Easy Marks, Page 2

  Nancy paused with a plate in midair between the sink and the dishwasher. An idea had occurred to her. “You know, I might need to consult someone like her if I get in over my head in terms of computer know-how. What’s the woman’s name?”

  “Can’t tell you. Sorry, honey,” replied her father as they stacked the dishwasher together. “That’s privileged client-lawyer info.”

  “Dad!” Nancy moaned. “I can just go to the library and look it up in a newspaper.”

  Carson Drew grinned. “I was able to keep the story out of the papers. You could try, but it wouldn’t do much good.”

  “You’re a great lawyer, Dad,” Nancy told him, laughing. “Too good!”

  There was a teasing glint in his eyes as he said, “I am, aren’t I?”

  • • •

  Nancy checked her watch as she approached the front door of People’s Federal Bank—ten minutes to nine. The bank wasn’t open yet, but Nancy saw through the heavy glass doors that Harrison Lane had spotted her. Holding a large ring of keys, he opened the door from the inside and let her in.

  “I have some information for you,” Lane said in a low voice. Behind him, tellers and bank officials were getting ready to start the day. Some of them glanced at Nancy with mild curiosity, but returned to their business right away. “That account you asked about—it’s in the name of I. Wynn.”

  “I. Wynn?” Nancy repeated, breaking into a laugh. “Get it? I Win—You Lose,” she explained when she saw Lane’s questioning look. “It’s obviously a fake name, don’t you think?”

  Lane shook his head. “It’s real. We checked it against the Social Security number the person gave.”

  Suddenly Nancy remembered the initials in Sally’s message-sender’s password: I.W.! “Can I speak with the bank official who opened the account?”

  “Certainly.” Lane ushered her over to one of the customer service desks, to the left of the long tellers’ counter. A slender African-American woman in her thirties sat behind the desk. She smiled at Nancy as Harrison Lane introduced Nancy and explained what she wanted.

  “Mrs. Tillman here opened the account. I’ll let her tell you the rest,” said Lane, leaving them.

  “Do you remember what I. Wynn looked like?” Nancy asked as she settled into the chair beside the desk.

  “I certainly do. It was about ten days ago. She was a strange-looking little thing—”

  “She?” Nancy interrupted.

  Mrs. Tillman nodded. “Oh, yes. A dark-haired girl, about your age, maybe a little younger. Her skin was very pale and her hair was jet black. It looked dyed. Perhaps it was a wig.”

  “And you say she was small?” Nancy prompted.

  “Yes, very petite, and nervous. But, you know, I figured she was just a kid. It’s easy to be nervous in a big bank like this. Her information checked out—at first, anyway.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Mrs. Tillman opened the desk’s file drawer and flipped through the manila folders, pulling one out. Nancy could see the name I. Wynn written across the top. “Well, like this, for instance,” Mrs. Tillman told her. “The previous bank reference she gave was for a savings and loan company in Texas. There is such a place, but it folded a few months ago.”

  After consulting the file again, Mrs. Tillman added, “She used her Brewster Academy student ID for signature verification.”

  Nancy nodded. “Do you have an address for I. Wynn?” she asked.

  Mrs. Tillman punched some numbers into the computer terminal on her desk. “Fourteen twenty-one Sycamore,” she read off the amber writing on the screen. “She opened the account with one hundred dollars. Ninety-five of it was withdrawn from a machine two days later. A few days after that a thousand dollars was deposited in cash. That was all withdrawn the day after that.”

  Nancy looked over Mrs. Tillman’s shoulder to check the dates. The thousand dollars had been deposited the previous Tuesday—exactly when Sally said she’d made her deposit. There were three other similar deposits and withdrawals. It seemed as if Sally was not the only student the grade-changer had contacted.

  “Were all these transactions done at a cash machine?” Nancy wanted to know.

  “Two different cash machines—one located at Archer Avenue, the other at Ivy Avenue,” Mrs. Tillman confirmed.

  Both those branches were quite close to Brewster Avenue, where Brewster Academy was located, Nancy noted. “Thanks very much,” she told Mrs. Tillman.

  • • •

  Ten minutes later Nancy turned her car onto Sycamore Street and began looking for number 1421. The neighborhood was run-down and deserted. Most of the houses were faded and sagging, as if they were simply waiting for a good excuse to collapse. Scraps of paper and debris littered the branches of the scraggly bushes lining the cracked sidewalk. There were only a few cars parked along the curb, but Nancy had a feeling that few, if any, people actually lived there.

  She parked in front of the address Mrs. Tillman had given, then took a long look at the place. If the other houses on the block were neglected, this one looked flat-out abandoned. She was tempted to leave. Still, it was possible that the house held some clue to the identity of I. Wynn. She had to check it out. After taking a flashlight from the glove compartment, she got out of her car and walked up to the front door to ring the bell. No one answered.

  Nancy’s blue eyes focused on the door’s heavy padlock. Maybe she’d find an easier way in around back. Before going, she grabbed the padlock and gave it a yank, to make sure that it was locked. To her surprise, the screws that held the hasp to the doorframe pulled right out of the rotted wood. The door swung slowly in, as if inviting her to enter.

  Glancing over her shoulder to reassure herself that the street was deserted, Nancy took a quick step inside and pushed the door closed behind her. Then, fumbling with the switch on her flashlight, she started forward in the gloomy hallway.

  Suddenly, with a loud crack, the floor under her feet gave way. Nancy let out a gasp as she felt herself falling through space!

  Chapter

  Three

  INSTINCTIVELY, Nancy flung her arms out to the side. She let out a cry of pain as her hands and forearms slammed against the floorboards an instant later.

  Her arms felt as if they were about to snap in two, and the splintery edges of the broken boards were digging painfully into them through the denim of her jacket. Her legs flailed uselessly below her, but the worst pain was in her shoulders. Nancy felt as if her weight were about to pull her arms from their sockets.

  Gritting her teeth, she moved her legs carefully in every direction, groping for anything that might give her extra support, but there was nothing. If her arms slipped, she was bound to fall!

  Okay, Drew, think. What if you let yourself down and hang full length by your arms, then drop to the basement below? She glanced nervously down into the murky darkness, imagining the jumble of sharp-edged pieces of machinery or nail-studded boards she might land on. No, the only sensible way out was upward.

  Nancy tried using her arms to push herself up out of the hole, but after half a minute, she gave up. She didn’t have enough leverage.

  Looks as if I’ll have to come up with plan B, she thought. Taking a deep breath, she let it out slowly and began to pull her right knee up toward the floor. Her aching arms felt as if they couldn’t hold on much longer, but soon the toes on Nancy’s right foot were touching the underside of the floorboards. With one last effort, she turned her foot to one side and pulled it toward her. It just barely cleared the far edge of the hole.

  With a loud sigh of relief, Nancy extended her leg onto the floor and let it take some of the strain off her arms and shoulders. She rested that way for a few moments, then pulled her other leg up and rolled cautiously to one side. If there was one weak spot in the floorboards, there might be others.

  Just above her head, a little daylight filtered in through the dusty windows on either side of the front door. Nancy spotted her flashlight in a corner next
to the door. She crawled over and retrieved it, then got carefully to her feet.

  Beyond the yawning hole, the floor of the hall was thick with dust. A few pieces of old furniture kept the place from being completely empty. Nancy decided it was too dangerous to investigate the house. She’d have to find out about I. Wynn some other way.

  Nancy squinted in the sunlight as she stepped out onto the rickety front porch. For the first time she noticed a small nameplate on the side of the doorframe opposite the bell. On it, the name Ignatz Wynn was written in small, shaky handwriting. Ignatz, huh? thought Nancy. That was hardly a girl’s name. What was the story here?

  She checked the mailbox that was nailed to the porch railing, and discovered a letter. It was from the People’s Federal Bank, a bank statement from the look of it. It had been mailed only a few days earlier. Nancy put it back into the box. There was no need to read it; she’d already seen the transaction records of the account.

  A movement in the house across the street caught her eye. Someone had parted the Venetian blinds and was peering at her through the slats. In the next instant the person was gone.

  Crossing the street, Nancy knocked on the door of the house. No one answered, so she rapped harder. Slowly the door opened, just enough for Nancy to see a short, gray-haired woman in a worn housedress. “What?” the old woman snapped, gazing up at Nancy suspiciously.

  “Excuse me, but I was wondering if you could tell me something about Mr. Wynn?” Nancy asked.

  The woman’s blue eyes narrowed. “Who wants to know?”

  “I’m his niece,” Nancy told her, mentally crossing her fingers.

  The woman’s face softened a bit, and she opened the front door wider. “Well, I hate to tell you this, honey, but your Uncle Iggy passed on. He just lay down one night and didn’t wake up. It was a peaceful death, I guess.”

  Nancy’s mouth fell open. “You mean, he’s—dead?” That was news!

  “Has anyone—I mean, anyone else—in his family been by?” she inquired after a moment.

  “I didn’t know he had any family,” the woman told her. “I saw a woman come by one day. And a man the next. But I don’t know who they were.”

  “Was the woman small?” Nancy asked. “That would be my cousin, Marie,” she added quickly.

  “This was someone else, then. She was kind of fat. The man was on the tall side. I didn’t get a good look at them. I mind my own business.”

  Nancy smiled to herself at this last remark. “Do you know what’s going to happen to the house?” she asked.

  The old woman snorted with laughter. “Sure I do. The government is taking over ownership. Iggy owed so much on back taxes that the state owns that house for sure. They were trying to blast him out of there for years, but he wouldn’t go. Bless that stubborn old wino. He wasn’t budging.”

  Nancy nodded.

  “How long ago did—uh, Uncle Iggy die?” she asked.

  After thinking a moment, the woman replied, “Two weeks ago. It was in the paper and all—just a single line crammed in with all the other unimportant dead folks’ lines. Wasn’t like they put his picture in or anything.”

  “That would explain it,” murmured Nancy, thinking out loud.

  “Explain what?” asked the woman, raising an eyebrow.

  “Huh? Oh—nothing. Thank you very much for talking to me,” Nancy said hastily. “I’ve got to be going.”

  The woman nodded and shut the door.

  Nancy’s mind was racing as she headed back to her car and slipped behind the wheel. The real I. Wynn didn’t have anything to do with this scam, she realized. The culprit must have picked the name from the obituary column. It was perfect. Ignatz Wynn had no relatives, according to the woman across the street, and his house was empty. How had the culprit learned Wynn’s Social Security number, though? That was a mystery for now.

  Nancy drummed her fingers against the steering wheel as she pondered another question. Who were the man and woman? They could be in on the grade-changing scheme. Or they could be real estate people or officials from the state. The only thing she knew for sure was that neither of them was the petite girl who had opened the account as I. Wynn.

  Starting up the engine, Nancy headed for home. The muscles in her arms were throbbing. She was sure she had some cuts and bruises that should be taken care of, too. She let out a sigh. This case wasn’t going to be as easy to solve as she had hoped. Her culprit was very clever.

  Time to go undercover, she decided. It looked as if she wasn’t going to visit Ned at Emerson this weekend.

  • • •

  By four o’clock that afternoon, Nancy had taken a long, hot bath and rubbed ointment on the scratches on her arms. Still wrapped in her bathrobe, she picked up the phone on her bedside table and called Sally Lane at home. After saying hello, she asked, “Can you think of a believable reason for me to be hanging around the school, asking questions?”

  After a brief pause, Sally’s high-pitched voice came back over the line. “What about the new tutoring program? That could work. One of the tutors just dropped out, and they’re looking for a replacement.”

  “That’d be perfect,” said Nancy. “The kids who need tutoring are likely to be the same ones who’d want their grades changed. Do you think your father can get me into the program?”

  “No problem. I’ll talk to him tonight.”

  “Okay, call me back when you’ve spoken to him. Thanks for your help, Sally,” Nancy told her. “And remember, don’t talk about this with anyone.”

  “My lips are sealed,” Sally assured her.

  • • •

  The next morning Nancy parked her Mustang in a visitor’s slot in the Brewster Academy parking lot and got out. She smoothed her red, black, and white plaid skirt and straightened the collar of her white blouse, then retrieved her attaché case from the back seat. She wasn’t sure what a tutor might wear, but she hoped she looked the part.

  Brewster Academy was a two-story gray stone building, with slate-colored shingles and two massive chimneys on either side of the roof. It looked as if it had escaped from a print of a New England town. The school was beautiful, but that didn’t change the fact that something very ugly was going on there.

  One of the front doors opened, and Harrison Lane stepped out on the top step. He’d called her the night before to tell her that everything was set, and she’d brought him up to date on what she’d learned about I. Wynn. Now, spotting Nancy, he waved.

  “There you are,” he said as she walked up to him. “I’ve been waiting for you. I just had a word with Walter Friedbinder, our new headmaster. He’s arranged everything.”

  Lane led her inside and down an echoing hallway to a door with Administration painted in gold on the frosted glass pane in its upper half. Inside was a small anteroom with a desk, a waiting area, and a couple of file cabinets. Through a doorway to one side, Nancy caught a glimpse of an elaborate-looking computer setup.

  The woman at the desk raised her head and said, “Please go right in, Mr. Lane. The headmaster is expecting you.” Nancy noted her nameplate: Ms. Arletti.

  Nancy had been expecting the headmaster to be a gray-haired man, perhaps with a trim mustache, but Walter Friedbinder was young and athletic looking, with short-cropped, reddish hair and intense blue eyes. He sprang up from his desk as they entered his office.

  “Welcome to Brewster Academy, Ms. Drew,” he said, offering his hand. “It’s nice to have you with us.”

  “Thank you. And please call me Nancy,” she said. “But maybe I’d better use the name Nancy Stevens around here. My name has been in the papers, and it might be best if no one knows I’m a detective.”

  “Of course,” said Friedbinder, the smile fading from his face. “I hope you can help us. As I’m sure Harrison told you, this is my first year at Brewster. I accepted the position as headmaster because I admire Brewster’s progressive educational system. The thought that the school might be ruined by a scandal makes me sick.”

&
nbsp; “I’ll do what I can, Mr. Friedbinder,” Nancy told him.

  His smile returned. “Please call me Walter. We try to keep things informal around here.”

  He returned to his desk and picked up a file folder. “I think you’ll find whatever you need to know about the tutoring program in here,” he said, handing it to Nancy. “Now, why don’t we go next door and I’ll introduce you to my assistant head, Phyllis Hathaway. She can take you down to the learning lab and get you settled in.”

  “I’ve got to be off,” Lane told them, checking his watch.

  Just as they left the headmaster’s office, the door across the anteroom swung open. An attractive woman with dark hair pulled back in a French braid came out. She was about thirty years old and stylishly dressed in a black linen dress.

  “Why, hello,” Lane said. “It’s been a long time. How are you?”

  The woman gave him a surprised look, then smiled politely and said only, “Fine.”

  There was an awkward pause, then the banker said, “Well, goodbye, everyone,” and left.

  Walter urged Nancy across the room.

  “Phyllis,” he said, “this is Nancy Stevens, who is joining the tutorial program. I said you’d help get her squared away.”

  Nancy was glad that he’d remembered to use her alias. The fewer people who knew her true identity, the better.

  “Hi, Nancy,” the woman said. “I’m Phyllis Hathaway. Come into my office. I’ll tell you a little about the program, then we can go down to check out the classroom where you’ll be working. Have you done much of this sort of work before?”

  Walter rushed to answer before Nancy could reply. “Nancy has excellent qualifications,” he said, his voice harsh and impatient.

  Phyllis’s expression hardened. “I’m sure she does,” she said in a clipped tone that clearly said, Mind your own business.

  The headmaster’s face reddened, but he didn’t say anything more. Instead, after another awkward pause, he said, “Well, I’ll leave you to it. Nancy, if you need anything, just let me know.”