Another Prank?
“That’s awful!” Bess cried out. “Why would Beezil kit-nap Fluffington?”
“We don’t know that he did, for sure,” Nancy said quickly. “It is kind of suspicious that he has catnip in his backpack, though.”
“He could have kit-napped Fluffington to get back at his dad for firing him,” George suggested.
Bess nodded. “Definitely. Or he could have kit-napped Fluffington as a dumb prank, like what he did with the blue stage paint.” She added, “And didn’t Meadow say he pulled a bunch of dumb pranks on his babysitters?”
“She said he put a mouse in his babysitter’s backpack. And he put shampoo in another babysitter’s smoothie,” Nancy recalled.
“When I’m old enough to babysit, I’m never, ever babysitting someone like Beezil!” Bess declared.
Nancy slung Beezil’s backpack over her shoulder. “Let’s go see what Beezil has to say about this.”
The girls found Beezil hanging out in his father’s office. He was sitting at Mr. Banner’s desk and talking on his cell phone.
“Dude, you should have seen their faces when they found out!” Beezil was saying to the person on the other end. “They looked like they were going to—” He stopped when he noticed Nancy and her friends. “Yo, this is a private conversation. What do you want?”
Nancy lifted Beezil’s backpack in the air. “You forgot something.”
“I gotta go,” Beezil mumbled into the phone. He snapped it shut and held out his hand. “Give it to me, Curlerhead,” he said to Nancy.
“Not so fast. What are you doing with catnip?” Nancy asked him.
Beezil’s cheeks flushed red. “You looked inside my bag? I’m telling my dad!”
“Your backpack was open,” George said.
“You kitnapped Fluffington, didn’t you, Beezil?” Bess accused him. “Why did you do it? Did you want to get back at your dad for firing you?”
“Wh-what?” Beezil sputtered. “What are you six-year-olds talking about?”
“We’re eight,” Nancy corrected him. “Did you use this catnip to lure Fluffington?”
“No way!” Beezil protested.
He got up from his father’s desk and walked over to where Nancy and her friends were standing. He grabbed the backpack from Nancy and reached inside. “Look,” he said, holding up the catnip container. “It’s not even open. It’s sealed shut with tape.”
Nancy studied the container. Beezil was right.
“O-kay,” she said slowly. “So maybe you had two things of catnip, and you used the other one.”
Beezil shook his head. “This is the only one. I bought it last night at a pet store. I wanted to give it to Fluffington, you know, because of, uh, what happened yesterday with the blue stage paint. I thought my dad would stop being mad at me if I gave Fluffington a present.”
Nancy stared at Beezil. Was he telling the truth? It was hard to tell. Beezil was definitely a major troublemaker. But was he a liar, too?
Later that afternoon, Nancy leaned back in her beach chair and peered out over the top of her heart-shaped shades. The hotel pool—that is, the girls’ favorite of the five hotel pools—was packed, mostly with kids. The pool area was landscaped with palm trees and tropical flowers that smelled like honey. Pink flamingos stood one-legged in the grass and preened their feathers.
George and Bess were sitting on either side of Nancy. George was writing in a small spiral-bound notebook. Bess was brushing pretty pink polish on her toenails. Hannah was on the other side of Bess, leafing through a magazine.
Hannah glanced up. “Is the Clue Crew working on the Fluffington case?” she asked. Nancy and her friends had filled Hannah in on Fluffington’s disappearance.
Nancy nodded. “George is writing down what we have so far.”
“This is what I’ve got,” George said, running her fingers down one of the pages in her notebook. “Clues,” she read out loud. “Catnip in Beezil’s backpack. Suspects. Beezil. He’s a big fat troublemaker. He put blue paint on Fluffington the day before Fluffington disappeared. Plus he had the catnip.”
“Beezil, Beezil, Beezil,” Bess said. She brushed polish onto her right big toe. “It all points to Beezil. He must be our kit-napper!”
“We need to find more clues and suspects,” Nancy pointed out.
“Don’t forget about motive,” George reminded Nancy and Bess. “If someone kit-napped Fluffington, then that person had to have a really good reason.”
“Fluffington is a celebrity. The kit-napper could sell her for a lot of money. That’s a motive,” Bess said.
George wrote this down in her notebook. “There’s also revenge,” she said. “Maybe the kit-napper was really mad at Mr. Banner or someone else involved with The Aliens Next Door.”
“Those are both really good motives,” Nancy said. “Or maybe the kitnapper had a motive that we haven’t even thought about yet.”