“We’re not sure exactly when Cindy came into the picture,” Frank said. “Maybe Firestein chose her for his accomplice because she was Jake’s girlfriend for a while—or maybe it was because she had such bad grades and he knew he could tempt her into breaking the law for a passing mark.”
“In any case,” Joe said, “she did a lot of his dirty work.”
“But she didn’t do the Securitech break-in,” Con said.
“No,” Frank replied. “She was with us at the police station when it happened. That really threw us for a while. We had been pretty convinced that she was behind the break-ins and the vandalism.”
“And she was, most of the time,” Joe said. “We think that the first time the Securitech system went off it was just a dry run for Firestein. He wanted to make sure his plan would work, so he turned the system off for a few minutes and sent Cindy out to cause some chaos—just to see if she’d be caught.”
“So, she chose her mother’s office to vandalize,” Con said.
Joe and Frank nodded.
“Boy,” Con said, leaning back in his chair, “I wonder what went wrong in that family.”
“Who knows?” Frank said.
“Personally, I think Cindy’s just a bad egg,” Joe said. “I mean, look at the way she bopped poor Jake on the head. There was no need for that; she’s just mean.”
“She went after you two as well,” Con said.
Frank nodded. “Good thing, too. If she’d stuck to the plan, we might not have figured it out and Jake might be rotting in a cell somewhere.”
“When she was trying to let the air out of our tires, she was waiting for Firestein,” Joe said. “He had time to break in to Securitech, but for his plan to work, he needed someone else to tidy up. So, we figure he stashed the computers in her car near the scene.”
“That way, if anyone stopped him for any reason, they wouldn’t find anything on him,” Frank said. “All he had to hide was one small computer disc. Then, while Cindy was supposed to dump the computers, Firestein was copying the disc.”
“Then he went to Jake’s apartment—which isn’t covered by Securitech cameras, and planted the disc in Jake’s storage locker,” Joe said. “Jake was his fall guy because the police had to catch someone for the crime. If they didn’t, Securitech would figure out that their code had been pirated a lot more quickly than they would have otherwise. But with the disc recovered so soon after the robbery, they’d relax, and Firestein could go about his dirty business.”
“We found a key to Jake’s apartment on Cindy’s key ring when we arrested her,” Con said.
“That makes sense,” Frank said. “She must have gotten it from him when they were dating. And it probably explains what Cindy dropped the first time we met her—in the darkened hall outside Jake’s apartment—those keys. Probably Firestein got a copy from her as well so he could frame Jake.”
“Professor Firestein was pretty desperate to get the code at that point, I’d guess,” Joe said. “He needed it fast because he knew that the system would be easiest to break into the first few days it was running. No one expects a computer system to work perfectly right away, so his tampering would be more difficult to detect.”
“Whether Cindy went to the apartment to pressure Jake or to try to steal some computer code for Firestein because Jake was behind in his assignment, we can’t say,” Frank said. “Either way, both of them nearly got away with it.”
Con sat up and took a sip of his coffee. “Well, I’m just glad you Hardys were on the case,” he said. “I’m not saying that the police wouldn’t have figured it out eventually—we cops are not as dumb as you think—but . . .”
“I’m just glad that we caught the real criminals and cleared Jake,” Joe said.
Frank yawned. “I think, at this point, we’ve earned some well-deserved rest.”
He and Joe got up and headed toward the door. “See you soon, Officer Riley.”
Con Riley leaned back in his chair and scratched his head.
• • •
On Monday evening the Hardys and their parents decided to eat out. The brothers chose Java John’s, and the four of them met Jamal, Vanessa, and Jake there, too.
“Let me get this right,” Jake said. “Professor Firestein was using me to steal Securitech’s computer code so he could control their security system. Then he broke into the company, stole their master disc, and planted it in my storage locker, to make it look like I’d done it.”
“Right,” Joe and Frank said simultaneously.
“And Cindy was in on it,” Jake said, shaking his head. “Man, that’s hard to take. I think I feel my headache coming back. She hit me with those bottles, too?”
“Let’s face it, Jake,” Vanessa said, smiling, “you have no taste in women.”
“That must be why you’re my friend,” Jake said.
The Hardys, Jamal, and Vanessa all laughed. Even Jake smiled a bit.
“You’ll all be happy to know,” Fenton Hardy said, “that Mrs. Hardy and I have spent a lot of time on the phone today.”
“We’ve talked to a lot of politicians,” Laura Hardy said, “and they assured us that the Securitech system will be turned off—at least until the city has time to rethink its position.”
Fenton took a sip of water and said, “Despite catching some criminals—and despite the clever use our sons put it to—the Securitech system was obviously very vulnerable to abuse.”
“Well, I’m pretty tired of being an unwitting TV star,” Frank said.
“Fifteen minutes of fame enough for you, Frank?” Jamal asked.
“More than enough,” Frank replied. “What about you, Joe?”
“I’ll be more than happy to see Big Brother closed down for good,” Joe said. “After all, cameras may not lie—but sometimes they don’t tell the whole truth, either.”
The Spy That Never Lies Page 10
