“Whoever cut out these pages wasn’t very careful,” Nancy observed. Though the edges of the missing pages were fairly straight, a good inch of paper stuck out from the binding. Nancy judged that at least eight pages had been cut, but she checked the page numbers to make sure. “They didn’t bother to try to hide the damage,” she surmised, “so they were probably in a rush.”
“Do you think this is the book Danny was looking at the other day?” Bess asked with a frown.
“Could be,” Nancy mused. “The book he dropped was large, about this size. But why would he bother tearing pages out of a book? He could have copied the pages just as easily.”
“Right. I noticed a color photocopy machine by the checkout desk,” George informed her.
Nancy sat down next to Bess on the window seat and thumbed through the thick art book at random. “Danny’s stealing pages from a book just doesn’t make sense to me. He—” She broke off suddenly and stared at a small black-and-white photo at the top of one page. It showed a simple shallow bowl. The shape was distinctive, modern, and eye-catching. Since the photo was black and white, Nancy couldn’t tell the exact color of the bowl, though it was pale enough to be a creamy white. “Look at this!” she said.
“What’s Theresa’s pot doing in this book?” Bess wondered, touching the photo.
“It’s not Theresa’s,” George said slowly. “The caption says it’s a piece from eighteenth-century Korea.”
Bess narrowed her eyes at Nancy. “Nancy Drew, tell me you’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking.”
Very slowly and with great reluctance Nancy said, “I am. I think Theresa might be involved in the forgeries.”
“Not on your life!” Bess cried, jumping up. The other people in the library looked up from their reading. Bess flashed a small, apologetic smile.
“It’s possible,” Nancy insisted, her voice low. Ticking off points on her fingers, she said softly, “Theresa has the expertise. She can easily make bowls that look like this expensive antique.”
“Time out!” George interrupted, making a T with her hands. “It’s time for a reality check, Nan. Theresa’s the one who exposed the scam to you. She told you about the shards.”
“Besides,” Bess put in, “Theresa doesn’t do raku, and as George said, she’s the one who brought you the evidence.”
Nancy leaned forward with her elbows on her knees and stared across the library. The other visitors had packed up their things and left. The library was quiet, and dust motes danced in the slanty beams of colored light pouring through the massive window. Nancy wanted to be wrong about Theresa, and maybe she was. But she had learned a long time ago to try not to let her personal feelings cloud her judgment. She liked Theresa, wanted her to be innocent, but wanting wouldn’t make it so. “I hear you, Bess,” Nancy said. “I hope you’re right. But remember, her pot was in that raku barrel on Sunday, the one Danny found.”
“I forgot about that,” George said, curling her legs up under her on the seat. “Though she swore she had never put it in the barrel or raku fired it.”
“Then who did? And why?” Nancy went on. “If Theresa’s innocent, why didn’t she tell me she was an expert in conservation and old materials?”
“She is?” Bess and George gasped in unison.
Nancy showed them the magazine article, then made them promise they wouldn’t mention anything she’d found out that afternoon to Theresa. “And I’ll put her off a bit longer about the museum and the curator. I keep forgetting how impressed he was with the way she had glued those shards together. He thought an expert had done the work.”
“Okay, we’ll keep our mouths shut,” George promised. “But speaking of experts, maybe we should feel out some of the other teachers here. Isn’t Jonathan giving a talk and demo tomorrow about his pewter work?”
“At two P.M.,” Bess piped up.
“The girl has his whole schedule memorized,” George marveled.
“That might conflict with the kiln-building session that everyone taking any pottery classes here is invited to join,” Nancy said, frowning.
“I’ll help with the kiln in the morning, but in the afternoon I’m going to check out Jonathan,” Bess insisted.
“We’ll all go. I want to draw him out a bit, since he knows so much about forgeries,” Nancy said.
“What should we do about this book?” George asked, holding up the history of Asian ceramics.
“When and if I can find out who ripped out these pages and why, I’ll speak to Ellie May,” Nancy said.
Bess sounded hopeful, “So you think it might not be Danny?”
“I don’t know,” Nancy said, rubbing her head. “To tell you the truth, I’m so hungry and tired right now, I can’t think straight. Let’s go to dinner, and maybe things will be clearer on a full stomach.”
The girls put away their magazines and went outside, where Bess checked her watch. “Hey, guys, I’ve got some really crummy news. We lost track of time in there. Unless we can beam back to the dining hall and go through some kind of time warp, we’re twenty minutes past the end of the dinner period.”
“I’ve got an idea, and it’ll give us a chance to talk in private away from the village,” Nancy said. “I’m sure I saw a pizza place in that mini-mall we passed between here and the interstate. Let’s grab the car and head out that way.”
A few minutes later the girls had piled into the Mustang and Nancy was driving down the narrow Junction road with the top down. Several small dirt roads branched off the blacktop. Nancy chose one of the dirts roads that Melinda had pointed out as a shortcut to town.
As Nancy stopped to turn off the two-lane black-top, a vintage black pickup truck squealed around them, then peeled off down the dirt road, sending up a cloud of dust.
“Ugh!” Bess cried, fanning her face. “That was mean!”
“And dangerous,” Nancy said. The truck was traveling much too fast down the rough road.
A few minutes later the three girls walked out of the warm evening into the cool air-conditioning of Pizza Heaven. A vintage 1950s jukebox was blaring a classic Chuck Berry tune. The place was packed. A large group of familiar faces could be seen at a back booth. George stopped in her tracks. “Is this party central or what?”
“Everyone from the Junction is here!” Bess exclaimed.
“Just the whole ceramics staff,” Nancy corrected her. “I remember now. Theresa told us that on Thursday nights Ellie May takes her pottery crew, including the assistants and apprentices, out for pizza.”
“Hey, look who’s here!” Tom yelled, spotting Nancy. “Pull up a table and join us,” he invited them.
Nancy hesitated, but Ellie May waved them over while Danny and Tom hauled a table up to one end of the booth to make more room. The girls pulled up chairs and settled in. Two steaming pies were already on one end of the table. Cans of soda and iced tea filled a big tray in the middle of the booth.
“Didn’t think you’d get tired of Junction food so fast,” Ellie May quipped, motioning toward the waiter. “Anything special on your pizza? My treat,” she added. “We’ve got two more pies coming out now, but knowing this crew, we’ll need another.”
“Half pepperoni, half veggie,” Bess requested slinging her bag on the back of her chair. “That way George doesn’t have to eat the pepperoni, I can skip the veggies, and Nancy can have both!”
Nancy sat across from Danny and Ellie May and looked around. “Thanks for including us in your pizza party. I hear it’s a regular Thursday night tradition.”
“It’s good for us staffers to get out, especially during the summer when things are busy.”
The pizzas were served, and as Nancy ate she looked around and wondered why Theresa was missing. Theresa had hinted at feeling left out at the Junction, but would Ellie May exclude her on purpose? Then Nancy realized the two guys who were Ellie May’s top assistants, the ones she’d seen in the studio the other night when she was talking with Theresa, had skipped the party, too.
“Too bad,” Karen said, flipping her long dark braid over the back of her chair, “Michael and David couldn’t come again tonight.”
“They had to finish firing that kiln. You know it needs watching,” Ellie May said. “Sorry the schedule’s worked out that way for them. I’ll take them their own personal pizza later.”
“And Theresa? Is she firing a kiln, too?” Bess asked, taking a slice of pizza and popping a piece of pepperoni in her mouth.
“Theresa?” Danny’s laugh had an edge to it. “She’s too good for the likes of us. She’s not in charge of kilns, but she’s always too busy to come.”
“Or too bored or whatever,” Karen spoke up from a corner of the booth.
“That’s not fair, guys,” Ellie May protested. “Theresa’s just a bit of a workaholic. She reminds me of myself when I was young. She’s just very driven, very determined.”
“Determined to keep to herself,” Tom remarked. “I can’t tell if she’s a snob, or shy.”
“The girl is just very single-minded,” Ellie May said. “How do you think she learned as much as she has about ceramics in such a short time? She’s not even thirty, and she knows more than anyone in the village, including me, about glazes and firing techniques.”
“Enough about Theresa.” Danny abruptly shot a warning glance toward Ellie May. “I’m getting sick of hearing about how great she is.”
“Jealous!” accused Tom.
“And you aren’t?” Danny countered.
“Cool it, guys,” Ellie May said, motioning toward the waiter. “Let’s have another pie for here, and then one to go, with the works,” she told him.
Nancy, Bess, and George stood and said they had to leave. “What with the kiln building tomorrow, I’m going to need my rest,” Nancy added.
Outside it was a little cool. Nancy slipped on her cardigan but left the car’s top down. George climbed into the front passenger seat, and Bess stretched out in back.
Bess waited until they were out of the parking lot before asking, “Did you see the way Danny shut Ellie May up? What was that about?”
“It’s pretty obvious that there’s no love lost between Danny and Theresa—at least on Danny’s side,” Nancy said. But as she headed back toward the Junction, she entertained another, more disquieting thought. Ellie May had told Nancy that the whole ceramics community was talking about the forgeries. Probably everyone was eyeing everyone else with suspicion. If Danny wasn’t one of the forgers, was it possible he suspected Theresa? On the other hand, if he somehow was able to pull off those forgeries, was he trying to frame her?
“Nancy, isn’t this where we turn off?” George asked suddenly, pointing through the windshield.
Just ahead, in the beam of her headlights, Nancy saw the turnoff for a narrow dirt road.
“Thanks, George, I was sort of daydreaming,” she admitted as she put on her directional signal, then turned. The road seemed narrower than on the way out and more deeply rutted. There were no shoulders to speak of, and the broad leaves of the tall field corn brushed the sides of the convertible.
“I don’t remember the road being this bad!” Bess complained from the backseat.
“Me neither,” Nancy agreed. “And I don’t remember its forking like this,” she added as the road split in two.
“Maybe you should turn around and go back to the highway,” George suggested.
Nancy turned on her high beams. “I can’t. There’s not enough space. If we can spot the lights from the Junction, we’ll just head in that direction. Melinda told me there’s a virtual maze of dirt roads back here, but all of them converge down at the road that runs along the river and eventually connects up to the Junction blacktop.”
“I think there’s light down that way!” Bess pointed off to the right.
Nancy peered into the dark. Sure enough, a slight glow seemed to emanate from behind the tall corn. Nancy chose the right fork. The road was still rough but less rutted and a little wider. Soon the corn gave way to soybeans. Now Nancy could see clearly some distance ahead. There was no village. Instead Nancy found herself approaching a large barn. Floodlights tacked to the peak of the barn’s tin roof illuminated the barnyard. A pickup truck with its lights on idled in front of the open barn doors. A radio droned a slow country ballad.
As Nancy approached she became aware that some guys were in the barnyard. They were hauling bales of hay from inside the barn, then putting them carefully into the back of the truck.
“Nan, isn’t that the same truck we saw on our way to pizza?” George observed.
Nancy made a face. “ ’Fraid so.” She sighed.
“Maybe they’re just rude drivers and not rude people.” Bess sounded hopeful.
“Well, they can’t be all that rude about giving simple directions,” Nancy stated, then pulled into the barnyard. “At worst, we have a place to turn around.”
Leaving the engine running, Nancy got out of the car and waved in the direction of the men. She jogged up toward them, a smile on her face.
“Hey there! We’re lost.” As she approached, the men froze in their tracks. Nancy saw there were four guys, though she couldn’t make out their faces. One said something to his buddies. He started toward her while the others ducked back into the barn. Nancy went forward to meet him, shielding her eyes from the glare of the floodlights. “Does this road lead to East River Junction?” she asked. “Or should we turn around and head back to the highway?”
“What are you doing snooping around here, girlie?” the guy said gruffly, continuing toward her.
Nancy stopped but stood her ground. “I’m not snooping,” she said firmly. “We’re just lost.”
“That’s not my problem.”
“Look, we’re lost. If you’d just—” Nancy broke off as a chorus of growls sounded from the back of the truck. She began to back away, but before she could take more than a few steps, two snarling dogs leaped out of the pickup and charged toward her.
At the sight of the huge rottweilers Nancy froze.
“Nancy,” George screamed from the car. “The dogs!”
Nancy sprang into action, turning back toward the car and breaking into a run.
“Put the top up!” she screamed at George as she pelted across the packed dirt of the barnyard. Nancy was a fast runner, but the dogs were faster. They were gaining on her. Several feet shy of the car, she could feel their breath on her back. “Let go!” she yelled as teeth sank into the loose fabric of her sweater.