The Clue at Black Creek Farm (Nancy Drew Diaries #9)(24)

Bess grinned. “Well, do tell! I always love hearing the latest deductions of Nancy Drew, Super Sleuth.”

I smirked at her. “You know I can’t tell you without George here”—Bess pretended to scowl—“but I can’t wait to tell you guys what I’m thinking. More than anything, I want to figure out our next step!”

Bess glanced out the windshield. “Well, I’ll give you this, Nancy,” she said. “When you want to drive fast, you really do drive fast! We’re nearly at your house already.”

Minutes later I pulled into my driveway, and we piled out and ran into the house. Pausing only to grab two oatmeal raisin cookies from the cookie jar on the counter (Thanks, Hannah!), we hightailed it up to my room, where I pulled out my own laptop.

I pulled up the home page for my e-mail program and logged in, then opened up my in-box to start sifting through the messages I’d forwarded from Jack.

“What are you doing?” Bess asked. “Or can’t you tell me that, either, till George gets here?”

I rolled my eyes at her. “No, I’ll tell you. I forwarded myself a bunch of e-mails that Jack’s sent in the last three weeks. I’m going through them now, looking for anything suspicious.”

“Jack,” Bess said simply. Her blue eyes sparkled with excitement.

I looked over at her. Darn, did I just give away my whole theory? “Um . . . yeah. Jack.”

Bess nodded slowly, tapping her chin. “He was very rude at the buffet,” she said. “And then with what Lori told us . . .”

I had turned my attention back to my computer screen, where suddenly something caught my eye. “Oh my gosh!”

Bess jumped up from my bed and darted over to my desk to look over my shoulder at the computer screen. “What is it?”

It was an e-mail from Jack, sent, according to the time stamp, at around four o’clock that morning.

Dude . . .

Look, what we’re doing is having no effect. There’s more fun planned for tonight, but I’m not sure it will work. S is too hardheaded.

We need to talk about sending a clearer message.

Maybe if S had an “accident” . . .

Meet me at Coffee Cabin in River Heights this afternoon at three.

J

I looked up at Bess. Her mouth was hanging open.

“An ‘accident,’?” she said slowly. Then she made finger quotes. “?‘Accident,’?” she repeated.

“I know,” I said.

“Do you think he’s going to hurt Sam?” Bess asked.

“I don’t know. But it sounds like that’s on the table.”

Bess looked horrified. “Three o’clock . . . what time is it now?”

I glanced at the clock on my computer screen. “It’s one thirty.”

Just then George breezed through my bedroom door. “Was that you I saw driving like a woman in labor?” she asked, looking at me like I was out of my mind. “It couldn’t be, right? Aren’t you always telling me that just because I can drive the speed limit doesn’t mean I should go that fast? What were you in such a rush for?”

I gave George a matter-of-fact look. “I think I’ve figured out who’s behind all the shenanigans at Black Creek,” I said, “and if we don’t stop him . . . Sam is going to get hurt!”





CHAPTER ELEVEN





Coffee Stakeout


I PEEKED OUT OF THE kitchen at the Coffee Cabin, watching the door as I adjusted the volume on the microphone I’d hidden under table four. Table four was the most popular table in the place, according to George, and very centrally located. If I was really lucky, Jack and his accomplice would take a seat there to have whatever sordid conversation they were planning to have, and I’d get a crystal-clear recording that I could bring to Sam to show him the ugly truth. If I was only a little bit lucky, they’d sit somewhere else in the Cabin, but still close enough to the mic for me to hear what they were saying.

I worried that we’d already used up our luck allowance, though—because it was crazy lucky that Jack had decided to meet this person in the one coffee shop in the area that employed my amazing friend George.

“It’s not too busy today,” George murmured, sidling up next to me in the crisp white shirt and black apron that served as her uniform. “That’s lucky. It’ll make ‘Dude’ easier to spot.”

I nodded. “I already have, like, three potential ‘Dudes’ picked out,” I whispered. “The bald guy at table one, the redhead at table eight, and the biker guy sitting at the bar.”

George surveyed my candidates with interest. “The biker guy ordered a strawberry mocha dream-a-chino,” she whispered back, “just in case that takes him off any kind of ‘potential criminal’ list.”

I shot her a horrified look. “George, criminals drink all kinds of coffee drinks!”

“There’s no coffee in that,” George corrected me. “But there is a mountain of whipped cream.”

I looked back at Biker Dude just in time to watch him put down his mug, revealing a huge whipped-cream mustache. I glanced at George and couldn’t help giggling.

“George, did you wipe down table seven?” George’s boss, Lydia, interrupted our giggle-fest. She leaned over from her desk just inside the kitchen, frowning.