Nancy squeezed the directress’s hand. “Let’s not panic yet,” she said reassuringly. “Maybe they’re in one of the studios.”
Back upstairs, the girls and Madame spread out. First Nancy checked studio A. Lawrence and Darci were working on the pas de deux.
“Now what’s wrong?” Lawrence muttered when Nancy waved him over. “It’s bad enough that Roger, our so-called piano player, didn’t show up.”
But when Lawrence and Darci heard Shana was missing, they immediately volunteered to help. Pulling on their sweats and sneakers, they followed Nancy into the hall. As they rushed down to the next studio, Nancy explained about the photo and why they were looking for Mrs. Wolaski.
Ten minutes later, everyone had gathered in Madame’s office. The entire building had been searched, but there was no sign of Shana or Mrs. Wolaski.
“Did Shana drive today?” Nancy asked.
Madame nodded. “But I picked up Gertrude at her house.”
“Then that’s where we’ll look next.” After Madame gave her Mrs. Wolaski’s address, Nancy quickly put on her coat and headed outside. Lawrence, George, and Bess followed. Darci and Madame stayed behind to call the Edwardses’ house, just to make sure Shana hadn’t been picked up by someone.
But when Nancy checked the parking lot, Shana’s beat-up Ford was in its usual place beside Madame Dugrand’s small foreign car.
“Nancy, take a look at this!” George called from the corner of the building. Nancy, Bess, and Lawrence ran toward her through the snow. George held up a gold bracelet that glistened in the sun.
“It’s Shana’s!” Lawrence exclaimed. “She never takes it off. Not even for rehearsal. She must have dropped it on purpose.”
“Stay here a minute,” Nancy told the others as she hurried around the side of the building. She didn’t want anyone accidentally messing up the footprints.
Nancy slowly walked forward following the same path the thief had taken the day the photo had been stolen. Studying the tracks, she found her own footprints from Sunday, then the pointy-toed prints. Mixed in with the two was a third pair of prints, which moved straight ahead. Besides them, a smaller set of prints seemed to zigzag back and forth.
Nancy bent down to take a closer look. At one point, the third set of footprints turned into slide marks in the snow, as if someone had been dragged.
Nancy’s heart quickened. If Shana had dropped the bracelet, then one of these sets of prints was hers. And if Nancy’s hunch was right, they were the ones that zigzagged. That probably meant that Shana wasn’t traveling under her own free will.
Following the tracks, Nancy reached the road behind the dance school. There, she found new tire marks on the side where someone had pulled over. Then she saw the pointy-toed prints mingling with the other two. Obviously, Gertrude Wolaski had a partner. But who?
Nancy tried to imagine what happened. Mrs. Wolaski had gotten Shana out to the parking lot on some pretense. Then, once outside, she’d somehow forced the dancer behind the building, where Mrs. Wolaski’s accomplice had been waiting. Nancy took a deep breath. In other words, Shana had been kidnapped.
“It’s time to call your friend Chief McGinnis,” Lawrence said, after Nancy had returned to the others and told them what she’d found.
“I know just what he’ll say,” Nancy replied. She deepened her voice. “‘Until someone’s been gone for forty-eight hours, or unless we discover a ransom note, there’s nothing we can do.’ ” Nancy sighed. “Actually, we don’t even have definite proof that Shana was kidnapped. It’s just my gut feeling.”
“And your gut feelings are usually right,” George added.
“So what are we going to do?” Bess asked anxiously.
Nancy headed for the school’s front door. “First, we tell Madame. Then we pay a visit to Gertrude Wolaski’s house.”
“But why would Gertrude kidnap Shana?” Madame Dugrand asked when she’d gotten over the initial shock. Darci had gone back to studio A to gather the rest of her things.
“What better way to hurt you, Madame, than to kidnap the star of your show?” Nancy replied.
The directress put her head in her hands. “This is all so terrible,” she said in a shaky voice.
“We’re heading to Gertrude’s house right now,” Nancy told her.
“I’m coming with you,” Madame insisted, slipping on her coat. “We’ll take the van. It will hold all of us easily.”
“Maybe you should stay here, Bess,” Nancy suggested. “We’ll check back as soon as we find out something. If you don’t hear from us in an hour, call Chief McGinnis and tell him everything.”
Bess’s face fell. “But what if Mrs. Wolaski comes back here, and I’m all alone?”
“I doubt she’ll show her face here ever again,” Nancy reassured her friend. “Get Darci to stay with you. She’ll want to keep her parents posted, too.”
“Okay.” Bess tried to grin bravely.
A few minutes later, as Madame drove down Galworthy Road, the sky began to darken. Nancy pointed to a gray clapboard house with a front porch. “There it is. Pull up on the other side, Madame.”
“Unless they’re sitting in there in the dark, no one’s home,” George commented as Madame parked across the street. “What do we do now?”
Nancy pulled her collar up over her neck. “I guess we knock first, and if no one answers—”
“We bust the door down,” Lawrence growled as he threw open the van door. “Whoever kidnapped Shana is going to pay.”
“Well, that’s not exactly what I had in mind,” Nancy said as she followed him out of the van. Her heart was pounding as the four of them approached the house. The street lights hadn’t clicked on yet, so everything seemed dark and shadowy. Quietly, Nancy walked up the porch steps, tightly gripping her flashlight. To make sure they weren’t caught in the act, they wouldn’t turn the lights on once they were inside.
When she reached the front door, Lawrence stepped next to her. He held a tire iron in his hand. “I brought it just in case,” he said in a low voice.
Nancy nodded. “We may need it,” she told him. “Gertrude’s accomplice, whoever he is, is probably here, too.” Then she leaned forward and rang the bell. There was no answer.
George walked over to one of the windows and peeked in. “The curtains are drawn tight. I can’t see a thing.”
“We’re going in,” Nancy said grimly. She tried the knob, then opened her shoulder bag and took out her lock-picking kit. A few moments later, the door swung open.
