Free 041 Something to Hide by Carolyn Keene Page A

down the number he gave and called it right away. He’s probably not there anymore, she thought.
    But the chief was there. “Hello, Nancy,” he said in a friendly voice. “Thanks for calling me back. I have just one quick question for you. Did Ned bring me all the samples?”
    “That was everything we had left,” Nancy replied. “We gave a lot away on Saturday.”
    “I guess you did. He brought an inventory of what you started out with.”
    “Any results on the test yet?” Nancy asked.
    There was a moment of silence, and Nancy could only guess that the chief was deciding whether or not to tell her. “Well,” he admitted at last, “we have done some random checking on the samples Ned brought us.”
    Quickly Nancy pulled a blank sheet of paper in front of her and got ready to take notes. “Was there poison in any of them?” she asked.
    “There was. Your theory was right on the mark. Hang on a second . . . Okay, see you tomorrow,” the chief said to someone in the room.
    When he returned to the phone, he continued his explanation. “The interesting thing is that not all the samples were tainted. That’s why I wondered if there might be more of them. About a quarter of the ones the lab tested were bad. The rest were perfectly all right.”
    “Were they all from the same batch?” Nancy asked. She knew that manufacturers put code numbers on their products to identify when and where a batch had been made. That way, if they were alerted to a problem, they’d have a way of tracing the individual packages.
    “Same batch,” Chief McGinnis continued. “The codes looked the same, but we called the manufacturer to be sure. They remembered this group of samples because of its being part of a special project. They also kept part of the batch at the plant,” he added. “When they checked it, it was perfectly all right.”
    “Then maybe it wasn’t a problem at the plant,” Nancy said. “Maybe it was deliberate tampering.”
    With a shock, Nancy realized the significance of what she was saying. If Spotless had been tampered with, one of Ned’s friends could very easily be the culprit.
    “Looks like it,” the chief agreed. “I don’t see any other answer.”
    “Did the lab identify the poison?” Nancy went on.
    “That was the easy part. When the lab heard that all the victims had had rashes, they had a pretty good idea even without the tests. It was arsenic, Nancy.”
    Nancy took a deep breath. Arsenic poisoning was a serious crime. Then she realized thatsomething just didn’t make sense. Why was Marcia so sick when the other poisoning victims had nothing more than a rash and severe stomach cramps?
    “Chief,” she asked slowly, “was there the same amount of arsenic in all the poisoned samples?”
    “Exactly the same,” he said. “Ten milligrams.”
    Now Nancy really was confused. If all the Spotless samples had the same percentage of arsenic, why was Marcia’s reaction so much worse? What piece of the puzzle was Nancy missing?
    • • •
    “One moment, please, and I’ll connect you to personnel.”
    The next morning Nancy was sitting at the desk in her room. She had just read the morning paper. There was a warning printed on the front page not to use any free samples of Spotless. Also the radio and TV had periodic warning announcements. Nancy wondered when the media would find out she was connected with the case. She hoped it wouldn’t be too soon, as she had several leads to investigate that day.
    Nancy tapped her fingers on the desk while she was put on hold. If she was lucky, she’d soon find out if Justin still worked for Asco.
    “I’d like to verify employment,” she said when the personnel clerk answered. “The employee’s name is Justin Dodd.”
    “I’m sorry, miss,” the clerk said after being gone a moment. “I have no record of a Justin Dodd working for Asco.”
    Nancy frowned as she hung up. Even though Justin had just been a summer intern, Asco should have had a file