037 Last Dance (9 page)

She heard the sound again and, after a quick check of the room, realized that it was coming up through the heating vent in the floor. She dropped to her knees and called through the grating. “Laurie, it’s Nancy. Can you hear me?”

The reply was faint. “Nancy—”

Laurie was trapped in the basement! Nancy ran out into the hallway and raced toward the cellar stairs. She tore down seven steps but was stopped by a locked door at the bottom.

Nancy doubled up both fists and pounded on the heavy wooden obstacle. “Laurie!” she called, choking out the name. “Laurie, open the door!”

“I can’t,” Laurie replied from the other side. Her voice sounded weak.

Remembering that Jon always left an extra set of keys on his desk, Nancy fled back up the stairs to the office. The hallway was becoming impassable now; the fire had spread there, too.

Nancy ran her hands over the surface of Jon’s desk and then plundered the drawers in search of his key ring. In the last drawer she found it. She was back at the cellar door within seconds, frantically trying one key after another.

But key after key failed to open the lock. Nancy fought against the panic that threatened her. If
she lost her head now, she and Laurie would both die.

At last Nancy found the key that fitted the lock on the cellar door. She felt relief sweep through her when the knob turned in her hand.

The basement was dark, but the smoke wasn’t bad. Nancy stepped inside.

“Laurie!” she cried, coughing.

A groan came from somewhere in the shadows.

Nancy flipped the light switch beside the door, but nothing happened. Obviously, the fire had already destroyed the building’s electrical system. Nancy began to grope, calling her friend’s name over and over again as she screamed in the pitch darkness.

She stumbled over Laurie, lying prone on the floor. Before she could lift her, Nancy heard the cellar door swing shut with a solid thud.

“Oh, no,” Nancy whispered as a terrible possibility struck her. She made her way back to the door and tried the knob. It wouldn’t turn.

Behind her, Laurie was stirring in the darkness. “Nancy? Oh, my head—”

“Help!” Nancy yelled, hoping that one of the firemen would hear. She battered at the door with both fists and shouted again. “Help!”

“My head—hurts—I think somebody hit me,” Laurie was saying in a dazed voice.

Nancy rested her forehead against the heavy door for the brief moment, breathing hard, struggling
to calm herself. When she laid both palms against the wood, she realized that the door was still cool. The fire hadn’t gotten any closer yet. The smoke wasn’t as bad as it was in the hallway, either.

She turned, her eyes slowly adjusting to the darkness, to see Laurie sitting up, one hand pressed to her head.

“Wh-what’s going on?” Nancy’s friend asked.

“We’re in big trouble,” she answered quietly. “The club’s on fire and we’re locked in down here.

“Help!” Laurie screamed.

“I tried that,” Nancy said. “No one’s going to hear us. We’ve got to find another way out.”

Laurie was too scared to be of any help. Spider webs draped themselves over Nancy’s arms and hair as she searched, exploring the walls for a window. If there were any, they were either painted or boarded over.

“What’s going to happen to us?” Laurie moaned.

Nancy didn’t want to think about the answer to that question. She began going over the floor for something she could use to pry open the door.

“Nancy, what’s going to happen to us?” Laurie repeated, sounding even more scared than before. Nancy didn’t blame her for being frightened, but she knew her friend had to keep her head.

“We’re going to get out of here,” Nancy said, still searching. She went to lay her hands against the door again, checking it for heat. It felt disturbingly warm now. “Somehow, we’re going to find a way out.”

The calm resolution in Nancy’s voice must have comforted Laurie, because she got up and began running her hands over the walls, looking for a way to escape.

Smoke was coming in beneath the door now. Nancy found an old potato sack and tried to block up the crack. The fire was close now. It was getting hard to breathe.

Nancy knew their time had almost run out.

N
ANCY COULDN’T GIVE UP
. With tears streaming down her cheeks from the smoke, she groped along the cellar walls. Suddenly she bumped into a large filing cabinet. Running her fingers behind it, she felt something sticking out from the wall. Could it be—?

“I think there’s a window behind this cabinet!” Nancy cried out excitedly. “Come on, Laurie, let’s try to move this out of the way—”

The smoke was thick in the room now, and the heat of the fire was heavy. Nancy felt as though she was smothering.

But the two girls pushed and shoved until the
cabinet had been moved aside. Behind it was a grimy, narrow little window.

Nancy wiped the window with her sleeve and saw booted feet outside. Firefighters! She grabbed the casement in both hands and rattled it. “Help!” she cried with Laurie joining in.

The firefighters heard them. One knelt and shouted, “Stand back from the window and cover your heads!”

Nancy put an arm around Laurie’s waist and the two of them stepped back with their backs to the window, their arms covering their faces. The splintering of glass was a welcome sound.

By now, Laurie was only half-conscious. One firefighter lifted her out through the opening where the window had been and carried her a safe distance from the endangered building. Another helped Nancy to scramble out. She coughed as the clean air reached her lungs.

“Is anybody still inside?” she asked one of the firefighters.

“Except for Mr. Villiers, you and your friend were the last. Maybe you should sit down for a minute, miss.”

Nancy shook her head, scanning the crowd for Ned, Bess, and George. She knew her friends would be worried and wanted to reassure them as soon as possible. Starting toward her car, she passed Pam Hastings.

Pam’s sooty face was streaked with tears as she
stared bleakly at the building. Quiet sobs shook her shoulders.

Nancy had just spotted her friends when there was an outburst of cheering behind her. She turned to see Jon being led out of the building by two firefighters. His clothes were torn and sooty, but even from a distance Nancy could tell he was fine.

She was glad he was safe, but it did seem odd that, although he’d been inside the burning building the longest of anyone, he was relatively clean and uninjured. What had he been doing in there?

And what about Laurie? How had she gotten locked in the cellar? And how had she been dazed?

Nancy didn’t like the conclusions she was coming to, but she couldn’t ignore them. Laurie had nearly died and not by accident. Someone had locked her in the cellar, while the building was going up in flames. That same someone may have set the fire in the first place.

“Nancy!” Ned interrupted her thoughts. He took her shoulders in his hands and looked down at her face. “Are you all right?” Nancy nodded.

Bess and George ran up then, too. “What happened?” George wanted to know.

“We were about to go back in there for you!” Bess cried.

Nancy let out a long sigh and ran one hand
through her hair, Looking at her fingers, she realized that she was probably covered with black soot from head to toe. She explained how she had found Adam and then Laurie.

“You found her in the cellar?” Ned said, his hands still gripping Nancy’s shoulders firmly.

“I know it’s strange, but it seems as if someone could have hit her over the head and left her there. . . .”

There was a stunned silence while Bess, George, and Ned absorbed what Nancy had said.

“That’s terrible,” whispered Bess.

“That same person could have set the fire,” George speculated.

“Right,” Nancy agreed. She glanced back at the building. Laurie was sitting up on the grass now, a paramedic kneeling beside her, waiting to see if she needed more oxygen.

Nancy and the others made their way through the crowd to Laurie’s side, but Jon had reached her first. He was holding her as though he would never let her go, when Nancy joined them.

Laurie looked up at Nancy with an expression of both sadness and fear in her eyes. “If it hadn’t been for you—” she started, but Nancy silenced her with a shake of her head.

“You would have done the same for me,” she said.

“I’m not sure I would have been brave enough,” Laurie replied. She was standing up-right
now and leaning against Jon for support. “Thank you, Nancy. Thank you for saving my life.”

“It’s okay, Laurie,” Nancy said quietly. “Just, tell me what happened. Did you hear anyone—see anyone?”

Laurie was shaking her head. “No. The last thing I remember is standing in the hallway outside Jon’s office. There was this sudden pain at the back of my head, then everything went black. Next thing I knew, you were calling to me from somewhere.”

Nancy was disappointed, but not surprised. She’d had a feeling that Laurie had been attacked and couldn’t have seen her attacker. She turned her gaze to Jon. “You were in the building a long time,” she observed.

Jon looked confused, tired, and relieved. “I was looking for Laurie. I guess I just checked all the wrong places. Thanks for finding her, Nancy.”

Nancy nodded and turned away, exhausted. She would sort through everything later—all she wanted at that moment was a hot bath, a few of Hannah’s cookies, and a good night’s sleep. Ned’s arm was strong around her waist.

“Once again,” remarked a shrill feminine voice, “our own Nancy Drew is at center stage. You’re a regular Wonder Woman.”

Nancy couldn’t believe her bad luck. Standing.
before her was Brenda Carlton, She and Ned started to move around the young reporter, but Brenda Mocked their way.

“Exactly what happened here tonight?” she demanded.

Nancy gave her a wry smile. “I would think that would be obvious, Brenda,” she said sweetly. Nancy lowered her voice to a confidential whisper, and leaned toward Brenda as though to share a big secret. “There was a fire.”

Brenda’s face puckered with annoyance. “I know that!” she sputtered.

“Nothing gets by you, does it, Brenda?” George asked.

By this time Brenda had recovered her composure. “Not much,” she said, smoothing the lapels of her jacket. Then she shoved past Nancy to Jon.

Flashes blinded everyone within a dozen feet as Brenda’s photographer snapped pictures of Laurie and Jon. The light of the blaze made it seem like midday. “What started this fire, Mr. Villiers?” Brenda asked, rapid-fire. “Or, should I say,
who
started this fire?”

The color drained from Jon’s face. “I don’t know,” he said. “It must have been an accident.”

“An accident?” Brenda repeated, raising one eyebrow.

Laurie huddled close to Jon, looking baffled and afraid. Nancy knew her friend didn’t believe the fire had been an accident. Neither had the
blow to Laurie’s head. “Can’t we all go home and forget about this?” she asked Brenda. “It’s been an awful night, after all—”

“I’ll be happy to answer your questions some other time,” Jon said, putting an arm around Laurie and starting to walk away.

Brenda stopped them easily. “I’ve been doing some research on you, Mr. Villiers,” she said, but she tossed a malicious smile in Nancy’s direction even as she spoke. “It seems you had a whole other life in Chicago.”

Jon stopped, his back rigid. Nancy watched as he turned slowly to face Brenda.

“Please,” he said hoarsely. “Don’t. Not now, not tonight.”

But Brenda was on a roll and she wasn’t about to back down. “It seems that Mr. Villiers is a star,” she announced to the crowd gathered around. “I can call you Jon, can’t I—Jon?”

Some of the tension seemed to leave Jon. He sighed and shrugged wearily. Laurie was looking up at him.

Nancy took Brenda by the arm and pulled her aside, where they could talk privately. “What’s going on here, Brenda?” she demanded. “Why did you say Jon is a star?”

Brenda examined her perfectly manicured fingernails. She didn’t like giving Nancy information, but apparently her need to feel important got the best of her. “I got curious about Jon
Villiers and checked back issues of the Chicago newspapers. Jon was a celebrity of sorts. He and his partner, Sheila Day, were big on the dance circuit in the Windy City a few years ago. They got a lot of publicity and won a few prizes-things like that. He and the girl were a sensation.”

“Sheila Day,” Nancy muttered to herself, remembering the love letters she’d found in Jon’s apartment. “Thanks, Brenda.”

Brenda scowled at her and walked back to the others. Nancy returned to Ned’s side.

Brenda had taken up her questioning again. “Weren’t you a professional dancer, Mr. Villiers?”

Jon looked down at Laurie for a moment before answering, in a bleak tone. “Yes. But I don’t see what that has to do with anything—”

Laurie was still gazing up at Jon.

“You had a partner, a Sheila Day, right?”

“Yes.”

“There was a rumor you were engaged to be married. Whatever happened between you two?”