J.M.J.

IV

The man climbing down the ladder was about halfway when he glanced down and saw Carson and Nancy. With a muffled curse, he immediately reversed direction and climbed back up to the window. At the same time, Carson grasped the lower rungs of the ladder.

"Stay here!" he told Nancy as he began scurrying up the ladder after the suspect.

"Dad…" Nancy tried to protest, but he clearly wasn't listening. She didn't waste time by standing there, though. She whipped her phone out of her pocket and dialed 9-1-1. Quickly, she reported that there was a burglar in the house.

Then she tried to decide where the suspect was most likely to emerge. He had had to leave his ladder behind, so he would have to come downstairs. The trouble was that once he had reached the lower floor, any window or door would be fair game. Quickly, she decided that the back was the most likely place, so she dashed around the house.

She was just in time to see a man dart across the yard. Without thinking about how she possibly meant to stop him, she ran after him. Perhaps it was just as well that the darkness swallowed him and she couldn't see where he had gone. With a frustrated sigh, she turned and ran back to the house.

"Nancy!" she heard her dad calling.

She had to look around for him a little before she spotted him in one of the upstairs windows. "I'm right here!"

"Get up here if you can and then call the police and an ambulance," Carson instructed her.

"I've already called the police," Nancy said. "The suspect got away out the back. Is the guard hurt?"

"He's unconscious. Get up here in case that burglar decides to come back!"

Nancy didn't think that was very likely, but she didn't argue. She hadn't seen where the suspect had gotten out of the house, but when she came to investigate, she found a back door open. She rushed inside, switching on the light as she did. She found herself in a kitchen, but she didn't take time to look around. Instead, she darted through the next door, into a dining room, as she found when she switched on the light there. From there, she found her way into what must have been the front entranceway, with a staircase sweeping around one side of the room. She pounded up the stairs and found another light switch.

"Dad?" she called.

"Right here!"

She followed the sound of his voice down the hallway and stepped into a room at the far end, which must have been the room that the rope ladder dangled from. Carson had already turned the light on here, revealing that it was a storage room of some sort. A large vault-like safe stood open on one side of the room. Nearer at hand, Carson was kneeling next to a man lying on the floor, attempting to revive him. Nancy placed the call for the ambulance and then came to crouch next to him.

"Do you think he'll be all right?" she asked.

"I don't know," Carson said tersely. "You'd better call Dustin, too. Here, you can find his number in my phone."

Before Nancy had finished that call, sirens announced the arrival of the police. Nancy went down to the front door to let them in, introducing herself and telling them that she was the one who had called.

"You're not supposed to be in this house," one of the officers observed. His nametag identified him as Bensen.

"We weren't exactly invited in, I guess," Nancy admitted, "but under the circumstances, we didn't think it would be a problem. I'm certain the man I saw running across the yard was the same one who was climbing down the ladder."

"I think you'd better tell us the whole story of what happened," Bensen said. "But first, there was an additional on this call that you were requesting an ambulance."

Nancy bobbed her head. "The guard was knocked unconscious. He's upstairs with my dad. Come on!"

She led the way up the stairs, but they found that the guard was already waking up. He was very groggy, though.

"Just try to relax," Bensen advised him. "The ambulance should be here any minute."

The man paid no attention at all. He jerkily tried to sit up. "The safe!" he said. "He's in the safe!"

Everyone turned to look at the safe on the other end of the room.

"The door was open when I got in here," Carson explained.

Bensen nodded and stepped toward the door. "Why don't you and your daughter tell us exactly what you saw?"

The Drews gave a brief but complete account. Before they had finished, the ambulance arrived and took charge of the injured guard. A minute or two later, Paul Dustin also arrived.

He was close to seventy, still agile and alert. He seemed very upset by the turn things had taken and rather humbled, too.

"I'm sorry I didn't take your call seriously at first," he told Carson. "I thought it was probably just the guard, Gavin Wells. He usually uses a flashlight instead of turning on all the overhead lights. That's how he was able to catch Alex Marquette in here. But I guess he wouldn't have had reason to try to hide the beam, though."

"Dustin, come over here and take a look in this safe," Bensen requested. "I can't let you touch anything until we've dusted for fingerprints, but I want you to see whether you can tell right away if anything is missing."

"He got into the safe?" Dustin said in alarm, as he had apparently not noticed the door open before now. "How did he do it? He didn't blow it?"

"No. He must have either listened to the tumblers or he knew the combination," Bensen replied.

Dustin shook his head. "The tumblers on that safe are silent. There's no way he could have heard them."

"Then he must have known the combination," Bensen said calmly. He pushed the safe door open with a gloved hand. "Now, do you immediately see anything missing?"

Dustin stepped forward to be better able to see into the safe. Nancy also came as close as she could to peer inside, and no one seemed to care. The safe certainly hadn't been looted. There were plenty of items that looked old or valuable inside. Nancy noted with satisfaction that amongst them was a conch shell and a Japanese puzzle box. Unless Eleanor Marquette had had multiple items like that, then the ones that rightfully belonged to Alex were still there.

"I can't think of anything that's missing right off," Dustin said, "but I'd have to consult my inventory list."

"Do you have the list with you?" Bensen asked.

"There's a copy in the safe itself."

"Fair enough," Bensen said. "Let us dust for fingerprints, and then we'll compare it to the contents."

Dustin stepped away again and dropped his head into his hands. "I don't understand why this keeps happening. Hopefully, at least this time, the thief didn't have a chance to take anything."

"I'm afraid he probably did," Nancy spoke up. "When we saw him, he was already leaving the house. He must have gotten whatever he was looking for."

"But I don't understand what he's been looking for!" Dustin complained. "None of these burglaries make any sense!"

"There has to be some explanation," Bensen said. He turned to Carson. "Maybe you have some idea."

"I have a client involved in this case," Carson told him evenly. "You know I can't discuss it."

"I have some ideas," Nancy spoke up eagerly.

Bensen gave her a somewhat bemused look. "All right, then. Let's hear them."

"There are three possible reasons for why someone might be pulling off these thefts," Nancy explained. "At least, there were three before tonight. This has eliminated one of them. Up till now, it was possible that someone was burglarizing the place to get valuable pieces from the estate without having to pay inheritance tax or share them with other heirs. They took just a few things at a time, hoping no one would notice, but I can't believe now that the thief had such a subtle motive, since he attacked the guard."

"Not to mention that he should have realized by now that the thefts had been noticed," Bensen pointed out.

"Right," Nancy agreed. "So it doesn't look like the thief is after the items for their own sake or to resell them. That leaves only two possible motives: either the thief is trying to play some kind of practical joke or torment the heirs in some way or else he believes that the items he's taken will help him find something more valuable."

"You mean, like Eleanor Marquette had some kind of hidden treasure that her family and the executor of her estate don't know about, but some random stranger does?" Bensen asked cuttingly.

Nancy was a bit crushed by his tone, but she didn't let it discourage her too much. "It's a possibility. And the burglar wouldn't have to be a stranger. It could be a member of the family. Mrs. Marquette might have told someone who kept the information to themselves."

"It's hardly likely," Benson said. "If she wanted everyone to know about this treasure or whatever, she would have told them all."

"Not necessarily," Nancy insisted. She considered the problem a moment longer and then she added, "Maybe she didn't want everyone to know."

"She would have had to tell me, as the executor," Dustin broke in. "She gave me a complete list of everything in the estate, and there was nothing secret. The whole idea is nonsense."

Nancy's cheeks reddened a bit in both indignation and embarrassment. "What if I could prove it?" she countered.

"Well, if you can prove it, then we can't very well deny what's right in front of our eyes," Bensen admitted. "How do you propose to prove it?"

"I don't know for sure that it's true, but if it is, chances are that the answer is in that puzzle box," Nancy said, pointing toward the object in question.

Everyone turned their heads to look at the object in question.

"How do you figure that?" Dustin asked.

Nancy noticed an incredulous look even in her dad's eyes, but she quickly started to explain. "Mrs. Marquette wanted to make sure Alex had the puzzle box, but she didn't mention it until very shortly before she died. Couldn't it be that there's something important inside and she wanted to make sure someone had it who wasn't as deeply involved in the feud as her sons are?"

"That's quite a leap of imagination," Dustin said.

"But it would be worth investigating," Bensen admitted. "We've dusted the box for fingerprints. The only ones on it seem to be yours, Dustin. Do you know how to open it?"

"Not a clue," Dustin replied, "and I'm not so sure we should. I'm not supposed to tamper with the estate."

"I don't think opening a box quite counts as tampering," Bensen said. "Especially not if it could be relevant to a police investigation. I'll have to see if any of my men know anything about puzzle boxes."

Carson chuckled. "You don't have to go to all that trouble. Nancy's very good at puzzles of all kinds. I'll bet she can have that box open before you could even call back to the station."

Nancy blushed. "I don't think I could solve it that fast, but I would like to give it a try."

"Be my guest, then," Bensen told her. He took the box out of the safe and handed it to Nancy.

She examined it carefully for a few moments, examining the pattern. It was a confusing pattern of red and gold, with dots and diamonds here and there. Even so, the lines of the panels were still clearly evident. Nancy tried sliding the panels different directions and in different orders. All the men fell silent, as they watched her, none of them but Carson expecting that she would make any progress very quickly.

They were stunned when after only about five minutes, Nancy had opened the box. Her face was flushed with excitement at having conquered the puzzle, but all her excitement died instantly when she looked inside. The box was empty.

"Very impressive puzzle-solving skills, but it hardly proves anything," Dustin told her patronizingly.

"I don't understand it," Nancy said with a frown. "I was so sure that there must be something inside."

"I'll admit, you had me believing it for a minute, too," Bensen said. "It was a good thought, but I guess the original theory that Eleanor wanted Alex to have this merely for sentimental reasons still holds up."

"I guess so," Nancy murmured unwillingly, but at almost the same moment, a thought came to her. Could have something been removed from the box?