“It might have,” Nancy told her, “except that Mr. Friedbinder knows who I am and why I’m at Brewster. How did you get involved in this racket?”
“There was a message in my E-mail,” Kim explained. “Whoever sent it knew I couldn’t afford to pay to have my grades changed, but he said I could improve my transcript if I ran a few errands. He also said that if I didn’t agree, my transcript could end up looking a lot worse than it really is. So I opened the account wearing this dumb wig. And he tells me when to pick up the money.”
“Why didn’t you go straight to the headmaster and tell him about it?” Nancy asked.
Kim shook her head sharply. “I couldn’t bring myself to turn Victor in. I’m really hung up on the guy.”
“Victor’s not the only one who could be responsible,” Nancy told Kim. “If I’m going to catch the culprit, I need to know how the money transfer works. I know you have a bank card for that account, but how do you know when to use it, and what happens to the cash?”
“I get an E-mail message,” Kim replied. “In code. If it says M five, I know I should withdraw five hundred dollars on Monday. T ten means one thousand dollars on Tuesday, and so on. It’s usually after or before school, but today the message said to go at lunchtime. I’m missing math right now.”
“How do you deliver the money?” Nancy asked.
“I put the bills in a brown envelope and leave it in one of the faculty mailboxes before school.”
“What?” Nancy exclaimed, straightening up. “Which one?”
Kim shrugged. “It’s not labeled. It’s on the bottom row, on the side near the door.”
Nancy frowned and stared into space. Then she said, “I’m going to need your help to put the person behind this out of business. How about it?”
Kim nodded hesitantly.
“Great,” Nancy continued. “Now, here’s what I have in mind. I want you to deliver the money you picked up today.”
“You do?” said Kim incredulously.
“Yes, I do,” Nancy replied. “And then I want you to stay home from school for the next two days. Think you can play sick for that long?”
“No problem,” Kim said. “No problem at all.”
• • •
At eight forty-five the next morning Nancy was standing near the coffee urn in the faculty lounge, paging through a news magazine. She glanced up just as Kim came in, stuck a brown envelope into a mailbox on the bottom row, and scurried out.
More and more teachers were drifting in, checking their mailboxes, and getting coffee. Each time one of them blocked Nancy’s view of the mailboxes, her anxiety level soared. She longed to move closer, but she didn’t dare. The person behind the racket knew Nancy’s real reason for being at Brewster—the threatening message in her E-mail proved that. If she was seen too near the mailboxes, the culprit would sense a trap and leave the envelope with the money where it was.
Nancy straightened up and felt her pulse beat faster. Dana has just walked into the room and paused near the mailboxes. Was this the pickup?
But then she turned and headed straight for the coffee urn. The envelope was still in place. “Hi, Nancy,” Dana greeted her. “How are you getting along with the computer system?”
“So far, so good,” Nancy replied. “You’re here early. Is there a problem?”
Dana smiled. “No, no. Not this time. I have an appointment near here in a little while, and I thought I’d stop by to make sure the computer beast is behaving itself.”
Nancy smiled back distractedly. She was very aware that Dana was blocking her view of the mailboxes. She made a half-step to the right, but Dana moved in the same direction and began asking her about tutoring. She wanted to know if Nancy had thought of using the computer system.
If she could have, Nancy would have pushed Dana aside. She had to see that mailbox.
Slowly Nancy angled to the left. Again, Dana adjusted her position so that she was blocking Nancy’s view. This is unbelievable! Nancy said to herself. Was Dana moving on purpose? It didn’t seem so because she kept talking excitedly about the applications of the computer in tutoring.
Nancy was about to explain that she wasn’t in charge of the program, when Friedbinder entered and paused to survey the room. When he saw Dana and Nancy together, he scowled and turned his back on them. A moment later Phyllis came in. She, too, noticed Dana and Nancy. She gave Nancy a quick nod, then turned to Victor, who had appeared at the door to speak with her.
Dana, her back to the door, missed all this. As the nine o’clock bell rang, she said, “Oh dear, I’d better run. We’ll talk again about coming up with an interactive approach to tutoring. I really think it’s the way to go.”
Heading for the door, Nancy looked at the mailboxes and drew in a quick breath. The brown envelope was gone!
Chapter
Eleven
NANCY CONTINUED in the direction of the door, fighting down an impulse to break into a run. How could she have let someone make off with the envelope, right under her nose!
Pausing outside the door, Nancy peered up and down the hall. To her left she saw a girl in jeans and a T-shirt, with books under her arm. To her right was Phyllis Hathaway, just going into the administration offices. She was too far away to see if she had anything in her hand.
The trap had failed, that was obvious. The question was, why? Was it an accident that Dana had blocked Nancy’s view at the crucial moment, or had she done it on purpose?
If it had been a coincidence, then it was just a piece of bad luck. If not, it meant that Dana and Phyllis were guilty and that they knew Nancy was trying to trap them. The only way they could have known that was if Kim had told them.
Nancy shook her head. Stop jumping to conclusions, Drew, she told herself. Walter Fried-binder and Victor had also been near the mailboxes. Either of them could have made off with the envelope, too. She would simply have to come up with a new plan for trapping the guilty party.
“Hi, there,” someone called. Nancy turned and saw Randi coming down the hall toward her.
“I looked for you yesterday,” Randi continued. “I still want to do that interview. Are you free at noon?”
Nancy decided it was time to be direct. “Randi, yesterday you called me Nancy Drew. How did you know my name?” She watched Randi’s face carefully. The threatening message had been sent from one of the terminals in the newspaper office after all. That fact alone put Randi in a very select group of potential suspects.
Randi rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on! It’s not such a big deal. I was just goofing on you yesterday. Can you blame me, after that art show story you gave me? Of course I know who you are. I’m a journalist, right? I read the River Heights papers every day. I’ve seen your name and picture.”
“Have you told this to anyone else?” asked Nancy.
“No,” replied Randi. “A good journalist doesn’t go around blabbing about her biggest story before she’s even written it. So tell me, what are you really doing here?”
“I can’t tell you. But I will when it’s over,” Nancy promised. “As long as you keep quiet about it now.”
“Deal,” Randi agreed.
Nancy groaned inwardly as she walked away. A reporter on the trail of a hot scoop was the last thing she needed. She just hoped Randi kept her word.
For the next couple of hours Nancy was too busy helping bewildered sophomores understand the mysteries of past participles to give any thought to her case. When she ushered her last student out the door, she returned to her desk to do some quiet thinking.
Could she eliminate Randi as a suspect? She was inclined to say yes. Yet one thing still bothered her. Randi had been the only one near the newspaper office when the threatening message was sent.
“Hey, I can practically see the wheels going around!” Victor said, interrupting her thoughts. He was standing in the doorway, grinning at her. “Do you know you have steam coming out of your ears?”
Nancy gave a laugh. “Hi, Victor,” she said
, in a tone of resignation.
“Wow, what enthusiasm!” he replied, falling into the chair across from her. “You looked a lot more lively when I saw you down in the faculty lounge. Maybe you need to drink more coffee.”
“Maybe I need to do less tutoring,” retorted Nancy. “By the way, what were you doing in the faculty lounge?”
“Uh-oh, she’s starting to pull rank on me,” he teased. “I had a right to be there. I was picking up something for one of my teachers.”
Nancy sat up straighten “Oh? What? For whom?”
He opened his eyes wide. “ ‘For whom,’ ” he repeated. “Golly, if I keep hanging around with you, can I learn to talk like that? Or am I a hopeless case?”
“You’re the one who said it, not me,” Nancy replied, with mock sternness. “But seriously, how about answering my question?”
“About the package? Sure. Mr. Farley, my physics teacher, ordered some reprints of an article, and he asked me to get them from his mailbox and bring them to the lab for him. Why?”
Victor’s story could easily be checked, so easily that Nancy doubted he would have told it if it weren’t true. Still, that didn’t mean that the reprints were the only thing he had picked up in the mailroom.
“You didn’t notice a brown envelope, about this big, did you?” she asked, indicating the size with her hands. “Someone was supposed to leave it for me, but it hasn’t turned up.”
“Nope,” he replied, shaking his head. “But I wasn’t really paying attention. I was too busy plotting my next exploit.”
Nancy raised an eyebrow. “And what’s that?”
“Just imagine,” he said, leaning closer. “Tomorrow morning, at the beginning of first period, a cartoon of the headmaster’s face appears on the screen of every terminal in the school.”
“Victor—” Nancy began.
He held up his hand. “Wait, I’m not done. The eyes look one way, then the other. Then, just when everybody is getting spooked, he puts his thumbs in his ears, wiggles his fingers, sticks out his tongue, and makes a really rude noise!”
Nancy laughed in spite of herself. “You won’t really do it, will you?” she asked. “You’d get yourself expelled!”
“I know,” he said with a sigh. “I have to face it—I’m chicken.”
Nancy sat back and studied him a moment. She couldn’t think of anyone who made her laugh as often as Victor did. She was growing to like him and had to admit that she found him very attractive. But if he was guilty, Nancy couldn’t afford to be blinded by his charm.
She’d been hoping not to have to wade through stacks of paper records. But now she could see she’d have to do it. Obviously, she couldn’t cross-check everyone’s records. With four hundred students at Brewster, each taking five courses a year and being graded four times in each course, that would make—eight thousand data points to check. But she could start by cross-checking Victor’s and Kim’s grades, those of her tutoring students, and then a few other students at random.
Making an excuse to Victor, Nancy went downstairs to the school office.
“Hi, Ms. Arletti,” she said to the secretary. “Is the headmaster free?”
In response, Walter Friedbinder appeared in his office door and said, “Hello, Nancy. What can I do for you?”
Nancy explained that she wanted to check the school records of some students against their teachers’ grade rosters. “I’d like the files on Victor Paredes, Kim Forster, and a few others.”
“Victor Paredes, huh?” said Friedbinder. “His name keeps coming up, doesn’t it? His record and Kim’s are on the computer. You can use the one here in the corner. But digging out the grade rosters is another matter. They should be in the file room, shouldn’t they, Ms. Arletti?” He gestured to a door behind the secretary’s desk.
“That’s right,” Ms. Arletti replied. “But they’re in a locked file cabinet, along with other confidential papers. It might take me a while to hunt up the key.”
“Why don’t you come back after lunch?” the headmaster suggested. “I’ll make sure we’re ready for you by then.”
“Here’s a key to the outer door, in case I’m out,” Ms. Arletti added. “I’ll put the file cabinet key in an envelope with your name on it and leave it here on my desk.”
“Thanks,” Nancy told her. As she turned to go, she noticed the door to Phyllis Hathaway’s office was slightly ajar. Was she inside, listening?
Nancy went back to the learning lab and worked for twenty minutes, but soon her impatience got the better of her. Surely Ms. Arletti must have found the file cabinet key by now. Nancy didn’t want to wait until after lunch.
Downstairs, the office door was locked. Nancy found the key she had been given and went in. The envelope with her name was right where Ms. Arletti had said it would be. Nancy took it, went into the file room, and turned on the overhead light.
The room was lined with a dozen gray, four-drawer file cabinets and some shelves piled high with papers. Nancy realized that she had no idea which one she wanted. Was she going to have to try the key in each of them, one by one?
Then she gave a little snort of laughter. There was no point in trying the key unless the cabinet was locked! She tried the top drawer of the nearest cabinet. It opened easily. She shut it and tried the next, which also opened. She kept going until, on the fifth try, she found one that didn’t open. Maybe this was the one.
She tore open the envelope and took out the little key. She was about to fit it in the lock when a noise caught her attention—the sound of footsteps retreating down the hall outside the office. Someone was running away from the office. Then came a whoof! A yellow glare suddenly filled the room.
Nancy whirled and gasped in terror. Flames were shooting up from all around the open doorway, charring the paint on the doorframe. In a flash the flames swooped across the floor, setting stacks of papers on fire.
Already the doorway was completely blocked, and the flames were advancing toward Nancy. Her body tensed as she frantically searched the small, windowless room.
She was trapped!
Chapter
Twelve
THE TINY ROOM was filling with black, acrid smoke. Nancy’s eyes were stinging, and when she tried to take in a breath, the overheated air seared her lungs.
Struggling to remain calm, she buried her nose and mouth in the crook of her elbow and got down on the floor. The air was a little cooler and less smoky down there, but she knew that wouldn’t last. If she didn’t find a way out, and very quickly, she was going to die.
Somewhere outside, a fire bell was clamoring. Help was probably on its way by now, but she doubted it could arrive in time to save her. Should she try to run through the flames? She shivered with horror at the idea. There was no way to do that without being burned, but at least she would have a chance. By staying in the file room, she had no chance at all.
Why wasn’t the sprinkler system working? Nancy raised her eyes to the ceiling and spotted the manual turn-on valve. She didn’t hesitate or even take a moment to think or plan. Drawing in a deep breath, Nancy held it, and sprang to her feet.
Under the turn-on valve was a tall steel bookcase. Nancy hurled some of the books onto the floor.
Her chest felt as though a loop of barbed wire were tightening around it. She began climbing the bookcase. The hot metal of the shelves seared her hands, but she ignored the pain. It was happening to someone else, in a distant place.
The higher she got, the thicker the suffocating smoke became. Finally, teetering on the top of the case, her foot braced against a lower shelf, Nancy reached up to the sprinkler valve.
Come on! Come on! she thought desperately as the stubborn valve refused to move. A glob of purple darkness floated in front of Nancy’s eyes. A deep nausea rose up inside her. Nancy, you can’t pass out, she urged herself. Hang in there!
With a last, desperate twist, Nancy gave the valve all she had. Suddenly bursts of water sprayed down from the small sprinkler heads mounted in
the ceiling.
In minutes the flames were dying and Nancy could see the doorway clearly. Coughing and feeling sick, she staggered across the smoky office, collapsing into the arms of a helmeted firefighter, who was just arriving.
• • •
When Nancy opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was a clear sky dotted with fluffy white clouds. She blinked, then turned her head. She was lying on a stretcher in the school parking lot, just outside the open door of an ambulance. On one side of her was an alert paramedic with an oxygen tank in his hand. On the other was Victor, more serious than she had ever seen him.
“Am I okay?” she croaked in a husky voice that surprised her. “The fire’s out?”
“I was going to ask you that,” Victor replied. “And don’t worry about the fire. You had it out so fast they’re going to make us go back to class soon.”
Nancy sent questioning messages to various parts of her body. Once she had received the answers she told him, “My hands hurt. And it aches when I breathe. Everything else seems to be all right.”
“We’ll be taking you to the hospital in a few minutes for examination and treatment,” the paramedic said. “Do you feel up to answering a few questions from the fire marshal before we go?”
“Sure.” Nancy started to sit up, then thought better of it when the parking lot started swirling around her. She would have to stay lying down for now.
The fire marshal was a man of about fifty with a deeply lined face and kind brown eyes. He squatted down next to the stretcher and asked her to tell him what had happened. “Then it was you who turned on the sprinklers. That was quick thinking, young lady. That probably saved your life, as well as kept the fire from doing serious damage. We’re not sure yet why the heat sensors in the sprinkler system failed. Brewster may be in for some heavy fines for having faulty safety equipment.”