Deadly Doubles by Carolyn Keene

door.
    “That was a nice evening. I think I’ll check with the front desk to see if there were any phone calls while we were out,” Nancy said, heading for her own bedroom.
    She flipped on the light switch as she entered.
    Then she screamed.
     

Chapter Eight
    T HE SCREAM BROUGHT Nancy’s friends running. They froze, appalled, their eyes following the direction of Nancy’s pointing finger.
    There was a message, but it hadn’t come by phone and hadn’t been left with the front desk. It lay in the center of Nancy’s bed in the tightly locked suite.
    It was a doll, an eight-inch redheaded doll with a teenage figure, dressed in an abbreviated blue bikini. The doll’s head lolled sickeningly to one side. A red cord was knotted around the broken neck.
    A note was attached, written with a blood-red marker:
    GO HOME, SEŃORITA.
    THIS COULD BE YOU!
     
    Nancy recovered quickly and approached the bed as Bess dove for the phone.
    Bess frantically punched numbers, then spoke in a rush. “Dan! Get back up here fast!” She dropped the receiver with a clatter that made them all jump.
    “So he just happened to give me his beeper number,” Bess said with a forced smile as Nancy eyed her. “It’s a good thing he did.” She reached out toward the broken doll.
    “Don’t touch it!” Nancy jerked Bess’s hand away. “There may be fingerprints.”
    Footsteps came pounding down the corridor. “They sure didn’t waste time waiting for the elevator,” George commented, opening the door carefully with her hand wrapped in a section of her skirt so she wouldn’t leave prints.
    All at once the room was full of very stern plainclothes detectives. Dan borrowed Nancy’s small camera to take pictures as his friend Joe phoned for reinforcements. The girls weren’t allowed to touch anything in the room until a fingerprint expert had arrived. When he came, FBI agents were with him.
    “Where are we supposed to go?” Nancy demanded when the fingerprint man refused even to let her sit on the edge of the bathtub.
    “If you have any sense, you’ll go back home,” Dan told her flatly. “This is no mess for nice girls like you to be mixed up in.”
    “ Teresa’s mixed up in this mess,” Nancy replied with conviction. “I’m not leaving until she’s out of it. There has to be some way I can help her! And I’m not going home until Senator Kilpatrick has that hit list in her hands!”
    She turned to her friends. “There’s no reason you have to stay here, though. Why don’t you phone home? I’m sure Dan can find someone to take you to the airport.”
    “No way!” George said gruffly as Bess nodded loyally.
    “All for one and one for all?” Nancy whispered. “Thanks, guys.”
    “There’s one thing you are going to do, whether you like it or not,” Dan said, reaching for the phone as the fingerprint expert finished with it. “I’m under orders to protect you, so I’m moving you out of these rooms. I happen to know the government’s paid the hotel to keep the rooms on either side of Teresa’s empty,” he added as he punched the button for the hotel manager.
    Nancy was about to protest, but she stopped abruptly. That location would be perfect! Within minutes, the three detectives were helping the girls carry overnight bags up the emergency stairs.
    “No one will know you’re in here,” Dan said with satisfaction as soon as he’d checked out the new two-bedroom suite. “I told the manager we’re using these rooms for a stakeout. We’ll move the rest of your things up tomorrow. In the meantime, you can lie low.” He thumped the pillows on the living-room sofa. “And I’ll spend the night right here to make sure nobody bothers you.”
    Nancy nodded silently. She had her own plans in mind—plans that would be blown if Dan spent the night on the sofa. He’d see her leaving the suite.
    Then her brow cleared as a thought struck her. If this suite was set up like the one they’d just left . . .
    “I’d really