Strangers on a Train (Nancy Drew Diaries #2)

Strangers on a Train (Nancy Drew Diaries #2)

Carolyn Keene




CHAPTER ONE



Going Ashore



“NANCY! DOWN HERE!”

I hurried down the last few steps to the landing and saw Becca Wright waving as she rushed up the next set of steps toward me. The cruise ship’s atrium stairwell was deserted except for the two of us, just as she’d predicted. Almost everyone aboard the Arctic Star was gathered along the open-air decks watching the view as the ship chugged into the picturesque port of Skagway, Alaska.

“I don’t have much time,” I told Becca. “Alan thinks I’m in the ladies’ room. He wants to get a photo of all of us at the rail when we dock.”

“I don’t have much time either.” Becca checked her watch. As the Arctic Star’s assistant cruise director, she was always busy. “I’m supposed to be getting ready for disembarkation right now. But I just found out something I thought you’d want to know right away. The police caught the robber!”

I gasped, flashing back to the events of the day before yesterday. While the ship was docked in a town called Ketchikan, someone had robbed the shipboard jewelry store.

“Really, they caught someone already? That’s amazing!” I exclaimed. “Who was it?”

“A guy named Troy Anderson,” Becca replied, leaning down to pluck a stray bit of lint off the carpet. “I guess he’s well known to the local authorities as a petty thief and general troublemaker type. They caught him over in Juneau trying to fence the stuff he stole.”

I blinked, taking that in. It wasn’t exactly the answer I’d been expecting. “So he wasn’t a passenger or crew member on the Arctic Star?”

Becca raked a hand through her dark curls. “Nope. Which is weird, right? I have no idea how he got onboard.” She smiled weakly. “Maybe it’s a good thing you’re still here, Nancy. I hope you’re in the mood for another mystery?”

The Arctic Star was the flagship of the brand-new Superstar Cruises, and this was its maiden voyage. However, things had gone wrong from the start. Before the start, actually. That was why Becca had called me. We’d known each other for years, and she knew I liked nothing better than investigating a tough mystery. She’d called me in—along with my two best friends, Bess Marvin and George Fayne—because she was worried that someone was trying to sabotage the new ship.

And she’d been right. Just a few days into the cruise, I’d nabbed the saboteurs, Vince and Lacey. They were working for a rival cruise line, trying to put Superstar out of business.

Then the jewelry store robbery happened—after Vince and Lacey were in custody. And I’d realized that maybe the mystery wasn’t over after all.

“Do you think this Anderson guy had an accomplice on the ship?” I asked. “If so, maybe that person was also responsible for some of the other stuff that’s been going wrong.”

Becca bit her lip, looking anxious. “I hope not. Because I was really hoping all the trouble would be over after you busted Vince and Lacey.”

I knew what she meant. I’d been trying to convince myself that the case was solved. That a few dangling loose ends didn’t matter. That those loose ends were just red herrings, easily explained by bad luck, coincidence, whatever.

What kind of loose ends? Well, for instance, there was the threatening note I’d found in my suitcase the first day onboard. Vince and Lacey claimed to know nothing about that. They also denied being involved in most of the problems that had happened before the ship set sail. And they claimed to know nothing about the fake moose antler from the mini-golf course that had missed crushing me by inches. They also seemed clueless about the angry argument I’d overheard from the ship’s kitchen that had ended in what sounded like a threat: Drop it, John! Or I’ll make sure you never make it to Anchorage. And they insisted that neither of them was the person who’d pushed me off a raised walkway in Ketchikan, sending me tumbling twenty feet down into icy water.

I shivered, thinking back over the list. It didn’t take an expert detective to realize that the most serious of those incidents seemed to be directed at yours truly.

“We have to accept that the case might not be over quite yet,” I told Becca. “If the robber does have an accomplice on this ship, he or she might still try to cause more trouble. We’ll have to keep our eyes open for clues.”

“Do you think—,” Becca began.

At that moment I heard a clang from the stairwell. I spun around and saw Alan standing on the top step of the flight coming up from below. He was staring up at Becca and me with a strange expression on his face.

“Alan!” I blurted out, cutting off the rest of Becca’s comment. “I—uh—didn’t hear you coming.”

I hadn’t seen Alan Thomas coming the first time I’d met him either. Had that really happened only a few short weeks ago? I’d been having lunch with Bess and George at one of our favorite cafés near River Heights University. Suddenly Alan had appeared beside our table, drooling over Bess and begging her to go out with him.

It wasn’t the first time that type of thing had happened. But it was the first time Bess had said yes. She said it was because she saw something different in Alan. He was different, all right. He was outgoing and cheerful and kind of excitable—nerdy, as George liked to call it. I guess that worked for Bess, because the two of them had been together ever since.