We already mined a later book in the Mystery Stories series, book #128, for the games, but let’s double back a bit for game #6, Secret of the Scarlet Hand. This game was based on book #124, released in 1995. As we know, Nancy goes to Washington, DC and uncovers a mystery related to Mayan history and art theft. What the game doesn’t have, however, is a cult of Mayan cosplayers and Nancy getting roofied. (Intriguingly, one of the online reviews for this book claims that it “doesn’t get too bonkers”; I can only wonder what books they’re comparing it to.)
Carson Drew has some kind of lawyer conference in Washington, DC. As he is wont to do, he’s paid for 3 extra plane tickets and an extra hotel room to invite his daughter and her friends along. I wonder if the Marvin and Fayne parents ever invite Nancy to do anything, or if all these free vacations only go one way.
The Clue Crew plans to swan around DC doing touristy shit, and their first stop is Beech Hill Museum. The museum director is (of course) a friend of Carson’s, named Susan Caldwell. Beech Hill’s specialty is Central/South American pre-Columbian art, and Susan and the Clue Crew exposit about the Aztec and Inca and Maya for all the 9-year-olds reading this book.
Some Latino dude pops up behind them and bitters that all these pieces were stolen from his people for the benefit of rich Americans. He thinks they should all be returned to Latin America, more specifically, to his homeland of Mexico. So this is Alejandro del Rio, attache to the Mexican consulate, which apparently leaves him plenty of free time to hang around museums and get into arguments with the staff. (It is a government job, to be fair.)
Before Alejandro can keep fighting the power, an older gentleman rocks in and tells him to quit being political on the clock. Said gentleman is Henrik van der Hune; Nancy notes his accent and assumes he must be “German or Dutch.” (His name points to him being Dutch, but Nancy doesn’t notice that.) Henrik is a curator (possibly the only curator, from the way Susan phrases it?) at the museum, but seems to be friendly with Alejandro. Alejandro is particularly antsy about the museum’s newest acquisition, and Henrik drags him off so that Susan can exposit to the Clue Crew without interference.
Susan tells the Clue Crew about how people used to straight-up steal artifacts from archaeological sites in Latin America, but hastens to add that Beech Hill doesn’t carry anything that was genuinely stolen; they have provenance for all of their items. (Of course, Alejandro thinks Beech Hill having the items at all is theft.) The museum’s newest acquisition is a carving of Pacal the Great, whom the book refers to as “Lord Pacal” (the game called him “King Pacal”). Susan says the museum bought the carving legitimately (for around a million dollars, which is nearly 2 million in today’s money, RIP), and the provenance for the carving checks out.
The Clue Crew asks to see it, so Susan takes them to a storage room. When she opens the carving box, though, Pacal is gone! Gasp! The only thing left behind is a note with a scarlet handprint and some Mayan glyphs drawn on it.
Nancy immediately says they should call the police and not touch anything, and Bess tells Susan that Nancy knows lots about police investigations because a single 18-year-old girl is horrifyingly the closest thing to law enforcement in River Heights. Susan weirdly says that it’s no surprise, since “[she is] Carson’s daughter.” I don’t know what being a lawyer-slash-golf-enthusiast has to do with being a girl detective, but whatever. Susan says she’ll call the police, but she also begs Nancy to help too because this woman has no professionalism.
The police show up, led by one Detective Briscoe. Nancy is offended that Briscoe doesn’t immediately take her seriously and let her in on the investigation. Hee. Susan shows them a photo of the carving, and Nancy notes that Pacal looks vaguely familiar. Remember this because we are indeed going to find out how she recognizes Pacal’s face and it’s going to be unbelievably dumb.
Back at the hotel, Nancy names Alejandro and Henrik as their main suspects. You’ll recall that last time we saw Bess, she was all “Jacques Brunais is too hot and French to be a criminal!”, and now she’s all “Alejandro del Rio is too hot and Mexican to be a criminal!” She also thinks Henrik is charming and his accent is dreamy, although she at least draws the line at calling him hot too.
The next day, Nancy catches Henrik skulking around suspiciously. She tries to needle him about whether or not he agrees with Alejandro re: returning the Pacal carving to Mexico, but Henrik is vague and blows her off.
Speaking of Alejandro, Susan decides to take the Clue Crew to the Mexican consulate, so they can look at more Mayan art. Not sure how that’s going to help Nancy find the carving, but sure. At the consulate, Nancy sees Henrik skulking around suspiciously (again), carrying a package. She immediately tattles to Susan, but Susan just shrugs that she trusts Henrik and he might be here on museum-related business. Then they leave the consulate because…I guess…we weren’t going to do anything else in this scene?
Back at the museum, another suspect is introduced: Taylor Sinclair, the art dealer who sold the Pacal carving to them. He’s rather blase about the whole thing, saying that art theft happens all the time and he doesn’t really give a shit about Alejandro del Rio’s feelings either. Like Susan, Taylor insists that the carving’s provenance is in order. Nancy wants to see the documents, but Taylor says that he already spoke with Briscoe, who said they couldn’t be found. Mysterious! Luckily, Taylor has his own copies, which he shows Nancy and Susan. The provenance shows that the first sale of the carving was from a private collection in 1955. Prior to that, according to Taylor, the piece came into the US legally in the ’40s. OR DID IT?
Taylor leaves and Nancy reflects that she doesn’t like him (no word on whether or not it’s because book!Taylor is still rocking the John Waters mustache). Anyway, Susan tells her to take the mysterious scarlet hand note to one “John Riggs”, an archaeologist who works at the Museum of Natural History. He can translate the glyphs for her.
Before Nancy can leave, however, she sees Henrik coming back to the museum, still carrying his mysterious package. He and Taylor Sinclair exchange words and Henrik storms off. Nancy follows him into the museum garden, but before she can ask him anything, a statue falls from the wall and hits Henrik on the head. The Clue Crew calls an ambulance, and while they wait, Nancy steals the package Henrik was carrying. Heh. I love that theft is her first instinct upon finding someone unconscious. (At least Nancy didn’t directly knock Henrik out, like she did with Mrs. Drake and Dr. Craven.)
It turns out that Henrik was carrying the provenance documents (the museum’s copy, which you’ll recall Taylor said were missing). Nancy holds onto them and, when poking around, found that the statue was deliberately removed from its holders. (“Sabotage!” George doesn’t say, again. I don’t know why she’s even in these books; she’s contributing nothing here.)
Nancy calls Detective Briscoe, who’s all huffy and condescending about talking to her about the case. Eventually, he tells her that the handprint was made with mercuric sulfide, aka cinnabar, but the culprit smudged their fingerprints, so they can’t get a read on it. After the call, Nancy complains to her friends that Briscoe isn’t taking her seriously. Bess says, “Then Briscoe doesn’t know you. Is there a mystery you haven’t solved yet?” Hee. Yeah, if only Briscoe were a devotee of Nancy Drew books, then he’d know Nancy’s been solving every mystery she encounters since the 1930s.
The Clue Crew heads over to the Museum of Natural History to meet John Riggs. Riggs is super bitter about Beech Hill winning the bid for the Pacal carving; he snipes that if his museum had bought it, it would be safe. “That’s how it goes, I suppose— they’ve got all the money.” This is hilarious considering the real Museum of Natural History is one of the largest museums in the country and is home to the freaking Hope Diamond. Quit crying about how broke you are, John.
Riggs translates the glyphs and says that “[the message] threatens anyone who tries to find the carving with death — by dismemberment.” He also tells them that the Maya used cinnabar in their artwork to make the lines stand out — although he unfortunately doesn’t have any on hand to demonstrate for the Clue Crew.
Just then, Alejandro del Rio walks in, and Nancy realizes that’s where she recognizes Pacal from — he looks just like Alejandro! I’m sorry, WHAT? HOW? Is it because they’re both Mexican???
Alejandro runs away the second he sees Nancy, which she finds suspicious. She tells Bess and George that maybe Alejandro’s resemblance to Pacal means something: “[W]e know how much he resents the fact that Beech Hill owns the carving. The two things could be connected.” Again, HOW? Even if the book is hinting that Alejandro is a descendant of Pacal, they’re separated by nearly two thousand years — he doesn’t share any more genetic data with Pacal than, like, I do with Genghis Khan. How can they be closely related enough that Alejandro visibly resembles him?
I don’t even know. Anyway, the Clue Crew chases Alejandro out of the museum and conveniently overhears him hailing a taxi to the Jefferson Memorial. Then they conveniently manage to flag down a taxi immediately afterwards so they can follow him. (In the midst of all this, Bess manages to tell the reader George that the Jefferson Memorial is the one on the back of a nickel, while the Lincoln memorial is the one on the back of a penny. You know, because Thomas Jefferson is on the front of a nickel, and Abraham Lincoln is — oh my God, whatever, we’re supposed to be in a car chase here.)
The Clue Crew splits up to look for Alejandro amongst the crowd at the memorial, although Nancy then takes a break from looking for their suspect to admire the architecture: “Nancy gazed around in wonder at the perfect classical proportions of the building. It reminded her of Monticello, the home in Virginia that Jefferson had designed for himself. […] A large crowd milled in front of the statue of one of the greatest men of American history.” First of all, you can really tell that this book was written in the ’90s. Second of all, CAN WE PLEASE FOCUS??
Nancy finally spots Alejandro, who’s meeting with some sketchy guy. After they part, Nancy catches up to him and needles him about what he was doing at John Riggs’s office, and who the sketchy guy was, and whether or not Alejandro approves of the Pacal theft, or maybe even stole it himself? Alejandro flips out and tells Nancy to fuck off.
Accordingly, Nancy backs off, but then Alejandro’s sketchy friend rolls up on a bike and tries to grab the provenance documents from her. She manages to keep them from his grasp but he gets away.
After a couple of brief interludes at the hotel and at the museum where nothing much happens, Nancy follows up on the cinnabar clue. As it turns out, there’s only one warehouse around that deals with cinnabar, and they’ve only received one order recently, from John Riggs. You’ll recall that he told Nancy he didn’t have any cinnabar earlier! Suspicious!
The Clue Crew’s like, “That’s enough detecting for today” and go back to the hotel, but upon arrival, they see that their room has been broken into. Nothing has been taken, and they muse that the intruder must’ve been after the provenance documents. There’s also yet another mysterious note with a scarlet hand, so Nancy calls Detective Briscoe. He’s like, “This seems like a crime, but art thieves are like really hard to catch so I’m just not gonna try. Bye.”
After Carson comes back from his lawyer meeting or whatever he’s doing, Nancy tells him about the break-in. Carson dramatically says that the culprit must be serious — “Dead serious.” He’s not worried enough to like, send Nancy home or anything, though.
That night, Nancy gets a mysterious call, telling her to investigate John Riggs some more. She doesn’t know who the caller is, other than that it’s a man with an accent. The Clue Crew derps that both Alejandro and Henrik have accents. I like how Nancy immediately noted that Henrik was German or Dutch from his accent when they met, but apparently now can’t tell it apart from a Mexican accent.
The next day, the Clue Crew goes to see Taylor Sinclair. Nancy notes that his gallery is surprisingly run-down. Do you think Taylor’s having financial trouble? Do you think that might motivate him to steal a priceless carving? Do you think he’s about to flee to Brazil, Dwayne Powers-style?
Taylor is fairly blase about both Henrik’s accident and John Riggs having bid on the carving; he’s vague about why he and Henrik argued and says he drove off after the argument. Nancy reports this back to Bess and George, who remark that Taylor didn’t leave right away — they saw him in the garden right before the statue fell on Henrik. Intriguing!
The Clue Crew stops by to see Briscoe again, and they tell him about John Riggs lying about not having any cinnabar. Briscoe’s like, “Suspicious! Maybe this is a real crime after all!” Nancy says she’s going to follow up with Riggs, and Briscoe is all impressed by her, because Nancy Drew is better than you. Nancy took the note back with a friendly grin. At last Detective Briscoe was treating her like a real detective. Heh. Resistance is futile, Detective Briscoe!
John Riggs tells Nancy that the note is yet another threat to make her stop investigating. Before she can ask him about the cinnabar, though, he gets a phone call and asks Nancy to come back in a few minutes. She steps out and, in the hallway, encounters Alejandro’s Sketchy Friend On a Bike heading towards Riggs’s office. Nancy doesn’t recognize him at first, until Bess and George come bursting in, saying that they saw the guy enter the museum. The Clue Crew runs back to Riggs’s office, but it’s now empty.
Nancy briefly worries over Riggs’s disappearance, but then she’s like, “Whatever, time to snoop!” She uses a pencil to shade over Riggs’s notepad, and sees that he wrote down an address with a note to meet at 7 PM tonight. Then she finds some cinnabar and writing supplies that match the scarlet hand notes.
They head to the mysterious address and find that it’s a house in suburban Maryland. There’s some kind of cult party going on, with all the attendees dressing up in robes and masks. For some reason, I always picture this as the party from the Buffy episode “Reptile Boy.” Anyway, Nancy infiltrates the party, while Bess and George write down all the license plate numbers of the cars outside. Some actual detective work! I’m shocked, aren’t you?
Some dude gets up on an altar and does a ritual over a big pot full of beverage. Nancy notes that his arms are skinny (lol) and freckled — much like John Riggs’s arms! For some reason, she doesn’t put two and two together and frets that John Riggs could be any of the masked people in the room. Someone hands a drink to Nancy, and she intends to only pretend to drink it, but then the person next to her knocks her elbow, which…causes the drink…to splash into Nancy’s mouth…in its entirety…so that she accidentally swallows all of it and passes out? Sure, whatever.
Nancy comes to in a shed, bound and gagged. The culprit comes in, but it’s too dark for Nancy to make out his face. He tries to hit Nancy with a shovel (as you do), but then Alejandro del Rio comes to her rescue. The culprit runs away while Alejandro unties Nancy.
Bess and George come running up and say that, from what they could see, they think Alejandro’s Sketchy Friend On a Bike was the one who attacked Nancy. Alejandro is perturbed by this and asks to meet up with Nancy back at the hotel, so that he can tell her what he knows.
The Clue Crew meets with Alejandro, with Carson in tow. I give them points for realizing they should probably have an actual adult here, but must dock points because Carson is useless. Alejandro explains that his Sketchy Friend On a Bike is one “Ricardo Martinez”, “one of the most notorious art smugglers in Mexico.” Martinez claimed he had information about the theft of the Pacal carving, which was why Alejandro was meeting up with him. Alejandro claims not to be in cahoots with Martinez; Martinez apparently has beef with whoever actually stole the carving and offered to point him out to Alejandro. Alejandro suspects that the carving was smuggled illegally into the US after all and that Martinez had something to do with it, and our culprit double-crossed him. In any case, Alejandro never got to talk to Martinez at the cult party, as he was distracted by saving Nancy.
The next day, Nancy brings their new evidence to Briscoe, then goes back to the cult house to investigate. The woman at the house seems pleasant enough and tells them that last night was a gathering of the “Pre-Columbian Society.” If Nancy wants to join, all she has to do is call the person in charge of new members, John Riggs!
The Clue Crew zooms over to the Museum of Natural History to question Riggs. He admits that he was at the party, but he wasn’t up to anything suspicious — the Pre-Columbian Society is just a gang of history nerds who like cosplaying as ancient Mayans, as you do. The mysterious drink was just Ovaltine, used to facilitate their LARPing of a religious ritual. (John Riggs would totally get cancelled nowadays.) He maintains that he didn’t order any cinnabar or write the scarlet hand notes, so the Clue Crew walks away having learned nothing except that John Riggs is a massive dork.
(Sidebar: Of all the genderswaps the games have done so far, I think turning John Riggs, Mayan cult enthusiast, into Joanna Riggs, uptight labor-law-violating museum curator with a bunch of antagonistic UST with Alejandro del Rio, was by far the best. Props to whoever came up with that one.)
They then visit Henrik at the hospital. He tells them he thought there was something funky with the provenance documents, but of course he can’t remember what. The Clue Crew decides to go back to the museum to look at the documents. You know, they’re really doing a lot of running all over DC. I can only assume, with the exception of their car chase with Alejandro del Rio, the book is cutting out all the time they’re stuck in traffic.
Anyway, of course the museum’s copy of the provenance documents is suddenly missing…again. Nancy goes to ask Taylor Sinclair for his copy, but Taylor acts really sus and refuses to give it to her. Nancy eventually tricks Taylor’s assistant into giving her the documents.
Detective Briscoe hauls John Riggs in for questioning, and he lets Nancy join in because nobody in this book has any sense of professionalism. Riggs refuses the presence of a lawyer because 1) he’s a dumbass and 2) he needs to reveal plot-important information and we don’t have time for bullshit like Miranda rights. He tells them that the cinnabar was ordered to a post office box, but he doesn’t have a PO box. Briscoe goes to investigate, and lets Nancy and Riggs tag along. Even Nancy is like, “Are you allowed to let a suspect investigate with you?” but then she’s like “Whatever.” They find out that the post office box is owned by Taylor Sinclair’s assistant.
Taylor’s assistant immediately caves and sells Taylor out. Heh. He admits that Taylor uses the PO box and was at the Mayan cult party the other night. Riggs is like, “Oh yeah, and he also told me he’s been having money problems recently.”
Now aware that Taylor’s up to something suspicious, the Clue Crew takes a second look at his provenance documents, joined by Alejandro. They realize that the copy from Taylor’s office doesn’t match the first one they saw: that copy showed a zip code for the original purchasers in 1955, but Taylor’s doesn’t. Moreover, Nancy and George recall that zip codes didn’t exist in 1955. (This is true! The zip code was introduced on July 1, 1963. This book is so educational.) They conclude that Taylor faked the provenance documents, corrected his copy, and was chasing down Beech Hill’s copy to fix it before anyone noticed.
(I actually quite like this bit of deduction, but it’s pretty funny that it hinges on a couple of teenagers knowing 30-year-old postal trivia off the top of their heads.)
They go to see Henrik, who has finally gotten his memory back and explains further: he figured out the mistake with the zip code way earlier, and like a dumbass, confronted Taylor about it and told him the proof was in the provenance documents. After learning that Henrik was onto him, Taylor stole the carving and tried to steal the documents, knocking Henrik out in the process.
The Clue Crew goes to Taylor’s gallery, where they run into Martinez yet again. They manage to pin him down and get him arrested; Martinez agrees to talk because apparently no one in this book cares about their Miranda rights. He confesses all: he smuggled the Pacal carving into the US and gave it to Taylor Sinclair, who promised him a cut when he sold the carving. After the carving was stolen, Taylor told Martinez that John Riggs was the culprit and asked him to help frame Riggs (Martinez was the one who called Nancy and told her to investigate him) and steal the provenance documents back. Taylor also told Martinez to attack Nancy at the cult party after she was knocked out. Taylor never paid Martinez since he needed the money to cover his own debts, and everyone figures that Taylor stole the carving…for himself…somehow. I’m not quite sure I get what Taylor’s motive is here, apart from covering his tracks due to the slipup with the provenance documents. I mean, if he hadn’t stolen the carving in the first place, nobody would’ve gotten so het up over the documents and he probably could’ve altered them without anyone noticing. It’s not like Martinez was about to turn him in for selling stolen goods, either.
Whatever. Nancy offers to go chase Taylor down at his “country house”, while Briscoe and the cops search Taylor’s gallery for the carving. Sure, send the 18-year-old girl after the criminal while all the grown men poke around an empty art gallery. Why can’t any of the adults in this book do their jobs?
Anyway, luckily Taylor’s country house is only like forty minutes away. Because when you buy a second house, you want it to be within commuting distance of your regular house and not like, somewhere remote where you can relax or anything. The house is empty, but Nancy notes that Taylor must have left in a hurry, because his laptop is still on. Hell yeah:
100 Mhz CPU and 8 MB of RAM! All yours for the low price of $3k (or $7k if you want to upgrade to 32 MB of RAM so you can run Secrets Can Kill).
Luckily computers didn’t have passwords in 1995 either, so all Nancy has to do is wake the laptop up, and she can see that Taylor was browsing flights out of DC. They race to the airport and run straight to the gate because you could do that in 1995. Good times. They catch Taylor just as he’s boarding and blah blah they have to stop him getting on the plane but then the carving isn’t in Taylor’s luggage and oh no he’s going to get away BUT WAIT Nancy realizes he’s wearing cowboy boots! This is suspicious because she’s never seen him wearing cowboy boots before! (You met the guy like three days ago, Nancy; you don’t know what he does in his free time.) She tackles Taylor and twists the heel off one of the boots, revealing the carving.
(Love when cowboy boots are an integral twist to a book, btw.)
Detective Briscoe runs up and is like, “Oh cool, mystery solved.” He takes Taylor to the police station and lets Nancy do the honor of questioning him: “You solved it. You ask the questions.” I’m not sure that’s how police interrogations work.
Taylor also totally ignores his Miranda rights (seriously, I hope no impressionable teen girls had to tangle with the cops after reading this book, because no one exercises their right to silence or an attorney) so that we can tie up the mystery in the next three pages: After Henrik busted him, he decided to steal the carving and resell it privately to some rich person who doesn’t care about provenance. He left the scarlet hand notes and planted the cinnabar in Riggs’s office to pin suspicion on him. He also drugged Nancy at the Mayan party because she was getting too close to figuring him out. Again, I fail to see why he even stole the carving in the first place. I feel like it would’ve been easier to fix the provenance documents when no one was looking and then just gaslight Henrik into thinking they were right all along. (Also he apparently mailed the original, incorrect copies to New York so no one would find them? Why didn’t he just burn them? They’re not real anyway. Jeez, I’d be a way better criminal mastermind than Taylor.)
Anyway, Susan gives the Pacal carving to Alejandro to take back to Mexico. Before he departs, Alejandro gives Nancy a necklace. Once again, I ask the same question I did during the game: is Alejandro hitting on us?
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