A Real Nancy Drew Mystery

When I was 21, I worked at and lived in an historic inn near Lake Michigan. I loved the inn. It had a sweeping front porch, like this.



And it had two bikes for guests to check out and use, like this.



On my second day behind the VERY OLD front desk, I saw one of those bicycles crash into said sweeping porch, whilst transporting a woman who appeared to be in her mid-fifties, but cruised, crashed, and dismounted like she was roughly 10.

She was wearing paint-spattered coveralls and ran all the way up the front steps, across the sweeping porch and practically directly into the VERY OLD desk behind which I stood, staring at her with dumbfounded curiosity.

She signed the bike back in, grinned at me, turned, ran through the grand and VERY OLD lobby, up the first flight of VERY TINY and floral-carpet-covered stairs, and from the clammering heard overhead, apparently down the entire VERY LONG, second-floor hallway. And then a door slammed. A door that looked like this.



And required a key that looked like this.



Seriously.

So I spun the book log around and read the name. Nancy Drew was scribbled hurriedly across the last entry slot.

I grinned. How mysterious? So I climbed the stairs to investigate and I looked exactly like this.



Except I didn't have the auburn hair, or the cool magnifying glass, or the dapper, apparently asexual boyfriend named Ned to follow me around and take interest in my every whim for an entire series. But I did look inquisitive. And intrigued. And I looked. . . down the entire way due to the afore mentioned VERY TINY (and VERY OLD) FLORALLY-COVERED STEPS—a mystery unto themselves.

And when I reached the end of the second-floor hallway, I heard singing coming from the last guest room, and banging. I knew that the room was listed as vacant, as were all the rooms in the inn that day. So I knocked. And she answered, still grinning, and singing.

She held a paintbrush in her hand and as I looked further into the room, I saw that she had begun to paint a star on the wall behind the bed. I panicked. My first time left alone and in charge, and I'd let a crazy woman in to graffiti the century-old walls, all whilst masquerading as a teen master sleuth.

In an effort to keep you all from falling off the edge of your chairs so early in the workweek, I will jump to the end of the story.

Turns out it really was Nancy Drew. Nancy Swan Drew, the artist. And she had been hired to paint a guest room that would from then on be known as the 'Nancy Drew' room. And she is crazy, in all the good ways. And she has a magnificent spirit. And she has the heart of a ten-year-old and the wisdom of twenty ten-year-olds. And she taught me many things using sparse and sage words that summer. And I thank her and hope she is well.