Carolyn Keene - Trial By Fire

They all went back to the judge’s house with the housekeeper. “It was lovely, wasn’t it?” Mrs. O’Hara kept asking Nancy, her father, and Ned. Bess had gone into the living room.

“It went very well,” Nancy said, helping her remove her coat and hanging it in the closet off the kitchen. The house was filling up with people who had come to pay their respects. “I guess the guests are starting to arrive. Hannah and Bess will help you keep things running smoothly.”

Mrs. O’Hara dabbed at her eyes. “It’s so sad. But he hadn’t been the same since before Miss Martha died. You could tell that, couldn’t you, Mr. Drew?”

“Well, I hadn’t seen him that often, Katherine. Once he dropped out of our weekly card games, I-”

The housekeeper’s eyes widened, and she stared at Nancy’s father. “He dropped out? When?”

“It’s been almost a year. We assumed he’d just lost the heart for it.”

Mrs. O’Hara looked away, a bewildered expression on her face. “Then where was he going?”

“Pardon?”

“Mr. Drew, the judge left here every Wednesday night, the way he’s always done since I came to work here.”

“He wasn’t with us. Perhaps he found a new group. They never played here?”

“No, sir, always somewhere else. Sometimes he drove, sometimes someone came to pick him up. Last summer, it was, he was going two and three times a week.”

“Perhaps he was going somewhere else,” Nancy suggested. “I mean, to the theater or something.”

“No, lass. He had a routine. Whenever he was going to play cards, he’d sit at his desk and practice shuffling and dealing. That’s how I could tell.”

Carson Drew smiled sadly, “He always joked that if he hadn’t gone into law, he’d have been a dealer in Las Vegas.”

“Aye. He and Miss Martha, they were a pair. All the time she was sick, he’d go to Pinebrook to see her with a deck of cards in his pocket. They’d enjoy a game together there in her hospital room until she couldn’t play any longer. I-I had no idea he wasn’t playing with you anymore, Mr. Carson.”

Nancy’s eyes locked with those of Ned, who had been listening quietly. “Pinebrook?” she asked.

“Yes. He wanted the best for her. A lovely place.”

Mrs. O’Hara launched into a lengthy description of the hospital. Nancy, knowing that her father was enough of a captive audience, excused herself and Ned, and they slipped into the library. Closing the door, they crossed to the judge’s desk.

The fingerprinting dust was gone, and the window had been repaired. But Jonathan Renk’s presence remained.

“What are you going to do?” Ned asked.

Nancy picked up the phone. “Call Ann. We may have found another link.” She dialed Ann’s number at the newspaper.

“Where are you?” the reporter asked.

“At my uncle Jon’s. Got a task for you. Can you find out the dates that Mrs. Harvey was a patient at Pinebrook?”

“I don’t see why not. What’s up?”

“My uncle Jon’s wife was a patient there over a year ago. Mrs. Harvey was there for two months. I’m just wondering if they were there at the same time.”

“Now, that would be interesting, wouldn’t it? Give me your number. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

Nancy looked around the library as she replaced the phone. She had planned to ask Mrs. O’Hara if she could check the judge’s files the next day, but since she wasn’t here-

She opened the desk drawers.

“What are you looking for?” Ned asked.

“I don’t know,” Nancy admitted. “Anything that’ll help explain why my uncle would agree to help frame my dad.”

“In other words, what had the judge done that could be used against him as blackmail.”

Nancy looked over at the wall of photographs, all with the judge’s smiling face, and sighed. “I guess so.”

Ned cupped her chin in his hand. “He was very special to you, wasn’t he? I’m sorry. I thought he was just your father’s friend.” He held her for a minute, smoothing her hair. “You must hate having to poke through his things.”

Nancy nodded and wrapped her arms around his waist. “I do. But I have to. Four days, Ned! I’m so worried that I won’t have worked this out by then and my father will be bound over for trial. The sooner this is cleared up, the faster people will forget, and then he can resume his practice.”

After he brushed his lips across hers, Ned gently pushed her away. “Then you’d better get to work, huh?”

She smiled. “I’d better get to work.” She went back to the desk.

The only items of interest were the judge’s checkbook and a box of canceled checks. Nothing unusual there-payments to the phone, gas, and power companies.

The lower drawer was filled with file folders. Nancy sat on the floor and flipped through the labels. Under “Deeds” she found the one for the house and the Renks’ vacation home at a nearby lake. There were also several papers clipped to each deed. They were from a bank.

“Ned, look at these.”

He left the drawer of the file cabinet he was going through. After a moment he said, “Judge Renk borrowed money from two different banks and used this house and his cottage as collateral.”

“Perhaps to pay my aunt Martha’s medical bills,” Nancy said.

“I’m not so sure,” he said slowly. “I saw several file folders in the cabinet with names of banks on the labels. They’re loan agreements, too. I’ll pull them. See if there are any more in his desk.”

There weren’t. Ned had found the only items of interest. They sat on the floor again and spread the folders out around them.

“This is incredible,” Ned said. “In this past year, Judge Renk borrowed over a hundred thousand dollars!”

“And paid it all back with interest-when? One bank a month for the past six months.”

“Where’d he get the money?” Ned asked. He raised an eyebrow. “He couldn’t have been that good at cards, could he?”

“You’ll have to ask my dad. Look, before we jump to conclusions, let’s check the dates on any canceled checks made out to Pinebrook. See if they match up with the dates he got the loans.”

They searched through several boxes of canceled checks. Jonathan Renk had paid the balance due on his wife’s hospital bill two months after her death. Thirty-nine thousand dollars.

“So why the loans for the hundred thousand?” Nancy muttered to herself. She bundled the folders together and put them aside to show her father.

Ned had begun looking at the photographs on the wall. “He sure had some high-powered friends,” Ned commented. There were pictures of the judge with presidents, senators, a governor, and nationally known mayors of large cities.

Nancy had joined Ned to look at the photographs. “That’s my aunt Martha. It must have been taken at Pinebrook.”

Martha Renk, wearing a robe and looking thinner than Nancy remembered, sat at a table with her husband and two nurses. Each had cards in their hands and smiles on their faces. But the face that caught Nancy’s attention was in the background. She gasped.

“What is it?”

“Ned! That looks like the man who tried to kidnap me!”

“Which one?”

There were six people standing behind the four at the card table. Nancy pointed to the man on the end. She had only seen his features for a few seconds, but thought she remembered his thin face, light eyes, and narrow lips.

Someone knocked on the door. Ned opened it, and Bess peered in. “Oh, there you are. Ned, we need some help with a fifty-pound bag of ice.”

“Sure. I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he told Nancy.

Nancy turned back to the photograph. She had to be sure it was the same man.

Taking it to the desk, she removed it from its frame. Without the glare of the glass, the face was clearer. It definitely was he. The judge had written the names of the people in the photo on the back. Philip Reston. That’s what the dispatcher had called him! Res, not Wes! She had seen the name before, too. Where?