OPERATION DISTRACTION
Rrrrring! Rrring! I was woken up the next morning by the phone by my bed, its old-fashioned ring burrowing into my dreams. After a few moments of confusion, I jumped up in bed and grabbed the receiver, glancing quickly at the caller ID screen.
NANCY DREW.
Wait . . . I was calling me?
“Hello?” I answered, realizing all at once that this had to be a call from my cell phone—that Stan, or whoever had ended up with it, was on the other end of the line. “Hello?” I asked again, after a few seconds. “Who is this?”
The voice that finally came over the line sent a chill up my spine. It was deep and robotic—clearly disguised. No real human being sounded this creepy.
“Good morning, Nancy.”
I felt my heart speeding up. “Who is this?” I demanded again.
The voice went on, as though the person hadn’t even heard me: “You got away from us this time, Nancy Drew—but you can’t keep running forever.”
Click. The other person hung up, and I soon heard the dial tone ringing in my ear.
I shuddered, placing the phone back and swinging my feet over the side of my bed. Don’t think I’ll get back to sleep after that.
A four o’clock, I said good-bye to my dad and sauntered outside to the patrol car parked in front of our house. The car had changed over a couple times—the officers inside weren’t familiar—but I still smiled warmly as I approached the driver’s side window.
“Hi,” I said to the officers inside. “I’m heading over to my boyfriend’s dorm at the university to hang out for a little bit. Is that okay?”
The officer in the driver’s seat—Officer Yang, his badge told me—shrugged and smiled. “It’s fine with us. You’re in charge, Miss. But you still have six hours of protection to go. Shall we follow you in your car?”
I nodded, relieved. “Great. It’s the Prius right over there. I’ll just be a minute.”
Walking to my car, I felt butterflies in my stomach. My being under police protection sure put a wrinkle in our plans to drive to Chicago and sneak into Green Solutions, which I was pretty sure was illegal, strictly speaking. Ned had called earlier today to confirm that he’d called Green Solutions and spoken to Cassandra herself. When he’d laid out some of the information George had made up for him, Cassandra had told him she was very interested in meeting with him, and offered to make time tonight at 7 p.m.
“What did she sound like?” I’d whispered to Ned, standing in the corner of our kitchen as my dad ate his breakfast a few yards away.
“I’m not sure,” Ned had admitted, sounding thrown by the question. “She sounded . . . normal. Friendly. Businesslike. Not at all like an environment-destroyer, killer, or kidnapper.”
I frowned. I wasn’t sure what I’d wanted Ned to say—I knew from my own experience that crooks often looked like perfectly normal, upstanding members of society. Still, I wasn’t sure what to make of this woman who’d almost (I was pretty sure) kidnapped me. It was strange to think of her just going about her business, making deals with hapless university bigwigs.
“Well, anyway,” I’d gone on, “we’re on for tonight at seven, right?”
“Right,” agreed Ned. “So I’ll see you here for Operation Distraction at four thirty.”
Now I pulled cautiously out of my driveway and started the twenty-minute drive to Ned’s dorm at the university. If we wanted to make it to Chicago tonight, I had to lose the River Heights PD. I felt a little bad plotting to evade them when my dad had gone to such great lengths to secure their protection, but I felt it was the only way. Once we’d searched the Green Solutions offices and found some evidence, I kept telling myself, we could get to the bottom of this and let the authorities take care of them then.
Once at the university, I parked in the visitor’s lot and walked over to the patrol car again. Officer Yang rolled down the window.
“I’ll be in that dorm, right there,” I said, gesturing to Seaver Hall.
Officer Yang nodded, taking the keys out of the ignition and nodding to his partner. “We’ll come with you,” he said. “If you’re going to be surrounded by people, we should really be there to keep an eye out. You know, it’s one thing to leave you in your house with your dad, but a different story with a whole bunch of strangers.”
I swallowed hard and nodded. This wasn’t exactly a surprise. I knew the RHPD weren’t wild about the idea of protecting me, but they were professionals. They would try to do their best.
Together, Officer Yang, his partner, Officer Heller, and I walked into Seaver Hall. I checked in at the front desk, and soon Ned came out to greet me, smiling broadly. “Hey, Nance,” he said happily, before taking note of the officers behind me. “Oh,” he said. “You brought company.”
Officer Yang grinned. “Don’t worry,” he promised, “we’ll give you some privacy. But I’m sure Ms. Drew told you we’re protecting her until this evening.”
Ned nodded. “Sure,” he agreed. “And that’s a good thing.”
Ned led us up to his room, pointing out the common lounge area that sat at the end of the hallway, a couch facing the corridor of dorm rooms. “Maybe you guys could hang here?” he asked with a hopeful smile, glancing at the police. “I don’t honestly know if the four of us would fit in my room. . . .”
Officer Heller smiled. “This will be fine,” he confirmed, settling on the couch and grabbing the remote. “Just keep the door open.”
Ned nodded. “Sure. Of course.”
I followed him down the corridor to his room, the third door on the left. Once inside, he nodded at me, I nodded back, and he picked up his phone and dialed.
“Sunil,” he whispered into the phone, “popcorn! Now!” There was a pause, and Ned looked at me, a little confused. “I don’t know. Maybe ten minutes?”
I nodded.
“Ten minutes,” Ned confirmed. Then he put down the phone, and we sat down, him on his bed, me on his desk chair.
“Now,” I said, looking out into the hallway with an impatient sigh, “we wait.”
So we did. It was only a couple minutes before we heard the familiar bang bang bang! of popcorn popping in the microwave in the common room. Then a cell phone rang, and someone answered it, walking out of the common room as he talked. Little by little, the bang sounds slowed down as the popcorn finished popping. But the microwave kept going. After a few minutes I heard Officer Yang ask, “Do you smell that?”
I could smell it. The bag of popcorn Sunil had placed in the microwave was burning, just as Ned had arranged before I’d gotten there. And just as we’d hoped, someone was walking across the common room now, and soon they opened the microwave door—freeing a whole bunch of trapped smoke, and setting off the dorm smoke detectors.
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
Ned looked at me with a triumphant grin, and I smiled back. Success!
Already, chaos was spreading through the dorm, as students threw open their doors and ran into the hall.
“What the heck ?”
“Omigod, not popcorn again!”
“Who did it? Oh, man, was it those cops ?”
“Oh no! What are cops doing here, anyway? Is someone in trouble?”
After a moment, Ned poked out his head, then turned and nodded to me. On light feet, we snuck out the door, and I threw a quick glance down the hall to the common room. At least twenty or thirty students were blocking the officers’ view—and Sunil, who’d strolled back in with his cell phone in hand, was shouting indignantly, “What happened to my popcorn? That was my dinner, guys!”
Ned grabbed my hand, and I followed him down the hall to the back staircase. We ran down to the main floor, then down one more flight, to a fire exit that let you out on a path that led to a dining hall. The door had an alarm, but since the fire alarm was going off anyway, nobody would notice. We ran down the path to the dining hall—and then around the side of the building, to a small, little-known parking lot where Ned had left his car.
“All right,” he announced, settling into the driver’s seat as I scrambled in next to him. “Operation Distraction was a success. Chicago, here we come!”
We picked up Bess and George along the way, and about an hour later, we pulled up in front of Green Solutions’ main offices.
“Wow,” George muttered, staring out the window. “This is totally not what I pictured.”
“Me neither,” I admitted.
In my mind, Green Solutions was always housed in a sparkly new building, maybe glass, and totally state-of-the art and eco-friendly. In real life, though, they were located in a quaint older neighborhood, surrounded by other prewar buildings. The building where Green Solutions was located on the eighth floor looked to be from the early twentieth century, and was boxy, dirty red brick. Gargoyles scowled at us from the top eaves of the building. I sighed.
“It’s not very big,” I observed, “which means it won’t be all that easy to sneak in four people at seven o’clock at night.”
Bess frowned, taking in the building. “There’s gotta be a way,” she insisted. “Anyway, that’s why we came early, right? To come up with a plan.”
“Right,” I agreed. “All right, let’s check it out.”
In the end, what saved us was the dermatologist’s office on the fourth floor. When you entered the building, a tired-looking receptionist greeted you and asked you to sign in and write down the office you were going to. Then she would call the office and make sure you were really headed up there. What the four of us learned from secretly observing a few visitors, however—of course out of sight of the receptionist’s wary eyes—was that the dermatologist’s office never answered their phone. Each time, the receptionist would sigh, roll her eyes, and finally say to whoever was waiting, “Go ahead up.” She never called back or seemed to check whether the patient had made it up there.
Perfect.
“We’re here for Dr. Visnaya,” Bess announced about half an hour after we’d arrived in Chicago.
“Both of you?” asked the receptionist warily, glancing from Bess to George, who stood beside her.
“This is my cousin,” Bess replied, looking a little insulted by the receptionist’s question. “She’s here for moral support! My acne medication hasn’t been working.”
The receptionist just stared at Bess, who happens to have perfect skin. “All right. Sign in,” she instructed, then picked up the phone. As expected, a few minutes later she just sighed and passed them up.
About forty minutes later—so we wouldn’t make the receptionist suspicious when lumped in with the dermatologist’s real patients—I walked up. “I’m here to see Dr. Visnaya, please.”
The receptionist nodded. “Sign in please. Your name?”
“Um, Nancy Drew.”
I realized the moment the name left my lips that I’d messed up—I hadn’t meant to give my real name! I just hoped it wouldn’t work against me somehow.
The receptionist was already on the phone. She waited, her eyes bored, and then suddenly perked up. “Oh, hello !” she said, sitting up in her chair and flashing me a smile. “Fancy talking to you today. Listen, this is Maria downstairs and I have a patient for you—a Nancy Drew ? Can I send her up?”
I felt my pulse quickening. This was the first time the dermatologist’s office had answered their phone all day! Why, why did it have to be when I was trying to sneak in?
The receptionist was already scowling. I clutched my purse, wondering if I’d have to run out of there. And if I did, how would I get back in? The receptionist would be looking out for me now. I’d have to break in somehow—hope someone had left a window open, or that Bess and George could open a fire exit for me.
“No,” the receptionist said now, “Nancy Drew, not Miranda Donald. Nancy Drew. ” Finally she sighed, said, “Whatever” into the receiver, and hung up, giving me a disgusted look.
“I swear,” she said to me, “they don’t know what’s going on up there. You go on ahead.”
I smiled, passing by her and into a waiting elevator. I’d done it! Sometimes it paid to be young and innocent-looking. And to have the occasional pimple, I guessed.
I met Bess and George on the eighth floor, where, after I stood outside the elevator for a few minutes, George peeked out of a ladies’ room and waved me in.
“You made it!” Bess squealed excitedly, looking up from a diagram she was drawing.
“Of course I did,” I confirmed, smiling. “So you guys have had forty minutes—did you case the joint?”
George laughed. “Did we!” she said cheerfully. “Nance, the layout here is great for snooping. We were able to get most of the lay of the land by just discreetly looking into Green Solutions’ offices—their entrance is all glass. From there we could see the reception area, Cassandra’s office, although we didn’t see her, and someone else’s—maybe the CFO.”
Bess nodded. “But also, there’s a window in the hallway that opens up. By sticking out our heads, we were able to look into the office next door—which just happens to be their conference room!” She grinned. “We’ve already texted Ned all the details. The most important thing is that he gets Cassandra to take him to the conference room—not her office. That way we can easily search the two offices while he distracts her down the hall.”
I smiled. “See? I knew I was right to leave the initial snooping in your hands.”
Bess laughed, nodding. “I forgot how fun this is,” she agreed. “Nance, don’t take this the wrong way, but—maybe you should get kidnapped by shady consultants more often!”
Ned knew better than to look for us when he got off the elevator an hour or so later. I could tell it was a struggle for him, but he kept his eyes facing ahead, and didn’t hesitate for a moment before pushing open the door to Green Solutions’ offices.
“Hello?” he called.
“Hello?” a pleasant female voice answered. George and I glanced at each other from our hiding place in a small alcove in the hall that housed a drinking fountain.
“I’m Carson Marvin,” Ned announced, impressing me with his smoothness. “We spoke on the phone this morning?”
“Of course, of course,” the voice said warmly. I looked at my friends. That was Cassandra Stevens! “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you! Why don’t you come into my office?”
“Actually,” Ned replied, and I looked nervously at my friends, hoping this little planned switcheroo would work, “do you have a conference room where we could meet? I have several documents to show you that I’d like to . . . spread out. And I have some information on my laptop. Perhaps you have a projector. . . .”
“Oh, sure,” Cassandra replied. “That’s fine. Let’s head to the conference room, then.”
I looked at Bess and George. Success! Peering around the corner, George glanced back at the two of us before cautiously sneaking down the hallway to peek into the Green Solutions lobby.
“Coast is clear!” she whispered a moment later.
Bess and I looked briefly at each other before stepping into the hallway and following George down to the Green Solutions entrance. With a nervous glance in my direction, George carefully opened the glass door—fortunately the hinges were well-oiled and it didn’t make a sound. As quietly as we could, Bess and I slipped through, followed by George.
“Let’s start in Cassandra’s office,” I whispered. “I’d bet she has the biggest secrets to keep.”
We tiptoed straight through the lobby and veered to the right to enter Cassandra’s huge, bamboo-paneled office. A large window looked out on the lake, and modern, expensive-looking furnishings surrounded a large desk. There was a door in the wall that contained the window, leading, I assumed, to a closet or restroom.
“Okay,” Bess whispered. “Same as usual? George takes the computer, I take the filing cabinet, Nance takes the desk?”
“Sounds like a plan,” George whispered back, heading right to the computer and grabbing the mouse. I moved behind her to the desk, looking down at the few, neatly-piled papers that were arranged on the edges. Lifting them up, I glanced at each one in turn: office memos, a letter from a satisfied customer, a letter asking for more information . . .
As we searched, I strained my ears to try to hear Ned and Cassandra in the conference room. I couldn’t hear anything, which I took as a good sign. Quiet meant a typical, orderly meeting. If Cassandra caught on to Ned’s ruse, I was pretty sure there would be raised voices and movement.
After a few minutes, Bess, George, and I fell into our familiar groove. We were silent, knowing that Cassandra might leave the conference room at any moment and hear us. Still, I was so focused on looking at the (so far, completely innocent) papers on Cassandra’s desk, I didn’t hear Ned until he was just a few feet outside Cassandra’s office. . . .
“Oh, this isn’t necessary!” he insisted, his voice high and insistent. “I don’t need to see the brochure from inside your office !”
I looked at my friends. Oh no! But Bess and George sprung into action immediately. They both glanced at each other, opened the door next to the window, found a small bathroom, and darted inside. I scrambled to follow them—but just then I glanced down and noticed an interesting piece of paper in one of the open desk drawers. It was handwritten on lined paper, folded into a tight package, and must have been crammed deep enough into the drawer that I’d unearthed it when I’d taken everything else out. I paused, torn. I should really scramble to the restroom—I knew that—but that paper looked much more personal and interesting than anything we’d found so far.
I reached out and grabbed it. That’s when I heard Cassandra’s voice. “It’s right in here. . . .” she was saying right outside the office.
Taking a deep breath, I darted down and under the desk.
Fractions of a second later, I heard two sets of footsteps enter the office.
“Did you hear that?” Cassandra asked.