“He has a good reason.” Ned appeared behind them. Turning a chair to face them, he straddled it. “It’s worse than we thought, Nancy. The police have a tape of a call your dad is supposed to have made to the judge, offering him the money.”
“What?” Nancy stood up, almost knocking her chair over. “Then the tape’s a fake!”
“It must be a good one,” Bess said, “if it fooled the judge.”
“Right. That’s really scary,” Nancy said. “But how could my uncle believe— Ned, do you have a quarter? I’m out of change.”
He dug into a pocket. “Who are you going to call?”
“My uncle Jon. I won’t be satisfied until he tells me he really believes my dad is capable of something like this.”
Nancy walked upstairs to the first-floor hall where she had seen a bank of telephones. As she deposited the quarter, Ann, Bess, and Ned hurried toward her.
Her ring was answered immediately, and she recognized the lilting brogue of the housekeeper. “Hello, Mrs. O’Hara,” she said. “This is Nancy. Nancy Drew.”
There was a sharp indrawn breath. “Ah, Nancy, it’s a dark day, isn’t it? How are you?”
“Fine, Mrs. O’Hara. Is my uncle Jon there?” The only response was a long silence. “Mrs. O’Hara, please,” Nancy begged. “You know how important this is.”
“Aye, that I do, Nancy. But his honor hasn’t been well, poor man, and this business with Mr. Carson has almost put him in his bed.”
“I’m sorry, but he can’t feel any worse than we do. May I speak to him?”
“He’s not home. And he’s not at the courthouse, either,” Mrs. O’Hara added hurriedly.
“What time do you think he’ll be back?” Nancy asked.
“I don’t know, and that’s the truth. Whenever it is, he won’t be taking calls. He’s that sick at heart.”
Nancy was determined not to give up. “When he gets back, would you ask if he’d see me? Please?”
A gusty sigh told her she had gotten past the first hurdle. “I suppose it wouldn’t do any harm to ask. I’ll call you and let you know.”
“I’d appreciate it very much, Mrs. O’Hara. Thank you.”
Nancy hung up, wondering if she could really count on Mrs. O’Hara’s help.
She glanced at the clock behind the sergeant’s desk. The afternoon seemed to be crawling by, and sitting around doing nothing made it feel that much longer. She wanted to get to work on her father’s case immediately.
Nancy turned to the reporter. “Ann, I need to know everything that’s happened so far. How about filling me in?”
“Sure.” Ann sat down on a bench and crossed her long legs. “I got an anonymous tip to check out the Mid-City Insurance Company. I found out that there was no such company. The address was a room about the size of a coffin, with a girl who answered the phone. Connie something.”
“I don’t know anything about insurance companies,” Nancy admitted. “But what’s wrong with using an answering service?”
“Not only did Mid-City not have an office anywhere,” Ann said, “they had no insurance agents.”
“I don’t get it,” Nancy said.
“Someone who said he represented Mid-City Insurance hired Connie’s answering service to take their calls. Once a day the man phoned for messages. If Connie received any mail, she was to send it on to a post office box. She said they got one large envelope once a week. That was it.”
“Didn’t she think that was odd?”
Ann snorted. “What did she care? It was a cushy job, and she was being paid well.”
Bess looked thoughtful. “Maybe I should start an answering service.”
“Why not?” Ann said. “Anybody can. Anyway, by tracing who paid Connie, and then tracing the post office box, I finally stumbled onto the parent corporation. That was where several names popped up. Names I’d seen before—all tied to organized crime and all on the board of directors of Mid-City.”
Bess sat down. “It does sound suspicious, but I have to admit I can’t see what they were doing wrong,” she said.
“I couldn’t, either, at first. But I managed to sneak a look at the message log Connie kept on Mid-City. All the calls to Mid-City were from three local businesses.”