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FRIDAY, 7 JULY, 2000, PHILADELPHIA |
[Click for Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3]CHAPTER 4 Nancy Employs a Ruse! The interior of the Motel No-Tell was just as undesirable as its exterior, thought Nancy Drew. All dark and damp, a rickety staircase angled up from the far end of the room as sunlight oozed down the stairwell illuminating airborn dust particles and faded, tattered brocade wallpaper. In the lobby was a round burgundy velvet sofa with a pedestal in the center precariously balancing a large planter. The sofa was almost black with dirt and age and the fern in the planter was quite dead. There were cigarette butts scattered about on the frayed and filthy carpet. A small booth to Nancy’s left was surrounded by grimey brass bars with a small window like a bank teller’s and in it sat a dejected-looking woman reading a colorful, glossy magazine, chewing and snapping her gum loudly. Something about the décor and ambiance of the motel put Nancy on her guard. She took a deep breath, squared her small shoulders and strode confidently towards the woman in the booth. There was a small silver bell on the counter next to a pile of magazines with pictures that shocked and scandalized Nancy Drew. “Honestly!” she thought to herself, “Did you ever see such a thing?” in reference to an intruguing rendering of acrobatics between a woman and a man on the cover of the top magazine. “However did they manage to get themselves into such an unfortunate position? The matter is truly a baffling mystery. And I’m going to solve it! Perhaps if the woman first lifted her arm thus … then swung her leg around thus … while the man thrust thus …” Nancy stood eyeing the upside-down magazine cover with a cocked head as she mimed getting into such a tangled position as the two models had been photographed. The woman at the booth stared at Nancy’s dance dully. “Um…” she said to get Nancy’s attention. “Hey, hello?” Nancy was too intent on getting to the bottom of this frustrating Mystery of the Nimble Naked People to hear the woman beckoning to her. Exasperated, the woman slammed her fist down on the silver bell which let out a resounding DING! and echoed about the room for several seconds, bringing Nancy out of her rêverie. “Oh hello,” said Nancy offering her winningest smile to the woman who stared at her in a manner that can only be described as fishlike. “Can I help you?” asked the woman. “Why yes, you certainly may,” replied Nancy chipperly, fond of the question. “I’m looking for Hugo.” “Hugo …” replied the woman, “… you mean Chico?” Nancy was about to repeat Hugo’s name when her sharp wit took over. This Chico character may just be a valuable piece to this baffling puzzle! Nancy put on her friendliest, giggliest voice, “Oh yes, Chico! What was I thinking, ‘Hugo’? Gracious! I can be such a dipsy-doodle with names! Isn’t life a funny thing? Ha ha ha! Chico, yes of course. Chico.” Nancy played her rôle very suavely. “You can find Chico on the corner of Licoln and 14th street, I imagine, after 8 o’clock,” said the woman, eyeing Nancy Drew suspiciously. Nancy caught the suspicion in the woman’s glance and employed a daring ruse to try to eradicate it. “Oh yes, Lincoln and 4th street. Next to ole’ what’s-his-name’s place. Of course. What a frazzled moppet am I to have forgotten.” “Uh, no, Lincoln and 14th street, I said,” repeated the woman, and after a contemplative pause, “and you are…?” Nancy thought in a panic and came up with, “Flossie. Flossie Bright. Flossie A. Bright from Bipford, Connecticut. Pleased to make your acquaintance.” Nancy held out her hand for the woman to shake. It was ignored. Eyeing the room swiftly, she decided her next plan of action would be to get up those darned stairs and see if she could locate the dastardly duo whom she had been chasing. But how to get past this woman at the booth! Nothing got past this quick one with the eagle eyes, Nancy could tell. She quickly invented another convoluted scenario. “My my! Isn’t that Hugo … I mean Chico coming through the door now?” announced Nancy loudly, pointing towards the entrance to the lobby. The woman in the booth looked that way and Nancy made a beeline in the opposite direction towards the stairs, snagging her pleated plaid dirndl on a rusty nail jutting from the banister which caused quite a tear. “Oh crunch!” said Nancy to her dress, annoyed, “It’s important for a gal to look her best while hot on the trail of a clue! And now this! What next?” As Nancy stood at the foot of the stairs fretting over her ruined dirndl, the woman had not been fooled long by Nancy’s distraction and now watched her, bored, as Nancy monologued to her clothing. “I shall have to make time for an unforseen shopping spree terribly soon. Such a bothersome thing to have soiled one’s dress. Perhaps that classy boutique I spotted on the way into Winchester might have something fashionable yet reasonbly-priced and…” “Um, excuse me, Miss?” Nancy was muttering to herself and did not hear the beckon. “Nevermind,” sighed the woman and went back to reading her magazine with disinterest. Back at the Drew household in River Heights, Mrs. Carlsberg sat impatiently, tapping the Formica table top with another spatula and staring intently at the clock. Mr. Drew rolled into the kitchen banging into tables and chairs and knocking over empty milk bottles. “Oh, Mr Drew!” cried Mrs. Carlsberg, “it’s nearly 7:30 and there’s no sign of Nancy! I’m in a terrible stew!” “Huh, huh, ‘stew’, huh, huh,” chuckled Carson Drew lowly, eyeing Mrs. Carlsberg’s thigh. “She’s always home for supper by 6 o’clock. This is a travesty! Wherever could she have gotten to?” “She’s probably out solving another mystery,” said Mr. Drew wheeling himself next to Mrs. Carlsberg and lifting up her skirt to peek. “Oh no! Not another baffling Nancy Drew mystery! Why, remember the last one when she was abducted by those queer sailors and bound hand and foot with piano wire and beaten brutally with a dead duck until she broke down and gave the address where she had hidden the priceless statue?” (“The Clue of the Queer Duck-Thumping Sailors and the Priceless Statue”—Bantam, 1932) “Yes, I remember,” recalled Carson Drew, “but she was such a clever filly that what she actually gave was the address of an abandoned warehouse where I and Officer Peterbilt were lying in wait to apprehend those fag seamen.” “And such a scuffle ensued!” piped up Mrs. Carlsberg, “and I never did understand how they managed to remove all of their own clothes, not to mention your own and Officer Peterbilt’s, before being apprehended.” Carson Drew smirked and shrugged, circling Mrs. Carlsberg’s pert nipples with another kitchen implement. “All’s well that ends well,” he explained. …to be continued… 
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