Troubled Waters (Nancy Drew (All New) Girl Detective Book 23) (6 page)

“Didn’t I tell you Craig has it in for me?” We turned to see J.C. Valdez standing in the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest. He stepped aside to let people leave, then nodded at the spray-painted message. “He’s messing up the renovation just to get at me.”

“Helping Homes is getting hurt a lot more than you are,” Owen pointed out. He kicked at the bits of plasterboard and brick. “Every time something like this happens, it costs Helping Homes money and puts us farther behind schedule. We’re going to have to repair the bricks, put up new Sheetrock. . . . It’s not like we’re a big corporation. Every setback costs money we don’t have.”

I didn’t want to make his day even worse, but I figured now was the time to tell Owen about the missing photos—and about finding Tanya’s wrench near the water valve. Owen listened quietly, his arms crossed over his chest.

“Jeez. I noticed some of the frames were gone, but we were so busy . . . ,” he said. “I figured they’d turn up somewhere.” He shook his head, frowning. “You really think someone turned on the water to distract us so they could take the photos?”

“Looks that way,” I said, nodding.

“Nancy has lots of experience solving mysteries,” Bess added. “We’d already been trying to figure out who took the pictures, and—”

“Hey, look!” I said, stepping over to the ragged hole in the wall. I hadn’t looked closely at the damage before, but now as I crouched down, I noticed that the hole went deeper than I’d realized. A lot deeper. “There’s a whole room back there!”

“What?” Bess exclaimed. She, George, Owen, Tanya, and J.C. crowded close behind me.

A stale, musty smell hit my nose, and I had to stifle a sneeze. Light from the living room windows filtered through the ragged hole. As I leaned in, I realized that an old doorway had been blocked with cinder blocks. Now that it had been broken through, I saw a dark, dusty room. It wasn’t very large, maybe six or eight feet square. All I could make out at first were dusty cobwebs that dangled from the ceiling and a thick coat of dust on the floor. But then Owen shined a flashlight around—and we all gasped.

“What a mess!” Bess exclaimed.

Whoever had busted through the wall hadn’t stopped there. Holes had been bashed in the dusty bricks of the hidden room, too. Smashed bricks and cinder blocks lay in piles on the dusty floor.

“Uh-oh,” George murmured. She pointed into
the half darkness, and I saw a glint of silver on the wall. Owen shined his flashlight at it, and the beam lit up another spray-painted message.

“‘Go back to Lowell,’” Owen read. He gazed soberly over George’s shoulder at J.C. “I guess that means you, huh?”

“Guess so.” J.C. stared at the message with an unreadable expression on his face. Then he straightened up and stepped away from the wall. “It’s pretty clear who wrote it,” he said.

“One thing is for sure,” I said, sitting back on my heels and gazing up at him. “We need to talk with Craig Reynolds.”

“I must have hammered a couple thousand nails today,” George said about five hours later.

She and Bess and I were just getting out of her car outside Cedar Plains High School. “My calluses have calluses!” Bess said, holding up her hands. “The muscles in my arms feel like Jell-O from lifting all that Sheetrock.”

My muscles ached too, but it was going to be a while longer before I could sink into a hot bath at home. “At least we finished covering the beams with wallboard at the foundry,” I said as we headed across the parking lot toward the gym doors. “I think Owen
appreciated that some volunteers stayed late—even if we did have to miss the beginning of Brad’s practice session with the Bullets.”

“Well, we didn’t miss all of it, anyway,” Bess said. She nodded toward the gym doors in front of us. One door was propped open, and through it we heard clapping and cheers.

“I just hope Craig is here,” I said.

“Brad said he helps out with the team, so he probably is,” George said, heading through the door. “Actually, it sounds like half of River Heights is here!”

Based on how packed the gym was, you would have thought we were there for an NBA championship game, not a high school team practice. We had to climb high up into the bleachers to find some empty seats. Cheers, hoots, and clapping echoed off the walls, so that we could hardly hear one another.

From what I could tell, the practice part of the evening was over, and now the Bullets were playing on their own. The boys from the Cedar Plains team sat in the first row of bleachers, red-faced and sweaty. They cheered along with the rest of the crowd while the Bullets dribbled and passed the ball on the court.

While the crowd cheered, I scanned the row of Cedar Plains players. “There’s Craig,” I said, nodding at the end of the row. He was sitting next to Coach Stanislaus, scowling darkly as J.C. stole the ball from
another player and sent it sailing through the hoop.

“Yeah, but check out who’s
not
there,” George commented.

I took a second look at the Cedar Plains players—and then frowned. “Brad,” I said. “I don’t get it. First he misses half a day of working on the foundry, and now he’s missing practice, too.”

“He was so excited about training with the Bullets,” Bess said. “Why would he skip it?”

“Beats me,” I said, shrugging. “He left the foundry at the same time as the rest of the players. If he didn’t come here, where
is
he?”

I stared out at the court. I was beginning to think maybe Cathy was right to worry about him. I hadn’t been watching the Bullets, but now I saw that J.C. Valdez had the ball. He was a blur as he twisted past one of his teammates, faked a pass, and then landed a high-arching, three-point shot from mid-court.

“No wonder J.C. was named most valuable player of the championship game,” George said, shouting above the deafening cheers. “He’s awesome!”

J.C. did a little victory dance, then turned to look straight at Craig Reynolds. “Now
that’s
talent!” he crowed, smirking.

“Jeez, does he have to rub it in?” Bess said. “I mean, if Craig caused the damage at the foundry, why is J.C. saying things that will get him even madder?”

Craig sat there, as stiff as stone. His cheeks turned an angry red, and he balled his hands into fists at his side. For a moment I was afraid he might jump up and punch J.C. Instead, he just sat there, staring daggers at J.C. until the Bullets stopped playing, a short time later.

“Now’s our chance to talk to Craig,” I said, getting to my feet. People around us were putting on their jackets and moving down the bleachers toward the doors. By the time we reached the floor, the Bullets were mobbed with fans asking for autographs. At least,
most
of them looked like fans.

“Uh-oh,” I said as Craig Reynolds pushed his way up to J.C.

Something told me Craig wasn’t going to ask for an autograph. I moved toward the two guys, but not fast enough. “You don’t think I’ve still got talent?” I heard Craig say to J.C. He got right in J.C.’s face and jabbed a finger into his jersey. “Maybe I can’t run like I used to, but I can still hit the hoop from the foul line a thousand times better than you.”

“Yeah, right,” J.C. scoffed. “Care to prove it?”

The next thing we knew, Craig grabbed a ball from the floor and stormed toward the foul line. “You’re on!”

I hesitated on the sidelines as the two of them
began taking practice shots. “So much for talking to Craig . . . for a while, anyway,” I said.

But as I watched people stream out of the gym to the parking lot, another idea hit me. “Did you guys notice whether there’s a Reynolds Building Supply truck outside? Maybe the same truck Craig used this morning to deliver materials to the foundry?”

“I wasn’t looking for it when we parked,” Bess said. “But it can’t hurt to look for it now. If Craig
did
wreck my wall, maybe we’ll find a sledgehammer or whatever he used to smash it.”

“Or those missing photos,” George added.

A minute later the three of us were outside scanning the parking lot. All around us, people were getting in cars and driving toward the parking lot exit. “There!” Bess said, pointing to our left.

Some headlights flashed across my face. When I could see again, I spotted the Reynolds Building Supply truck at the end of the second row of cars. Bess, George, and I hurried toward it.

“I’ll keep an eye on the gym doors,” Bess offered. She stopped a few feet away from the truck and turned to face the school. “The last thing we need is for Craig to come out and catch us.”

While George circled to the back of the truck, I tried the driver’s door. “Locked,” I muttered.

Pressing my face against the window, I peered inside. Except for a take-out coffee cup and some crumpled fast-food wrappers, I didn’t see anything.

“There’s a bunch of stuff back here, Nan,” George called softly. “Help me look through it.”

She was standing on the rear bumper, staring into the open truck bed. Climbing up beside her, I saw a jumble of cardboard boxes and wood half hidden beneath a tarp. “Hmm,” I said, pulling the tarp aside.

A couple of sheets of plywood and some beams covered the bottom of the truck bed. Half a dozen boxes sat on top of them. I reached for the two boxes closest to me and opened the cardboard flaps. “Let’s see . . . screws, some kind of pipe connectors . . .”

George was opening more boxes next to me. “Washers, doorknobs . . . ,” she murmured. There was a pause, and then I heard her draw in her breath. “Nancy, take a look at this!”

George tilted the open box toward me, and I saw three rows of cylindrical silver cans.

“It’s spray paint,” I realized. “Silver spray paint.”

T
hat’s not all,” George said. She counted the cans, shifting them to show me an empty spot in the bottom corner. “One’s missing.”

“So maybe Craig used it to write those hate messages to J.C.?” I said. Pulling the tarp farther aside, I looked beneath it. “There’s just more plywood here. No empty can. And I don’t see the photos that were taken from the foundry or a sledgehammer.”

Bess looked at us expectantly when we rejoined her at the front of the truck. “So?” she asked. Her eyes widened when George and I told her about the spray paint we’d found. “So J.C. was right about Craig!” she said, shaking her head in amazement.

“Looks that way,” I said. “Come on. Let’s go talk to him. He probably won’t be happy that we snooped
around in his truck. But we’ve got to do everything we can to get to the bottom of this. The whole foundry renovation could be at stake.”

The gym had pretty much emptied out by the time we returned. Other than a few spectators in the bleachers, the only people left were J.C.’s teammates, Coach Stanislaus, and the boys on the Cedar Plains team. Craig was still taking shots from the foul line, so Bess, George, and I sat in the bleachers behind Cam and the other guys. Cam half frowned when he saw me.

“Where’s Brad?” he whispered. “Coach is really steamed at him for skipping practice.”

I wasn’t thrilled about how Brad was acting either. But at the moment I was more concerned about talking to Craig than tracking down Brad.

“What’s the score?” I asked, nodding toward the court.

Cam’s eyes flitted toward his brother, and he said, “J.C. sank twenty-seven shots before he missed. Craig made twenty-three so far, and he’s still going.”

At the foul line Craig bounced the ball twice, then sent it sailing toward the net. It bounced off the backboard, then dropped through the hoop.

“Yes!” Cam said under his breath. “Four more, and he wins. . . .”

Craig was already getting ready for his next shot. His face was a mask of concentration as he bounced
the ball twice, then twice again, before shooting it toward the net.

Again the ball hit the rim. But this time, instead of dropping through the hoop, it angled off to the right and missed.

Hoots and cheers erupted from J.C.’s teammates. Hands flew up to give him high fives and clap him around the shoulders. A self-satisfied smile spread across J.C.’s face as he stepped over to Craig and held out his hand.

“Nice try, Craig,” J.C. said. “But like I said, you’re just not in my league.”

Craig swatted J.C.’s hand away. Ignoring J.C. completely, Craig walked over to the bleachers and grabbed his warm-up jacket.

“Come on, Cam,” he said, and then headed for the doors.

Craig didn’t slow down or turn around. By the time Bess, George, and I caught up to him and Cam, they were already outside.

“Craig?” I called. “Can we talk to you?”

Craig stopped just outside the double doors and turned toward us with a scowl. “Do I know you?” he asked.

“We’re part of the Helping Homes volunteer crew working at the Davis Foundry,” Bess told him. “We saw you there yesterday.”

“And?” he said impatiently.

“There were a few incidents today at the foundry,” I began. “Someone’s causing damage and putting the renovation behind schedule.”

Craig’s expression remained stony as we told him about the water, the missing photographs, and the holes that had been smashed in the walls. If he knew about the damage, he showed no sign of it.

“Someone painted hate messages on the walls too,” I finished. “Hate messages to J.C. Valdez.”

For the first time all night I saw Craig crack a smile. “You mean I’m not the only guy around here who doesn’t think J.C. is a superhero? Well, that’s . . . Hey, wait a minute.” Craig shoved his hands in his pockets and stared at us. “Are you saying you think
I
had something to do with the damage?”

His angry gaze made me gulp, but I held my ground. “The messages were spray painted in silver,” I said. “And we found a box of silver spray-paint cans in your truck.”

“You found . . .” Craig’s scowl deepened, and he took a step toward me. “You’ve got a lot of nerve, nosing around in my things,” he spat out.

“Well,
you’ve
got no right to wreck the Helping Homes renovation just to get back at J.C. for being more successful than you!” Bess shot back. “Don’t
you even care about the people who’ll get new apartments in the foundry?”