Easy Marks

by Carolyn Keene

  “Are you suggesting that she’s a crook?” Nancy asked.

  “I didn’t say that,” Walter said quickly. “There’s nothing illegal about selling someone something he doesn’t need. But it’s not very principled, either. I may as well tell you that I’m interviewing other people who can keep the computer system going. As soon as I’ve found someone, Dana MacCauley is going to be out in the cold.”

  Nancy frowned. “Do you think she has any idea of the way you feel?”

  “I’m sure she does,” he said. “I haven’t made any secret of my dissatisfaction.”

  As she and the headmaster moved along the walk to the door, Nancy’s thoughts raced. Dana must know more about the computer system than anyone. If she knew that her company was about to run into serious financial trouble, she might be frantic to accumulate extra cash.

  Could she and Phyllis have dreamt up the grade-changing racket together? That would explain Dana’s touchiness concerning Phyllis’s involvement in setting up the computer system. Maybe their motive wasn’t just the money. Maybe they hoped to involve Walter Friedbinder in a scandal, a scandal that would cost him his job. Both women had made it clear that they thought Phyllis should have been chosen as the new head. Did they also think she might be chosen as Walter’s replacement, if he were out of the way?

  “I’ll leave you now, Nancy,” said Walter, breaking into her thoughts. “Good luck with your work.”

  The headmaster continued down the hall toward his office, and Nancy went up to the second floor. Victor was waiting outside the learning lab, leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets.

  “Hi, Teach,” he said, straightening up. He flashed his handsome smile.

  Nancy rolled her eyes. “Were you able to calm Kim down?” she asked. “I’m beginning to think it’s not safe to be seen with you.”

  “Forgive me, O exalted one!” he wailed. “I have offended you!”

  Nancy couldn’t help but laugh. “I do hope you explained what really happened.”

  “Oh, I explained,” he told Nancy. “I don’t think she heard a word I said, though. She just kept saying she was going to get even with us for everything.”

  Nancy was puzzled. Kim had seen her and Victor together only twice, for a total of about twenty minutes. Why was she so upset? “Everything? Like what?” Nancy asked.

  “Beats me,” Victor said with a shrug. “All I can say is, Kim is getting to be a very big drag. I wouldn’t be surprised if she—”

  The bell down the hall started to ring and drowned out the rest of his sentence. When it stopped, he said, “I’d better run. I am enrolled in school here, and I don’t want to get kicked out. I’ll look for you after school. Maybe we can go back to the Roost for a hot fudge sundae.”

  He walked away quickly, leaving Nancy staring thoughtfully after him. Was Victor getting a little too fond of her? Keeping an eye on him because he was one of her chief suspects was one thing, but playing with his emotions was something else. She had told him about Ned, but he didn’t seem to care.

  She would just have to watch her step with Victor. For a start, she was not going to be around after school for him to find. And the next time they met, she was going to be sure to find a way to work Ned’s name into the conversation.

  Nancy unlocked the learning lab, turned on the lights, and checked her watch. She still had three or four minutes before her next student. The computer terminal caught her eye, and she walked over to it, switched it on, and typed in her password. She had a message in her mailbox.

  She called it to the screen, expecting an announcement of an upcoming Glee Club concert or a raffle to raise money for the volleyball team.

  Instead, these words appeared: Snoops and spies get hurt, Nancy Drew. Go home before you get erased—for good.

  Chapter

  Seven

  HER HEART POUNDING, Nancy stared at the monitor screen. She wasn’t imagining the message. It was still there. She leaned closer to study the transmission information at the top of the E-mail message. She knew that password—IW443!

  And the time of transmission was—Startled, Nancy rechecked her watch. The message had been entered only minutes before, Recalling what Dana MacCauley had shown her, she saved the message, then refused it. Returning message to terminal 29, came the message on the screen.

  In a flash Nancy took her printout from her bag. “Twenty-nine, twenty-nine,” she muttered, running her finger down the list. “There it is!” The message had been sent from the terminal in the newspaper office. If she hurried, she might catch its sender.

  At the door, she bumped into the girl who was arriving for her tutoring session. “Sorry,” Nancy gasped. “Have a seat, I’ll be right back!”

  As she dashed down the corridor, everyone turned to stare at her. When she reached the Academician office, she found it locked and the frosted glass in the upper half of the door dark. Nancy shook the knob a few times.

  “Are you looking for someone?” a voice asked.

  Startled, Nancy whirled around to find Randi, the girl she had met the day before.

  “Oh, yes,” Nancy replied, thinking fast. “A student I’m supposed to tutor asked me to meet her in this room, and she hasn’t shown up. Has anyone been here that you know of?”

  “She wanted to meet you at the Academician office?” Randi repeated in a dubious tone. She unlocked the office door, flipped on the lights, and motioned Nancy in.

  Nancy quickly took in the whole office. Crowded as it was with furniture, there wouldn’t be anyplace for anyone to hide, she saw at once.

  “I was in the office myself until ten minutes ago, and there wasn’t anyone else here,” Randi told her. “Are you sure you’re not mistaken?”

  Before Nancy could answer, Randi continued, “I know I’ve seen you before. You look so familiar. I know! I’ve seen your picture in the newspaper! Who are you? What are you doing here?”

  Nancy felt her heart sink. She couldn’t let her cover be broken—not now! “As I told you yesterday, I just started working in the tutoring program,” she replied in a rush. “You might have seen my picture because I just won the River Heights art contest. Second prize.”

  “Maybe that was it,” said Randi suspiciously. Then she shrugged. “Hey, why don’t I interview you about the program now?”

  As the girl reached for a pad and pencil, Nancy hastily said, “I’m not the one you want. I just started, I’m only temporary, and I don’t know that much about it. Why don’t you interview Ms. Hathaway or Mr. Friedbinder?”

  Randi wrinkled her nose. “They’re not actually working in the tutoring program; you are. I want to get a ground-level view of it.”

  “Then the people you ought to talk to—” Suddenly Nancy clapped her hand over her mouth. “Uh-oh, I just remembered, I left someone in the learning lab waiting for a tutoring session!”

  Randi was staring at her as if she had lost her mind. Too late Nancy remembered that she’d just told Randi she was meeting a student there at the newspaper office. Luckily, all Randi said was, “Okay, but I still want that interview with you, Nancy Drew.”

  Shooting Randi an apologetic smile, Nancy hurried back down the hall.

  Suddenly she gasped and stopped short so quickly a guy with a big stack of books under one arm, obviously late to class, walked straight into her. She helped him pick up his books, thinking about what Randi had said.

  Randi had called her Nancy Drew—not Nancy Stevens. Somehow she’d uncovered Nancy’s real identity. Randi wasn’t the only one who had addressed her by her full name in the last hour, either. The author of that threatening message had done the same. Walter Friedbinder and Sally Lane were supposed to be the only ones who knew her real name, but if Randi knew, others might, too.

  Nancy groaned. It was going to be even more difficult to track down the grade-changer now.

  When she reached the learning lab, it was empty. The girl must have gotten impatient and left. Nancy turned on the computer and checked h
er E-mail. No new messages had come in for her.

  “Hey, there,” a familiar voice called from the doorway. “Sharpening your computer skills?”

  Nancy turned to see Victor stroll into the room. “Something like that,” Nancy answered him. “Listen, will you excuse me? I have to make a phone call.”

  Victor’s face fell, but all he said was, “Sure. I just sneaked out of class to say hi. Catch you later.”

  Once he was gone, Nancy dialed the number of the People’s Federal Bank. Harrison Lane came on the line at once.

  “Nancy!” he said. “I was just going to call you. Eight hundred dollars that was deposited yesterday in I. Wynn’s account was withdrawn from the Archer Avenue bank machine at eight-thirty this morning.”

  “Before school hours,” Nancy noted. “Mr. Lane, is there any way you can program the bank’s computer to alert you the next time somebody tries to make a withdrawal or deposit from that account?”

  “That shouldn’t be too hard,” the banker said. “We’ll just put a flag on the account number, with instructions to telephone me when it pops up. We can also tell the computer to take extra time to process any transaction for that account. That way, we’ll have enough time to react to the alarm.”

  “Great,” said Nancy. “Can you set it up right away? I don’t want our crook to decide to pull out of this scheme before we have a chance to catch whoever it is.”

  “Neither do I,” Lane agreed. “I’ll flag that account the moment we get off the phone.”

  “Thanks.” As she hung up, Nancy’s stomach growled, reminding her that it was almost time for lunch.

  • • •

  Nancy’s heart sank when she entered the anteroom separating Phyllis Hathaway’s and Walter’s offices. She’d rushed there after grabbing a quick bowl of soup in the cafeteria, hoping to find Phyllis out to lunch, but apparently the assistant head was eating in that day and was hunched over some papers on her desk. As Nancy watched, Phyllis took a bite from a sandwich, then turned her attention back to her work.

  Stepping out of Phyllis’s sight, Nancy leaned against Ms. Arletti’s empty desk to think. She had to get the woman out of there so she could search her office.

  As she thought, Nancy became aware of Walter Friedbinder’s voice from inside his office. “Sure, Mel. We’ll talk about it at the staff meeting before the board arrives. . . . Fine. See you then.”

  Nancy stood up straight as an idea came to her. A second later she sneaked inside Walter’s office and closed the door behind her.

  “What—?” he began when he saw her, but she silenced him by putting a finger to her lips. His gaze was openly dubious, but he waited while Nancy explained in a whisper what she wanted to do.

  “So I call Phyllis in here for an emergency meeting, giving you a chance to search her office?” Walter’s intense blue eyes took on a pleased glint. “I’m sure I can handle that.”

  “Great,” said Nancy, smiling at him. “I’ll wait out in the hallway until I hear her go into your office. If you can keep her here for ten minutes, that ought to be long enough.”

  A few minutes later Nancy slipped into the assistant head’s office and stood with her back to the closed door. In a flash she scanned the room—two filing cabinets, desk, the computer station, a bookcase, and a coatrack with a raincoat on it. She decided to start with Phyllis’s desk, which was against the wall to the left of the door.

  Sitting in the desk chair, Nancy glanced through the papers on the desktop, next to the half-eaten tunafish sandwich. They were nothing but notes on an upcoming parents’ visiting day. Next she pulled open the top desk drawer and sifted through a jumble of paper clips, rubber bands, and pens.

  Nancy saw nothing that would link Phyllis to I. Wynn or the scam. Nor did she find any clues as to what “plan” Phyllis had meant during her phone conversation with Dana that Nancy had overheard.

  A few times Nancy paused to listen but heard only the distant hum of Phyllis and Walter talking in the other office.

  Next she tried the file. It was locked, but she easily jimmied it open using the lock-picking kit she always kept in her purse. What is this? she thought, her gaze lighting on a binder that was tucked in among the files. The spine was labeled “Computer Password Logbook.”

  Great! Snatching up the binder, she opened it to the first page. It was a chronological listing of the computer passwords. Next to each password was the name of the student to whom it was assigned and the date the password was issued. All of the entries on the page were made in a neat, flowing script, probably Phyllis’s.

  Nancy’s head snapped up as she heard a door open and then Phyllis’s voice, loud and clear. “Nonsense, Walter, I have the file in my office. It’ll just take a second to grab it.”

  Nancy’s breath caught in her throat, and she slammed the book shut. She could hear Walter objecting, but Phyllis wasn’t paying any attention. Her heels clicked on the floor as she crossed the wooden anteroom.

  Nancy checked frantically for somewhere to hide, but there was nothing—no closet, no enclosed space. Unless she could suddenly disappear, Phyllis was going to catch her red-handed!

  Chapter

  Eight

  NANCY DIDN’T HAVE TIME to think about what to do. Holding the binder to her chest, she slid the file drawer shut, then rushed over to squat in the corner behind the door, on the far side of the desk. A split second later Phyllis’s clicking heels stopped outside the door and the knob was turned.

  Nancy held her breath as the door swung in toward her. She stayed low so Phyllis wouldn’t see her silhouette through the frosted glass in the top half of the door. Please leave the door open, Nancy begged silently, and stay on the other side of the room!

  She heard a drawer being opened and some papers being rustled over by the desk. Would Phyllis notice the unlocked file drawer or the missing binder?

  Every muscle in Nancy’s body tensed as Phyllis’s shoes clacked back toward Nancy. The assistant head paused at the door a moment, then the door was closed and she was gone.

  Nancy’s knees went weak, and she let out a long breath. Phew! I’d better work fast and get out of here in case she comes back again! she thought. Reopening the binder, Nancy flipped excitedly to the last page of entries.

  There at the end was her own password, NS-444. Just above it was the listing for IW443. The name listed was—Nancy squinted, trying to make out the letters. The initials I and W were clear, but the rest of the name was scrawled illegibly.

  Hmm. She compared the handwriting of the IW443 entry to the others. It seemed to be not as distinct but similar otherwise. Had Phyllis tried to disguise her writing so that no one could link her to the fake entry? Or was someone else trying, not quite successfully, to imitate her handwriting so that Phyllis would be implicated in the scam?

  Nancy shook her head. She needed concrete evidence. Flipping back to the first page, Nancy ran her finger down the listings until she found Phyllis’s and Victor’s passwords and copied them down. As an afterthought, she wrote down Randi’s password, too. Then she replaced the binder in the drawer and began looking through the other files.

  It seemed to be dull stuff for the most part—budget information, personnel files, minutes from staff meetings, curriculum files. There was a fat computer file and a manual for the school’s system, but Nancy didn’t see how reading that would help solve her case.

  She glanced at her watch. She’d been there for almost ten minutes now! Phyllis had to be returning any second. Shutting the drawer, Nancy moved quickly over to the filing cabinets, opening them one by one. There was no time to examine them thoroughly, but she didn’t see anything unusual or incriminating at first glance.

  With a sigh, Nancy closed the last drawer of the file cabinets and scrutinized the office to make sure everything was the same as when she’d entered. Then, after cracking open the door to check the common waiting room to make sure it was empty, Nancy slipped back through the empty anteroom and into the hall.


  Well, she hadn’t hit the jackpot, as she’d hoped, but at least she had those passwords now. Maybe they would lead to some valuable discoveries.

  • • •

  Nancy sat at her bedroom desk and pounded on the papers in front of her. “I need a break here!” she muttered into the air.

  It was Sunday evening. She’d spent all of Saturday afternoon at Sally Lane’s, using her computer. After Sally had shown her how to access the Brewster computer with her PC, Nancy had gone to work. Using the passwords she’d copied from Phyllis’s log, she accessed first Phyllis’s, then Victor’s, then Randi’s files.

  She’d called up each and every file, checking for anything that would point to any of them as her suspect. By the time she was done, she’d read enough administrative memos, computer programs, and newspaper stories to last a lifetime! But she hadn’t found a single thing to incriminate any of the three.

  That day she’d given herself a break and had gone shopping at the River Heights Mall with her best friends, George Fayne and Bess Marvin. But her mind was not on shopping. She kept trying to make sense of the evidence she had so far: the threatening message that had been sent from the newspaper room; Randi’s knowledge of her real name; Phyllis’s hush-hush phone call with Dana; Victor’s abilities to doctor off-limits files; the use of her real name on the threatening message. . . .

  Depending on how she read the clues, any one of her suspects could be guilty. Nancy had laid out all her notes and papers on her desk, waiting for something to strike her, some pattern she’d overlooked.

  A sheet of paper drifted to the floor and caught her eye. Bending to retrieve it, Nancy saw that it was the funny version of Walter Friedbinder’s biography that Victor had concocted. She picked up the original biography and compared the two. It was amazing how easily he had turned a serious press release into a joke.