Nancy Clancy, Secret of the Silver Key Page 2

  “Oh, look at this, Dad,” Nancy said after she pulled open the end drawer. A small silver key was inside. “I wonder what it opens.”

  A moment later when she pulled out the next drawer, Nancy thought she might have the answer. At the very back of the drawer was a small keyhole. That certainly was an odd place for a keyhole to be. Just as that thought crossed her mind, Nancy noticed that this drawer, the one with the keyhole, wasn’t as deep as the other.

  Suddenly an icy little shiver wiggled through her. She held up the silver key to the keyhole. Oui, oui, oui! It was the same size.

  “Dad!” Nancy gasped. “I think my desk has a secret compartment!” Just uttering the words “secret compartment” sent another bigger, icier shiver through her. This was like something straight out of a Nancy Drew mystery. Who knew what might be inside? A hidden jewel. A treasure map. A—

  “What are you waiting for? Open it!”

  With trembling fingers Nancy inserted the key. At least, she tried to.

  Although it seemed to fit, the key wouldn’t turn.

  “Here. You try it, Daddy.”

  As soon as she handed over the key, her father said, “I see the problem. The tip is bent a little.” He scratched his chin. “I know I have a small saw somewhere in here. I could try cutting out the front so you could see what’s behind the keyhole.”

  “No!” Nancy yelped. She didn’t want the drawer sawed open. That would wreck her desk before it even got into her room. Also, it seemed against the rules. If you were lucky enough to discover a secret compartment, it should be opened the proper way: with a key. Nancy was almost 100 percent positive that’s what Nancy Drew would say.

  Dad turned the key over in his hand. “I guess I could try hammering it. Maybe that would straighten it out.”

  “Yes, please, Daddy. Try that.”

  While her father hunted for the hammer, Nancy raced over to Bree’s house.

  Ooh la la! Bree was in her backyard jumping rope.

  “Seventy-one, seventy-two,” she counted, gasping for breath.

  “Stop! Stop! Come with me, tout de suite.” Nancy said it like this: “toot sweet.” It was French for right now.

  “Can’t,” Bree huffed. “Seventy-eight, seventy-nine . . .” At eighty-one, Bree tripped, and the jump rope went flying from her hands. “Thanks a bunch, Nancy. I was going for my personal best until you messed me up.”

  “Sorry! But this is important.”

  The minute Bree heard the mysterious words “secret compartment,” she stopped being annoyed and scooted back to the garage with Nancy.

  “I did my best,” Nancy’s dad informed her. “The key is still a little bent.”

  After Nancy showed Bree the special drawer, she took the key from her father and tried turning it gently in the keyhole. The lock seemed to give a little, so she pressed down on the key harder and pulled.

  All at once, the door of the secret compartment swung open.

  Nancy and Bree peered inside.

  “So, tell me. Tell me. What’s in there?” her father said. “I can’t stand the suspense!”

  There was no jewelry. No treasure map, either. The only thing inside the secret compartment was . . . another key. Another silver key, although this one was bigger and fancier.

  Nancy couldn’t help feeling let down, although she said to Bree, “It must be important if somebody bothered hiding it in a secret compartment.”

  “Maybe something in one of the other drawers explains what it’s for.”

  But the other drawers were all empty, which really didn’t surprise Nancy. After she put the key back in the secret compartment, she turned to Bree. “So? Want to help me paint?”

  Of course Bree did. Besides sleuthing, she and Nancy both loved to do interior decorating. That was the professional term for making your room look prettier.

  “Nice job, girls!” her mom said when they were finished applying the alabaster paint.

  “With the gold, it’s going to look so elegant,” Bree said.

  “Better wait for the white paint to dry,” Nancy’s mom advised.

  While she was pulling off her smock, Nancy heard someone shouting to them.

  “Hey! What are you guys doing?”

  It was Grace. Nancy resisted the urge to look at Bree and make a face.

  Grace pulled down the kickstand on her bike, a bike that was made in France and cost a fortune, according to Grace. She already had her helmet off and was walking over to the garage.

  “It’s my new desk. We’re painting it.”

  “It doesn’t look new. It looks old.”

  “It’s new to me,” Nancy told Grace. “And it’s practically an antique.”

  “It has a secret compartment with a key!” Bree added.

  Nancy had wanted to deliver that exciting bit of news herself. Still, it was very satisfying to hear Grace whistle and say, “No kidding!”

  Proudly Nancy pointed at the special drawer that was drying on newspaper. “Don’t touch it. The paint’s wet. But you can see the little door inside.”

  Grace bent down and whistled again. “So what was inside?”

  “Another key,” Nancy said.

  “What does it open?”

  “We haven’t got a clue,” Nancy admitted.

  “Where’d you get the desk?”

  After Grace heard about the tag sale, she said, “So, duh! Just go back there and ask whoever used to own the desk what the key is for.”

  Nancy and Bree turned to each other and scowled. Grace was right. Why hadn’t they thought of that themselves? That worried Nancy. Maybe because it had been so long since their last mystery, their sleuthing skills were getting rusty!

  At lunch on Monday, Nancy and Bree sat at their usual table under the poster of the five food groups. Nancy had brought the silver key. She held it out for her friends to see while telling the story of how she found it.

  Bree passed around a bag of veggie chips and said, “After school, we’re going to bike over to the tag-sale house and ask the lady if she knows what the key is for.”

  “I get to come too,” Grace said, appearing out of nowhere. She plopped down her tray and squeezed in next to Clara. “It was my idea, after all.”

  Nancy grit her teeth. Grace’s eavesdropping skills were superb, Nancy had to admit. Grace always heard exactly what you didn’t want her to.

  “It was my idea,” Grace repeated as she unwrapped her sandwich. “So it’s only fair.”

  “Okay. On one condition: We ask all the questions,” Nancy said. “You can’t do any interrogating.”

  Once they had their helmets on, Nancy and Bree slipped on their trench coats. Nancy’s was hot pink. Bree’s was purple.

  “It’s hot. What do you need coats for?” Grace said.

  “It so happens that these are the kind of coats detectives wear when they are sleuthing,” Nancy informed Grace.

  “Whatever,” Grace said, and hopped on her made-in-France bike.

  It was easy finding the way from school to the lady’s house because she lived only two blocks over. After parking their bikes on her front lawn, Nancy knocked at the door. When the lady opened it, Nancy cleared her throat. Then, since she didn’t know the lady’s name, she smiled and said politely, “Madam, I hope we are not disturbing you. We need only a few minutes of your time.”

  “Oh, I remember you.” The lady smiled back. “Your family came to the tag sale. You bought the rolltop desk.” Suddenly she looked puzzled. “Is something wrong with it?”

  “Oh, no! It’s painted alabaster white now with gold trim and looks great.”

  “Well, what can I do for you girls?”

  “We are trying to solve a mystery,” Bree began.

  Nancy dug in her trench coat pocket and showed the key to the lady. “This was in a hidden compartment in one of the desk drawers. I’m hoping you know what secret the key will reveal.” “Reveal” was also one of Nancy’s favorite words. It sounded so much more mysterious than “show.
”

  The lady squinted at the key. “I have no earthly idea. Maybe my daughter knows. It used to be her desk. Would you like me to call her?”

  “Thanks! That would be superb!” Nancy said.

  The lady left them standing by the door. In less than five minutes she returned. “I’m afraid my daughter was no help either. All she said was that the key had always been there.”

  “Hmmmm.” You couldn’t even really count this as new information. Still, Nancy tried mulling over the lady’s words.

  “Well, was it—” Grace started to speak. But Nancy turned and looked at her sharply.

  “Remember the rules.”

  Then suddenly Nancy thought of a question to ask. “Was the desk brand-new when you got it?”

  “Rats. That was my question.”

  Nancy ignored Grace and was pleased when the lady replied, “No. The desk used to belong to our next-door neighbors.”

  Ooh la la! Now the investigation was getting somewhere! “The house with the green shutters?” Nancy asked, pointing.

  The lady nodded.

  “Easy-peasy!” Bree exclaimed. “Let’s go!”

  “Oh, no, honey. The La Salles moved years ago. In fact, two different families have lived in that house since then.”

  “Where does the La Salle family live now?” Nancy took out her sleuthing notebook and pen.

  “The last I heard, they were in New York City.”

  The Big Apple! How glamorous, although New York City was way too far away to bike to. “Do you have their phone number or an email address?”

  “I did. But I don’t know if either one is current. We haven’t been in touch for years. And . . .” The lady paused for a second. “Well, I’m sorry, but I really wouldn’t be comfortable giving out that kind of information.” The lady backed away from the front door. It was clear that she didn’t want to be interrogated anymore. Suddenly Nancy started feeling more like a pest than a practically professional sleuth.

  “We’re sorry to have bothered you. And we thank you for your time,” Nancy said sadly.

  “Good luck!” the lady said.

  Nancy and Bree turned to leave, but Grace butted in.

  “Listen, if you do find an email address or something,” she said to the lady, “you could write and see if your old neighbors would let us email them.”

  “Yesss.” The lady drew out the word as if she were considering it. “I suppose I could do that.”

  “My name is Nancy, and this is my family’s email address.” Nancy wrote down clancyfamily@arrow.com and handed the slip of paper to the lady.

  “Thanks so much,” Nancy said, and pocketed her notepad. Then the three girls hopped back on their bikes and rode home. Nancy wasn’t completely convinced the lady really would bother to try to track down her old neighbors. And Nancy certainly didn’t like the way Grace had said “us” before, as if she were a part of the investigation. However, Nancy had to hand it to Grace. If not for her, their sleuthing would have come to a dead end. Sometimes it really paid off to be a pest!

  Later that night, while Nancy was searching for something superb to put in the class time capsule, she heard her dad calling.

  “Nancy, there’s an email for you . . . at least I think it’s for you. Do you know someone named Ann Tyler?”

  Nancy zipped downstairs to the living room, where her father sat with his laptop computer.

  “Let me see, Dad!” Nancy peered over her dad’s shoulder at the screen.

  Oui, oui, oui! The email was from the tag-sale lady! Nancy read it out loud.

  To: clancyfamily@arrow.com

  Hello, Nancy,

  You are in luck. Here is the email address for Diana La Salle. I wrote her and it is fine for you to contact her daughter, Olivia, who owned the desk. Here is Olivia’s phone number. I hope you are able to solve the mystery.

  Sincerely yours,

  Ann Tyler

  Diana La Salle! Olivia La Salle. In her entire life, Nancy had never heard such elegant names. They sounded characters in a Nancy Drew book. Nice ones. Not evil ones. Nancy kept repeating the phone number aloud as she ran toward the kitchen to make the call.

  “Hold on, Sherlock,” her dad said. “What’s going on here? What mystery?”

  Nancy’s mother and JoJo were sitting on the sofa with the tag-sale book on pirates. Her mother stopped reading. Now both her parents were looking at Nancy, waiting for an answer.

  “It’s kind of complicated,” Nancy began.

  Her mom and dad were not at all pleased when they heard she had biked over to a stranger’s house.

  “She isn’t a stranger. We all were at her house for the tag sale!”

  “That doesn’t make her a close personal friend,” her dad pointed out.

  “But we didn’t go inside. We just stood at the door.”

  After Nancy had apologized many times, she asked, “So? Will you let me call now? Please?”

  Her parents relented, which was the grown-up way of saying they gave in.

  “Merci. Merci beaucoup with sugar on top!” Nancy blew kisses at them. Then she thought of something. “Ooh, I have to inform Bree of this.”

  Upstairs in her room, Nancy sent off a message in their Top-Secret Special Delivery mailbox. It hung from a long rope strung in between their bedroom windows. Nancy rang the bell, which meant mail was coming.

  There’s been a break in the case! her note read. Can you come over tout de suite?

  Bree arrived in a flash. Nancy had Olivia La Salle’s number written down. She punched it in and held the receiver between them so they both could listen. What they learned was music to their ears. Not only had the desk belonged to Olivia La Salle, but she was quite sure she knew what the silver key opened. “If you’d like to come over, I can show you,” she offered.

  After Nancy and Bree hung up, they jumped up and down and then high-fived each other. Fortunately, Olivia La Salle no longer lived in Gotham, which was another name for New York City. She lived in a town that was fifteen minutes away by car.

  Unfortunately, neither of Nancy’s parents could spare the time to drive there until the weekend. Though only a few days away, the weekend seemed impossibly far into the future. No way could Nancy and Bree wait that long.

  “Let me see what I can do!” Bree said, and sped back to her house.

  Nancy waited in her room for the bell to ring. When it did, she reeled in the rope and opened the note in the basket.

  Chérie, my dad will take us tomorrow after school!

  Nancy opened the secret compartment and gazed at the silver key. Soon its secret would be revealed. Knowing that made her shiver with pleasure.

  The next day, Grace was absent, which solved the problem of whether to invite her sleuthing. Many kids came in with stuff for the time capsule, which was a big box from Sibley’s department store. Lionel brought in a whoopee cushion. Bree had a long printed-out bill from a supermarket register. She said, “Kids of the future can see what milk and ice cream and cereal and lots of other food used to cost.”

  Bree beamed when Mr. D said, “What a superb idea.”

  Joel, who wanted to be an astronaut, had a Lego rocket ship. Clara brought in very shiny coins, a penny, a nickel, and a dime.

  “Won’t there still be money fifty years from now?” Tamar wanted to know.

  Mr. D wasn’t sure. “By then everybody might be using plastic money cards instead of real money.”

  “My coins were made this year.” Clara showed the class where the date was on each. “So in fifty years, they’ll be exactly fifty years old.”

  In the afternoon, during creative writing, Nancy continued the latest exploits—which were adventures but more exciting—of Lucette Fromage. She was a nine-year-old girl Nancy had made up.

  This time, Nancy decided to have Lucette Fromage magically travel back in time to Paris, France, hundreds of years ago.

  Nancy began writing. “Lucette found herself in a castle garden where a beautiful lady said “B
onjour” to her. She was dressed in a très-fancy gown and carried a lace parasol. Although the lady was young, her hair was white. That was because she was wearing a big, powdered wig.

  “Tout de suite Lucette realized this lady was the queen of France.”

  Nancy put down her pencil and thought about what should come next. Last week she had read a book about this queen. Her name was Marie. The queen loved jewels and eating cake. But she didn’t care about the poor people of Paris, France. Nancy began writing again.

  “Lucette curtsied and said, ‘Your Majesty, I come from the future and I am here to warn you. You must act nicer to peasant-folk or they will do something terrible to you!’”

  Even writing fast, the last bell rang before Nancy had finished her story. She grabbed her backpack and she and Bree were outside the school building in record time.

  “Hi, Pop!” Bree shouted, waving. Her father waved back from inside the first car in a long line that snaked down the block.

  As soon as they were buckled into their seat belts, off they went to visit Olivia La Salle.

  Bree’s dad had GPS in his car, so driving to Olivia La Salle’s house was a cinch.

  Nancy loved listening to the sophisticated voice of the GPS lady, who announced in practically no time, “You have arrived at your destination.”

  Ooh la la! The house was a genuine McMansion. It was brand-new and big—really big—with the kind of tower that Nancy knew was called a turret. Castles often came with turrets.

  Olivia La Salle greeted them at the door. Double ooh la la. She was glamorous. Her wavy red hair looked as if she had just left a beauty salon. Her makeup was applied perfectly. When she smiled, both her top and bottom teeth showed. “So who’s the proud new owner of my desk?”

  “I am. I’m Nancy Clancy, and this is my best friend, Bree, and her dad, Mr. Sylvester James.”

  “Well, I think it was very enterprising of you girls to track me down,” she said cheerily, and motioned everyone inside. “We’ll go in the family room and you can see what your key opens.”