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.
Carolyn Keene, The Thirteenth Pearl
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