The Thirteenth Pearl

by Carolyn Keene

  As the police led Blaine away, Nancy asked her

  father, “What are you going to do, Dad? Can you still

  help the clients who were scared into accepting those

  settlements?”

  “I'm afraid it's too late for that,” he replied, “but I'm

  going to bring a suit against Blaine and John Brown

  Junior for theft and fraud. Maybe we can put together

  a class-action suit against them as well. At the very

  least, they're going to be disbarred. They might even

  go to jail. And despite Ms. Warner's wishes, I'm afraid

  Williams and Brown won't be able to back her up at all,

  or their firm will be destroyed. This will rock their

  reputation as it is.”

  Mr. Drew looked at the three young people and

  said, “Nancy, you can fill me in on this case—on our

  way to the hospital. We need to make sure Henry and

  Bess here weren't injured too badly.

  “Honestly, Nancy,” he added with a grin, “you sure

  know how to make a summer temp job interesting.”

  16. Summer Vacation—At Last!

  The next day at the office Ms. Hanson, Henry, Byron,

  and Mr. Drew gathered to discuss the case with Nancy

  and Bess. Henry's leg was in a cast, and he leaned

  jauntily on his crutches.

  “How did you figure out what Blaine was doing?”

  Ms. Hanson asked.

  “A lot of it was just plain luck,” Nancy said. “My

  father had expressed his concern about these cases

  settling so early. And I knew something was up when I

  found that E-mail log file and saw that the dates on

  those transmissions were on the same days the cases

  were first received,” she explained. “And then I

  overheard some conversations at Williams and Brown

  that gave me a possible motive. When I called Bess to

  ask for her help in tracing the E-mail, Blaine must have

  been eavesdropping and heard us plan to meet at the

  Sacred Cow restaurant.”

  “Then Blaine and John Brown Junior sat behind us,

  and overheard us plan to go on-line and look for a

  computer expert,” Bess continued. “So when I posted a

  note on the local computer users' bulletin board,

  Blaine left us a reply that same night, pretending to be

  a computer expert called SEEK.”

  “SEEK. So that's what you were talking about at the

  Cyber Space that night,” Byron said.

  “You didn't help matters, always sneaking on-line to

  do your poetry stuff,” Nancy said.

  Bess turned to Byron. “You know, you left a disk

  with one of your poems on it in the library last night. I

  really liked it.”

  “You did?” Byron said, blushing and smiling at Bess.

  “Well, you and Nancy have to come to my poetry

  reading at the Cyber Space tonight. Everybody else,

  too.” He added, after a pause, “Did you guys really

  suspect me?”

  “Both you and Henry were suspects for a while,”

  Nancy admitted.

  “I know, I know,” Henry said. “Finding that list of

  the clients I wrote down must have made you

  suspicious. But I was suspicious, too. I just wanted to

  figure out what was going on here.”

  “Which I appreciate,” Mr. Drew said, smiling at his

  paralegal.

  “And we wouldn't have gotten the proof we needed

  if it weren't for your computer expertise,” Nancy said

  generously.

  “Yeah,” Henry said, grimacing, “but if you hadn't

  pointed me in the right direction I would've done just

  what Blaine wanted, and blamed Ms. Hanson for

  everything.”

  “Henry, how could you think I'd do anything like

  that?” Ms. Hanson asked. “I must say, I'm a bit

  surprised and hurt.”

  “I'm sorry,” Henry said. “I just followed the clues I

  found. I didn't think about the fact that you can use

  someone else's password and log-on. And I'm supposed

  to be the computer whiz around here.” He looked at

  Bess and Nancy and blushed slightly. “If it weren't for

  Nancy and Bess, I wouldn't have figured anything out.”

  “So after Blaine left you this note, pretending to be a

  computer expert called SEEK, then what happened?”

  Ms. Hanson asked.

  “We had an on-line chat with SEEK,” Bess

  explained, “and arranged to meet at the Cyber Space

  Café.”

  “Blaine must have been on-line as SEEK in her own

  office, while we were in the library,” Nancy said.

  “That's kind of creepy,” Mr. Drew said. “This whole

  thing is like a spy movie.”

  “I've learned a lot about the Internet from this case,”

  Nancy went on. “On-line, you can pretend to be

  anyone—and anywhere.”

  “So the next night,” Bess continued, “when Nancy

  and I went to meet SEEK at the Cyber Space, I had to

  run home for my on-line chat group, and when Nancy

  left the café alone, Blaine attacked her.”

  “You should have told me what was going on then,”

  Nancy's father scolded. “You could have been in real

  danger.”

  “I told you about my suspicions,” Nancy said. “But I

  needed proof. I had to show a solid connection

  between someone here and someone at Williams and

  Brown before I did anything. Anyway, when she

  jumped me, Blaine dropped a disk she was carrying

  with files from the Harris case. That made us pretty

  sure it was her, but we decided to stake out the office

  the next day to see if we could catch her in the act.”

  “But I caught you in the act, instead,” Henry said

  with a grin.

  “And it's a good thing you did,” Bess said. “We all

  worked together and found the notes from the old case

  files and the mail-server information which proves that

  Blaine was E-mailing John Brown Junior at Williams

  and Brown.”

  “Their reputation's going to suffer for this kind of

  illegal activity, you can bet on it,” Ms. Hanson said. “I

  don't care if they claim they didn't know what John

  Brown Junior was up to. They profited from his and

  Blaine's scheme.”

  “That doesn't help us,” Henry said. “Mr. Drew

  doesn't handle the kind of insurance cases they do.”

  “I'm not going after Williams and Brown for their

  business,” Mr. Drew said. “I've got enough of my own.

  And I don't have anything against the firm—just John

  Brown Junior for doing illegal things to advance his

  own career. We'll get Blaine's banking records and

  follow the money trail.”

  “You can match up deposits with the dates and

  dollar amounts we found on that disk in Blaine's

  office,” Nancy said. “I'm just glad it's all over. I'm really

  looking forward to going sailing with George.”

  “I think I'll invite myself along, if that's okay,” Bess

  said.

  “Fine with me,” Nancy said.

  “Good,” Bess replied. “I deserve a little R and R at

  sea. Sailing isn't hard work, is it?” she added, smiling at

 
her friend.

  “Not at all,” Byron said, gazing at Bess. “It's very

  romantic.”

  “Send me a poem while I'm away,” Bess said with a

  grin.

  “You'd make a good lawyer,” Henry said to Nancy.

  “A lot of legal research is just snooping around.”

  “I prefer to call it investigating,” Nancy said. She

  and Bess laughed together, and the others joined in.