Nancy Drew: Mystery of the Six and a Half Keys
Chapter Fourteen
Nancy thanked Elka for her hard work, then ran away before Elka could hand her a bill. As she walked through the courtyard gate, Nancy checked her task list. There was a new item on it: Further investigate the marionette theater, then ask everyone in the entire city about Rezidente.
Nancy scratched her head. Did someone write that as a joke? Why would she waste a bunch of time on puppet stuff again? There was a mystery to solve!
Nancy stopped at Vladena's on her way back to the café. "Hey, Vladena, I got the paperwork you filled out for Adela's necklace," Nancy said.
Vladena sighed. "That is not my paperwork. That is the monstrosity of an online system. My paperwork is in the safe."
"Oh," Nancy said. "Can I see it?"
"You? Please," Vladena said. "No one could crack my safe. I dare you to try."
"Well, I did steal the Zattere Sapphire when I was in Venice, but I left my hammer and dynamite at home," Nancy said. "I can probably crack your safe without them, though. It looks like you made the amateur sleuth mistake of writing the combination on the outside of the safe."
Indeed, Vladena had done so. She left pictures above the lock: a sun, a circle, a half-moon and another circle.
"That's a code," Vladena said. "The math is quite complex, involving many steps that must be taken in a specific order."
Nancy spent a few moments, typing on her phone. After a brief wait, she triumphantly said, "Ha! It's 5457." Nancy punched in the code, and the safe popped open.
"What? How did you do that?" Vladena asked.
"I asked my friend, Professor Hotchkiss," Nancy said. "She's sort of an expert on Egyptian hieroglyphics."
"These are not hieroglyphs!" Vladena protested.
"Whatever they are, they're not good enough to protect your safe," Nancy said. "Speaking of which, did you know lots of people had safes in the year 1930? It's true!"
Nancy took Vladena's appraisal log out of the safe and compared it to the appraisal log on DEGAS. Although they had different description sections, they were pretty much the same.
"WHOA!" Nancy said. "The dates don't match! One says Sunday the Fifth, while the other says Thursday the Third." Nancy spun around in a circle, so she could dramatically point at Vladena. "And that's impossible, because today is a Tuesday!"
"I didn't inspect the necklace today," Vladena said sullenly.
"So you admit this appraisal log is a fake!" Nancy said.
"I don't know why the DEGAS version of the log is wrong," Vladena said. "But I can assure you that no one could have tampered with my copy of the log. No one...except Oskar. I left him alone in the store with the necklace for a few minutes, while I helped a customer."
"You trust him with your valuable merchandise?" Nancy asked. "That's so romantic!"
"I would not say that," Vladena said. "He would have to be the world's most foolish thief to think he could steal jewels from me, when I was in the middle of appraising them."
"Maybe he's a fool in love with you," Nancy said. "You should ask him out on a date."
"The only fool here is you," Vladena said sourly.