Power of Suggestion (9 page)

As they drove back to the Emerson campus, she told Ned about her encounter with Diana.

“They were actually dating?” Ned asked, looking surprised. When Nancy nodded, he added, “So do you think
she
could have killed him?”

Nancy grew thoughtful. “It's possible, though I don't know what motive she could have. She seemed genuinely upset by Wayne's death, but I had a definite feeling she was hiding something.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out the envelope Diana had dropped. “Maybe these will help.” She told Ned about the diskettes and how she'd found them.

“What's on them?” he wondered.

“I don't know. I didn't get a chance to look.” She opened the envelope and took out the diskettes, then read the hand-lettered labels. “Hey, this might be important!”

Ned glanced over from the driver's seat. “What've you got?”

“This one is labeled Subliminal Persuasion: Analysis and Assessment,” Nancy told him. “I think these are the records of Professor Edberg's study!”

• • •

“I'm glad Parker and Bess had a good time at the movies,” Nancy said two hours later as she and Ned walked down the upstairs hall of the Omega Chi Epsilon house. They'd just knocked on Parker's door and found him half-asleep. He woke up long enough to tell them that after the movie, he had dropped Bess off at Packard Hall, then returned to the fraternity.

“Let's just hope Maury is having some luck with those diskettes so that we can all get some sleep,” Ned said. He pushed into a tiny bedroom that was filled with computer equipment. A narrow bed was squashed against one wall, as if it were an afterthought.

“This is interesting,” Maury Becker said, looking up from his computer screen. Immediately after leaving Wayne's house, Nancy and Ned had gone back to the fraternity to show Maury the diskettes Nancy had found. He'd immediately agreed to examine them. Then Nancy and Ned
had gone out to get something to eat so that Maury would be able to concentrate, without the two of them hovering over him.

“It took a few tries to find which word-processing program Edberg was using,” Maury now said. “After that it was a breeze to access his file menu. It's going to take time to examine them, but it looks like this first disk, the one labeled Subliminal Persuasion, contains records of Professor Edberg's study.”

Nancy leaned over Maury's shoulder and peered at the screen. “What about the other disk?” she asked. “The one labeled Reevaluation?”

Maury frowned. “That one's proving more difficult to access,” he explained. “It's been blocked—a coded input sequence is required in order to access the files.”

“In English, please, Maury,” Ned interrupted. “We're not all computer experts.”

“Okay, look. You boot up the computer, it asks you what you want to do. You tell it the program you want to use, and then the computer reads the diskette,” Maury explained. “This block is preventing me from getting into the disk to read what's on it. Unless you tell the computer the secret code, it won't open the files. It's a security device.”

“So someone wanted to keep the information on this second disk secret,” Nancy said.

“That's right,” Maury answered.

Nancy felt herself growing excited. “This information
could be the key to Wayne Perkins's murder!” she said. “Are you sure we can't access the information?”

“Oh, ye of little faith,” Maury said, smiling up at her. “That would be impossible only if Wayne was a better programmer than I am. But
nobody
is a better programmer than I am!”

Ned put his arm around Maury's shoulders. “And that's why we love you, Maury. Who could resist such modesty? How long do you think it will take until you break into this disk?”

“Not long. A day. Maybe a day and a half,” he said distractedly, his attention already refocused on his work. “Come back Sunday morning after breakfast. I should have it by then.”

“Yikes!” Nancy said, glancing at her watch. “It's already two in the morning.”

Ned yawned. “I'm beat. Come on. Let's get you to the dorm.”

• • •

“I can't wait to meet this elusive Diana DeMarco,” Bess said the next morning as they left their dorm room.

It was just before nine o'clock. Nancy had already been up for an hour, despite having gone to sleep so late. She couldn't stop thinking about the case. After dressing in white corduroy slacks and a blue sweater, she'd sat at one of the desks in her room, thinking over what she'd learned so far.

All the evidence pointed to Parker. He'd been with Wayne just before the murder, the gun was
his, and he and the teaching assistant had been having problems. But then, Diana was hiding something, and she
had
been in the study group, too. And if Wayne had gone to the trouble of protecting information about the research, maybe the subliminal study was the key.

“I just hope Diana's there,” Nancy said now, closing the door to their room behind them. “She's been pretty elusive so far.”

The two girls went down a flight of stairs to the first floor, then made their way to Room 106. After several knocks, the door was opened, and Janis Seymour, wearing a nightgown and bathrobe, blinked at them.

“You again!” Janis said angrily. “What are you doing here so early?”

“I'm sorry if we woke you, Janis, but Diana asked me to meet her here at nine,” Nancy said.

Janis stared at Nancy. “She didn't say anything to me. Anyway, she's gone.”

“She's
gone
?” Nancy felt a terrible sinking feeling. She never should have trusted Diana! “Where did she go?”

Janis shrugged. “I heard her rattling around the room while it was still dark. I guess she was packing her bags. But I was half-asleep, and it didn't really register.” Janis stepped back, showing Nancy and Bess Diana's side of the room.

Nancy couldn't believe her eyes. Diana's things had been completely cleared out!

N
ANCY
, this is awful!” Bess cried, looking around the room in alarm.

Nancy groaned, mentally kicking herself for letting Diana convince her to wait until morning to interview her. “Listen, Janis, your roommate could be in real trouble. You've got to let us help her.” She had a feeling that Diana was an important link to the case, and she had to find out where the dark-haired girl had gone.

“What kind of trouble?” Janis asked suspiciously. “Why should I believe you?”

Bess took Nancy's arm and started to pull her away. “She's right, Nancy, it's not our problem. Let Janis take the blame for whatever happens to her friend.”

“Wait—wait a second,” Janis called after them. They turned. “What can I do?” Janis asked.

Nancy and Bess stepped back into the room. “Just let us take a look around,” Nancy said.

Soon she was giving the room a quick but thorough going over while Bess kept Janis distracted with small talk. Nancy looked for any clue that might tell her where Diana had gone, but the girl had left behind little more than an old towel, some cosmetics, and a few unimportant papers.

“How could she take everything?” Nancy wondered aloud.

“She never did have much,” Janis answered. “Two suitcases and her laptop computer.”

“For a whole school year?” Bess asked, looking doubtful. “That doesn't sound like much.”

Nancy snapped her fingers. “Maybe she wasn't planning on staying for the whole year—”

She broke off as she spotted something in the wastebasket under Diana's desk. She pulled it out and saw that it was a small block of notepaper. There was a blue logo of a pair of headphones, with the name Subliminal Suggestions, Inc., printed beneath it. An address and phone number in Pittsburgh were also listed.

Nancy flipped through the pad, but there was nothing written on any of the sheets. Then she noticed that there were some faint indentations on the top sheet, and there was a ragged edge at
the top, as if someone had torn off the sheet in haste. Taking a pencil out of the desk, Nancy began shading in the top sheet of the pad.

“Find something?” Bess asked, coming over.

Nancy showed her. The pencil shading highlighted the words that Diana had written on the pad: Mid-America Airlines, Flight 203, 10:15 A.M.

“She must be going home to Pittsburgh,” Janis said, looking over Nancy's shoulder.

“We don't have much time,” Nancy said. “Come on, Bess—” Then she stopped in her tracks. How could she have overlooked the obvious? Subliminal Suggestions had to be a rival of Positive Tapes! “Can I use this phone?” she asked Janis.

Janis nodded, and within seconds Nancy had dialed the number listed on the notepad. “Good morning, Subliminal Suggestions. How can we help you?” a receptionist's voice announced.

Nancy couldn't believe her luck. It was a stroke of good fortune that the company's office was open on Saturday. “May I speak with Diana DeMarco?” she asked.

“I'm sorry, Miss DeMarco is away on assignment. May I take a message?”

“No, I'll try later. Thanks.” Nancy hung up the phone and grabbed Bess. Her heart was pounding with excitement. Finally she had a breakthrough! “Let's go!” she said, pulling her friend out the door.

“Can I ask what's going on?” Bess said, hurrying down the hall after Nancy. “Why are you so excited?”

“Diana DeMarco isn't really a student,” Nancy told her. “She works for one of Larry Boyd's rivals. I bet anything she was here to steal information about Dr. Edberg's study. She's an industrial spy!”

Bess grabbed Nancy's arm. “Whoa, slow down! How do you know all this?”

When Nancy related her phone call to Subliminal Suggestions, Bess shook her head in amazement. “If she works for them, then she
can't
be a student. You must be right about her being a spy. I bet she was using Wayne to learn about the study. Maybe he found out that she was working for Subliminal Suggestions, threatened to expose her, and had to kill him!”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Nancy said. “But what about Larry Boyd, not to mention the bald man Dave Webb saw at the psych building? Do they figure into this? We have lots of possibilities. Now we've just got to find out if any of these guesses are right or if Wayne died for some other reason entirely.”

Soon after, the girls pulled into the Emersonville airport's parking lot. It was a small airport, with one medium-size terminal building, a control tower, and a single airstrip. Diana wouldn't be hard to find. After parking, the girls hurried into the terminal.

Nancy's gaze quickly scanned the people in
line at the two ticket counters. No Diana. “Come on!” she urged Bess, hurrying in the direction of the boarding gates.

As they approached the small line of people waiting to pass through the X-ray machine, Nancy spotted the familiar brown-haired figure. Diana was carrying two suitcases and her laptop computer.

“Diana! Hey, Diana, wait!” Nancy shouted.

A look of shock registered on Diana's face when she spotted Nancy. She tried to push past the other passengers, but the guard stopped her. Dropping her suitcases, she broke away from the line and ran down the hall away from the girls.

“I'm right behind you, Nan!” Bess called as Nancy took off after Diana.

A janitor was pushing a wet mop down the hallway. Diana tried to slow down as she hit the patch of damp tile floor, but she was too late. Her feet flew out from under her, and she fell with a thud. By the time she got to her feet, Nancy and Bess were glaring down at her.

“Why are you trying to get away?” Nancy demanded. “What have you got to hide?”

“I don't see that it's any of your business,” Diana answered, getting to her feet and brushing off her slacks. “You have no right to try to stop me.”

“Maybe I don't, but I'm sure the police will be interested in learning about your romance with Wayne. Your sudden departure will look pretty suspicious.”

“I had nothing to do with his death!”

“Yeah, right,” Bess scoffed. “We know all about how you're working for Subliminal Suggestions.”

Diana shot a startled look at Bess. “How do you know about that?” she blurted out.

Suddenly all her bravado fell away, and Diana slumped in defeat. “What about the diskettes—did you find them?” she asked quietly. When Nancy nodded, Diana let out a sigh. “Maybe we should have breakfast together after all.”

Soon the three girls were seated in the airport cafeteria, breakfasting on lukewarm coffee, orange juice, and stale rolls. Diana confirmed Nancy's guess that she was an industrial spy. “But Wayne wasn't my partner,” she insisted. “He was one of the most honorable people I've ever met.”

She took a sip of her coffee, then continued. “I graduated from college two years ago and went to work for Subliminal Suggestions. This fall I registered here under false pretenses. Right away I tried to get close to Wayne so I could learn about Edberg's study.”