Nancy Drew Files #1: Secrets Can Kill

“Let’s keep doing Nancy Drew posts,” she said. “It’ll be fun,” she said.

In intervening two years since I recapped Midnight in Salem (which was already a year after it came out, in 2019), there has not exactly been a deluge of Nancy Drew content. Still, I (very occasionally, lol) get requests to do more Nancy recaps, so I figured the books would be a fun thing to do. (I did originally mean to recap the Dossier games, but they’re actually super boring and have way too many endings to bother with. I won’t say “never” about them, but like…it’s very unlikely at this point.)

In the interest of not committing myself to doing all eighty thousand Nancy Drew books in chronological order, I thought I’d instead just start with the books that were adapted into games. So here we are with Secrets Can Kill. Again. I hope the book is better than the game, although I’m not counting on it.

Secrets Can Kill is the first installment in the Nancy Drew Files series, which was launched in 1986 and ran until 1997. The Files series retooled Nancy to be a little more hip to the late 20th century, by which I mean “a little more like a Sweet Valley book.” Nancy goes to the mall and wears “tight jeans” and teases her hair; she and Ned occasionally break up while Nancy dates some one-off character whom she has no business getting involved with because these dudes are literally suspects in her cases half the time. And also because they wear sweaters wrapped around their shoulders. I don’t hate the concept of Nancy acting more like an actual teenager than she does in the classic books — or in the games, for that matter — but it’s kind of hard to take her seriously when she’s acting like a character illustrated by James Mathewuse well what do you know, Mathewuse illustrated several covers for the Files series, too. Foolish of me to assume they would’ve hired anyone else to capture Nancy’s fluffy bangs.

Anyway, to my point: we begin with Nancy standing in front of her mirror, inspecting her appearance and trying on the new clothes she bought at the mall earlier that day. She’s hanging out with her best (and only?) two friends, Bess and George. The three of them exposit that they’ve been shopping all day, buying Nancy tons of clothes so that she’ll fit in at Paseo Del Mar “Bedford High” when she goes undercover there for her newest case. Nancy needs to overhaul her wardrobe because she has no idea what’s cool with the youths anymore, at the ancient age of [checks notes] 18. Wouldn’t that mean she just graduated high school three months ago?

Whatever. Anyway, Bedford High has been experiencing a rash of petty thefts, so the principal has hired Nancy to investigate. Nancy thinks to herself that a “small-time vandal” isn’t nearly as exciting as some of the criminals she’s put away in the past. Heh. Suck it, Jake Rogers. Unlike in the game, Nancy doesn’t have to travel to Florida, and there is no Aunt Eloise (or Paseo Del Mar Manatees, RIP). Bedford is the next town over from River Heights, and Nancy got the job through nepotism her father, who knows the school principal. Somehow. Carson knows a lot of random people — school principals, fashion designers, judges living in an entirely different state, owners of random cabins out in Pennsylvania…

Bess and George gush over all the hot guys Nancy’s going to meet at the school — like the captain of the football team, “‘Hunk’ Hogan”! Oh no, are you telling me Hector “Hulk” Sanchez used to be a horrendous ’80s wrestling reference? This is painful. Then Bess immediately switches gears and says it doesn’t matter how many high schoolers throw themselves at Nancy, she won’t pay them any attention, because she’s got Ned. Nancy agrees, thinking that she and Ned have “a very special relationship.” Which one of them is Ronald Reagan and which one is Margaret Thatcher, do you think?

Nancy mentions that she and Ned met as kids, which is weird because they first meet in Secret of the Old Clock, the first of many times that Nancy crashes her car. Anyway, Nancy mentions that she and Ned occasionally drift apart and date other people, but they always come back to each other, and no dated references to Hulk Hogan could ever break them up. Bess keeps babbling on about Nancy setting her and George up with guys. “Who knows when we’ll have a chance like this again?” It’s the next town over, Bess. Just drive over and creep on a football game if you want to date a high schooler so bad.

Hannah Gruen, Nancy’s housekeeper-slash-mother figure who was brutally excised from the games after MHM, pokes her head in and says she has mail for Nancy. It’s an envelope containing a video tape(!), and Hannah mentions it was left in the mailbox without an address or stamp. Nancy is intrigued as to where it came from, and they speculate that it’s some kind of free promotional video, which seems endearingly ’80s-90s. I distinctly remember getting a free NSync and Britney Spears VHS with a Happy Meal in the year 2000.

Anyway, George makes it weird and says that “It’s that workout tape Bess was so interested in—the one with all the gorgeous hunks.” Nancy says Bess was more interested in the “hunks” than working out because haha, Bess is the fat friend, remember? Also I didn’t need to see the word “hunk” this many times in the span of one chapter.

Naturally, though, it is not a promotional movie, featuring hunks or otherwise — instead, it’s a video showing the girls at the mall earlier in the day, following specifically Nancy. The video ends with a distorted voice saying, “Stick with shopping, Nancy Drew. It’s a lot safer than snooping at Bedford High!” Ah, incredibly weak trash talk, a hallmark of this series.

Nancy is creeped out by this, but gamely goes to the school the next day anyway, driving her “red Mustang.” Excuse me? Does Nancy not drive a blue roadster? Is everything I know a lie? Whatever. Nancy remembers that the Bedford principal told her that video equipment was among the things stolen recently; she wonders if perhaps there is a link between that and the videotape she received. I don’t think there’s any “perhaps” about it, Nancy.

She drives towards Bedford and hasn’t even gotten to school yet when she meets “one of the most gorgeous boys [she’d] ever seen.” He’s some blonde guy driving a Porsche, and he and Nancy check each other out while they’re waiting for a red light together. Well, I guess Nancy said she wouldn’t cheat on Ned with Hunk Hogan, not that she wasn’t going to cheat on him at all.

Nancy loses Hot Porsche Guy once they get to school, although Nancy remarks that Bedford High isn’t that big, with around 600 students. That’s, uh…that’s still more than my high school had. Within a minute of walking into the school, she overhears a suspicious conversation: some guy is wibbling that he can’t give someone a ride, as he’ll miss practice and get kicked off the team. Some other guy snipes at him to “Miss practice…or else.” Nancy can’t pinpoint the voices, though, because that would make this way too easy.

She goes to meet the principal, one Mr. Parton. On her way there, she observes the interior decor and remarks, No matter how much high schools changed […] the paint jobs never seemed to. Nancy, you were in high school THREE MONTHS AGO. Anyway, Mr. Parton is on the edge of a nervous breakdown with all these thefts, and of course the police refuse to help. “Thank heavens I know your father,” he says. “If he hadn’t suggested that I hire you, I don’t know what I would have done.” Jesus Christ, Mr. Parton, have some self-respect. You could look up private detectives in the yellow pages without Carson Drew holding your hand, my dude.

Mr. Parton tells Nancy that he’s set her up with a contact to help her break the ice with the other kids, and that contact is naturally Hot Porsche Guy, aka Daryl Gray. Nancy immediately, weirdly compares his eyes to the “dusky color of ripe blueberries.” Ghostwriter, those are two completely unrelated things. You can either compare his eyes to dusk or to blueberries, but not both at once. Anyway, Daryl and Nancy immediately salivate all over each other, and Nancy thinks that Mr. Parton must be soooo oblivious not to notice the attraction between them. Nancy, he’s a high school principal. He wouldn’t last a day in his job if he clutched his pearls every time he saw hormonal teenagers eyeballing each other.

Daryl and Nancy start flirting as soon as they leave the principal’s office, and they’re so busy exchanging lame one-liners about how Daryl’s Porsche probably makes FAST GETAWAYS and how Daryl will have to show Nancy WHAT IT CAN DO blah blah the hammer Porsche is my penis blah that Nancy straight-up walks into Hunk Hogan. Daryl introduces him with his real name, “Walt Hogan”, but I’m going to keep calling him Hunk Hogan because it’s funnier. Hunk is all pissy with her and storms off, and Daryl remarks that he’s been a weirdly aggressive dick recently, especially on the football field. Aggressive, you say? The way people taking steroids often are, perhaps?

Daryl walks Nancy to her homeroom, and some girl (“Carla”) glares at Nancy when she sees them together. Carla is blonde, which is how we know she’s popular and evil.

Nancy goes about the rest of her day, thinking the classes are boring and complaining about having homework. Nancy, you know you’re not actually a student here, right? You don’t have to actually do the homework. Anyway, in the cafeteria, she meets one “Connie Watson”, who’s quite shy and sweet. This is weird for me because I’m used to hating Connie for being too uptight to let me break into the teacher’s lounge.

Nancy decides to blow off lunch (and ditch Connie) in favor of snooping around. She sees Carla in the hall and tries to make nice by asking for directions for the video lab. Carla plays nice but actually gives Nancy directions to the boiler room. Not the boiler room! What if the boiler is about to explode and the only way to escape is to solve a puzzle? Nancy is about to bail out of there, but then she overhears the tail end of an argument. Hunk Hogan storms out, followed by another dude who creeps at Nancy to stay out of other people’s business. Nancy recognizes the voice as belonging to the “Miss practice or else” guy in the hallway. He introduces himself as Jake Rogers Webb. I never understood the point of changing a character’s last name like that. Walt/Hunk Hogan –> Hector/Hulk Sanchez makes sense, as the game makes him Latino (and can now call him “Hulk” without worrying about getting sued), but like…what, does “Rogers” indicate a wildly different ethnic or social background than “Webb”? (I was rereading the Heartland series the other day, and was reminded that the TV show changes a character’s surname from “Baldwin” to “Borden”, which, like…what was the point?)

ANYWAY. Jake touches Nancy’s face and is all pervy and creepy with her. Nancy storms out of the boiler room and promptly runs into Daryl Gray. Wow, it sure is crazy that Daryl just happened to be hanging around the boiler room, isn’t it? Jake pops up behind Nancy and snipes that Daryl knows all the pretty girls, just like he knows all sorts of “clever ways to make money.” Nancy asks what he means by that, but then Daryl asks her to a dance this weekend, and she’s too twitterpated to press further or question what he was doing by the boiler room in the first place. Nancy, you’re embarrassing yourself.

Nancy tries to break into the video lab but Connie intercepts her, inviting her to football practice instead. Upon arrival, the book confirms what we knew, which is that Carla is the head cheerleader and a total teen movie stereotype. I wish Carla had been in the game 🙁 I bet it would’ve been a lot funnier if she were there, clowning Nancy and trying to cockblock her and Daryl.

Connie sighs that she wishes she could be on the cheer squad, but she’s too unpopular and overweight and Carla won’t stand for her presence on the team. I love how fictional cheer squads are always ruled by a 16-year-old girl with an iron fist and not like…run by a teacher. Connie tells Nancy that Carla and Daryl used to date, and she’s surprised Carla still wants Daryl back — Carla only cares about money, and the Grays went broke a while ago (although not before buying Daryl a Porsche, apparently). Nancy is intrigued. She’s also intrigued by a bracelet Connie is wearing, but when she asks about it, Connie blusters that it was a present and she doesn’t know anything about jewelry.

The next day, Carla doesn’t spot Nancy while they’re doing flips in gym class, and Nancy has to do some needless acrobatics to avoid breaking her neck. She breathes a sigh of relief that she didn’t land on her head. What? I’m so uncomfortable with this Nancy, who unwholesomely flirts with her suspects and cares about getting a head injury. After that, she goes to class, where she encounters Hal Tanaka Morgan. Her classmates exposit to her that he’s the class brain and got a crazy high score on his SATs. This is the ’80s, so the max score would’ve been 1600 (which is what it’s gone back to now). (Does all late millennial trauma stem from having to duke it out in the 2400-score system?) And yet! When they have a pop quiz, Nancy notices Hal looking at her paper. After class, she eavesdrops and hears Jake telling Hal to write an essay for him, implying that something bad will happen if he doesn’t do it.

Nancy wonders how Jake has three people running around doing his bidding, since he’s not nice or charismatic in the slightest. He…he’s threatening them, Nancy. You’ve heard him doing it. Anyway, she then breaks into his locker to search for clues. He comes down the hallway before she can really dig into it, but she does see Connie’s bracelet inside. When Nancy tells Connie about it, however, Connie sputters that she lost her bracelet at home, so there’s no way Jake could have found it at school, and actually, she didn’t lose her bracelet at all. Then she runs away. Suspicious!

At the end of the day, Nancy decides to have another crack at the video lab. She finds Daryl inside, and he greets her with “his Porsche-driver’s grin”. I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean. Once again, Nancy is twitterpated, and asks him out for “a Coke.” Just a Coke? Are they going on a date to a vending machine?

Daryl instead suggests going to Bedford Lake, where they can sit on some “secluded benches.” Ew. Nancy drives them over in her not-blue not-roadster, but then they go down a hill and she finds out the brakes have been cut. Horrors! Nancy veers the car off the side of the road to avoid hitting anyone, but then she smells gas (of course she does) and realizes the car is going to explode (of course it is), and OH NO Daryl’s door is pinned against a rock and he can’t get out (just crawl over to the driver’s side?) but then he does and then the car explodes as they run away from it.

Is this where the diner explosion in the game comes from? If so, I love the idea of the writers taking this incredibly drawn-out, overdramatic car crash, and turning into a scene where you smell gas for 5 seconds and then stick a ladle under a pipe.

Clearly, Nancy’s car blowing up before she could sit on a “secluded bench” with Daryl Gray was a sign from the universe, but Nancy’s all, “That sign won’t stop me because I can’t read!” She and Daryl kiss…I think? At first Nancy is merely thinking about how “fabulous” his arms feel around her, but then in the next paragraph, she pulls back “[b]efore Daryl’s lips reached hers again.” (I know, I know. Bad writing? In a Nancy Drew book? You’re shocked.) Anyway, Nancy’s starting to feel guilty about Ned, but then she lets Daryl kiss her again when he takes her home, so I guess she doesn’t feel that bad.

Nancy is convinced that Jake cut the brakes on her car, so she storms over to Bedford High the next day ready to confront him. But you’ll be shocked to find out that Jake is dead! (“As a doornail!” one student chirps. Good to see the kids at Bedford are just as fucked up as the Paseo Del Mar kids.)

All the kids are buzzing about the murder, and Nancy overhears that he was pushed down the stairs near the video lab, but he was also brutally beat up. Apparently it only happened a couple of hours ago, but no one knows why Jake was at school so early in the morning. Nancy goes to the scene of the crime and thinks: “She knew that if she talked to the police then and there, they’d listen to her. They’d probably even ask her to join their investigation.” That is HILARIOUS (and sadly, probably true).

Anyway, since the cops are too busy, idk, staring at the chalk outline of Jake’s body, Nancy decides that this is a good time to break into his locker again. Daryl catches up with her and says that Mr. Parton has told her to stay on the case, but Daryl thinks she should back off for her own safety. Nancy is a little weirded out by this, especially as earlier in the morning, she also remembered that he kept trying to dissuade her from confronting Jake. Once again, though, she’s too dickmatized to question him much.

In Jake’s locker, Nancy finds a video camera battery, which Nancy would have bet her fifty-dollar designer jeans that Jake used to film her and her friends at the mall. Seriously, who is this girl, Jessica Wakefield? As we learned in Danger by Design, Nancy wouldn’t know a designer brand if her life literally depended on it. Anyway, she also finds Connie’s bracelet — again — along with an article about Hunk Hogan getting injured, and a copy of the SATs with the answers already filled out.

Nancy is busted at the locker by one Brenda Carlton, local reporter and Nancy cosplayer. Nancy internally snipes that Brenda has “delusions of being an investigative reporter for Today’s Times, her daddy’s award-winning newspaper.” I mean, Nancy’s literally on this case because her dad knows Mr. Parton, so…glass houses. Brenda immediately cottons on that Nancy’s undercover, and she threatens to expose her unless Nancy tells her what’s going on. Nancy promises to give Brenda the full story after she’s solved the case, and thinks to herself that someday, she was going to close that reporter’s notebook for good. Probably not in any of the books I’m going to recap, though.

Nancy goes back to the video lab and finds that it’s been trashed — by the murderer, perhaps, searching for evidence? This doesn’t stop Nancy from taking her sweet time looking around, though. She finds a row of tapes that are still untouched — mostly just “rock videos”, like the famously heavy song, “Material Girl.” Seriously. Anyway, there’s another tape on the shelf called “I Spy”, which Nancy decides to watch even though she thinks it’s just a music tape and she’s worried the murderer is still hanging around. Fortunately, though, the tape turns out to be plot-relevant: it’s a silent clip, showing Hunk Hogan taping up his ribs in the locker room, in great pain the entire time. Nancy muses that Hunk’s injury must have been worse than he let on in the article, but only Jake knew about it.

Nancy finally has a moment of sense and thinks she shouldn’t be watching the tape alone in the lab. As she goes to remove the tape, though, she hears a noise coming from the supply closet and realizes that ~someone~ is in the lab with her. She bails out of there and there’s a moment of suspense when the door won’t open but then it does and she goes home. Nancy, Bess, and George all watch the tape and also see Connie shoplifting her bracelet and Hal stealing the SAT answers from the school office. Why does the school have a copy of the SAT answer book? The test is handled by a totally separate organization (College Board). I can believe the school has copies of the test itself (since they’d need to hand it out to students), but they’re not involved with scoring it in any way.

Do I care too much about this? I care too much about this. Let’s move on. Nancy and her friends discuss what they just saw (“Poor Hunk”, Bess says) and figure that Jake was killed by one of his blackmail victims. Nancy also solves the mystery of the anonymous video tape, saying that Jake must’ve overheard Mr. Parton talking to Carson Drew during one of his spy sessions, and that’s how he found out Nancy would be attending the school undercover.

Nancy goes to school the next day and flirts some more with Daryl. She tells him that her dad has bought her another car (of course he did). It’s a Mustang convertible, so presumably the next time Nancy is trapped in her car and it’s about to blow up, she can just jump out. Daryl smarms that Nancy must want to “show him what it can do” some more. Why do they keep saying that about their cars???

Anyway, Nancy tells Daryl about Jake’s blackmail tape and Daryl is apparently too shocked to say anything. OR IS HE? Nancy tells him that she’s not going to go to the police just yet, which calms Daryl down. Then he gives her “one of his sexiest looks” and tells her to be careful. Gross. I’m getting the urge to play the game again just so I can viciously reject game!Daryl every time he tries to flirt with me.

Nancy then gets to my favorite part of the game, which is rolling around and confronting all the suspects about what they’ve been up to. It’s kind of boring, though, because Hal and Hunk don’t confess: Hal just panics and runs away, while Hunk threatens to break Nancy’s face if she keeps asking questions. Nancy does manage to get a confession out of Connie, who admits that she has a shoplifting problem and Jake caught her. She says that Jake started blackmailing her to do “everything” he asked, but doesn’t elaborate on what that is. (You’ll recall in the game, Jake was forcing Connie to date him).

Connie definitely undergoes the biggest change from book to game, from an overweight, insecure shoplifter to a standoffish, secret-judo-competing soda-machine defending hall monitor. Game!Connie does strike me as pretty much an encapsulation of mainstream feminism in the ’90s (girls can do anything that boys can! women excel at sports, too! sassy short haircuts are in!), so maybe that’s where the change came from, I don’t know. Also, admittedly, without a secret judo background, it becomes about a thousand times more implausible that book!Connie managed to beat Jake up.

ANYWAY. Nancy takes Daryl back to her house to watch the tape. For some reason, they turn the lights off to watch a, like, 10-minute clip show of their classmates. The darkened room gets them all twitterpated and they end up making out. Mercifully, they’re interrupted by Bess and George at the door. Bess and George immediately figure out what Nancy and Daryl were up to, but instead of being like, “You have a boyfriend, wtf is wrong with you” they cackle that Daryl is super hot and they can’t blame Nancy for not being able to keep it in her pants. Damn, Ned needs better friends 🙁

Speaking of whom, Ned conveniently calls at that moment and tells Nancy that he’s coming into town this weekend. Nancy recalls that she’s going to the dance with Daryl this weekend, but she elects not to tell Ned about it because of course she doesn’t.

When she hangs up the phone, she goes back to her friends, and is shocked to see that after what they thought was the end of the tape, there’s another scene. Ooh, a post-credits scene! How modern of them. Just kidding, it turns out to be another clip show, this time of Daryl. Shock! Daryl was being blackmailed by Jake, too! This means he has a motive! Nancy clutches her pearls that she was macking it with a potential killer. Yeah, it’s almost like there were a ton of red flags but she ignored them all because he has a Porsche. (I mean, I guess it worked for Bruce Patman. If Daryl doesn’t have a 1Daryl1 license plate, though, I don’t know what Nancy saw in him.)

The video doesn’t show much, just Daryl driving out to a diner called the Red Caboose, meeting some sketchy dude with a mustache to receive an envelope from him, and taking the envelope back to a driveway with a fancy wrought-iron fence. Nancy wibbles that the tape didn’t really show Daryl doing anything WRONG, so maybe he’s just involved in some garden-variety sketchiness — like gambling! Gambling wasn’t so terrible, she told herself hopefully.

Nancy decides to drive out there to investigate herself, taking Bess and George with her. Bess wants to get lunch at the Red Caboose because haha Bess fat, get it? (x2) They have to drive out way past town, and upon arrival, they find out that the place Daryl was hanging around is an Air Force defense plant. (The owner of the Red Caboose, which is just outside the plant, remarks that it scares him to live out here: “If the United States is ever attacked, you can bet some country’s got a bomb picked out for that place.” Oh, to live in the ’80s and wonder about if the US is “ever” attacked.)

The girls drive back to Bedford to find the place where Daryl delivered the envelope he got from Mustache Man. They find the wrought-iron fence, which leads to a building that says “USSR — PRIVATE PROPERTY.” HEE!

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7yn4yhYHnY&w=360&h=215]

A bunch of lights turn on when they approach and dudes with guns jump out of the bushes. Nancy freaks out and drives away, but an unmarked van pulls away from the house and starts following her, too. They get into a car chase, and Nancy weirdly tries to outrun the van by blowing through a yellow/red light, assuming it won’t follow her. Because guys who are willing to shoot you are going to draw the line at running a red? I don’t know. Anyway, they manage to escape by going to a crowded pizza place and Bess makes another crack about grabbing food because haha Bess fat, get it? (x3)

(I’m of two minds here — on the one hand, Nancy has a point that it might not be smart to stop and talk with the scary Russians with guns. On the other hand, it’s funny how she assumes they’re chasing her because they’re evil, not because she trespassed onto government property.)

Nancy gets the idea to confront Daryl at the dance — Bess’s new boyfriend, whom I have not been including in this recap because he’s been irrelevant until this last bit, is in the band that will be playing, so she’ll be there to back Nancy up. Nancy also invites George along and sets her up with a guy they keep vaguely alluding to but refuse to reveal yet. It’s obviously Ned.

At the dance, Nancy notes that Hunk looks happy for the first time in a while, but she can’t find Hal or Connie anywhere. Then she figures Connie doesn’t go to dances because she’s so unpopular, and thinks Maybe when this is over, Connie will straighten her life out and stop trying so desperately to be somebody she’s not. It’s oddly comforting to see Nancy acting so classically condescending and judgmental after her bizarro behavior all book.

Nancy gets Daryl alone in his car (ah, naturally the dramatic showdown has to happen in the Porsche) and hits him with THE TRUTH! She knows he’s been passing off Department of Defense secrets to the Russians, and now they’re going to win the Cold War something something Chernobyl something something Iran-Contra I wasn’t alive in the ’80s so I’m just pulling all this off Wikipedia. Daryl gets rough with Nancy and pulls her out of the car, but then Ned — for of course it is he who came to the dance with George — swoops in and saves her. Daryl cracks and says he didn’t kill Jake, some rando named Mitch Dillon did. (Well, he’s not a rando to anyone who plays the games and is well-acquainted with Dillon HVAC, but he comes out of nowhere in this book.) Mitch was Daryl’s contact at the defense plant. When Jake found out he could blackmail a government agent with a salary and a 401k instead of his classmates, he tried to go after Mitch, but Mitch killed him. Then Mitch turned on Daryl and told him to get the “I Spy” tape — it was Daryl who was hiding in the video lab that day, looking for the tape. Nancy tells Daryl he can redeem himself by helping them catch Mitch.

A plan is hatched: Daryl will set up a meeting with Mitch, presumably to hand the tape over, and he’ll get Mitch to confess to killing Jake. Meanwhile, our crack team of detectives will hide out with a camera and get the whole thing on tape. You know how unobtrusive cameras were in the ’80s. Ned drives Nancy to her last day of school at Bedford, and Nancy thinks about confessing her indiscretion to him but then she doesn’t.

Mitch calls Daryl and changes their meeting time. Daryl freaks out that Mitch knows what’s going on, plus they tipped the police off and now they won’t be there in time. There’s no time to change the plan, though, so they just have to roll with it. They accordingly go to the park, but their plan naturally gets botched: Brenda Carlton was following them, and Mitch runs when he sees her hiding in the bushes. Nancy chases him, but trips and reveals herself to Mitch, too. Mitch has a gun and holds it to Brenda’s head, threatening to shoot her. Nancy and Daryl stall for time, hoping someone’s gone to call the police, but eventually Mitch gets sick of waiting and shoots. Daryl and Nancy both jump him, so Brenda doesn’t die, but Daryl does get clipped by the bullet. Ned and Bess’s boyfriend tackle Mitch. Then the police show up and that’s the end of that.

We cut to Nancy wrapping up the case in Mr. Parton’s office. Mr. Parton says Mitch has been arrested for murder and espionage, and some sketchy Russian “diplomats” have left town, although they’ll probably never know the real depths of the conspiracy. (Well, Mr. Parton and Nancy won’t. The DoD probably will). Then Mr. Parton uses the phrase “Mother Russia” unironically.

Mr. Parton says that Hal is going to take the SATs again, Connie is getting help for her shoplifting problem, and Hunk is going to “bench himself for a while.” Oh, so book!Hulk just…wasn’t on steroids at all? I thought that’s where we were going, what with his rage issues, but apparently not. At the risk of complimenting the game, the “suspects” are much more interesting there. They’re kind of weirdly underdeveloped in the book. Like, the other kids mention that Hal was running for class president (which is what tanked his grades so bad that he had to cheat on the SAT), and they talk about it like it’s weird that he even tried, but then we never find out why he ran. Nancy barely even talks to Hal outside of two conversations.

Anyway, Ned picks Nancy up and she finally confesses to him about being unable to resist a high schooler who was willing to compromise national security just so he could keep driving a Porsche. Ned’s like, “Yeah, could kind of tell by you making out with him at the dance.” He’s slightly passive-aggressive about it but says he understands. Nancy briefly considers that she wouldn’t have liked it if Ned had cheated on her, but then she’s like, “Eh, too late to do anything about it now.” Then the book ends. Sure. Why not.