163 The Clues Challenge Page 10
towering branches of the oak.
“Good.” Ned frowned, stomping the snow under his
boots. “'Cause she's got some explaining to do.”
“What's going on?” asked Hanna, a girl with freckles
and a halo of reddish brown curls around her face. She
glanced curiously at the Omega team as they circled
Joy at the foot of the legendary oak.
“I found this in your backpack, Joy,” Nancy began.
She opened the container and poured a handful of
chalky tablets into her palm.
Joy stared blankly at the tablets, her pale brows knit
together. “Pills?” she said. “But I don't—”
“It's the same medicine someone used to spike our
dessert at the Eatery,” C.J. cut in. “Don't try to pretend
you don't recognize them. They're obviously yours,
Joy.”
Joy's eyes flickered uncertainly. “I've never . . .” Her
voice trailed off as Randy snapped a photograph of her.
“Hey!” she said sharply. “I don't like being set up—
especially in front of the press!”
She grabbed the bottle of pills and shook them in
front of Nancy's face. “You know these aren't mine.
Why are you setting me up?”
Whoa, thought Nancy. Joy was hardly acting like a
person who'd been caught red-handed.
“You're going to be in serious trouble when we show
this to Mr. Lorenzo,” George pointed out.
“And the police,” Nancy added.
“But I didn't do anything!” Joy insisted.
“Are you saying you're not the person Mr. Lorenzo
saw sneaking around the woods in my hat?” she asked,
turning back to Joy. “That you weren't up on the roof
on the administration building when that icicle was
knocked off?”
“And what about the other night, when we saw you
at the bell tower,” George added. “You were definitely
up to something there.”
Joy bit her lip. She glanced back at her teammates.
All four girls watched her uncertainly.
“All right. All right,” Joy said at last, letting out her
breath in a sigh of frustration. “I have been up to
something. But it's not what you think. It doesn't have
anything to do with the Clues Challenge!”
Nancy couldn't believe how defiant Joy was. “We're
listening,” Nancy said.
“There's a chemistry midterm coming up,” Joy
began. “I promised to help someone in my class study.
That's who I was meeting after the pre-Challenge
dinner. I was going to lend her my study notes.”
“Outside the bell tower, in the freezing cold?”
George asked doubtfully. “Why did your friend run
away like she was harboring top-secret classified in-
formation? Getting class notes is no big deal.”
“It is to my friend,” Joy insisted. “She's used to being
at the top of her class. I guess she figured her
reputation as a brainiac would be wrecked if people
knew she'd been having trouble.”
Nancy searched her mind, trying to fit Joy's expla-
nation to all that had happened. There were still too
many unanswered questions. “What about your glove?”
Nancy asked.
“The one I found on the roof of the administration
building,” Ned reminded Joy. “Along with that file. Are
you trying to say you didn't use the file to sabotage
George's skis?”
Joy shook her head forcefully “I didn't! I was never
on that roof, I never touched that screwdriver, and I
don't know about any pills,” she insisted. Planting her
hands on her hips, she fixed Nancy with accusing eyes.
“Someone set me up!”
She seemed so sincerely angry that Nancy found
herself believing Joy. “What about my yellow Omega
team hat? I know you took it,” Nancy said.
For the first time Joy's defiant glare faded to un-
certainty. “That was me,” she admitted. “Since you
guys wrecked my first chance to give my friend the
chemistry notes, I had to make another rendezvous. I
decided to meet her during the party, when everyone
from the Clues Challenge would be at the Attic.”
“That way no one would see you outside and think
you were searching for clues,” Grant said.
“Exactly,” Joy said, nodding. “I didn't plan to take;
your hat, Nancy. But as I was on my way out of the
Attic, I saw it sticking out of your jacket pocket. . . .”
She took a deep breath and let it out in a cloudy
stream. “I was really mad at you guys.”
“Why?” C.J. asked.
“You kept accusing me of things I didn't do! I was
sure you were trying to make me look bad, so I decided
to give you a taste of your own medicine. I took the
yellow Omega hat for extra insurance. That way if
anyone happened to see me by the boathouse . . .”
“We would get the blame instead of you,” Nancy
finished.
Joy nodded. “Look, I'm sorry you almost got dis-
qualified,” she said. “But I'm not the one who's been
sabotaging you guys. And I'm not about to waste time
on this stuff now.” Turning to her teammates, she held
up the clue she'd brought down from the top of the oak
tree. “Let's go, Deltas!”
Joy and her teammates waded through the snow to
their skis, put them on, and skied back the way they
had come.
“What are we waiting for?” C.J. asked, jumping for
his own skis. “Let's finish going over the evidence after
we win the Clues Challenge!”
The Omega team stayed close on the Deltas' trail as
they skied back toward Clues Challenge headquarters.
Nancy let the thrill of the race take over her thoughts
about the sabotage. She didn't think about the case
again until they reached the Sports Complex.
Everyone headed for the glassed-in atrium—except
Randy. He held back, hoisting his skis and poles onto
his shoulder. “I'll catch up with you later, C.J.,” he said.
“I've got some business to take care of.”
There was a determined note in his voice that
caught Nancy's attention. Randy looked long and hard
at the atrium, where Mr. Lorenzo sat.
“Did you see the way he looked at Mr. Lorenzo?”
Nancy whispered to George and Ned as Randy started
toward his Jeep. “You guys brainstorm the clue without
me,” she said. “I want to find out what Randy is up to.”
Ned nodded, taking her skis and poles. “We'll be at
the Student Center,” he told her.
George stuck her skis into the snow next to Ned and
hustled to catch up with Nancy. “Well, you didn't think
I'd let you go by yourself, did you?”
The two girls ran inside the atrium to pull off their
ski boots and grab their own shoes. By the time they
got into Nancy's Mustang, Randy was just turning his
Jeep onto the main road of the campus. Nancy fol-
lowed at a distance.
“He's leaving campus,” George said.
Up ahead, Randy's Jeep turned right onto Main
past SportsMania and parked on a side street. Nancy
pulled over to the curb a few cars back, and she and
George watched through the windshield.
Randy got out of his Jeep and jogged across the
street. He looked both ways, then ducked into an al-
leyway.
“Talk about suspicious,” George murmured.
Nancy reached for the door handle and pulled it.
“Let's follow him,” she said.
She and George crossed over to the alleyway and
paused at the end of it. Nancy peeked her head around
for a look, then blinked to let her eyes adjust to the
dimmer light.
The alley stretched back about fifty feet, she saw.
One side of it ran behind the businesses on Main
Street. Windows dotted the grungy brick walls, along
with a network of fire escapes higher up.
Randy was about halfway down the alleyway. As
Nancy watched, he reached up toward one of the
windows and pushed it up.
“He's sneaking in!” she whispered to George.
“Where?” she asked.
“SportsMania, I bet.” Nancy frowned as Randy
hoisted himself up and over the windowsill. As soon as
he was out of sight, she darted into the alleyway.
“Come on!” she whispered.
They tiptoed down the alleyway, then crouched be-
neath the window Nancy had seen him climb through.
They heard drawers opening, and the rustle of papers.
“Come on,” Randy's muttered voice came through
the window.
Slowly and silently Nancy lifted her head until she
could see through the window. They were at the back
of SportsMania, all right. Nancy recognized Mel
Lorenzo's cluttered office immediately. Her eyes
narrowed as she caught sight of Randy, bent over an
open drawer of Mr. Lorenzo's desk.
“Ahem!” Nancy cleared her throat.
Randy's head jerked upward, and his surprised eyes
locked on her.
Nancy was through the window in a flash. “Gotcha,”
she said.
14. Caught!
“What are you doing?” George demanded of Randy,
scrambling through the window behind Nancy.
“Leaving Mr. Lorenzo another blackmail note?”
“Shhh!” Randy held a finger to his lips, jerking his
head toward the office door. “If Jimmy hears, we'll all
be in hot water.”
The three of them froze. Nancy didn't relax until she
heard Jimmy talking to a customer in the store. He
didn't appear to have heard them.
“Don't try to change the subject,” she whispered,
crossing her arms over her chest. “We were talking
about blackmail, remember?”
Randy stared at her blankly. “I don't know what you
mean,” he said.
“Shouldn't we call the police, Nancy?” George bit
her lip and leaned against a stack of cardboard cartons.
“Wait!” Randy glanced quickly back and forth be-
tween Nancy and George. “Just hear me out. If you still
want to call the police when I'm done, I won't stop
you.”
Nancy glanced at George, who shrugged. “Okay,”
Nancy said.
“I'm looking for evidence,” Randy said. “Evidence
that could lead to the capture of a criminal who's been
on the loose for the past three years.”
He pulled his notebook from his parka pocket.
Nancy recognized the faxed sheets he slipped out from
under the cover and held out to her.
“Three years ago there was a point-fixing scam at
Western Tech,” Randy explained. “I wrote about it for
Sports World.”
Nancy said nothing to let on that she had already
read the beginning of the article. Holding it out so
George could see it, too, she skipped over the part she
had already seen.
“Whoa,” she said, reading farther. “The man who
masterminded the scam got away?”
Randy nodded. “Andrew Papazian, a local busi-
nessman. He skipped bail and was never seen or heard
from again.”
“So those three college kids were ruined,” George
said, pointing at the names in the article. “Ty Brubaker,
Kent Atwood, and Jamal Warner. But Papazian got
away.”
“Actually . . .” Randy shot another glance at the
closed office door. Lowering his voice even more, he
said, “I think I may have found him.”
Nancy's mouth fell open as she made the connec-
tion. “Mr. Lorenzo? You think he's Andrew Papazian?”
“There's a photograph in the article.” George
flipped to the second page and pointed at the grainy
image.
“Hmm.” Nancy looked closely, then frowned. “See
how fat Papazian is?” She pointed to the huge paunch
on the man in the photograph. He held a corner of his
suit jacket over his face. A fat cigar stuck out from
between the fingers of his right hand, which he used to
hold a corner of his suit jacket over his face. “Mr.
Lorenzo is in much better shape than that. And I've
never seen him smoke.”
“I know, I know. Papazian didn't wear a ponytail or
tinted glasses, either,” Randy said. “But he could have
changed the way he looked so no one would recognize
him. Try to see past the superficial details.”
Nancy stared at the photo again. “Papazian is big,
like Mr. Lorenzo,” she said slowly. “If this guy lost
weight, got in shape, gave up cigars, grew his hair, and
started wearing glasses, he could look like Mr.
Lorenzo.”
“That's a lot of ifs,” George said. She fixed Randy
with questioning eyes as she put the faxed article down
on the desk.
“I didn't make the connection at first, either,” Randy
told them. “But there was something Lorenzo kept
saying, Man, oh, man.' ” Randy tapped the article
against the desk. “It rang a bell. Then I remembered
where I'd heard it.”
“Andrew Papazian?” Nancy guessed.
“Bingo,” said Randy. “He used that expression all
the time. During the trial, press conferences . . . I
wasn't the only person who noticed. After he skipped
town, I remember reading a newspaper headline that
said, Papazian Is Gone, Oh, Gone!' ”
“I still couldn't say for sure that Mr. Lorenzo is the
same person in that photograph,” Nancy said. “But if
he is, that could explain why he's being blackmailed.
Someone else could have realized he was Andrew
Papazian.”
“And that person threatened to spill the beans—
unless Mr. Lorenzo paid big money,” George finished.
“The big question is, who is the person?”
Nancy rested her hands on the desk and leaned over
them, thinking. “I don't know. And I'm still not sure
what all this has to do with the sabotage that's been
going on at the Clues Challenge,” she said. “Maybe
nothing.”
Randy's article lay on the desk in fro
nt of her. Nancy
found herself staring at a photograph near the end of
the article, of the three Western Tech basketball
players who had been expelled.
The caption read, “Ty Brubaker, Kent Atwood, and
Jamal Warner expressed remorse for their part in the
point-fixing scandal. Ty Brubaker, former high scorer
for Western Tech, said, It was wrong. I'm sorry I ever
let Pops talk me into it.' “
“Pops?” Nancy said, fingering the print.
“Papazian's nickname,” Randy told her.
“I've seen it before . . . somewhere,” Nancy mur-
mured.
She couldn't take her eyes off the photograph. There
was something familiar about it. She kept going back to
Ty Brubaker, and the dark brows that stretched over
his eyes in a thick line. . . .
“That's it!” she said, snapping her fingers.
“Shhh!” George shot a warning glance at the door.
All three of them froze. Nancy only relaxed when
she heard Jimmy and his customer still talking out in
the store.
“There's a photograph of Dennis and Ty Brubaker
in Dennis's room!” she whispered. “He has an auto-
graphed photograph of Ziggy Laroquette, too. Some-
one named Pops wrote on it.”
“Papazian?” George guessed.
Nancy shrugged. “Maybe. But we know one thing
for sure. If Dennis knew Ty Brubaker, he definitely
knows about the point-fixing.”
“Which means he could have known Papazian
before he skipped bail and turned himself into Mr.
Lorenzo.” Randy jumped to his feet and headed for the
window. “Dennis is the link we need to put Papazian
behind bars where he belongs. I've got to talk to him.”
“Hold it!” Nancy said. “We still don't know for sure
that Mr. Lorenzo and Andrew Papazian are the same
person.”
“Besides which,” George added, “Dennis might not
want to cooperate. If he's the person who's been
blackmailing Mr. Lorenzo, he's made a lot of money by
keeping Papazian's identity a secret.”
Randy shoved the faxed article under the cover of
his notebook and dropped it into his jacket pocket.
“We can't sit by and do nothing. If Lorenzo is Papaz-
ian, he belongs in jail.”
“We need to find out the truth,” Nancy said. “Let's
talk to Dennis.”
“How? We don't know where he is,” George said.
Nancy headed for the window and began to climb
back out to the alley. “I think I know how we can find