Nancy Drew: Mystery of the Six and a Half Keys
Chapter Seventeen

Leo's secretary wasn't in the office, when Nancy returned. She was easily able to leave the building and return to the café.

Adela was still sitting in her chair, drinking coffee. Nancy had to wonder if Adela had moved at all, in the past few hours.

"Nancy!" Adela said. "My laptop has been hacked! I got a weird pop up, and now it won't respond to anything I do."

"Take it to a computer repair person," Nancy suggested. "We've got bigger problems. Father Leo Dean of the St. Vitus Cathedral was just kidnapped and taken into underground tunnels by a skeleton knight."

"What?" Adela asked.

"Secret Agent Zane says it's all part of a big plot to steal the Crown Jewels," Nancy said. "Unless Leo was kidnapped for a completely different reason, like—plot twist—he owed money to the owner of a Halloween costume store. That'd explain the skeleton outfit."

"So that's why my necklace was stolen!" Adela said. "Someone plans to use my gems as convincing substitutes for the real royal gems!"

"Uh...yeah, that's totally what I was thinking, too," Nancy said. "I have definitely been on task the whole time, yep."

"But in order to steal the crown jewels, Father Leo would not be enough," Adela said. "You'd also need the original blueprints, which were kept in the alchemy lab. And no one has seen that for hundreds of years."

Nancy nodded. That was great news! The alchemy lab was so well hidden, there was no chance of the culprit finding it. All Nancy had to do was sit back and relax, while the culprit wasted all their time on the impossible task of locating the blueprints.

"That means you have to find it," Adela continued.

Nancy frowned. "Me? As in...me?" she asked. "You just said it's been lost for hundreds of years!"

"The only way to make sure it's safe is to find it before the thieves do," Adela said. "If you get there first, you can lay a trap for the thieves!"

Nancy sighed. She knew exactly what would happen next. She would bust her butt, solving ancient puzzles in order to locate a fabulous treasure, only for the culprit to swoop in at the last second and try to steal it. That had happened to her at least twenty times already.

"You have a good point, but have you maybe considered...just buying yourself a new necklace?" Nancy asked. "That'd be way less of a hassle."

"You must find my mother's necklace!" Adela said. "Without it, I can't—well—there is something special I want to do with it."

Nancy's suspicions were aroused. "You're not lying to me, are you?" she asked. "Is there a secret reason why you want the necklace back?"

"My reasons are my own," Adela said.

"I want to trust you, Adela, but there's no getting around the fact that we're basically strangers, and the first thing you did to me was lie about your identity as part of a test," Nancy said. "So if you don't tell me the truth about the necklace right now, I might decide to go back home."

Adela sighed. "Fine," she said. "I didn't wish to tell anyone, but...I only pretended to sell my necklace."

"So the entire case is a lie?!" Nancy asked.

"No!" Adela said. "The truth is, I put the necklace on the market, because I was looking for its original owner. My grandmother says she got it from a noble family, in exchange for providing food and shelter during the war."

"And that means there are tons of new motives and possible culprits for me to investigate," Nancy said. "Thanks a lot! Why didn't you tell me this sooner?!"

"It does not matter," Adela said. "Forget my necklace. Concentrate on protecting the crown jewels. They are far more important."

Adela was the one paying for Nancy's trip back home, so Nancy was forced to agree.