“FOR THE RECORD, I’M NOT doing this for your tour,” I told Brady. “I do think you need to take some ownership of your actions. Even if you meant it as a joke, I don’t think you should have called for violence against a heckler, and I think you should apologize. I’m taking this case because I don’t want one of the first performances at the Arts Complex to be a disaster. It’s too important to River Heights.”
Brady looked like he wanted to argue, so I held up my hand to stop him. It was now almost one thirty, and Joe was giving me until six. We didn’t have time to argue.
“First things first: we need to search this room,” I said.
“What are we looking for?” Ned asked.
“Anything that looks out of place,” I answered. “Whoever destroyed it must have exerted a lot of energy to do this level of damage. It’s possible they dropped something or otherwise left something behind that will help us identify them.”
“Okay. Where do we start?” asked Joe.
I surveyed the room. It was a good question. For a moment I felt overwhelmed by how much damage had been done. It could take a long time to go through everything, and I didn’t have a lot of time before Joe would call in the extra security. It was also easy to imagine missing an important clue in the mess. But sometimes moving forward with one plan is better than waiting for the perfect plan.
I opened the door to the bathroom. It looked like that room had been left alone.
“Brady, is this how you left the bathroom?” I asked.
Brady peered in. “Yup, looks like they left that room alone.”
“Okay, then we will too. Let’s divide this room into quadrants,” I said, “and each of us will be responsible for searching that quadrant. If there’s anything that seems like it might be a clue, hold it up and Brady can tell us if it’s his or not.”
“You’re lucky this is the first stop on my tour,” Brady said.
“Why is that?”
“You won’t be digging through my dirty laundry.”
We all laughed.
“Okay,” I said. “Brady, how about you take from the west wall through the left pillow, and then down the bottom of the bed. Joe, if you could take the east wall through the right pillow, Ned and I will split the space in front of the bed. Sound good?”
Everyone nodded and got to work.
I got down on my hands and knees and started in the upper left corner of my quadrant.
“Make sure you look under things. Even the smallest clue could help us find the person who did this,” I reminded everyone as I focused my eyes intently down, looking for anything that seemed like it didn’t belong to a middle-aged stand-up comic. I carefully shook out the pants that were strewn across my way. I was completely focused on the two square feet of carpet in front of me.
After a moment, Ned spoke up. “You know, these notebook pages aren’t torn that small. I think we could put them back together.”
“Don’t tease me, Ned,” Brady answered. “I can’t take another disappointment right now.”
“No, I’m serious,” Ned said. “I’m pretty good at puzzles.”
“He’s being modest,” I added. “He’s really good at puzzles. It’s a tradition in his family that they do a giant jigsaw puzzle every year over the holidays. And by ‘giant’ I mean like over five thousand pieces.”
“Yeah, and we do the expert-level ones,” Ned continued. “The ones that are approximately ninety percent sky or ocean, so each piece is blue with very little distinguishing it from the others.”
I picked up a scrap of the notebook paper and examined it. It was about half an inch in size, but you could clearly make out the letters st on it. It wouldn’t be easy to put it back together, but it was possible.
“I think he could do it,” I said.
“Here,” Ned said, taking the recording equipment out of its box. “Put all the notebook pieces you find in this box, and I will work on putting the pages back together after we finishing searching the room.”
We got back to scouring our quadrants for clues, stopping only to put notebook scraps in the box. After a while my arms began to ache and my eyes started swimming from staying focused on a small spot for so long.
“There’s nothing in my quadrant,” Joe said, standing up and stretching his back.
“Mine either,” said Brady.
“Sorry, Nancy,” Ned chimed in. “I don’t see anything either.”
I hadn’t had any luck either, and I was going to give up when suddenly my own words echoed in my head: Look under things.
“The bed,” I said.
“Brady and Joe searched the bed,” Ned said, confused.
“But they didn’t search under it,” I said. “Come on!” I lifted up the bed skirt, but it was too dark to see anything. I pulled out my phone, turned on its flashlight function, and shined it under the bed. I swept it from left to right, like I had seen the spotlights on police helicopters do on the news when they were searching for escaped suspects. The light caught something that flashed, but I couldn’t make out what it was.
“There’s something under there!” I exclaimed.
“What? What is it?” Brady asked, rushing to my side.
“I’m not sure,” I said, stretching my arm underneath the bed. I reached as far as I could, but I still couldn’t grasp it.
“Let me try,” said Brady, shoving his arm under the bed. I watched him flail his arm, his face puckered in concentration, and I realized he was holding his breath.
“Got it!” he exclaimed, exhaling with a loud gasp.
He pulled his hand out, his fist clenched around the mystery object. Slowly he opened his fingers, revealing a large gold button about the size of a nickel with an anchor embossed on it, so it stood out from the button three-dimensionally.
“That looks like a button from a blazer,” I said.
“Is it one of yours?” Ned asked Brady.
Brady laughed. “Did any of the clothes you saw strewn all over this room look like I would (a) wear a blazer or (b) wear anything that had an anchor on it?” He didn’t wait for any of us to respond. “No, I am strictly a jeans and black T-shirt kind of guy. If it gets chilly, then perhaps I will don a black sweater.”
“Then this is a clue!” Ned exclaimed. “Our culprit wore a blazer and lost a button!” I gave him a look, and Ned knew me well enough to know exactly what it meant.
“What?” Ned asked. “Why isn’t this a clue?”
It was one of the things I liked best about my relationship with Ned—how well we could communicate without speaking.
“Well,” I explained, “it’s more that we don’t know that it’s a clue. This is a hotel room. For all we know, it belongs to a previous occupant.”
“Then what was the point of spending half an hour crawling around on my hands and knees?” Joe asked huffily.
“It’s still good,” I said. “If we find someone in the course of our investigation who is missing an anchor button, we know that they’re probably involved. We just can’t rule anyone out because they don’t have a blazer with a missing button.”
Joe sighed. “I have to get back to my office. Brady, if you change your mind about the extra security, let me know. Nancy Drew, you have until six o’clock to convince me you have the suspect.” He left the hotel room.
I felt bad that I hadn’t convinced him that it wasn’t a waste of time to search the room. Detective work isn’t glamorous; there are a lot of dead ends and wrong theories before you solve the case, but each dead end is important, because it eliminates one possibility of what happened. It’s just like taking a multiple-choice test: every answer that you know is wrong gets you closer to the right answer. I wish I had been able to explain better that just because we didn’t know the button definitely was important, that didn’t mean it definitely wasn’t.
I turned to Ned. “I think it’s time we go interview some of these members of RHVRA and see if they know anything.”
Ned looked down at the box of notebook scraps we’d collected. “Do you mind seeing if George and Bess can go with you?” he asked. “It’s just that I think putting this notebook back together could take a really long time, and I’d like to get started on it. Brady’s going to help me.”
“Sure,” I replied. “That makes sense. But what about your interview for NED Talks?”
Ned glanced at Brady, who was on the other side of the room, gathering some of his belongings from the floor. “I think he might be open to answering some questions as we’re working.”
“Sure,” I replied. “That makes sense.”
“Thanks, Nancy,” Ned said. “Let me know what you guys find.”
“You got it. Good luck with your hardest puzzle yet,” I told him before turning toward Brady. “Bye,” I said. “I’ll be in touch as soon as I have something to report.”
“Thanks. Talk soon.”
I stepped into the hall, pulled out my phone, and dialed George’s number. She answered before the end of the first ring.
“Nancy!” she yelled so loudly that I had to pull the phone away from my ear. “I just finished my shift. How’d it go? Did my microphones work? Wait. Don’t answer that. Bess is right here. I’m going to put you on speaker.” After a moment, she said, “Okay, go ahead, you’re on speaker.”
“Well, the interview didn’t happen yet, so I don’t know how the mics worked.”
“Oh no,” Bess said. “Poor Ned. I know how much he was looking forward to this. Is he okay?” That was typical Bess. She is the kindest person I know and is always aware of other people’s feelings and how events impact them.
“Yeah, he’s okay, but we’re on a case.”
“What?!” Bess and George said in unison. Even though I wasn’t with them, I knew they were both leaning into the phone excitedly. I may have the reputation for being a detective, but my friends have helped me on almost every case; they like solving mysteries about as much as I do.
“What do you need us to do?” George asked. A feeling of warmth spread through my body. It was such a relief to know that my friends always had my back. I knew that police officers and other detectives always worked with partners. I was lucky enough to have two partners. Three, if you counted Ned, but he was usually too busy with school stuff. I quickly explained what had happened and told them about the vandalized poster. I could hear George typing frantically in the background.
“I found the RHVRA website,” George said. “It says here they’re holding a sit-in at Joe Archer’s office at the Arts Complex.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s where I’m headed.”
“We’ll meet you there,” Bess said. “Don’t go in without us.” They hung up without saying goodbye, but I knew it was because they wanted to get there as fast as possible.
GEORGE AND BESS ARE IN, I texted to Ned as I walked back toward the elevators. Ned texted back a smiley face and wrote, WE GOT A PAGE PUT BACK TOGETHER IN THE NOTEBOOK.
As I rounded the corner, I spotted a housekeeper’s cart outside a room. I took the button out of my pocket. I had an idea.
I approached the cart. I could hear the housekeeper working inside the room. I took a deep breath and knocked on the open door.
“Hello,” I called out in a higher-pitched voice than I usually spoke in.
A gruff-looking middle-aged woman sporting a name tag that said PENELOPE came to the door, a cleaning rag in her hand. “I do the rooms in order,” she said. “I’ll get to your room when I get to it, so save your breath.”
“Oh, no,” I said cheerfully, “it’s not about that. Well, it’s kind of about that. My dad is staying in room 823, and he found this button on the floor.” I held out my hand, showing her the button. “And it’s such a nice button that we thought whoever the guest was who stayed in there before us might want it back. I was wondering if there was any way I could help get this button back to its owner?” I noticed that Penelope was staring at me with a suspicious look.
It felt a little ridiculous to make up an elaborate lie, but I wasn’t ready to tell Penelope that the room had been destroyed. I wanted to preserve the crime scene as long as possible before involving the police. If she knew there’d been a break-in, she’d have to report it. I had hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door handle for just that reason. At the same time, I did need to confirm whether this button was a real clue or a red herring.
“That room was perfectly clean. There was no button. What kind of scam is this?” she asked me harshly.
“I’m sorry?” I said. “I don’t know what you mean.” My mind raced. This was not the reaction I’d been expecting. My story had seemed pretty innocent to me and not something easy to refute. How did she know I was making this up?
“If you think you’re going to get a free room by claiming the room wasn’t cleaned properly, you have another think coming. Because I know that’s a load of baloney.”
“No, no. I really just want to return it to its owner, and I know that the people who clean the rooms know everything, so I thought I’d ask you. I can take it down to the front desk, of course.”
“You will do no such thing,” Penelope said. “I’ve read about people like you. You come into expensive hotels and find ways to get free rooms. I’m not falling for it.”
I needed to change tactics. Penelope was wrong about the reason I was lying, but she definitely had cottoned to the fact that I wasn’t telling the whole truth. I dropped my voice back down to its natural pitch. “I promise you I’m not trying to get a free room and I’m definitely not trying to get you in trouble, but I really did find this button in room 823. Why do you say that’s impossible?”
“Because this floor was one of the last floors renovated. The guests staying in these rooms are the first guests to stay in them since the renovation. These rooms were spotless. Therefore you are lying, but I can take that button, if you want.”
“No, that’s okay. I think I’ll hang on to it.”
I thanked Penelope for her help and kept going toward the elevator. Bess and George would probably be at the Arts Complex by now. I needed to hurry to meet them. I could feel Penelope’s eyes still on me as I made my way down the hall. Otherwise, I would have added a little skip to my step: the button could only have been left behind by the perpetrator. It was officially a clue!