While the first two books to get the PC game treatment were both part of the Files spinoff series, we get to take a break from “hunks” and “steamy kisses” to return to the main line of books for the third adaptation, Message in a Haunted Mansion — or, as the book calls it, The Message in the Haunted Mansion. This book was published in 1994 and takes place in San Francisco, which overly excites me because I was also living in San Francisco in the ’90s. Do you think there’ll be a part where Nancy goes to a Kumon in West Portal and has to stay there until it closes because she can’t finish the math worksheets? I would feel so seen.
So we open with Nancy, Bess, and George on their way into the city. They’re here with Hannah, Nancy’s housekeeper, who knows one “Rose Green”, a woman who’s trying to open a bed-and-breakfast in Pacific Heights. The opening has been repeatedly delayed by a bunch of mysterious accidents, so Rose has asked for some free labor to help her finish the renovation on time. She exposits that she’s already sunk a lot of money and effort into getting the house; she was almost outbid by someone anonymous (do you think this person will be important to the plot?), but managed to meet the bid by going in on the house with her niece, Abby. George asks if there’s anywhere nearby to jog because her only defining trait is being a tomboy, and Rose name-checks both the Presidio and Golden Gate Park as being nearby. I had to clock 100 collective hours volunteering at both those places in order to graduate middle school! I feel seen already.
They pull up to the house and meet the handyman, Charlie, who is a gruff old guy and not the young, meant-to-be-attractive-but-the-Y2K-graphics-couldn’t-quite-get-there college student he was in the game. There’s not a hunk to be found in this book, I’m afraid.
Our main gang hangs around in the foyer and crams a ton of exposition into the next few pages. Deep breath, here we go: Rose is working with this antique dealer named Louis who just showed up one day and offered his services (as you do) and he and Rose are banging (gross) and the house has a bunch of two-way mirrors (to facilitate the mystery plot) and also they think the house used to be a hotel because there’s a basement (improbable) which houses a saloon (cool) and the hotel used to be owned by an “E. Valdez” back in the 1800s, but a lot of historical documents were destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire so they don’t know who E. Valdez is. I’m sure Nancy will find out.
After another paragraph about Victorian interior decorating, Abby appears. The book describes her as “heavyset” which means that we get twice as many comments about weight and eating peppered into the text. Haha Bess and Abby fat! Are you not amused? (I mean, I don’t think describing Bess and Abby as being overweight, or even just heavier than their friends, is offensive in and of itself. It’s just so predictable how Bess is always the one to bring up being hungry; half the scenes that feature food feel the need to single out Abby and/or Bess’s eating habits. Like they can’t let the audience forget for a single chapter that they’re not skinny.)
Anyway, Abby’s a dramatic theater kid with red hair who wants to hold seances with “afternoon tea” when the hotel opens up. I bet she loves Tori Amos.
Bess takes a photo with her “instant camera”, and as it develops, they see a white blob at the top of the photo. It’s because you didn’t shake it, Bess! Nevertheless, she’s immediately like, “It’s a ghost!” Hannah suggests asking “Emily Foxworth” about it. Emily is apparently a photojournalist whom Nancy and George met the last time they were in San Francisco, in book #82. They reference this previous book multiple times, actually. It’s kind of weird. Are they suggesting continuity matters in this series? Because that is not an impression that I’ve ever gotten.
Nancy, Bess, and George go up to their room, and from here on out, I am going to use “the Clue Crew” to mean “Nancy and whichever friends show up in any given scene”, because otherwise, at some point I’m going to have to write, “Nancy, Bess, George, Rose, Hannah, and Abby all go downtown” and I refuse.
The window in their room promptly breaks and upon inspection, Nancy realizes it was sabotaged to fall. (“Sabotage!” George doesn’t say, to my disappointment. Honestly, you could remove George from this book entirely and it wouldn’t make much difference.) Nancy apparently moonlights as a window installer, because she explains that windows use putty and glazing points (those little metal thingies in a window frame) to hold the glass in, neither of which were used here. Oh, and also the window sash cords have been cut and they’ve been oiled to make them slide easily. Jeez. This is a little overkill, mystery culprit.
Rose mentions that Charlie was the one who replaced the window, and Nancy muses that he’s the logical suspect, but what could be his motive? Everyone’s like, “Whatever, let’s not think about it” and they decide to go on a sightseeing drive. In her panic over the window, Bess splashed tea all over her dress, so she lingers upstairs to wash it and change her clothes.
Nancy and George take a brief detour into the saloon, where they see Abby lurking furtively around the piano. She’s not at all happy about being noticed, which Nancy finds suspicious. Then, when they’re about to leave for their drive, Nancy sees a teen boy lurking around the house, which she also finds suspicious.
Clues sufficiently planted, Rose takes the Clue Crew around SF and they see Alamo Square and Twin Peaks and go through Golden Gate Park, “with its museums, playing fields, lakes, and wooded areas.” Aw, did they go to Stow Lake? I went there on many an awkward paddleboat outing as a child, trapped in the middle of the lake with my dysfunctional parents. Good times. Anyway, they also stop by Land’s End Inn, a popular spot set atop a rocky cliff overlooking San Francisco Bay. There is (or was, it’s been closed for renovations for about 84 years) actually a touristy restaurant on the cliff near Land’s End — but it overlooks the ocean, not the bay, because most of Land’s End is on the ocean side of the city. Oh, ghostwriter. So close, yet so far.
Bess sees an old photo of a blonde woman at the restaurant, who turns out to be local historical figure Lizzie Applegate. She fell in love with a bandit named El Diablo, joined his gang, then moved to SF, became a famous actress, and opened a hotel. After she was a stagecoach-robbing outlaw? I feel like she should’ve been arrested once people figured out who she was, no? Anyway, Bess immediately overidentifies with Lizzie because she’s blonde and “full-figured” and Bess wishes she could become a famous actress and run away with a hot criminal too. (And then Nancy would track you down and personally help prosecute you, Bess, is that what you want?)
Back at the house, disaster has struck again: someone left the faucet running in the girls’ room, causing a ton of water damage. You’ll recall Bess had washed her clothes earlier, but she protests that she didn’t leave the faucet on. The Clue Crew has to move into a different room with a giant Victorian bed in it.
Nancy thinks the faucet incident was sabotage, too, and decides that they have a mystery on their hands. She and George want to research the history of the house to see if there’s something important about it, but Bess is like, “Uh, before we dive into research, how about diving into something to eat?”
They go to a Chinese restaurant on the corner and meet the owners’ daughter, a girl named Mary Lee. George immediately makes friends with her because Mary’s wearing running clothes, so she’s like, “You like running! My only personality trait is being sporty! Let’s be friends!” She asks Mary to go running with her sometime, which is funny because at no point during this exchange does George even tell Mary her name. (Also, at no point do they actually go running together.) Anyway, Nancy sees Lurking Teen Boy outside the restaurant window and notices that he and Mary seem to know each other. Mysterious!
Night has fallen by the time the girls return to the house. Nancy sees a white shape floating outside, near Abby’s window. She goes to Abby’s room to investigate, but Abby says she didn’t see anything, although she still tries to convince Nancy that the supernatural is real and the house is totally haunted.
(Also, Abby’s room: The decor certainly was dramatic, Nancy thought—a rich-looking red-and-black patterned carpet, red flocked wallpaper, large gilt mirrors, even black satin sheets and a quilted red bedspread. I bet Abby also loves Interview with a Vampire.)
Nancy is still skeptical, and she tells the Clue Crew that Abby was probably trying to make her think she saw a ghost, but of course Nancy doesn’t believe in no ghosts. Bess pretends to swoon and grabs the bedknob, accidentally pulling it off. She gasps that there’s a key inside, and “Maybe [it] will unlock the secrets of this house!” Hee. I mean, that’s what it’s going to do, but it’d be hilarious if it was just the key to a broom closet.
(The game also retains the key-in-the-bedknob moment, although in the game, Nancy just walks up to it and rips the bedknob off for the hell of it. Fuck your restoration, Rose!)
The next day, Nancy corners Charlie while he’s repairing the window. She tries to interrogate him about the window falling, and is intrigued that he doesn’t mention that the cords had been cut or oiled or that the glass wasn’t even attached to the window. Nancy Drew is a better window installer than you.
A plate of muffins that Hannah baked has gone missing, and everyone denies eating it. Rose muses that food had been going missing even before Nancy showed up. Mysterious!
Louis arrives and he and Rose gaze into each other’s eyes and it’s gross. He mentions that his antique store will have a booth at the upcoming “Winter Festival” and suggests that the girls can help out by dressing up in historical clothes and looking pretty. Bess loves the idea of cosplaying as Lizzie Applegate and immediately agrees.
Nancy asks him for tips on researching the house, and Louis muses that it will be hard to find information because the 1906 fire destroyed a ton of records. Abby points out that the library still has plenty of pre-1906 records, and Louis blusters that it does, but it’s 1994 and you have to use dial-up for the Internet, so really, it would be a waste of time when they should be working on the renovation. Rose says that Louis himself said they should have a historical exhibit ready to go when the B&B opens. Louis is like, “Oh right. Go to the library, I GUESS. If you HAVE TO.” Then he leaves. Nancy thinks Louis might’ve been purposely trying to keep them away from the library.
While they work on the house, Abby asks Nancy to straighten an ornament on the roof of the house tower. The roof caves in and Nancy falls into a secret attic, which contains a mysterious trunk and a desk. Then there’s a bit where Nancy pulls on a trapdoor rope to escape the attic, but the rope breaks, so she has to use a paint scraper to pry the door open again. It’s funny because it adds absolutely nothing to the book (except to pad out the word count) and is just like the games’ “Here’s an escape route OH NO the obvious way to escape won’t work, I guess you have to do a puzzle to get out” shenanigans. It’s like they knew this book would one day be turned into a point-and-click game!
Charlie yells at Abby that he said no one should go up on the tower roof, and Abby derps that she thought he just meant she shouldn’t, because haha Abby fat. She thought Nancy was light enough to safely climb up there. OR DID SHE?
The Clue Crew retrieves the trunk and desk from the attic. The trunk has a bunch of 1800s dresses, which Bess is all pumped about wearing for Louis’s Winter Festival booth. When they try the desk, however, Nancy says, “It’s locked.”
Amazing. Bess suggests trying the key from their bedknob, and Abby gets all salty that they found a key without telling her. Suspicious! Naturally, the key fits, and they find a bunch of old papers related to Lizzie Applegate. They recall that Lizzie used to own a hotel and wonder if this is perhaps that very hotel.
Louis comes by and the Clue Crew shows him the papers. He’s all condescending about how their research is cute and all, but it won’t matter if they can’t finish the house renovation on time. Rose is sad. Aw. In the game, it’s hard to sympathize with Rose when she’s randomly thirsting after Louis in between making us do bullshit chores while she sits in the dining room all day. Actually showing that she and Louis are in something of a relationship while he’s subtly cutting her down makes me feel worse for her. (Although given that she’s still asking three random teenagers to do free labor for her, I don’t feel that much worse.)
Abby finds a song sheet in Lizzie’s papers, about finding gold “where the rainbow ends and the phoenix rises.” Bess goes down to the saloon to see if it matches anything in Abby’s book of “old California songs.” A spark flies from the fireplace and everyone foreshadows that they don’t have a fire screen and they need one and they should definitely buy one before something bad happens.
Bess comes bursting in shrieking that she saw Lizzie’s ghost in the saloon, and everyone runs downstairs to look. She insists she saw a blond person in men’s clothing (as Lizzie liked to wear trousers) in the saloon mirror, and everyone’s like, “Are you sure that wasn’t you? Because it’s 1994 and women can wear pants now?” Bess insists she saw Lizzie. Also, Lizzie’s song isn’t in the songbook. Mysterious!
The next day, Nancy goes to the library to research. Nancy looks at a bunch of maps on a microfilm projector (lmao, the ’90s) and finds out that the house indeed used to be Lizzie Applegate’s hotel, which was called the Golden Gardenia. When she does more digging, though, the owner of a hotel is listed as an E. Valdez. Who could that be! Nancy is a little quicker on the uptake here than she is in the game, at least; she immediately wonders if the “E.” stands for “Elizabeth”, but the “Valdez” surname stumps her. (It’s clearly because El Diablo was Latino and he and Lizzie were married — not to spoil that incredibly well-hidden twist for you — but I still think it’s funny that no one considers that Lizzie, an actress, might’ve just had a stage name.)
Having found some more clues, Nancy goes to New Montgomery Street to meet up with the rest of the gang. I used to work in an office on New Montgomery Street! I feel so seen. Everyone compares notes and theorizes that Lizzie Applegate used to own the house and might’ve married El Diablo, whose surname might’ve been “Valdez” since he was “Spanish” (more likely Mexican, in 19th-century California — although they probably would’ve just called him Spanish back then, in fairness. My point is he wasn’t likely to have been like, a first-generation settler from Spain. I care too much about this, let’s move on). All the grown-ups think this is plausible but of course they don’t have actual proof yet. Bess still insists, “I just know the Golden Gardenia was Lizzie’s hotel.” She’s so weirdly invested in this. Also, Emily Foxwoth is at this meeting to foreshadow that she once wrote an article about treasure hunters in California.
The girls then catch a bus back to the house. OMG, are they riding Muni? That’s how I used to get to Kumon. I feel seen x2. When they get there, they see the house is on fire and Lurking Teen Boy is running away from it. Suspicious!
Louis is also there, and says he happened to be walking by the house and saw the smoke. Luckily the front door was unlocked (you know how people leave their houses unlocked in large cities all the time, especially in crime-free cities like San Francisco), so he tried to put the fire out. Lous spends a lot of time just walking by this house for someone who’s supposed to be running his own business, don’t you think? Abby is also still at the house, and Louis is surprised to see her, saying that he thought she and Rose were at an estate sale. Also suspicious!
The fire chief says that nothing was really damaged apart from a bunch of papers. Everyone assumes he means Lizzie’s papers, but when Nancy goes to clean up, she finds some unburnt scraps that are dated 1982. A mere 12 years ago! They’re not historical at all! She wonders if perhaps someone was after Lizzie’s documents, so they stole them then burnt a bunch of random papers to make everyone think Lizzie’s papers were lost.
(This also happens in the game, but the trickery with switching Lizzie’s papers with random letters went straight over my head at the time because I am a dumbass.)
The Clue Crew heads back to Lees’ restaurant to tell Mary everything that happened. Mary’s grandfather happens to be hanging around and, even more conveniently, happens to be the son of a guy who worked at Lizzie’s hotel. Bess shows him a photo they found of Lizzie and her staff, and she’s like, “Is the Chinese guy in the photo your dad?!” Bess, there was more than one Chinese guy living in San Francisco in the 1800s. Luckily for her, though, Grandpa Lee confirms that was indeed his father, and the woman he worked for was indeed Lizzie.
Nancy asks Mary about Lurking Teen Boy, since clearly Mary knows him. Mary gets all shifty and blows Nancy off.
The girls go back to the house and find a note on Nancy’s bed that just says, “Leave the mansion at once!” The note is scented with gardenia perfume and Bess is like, “Lizzie’s ghost must have left it!!!” Jesus fucking Christ. I’ve had a bad week at work and I’m getting a little legitimately annoyed by Bess’s incessant romanticizing of Lizzie Applegate just because she saw one (1) photo of her. Nancy is a better person than I am because I would’ve started passive-aggressively giving Bess the cold shoulder around the second time she tried to derail my crimebusting with her bullshit.
The next day, the girls go to the California Express Company museum, which seems like a thinly-veiled reference to the Wells Fargo museum. The guide gives them some historical background: El Diablo’s real last name was indeed Valdez; there’s no proof he and Lizzie were married, but it’s likely. He disappeared after a big stagecoach robbery where he made off with a shitton of gold that was never recovered.
When they come back to the house, Rose excitedly announces that she and Louis found the perfect chandelier for the foyer. As soon as she says this, it promptly falls from the ceiling and shatters. Okay, timing-wise, that’s just funny. Nancy inspects the chandelier and sees that the chain link was filed down.
She decides to ask Rose about the burned documents and shows Rose the scrap of paper she found. Rose gasps that the paper is actually one of her letters. Literally all of our suspects knew where she kept her letters, though, so that narrows it down not at all.
The Clue Crew goes exploring down Sacramento Street. I also used to go shopping there! I feel seen x3. Unlike me and my middle school friends, however, Nancy & Co. are not in search of bootleg Death Note DVDs. They instead find Louis’s antique store, and are confused to see Charlie outside, driving a cab and dropping a girl off. Charlie turns out to be working a second job as a cab driver to make ends meet (the more things change) and the girl turns out to be his daughter, who works at Louis’s store. Nancy is intrigued that Louis and Charlie know each other outside of the restoration project. Louis comes in and Nancy tells him about the chandelier falling. He’s like, “Oh no what a tragedy 🙁 I guess the house is jinxed 🙁 Rose should probably sell it :(”
That night, while everyone is asleep, Nancy hears a noise in the kitchen. She wakes everyone up to investigate, and they find out that the back door is open and there’s a piece of cake missing. There’s a whole scene of misdirections where they’re like, Abby probably snuck a piece of cake because she’s ashamed of eating sweets because haha Abby fat, and also there’s her scarf outside, and oh look she used a metal file to cut the cake just like the one that was used to cut the chandelier, but OH WAIT Abby gave the file back to Charlie but then it was missing so someone else stole it AND ALSO Abby dropped her scarf outside so that doesn’t mean anything but she thought she locked the door and I don’t know is on third. The point is: they have absolutely no idea who stole the cake.
The next day, the Clue Crew sneaks into Abby’s room to snoop. They don’t find much besides a bunch of occult paraphernalia…and a bottle of gardenia perfume. Oh snap!
Then they go to Chinatown to meet Mary, who leads them around and exposits about the history of Chinese people in SF for everyone who didn’t have to read Dragonwings in elementary school. They eventually meet up with Grandpa Lee, who tells them more about his dad’s time in Lizzie Applegate’s employ. He recalls that his parents once called the house gum bo fu, aka “Gold Treasure Mansion.” Bess and George immediately assume El Diablo’s heist money is in the house somewhere.
Back at the house, Nancy overhears Louis trying to convince Rose to sell the house. He says he’d be willing to buy her and Abby out, “as a friend.” He needles Rose that, if she loses her entire life’s savings on this house, she doesn’t have another 30 years to earn it back. Creepy.
That night, Bess sees a blonde woman with a white dog in the backyard. Naturally, Lizzie had a white dog, so she starts screaming that it’s Lizzie’s ghost. Again. Nancy looks outside and remarks that she can kind of make out some blonde hair and the dog, but she can’t tell whether the person is male or female (although the book then says the dog is sat next to “her”, which is weird since we’re in Nancy’s POV and she supposedly can’t tell — and also because this person is a dude, as we will see later). They go outside, but the person is already gone. They do run into Mary, though, who claims she’s looking for her cat.
The Clue Crew goes back to their room, where George randomly leans on a panel on the wall and it opens to reveal a safe. Sure. Why not. Nancy uses her combo-lock-picking skills to open it* and they find a bunch of letters and diaries. Lizzie’s journal conveniently has a bunch of mystery-pertinent information (this book really is just like a Nancy Drew game), where she confirms that El Diablo’s real name was Diego Valdez, making her E. Valdez. There’s a line in her journal about “holding [his] treasure true”, which is very similar to a line in the song from her papers. Bess assumes this means Lizzie had the gold from El Diablo’s stagecoach robbery.
Nancy muses that someone else must think that the gold is in the house too, and they’re probably causing the accidents to try and get to it. (Still, she doesn’t think Rose and Abby know about the safe: “Even if they had found this secret door, they probably couldn’t have opened the lock.” Heh. Nancy has no faith in anyone else’s mystery-solving skills.)
*Sidebar: I first learned about picking combo locks from the first Artemis Fowl book when I was like 10 years old, and any fictional scene of someone putting their ear to a safe and spinning the lock still just makes me think of Mulch Diggums.
The next day, Abby dresses up and invites everyone to a seance. Not at a spooky hour like nighttime, though. She just rolls up “after breakfast” in a turban, which is hilarious. The Clue Crew troops down to the saloon and Abby makes the table shake and a silvery figure appear. Nancy recognizes it as the same figure she saw outside Abby’s window the other night, and assumes Abby was practicing projecting it. She and George are unimpressed (George: “Is that it?”), but of course Bess is falling all over herself to believe that ghosts are real and they just communed with Lizzie Applegate. For fuck’s sake, Bess.
Nancy goes to investigate the saloon and finds a trapdoor under the table. It leads to a small room, the wall of which is a two-way mirror that looks out into the rest of the saloon. Nancy realizes that Bess must have seen someone in this room and assumed it was Lizzie’s ghost. She also finds the white puppy they saw the other night, along with evidence that someone’s been staying in the room.
Nancy and George take the puppy out, where Lurking Teen Boy catches them. The dog is his; his name is Tim and he’s been secretly staying in the house. Tim tells them that he’s from Iowa and always wanted to live in a big city, so he moved to San Francisco but ran out of money before he could find a place to live. I mean…he probably could’ve saved on bus fare from the start by moving to a closer city. Chicago was right there, Tim! Unless him dreaming of San Francisco specifically is the book trying to hint that he’s gay. Anyway, he has long blond hair, meaning he’s the person Bess saw in the saloon mirror, and also the person with the dog she saw in the backyard. Nancy thinks, with his hair, “no wonder” Bess thought he was Lizzie Applegate. Heh. It’s the ’90s, Nancy. Maybe he’s just a metalhead, leave his hair alone.
Anyway, Tim works in the Lees’ restaurant and Mary has been bringing him leftovers, which is why she was hanging around the house. He’s also the one who’s been stealing food. Tim denies starting the fire, but when asked, he recalls seeing “an old guy” right before it started, carrying a red duffel bag. Nancy assumes he means Charlie.
Nancy agrees not to rat Tim out, as long as he joins forces with the Clue Crew and watches the house for her. Then she and George go for a jog and nearly get run down by a cab — from the same cab company Charlie works for. Nancy calls “Lieutenant Chin” (a policeman who was also introduced in book #82) to find out who was driving the cab.
The next day, Louis swings by and asks the girls to help him set up his booth for the Winter Festival. The Clue Crew sans Nancy and Abby all go along. Nancy gets a phone call confirming that Charlie was driving the cab that tried to run her and George over. Mysteriously, Charlie also doesn’t show up for work.
Nancy then gets another call, from the hotel where Hannah is hanging out with Emily Foxworth. The hotel clerk tells her that Hannah is sick and needs Nancy to pick her up. Nancy doesn’t question this at all and rushes out of the house. Abby lends Nancy her car, specifically saying that she got new brakes a few months back.
Was Hannah not sick at all and it was a trap? Of course. Did Abby just clumsily foreshadow that someone was going to cut the car’s brakes? Also of course. (At least the car didn’t also blow up this time.)
Nancy says she’ll jog back to the hotel to call a tow truck (lmao the ’90s), but Louis suddenly appears, saying Abby told him that Hannah had gotten sick. He offers use of his car phone (lmao the ’90s) and to have his mechanic look at it. Nancy weirdly is enthused about this idea, saying she’ll get a “full, unbiased” report from Louis’s mechanic. Nancy, that man is specifically in the employ of one of our suspects. You’re not even a little worried he’ll lie to you?
Louis drives them back to the house and frets over all the accidents: “What if they aren’t all accidents? After all, with sixty thousand dollars in 1878 gold coins at stake, who knows what could happen?” Nancy doesn’t twig to this, however, until several paragraphs later. When they all head back to the Winter Festival together, Nancy recalls that Emily Foxworth gave her the article she wrote about treasure hunters — and surprise, surprise, Louis is quoted in the article. Nancy realizes that Louis has known about El Diablo’s treasure the whole time. And then, when they’re unloading Louis’s trunk, she sees that he owns a red duffel bag, meaning Louis was the one Tim saw before the fire, not Charlie. (Although Charlie must still be involved, unless he was just trying to run Nancy over for the hell of it.)
The Clue Crew is dressed up in their 19th-century clothes, but they’re too creeped out to hang much at Louis’s booth. Nancy spies Louis and Rose together and remarks that she never saw how creepy and controlling he is with her before. I love how Nancy’s observations of suspects tend to be totally backwards: it hardly ever occurs to her that someone is a bad person until she pins them down for arson or jewel theft, and then she’s like, “Oh yeah I guess there were some red flags in their personality.” That’s not how profiling works, Nancy!
The girls take a picture with Mary, who’s also at the festival dressed in a qipao because she’s Chinese, if you’ve forgotten. Hannah’s like, “You guys are dressed like it’s the 19th century and you’re standing next to a Chinese person; this conveniently makes me think of that photo of Lizzie and Mary’s grandpa!” She mentions that the photo showed a phoenix fireplace mantel in the house, which makes Nancy realize that Lizzie’s song has directions to find the gold: the stained glass on the door throws a rainbow on the wall, where the phoenix mantel used to be (“where the phoenix rises”). Under the rainbow (“where the rainbow ends”), the gold must be buried.
They flag down a cab, but unfortunately it belongs to the same company that Charlie drives for. The driver reports the ride to his dispatcher (lmao the ’90s), so Charlie knows that someone is heading back to the mansion. This wouldn’t have happened if they had taken Muni, I’m just saying.
They make it back to the mansion first and find El Diablo’s gold buried under the floorboards. Tim shows up and is helping them dig up the gold, when Charlie and Louis burst in. They explain everything: Louis was the other bidder on the mansion and Charlie is his accomplice; Charlie was the one causing most of the accidents, as well as cutting Abby’s brakes and nearly running Nancy over; Louis was behind the threatening note and the fire. Tim manages to run away and call the police; the girls jump Louis (still wearing their foofy 1800s dresses) and stab him with their hatpins, then hide in the saloon until the police show up.
We cut to a few days later. Nancy explains that, per Lieutenant Chin, Louis was blackmailing Charlie into helping him, as Charlie’s daughter once stole something from Louis’s shop. As such, Charlie will probably get off relatively easy, but Louis’s fate is unknown. Also unknown is who’s going to ultimately get the gold, but Rose and Abby are at least going to get a $3k reward from Wells Fargo the California Express Company for…taking the credit for Nancy finding it, I guess. Abby is upbeat that the reward will cover some of their renovation costs. I see Abby is suffering from Tim Syndrome, because $3k will get her absolutely nowhere in San Francisco.
Rose and Abby offer to let Tim stay in the house in exchange for his help with the renovations, and he accepts. Abby explains that she was acting all shifty and weird because she was trying to keep her magic tricks a secret “to see if they would really work on an audience.” Yeah, God forbid you put your performance on pause so it doesn’t interfere with a crime investigation. She’s such a theater kid.
Bess takes another photo of everyone together and sees another white splotch in the Polaroid. Everyone’s like, “OMG, maybe Lizzie’s ghost is real after all!” and I am appalled that they’re validating Bess’s bullshit.
Bess’s constant need to make everything about her Lizzie Applegate standom aside, I liked this book! Despite not having the makeout scenes of the Files series, this book actually feels more adult, in the sense that Louis is appropriately sinister and the way he’s using Rose is treated with actual gravitas. The San Francisco setting was actually fairly accurate and pleasantly nostalgic; Nancy’s trolling around the Presidio and Chinatown just reminded me of every local history field trip I had to take in school (Mary didn’t take her out to Fort Funston and make her put ice plant on her tongue, though, which would’ve been the triple crown of San Francisco Elementary School Field Trips). Also, it’s always nice to see SF’s history explored, even in a cursory way — most people know it for its tumultuous present, but the city does have a very rich history with a lot of dramatic visuals (fire, fog, phoenixes), so I’m glad the book took advantage of that.
Amusingly, a lot of things from the book pop up in the game — not always in the same context, but the falling chandelier, the seance, the player piano, the safe full of conveniently revealing papers, and even Nancy’s paint scraper were all incorporated into the game. Apart from the usual changes — cutting/merging some characters to keep the cast manageable and moving all the action inside the house — the game hews fairly close to the book’s storyline and follows most of its major beats in the same way. The book helps by, in some parts, almost being written like a game — there’s a bit where Nancy gets stuck in the saloon, finds a trapdoor out of there but there are some heavy crockpots over it, so she has to find another exit out of a side window. I can only assume there wasn’t enough time to put that in the game, because that is exactly the kind of bullshit they would make the player go through.
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