062 Easy Marks (2 page)

“ ’Bye, Hannah,” Nancy told her. “Have fun.”

Going inside, Nancy saw that there was mail on the low table in the entrance hall. Most of it was for her father. But Nancy felt her heart skip a beat when she came to a letter with familiar handwriting. A letter from Ned!

A tingle ran through her as she took it up to her room to read it.

Ned Nickerson, Nancy’s boyfriend, was away at Emerson College. This was the first letter she’d received from him since he’d returned to school from summer break. It wasn’t a very long letter—just news about classes and his friends. But the part at the end about how much he missed her made Nancy resolve to visit him soon.

She settled back against the pillows on her bed to write him back. By the time she was done, her father had come home and it was time for dinner.

Over baked chicken with chestnut stuffing, Nancy told her father about her case. Carson Drew had a respected law practice in River Heights and was often a help to her.

“I’m not sure if other kids are involved, or if Sally was singled out. And what makes it especially tricky is that changing a grade in a computer file doesn’t leave any trace,” she concluded, spooning a second serving of stuffing onto her plate. “You can’t examine a floppy disk for erasure marks or analyze how old the ink is, the way you can with something on paper.”

Her father smiled. A distinguished-looking man in his forties, he had dark hair that was flecked with gray at the temples. “Don’t I know it! A few years ago, people were talking about the ‘paperless office’ that computers were supposed to create. But I probably use more paper in my practice now than I did before we computerized. We print out every version of every document we draft, so that if any problems come up we can pull the file and put our finger on the exact bug. I’m surprised that Brewster Academy doesn’t do something of the sort as well.”

“Maybe they do,” Nancy said. “But I don’t know about it. I hope I don’t wind up having to go over a ton of paperwork to check which grades have been changed,” she added, sighing. “But if that’s what it takes, I’ll do it. I’d rather catch this hacker by checking the bank’s information.”

“Hacker,”
Carson Drew repeated. “What a funny word that is! I remember the first time I heard it. It was six or seven years ago. A high-school girl here in River Heights managed to figure out how to monkey with the billing on the telephone company’s computer.”

“Uh-oh, I think I see what’s coming,” Nancy guessed. “She had a boyfriend in Tokyo, right?”

Her father smiled. “Not exactly, but you aren’t far from wrong. At summer camp she had gotten to be very close friends with her counselor, who was also from River Heights. But in September the counselor went off to college on the West Coast. The girl was having some emotional problems, I gather. She got into the habit of calling her former counselor two or three times a week and talking to her for an hour or more at a time.”

“Sounds like a pretty expensive habit,” Nancy remarked. She scooped up the last of the chicken with her fork and popped it into her mouth.

“Eventually it was,” Carson replied. “But for several months, she managed to, ah, hack the telephone company computer and erase the calls from her parents’ bills. Apparently she was very clever about it, too. The telephone company had quite a job catching up with her.”

“And when they did?” Nancy asked.

Her father leaned back in his chair. “Her parents asked me to step in and deal with the telephone company. I talked them into settling for the amount they were owed on the calls, plus a detailed explanation from the girl of how she had broken into their system and altered the bills. They needed that even more than the money, you see. Otherwise, someone else might have come along and found the same weak point in their security. I understand their computer experts were very impressed by the girl’s skills.”

“So she didn’t end up with a police record or anything like that?” Nancy said with a laugh. “She was lucky to have you for a lawyer!” She stood up and collected the plates from the table. “Hannah left fruit salad in the fridge. Want some?”

“I think I’ll pass.” Her father stacked the serving dishes and followed Nancy into the kitchen with them.

“Whatever happened to the girl?” Nancy asked. “Did she go on to be a computer crook or a computer genius?”

“Genius, I think,” her father answered, laughing. “I remember hearing that she started her own computer company right here in town.”

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, rumbling 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

I
NSTINCTIVELY
, 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.”