8
Meeting Place
Frank immediately dashed to the door. But when he got out, nobody was in the corridor. He bit his lower lip. This time, the eavesdropper got away. He knew it was no use to go after him, since he could have escaped through the front door or he could have hid in his room, if he was one of the guests staying in the inn. And Frank had a hunch that he was.
"Ignore the eavesdropper," George said dismissively. "I want to find out what this message said."
Nancy looked at the date. "It's a newspaper dating exactly a week from the day Christina was killed!" said the girl detective, surprised. "I think this may lead us to another suspect."
George thought for a moment. "Wait a minute, Nancy," she said as she finished thinking. "Isn't this like the message you decoded in the Mystery of the Moss-Covered Mansion?"
Nancy suddenly remembered the details. She was asked by her father to decode a certain personals ad posted on a Florida newspaper. It was a striking coincidence!
"That time, I used the first, fifth, ninth, and thirteenth words to find out the message. Maybe if I do this for this one…"
Nancy took out her notebook and began decoding. She first began by writing the message down: "Weil loll mien eats ants clod, road lad, or lain Edo root; see site. Keel nets." Then, she took out the first, fifth, ninth, and thirteenth words from the text and wrote them down underneath the original message. When she finished, she read:
"Weil ants or see."
For an instant, nobody said anything. But after a while, George and Joe started chuckling. Then, all of the detectives were laughing at the hilarious sentence Nancy just read. "That's a weird message!" George commented.
Nancy knew it was not the right one. She scratched her head. "Maybe I should take the first letter of each word and make words out of them. Let's see… WLMEACRLOLERSSKN."
"Doesn't make much sense, either," Frank said.
The detectives then tried the second letter of each word. But it still didn't make sense. They did the last letter of every word but found nothing.
"Do you think the letters stand for another one in the alphabet?" Joe suggested.
Nancy shook her head. "That's not possible. You don't usually see real words after you do it in that format. But all these are real words. What's the chance of jumbling up the alphabet and still get sixteen real words? I don't think that's the case."
George knew it would take forever trying to break the code. She then had an idea in mind. She turned to the message and read: "Will meet at Coral Dr. and Rose St. Kent."
Nancy was surprised. "How did you figure that out, George?" she asked, amazed.
George grinned. "All you had to do was read every other letter."
She took the notepad and started crossing out letters. The brunette wrote down the letters without the spaces, commas, and semi-colon. It came out like this:
WeillollmieneatsantsclodroadladorlainEdorootseesiteKeelnets.
First, she crossed out "e" and "l" in "Weil". She then crossed out "o" and the third "l" from the second word "loll". After doing the entire message, the detectives saw the message George had read earlier:
WillmeetatcoraldrandrosestKent.
Will meet at coral dr and rose st Kent.
Will meet at Coral Dr. and Rose St. Kent.
Everyone was amazed at George's decoding ability.
"You are truly an expert!" Ned complimented. George grinned.
"That's because I've been Nancy's best friend for years. I guess I got her sleuthing ability!"
But then Nancy looked at the name at the end of the message. "Kent… I'll bet it stands for Kent Stuart!"
Five minutes later, the detectives were in front of Kent's room knocking on his door. Kent opened with a welcoming smile. But his smile didn't last long when he heard what happened from the detectives and what they had found out. He grimaced.
"Okay," he said, "Christina and I were in love."
This shocked the entire group. Kent then continued as if he didn't notice. "She had been very nice to me because I had lost my job at a company I had worked for two years. She then offered me the job here in Orange Farm Inn and in the plantation. She said she love me more than her husband and told me she was going to leave him. I knew instantly that it meant divorce. I told her not to, but she was determined."
Nancy and George looked at each other quizzically. Could it mean that Christina's husband, Percival, had killed his wife?
"Time to talk to Percival," George said after the detectives said goodbye to the young blond suspect.
Percival didn't answer when the detectives knocked on his door. "Is he away?" Nancy muttered.
"He's away to the court meeting today," Mrs. Morley said. She appeared from behind the detectives, and the voice surprised them.
"Oh, hi, Mrs. Morley," George said, turning around. "I heard Christina broke your vase a while ago."
Mrs. Morley's smile disappeared. "How did you know that?"
"I heard from one of Christina's friends," Nancy replied.
"Well." Mrs. Morley put down the broom she was holding. It seemed like she was going to clean the corridor. "That vase was my most treasure thing. But I forgave her, of course. Who would keep whining about a silly old vase for weeks?"
"But it was precious and expensive, wasn't it?"
"Yes. It was made for the queen in a European country. My grandmother got her hands on it and gave it to me. I think it would be worth nearly a hundred thousand dollars if we had sold it in auction. It was truly a wonderful piece of artwork."
Mrs. Morley sighed. She then said she had work to do and went downstairs.
Nancy stood there in silence. Maybe this could be the motive, if Mrs. Morley actually killed her brother's wife. But she doubted it. Many questions were yet unanswered, and talking to suspects surely multiplied the number of unanswered questions.
They then went to the second floor and visited Jerome's room. He wasn't there.
"Figures," Joe said. He turned to the others. "Well? What do we do next?"
Nancy looked at the notepad. "We already know where Kent and Christina had met. I think we should go there to investigate. Maybe they had a fight about the marriage and divorce. I have a hunch that someone can tell us about the couple."
The detectives went there in their two separate cars and got there at the same time. Nancy looked at the street names.
"Coral Road and Rose Street. This must be it!"
The place was a restaurant. Its name was "Fast Sea Vikings." It was a fairly small restaurant that could fit only about two-dozen customers in it at a time. Nancy looked at the others and went inside.
"Welcome to Fast Sea Vikings!" a cheery voice greeted them. "I'm Paul Erickson. How many I help you?"
George almost laughed at the name. Erickson? That was the last name of Leif Eriksson, one of the most famous Vikings in the history, who was thought to have discovered North America. And the name fitted very well with the name of the restaurant. She thought it was a nickname, but when she looked at the man, who had a long beard and mustache, a huge stomach, muscular build, and a hat with two horns sticking out from it, she was sure he could have jumped out of the history textbook that talked about the sixteenth century.
After the group was seated, the man gave them five menus. George was shocked to see yet another menu filled with seafood. "I knew Florida was three-fourth surrounded by water, but I had no idea all the people there ate was fish!"
"Relax," Frank said. "Here is 'Fast Sea', which means 'fast food' and 'seafood' combined. I'm sure there is a section that mentions hamburgers or pizzas."
Frank was right. George was elated when she had found the fast food menu and ordered a hamburger combo. Meanwhile, Nancy asked the waiter if he had worked here for a long time. The waiter seemed like he was Mexican and didn't speak a lot of English. But he did mention that he was hired just two weeks ago. Nancy asked if he knew a couple that came to the store on a certain day of every week. The waiter said he remembered, but he didn't remember their names.
"Can you tell me about them?" Frank asked.
The waiter said he remembered the couple just because they had been having a fight at the hotel just two weeks ago, when he was hired there as a waiter. He saw that they were arguing about divorce and elopement. He didn't know what they meant, but he remembered that the store owner, who was the man they had met earlier, was really upset about the whole incident that drove a couple of customers away.
Nancy thought for a moment. This meant that Kent was arguing with Christina about divorce and elopement. She looked at her friends. "So Kent was telling the truth about he and Christina secretly dating."
Frank crossed his arms across his chest. "A woman was having affairs with her husband and his brother. Maybe she refused to marry him so he killed her."
"Or her husband found that out and killed her instead," Joe added. "Either way, all the people at the inn are suspects."
"Let's go back to the inn to find out more," Nancy said. "I want to search Sam Cantu's room to find if the same thing goes for him, too."
When the detectives got to the inn, it was almost lunchtime. They could smell the delicious aroma of food cooking coming out from the chimney that led to the kitchen. Nancy realized that there was also an oven in the kitchen.
Could the killer have climbed out of the chimney and escaped?
No, it wasn't possible. She knew that all chimneys had the special net placed above, and in the summertime, the net is supposed to stay on. It was a good guess, but she knew it wasn't possible.
Nancy looked at the muddy ground around the house.
"Hey, it's almost time to eat, Nancy," Frank called.
"I'll go later. Can you guys wait in the lobby? We can eat after we search Sam's room."
"Okay," Frank said with a shrug. He then closed the door and Nancy was alone outside. She looked into her purse but didn't find a magnifying glass inside. She groaned again. It was the second time she forgot one of her detective tools in her room! She quickly went into the bed-and-breakfast.
George was in the dining room looking at the tapes placed in the room by the police when Nancy went back into her room. George decided to see if Nancy found any clue outside. But when she got out, nobody was there. The brunette looked at the side of the house and saw a shoeprint.
"Huh?"
George was surprised. Why would someone walk over the muddy lawn? She remembered that it had rained for two days before the detectives got to the farm. That meant that a person must have walked on the lawn recently, probably yesterday or today. Looking at the shoeprint, George could see that it was made quite recently.
"I wonder if this was made by the killer?" George muttered.
Just then, she heard something move behind her. George was surprised and turned around instinctively. But she didn't see the person's face, for she was hit at the back of her head and blacked out.
The first thing she heard was the cracking of a wooden object.
The first thing she smelt was the smell of burning wood.
The first thing she saw was the red flame burning in front of her.
And the first thing she felt was the pain in her wrists and ankles.
George realized where she was in an instant. She was in the shack in the farm where the farmers kept the tools! She quickly tried to sit up, but the ropes that tied her hands and feet were too tight. The more she moved her hands and feet, the more the ropes hurt.
The dark-haired girl tried to scream, but her mouth had been covered with handkerchief, preventing her even from whispering for help.
The athletic brunette tried to stay calm and think.
What if I were Nancy? What would I do to escape?
George thought as hard as she could. But the flames got hotter and hotter. It spread throughout the small shack, burning every wooden thing in its path. Smoke filled George's nostrils and she almost choked.
How can I survive?
Will I survive?
George closed her eyes tightly. Drops of tears rolled down her cheeks.
Help me… Help me, Nancy!
Postscript: George is again not just in hot water, but in hot shack as well. Will she be rescued before she would be burnt to a crisp? You'll find out after I get five reviews (as always).
Ragna--I'm
sorry if the give-me-five-reviews-or-I-won't-update tactic is
irritating you, but I want to hear from my readers about how they feel
about the story and whether I made another mistake in the story, etc.
But I will review after a week even when I get no review at all for that chapter.
Keywords for the next chapter: Joe Hardy on the rescue, skeletons in Sam's closet.