Partners in Crime (9780545463119) (9 page)

For
two weekends in a row, we had missed our Family Movie Night. So my parents insisted on having it Tuesday night because it was “important to spend time together.” Even if we were sitting there not talking, shoving popcorn in our mouths.

My parents were cuddled together on one end of the couch, and Hubble and I were on the other. At one point during the movie, I glanced over at my parents. Mom's long blond hair was tied up in a ponytail and she wore jeans and a cute pink T-shirt. She looked younger and prettier than all the other moms in town.

Sometimes I wondered if Mom ever wished she'd
been the mother of one of those pretty girly-girls instead of someone like me. I don't like romance movies. I don't like to go shopping. I tend to wear comfortable clothes instead of worrying about trends and the latest fashions. And I don't wear makeup, though I let Mom do my face one time, mostly to make her happy. I think she knew I didn't enjoy it, though, because she never asked again.

Sometimes I wished I could magically be interested in the things Mom likes. Because I was worried that she was disappointed that she'd had a daughter like me. I was worried that she wished she had a daughter like Fiona.

 

On
Wednesday, I was on my way to the cafeteria for lunch when I realized I'd left one of my notebooks behind in the library. I groaned and doubled back. The room was empty. Even Mrs. Wixted was out. Probably having lunch in the teachers' lounge.

I had been doing work at a small table around the corner behind the science fiction books. I rounded the corner, ready to grab my notebook and hurry to the cafeteria. But instead I found that I wasn't alone.

Startled, my hand went to my heart. It was pounding like a sledgehammer. “I didn't know anyone else was in here,” I said.

Maya looked so small seated at the table with a sandwich in her hand. “Sorry,” she squeaked.

My heartbeat started to return to normal. “What are you doing in here?”

“Eating lunch,” Maya said.

“Yeah, but why are you eating in here all alone?”

So softly that I could barely hear her, Maya said, “I've been eating here a lot lately.”

“Oh,” I said. Mainly because I couldn't think of anything else to say. She looked down again at her sandwich. The crusts were cut off. She must have not been a fan of crusts. Neither was I.

I pulled out the chair opposite her and sat down. “If you ever want to eat in the cafeteria, you can sit with Darcy and me.”

She nodded but didn't look up. “Yeah, maybe sometime.”

I thought about my assignment for our investigation. I didn't have the guts to ask Zane what was going on with him. But maybe I could find out an easier way ….

“So, um, what's going on with you and Zane Munro?” I asked.

Maya's head snapped up and her eyes widened. “Nothing! Nothing at all!”

I'd never heard her speak so loudly. That wasn't the reaction I was expecting. She seemed … nervous. I said, “I was just wondering —”

Maya interrupted me. “I have to go.” She picked up the remains of her lunch and stood to leave.

I held up a hand. “Wait. Why are you so nervous?”

Maya chewed her lip for a second. “I can't talk about it,” she said.

“Talk about
what
?”

“Zane's secret.” As soon as Maya said the words, she squealed in horror, dropped her lunch, clasped both hands over her mouth, and ran away.

 

After
school, Darcy, Fiona, and I walked home together. I so desperately wanted to tell Darcy about Maya's freak-out in the library. But I worried that she'd just assume Zane's secret was about the note in my locker. And I still didn't think he'd do something like that.

We went to Darcy's house this time. As we grabbed some snacks from the kitchen, Fiona asked, “Where's your mom?”

“Work,” Darcy said, shoving a pretzel the size of my face into her mouth.

“Does she work every day?” Fiona asked.

Darcy nodded. She couldn't really speak. Due to the giant pretzel.

“You have the house to yourself every afternoon?” Fiona sighed. “Oh, man, I'm so jealous of you guys.”

Darcy and I shared a skeptical look. Fiona Fanning was jealous of
us
?

“The whole house to yourself every afternoon,” Fiona said dreamily. “Your mom is probably the type to let you do whatever you want, too, isn't she?”

Darcy shrugged a yes. She was still eating that pretzel.

Fiona turned to me. “And your mom is so pretty and cool. She was a cheerleader at our school, did you know that? And your dad was this big jock. There are trophies with his name on them in the glass case in the school hallway. You must be so proud.”

“Yeah, I guess.” I'd never really thought of Mom and Dad as parents other kids would envy me for. They were just, you know, my parents.

Darcy pointed upstairs to tell us we should go to her room. Thankfully, by the time we got up there, she could talk again. I slid into the bacon chair.

Darcy's closet was open and Fiona peeked inside.

“Your whole wardrobe is black and purple,” she said, aghast.

“Yeah, so?” Darcy said, leaning back in a chair.

“Well, don't you own anything that doesn't look like it's for a Halloween theme day?”

“I have my style. You have yours.” Darcy chomped on another pretzel. “So are you going out with that disgusting Slade this weekend?”

Fiona hopped onto Darcy's bed and crossed her legs. “Nah, I pushed him off until next weekend. I have too much to do right now with cheering, homework, an absolutely crucial trip to the mall, and of course this investigation. Plus, he wants to double, so I have to organize that.”

“Double-date? With who?” Darcy asked.

“One of my cheerleader friends,” Fiona said casually.

“Yeah, but which friend of his?” Darcy asked again.

“Hunter,” she admitted.

“Oh, double puke!” Darcy exclaimed.

“Can we focus here, girls?” I said.

Darcy reached into the bag for another giant pretzel, and I grabbed it out of her hand. “Seriously. Let's go over anything we've learned since our last meeting.”

I wasn't quite ready to tell them about Zane, so I said to Fiona, “Did you find any other clues in your house?”

Her shoulders sagged. “No. And they've started keeping the den locked, which is strange.”

“They've never locked it before?” Darcy asked.

“Nope. And I tried eavesdropping last night when they were talking in there, but all I heard was something about someone who's moving.”

They could have been talking about
anyone
. “That doesn't help much,” I said.

Darcy's laptop made a pinging sound and she picked it up off the floor and slid it onto her lap.

“What's that?” Fiona asked.

“It's a computer,” Darcy said.

Fiona rolled her eyes.

Darcy laughed. “It's my tone for new e-mail.”

She keyed in her password. As she read the e-mail, her face changed. I knew immediately this wasn't good.

“What?” I asked.

Darcy looked up at me, then at Fiona. “I think we just heard from whoever left the note.”

“What
does it say?” Fiona and I asked at the same time.

Darcy cleared her throat. Gripping the laptop tightly, she read the e-mail out loud. “‘Darcy and Norah: Stop. You are putting Fiona's life … in danger.'”

The little blond hairs on my arms stood up as a chill went through my whole body.

Fiona said anxiously, “Can I see that?”

Darcy walked the laptop over to the bed, where Fiona was sitting, and placed it on her lap. Darcy and I sat on either side of her and read the message again and again. The e-mail address was unfamiliar — just a random string of numbers. Whoever was sending us these messages meant business.

“How could we be putting her life in danger?” I wondered out loud.

“Maybe we are,” Darcy said. “Or maybe we aren't.”

“What do you mean?” Fiona asked with a quiver in her voice.

“Whoever this person is, he or she realized that the note didn't stop us from investigating. So they're trying something different. Instead of ordering us to back off, they're giving us this life-or-death warning. Thinking maybe that will work.”

I wrung my hands together nervously. “But what if they're telling the truth? What if we really
are
putting her in danger?”
And ourselves, too
, I thought.

Darcy cracked her knuckles. “Okay, give me back the computer. It's time for Senora Hacker to get to work.”

Fiona handed the laptop over. “What are you going to do?”

“Give me five minutes,” Darcy answered. “I'm going to find out who this person is.”

“How?” I said.

“After all the anonymous e-mails we got from our client” — she motioned at Fiona — “I decided to research e-mail-tracing software programs. I convinced
my mom to get me one.” She grinned and said conspiratorially, “I told her it was an educational game.”

I rolled my eyes at Darcy's behavior but was secretly glad she'd done it.

Darcy grinned at me. “Anyway, it's complicated and involves Internet Protocol addresses and stuff that would bore you as much as your chattering on about astronomy bores me.”

“Point taken,” I said. “Do your thing.” Sometimes it was best to just let Darcy work.

Fiona and I had a staring contest with the floor, silently sitting, waiting for news. My pulse was racing. When five minutes turned to ten, I started to wonder. Darcy was a computer genius. When she said something was going to take her five minutes, that meant three. Something was up.

Darcy's narrowed eyes stared at the screen as she pounded the keyboard and grunted and groaned. If looks could kill, that laptop would've been on fire. Finally, after another few minutes, Darcy slammed it closed.

“What's up?” I said, almost too scared to ask.

She let out a long exhale. “Well, I don't think it's anyone from our school.”

“Really?” Fiona's voice bubbled with excitement. “Your computer program told you that?”

“Tone it down, Happy Pants,” Darcy said. “This is
bad
news.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Some kid at school couldn't do what this person did.” Darcy paused. “The e-mail is encrypted.”

“What's that?” Fiona asked, much less excited now.

“It means that the person who sent the e-mail was technologically savvy enough to hide the e-mail's origins. I can't find out for sure where it came from. But that tells us one thing.”

I gulped. “What?”

Darcy shifted her gaze out the window. “That we're dealing with something much bigger than we imagined.”

“Like … dangerous people?” Fiona said in a small voice.

“Maybe,” Darcy said.

I put my hand on Fiona's shoulder. “Do you want to stop the investigation?”

She looked down at her hands and thought for a long moment. Then she straightened her posture and said, “No. I want to keep going until I find out the truth.”

I was glad she said that, because I felt the same way. We had come so far and were in so deep. We couldn't quit now. I looked at Darcy and nodded slightly.

Darcy said, “Okay, then, Fiona. If you're still in, we're still in.”

Fiona forced a nervous smile. “Thanks, guys. So, what now?”

“I think it's time to talk to your parents,” I suggested.

Fiona shook her head quickly. “My parents are so overprotective. If they find out someone is kind of threatening me, they will freak out and never let me out of the house again!”

“But what if they know something?” I said. “They might be able to steer us toward who's doing this. They had Bailey's birth certificate, after all.”

“This is bigger than my parents,” Fiona said. “This is like … like … a conspiracy! My parents wouldn't know anything about crypticized e-mails —”

“Encrypted,” Darcy corrected.

“Yeah, whatever,” Fiona continued. “They wouldn't know anything. My mom can barely coordinate tops with skirts.”

I got up and started pacing the room. Fiona was insistent on not telling her parents. But I couldn't
think of any other next step to take. This is when I usually counted on Darcy to come up with something brilliant, but she was staring into space. Fiona nervously twirled a strand of hair around her finger.

After a few minutes of silence, Darcy stood and faced Fiona. “Okay. Your parents might hold a clue to this mystery, but I understand if you don't want to ask them. That just means there's only one thing for us to do.”

Fiona pulled her hand from her hair. “What?”

Darcy smiled mischievously. “We're going to spy on your parents.”