Nancy Drew: Mystery of the Six and a Half Keys
Chapter Twenty-Four
"Loutkari is blackmailing me," Radek explained. "They wanted me to dress up in this costume and chase you, so you'd solve the mystery faster."
"How is bringing a random monster into the mix supposed to get me to solve the mystery faster?" Nancy complained. "That makes no sense."
"I don't make the decisions, I just follow orders," Radek said. "I get the sense Loutkari is getting desperate, because the crown jewels exhibit opens this weekend. They don't have a lot of time left to get the blueprints."
"I already found the blueprints this morning," Nancy said. "Guess I solved the mystery sooner than you expected. What do you want with these blueprints?"
"I've been ordered to steal them from you," Radek admitted.
"I freaking knew it!" Nancy cried. "Well, you can tell Loutkari to kiss my big, fat—"
Nancy was interrupted by the arrival of Marek. "What's going on in here?" Marek asked.
"Oops," Nancy said. When making her trap, she had forgotten that there were two doors to the building. Good thing Radek had entered through the booby-trapped one.
"Nancy captured me, so I'm confessing everything," Radek said. "What else can I do?"
Nancy pondered that for a second. How else could this culprit confrontation have gone?
"You'd better start telling me why you're here," Nancy said.
"I'm sorry, I didn't want to hurt you," Radek said.
"That has nothing to do with what I just said," Nancy pointed out. "Why were you following me?"
"I can't explain now, okay? We should get out of here," Radek said.
"Why?" Nancy asked.
"Look, I'm not the only one who knows where we are," Radek said.
"That is the third time in a row you've completely ignored my question and said something unrelated," Nancy said. "I'm not going to let you get away with that. Tell me why you're here!"
"I'm sorry. They didn't really give me a choice," Radek said.
"Who's they?" Nancy asked. "Are you trying to say you were forced to follow me?"
"They sent me the tracking software," Radek said. "I've never needed it before in my work, but I didn't have a choice."
"Who's they?" Nancy repeated.
"We shouldn't discuss this here. Let's go back to Aparat," Radek said.
"Quit ignoring my questions!" Nancy screamed.
Yes, it would have been far more frustrating, if Radek and Marek had spent seven minutes ignoring Nancy and talking about unrelated things. Good thing they were being direct and straightforward in their confession.
Nancy snapped out of her daydream, in time to hear Marek mumble something about his dead daughter.
"Okay, I definitely heard everything you just said, but just for the sake of thoroughness, maybe you should explain it all from the beginning again, like I'm hearing it for the first time," Nancy said.
"I was just explaining that you have the blueprints that Loutkari wants," Radek said. "I'm supposed to steal them from you."
"And I'm supposed to use them to make the seven keys," Marek said. "After that, I give them to Loutkari in a dead drop, at the statue. Once that's done, Loutkari promises to give up the blackmail."
"They must have some pretty serious blackmail material on you, if you're willing to go this far," Nancy said. "What do they have on you? Are you part of an underground crime league or something?"
"They have an embarrassing photo of us at a Christmas party together," Radek said. "Marek dared me to kiss one of my puppets because I've never had a girlfriend, and, uh...things got weird from there."
"Ah," Nancy said. "Well, the way I see it, we have two choices. You can mess up the keys on purpose, so Loutkari can't steal the crown jewels, or you can put a tracker in the keys, so I can secretly follow them and catch the real culprit red-handed!"
Weeks later, Nancy would realize that using a tracker wasn't that great of an idea. She knew where the culprit would take the seven keys: to the door of the vault with the crown jewels. Nancy could have just gone there directly with the police and waited for the culprit to appear. That would have been much easier than bringing a tracker into the mix.
But alas, since Nancy didn't think of that until later, she was forced to use Marek's old-fashioned tracking device. It didn't work very well. Nancy was forced to wander around in circles saying, "Is it here? Is it here? Is it here?", until she found the correct coordinates.
Once she found one set of coordinates, she had to find the next one, then the next one, and so on. It took her about an hour to reach the final set of coordinates, which were at the entrance to the alchemy lab.
"Oh, come on!" Nancy complained. "I already knew where the secret alchemy lab was located! Why didn't Marek send me this coordinate first, instead of wasting my time with all the others?"
Grumbling, Nancy entered the alchemy lab where she came face-to-face with the culprit! It was...Vladena Zlaty!
Author's Note: Pretend to be surprised who the culprit is, even though you probably knew it already.