Stop the Clock (Nancy Drew (All New) Girl Detective Book 12) by Carolyn Keene Page B

Ned. Where are you?” I asked when he picked up.
    “I’m parked in front of your house, ready to walk up to the door and ring the bell,” Ned said. “Where are you?”
    “I’m on my way back from lunch with the Romer sisters,” I told him. “Stay where you are; I’m a second away. We have another stop to make.”
    “Okay,” Ned said.
    The next minute, I pulled up alongside Ned’s car. He hopped out and got into mine.
    “Where are we going?” Ned asked.
    “To the Smalleys’ house,” I told him. I quickly filled him in on what Janice and Lizzie had told me.“The Smalleys really are behind all this, Ned, I just know they are.”
    “Well, it’s certainly all starting to fit together that way, Nancy,” Ned agreed.
    I listened as he reviewed all the things that had happened since the day the clock was stolen from the library, including all the things that had happened to me as chair of the decoration committee for the library anniversary celebration.
    “Yes—now it’s easy to see the Smalleys’ hands in everything,” I said. “Someone really angry with me is doing all these things—and I know they qualify.”
    Ned nodded.
    Just then we turned onto the Smalleys’ street and started past the front of their house. As we neared the sidewalk in front of their porch, I couldn’t believe what I saw.
    “What in the world is Ellis Lamsley doing here?” I gasped.
    Ned didn’t say anything. I think he was as confused as I was. “Maybe they have some library books that are overdue?” he said.
    “Yeah, right,” I said, smirking at his joke.
    Ned was just being facetious. First, I’d never seen either of the Smalley girls reading for pleasure; they were usually shopping and socializing. Second, the library didn’t send their staff out to collect overduefines. Ellis could only be there on a personal matter. This whole mystery was getting more and more bizarre.
    That’s when I remembered the name. Ellis’s last name. Lamsley.
    Just as I turned a corner, my cell phone rang. Ned answered it for me; it was Bess. She wanted us to meet her and George at George’s house.
    “You timed your call just right,” I said. “I have something really weird to tell you.”
    We were about five blocks from George’s house, so it didn’t take us long to get there.
    Ned and I hurried to the front door and rang the bell.
    I could tell by the look on George’s face when she opened the door that something had happened—and it wasn’t good.
    “Break it to me gently, George,” I said, as Ned and I went inside.
    Bess was sitting in a chair with a frozen expression on her face. Suddenly I was scared. “Is it Dad or Hannah?” I managed to ask. “Has something happened to them?”
    “Oh, no, nothing like that, Nancy,” Bess said. She stood up. “It’s still bad, though—and we wanted to be with you when you heard.”
    “Okay,” I said, steeling myself. “I’m ready.”
    “All the posters that we made for the library celebration were ruined by leaking water,” George said.
    I just looked at her—half relieved, half angry. “What happened? Did the library flood or something?” I asked. I could just see some major water catastrophe devastating the library.
    “No, the leak was just down in the basement, where you’d said in your note that we should store the posters,” Bess said. “A water pipe leaked on them.”
    “I didn’t tell anyone to store any posters in the basement,” I said. “Someone else wrote that note.” Everyone was just staring at me. I took a deep breath. “Well, I also have a surprise for you two,” I told Bess and George. “Ned and I just saw Ellis Lamsley going into the Smalleys’ house.”
    Bess gasped.
    “You’re kidding me!” George said. “Why would he be doing that?”
    “That’s what we’re going to find out,” I said. “I want the four of us to go to the library and see if we can find Ellis,” I said. I looked each one of them straight in the eye. “After that,