Nancy Clue Mysteries 2 - The Case of the Good-for-Nothing Girlfriend (22 page)

George hit the roof. "How come you didn't tell me?" she demanded.

Bess tried to comfort her sweetie, but George would have none of it. "She's impossible to calm down when she gets angry," Bess explained to Velma.

"Tell me about it," Velma sighed. "Why, the only thing that distracts Midge when she's like that is..."

"Excuse me!" Midge cried, her face red as a beet. "I mean, er, I'm hungry. Let's take this conversation to the kitchen, shall we?"

"I'm too upset to eat," Bess wailed, but once she spied Lauren attacking the luscious chocolate cake she had baked the night before, she changed her mind. She got a pitcher of cold milk from the refrigerator and cut generous slices of the delicious dessert.

"What is it about upsetting news that always makes food taste better?" Bess wondered. "And this is just about the most upsetting news I've ever heard. Whatever will we do?"

No one had an answer.

Midge groaned as she covered her head with a pillow and burrowed under the covers in an attempt to shut out the bright sunlight streaming in through the windows at one end of the small, simply furnished first-floor back bedroom that had been Hannah's residence for over twenty years. Midge tried with all her might to fall back to sleep, but couldn't. She checked the little alarm clock on the metal bedstand. It was seven a.m.

"I'm cursed," she thought, propping herself up. "You wake up early once in your life, and it ruins your sleep forever," she groaned.

Normally she would have delighted in finding herself awakened early in a deliciously cool room with Velma asleep by her side. "If we were alone, she wouldn't be asleep for long," Midge thought ruefully. She got out of bed, almost stumbling over Lauren, who was passed out in a sleeping bag on the floor. Midge had been too tired to argue when Lauren had followed them to bed.

She pulled the curtains shut so the others wouldn't be disturbed by the morning light. They had all stayed up to explain the unusual circumstances under which they had met. "Could it be only eleven days since we met Cherry and became embroiled in the search for those kidnapped nuns?" Midge asked herself in amazement. Why, she felt as if she had known Cherry and Nancy her entire life!

Bess had been shocked when she'd found out that an evil priest had been behind the dastardly kidnapping of the kindly nuns, but George said it didn't surprise her one little bit. Midge smiled. That George was a good egg, she decided as she carefully stepped over Lauren and pulled open the bedroom door. "What's this?" she wondered, picking up a small red rubber ball on the ground outside her door.

A white bundle of fur flew by, stopping just long enough to grab the ball from Midge's hand. It was Nancy's terrier, Gogo. "A terror's more like it," Midge grinned as she threw a plaid bathrobe over her pajamas, and made her way to the spacious, sunny white and yellow kitchen.

She was delighted to find a pot of fresh coffee already percolating. Bess had gotten up early and was taking fragrant buttermilk biscuits out of the oven.

"There'll be apple pancakes in a few minutes," she smiled at Midge. She motioned for her to be seated at the white and gold speckled Formica table and brought her a cup of coffee and a pitcher of cream.

"You don't have to wait on me," Midge protested, but Bess just laughed. "I always do the cooking, and George does the dishes," she explained. "Sit and eat," she added, bring a basket of biscuits and a plate of butter to the table. "Did you sleep well?" she asked.

Midge broke open a biscuit and slathered it with the creamy butter. "As well as can be expected with that little snoring kid in the room," she said.

Bess laughed. "Maybe tonight Lauren will feel comfortable enough in this strange house to sleep in the living room." Bess grew somber. She sat down across from Midge and poured herself a cup of coffee. "You might think I'm crazy, but..." Her voice trailed off.

"Go on," Midge urged. "I won't think you're crazy."

"I can't explain, exactly, but after hearing what you said about Nancy and her father, I just couldn't sleep. Why, I even got up to make myself a cheese and tomato sandwich, hoping that would put me to sleep, but still I lay awake."

Bess continued breathlessly, her brown eyes growing as big as saucers as she relayed her bizarre experiences in the Clue household.

"This house has always felt a little scary to me. Whenever I'm here, I feel like, well, I feel like I'm being watched. Like someone's standing behind me, watching everything I do." Bess shivered. "Until last night, when I learned of the horrible things that went on here, I thought I was just being silly." She blushed. "I'm not the bravest person," she admitted. "Last night when we heard you in the cellar, I made George pretend she was a man, and I stayed a safe distance behind her."

Bess leaned in close to Midge and dropped her voice to a whisper. One night years and years ago I was sharing Nancy's room and I awoke in the middle of the night and thought I saw someone standing at the foot of my bed.

"I must have been dreaming, though, because when I turned on the bedside lamp, the figure disappeared. I remember smelling the most luscious scent; I thought it was a perfume of some sort until I remembered that a large lilac bush grows right outside Nancy's bedroom window," Bess added.

Midge wanted to quiz Bess further about the strange incidents in the Clue household, both before and after Carson Clue's death, but Bess clammed up when she spied Lauren headed down the hall toward the kitchen. "No more talk like this, or we'll never get her out of your bedroom," Bess giggled. "Anyway, I'm always being a silly goose about things. Why, I'm even afraid of my own shadow. Don't listen to a thing I say about this house. I'm sure there's nothing to any of it."

Midge wasn't so sure, but she let the conversation drop, at least for the time being.

Lauren wandered into the sunny kitchen holding the waistband of her pajamas in an attempt to keep them from sliding down her slender frame. In the oversized pajamas, with her hair sticking up in unflattering angles, Lauren looked more like a kid and less like the smart-aleck teen Midge knew her to be.

"Why, she looks harmless," Midge realized. "How could I have ever suspected that she and Velma..." Her thoughts stopped when she saw the newspaper in Lauren's hand. It would certainly include coverage of Hannah's trial. Midge snatched the paper away from Lauren, and tried to think of a way to get her out of the room so she could freely discuss the trial with Bess. "You stink," Midge said bluntly. "Go take a bath."

"You're not my mother," Lauren replied tartly as she slumped into a chair and reached for a biscuit.

"That is one of the many things I am grateful for," Midge replied sarcastically. "Go take a bath," she ordered again, in a no-nonsense tone that surprised them both. "Now."

"Yes, sir!" Lauren saluted before snatching another biscuit. She put a third in the breast pocket of her pajama top, glared at Midge, and stomped off.

"There're fresh towels in the hall closet and bubble bath beside the tub," Bess called after her. The slam of the washroom door was Lauren's only reply.

"Honestly," Bess sighed as she mixed pancake batter. "She's an odd little duck. What on earth are you doing with her? And where are her parents?"

Midge lit her first cigarette of the day. "She's just a little juvenile delinquent we picked up along the way. I'm sure her family's glad to get rid of her," she chuckled.

Bess quivered in alarm. "Should I hide the crystal?" she wondered.

"Nothing like that," Midge assured her. "I have caught her in a few lies," she admitted. "Well, not really lies. More like creative story-telling. I get the feeling she's not happy at home and isn't too keen on returning. I am, though," Midge admitted. "We've been gone much longer than planned, and my long-suffering friends, Tom and Monty, have been caring for my pets all this time." She shuddered when she imagined what Monty's white wall-to-wall carpet would look like after boarding one dog, five puppies, a cat, and various, assorted rodents.

"One problem at a time," she sighed, scanning the newspaper. She almost knocked over her coffee cup, so shocked was she when she saw the River Depths Defender. For the entire front page was devoted to what the paper was calling "The Case of the Homicidal Housekeeper."

"Horrible Hannah," read the twenty-four point caption below a harsh jail-cell photograph of Hannah Gruel. Midge had never met Hannah, but she could tell from the wan look of her once-pleasant features that the elderly woman was suffering a great deal. "I can't believe this. Look!" Midge cried to Bess, who was absorbed in dropping evenly spaced dollops of pancake batter onto the hot griddle.

"'Hannah's Recipe For Mayhem,' " Midge read a headline aloud in a shocked tone. "It says there's evidence Hannah tried to poison both Nancy and Mr. Clue during last year's Founder's Day Picnic by baking arsenic in a huckleberry pie. They even printed her recipe! "

Bess hurriedly wiped her hands on her apron and looked over Midge's shoulder. She shuddered when she saw how the newspaper had twisted and distorted kindly Hannah Gruel's life so as to make it appear that she was really a manipulative, scheming woman.

"It says here police believe Hannah's been squirreling away money for years! " Midge exclaimed. "Look at this photograph of a jar filled with coins. They're saying it's evidence of her successful scheme to steal money from Mr. Clue."

Bess gasped in horror when she looked at the photograph. "Why, I know for a fact that Hannah keeps her pin money in that jar. She makes extra money baking pies for the neighbors and uses her savings to purchase Christmas gifts for Nancy and Mr. Clue," she gasped indignantly. "What other lies are in here?" she cried, doing her best to flip pancakes while reading over Midge's shoulder.

Midge groaned as she rifled through the newspaper. "Most of the articles are about Hannah!" she cried. "Even on the society page, there's one titled, 'I Never Trusted Her.' " Midge read it aloud.

" ` "I never trusted that woman," Mrs. Milton Meeks, a prominent leader of the community, was overheard exclaiming at yesterday's Ladies' Club Luncheon honoring local poetess Miss Betty Pearl, whose recent publication in Reader's Digest has earned her accolades from around the state.

' "I knew the day Carson Clue brought that woman into his house no good would come of it," Mrs. Meeks declared after sampling a delicious luncheon of tuna salad and vegetable medley. She expressed concern that Hannah's actions would disrupt the happy harmony housewives and housekeepers of River Depths have always enjoyed. Others at her table expressed similar fears.

`A good time was had by all.'

"They're all the same," Midge sighed after a quick scan of the other articles. "There's even an editorial calling for a law to disarm housekeepers," she sneered as she threw the paper on the floor in disgust.

Bess plunked a platter of pancakes on the table in front of Midge and announced, "Why, Mrs. Meeks tried several times to hire Hannah away from the Clues. My mother overheard her cornering Hannah one night after a Ladies' Club meeting, where Hannah served her delicious blueberry tarts. She begged her to quit and come work for her!

"Although she was too much a lady to ever say so, Hannah never did like that Mrs. Meeks." Bess's pretty face flushed with anger. She twisted a dish towel in her hands. "If I ever see that woman on the street, why, I'll-" But before she could finish, the doorbell rang.

"Who could it be this early in the morning?" Bess wondered aloud as she hurried to answer it. "It's probably the milkman, unable to decipher George's note about extra butter." She pulled off her apron, dusty with flour, and ran a hand through her mussed hair. She flung open the door and to her great surprise saw the very same Mrs. Milton Meeks in the news article, standing on the Clues' front porch. And in her white-gloved hands was a casserole dish covered with a red-checkered cloth.

"Oh, Beth, dear, you're here!" Mrs. Meeks exclaimed in glee.

"It's Bess," Bess corrected, but Mrs. Meeks paid no mind. She sailed right past her and headed for the kitchen.

"Was I ever shocked and pleased to drive by earlier and see Nancy's car out front! " Mrs. Meeks cried.

"Nancy's asleep and can't be disturbed," Bess warned.

"So she is home," Mrs. Meeks' eyes twinkled in delight. "I wouldn't dream of waking her," she declared. "I just wanted to drop off this special tuna salad I prepared especially for her."

"Oh, hello young man," she said cheerily to Midge as she put the casserole dish in the refrigerator. "You must be one of Nancy's detective chums from Lake Merrimen. Now, which Hardly boy are you? Joe or Frank?" She reached in her handbag hanging from the crook of one arm and took out a pair of jeweled cat glasses. She balanced them precariously on the tip of her pug nose and stared at Midge. She gave her a good going-over.

"Young man, I'd advise you to not sit around the house in your sleeping attire," she warned. "Honestly, what will people say when they find out you and Nancy are staying in the very same house without a chaperone? Beth, does your mother know about this?"