Carolyn Keene - Easy Marks

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, NS444. 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.

As her eyes flicked from one version to the other, it occurred to her that Friedbinder’s real biography was pretty amazing in itself. He had received both a master’s degree and a doctorate in his first five years after college and taught at the same time.

“Wow!” Nancy said softly. “That’s pretty impressive.”

After getting his doctorate, Friedbinder had become dean of students at a small private school. While there he had increased both the percentage of graduates going on to four-year colleges and the number of acceptances at highly prestigious colleges.

No wonder Lane and the other trustees decided to offer Friedbinder the job of headmaster at Brewster. Many people thought the best indication of a school’s success was the list of colleges its graduates attended. A private school that wasn’t seen as successful would stop attracting students and eventually go broke. So Friedbinder’s obvious skill in that area must have been an important plus, at least in the eyes of the board.

Nancy noticed the title of Friedbinder’s Ph.D. dissertation: “The Development of Creative Problem-Solving Skills.” The press release said he’d gotten it published. The dissertation sounded as if it might help Nancy in her work, so she decided to ask him about borrowing a copy.

Nancy saw Friedbinder at eight-thirty on Monday morning in the school hallway. His manner was brusque and businesslike. “I need to speak to you privately, Ms. Stevens. Right away,” he said.

As she followed him into his office, Nancy wondered why she had become Ms. Stevens, instead of Nancy. She soon found out.

“When I came in this morning,” said the headmaster, rustling through the papers on his desk, “I found this note in my mailbox.” He held it up.

“What does it say?” asked Nancy.

“I’ll read it to you, word for word,” Friedbinder replied. He took a pair of glasses from his coat pocket, adjusted them on his nose, and read:

“Good grades are big business at Brewster. And the people raking in the dough let a computer do their dirty work. Want your grade changed? Talk to Victor Paredes and Nancy Stevens.”

Chapter Nine

The first thing Nancy noted was the use of her alias: Nancy Stevens. Whoever wrote the note probably wasn’t the same person who had sent her the threatening message on Friday.

The next thing that struck her was that the note concerned grade changing. Its author knew about the scam.

“That’s very interesting,” Nancy said, taking a seat. “Do you mind if I have a look at it?”

Walter Friedbinder passed it to her. The accusing message was printed in blue felt-tip ink on ordinary lined loose-leaf paper. The large block letters indicated to Nancy that the writer had apparently tried to disguise his or her handwriting. Nancy noticed one peculiarity, though. The small letter k had a closed loop for the upper arm, so that it looked like a small capital R with a line sticking up from it. Nancy was sure she would recognize it if she came across it again.