Nancy reached for the phone and called Carlo’s studio again. Charmaine answered this time. Nancy asked if Sherman Pike was there.
“No, he had stuff to do at his office today,” Charmaine said. “Want me to give you that number?”
Nancy scribbled down the number Charmaine gave her, then called Sherman Pike. He agreed to see Nancy and Bess in half an hour.
Bess hurriedly dried her hair and, grabbing a banana muffin for breakfast, headed down to the garage with Nancy. By the light of day, the place looked much less forbidding than it had the night before.
The two girls drove to Sherman Pike’s office, which was downtown in the Loop. When they arrived, he was on the phone. He nodded hello and pointed to two chairs. When he hung up, he said, “Well, girls, the mystery is solved.”
“It is?” Bess said, astonished. “Cindy has been found?”
“Well, no, not exactly,” said Pike. He took a cigarette from the pack on his desk and lit it. “But that was Stella Laporte. Erik Johansen has just confessed that he was the one trying to wreck the shoot.”
Nancy just stared at him.
“Apparently he caused that fire yesterday,” Pike went on. “He sabotaged the set the day before, too. When the fire marshals went to his house and questioned him this morning—on a tip from you, I understand—he broke down and told them everything.”
The cereal company executive blew a cloud of tobacco smoke across the desk. Nancy turned her face and had to cough. Too bad the fire marshals couldn’t take care of Pike’s cigarette!
“I guess Erik was hoping the delays would make Stella look bad,” she said. “And he was obviously willing to take a risk. That set wall nearly fell on him, too! But what about the lights going out last night? Erik wasn’t there then. And most important, what about Cindy?”
“Erik swears he had nothing to do with Cindy’s disappearance,” Pike said. “In fact, it wasn’t until she vanished that he got the idea to cause more delays.”
Nancy looked over at Bess with wide eyes. With Erik’s confession, a big part of the case was solved, but Cindy was still missing. That meant that her disappearance wasn’t connected with the sabotage at the studio.
Sherman Pike continued. “But tell me, girls, what did you want to see me about?”
“This may sound silly,” Nancy said. “But we didn’t get a chance to try any Healthibits last night. Do you have some around?”
Pike looked at her shrewdly, guessing that there was more to her request than met the eye. “Of course,” he said. Swiveling his chair, he opened a cabinet and took out another of the white boxes. “I’ll ask my secretary to find some bowls.”
“Oh, don’t bother,” Nancy said. She poured some of the cereal into her palm, passed the box to Bess, and took a small taste. It wasn’t bad—like granola, but with a hint of orange and carob.
“I like it,” she told Pike.
“So do I,” Bess said. “But I liked the other version better. The one with crushed nuts.”
Pike frowned. “You must be thinking of some other product,” he said. “That’s one of our selling points, in fact. Most health-food cereals do have nuts, but you’d be amazed at how many people dislike nuts. Lots of people are even allergic to them. For them, Healthibits is the answer—it has all the advantages of a healthy cereal, but with no nuts.”
Bess frowned stubbornly. “But I like nuts,” she said. “And I’m positive that there were nuts in the box of Healthibits that Cindy had at her apartment.”
Nancy felt her jaw drop. She flashed to an image of all those allergy medicines in Cindy’s bathroom. What if that other box had had nuts in it—and Cindy was allergic to nuts?
“May I use your phone?” Nancy asked urgently.
Pike pushed it across the desk. “Feel free.”
Nancy quickly called Cindy’s mom. “Mrs. Sunderland,” she asked, “is Cindy by any chance allergic to nuts?”
“Why, yes,” Mrs. Sunderland replied. “She has to be very careful. If she eats anything with nuts in it, her face swells up something awful. It’s not painful, and her doctor insists it’s not usually dangerous, though of course it depends on how much she’s eaten. But it’s scary all the same. And you can’t be a model if your face looks like a balloon, can you?”
“How long do these allergy attacks usually last?” Nancy asked.
“It depends,” Cindy’s mom told her. “Sometimes it’s as long as three days before the effects wear off. Nancy, where is Cindy? Is she all right? I’ve been worried sick. I spoke to Ann Bowers again this morning, but she said she couldn’t tell me anything new.”
“I can’t make any promises,” Nancy said. “But I think I’ll have good news for you by this evening.”
When she hung up, Nancy saw that both Bess and Sherman Pike were staring at her. “This evening?” Pike said. “Are you really that close to finding Cindy?”
“I hope so,” Nancy said.
Pike leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head. “So do I,” he said. “Watching that other girl, Gayle, last night, I realized that I agree with Stella—Cindy is the ideal spokesperson for our product. Get her back for us, please.”
“We’ll do our best,” Nancy promised, getting to her feet. “Thanks for your cooperation.”
In the elevator going back downstairs, Bess said, “So Cindy is violently allergic to nuts. Nancy, I know there were crushed nuts in that box of Healthibits in her room.”
“I believe you,” Nancy replied. “But how did they get there?”
“The box was open,” Bess recalled. “And remember? Ms. Bowers said she found a cereal bowl by the sink when she came home from the theater. Cindy must have tried the cereal that evening.”
“And the next morning, she vanished,” Nancy went on. “If the cereal did have nuts, when she woke up her face would have been swollen completely out of shape. Suppose she decided to run away, rather than risk losing the job with Healthibits?”
“I guess that would make sense,” Bess said. “But what about the rest of it? The kidnapping calls and all the threats?”
“I’m not sure,” Nancy admitted. “There are still a lot of pieces to put together.”
As they stepped out of the elevator, Nancy strode briskly across the lobby. Despite Bess’s questions she felt enormously relieved. If Cindy had simply disappeared because of an allergy, then their biggest worries were over.
