Confessions of a Teen Sleuth Page 4

  My mother had not died when I was three. There had been no rabid collie. She was out there. Somewhere. I was thirty-four years old, but for a moment I felt as if I were sixteen again. I could feel the dark cloud of the last several months lift, replaced by the marvelous sensation of a puzzle waiting to be solved. It was a sensation I had not felt in many years.

  "I must find her!" I exclaimed, wiping a tear from my cheek. "I must find my lost mother!"

  A deep sigh of relief escaped my father's lips. "If anyone can do it, you can!" he declared. "I have complete faith in you."

  My eyes sparkled with anticipation. My very own mother and a new mystery, all rolled up in one. I had always found that missing mothers made for particularly enjoyable cases. Now who could I get to take care of the baby?

  George Fayne answered the door with a gasp of surprise. "Nancy, what are you doing here?"

  My tomboyish chum was still working as a riveter down at the Paver Heights docks. She lived in an apartment on Cottage Street near the warehouses on the wrong side of the tracks. It was an area of town where many young women with short hair and boys' names lived.

  I excitedly told George about my new mystery.

  "Hypers!" she exclaimed.

  George's roommate appeared in the doorway from the bedroom they shared. Her name was Victoria, but she preferred to be called "V." A short, brawny girl with some Cherokee blood, V also worked as a riveter. I didn't know much about her except that she enjoyed motorcycles, arm wrestling, and herbal tea. I had always thought her a bit queer, though an excellent bridge partner.

  "Hello, Nancy!" V growled amiably.

  I repeated my story to V as she listened in amazement. "So,"

  I finished, "will you watch the baby? Will you watch Ned Junior while I embark on this new adventure?"

  "What about your husband?" inquired V dubiously.

  "He's taking his life insurance exams in Omaha," I explained. George cracked her knuckles thoughtfully and glanced at V. V nodded. "Okay!" cried George. "We'll do it! When do we start?"

  "Right now?" I suggested.

  "But Nancy, you don't have the baby with you."

  I glanced around the apartment. They were right! "Oh." I smiled, chagrined. "I must have left him in the car. In all the excitement."

  I retrieved Ned Junior from the roadster, handed him over to George, and caught the next Federal flight west.

  The Federal DC-3 landed at Los Angeles Municipal Airport, and as I descended the staircase onto the tarmac, I was greeted with a blast of bright desert heat. I made a mental note to quickly change out of my chic fitted wool suit and extremely large hat. I retrieved my smart blue luggage and headed to the bank of phone booths in the adobe-style terminal. Fretfully, I skimmed through the Los Angeles city telephone book looking for my mother's name. I did not hold out much hope of finding it so was not terribly surprised when my search yielded nothing. Undaunted, I searched the listings under R until I came to what I was looking for: the Rudolph Valentino Fan Club and Remembrance Society. I dropped a nickel in the pay slot with a gloved hand and dialed.

  A fat, cheery female voice answered. She did not recognize my missing mother's name but told me that the group would be having its monthly meeting the very next night and that I could address the group with my query. Perhaps someone else would remember a woman fitting my missing mother's description, she suggested brightly. I got an address, thanked the woman, and hung up just as a ruckus broke out in the terminal.

  An elderly gentleman had collapsed!

  Other passengers immediately began crowding about the fallen man, asking silly questions and generally getting in the way as I rushed to his side. Luckily for him, I was able to elbow my way through. He was a dapper little fellow clad in a coffee-colored suit with patch pockets, a blue silk shirt, and a coffee-colored tie. His gray hair was combed back straight from his forehead, and his face was ashen. I knelt beside him and felt for a pulse. It was weak.

  "Someone find a doctor!" I cried to the throng of onlookers.

  "I'm a nurse," exclaimed a voice. "Can I help?"

  The crowd parted and I looked up to see a slender, healthy, and well-built young woman with very dark hair that glistened against the sharp white of her nurse's uniform. I groaned inwardly. Cherry Ames.

  "Hello, Nancy," purred Cherry as she approached me with the famous proud erect posture that made her seem beautifully tall and slim.

  "Cherry," I exclaimed evenly, trying to mask my dismay at the sight of my nemesis. "What are you doing here?"

  Cherry shook her dark curls cunningly. "I'm an army nurse," she retorted. "I've just returned from Washington, where I have been personally attending to a very famous general."

  I'll bet, I thought.

  The man groaned. Cherry regained her nurse's composure and got to work. She ordered a big, sandy-haired woman in the crowd to fetch a glass of water. When the woman returned, Cherry threw the water in the man's face. He sputtered and regained consciousness. The crowd applauded. "That elderly gentleman is alive because of her!" someone in the crowd shouted. "That nurse is a hero!" Others in the group muttered their agreement.

  'I'm a nurse," exclaimed a voice. "Can I help?"

  The man sat up groggily. "What happened?" he asked.

  "You fainted," Cherry told him authoritatively. "I'm a nurse."

  He blinked a couple of times as if to clear his head and then glanced about, embarrassed. "I must have had a few too many highballs on the flight from Washington. Please don't tell anyone about this," he pleaded, getting to his feet. Then, without even saying thank you, he picked up his suitcase and darted off into the crowd.

  "What a strange elderly gentleman!" observed Cherry.

  "Yes," I agreed.

  We exited the airport, and I reached into my purse for cab fare, anxious to part ways with Nurse Ames.

  "You'll never get a cab!" Cherry scolded. "They always pick up the servicemen first. Why don't you let me give you a ride?"

  I stole a look at my black-haired companion. While the notion of spending time with Cherry gave me pause, I thought that carpooling was the least I could do for the war effort, so I agreed.

  Cherry had a canary yellow 1939 Plymouth convertible, which she drove at an alarming speed toward my hotel. She had graduated from nursing school only the year before and was still very much delighted with her accomplishment. "Nursing is the most rewarding of all professions for women," she informed me. "And frequently the most romantic and exciting."

  "It must take a special kind of person," I commented, imagining a life of making beds and emptying bedpans.

  We passed small adobe-style houses and Spanish-style architecture as well as modern sandstone office buildings. Even then the air hung heavy with haze, and the city seemed to shimmer with heat. I had to squint to see the low hills that squatted to the north and east.

  Cherry yammered happily about her most recent doctor crush and spoke animatedly about the Brown Derby and other city hotspots that she frequented with her fast nurse friends. She had been stationed in Los Angeles for five months and found it far preferable to her hometown of Hilton, Illinois.

  I suppose I told her about my missing mother in an effort to get a word in edgewise. I immediately wished that I hadn't as she became convinced that she could be of help.

  She moistened her lips thoughtfully. "I don't have to report to work for another day," she exclaimed. "Why don't you bunk with me and we can go look for your mother together?"

  I hesitated. I had always enjoyed solving a mystery with a chum, but Cherry Ames?! She would sell her own twin brother for a nurse's watch and a pair of white, rubber-soled shoes. Still, I knew that if I were going to find my missing mother I would need the help of someone who knew the city.

  "All right," I agreed.

  Cherry lived in a small stucco house in Inglewood with two other girls who worked as night shift nurses at Los Angeles General Hospital. She had one bedroom, and the other two girls shared the other. The house
had nice furniture and bright yellow curtains on every window. I recall that it smelled vaguely of formaldehyde. Cherry's roommates were asleep, so Cherry and I played gin rummy and smoked Chesterfields until it was late enough to drift off.

  The next morning, Cherry took me on a short tour of the city. We saw the ocean, the oil derricks, the orange groves, muscle beach in Santa Monica, and Gary Cooper's house. I wanted to see Clark Gable's house in Encino, but Cherry refused. We fought bitterly. Then it was afternoon and time for the monthly meeting of the Rudolph Valentino Fan Club and Remembrance Society.

  The Society met in a Spanish-style villa in the Hollywood Hills. The home was the private residence of the club founder and president, Mrs. Eugene Boil. An enormous woman with an equally large voice, Mrs. Boil answered the door herself and ushered us back to the parlor where the group was already gathered. (I had explained my predicament over the phone, and Mrs. Boil had agreed that I might come to the meeting and ask the members if anyone remembered my missing mother.)

  The society had been formed in 1926, shortly after Valentino died of a stomach ulcer at the age of thirty-one. At its height, there had been 231 members. Now, including Mrs. Boil, there were exactly five. They were all generously built women in their late fifties with the gossipy demeanor that the happily widowed often possessed in those days. I explained my presence and passed around the yellowed newspaper clipping of my mother at Valentino's funeral.

  "Did this woman ever come to your meetings?" I asked.

  The women examined the clipping through their spectacles and pursed their lips thoughtfully in unison.

  "Why, she takes evens," one of them declared.

  I could feel my stomach tighten. "What does that mean?" I asked.

  Mrs. Eugene Boil stepped forward authoritatively. "Part of our club charter stipulates that a bouquet of roses be left on Rudy's grave every year on his birthday. We partner with another club, the Rudolph Valentino Society of Admiring Friends. We do odd years. They do evens."

  Cherry groaned audibly. I shot her a quieting glare.

  "So my mother is part of this other club?" I asked Mrs. Boil. "You've seen her?"

  "Well, yes, dear. Now that I see the photo, I recognize her too. She is the founder, president, and only member of the Society of Admiring Friends."

  I swallowed nervously. "Do you have her address?"

  "Of course," Mrs. Boil declared defensively. "We have to coordinate florists, don't we? But she doesn't go by Constance Drew anymore. She uses the name Connie Drawn."

  Mrs. Boil walked over to a bookshelf and pulled down a large leather ledger. She opened it, leafed through the pages, and finally held it out for me to see. There it was, as big as life:

  Connie Drawn. 44 Vine Street, Apt. #3

  "Thank you," I cried gaily.

  We sped directly there in Cherry's convertible. I could barely speak I was so overcome with emotion. This did not stop Cherry from babbling incoherently about a whole host of subjects that had mostly do to with boys. Finally, we arrived. The building had been built in the twenties and surrounded a courtyard with a pool that had long ago been drained.

  I rushed to apartment 3 and knocked.

  A middle-aged gentleman answered the door. He had bristly hair and was casually dressed in brown slacks and a white undershirt. He looked mildly amused.

  "Where's the fire, cupcake?" he asked.

  "Fire?" I shouted. "What?!" I had been well trained in fire extinguishing and rued my lack of bucket. I was preparing to sling the man over my shoulder and carry him to safety when Cherry took me by the shoulders.

  "There's no fire," she explained. "The bum's just trying to be cute." She turned to the gentleman and poked him hard in the chest. "So listen, bub, I'm a nurse, see? This dame's looking for her missing mom. Do you know Connie Drawn, or what?"

  The man dismissively waved a hand. "Connie Drawn hasn't lived here in months," he retorted.

  "But she did live here?" I asked excitedly.

  "Yeah. With a couple of Orientals, Ai and Ko Sato. Then they got hauled away, and I guess she split too, 'cause next thing I knew, all three of them were history."

  "They were arrested?" I asked.

  "Naw," explained Cherry. "They were interned, right?"

  The man nodded.

  "Which camp, do you know?"

  "Manzanar."

  "They got internships at a company called Manzanar?" I asked, confused.

  The man widened his eyes and looked at Cherry. She sighed and shrugged.

  "Thanks, bub," she told him, dragging me by the hand to the car.

  "We've got to find out more about this internship pro­gram," I declared when we got back in the car.

  Cherry's jaw tightened. "There's no internship program," she explained slowly. "The government is housing the Japanese at camps on the West Coast. Manzanar is where a lot of the Japs from L.A. are sent."

  "Why, Cherry Ames, that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard," I chortled. "Why would the government send the Japanese to camp?"

  "They're internment camps," Cherry flashed impatiently, "not summer camps. It's like jail. Prison. The big house. They lock them up. Get it?"

  "But why?"

  Cherry's eyes narrowed. "Why, for their own protection, of course."

  I was still puzzled by this but had the greatest of faith in the reasoning and actions of the United States government. "We have to go there," I declared. "We have to go to Manzanar and talk to that Oriental couple who lived with my missing mother."

  Cherry looked over at me, clearly very pleased with herself. "That's the crazy thing," she retorted slyly. "You know my new assignment, the one I start tomorrow?"

  "Yes."

  "I'm going to be an internment camp nurse. I'm to report at Manzanar first thing in the morning!"

  Manzanar consisted of row upon row of tarpaper-covered wooden barracks of simple frame construction, surrounded by a barbed-wire fence. It was in the desert, northeast of Los Angeles, at the base of the rugged eastern Sierra, where summer winds billowed fine sand continuously over the barren landscape. I had never seen anything quite like it, with the exception of a girls' camp I had been sent to as a child. I had not liked that camp either and had quickly, out of boredom, uncovered a plot to kidnap one of the counselors. The entire camp was immediately closed down so that local law enforcement could investigate.

  Cherry showed her papers and identification to the soldier at the gate.

  "Who's the blond?" he asked, jabbing a finger toward me.

  "I'm not blond," I politely corrected him. "My hair is titian."

  He surveyed me coolly. "Whatever you are, you aren't going inside unless you've got papers saying you've got clearance."

  Cherry bit her bottom lip and fluttered her thick black lashes flirtatiously. "Can't she come in just for a minute? To help me get settled?"

  The solider turned a deep scarlet. "All right," he agreed gruffly. "But just for a minute."

  Cherry's quarters were in a shed near a barbed-wire fence at the back of the camp. The only furniture was a cot with a brocade bedspread, a potbelly stove, and a small dressing table. Cherry was to work three double shifts, during which time she would live at the camp. The rest of the week she planned to live in Los Angeles.

  "Wait here," ordered Cherry. "I'll report in at the main office and see if I can find out which barracks the Satos are in."

  I sat down on the cot and organized my purse. By the time I was done Cherry had returned with two files.

  "Here they are," she exclaimed brightly. "Ai and Ko Sato."

  I opened up the files, which contained basic information about each individual along with a black-and-white photograph. My gaze fell on the photograph of Ai Sato. She wore traditional Japanese garments, and her dark hair was pulled into a bun at the base of her neck. But I still recognized her.

  "That's no Oriental!" I shouted. "That's my missing mother!"

  It did not take me long to piece together what had happened. M
y mother was in love with Ko Sato. When the threat of internment was raised, she began disguising herself as Ai Sato, so that if he was taken to the camps, she could go with him. And now, if I confronted her, I would reveal her secret and she would be made to leave her true love. But I had to see her! I decided that I would just walk through her barracks, in hopes of catching a glimpse of her. Then Dad could follow up with divorce papers by mail. In a place like this it was probably a real treat to get letters.

  A few minutes later, clad in Cherry's gleaming white uniform so as to appear inconspicuous, I glided through the longhouse in which my mother now lived. Most of the barracks were subdivided into family units. In my mother's barracks, four childless couples shared one of these areas. There were no plumbing or cooking facilities, just a large, empty, wooden room with a stove and standard army steel cots around the perimeter. A few dressers, homemade curtains, and a wall calendar did not go very far to make the space homey. It was the middle of the afternoon so the camp's residents were out and about playing kickball in the sand and writing sad letters to Roosevelt. One elderly woman sat on a cot.

  I stole a look at the cots assigned to the Satos and was surprised to see the bedding stripped and the mattresses rolled up. A trunk sat between the two beds.

  "They're gone," the elderly woman muttered.

  "Gone?" I asked.

  "They escaped last night. She said you would be coming.

  She left that for you."

  I fell to my knees in front of the trunk. I had been so close! Now my mother was gone again. Vanished. But this time she had left me something. Slowly, apprehensively, I opened the trunk. Inside, neatly stacked and well thumbed, were the first nineteen Nancy Drew Mystery Stories. My mother did love me! She had kept track of me in her own way. She was proud of my sleuthing. She knew about Ned and Bess and George and Hannah Gruen and all of the other people who had come into my life only to be parodied by Carolyn Keene's poison pen. On top of the books was a note. It read:

  Dear Nancy,

  I have enjoyed reading about your adventures. I am in love with an Oriental. We are heading north. Tell your father to declare me dead. I still think he should have voted for Woodrow Wilson. (Follow your heart.)