002 Deadly Intent (6 page)

“Then,” Nancy mused aloud, “there must have been something worth far more than money in that wallet. Well, thank you for the information, Mr. Rutland.”

“Wait, that’s not the only thing I wanted to tell you,” Carl Rutland said. “I found something outside Barton Novak’s dressing room, near all those boxes and things.”

“You did?” Nancy was alert.

“Yeah. A scarf. A violet-colored scarf with designs on it.”

“Mr. Rutland,” Nancy said hoarsely, in a flash of understanding, “you mean you found a purple bandanna—a square of heavy cotton, with a sort of leafy pattern stitched on it in green?”

“Yeah, that’s it. Is it yours?”

“No. No, it’s Barton Novak’s, sort of his good luck charm,” Nancy said, “and one of a kind.
His sister did the embroidery.” Nancy remembered reading that in several articles about Barton. “He never plays a concert without it. Um, Mr. Rutland, when did you say you found the bandanna?”

“Last night, after they took you home. I’ve got it right here in my pocket.”

“Last night?” Nancy’s brain was working overtime. “Well, just hold on to it. I’ll make arrangements to get it from you.” Nancy thanked the man again and got off the phone in a hurry, her hand trembling as she hung up the receiver.

“Nancy, what’s the matter? You look like that security guard has been telling you ghost stories or something,” George said.

“No, not ghost stories. Something much more real and much more frightening. It’s Alan, George. He’s been lying to us!”

G
EORGE’S EYES WIDENED
. “What do you mean?”

“That guard found Barton’s bandanna,” Nancy explained.

“So? Maybe he dropped it without realizing.”

“But don’t you see?” Nancy felt sick at the realization. “Just this morning, Alan told us he saw Barton. And he said that Barton was wearing that bandanna!”

George began to look sick too. “Oh no.”

“Even if he was a little flaky, I always thought I could trust Alan,” Nancy said. “But now I don’t know
what
he’s gotten into—except that it’s
really dangerous.” She got up and headed for the door.

“Hey, where are we going?” George grabbed a sweater from the bed.

“To find Alan.” Nancy slipped on her jeans jacket and took the room key. “He and Bess must be getting their tour of the World recording studios right now.” She put an insistent hand on George’s back and moved her toward the door.

“Wouldn’t it be easier to call him there?” George suggested.

Nancy shook her head vigorously. “No way. What if they wind up putting us through to Vivian or Mr. Marshall’s office? I don’t want them to know anything about this. I want to get Alan alone. Besides, I need to see the expression on his face when we confront him with his lie. It would be worth a thousand words, as they say.” Nancy stepped out of the room.

George followed, a worried look in her brown eyes. “Nancy, do you think Bess knows Alan’s lying? I mean, it seems so impossible—”

“I know. Bess has never been anything less than a hundred percent straight with us. I’m sure she wouldn’t hold anything back. One thing really scares me, though. If Alan isn’t the kind of guy we think he is, Bess could be in trouble.” Nancy locked the room and headed for the elevator, with George a few steps behind her.

“But, Nancy, it’s so obvious that the guy is
nuts about Bess. And don’t forget, he helped us solve your last mystery.”

“I know. I only hope he’s got a good explanation for this.”

Finding Alan turned out to be easier said than done. When Nancy and George arrived at World Communications, the receptionist told them that the recording facilities were not housed in the same building as the executive offices. “Our recording is done by an independent company. Oraye Sound.” She wrote down Oraye’s address.

“Is it far from here?” Nancy asked.

“All the way downtown.”

Nancy took that to mean yes. “Come on, George. It looks like you and I are going for a little cab ride.”

They raced outside and hailed a taxi. “205 East Fourth Street,” Nancy told the driver. “And go whatever way’s the fastest. It’s important.”

“Lady, it’s always important. Everyone in this town is always in a hurry,” the taxi driver responded. “But I’ll do my best. Of course, going through midtown this time of day, there’s always traffic.”

“Isn’t there some way to avoid it?” George asked. “This really is an emergency.”

“Then you shoulda chartered a helicopter.” The driver swung out into the flow of cars, inches in front of a gray hatchback. The driver of the gray car let out an angry blast of his horn.

“Oh brother,” grumbled Nancy a few minutes later, looking nervously at her watch. “We could walk faster than this.” She pulled several crinkled dollar bills out of her jacket pocket. “We’ll get out here,” she announced, before they had reached their destination. She pushed the money through the opening in the Plexiglas shield that separated the driver from his passengers. “Keep the change.”

The taxi came to a halt, and she jumped out. “Come on, George. Maybe we can still make it down there before Bess and Alan leave.”

The girls reached East Fourth Street in record time. “We should have recruited you for girls’ track in high school,” George panted.

Nancy wiped her forehead. “Let’s see,” she said, trying to catch her breath, “194, 196 . . . It must be on the other side of the street. 201. Yeah, there it is, 205.”

Nancy rang the buzzer for Oraye Sound, Inc., and she and George entered the building and headed for the fifth floor. The elevator opened on a large area divided into a number of work spaces by movable partitions. Several halls branched off in different directions from the central space. People rushed back and forth busily, and the hum of voices filled the room. In one corner was a large desk that was not hidden behind any of the dividers; a young man sat behind it, typing.

Nancy and George approached him, and Nancy cleared her throat. He looked up from his typewriter. “Hi, are you with the NYU group?” he asked. “You’re late,” he continued, without waiting for an answer. “The tour’s started already. They’re down that way, in one of the editing rooms.”

“NYU?” Nancy asked.

“Yes. New York University. Aren’t you film students?”

Nancy shook her head. “Actually, we’re here looking for our friends, Alan Wales and Bess Marvin.”

“Who?”

“They should have come in early this afternoon. He’s medium height with frizzy brown hair. She has blond hair a little past her shoulders, and she’s on the short side,” George supplied.

The man thought for a moment. “Oh, you mean the two Harold Marshall sent over.”

Nancy’s brow furrowed at Mr. Marshall’s name. “Yes. That’s right.”

“Oh, you just missed them. They were talking about going out to celebrate something.”

Nancy felt thoroughly frustrated as she and George started back across the large room. “George,” she said, in what was for her a down voice. “What’s going on with this case? I feel as if I’m following shadows, not leads.” Now she
wouldn’t be able to get hold of Alan until their rendezvous at the club that evening. She’d lose several hours of sleuthing time—hours that could be critical to Barton Novak.

Before George could reply, Nancy saw something that made her pulse speed up. Moving as quickly as she could, she pulled George into an unoccupied work space. “It’s Vivian!” she whispered, peeking out from around the partition.

“Who?”

“Harold Marshall’s secretary.” Nancy watched as Vivian emerged from the stairwell carrying a bulky package under her arm. The woman glanced around furtively and slipped down one of the hallways. The young man at the corner desk, his back to the work spaces and network of halls, continued to type, and Vivian passed by unnoticed.

“Looks to me like she’s sneaking around,” George said.

“Come on,” Nancy urged. “Maybe the trip down here won’t be a waste after all.” She grabbed George’s elbow, and silently, keeping a safe distance behind her, the girls followed Vivian down the hall.

Vivian seemed to know exactly where she was going. After proceeding along a maze of corridors past numerous doors, she stopped abruptly in front of one of them. Second-guessing the next move, Nancy pulled George back around the last
corner in the corridor—and not a second too soon. Nancy edged around the corner just in time to see Vivian whipping her head around, clearly checking to make sure she was alone. Then she entered the room she had stopped in front of.

“Now what?” George hissed as they both breathed a sigh of relief.

“Well, we can’t follow her in there,” Nancy thought out loud, “so we’ll have to wait until she leaves. Then we can see what’s in that room. But let’s get out of here. She’s going to come back this way, and besides, someone might see us.”

“Maybe there’s a ladies’ room around here,” George suggested. “We could hide in there until she leaves.”

The girls found one a few doors down and entered cautiously, making sure it was unoccupied. Then Nancy posted herself by the door, leaving it open a finger’s width so she could peer out.

Vivian didn’t take long. Only a few minutes later, Nancy heard the clicking of her high-heeled black pumps on the tiled hallway floor and noticed that Vivian no longer carried the package that had been under her arm. “She must have dropped something off,” Nancy said, pulling the restroom door shut as Vivian walked by.

Nancy waited until the footsteps faded. Then she peeked out again. The corridor was empty.
“Okay,
now!”
she instructed George. The two friends made a dash for the room Vivian had entered and let themselves inside, the door opening and closing with a faint squeak.

The walls of the small room were lined, floor to ceiling, with cabinets, and in the middle of the room were low, free-standing, enclosed bins.

“It’s some kind of storeroom,” Nancy observed.

She pulled at the handle of one of the cabinets—labeled 1981, A through C—and found it locked. She tried one on the adjacent wall. The typed sticker on the door read 1982, G through K. It didn’t open either.

George was walking around, fiddling with the cabinet doors. “These are locked too,” she said, her words colored with annoyance. Then she called out softly, “Nancy, come look at this.”

When Nancy joined her, the young detective took a look at a list George had been studying. It was taped to the wall. The page was divided into columns headed
name, title of master, date borrowed, date returned.

“Masters. So that’s why all these drawers are locked so securely. George, this is where they keep all the original recordings, the ones they copy when they press the albums they sell.”

“Right,” George said, “I remember back when we were sophomores, this record store in Mount Harmon was closed down because the owner was
selling albums that had been made illegally. I’m not sure of the details, but he was buying the albums for way under the normal costs, selling them for the retail prices, and raking in a fortune.”

Nancy nodded. “Right. If these masters get into the wrong hands, they can be used to make a lot of illegal money. Record piracy, I think they call it.”

As Nancy talked, she skimmed the list in front of her for Vivian’s name. It wasn’t there.
What was Vivian up to?
she wondered. She guessed that the parcel contained masters Vivian had sneaked out and then sneaked back in. Was Vivian getting them for Harold Marshall so he could mint illegal albums and sell them as the real thing? If so, then Barton was right to wonder about Bent Fender’s royalties. They wouldn’t earn money on copies sold illegally.

Nancy pondered that, continuing to study the list. Suddenly a familiar name near the bottom of the page caught her eye. “George!” she gasped, pointing to the bold script.

George’s gaze followed Nancy’s finger. “Oh wow! Barton Novak!”

“And he was here just a few days ago!” Nancy added. “George, I bet Barton came here and discovered something. Maybe he found out that some of the masters were missing!”

“And then someone found out that Barton
knew, and had to make sure he didn’t tell anyone.”

Nancy nodded, her face taut. “That’s a really strong motive. Now I’m sure Barton didn’t disappear on his own. He must have been kidnapped!”