I Hate Nancy Drew

            I’m sitting with my feet up on the desk and my hat tipped diagonally over my eyes. Yes, it’s stereotypical. But when you’re a fifty-five year-old woman trying to make it as a detective, you have to overcompensate a little.

            Unfortunately, this hasn’t gotten me anywhere. My office is empty, like a black hole, and drafty to boot. I don’t even have a secretary because, a) I definitely couldn’t afford one, and b) I’m not quite sure anyone would be insane enough to take a risk on such an inexperienced detective. That goes for clients too. In the six months that I’ve been open I’ve had a total of three calls. Two were from my mother. One was from my cousin Nancy.

            Nancy is not just your average cousin. She’s famous, cult-worshipped. She beats me at everything, and even if she didn’t, she’d beat me at being gracious. She was born to the richer brother, she’s led the more successful life. She’s Nancy Drew. 

            Which makes me Gertrude Drew. She’s six months older than I am, and she’s… well, you know… she’s been a successful detective since she was sixteen. While I sat inside my rainy Oregon home and wished I could be doing something exciting, my father read me the letters that Nancy’s father faithfully sent detailing each miraculous clue Nancy managed to dig up for each unbelievable mystery that fell into her lap.

            If you ask me, she should be dead already.

            But no. Instead, she established herself as an affluent private eye on the East Coast. Her business thrived. I tried to open my own office as a detective, but I just didn’t have the luck she did. I never have good luck. Eventually I got tired of staring at the blank wall day after day, and I got tired of the rainy weather in Portland that made my hair frizz. So I moved south. To southern California. Delightfully smoggy Los Angeles to be precise. And I opened a plant nursery.

            That was how I spent the majority of my life—puttering around in a garden. Compared to the excitement of sleuthing, it seems completely lackluster, but I actually like to garden (it’s kind of like solving a mystery, only it’s the mystery of how in the world can I make this plant grow). Still, after thirty-some years of that, I thought maybe it was time for me to break back into the family business. This brings me to the present.

            The phone rings.

            “Hello.” I often try to speak in monotone to make up for the high pitch of my voice. Nancy doesn’t have to do this.

            “Is this the office of Detective Gertrude Drew?”

            “Yes. What can I do you for?” The woman on the other end of the line sounds older than I, which means she probably wants me to help find her cat. When I was younger, these “cases” were by far the most plentiful.

            “I’m calling on behalf of my son; he asked me to assist him in finding a reliable detective. He is Roger Olsworth,” she pauses here, apparently assuming I will recognize the name. I do not, but I won’t say anything because it’s always better to reveal as little about yourself as possible. She finally decides she should ignore my unresponsiveness. “He was recently, and far too publicly, if you ask me, accused of murdering Miss Lora Levin. He is unquestionably innocent, but those… men… at the police department have decided he is the primary suspect. We want you to save him from jail.” This sounds promising. But then again, any case that’s not about lost cats would sound promising to me.

            “I charge $75 per hour. How soon can you have your son come in to talk to me?” I ask, losing my grip on my monotone voice. I shouldn’t have phrased it as a question. Damn.

            “He’s walking out the door now,” she says, and abruptly hangs up.

            Twenty minutes later a man knocks on my frosted glass door, then opens it and bends down to fit through.

            “Hi, I’m—“

            “Roger Olsworth. Sit.” Thank goodness I have a good grip on my monotone, because this man is, first off, frighteningly large enough to snap me in two, and secondly, undeniably handsome. Either of these things would have been enough to surprise me out of my PI persona if I hadn’t spent the last twenty minutes practicing how this would go.

            The first thing anyone could possibly notice about him is that he is a giant. Not like Abraham Lincoln, but like a giant athlete. He looks like a football player or steroid-user, but you can’t exactly ask someone “Hey, so you’re gynormous and attractive, how come?” I try a more subtle approach.

            “Tell me about yourself.” My feet are back up on my desk and I’m trying to look as nonchalantly in control as possible.

            He takes a seat in the chair across from me, and smiles sheepishly. “Well, I guess you already know my name.” I raise one eyebrow at him. “I, um, grew up in San Diego, and… I went to UCLA and played basketball. Now I play for the Clippers.” He raises his eyebrow and grins self-assuredly. “I love mint-chocolate chip ice-cream and thunder storms and long walks on the—”

            “Tell me about Lora,” I interrupt him. So he’s confident. Maybe that sheepish smile was actually a smirk.

            “She was, you know, my ‘on the side’ girl,” he leans in conspiratorially. “I mean, who doesn’t have someone, you know? And Ella—my wife—I always thought Ella knew. But then, well. I don’t know how much my mother explained. So Lora got pregnant, she told me two or three weeks ago.”

            “And when was she killed?” I ask.

            “Hmm…. Lets see,” he says as he begins to count on his fingers. “They… found… her on last Thursday, and the coroner said she’d been killed at least forty-eight hours earlier. So that makes it… I guess Tuesday.”

            “Did anyone else know about her being pregnant?” I’ve finally taken my feet off the desk and tipped my hat back out of my eyes so I can take notes. I’m improvising here—I kind of have the feeling ace detectives are supposed to be able to keep each scrap of information in their mind, and not rely on lowly things like ballpoint pens.

            “Well,” and this for sure is a sheepish smile, “I told Ella. I was trying to do the right thing, you know. And I told my mother, and my best friend Judah, because I needed advice. I worried about it for a while, actually. In fact,” he seemed to be literally turning into a sheep, “I’m kind of relieved, you know. I hadn’t decided what I was going to do.” My furious scribbling is interrupted by the oddly cheerful jingle of a cell phone. Rodge, as I’ve decided to call him, takes it out of his pocket and all I can catch is the high voice of a woman on the other end. It seems suspiciously urgent.

            Rodge stands as he hangs up the phone. “Something’s come up at my house, I’ve gotta go.” He starts to leave but at the door he turns back. “Thanks for helping me out. I would’ve never known where to start, but my mother went straight to the internet and called you. You should stop by my house any time you need anything, and I’ll do my best to help you.”

            After he leaves I sit and ponder for a while. I wish that I had a nice old fashioned pipe to smoke, but I fear that might be pushing the whole overcompensation thing a bit too far. It was highly suspect that his wife called in the middle of our meeting with an “emergency” that called Rodge away before he could reveal any more. She is definitely a possibility. From my observations, finding out that one’s husband is having an affair can throw anyone into a blind rage. And I seriously doubt this woman “always knew.” People like Rodge never marry the brightest bulb in the bundle… er… the sharpest tool in the shed.

            But Rodge himself is definitely not out of the picture either. No matter that I’d really like to believe he’s not implicated, that admission of relief leads to some questions. And though most would dismiss him, thinking no real murderer would let that slip, he seemed to bumble along through the visit so much that I wouldn’t put it past him to forget he shouldn’t have said that.

            Plus this Judah character. He deserves some investigation as well.

***

            I sneak into Rodge’s backyard that night. It’s a mess; I stumble my way over rocks and once what I swear is a high heel’s heel scratches deep into my ankle. “Damnit Gertrude,” I say to myself, kicking the rocky dirt away. “Rodge didn’t hire you to accidentally kill yourself while on the case.”

            I finally get to the hole where they found the body. The police have finished up here, which is why I’ve been able to do this, and it seems indecent that the hole has been left gaping open for all the world to see. I toss a scrap of a glossy magazine and a pair of eyeglasses to the side—the killer would not have been able to bury her and cover his tracks if he had accidentally buried his glasses alongside her. I guess when you have such a high profile case, there are dozens of media-type people who might leave debris at the scene of the crime.

            The hole is deep. It goes up to just above my waist. I’m intrigued—to bury poor Lora’s body this deep in the first place would have taken many hours of sweat and muscle. Probably a muted sense of smell, too. I’m trying only to breathe out of my mouth. I look around a little longer but find nothing, and attempt to clamber out of the hole. I creak a little more than I would like. Loud enough to wake up the whole neighborhood, actually. How could I think I could still do this? I should be sitting by a fire somewhere knitting hats for my grandchildren. If I had any, that is. I’m lucky Rodge took a chance on me.

            I walk up to the back door of the house and peer through. Although the back room is dark, light spills out of another by the far corner. I try to get a look inside, hoping to get some clue as to Rodge’s behavior when he’s not in front of me, but my position is not ideal. Sigh. I finally rap on the glass, and the room, a kitchen, goes into high relief as Rodge enters and turns on the lights. He grins at me and strides (in very large strides) over to open the door.

            “When I said stop by my house, I didn’t mean sneak in in the dead of night!” he laughs. To keep my cool exterior I studiously wipe my loafers on the doormat. Ignoring my attempt at professionalism, and apparently somewhat unaware of his own strength, Rodge grabs my elbow and pulls me into the house.

            “Roger, who is it?” a voice I recognize from the phone calls out from the next room.

            “It’s Gert—you don’t mind if I call you Gert,” He says aside to me. As a matter of fact I do mind, but I’m not going to contradict the first people to give me a case.

            “The detective?” asks another voice I haven’t heard. When we turn the corner into the next room I see that the new voice belongs to a man almost as tall as Rodge and resembling a telephone pole. An albino telephone pole. He and Rodge’s mother are seated on the black leather couch, but rise when Rodge and I enter the room.

            “Gert, this is Judah, my best friend. We started playing basketball together when we were like nine, and kept it up all the way through college.” He claps Judah on the shoulder. Judah sticks out his hand and I shake it firmly. The handshake is an important way to establish dominance.

Despite the fact that we’re indoors I wish I was wearing sunglasses so I could spend my time examining him for clues without looking like someone with an albino fetish. Okay, so he’s not really albino. But he has white blond hair, and blue eyes, and I wonder how he came by his name. He bounces a little on the heels of his blindingly white (to match his skin) Nikes. He has a gold class ring on his right hand, and a hemp bracelet on his left hand, giving him the look of someone confused about whether they’re trying to be a surfer or football player. Although he really doesn’t have the right body type for a football player.

            Rodge’s mother gives a slight cough, very delicately, which I take as a reminder that she’s there as well. I’m surprised by the strength of her handshake as Rodge introduces her as Amelia Olsworth, his mother. She’s a lean, very short woman who would be even shorter if she wasn’t wearing heels, and does not look as if she could have given birth to the giant next to her. She seems grandmotherly, and she actually put down a knitting project when she stood up to greet us.

            Rodge indicates that I should take a seat in one of the armchairs, which I do, and everyone else sits as well. After an awkward pause—even I’m not quite sure how a meeting of this sort should go—Rodge and Judah resume a conversation they’d apparently been in the middle of when I knocked at the back door, about some basketball game and some controversial something or other. I can’t really follow it, and it’s certainly not helping me get to the bottom of the case. At the first pause I interrupt.

            “So, Judah,” I begin, “Do you play in the NBA, as well?” He shakes his head. He seems to be one of those I Only Ever Answer Questions With One Word type of person. Or he’s withholding information.

            “He would’ve been, but he fucked up his knee when we were seniors,” Rodge pipes in.

            “So what are you doing now?”

            “He’s living with me. He’s about to get his business degree.” This is a strange situation. Either Rodge knows that Judah is involved and is trying to protect him, or Rodge is just an overbearing jerk. Which would make anyone upset. The question is…. Upset enough to kill the man’s mistress? I’d need time to think this over.

            “Could I have something to wet my throat?” I ask, trying to stall so I can make a decision about Judah. Mrs. Olsworth jumps up and apologizes for their rude behavior, then rushes into the kitchen saying she’ll make some tea.

            “Roger, how long had you been seeing Lora Levin?” I ask. I need more information.

            “Hm. I’d say about sixth months. I think. Anyway, not that long.” Wow, zero help there. Maybe I need to get more direct.

            “And Judah, did you know about Lora?” He nods slowly, not making eye contact with me. In fact, he hasn’t made eye contact with me the whole time I’ve been here. Rodge’s sigh interrupts this train of thought.

            “He knew, I can’t keep anything from him. And the whole time, he was pestering me to stop. Kept reminding me about all of the trouble that could come of it, not to mention Ella. This guy’s basically my conscience,” He does that odd punch, I’ll Almost Push You Over To Show My Affection In A Manly Way, thing with Judah. He pulls away as his mother calls out that she needs his help, and he leaves to go assist her.

            Judah and I sit in silence for a while. He’s a highly suspicious character, for two reasons. A) He appears to depend on Rodge for a lot of things. If something like his affair got out, Rodge could lose sponsors, and possibly even his spot on the team. Which would mean Judah would lose his support. B) He definitely seems like he’s trying to hide something. Highly suspicious character indeed.

            As it becomes clear Rodge will be just a tad longer than a minute, Judah abruptly stands and says in a quiet voice, “I’ll show you around.” He turns without waiting to see if I’ve stood up and moves towards a second door. I scramble to follow, and almost fall over, but eventually catch up. Judah leads me through a darkened foyer and up a large flight of stairs. On the way he quietly points to the other wing of the first floor and says “Dining room, study, pool.” I stay quiet. Some people clam up when they’re asked questions. Maybe Judah is a clam.

            On the upper floor, he leads me down a dark hallway. The fist room he brings me to is his own. I know this because when he shows me, briefly, the inside of the room, I see his name on a certificate, some sort of honors program graduation, on the wall. As we continue down the hall, Judah motions, unnecessarily, for me to be quiet. He then knocks twice gently on a door and puts his ear to the wood. “It’s Judah,” he calls softly. After several minutes a tall brunette opens the door. She’s a mere half-head shorter than Judah, where I’m at least a head and a foot. 

            “Judah, have you seen my glass—Who’s that?” she asks, her eyes suspicious.

            “Gertrude Drew. The detective.”

            “I don’t want to see her.” I think it’s time for me to assert myself, despite the fact that she appears to tower above me. Damn. You know, Humphrey Bogart must have run into this problem, but it didn’t hinder him too much.

            “Look, miss, I just want to get to the bottom of this. If you don’t want to help, that’s fine, don’t. But I’ll find out anyway.”

            “Is that a threat?”
            “Should it be?”

            “I don’t know anything, if that’s what you mean.”

            “We’ll see.”

            She turns to Judah. “Is it too much to ask to be left alone to deal with the fact that my husband was having an affair and his mistress got pregnant and then murdered?” Now that I look, she seems to have been crying recently. Suddenly, Ella looks angry. I’m about to ask what I’ve done when I hear a polite cough from behind me. I turn around to find Mrs. Olsworth standing there with a smile on her face that somehow doesn’t reach her eyes.

            “Ella,” she acknowledges.

            “Amelia,” Ella responds, just as cool. Unlike Mrs. Olsworth, Ella hasn’t masked her distaste. She slips back into her room and closes the door sharply. Mrs. Olsworth sighs and rings her hands.

            “I see you’ve met my daughter in law. Poor Roger, she never appreciated him like she should have. According to her, Roger never made enough money to keep her pampered the way her parents had. And then, if you ask me, she went round the bend a little when Roger told her about Lora Levin.” She pauses here, as though wondering whether that had sounded too harsh. “I mean, of course anyone would be upset,” she ammends, “but Ella threw kitchen dishes at the walls for close to three days. She has no self control.”

            As Mrs. Olsworth spoke, Judah began to walk again, leading me further down the hall. We pass Rodge’s room, but Judah merely points and moves on, giving me no opportunity to investigate. At the end of the hall an open door leads to Mrs. Olsworth’s room. She graciously beckons me in, and I step into a world of plants. I forget my tough detective persona as I look around the room. She has two cacti in one corner, and twenty different little herbs growing on the table. In another corner she has bamboo growing, and she’s tied it to supports to get it to grow in various shapes. Under the window she has about a zillion different flower pots: irises, lilies, a small rosebush, geraniums, begonias, chrysanthemums, and two others that I can’t remember the name of but which almost outshine all the rest.

            “I’m a gardener,” Mrs. Olsworth admits, looking comical with her head at the level of Judah’s elbow. I stand in awe until we hear Roger’s voice calling us downstairs.

***

            The next evening I attend an event I’ve tried my hardest to forget about: the monthly family dinner. This means only one thing: I must deal with Nancy. After I moved to LA,  my mother and father did as well. Nancy’s family came a few years ago, when her husband Ned went into early retirement. Alas, she has still resisted death, and shows up on my parent’s doorstep precisely at 7:30 with Ned in tow. Her father had shown up fifteen minutes earlier, and now our two families subtly face off. In the living room of my parent’s house all six of us arrange ourselves precisely. It’s always this way. Nancy, Ned, and her father one couch, and my mother and I across from them on another; my father sits in an armchair on our side.

            The usual pleasantries done away with, my mother announces—in a way that still embarrasses me even at fifty-five—“Gertie has a case, now.” I feel sixteen again.

            “Oh really? That’s great, Gert,” Nancy exclaims. Did I mention I hate it when people call me Gert? “I’m so glad you decided to try investigating again! I always wished we could work together on a case,” she tells me. Sure. Sure that’s what she wishes. In other words, she’s laughing at my failure. Just great.

            “So what’s the case?” my uncle asks. My parents look to me, wanting to give me the “joy” of explaining it.

            “It’s with that whole Roger Olsworth thing,” I say grudgingly.

            “Oh, the up-and-comer? The one who had that dead woman turn up in his backyard?” interrupts Ned. “It’s a sad thing for his career, if it turns out it was him. He seems like he’s about to make it big.” Ned’s a big sports fan, when he’s not drooling after Nancy on some hunt.

            “I don’t really think it’s him, though he may have had something to do with it,” I pause, not wanting to admit that I’m rather stuck in the case. I’m just not really sure where to go from here. A background check turned up nothing suspicious on any of them, though it did confirm Mrs. Olsworth’s comment about Ella’s rich upbringing. The silence in the living room lasts rather longer than is comfortable.

            “Don’t you ever miss puttering around in the garden?” Nancy’s father asks, supposedly in an effort to break the silence. But I know he’s really laughing at me. Laughing along with Nancy at the fact that I owned a nursery for the majority of my life. Puttering around indeed. I don’t suppose he’s ever coaxed a bud out of a rosebush that’s about to die, or given daily attention to a delicate Bonsai tree.

            Suddenly Nancy giggles. It’s a horribly unappealing noise that makes me want to strangle her. This wouldn’t do, however. “Wouldn’t it be ridiculous fun if some amazing plant clue proved to be the answer to one of your cases!” she exclaims. Notice how she snuck in that “one of your cases,” to emphasize the fact that I only have one.

            There’s another silence. I don’t have the energy tonight to make small talk. Or humor that family when they’re laughing at me. My mom has just stood up to bring everyone into the dining room for dinner when it clicks for me. The case falls into place. Unbelievably, it was Nancy’s comment that brought it all together. I stand unceremoniously and excuse myself, apologizing. Outside, I dash to my car and speed toward Rodge’s.

            I get there just as Rodge and Judah are heading out. Trying to hide the fact that I’m winded, I beckon for them to come inside.

            “Are your mother and Ella here now?” I ask Rodge, discreetly holding the stitch in my side.

            “Yup. Did you get a new clue?” Rodge seems to be very excited by the idea of sleuthing.

            “Better,” I respond, leading them inside and upstairs. We traipse past Ella’s room, and Judah slips in and drags her out. She appears to not be on speaking terms with Rodge still. I end the parade at Mrs. Olsworth’s door. I knock. She opens, and I push my way past her into the room.

            “Oh, Miss Drew,” she says, covering her surprise. “Have you found something to prove Roger is innocent?” She looks pointedly at Ella as she says this.

            “It wasn’t Ella,” I say, throwing her off guard. She glances around, apparently not sure whom to accuse next. I decide I’ll put her out of her misery. “It was you.”

            “Miss Drew, I, I’m, I’m not quite sure what you are insinuating here, but I’ll have you kn—”

“I’m telling it to you straight,” I say in my monotone, speaking over the woman and talking to Rodge.

            “Why don’t we hear your evidence?” Rodge asks, obviously trying to diffuse the situation.

            “First, look in your mother’s closet. I suspect you’ll find a pair of high heels with one of the heels missing.” Rodge goes and confirms this. Mrs. Olsworth splutters. “I had an unpleasant encounter with the missing heal when I was exploring your backyard last night. Second, the ‘emergency’ call you got from home at our first meeting was not from Ella, as I thought at the time, since you two aren’t speaking. It was from your mother. She called you away again last night when we were in your living room. She was trying to prevent you from spilling too much of the true circumstances of the murder, and your relationships to the people in this room.”

            “You have no way of proving this—”

            “Mom, come on. That call was from you,” Roger interrupts his mother’s protest.

            “Thirdly,” I say, drowning out both of their voices, “I found a pair of glasses in the hole. The actual killer would defnitely have noticed dropping their glasses, so they must have been put their on purpose by someone—yes, you Mrs. Olsworth—to make me suspect Ella, who is missing a pair of glasses, if I’m not mistaken.

            “Fourthly, Your mother is the one person who would lose the most, besides yourself of course,” I add to Rodger, “if it became public knowledge that you had had an affair and gotten your mistress pregnant. Plus, she had no clue whether the way you would react would exacerbate the situation. You were on the brink of breaking into the big time, and she felt that Lora Levin’s presence endangered that. Ella wouldn’t have been seriously inconvenienced if you lost your contract or sponsors, since she already came from a wealthy family. Judah would have been okay because he’s brilliant. He graduated with honors from UCLA and is about to get his MBA. He would’ve been fine. Roger, you yourself, would never worry about that, that’s why you got into this mess in the first place. So that leaves Amelia Olsworth.

            “Fifth, It was your mother who recommended me for this job.” It is this part that is the hardest for me to admit. “She researched me and knew that I hadn’t had much experience. She was betting that I wasn’t good—at least not good enough to see behind her attempt at framing Ella. Unfortunately for you,” I say, turning to Mrs. Olsworth, “I am a great detective.

            “The final piece of evidence I have against Mrs. Olsworth is the most damning, and also the reason why she should never have chosen me to be the detective. There are two flowers of the same species in this room that I couldn’t recognize at first. I used to own a plant nursery, and there are few flowers I don’t recognize. This evening at dinner my memory was jogged—I didn’t remember what kind of flower they were because they are very rare and delicate. In fact, they are nearly impossible to grow in pots, and can hardly survive a week or two in one. They only live if you grow them in the open. Those two flowers, a particularly rare form of orchid called Molla, I believe had been planted above the place where you, Mrs. Olsworth, buried Lora Levin. You couldn’t bear to let the flowers die, so you repotted them in your room where you could watch them for their last few days of life. There is no other reason anyone would try to pot Molla.”

            My throat was dry. I hadn’t intended to give so long-winded an explanation. I let the four of them take in this information for a few moments before signaling out of the window to the police that it was okay to enter. In my one moment of thinking ahead, I had given them a heads-up as I sped here from my house. I move out of the way as the police storm in, staying in a corner and watching the activity. I’m pleased I figured everything out, but I’m not sure if I’ve caused more pain than relief among this make-shift family.

***

The next day I’m back in my office with my feet on the desk. Someone knocks on the door. “Come in,” call out. No one enters. Frustrated and suspicious I stand up and stalk over to the door, throwing it open. On the floor in front of my door there’s a red rose—the sturdy kind. Attached is a small card that reads only “Thanks,” and is signed “R.O.” I smile and bring it inside to put in a vase. I think I’ll start bringing in more plants to the office.

The phone rings.

            “Hello?” I’ve given up on the monotone.

            “Gert! It’s Nancy! I just wanted to congratulate you on solving that case.” Strange. There doesn’t seem to be any venom in her voice.

            “Thanks,” I say sincerely. “It was actually you who helped me put it together.”

            “See, I told you we could make a great team!” Okay, so I don’t think she’s laughing at me. “Anyway, I just wanted to tell you how pleased I was. And to wish you good luck on the next case. I’m sure you’ll be busy in no time!” We say goodbye and she hangs up. This has been a surprising conversation. A surprising experience, really. It occurs to me now that she may never have been laughing at me. Perhaps she was sincerely excited for me the whole time. And she never actually did anything to hinder my business, not even the first time I tried detective work.

            Maybe being Nancy Drew’s cousin isn’t so bad after all.