032 High Marks for Malice

by Carolyn Keene

  Nancy unlocked the door to the room, pushed it open—and stopped short. The blinds were closed, the curtains drawn over them, but even in the near-darkness she could see that the room was in shambles. Clothes were strewn all over. Books and papers littered the floor. Even Cass’s bed had been ripped apart.

  Stepping into the room, Nancy felt for the light switch and flipped it. Nothing happened. Moving to a table lamp beside the couch, she tried to turn it on. Again nothing. She peered down through the hole in the lamp shade. The bulb was broken. The other lamp had met the same fate. Someone had been very busy.

  A tiny sound alerted Nancy that someone was still there. She turned slowly, her eyes scanning the shadows and the farthest corners of the room. Suddenly the closet door flew open and a figure dashed for the door of the room.

  Nancy threw herself into the intruder. The impact slammed the person against the wall. Stunned, the figure collapsed in a heap.

  Watching for any sudden movement, Nancy opened the door wider, using the light from the hall to get a better look at her subject.

  It was Maria!

  Chapter

  Fourteen

  MARIA BEGAN TO CRY, deep, wrenching sobs that shook her small body. Nancy stared at her, astonished. Even though Maria was a suspect, Nancy simply found it hard to believe that she was capable of hurting anyone.

  “I didn’t do this, I swear,” Maria gulped, then rolled onto her side, curled up.

  Nancy moved around the room, trying lights until she found one that had survived the vandalism. The devastation made her angry, but she checked her temper. Now she had to talk to Maria and get some answers. Nancy sat down beside her. “It’s all right, Maria. Stop crying.”

  “It’s not all right!” Maria pulled herself upright. “Everything’s all wrong! Everything’s awful!”

  Nancy found some tissues and crammed them into Maria’s hand. “Tell me about it. Maybe I can help. You say you didn’t do this.”

  “I’d never! I sneaked in the back way to see you. When I got here, the door was open and it was—like this.” She looked around helplessly. “I started to leave, but someone was coming up the steps. I didn’t want to be seen, so I came in and closed the door. Then I heard the key in the lock and I was stuck, so I hid.”

  Nancy gave Maria a long, searching look. Her instincts told her that the girl was being truthful—this time. “Okay,” she said. “I believe you. Why did you want to see me?”

  Maria blew her nose. “I wanted to—to apologize. That accident with the steam pipe was meant for me, not you. I was given specific orders to keep you out of the basement. If there was any reason to go down there, I was to do it, not you.”

  “Jim Pickering told you that?” Nancy leaned forward intently.

  “No, no. The computer at my desk told me. I hate it!”

  Bewildered, Nancy sat back on her heels. “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do I. It’s like some awful, evil monster, ordering me around. I don’t know who’s sending the messages on it, but it says if I don’t do what it tells me to, or if I try to quit my job, I’ll be the next one to have an accident. I’ve been so scared, especially after what happened in the basement today.”

  Nancy took her hand. “You have every right to be afraid. Look, Maria, you’ve got to trust me. Tell me everything’s that’s happened.”

  Maria must have needed to unburden herself to someone, because she began to talk. It wasn’t long before Nancy knew it was vital that the others hear her story, too.

  The phone rang, startling them both. It was Ned, insisting she come down immediately. “Cass is with me. We’ve got good news!” he said happily. “Hurry up, we’re going to celebrate!”

  “Be right there.” Nancy hung up and turned to Maria. “Ned and Cass are downstairs. I think what you started to tell me is connected to what happened to Line. We need your help, Maria. Would you be willing to talk to them, too?”

  Maria was silent for a moment. “You’re Ned’s girlfriend, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  Sighing, Maria got up. “I knew he was too nice not to have a girlfriend somewhere. Do you really think I can help?”

  “I’m sure of it,” Nancy said.

  “Then let’s go. I’m tired of being pushed around by that computer, and I’m tired of being scared.”

  “Great,” Nancy said, and led her downstairs.

  • • •

  Ned’s news was indeed heartening. “Hi, Maria! I’m glad you’re here. Cass stopped by the hospital early. Line’s out of his coma! He’s just asleep now.”

  “Dr. Garrison says he probably won’t wake up for a while,” Cass exclaimed, “and he has a long way to go, but it looks as if he’ll pull through just fine.”

  “Oh, I’m so glad!” Maria said, getting in the back of the car with Cass.

  “That’s terrific!” Nancy said, but she was already thinking ahead—and she was worried. Once Line was awake, he could name names and blow the whistle on the whole scheme—whatever it was. Someone would almost surely try to kill him again!

  “Look, guys, I’m sorry to throw cold water on the celebration,” Nancy said, “but Line’s in more danger than ever now. If he’s just asleep, all we have are hours to figure things out—not days.”

  Ned gave her a worried look. “You’re right, but maybe we should discuss this later.” He jerked his thumb toward the backseat.

  “We can talk in front of Maria,” Nancy assured him. “In fact, what she has to tell us may give us some answers now.”

  At her suggestion, they went to Gianelli’s again. Nancy recounted the events of her day. “Your turn,” she said to Maria, and gave her a smile of encouragement. “From the beginning.”

  “Well, I’m a whiz at program design,” Maria began shyly. “Everybody knows it. I’d been working in the computer lab for a couple of months when Mr. Pickering said there was a possibility the computer network for the students might have to be shut down. Some kids had figured out how to break into the faculty and administration network.”

  “Did they really?” Cass asked.

  “Mr. Pickering said unless they could come up with a better way to hide sensitive information from the students, our whole system would be dismantled. I would be out of a job.”

  “So someone came up with a solution?” Ned asked.

  “I did, for one. I constructed a new language and designed a program that would set up files and hide them.” Nancy and Ned exchanged a startled glance. “No one would even know the files were part of the network, much less be able to get into them. But they didn’t use it.”

  “That’s crazy!” Cass said. “Why not?”

  “They found another way. I put my program on a diskette and showed Mr. Pickering how it worked. But a week later he gave it back. He said they wouldn’t need it, that the problem had been solved. And I would have one new task to perform. Any time someone tried to get into sensitive files, an alarm would go off on the computer at my desk.”

  “What good would that do?” Nancy asked.

  “Well, it alerts me to what’s happening. All I have to do is hit two particular letters on my keyboard. That tells the mainframe to trace the location of the computer trying to open the file. If the location isn’t on the okay list, the system shuts down.”

  “So the new protection seemed to do the job and things went back to normal?” Nancy asked.

  “Until this past Thanksgiving. That’s when Doc showed up—I told you about that yesterday.” She hesitated. “What I didn’t tell you was that he showed me a printout of a program and asked if I knew anything about it. It was my program, the one I’d made up for Mr. Pickering!”

  Nancy felt her pulse begin to race. “Did you explain?” she asked.

  “Of course. He hadn’t been able to get it to work. I described what it was supposed to do, and he said it was a dynamite program. But he wouldn’t tell me where the printout had come from. I didn’t even have one. I’d never printed ou
t the program!”

  “And then?” Ned said, looking baffled.

  “That next night he told me he’d take my shift for me. He knew I had a test coming up the next day. I left him there. The next morning he was dead.”

  Because he had the answer, Nancy thought.

  Maria swallowed. “Then, the evening after his memorial service, Line asked me to switch shifts with him so he could work at night. I agreed. But I came back for a book the night he started. He was at the computer with the printout Doc had had. When I asked what he was doing with it, he said”—she paused, her eyes frightened—“he said he was avenging a friend’s death!”

  “Doc’s,” Nancy said grimly.

  “I didn’t understand. I mean, how could my program have anything to do with Doc’s suicide? I asked—not letting on that it was my work; I was getting scared by then—but Line said the less I knew the better. So I went right to Pickering the next day and asked if he had made a copy of my program.”

  Nancy abandoned her slice of pizza. “What did he say?”

  “He said he wouldn’t know how to copy a diskette. Then he admitted that it had never left his desk drawer. He said by the time I gave it to him, the problem was solved, but he didn’t want to hurt my feelings.”

  “And then?” Nancy coached her.

  “I started playing around on the computer—just checking, really—and parts of my program popped onto the screen. It was on the student network with a few changes, but it was mine! I came back that night to talk to Line about it, but he wasn’t there.”

  “That was the night Line had his accident?” Nancy asked.

  “Right. And when I came back last night—I’m working a double shift because of Line—there was a message on my computer telling me to mind my own business and follow orders or I’d have an accident, too.”

  “What orders?” Ned questioned.

  Her chin began to quiver, “To find out why y’all were really here. Today’s message was to go to the spa and keep an eye on you, Nancy. Under no circumstances was I supposed to let you go to the basement. That pipe was meant for me.”

  “But why?” Cass asked. “You were following orders.”

  “Yes, but she knows too much now,” Nancy said. “She knows her program—with changes—is on the mainframe. I think Doc discovered it first, then Line. How do the changes affect it?”

  “I was trying to run the program to find out, when the first message popped up telling me to mind my own business or else.”

  “We have to figure out how it’s being used,” Nancy said. “Do you think you could do that? I’m pretty sure it’s the key to everything.”

  “If I could get a good look at the changes, I might be able to,” Maria answered.

  Ned smiled. “We should be able to take care of that. Here.” Reaching into the inside pocket of his coat, he pulled out a roll of papers. “I had them reduced, so they’d fit on notebook-size paper. Easier to carry.” He handed them to Maria.

  “This is it, my program, changes and all!” Maria exclaimed. “Where’d you get these?”

  “From Line, who got them from Doc,” Nancy said. “See what you can do with them, okay?”

  Maria’s eyes widened with alarm. Then, lowering her gaze, she began to study the printouts.

  “I have a new curve to throw at you, Nan,” Ned said softly, so that Maria wouldn’t be disturbed. “When I dropped copies of the printout at Marty’s, he remembered a box Doc had asked him to keep. Our visit reminded him he had it. There were printouts Doc had run of certain graduates from 1970 on. Bladinsburg’s name was on it.”

  “On a list of graduates?” Nancy exclaimed. “But—”

  “There were almost fifty names, two or three in each year,” Ned interrupted. “And none of them are listed in Marty’s alumni directory.”

  Nancy sat back, her mind working overtime. “I don’t get it. Okay, Doc saw this Bladinsburg in the flesh. But can we be sure the others really exist?”

  “Oh, they exist,” Ned assured her. “I checked them out in Who’s Who and a few other business reference books. Most of them were listed.”

  “Great! What did you find out about them?”

  “They’re very successful, all in top executive positions. And their biographical sketches all say they graduated from Basson.”

  “Then why aren’t they in the yearbooks or alumni directories?” Nancy asked. “What do these guys have in common?”

  “Camera shy?” Cass offered.

  “They would still be listed, even if their pictures weren’t in the yearbooks,” Nancy said.

  “Let’s go,” Maria said abruptly, standing up. “I think I can get it to work.” In a flash she was out the door, on her way to the car.

  The others paid the check, then caught up with her in front of the barber shop where Ned had parked. As Nancy waited for him to unlock the doors, her eyes strayed to the interior of the shop. She stared, intrigued, at a man in the barber’s chair. One side of his face sported a blond beard. The barber had begun to shave off the other side.

  “That’s it!” Nancy exclaimed. “Cass, has Mr. Pickering ever worn a beard?”

  “He did until a couple of days ago,” Cass said.

  “That’s what I noticed!” Nancy said, turning excitedly to Ned. “His cheeks and chin are lighter than the rest of his face. It’s because they’ve been hidden under a beard!”

  “And the man you wrestled with at Line’s had a beard,” Ned responded, his eyes gleaming.

  “Pickering’s looking more and more suspicious,” Nancy said, thinking aloud. “He approaches Maria about a program no one would be able to get into. Then after she’s come up with it, he tells her it wasn’t used, but it was—to do what, we don’t know yet.”

  “We will soon, if it takes me all night,” Maria said grimly.

  “Three people discover Maria’s program is on the mainframe,” Nancy went on. “Number one is killed. Number two was supposed to die—he was lucky. Number three—”

  “Me!” Maria said, her eyes blazing.

  “Could have died today, too. Your program is at the heart of this whole thing, Maria,” Nancy said. “And Jim Pickering is in this up to his clean-shaven cheeks!”

  Chapter

  Fifteen

  OKAY, I AGREE that Pickering’s probably involved,” Ned said, as they drove toward the campus. “But what about motive, method, and opportunity?”

  “He’s had all the opportunity in the world,” Nancy pointed out. “The Fish Tank’s under his control. He can come and go at any time. As for method, if he lied to Maria about her program being used, he may have been lying about not knowing anything about computers.”

  Cass shook her head. “I hate to admit it, but I think he’s been telling the truth about that. He’s one of those people with a phobia about computers.

  “Well, we know he’s not working alone; his accomplice must be an expert. Somebody made those changes and installed that program on the mainframe.”

  “What about motive?” Ned asked.

  “When we find out what the program does now, we’ll have the motive,” Nancy said. “Are you sure Pickering’s gone home?” she asked Maria.

  “He leaves at eight,” Maria assured her. “The night supervisor takes over for him then.”

  To their surprise, they found Marty Chan at the circulation desk, the printout Ned had left with him hidden in a binder.

  He ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. “Sorry,” he said. “I haven’t gotten anywhere. Whoever wrote this is a genius.”

  “Meet the genius,” Nancy said, nodding toward Maria.

  “You?” Marty’s mouth dropped open. Then he grinned. “Bested by my own student. I must be a better teacher than I thought.”

  Maria turned pink. “You are. The only reason you were stumped is because somebody made some changes. But I think I’ve figured out what to do about them.”

  Marty got up and surrendered the chair to her with a sweeping bow. Maria t
ook his place, saying, “Anything you put in a computer has to have a name, like the name on a file folder.”

  “That makes sense,” Nancy said. “So when you want to work on something in that folder, you ask for it by name.”

  “Right,” Maria said, her fingers flying over the keyboard as she talked. “But my program says to the computer: here’s a file I want you to hide for me. It’s so secret I’m not even going to put a name on it and I’m giving you the instructions on how to hide it in a language only you and I will understand.”

  “Wow!” Nancy said. “You had to teach the language to the computer?”

  “Uh-huh. Whoever changed my program told the computer, here’s the stuff to put in the secret files. Now hide the files and”—Maria held up a finger—“hide all the commands that make the program work, so no one will be able to make a printout of them.”

  “And somehow Doc managed to get it to print anyway,” Nancy said. “I see.”

  “Even I don’t know how he did it,” Maria said. “But I do remember which commands are mine and which aren’t. So what I’ve just done is erase all the ones that someone else put in. Getting to the files, much less opening them, will be tricky.”

  “You can do it,” Nancy said confidently. “We’re all betting on you.”

  Maria said, “Cross your fingers,” then typed a few lines, erased a few more. Then she gasped. “Look!” A blank transcript form had appeared on the screen.

  “That’s like a report card, isn’t it?” Nancy asked.

  “Precisely like a report card,” Marty said, and dropped to one knee beside Maria, his face pale. “Boy, is this college in trouble! That’s straight out of the registrar’s office! This means a kid could call up this form and type in any grade he wanted, maybe even change a grade already there!”

  Maria looked sick. “Nobody’s ever going to believe I didn’t sell my program to a student.”

  On a hunch, Nancy said, “Maria, fill in the form. For a name, use Andrew Bladinsburg.” She spelled it for her.

  Maria typed the name on the first line of the form. Immediately the names of classes and grades to go with them scrolled down the screen. A message at the bottom said: “Page 1 of 2.”