“The administration building?” George suggested.
The four-story brick building was down a small slope from the bell tower. Nancy lifted the binoculars to get a close-up view.
That was when she spotted Joy, in her red jacket, halfway up the side of the building. Her body was bent in a V, with her feet pressed flat against the bricks and her hands holding on to a drainpipe that rose vertically from the ground to the eaves of the building. Sunlight glinted off a plastic snowflake that hung from a window ledge just above her head.
“The next clue is there!” she said. “But so are the Deltas.”
The Omega team got rock-climbing shoes, harnesses, and ropes from the Clues Challenge headquarters at the Sports Complex. By the time they got to the administration building, the Deltas were gone.
“Joy used the drainpipe to hoist herself up,” Nancy said, letting her backpack drop to the snowy ground. “She wasn’t wearing a harness or anything, but …” She stared up at the sheer brick facade of the building, broken only by windows. The snowflake, hanging from a third-story window, seemed impossibly high. Huge icicles hung from the eaves. Some of them almost as tall as she was. “It looks pretty dangerous.”
“I can do it,” Grant said. “I’ve done lots of rock climbing. As long as I have good traction, it’ll be a piece of cake.”
Nancy was glad to see that the gloves Grant pulled on had a rubberized palm. His climbing boots were flexible, with textured rubber soles that stretched around to cover the sides of his feet and toes. Taking a deep breath, Grant stepped onto the wall with one foot. It held firm against the bricks as he hoisted himself up on the drainpipe with his hands, angling his body out in a V.
“Good luck,” George said.
Nancy watched silently, not wanting to do anything to break his concentration. She hardly dared breathe.
“Keep it up,” C.J. murmured as Grant climbed slowly and steadily past the second-story windows. “You can …”
All of a sudden he frowned. “Did you guys see something move up on the roof?”
Nancy shaded her eyes with her hand. “Yes!” She gasped as something flashed above the eaves. It looked like an arm, but the sun made it hard to see clearly.
Crack!
“What—”
Nancy didn’t have time to finish her question. A huge icicle broke free from the eave and plummeted right toward Grant’s head.
8
Look Out!
Moving instinctively Nancy grabbed her backpack and hurled it at the brick wall as high and as far as she could. Her eyes were locked on the deadly point of the icicle that was falling toward Grant’s head.
With a thump the backpack slammed into the icicle, then ricocheted off the bricks and fell to the ground.
“Hey!” Grant flinched as chunks of ice rained down on him. His hands slipped on the drainpipe. For one awful moment his body swerved unsteadily. Nancy feared he would lose his grip altogether, but somehow he managed to get a steady grip with his hands and feet.
“Wh-what happened?” he asked, his face white.
George, Ned, and C.J. stood frozen in shock as Nancy vaulted toward the main entrance of the administration building.
“Someone knocked that icicle off the roof,” she called over her shoulder. “I’m going to find out who!”
“Wait up! I’m coming,” Ned called.
They raced up the central staircase to the fourth floor. Nancy paused breathlessly at the top of the stairs. There was a seating area with plants and windows that overlooked the quad. The place was deserted.
Not surprising, Nancy thought. People wouldn’t be working in the administration building on the weekend. Hallways led left and right, but she didn’t see any way to the roof.
“This way!” Ned said, and led them past half a dozen doorways to a stairwell at the end of the hall.
“Footprints.” Nancy pointed to wet boot prints on the stairs above them.
She pushed through a metal door to the roof and looked around. No one was in sight, but a trail of prints led through the deep snow to a raised parapet along the roof’s edge and then back to the door.
Nancy hustled through the snow to the parapet and peered over the edge. Directly below her, she saw Grant had made his way down the wall to the ground.
At least he was safe.
“Hey, Nancy!” Ned called from behind her. “Look what I found.”
She turned to see him bent over the snow a few feet from the door. Ned straightened up, holding out a slender tool in his gloved hand.
“A file,” Nancy breathed.
“And this,” Ned added, holding up a green glove in his other hand. “Whoever was up here must have dropped them.”
“Which means that whoever knocked the icicle off is the same person who filed the tip off the screw from George’s binding.” Nancy walked back over to him, took the file and glove, and put them in the pocket of her parka. “Come on. Maybe we can still find the person.”
Ned and she made their way back down the stairs to the fourth floor. “Too bad the footprints have dried out,” she said. “We’ll have to guess which way the person went.”
“There are three stairways,” Ned said. “This one, the main stairs we used to get up to the fourth floor, and another stairway at the end of the other hall. I’ll go this way.”
“I’ll take the main stairs. Meet you at the bottom!”
