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Last time on Nancy Drew and the Scarlet Pimpernel, the only crime committed was the hiring of a poor unpaid intern. Aside from that, we learned Sonny Joon is a dingus and that there is a big problem with people smuggling artifacts out of Mexico, which I am totally positive will never come up again for any reason.

Aside from that nothing much has happened, so let's get Nancy back to her office and start working on the to-do list, hm?

First, scratch #3 off the list. Scritchscratch, crossed out. Second, we've got an order number for that bubble wrap/other supplies. Get on the phone, dial out... Yes, place an order, yes, we have an account number... Yes, that account number IS for the Beech Hill Museum, this is Nancy Drew, the new assistant curator...

Apparently he's sent the "previous four invoices" to a collection's agency and he 100% refuses to do any further business with the museum. Then he declares Beech Hill will "never see another PACKING PEANUT out of this company!" and briskly hangs up.

So that went well. Uh, Henrik? Henrik refuses to talk about WHY the museum is so in debt, but he ceremonally absolves us of ordering more supplies. "If Joanna wants something shipped, she can wrap it in a plastic garbage bag for all I care." he huffs before returning to work.

Okay, tensions running at least lukewarm at the museum, I see. Let's scritch-scratch that off the list too. We do manage to get Henrik talking about glyphs, and Nancy seems let down that there's no such thing as a "dictionary of Mayan glyphs" she can look at. No, three different glyphs might all mean "sunshine", but with subtle changes that mean different things in context... Mayan glyph translation is still all about long research and a certain element of guesswork.

"Lucky for me, really. Otherwise I'd be out of a job." Henrik muses. We let him get back to it and instead face off with To-Do List Problem #1: Reassembling that ancient pottery.

Or we would, except there's a number of pieces missing. Right... maybe we can find those in the museum somewhere. Ah well. Also in the lab are a Ham Radio (happily we know all about THOSE from Old Clock, Nancy probably remembers her adventure in the 1930s quite fondly) and something called the Spectro X Archaeo-Analyzer, which Henrik informs us costs much more than Nancy does (WE'RE UNPAID, DAMNIT) and we should never touch it without permission.

Fine by me, although the mere fact it EXISTS means we're going to have to poke it eventually. So from there it's out of the lab and into Shipping/Recieving. In a box marked "Sonny's Stuff", we find a 3.5" floppy marked "SONNY'S STUFF", and also a piece of the pot we need to assemble. ...seriously? Sonny, you are either the best or worst museum assistant ever. I kind of wonder if he's the protag of a DIFFERENT adventure series. A wackier, Lucasartsier one.

Also in S/R:
A padlocked box marked "#117-04".
Another locked box, number-code locked this time, marked "BH-1113".
And a third, also padlocked, "BH-1403".
A few big sheets of bubble wrap.
The "Convermatic Auto-Narrator", which is tied to the thing where we have to match a recorded narration to the exhibit it's playing at.
A packing list, maybe?

That list implies that "1113" is a shipment of jade, but I don't know about the others. Nancy really has no good reason to start breaking into boxes in the shipping room, either. Not YET anyway.

I plan to start scouring the museum, except the first place I go after getting out of Shipping is the big pyramid that's a centerpoint of the museum display, and that's where Sonny stashed the other broken pot piece. So it's time to assemble that.

It's a 3D jigsaw with some rotating and such, but that's not really that big a deal. Scratchity-scratch off the to-do list, and that's all but numbers 5 and 6 done! This may be a REALLY SHORT GAME. Back in the lobby there's a big-ass display of headphones. We stick the little handle we found on the cabinet they're in and open that up, then spend the next ... ooh, I'd estimate about an hour running from display to display and then back to the shipping room to play with the Auto-Narrator.

While I'm out there, I bump into Sinclair.

He's aware Nancy is a detective, and he's relieved she's here... but Nancy explains she's not really ON a case right now. She's just working! Sinclair brushes her off: She may not be on a case, but she WILL be. The museum's in terrible danger! When she's done with her to-do list, she MUST come see him at his office!

Maybe not such a short game after all.

From there we just walk around, checking the audio recordings to make sure they match up...

...and learn a little something about the Mayans in the process. Did you know they will break your umbrellas? It's true. Once that's crossed off, all we have left to do is "Reorder the Mayan counting exhibit", and that can't possibly--

--errm. Okay, we're missing a tile (I've found one missing tile, we need one more), and also I have no idea what the crap a LEERING HEAD represents numerically speaking. Speaking of numbers, though, the little clock in the corner of the screen shows it's like 10 PM. We can probably knock off for the evening. Back to Nancy's hotel room, where Nancy keeps a running log about the game's progress...

...and where I can slot in that disk Sonny Joon made. I hope Nancy's laptop doesn't come down with a virus. Sonny's password-locked the disk, though. What would this loonbucket use as a password? What does he actually care about?

Uhm.
"ALIENS" ?
Wrong password, try again...
"SONNYJ" ?
Wrong password, try again...

...you're kidding me.

"KOKO"? Wrong.
"KOKO KRINGLES"...

*sunglasses* We're in. HACKED. On this disk Sonny has... let's see. His thoughts on the Maya/Alien connection (meh), some notes on a minigame we've yet to play called the Temple Quiz...

...stuff on the Convomatic Narrator, which we've already done... and boom, Sonny Joon's GUIDE TO MAYAN NUMBERS which is... super-long and complex. Mayan numbers are EITHER represented by a line and a series of dots, OR by a picture of a God. Included is a blurb about what Sonny personally feels each Mayan God looks like. Choice descriptions include "THREE (ox) looks like a doctor" and "ELEVEN (buluk) is frothing at the mouth and has three curly ovals on his head."

Let's tackle that stuff later. Right now, since we're in the hotel room, it's time for a Bess & George call!

Bess and George are deep in a game of Go Fish when Nancy interrupts...
(Bess: "I'm winning!"
George: "Don't believe a word she says, Nancy. I beat her senseless last hand!")

...and Nancy rattles on to them for a long time about the Maya, the monolith...

(Bess: "How big is this monolith thing? Like a refrigerator?"
Nancy: "Sure. BIGFOOT'S refrigerator".)

...and just all the stuff going on at the museum.
(George: "It's kind of a relief, Nancy. We were sure your brain was going to dry up and blow away without a mystery to solve."
Bess: "But it sounds like your brain's got plenty to chew on. You're sounding very, uh, curatorial."
Nancy: "Right now the WHOLE MAYA CULTURE is the mystery to ME. I'm having a great time learning about their language, their numbers, their ancient kings..."
Bess: "Speaking of kings, this card game's not over yet."
George: "I hope you have plenty of BAIT for your FISHING POLE, dear cousin. EN GUARDE.")

... I do love these three. Anyway, next time we'll scour the museum for that one tile, work out the mysteries of the Mayan numbering system, and see just what Taylor Sinclair wants to talk to Nancy about.