Nancy Drew Girl Detective #22: Dressed to Steal

In a previous case, Nancy and the gang met a fashion designed named Alicia. She's now a hot star and opening a new shop in River Heights. Scoop, her Chicago store, was such a hit that she picked this random small town for Scoop 2. Nancy finds out that the store will have a secret early opening with big sales on Friday, and Bess can't wait to find some bargains.

The sale goes worse than anyone thought possible. Someone throws a rock through the plate glass window that causes everyone to freak out and run. A young girl gets trampled in the commotion. Since this is River Heights, the Chief of Police himself comes out to shut down the opening. He tells them that they can come back the next day but that they will all get numbers that determine when they can enter the store. Alicia is practically in tears because she never expected something like this to happen.

Nancy learns that a pair of earrings went missing too. Natalie, the editor in chief of Threads, a super popular fashion magazine, borrowed the earrings and some other stuff for a shoot and never returned anything. Her newest assistant is Deirdre, this girl all our girls hate. She's briefly a suspect but not really in the book. Natalie is a suspect though.

Before the store can open again, there's another act of vandalism. Someone breaks in, smashes a bunch of stuff, and leaves threatening messages on the walls. All the messages are about how Alicia will regret using fur in her designs. Alicia tells Nancy that she only uses coyote fur and that she works with a guy who owns a coyote farm right outside of town. He somehow found a way to remove the fur without hurting the animals.

Once the shop does open, a bunch of women come in and demand their money back. They all bought the coyote fur jackets, and they all found threatening messages in the pockets. All the messages feature the signature of some animal rights group. Nancy and Ned check it out and find nothing but do find the leader, Bettina, at the coyote farm. She narrowly gets attacked by a pack of coyotes before Nancy saves her. Though she claims she isn't behind the vandalism, she thinks whoever did it was smart and a real activist.

Nancy eventually finds the missing earrings in Natalie's desk drawer at her office but learns from Deirdre that Natalie has no idea the jewelry is officially missing. She sent Alicia an email to ask if she could keep them for a few days to wear to an awards dinner. Luckily, Alicia thought of another suspect: Jean-Georges.

See, way back in the day, Alicia was a fashion model who lived with this chick Campbell and dated this guy Jean-Georges. After they broke up, he started dating Campbell. After they married, he released a line of fashions that look an awful lot like Alicia's designs. He later claimed that he came up with the idea first and that she stole from him.

Nancy and Bess visit his shop and find that his designs are all pretty boring. While Alicia uses sequins and bright colors, his stuff looks like office wear. They follow him and his wife but decide to go boating on Lake Michigan when he does nothing but act like a huge ass. That's good luck because he and his wife also went boating and their boat capsized. He's so happy when the girls save them that he gives them new clothing from his line.

After learning that the girl injured in the store has a dad who is a lawyer and likes suing people and finding his card in the store, Nancy wonders if he might be a suspect. She follows him and accidentally gets trapped in an elevator with him. When she pushes him too far, he rails about Alicia almost “killing” his baby girl and how she will pay. For some reason though, Nancy figures he's a blow hard and not a real threat.

Cut to the big fashion awards dinner. Nancy winds up sitting close to Jean-Georges and receives a dessert with a butterfly on top. No one else gets the same thing. A waiter admits that someone left him a note and asked him to put a butterfly on the cake. The note has feminine handwriting but no real clues. After the awards, Natalie gives back the earrings, which takes her off the suspect list.

Alicia knows that her designs were all hers and has the proof on her laptop. When Nancy pushes her to check, she realizes that someone deleted all her original designs. The same person also stole the back up copies she saved with the dates. They then head over to see Jean-Georges and sneak into his apartment.

Though they think he's not home, Campbell is asleep and wakes up to them snooping around. She calls the cops to report trespassers and tells them that they're going to jail. She also threatens them with a bottle of nail polish remover and throws it at them before breaking down and admitting the truth. Campbell stole Alicia's designs when they were roommates and gave them to Jean-Georges, telling him that she drew them all. He fell in love with her designs and then fell in love with her.

When he and Alicia got into it over the designs, Campbell realized that Alicia could prove she stole the designs from her. She not only caused the accident at the store but stole all the stuff from her too. Campbell agrees to tell them all this on the condition that Alicia not go to the police. In the end, Alicia treats Nancy and her friends to new dresses and gives Ned a special present to give to Nancy: a pair of butterfly earrings.

*The book opens with George complaining to Nancy about how she hates the dress she wore to some banquet for Carson and how she wishes she dressed better. Not only does it come out of left field because George never cared about clothes before, but it's stupid because it doesn't really pop up again.

*As I primarily wear yoga pants and tee shirts or tank tops, I know absolutely nothing about fashion. That said, is it really possible to take fur from an animal without killing it? All I can picture is Alicia super gluing a bunch of hair to her coats...

*Bettina brings wire cutters and plans on letting the coyotes loose because it's not “fair” to keep wild animals locked up. When Nancy points out that they will wreak havoc on the ecosystem, Bettina claims that they would only kill nuisance animals and would know when to stop. Uh, okay. She also believes that a roving pack of coyotes, the same ones who almost killed her, would have stopped before doing any harm when they realized she was there to save them.

*I realize that getting hit with nail polish remover would not be pleasant, but Nancy acts like Campbell has a bomb. She literally pushes Alicia to the ground and tells her that the “poison” would blind her. Suddenly, I'm not loving the idea of having nail polish remover in my house...

*Ned not only works for his parents' newspaper in this book but is also an intern at Threads.

*Deirdre keeps sneaking around and writing down notes because she thinks she can solve the case before Nancy. She even tells her that once she uncovers the truth, the chief will hire her for all his mysterious cases instead of Nancy. Um, does she realize that Nancy never gets paid for her work?