The Cheating Heart Read online

  “But who—and how?” Tavakolian erupted. “You’d better come up with a culprit soon, or I shall ask the dean to take action against Nickerson!” He hung up abruptly.

  • • •

  After a jog and breakfast with Ned on Monday morning, Nancy took a long, restorative shower in the Theta Pi house. She passed Brook in the hallway. “I’m off to the bookstore—catch you later!” Brook called out with a wave.

  Back in the room, Nancy settled down on the bed to make some phone calls. After her last conversation with Professor Tavakolian, she knew more than ever that she’d need concrete evidence to convince him that Ned wasn’t guilty.

  First she dialed Dean Jarvis to report what she’d learned about Steve Groff and Carrie Yu. Next, she called home. Her father, Carson Drew, was at his law office, but she spoke to Hannah Gruen, the Drews’ long-time housekeeper. Nancy explained that she would be staying at Emerson a day or two longer than she’d planned.

  Just as she hung up, the phone rang again. It was Ned. “So what’s the agenda for today?” he asked.

  “Can you come with me to Ivy Hall?” Nancy asked, drying her hair with a towel. “I’d like you to walk me through what happened last Monday.”

  “At your service,” Ned said promptly. “I’ll stop by for you in ten minutes, at noon.”

  Ms. Belzer waved hello as Nancy and Ned walked into the empty department office a half hour later. “If anyone comes in looking for me, I’m going to return these to the library. I’ll be back in ten minutes,” Ms. Belzer explained, carrying a pile of books out the door. Nancy nodded.

  Glancing around, Ned began his story. “Okay. I stopped by Tavakolian’s office just after three o’clock. He gave me the test—it was ten pages long. I brought it down here and put the first couple of pages through the photocopier.” He moved through the archway into the photocopier nook. “Soon I had to reload the paper tray—two hundred copies use up a lot of paper.

  “Then, after I started the copies of page three, I noticed page four was missing,” he went on. “So I went back to the professor’s office.”

  Nancy followed Ned back out into the hallway and down to Professor Tavakolian’s office, which was locked shut. “You came down here, but he wasn’t in,” Nancy prompted Ned.

  “Right,” Ned replied. “I found the disk on his desk and took it back to the department office.” They went back up the hallway. “Ms. Belzer let me boot up the disk on her screen,” Ned finished, standing before her desk.

  “How did you know which file it was?” Nancy asked, trying to visualize the scene.

  “There was only one file on the disk, called Frosh Lit Test,” Ned recalled. “I scrolled through the file until I found the missing page, then I printed it out.”

  Nancy thought a minute. “Were the answers in the same file as the test questions?”

  Ned nodded. “When I scrolled through the file, I saw the list of answers, at the end of the test questions.”

  “Okay. Now tell me how you printed out the missing page, step by step,” Nancy asked.

  Ned explained patiently, “I scrolled through the file to the section that represented the missing page. I highlighted it on screen. Then I hit a series of buttons to tell the printer to print just that page.” He pointed to the buttons on Ms. Belzer’s keyboard.

  Nancy looked around. “You printed it out on this printer on the table by the window?” She paced around the bank of file cabinets over to the window as she spoke.

  Ned nodded, following her. “I went to take the sheet of paper out of the printer. Then I returned to Ms. Belzer’s computer, hit the button to exit from the file—”

  “You mean you left the computer for a minute, with the test still on the screen?” Nancy asked.

  Ned nodded.

  “Ned, that may be it!” Nancy said eagerly. She hurried back around the file cabinets and pointed to Ms. Belzer’s computer. At the bottom of the screen, the name of the file Ms. Belzer had been working on was clearly displayed: Honors Program.

  “Don’t you see?” Nancy said eagerly. “The name of Tavakolian’s file was Frosh Lit Test. Anyone walking by and glancing at the screen would know at once what this file contained. It was as good as displaying it on TV.”

  Ned nodded slowly. “But how could anyone have copied down the answers that fast? I was only away from the desk for a minute.”

  “It wasn’t the answers that were stolen,” Nancy reminded him, “it was the whole test. Now show me again how you print it out. We’ll use Ms. Belzer’s file here as an example.

  “So with just three keystrokes, someone could have told the computer to print out the whole test,” Nancy said after Ned showed her. “That must have been just after you’d left the printer, or you’d have noticed. And then after you’d returned to the computer—the thief went over to the printer and took out the pages.” She strolled to the table by the window and lifted out Ms. Belzer’s two-page document the laser printer had already printed out.

  “Nancy, that’s it!” Ned cried.

  “And this is a fairly common software program—lots of people must know how to work it,” Nancy noted. “Where was Ms. Belzer at the time?”

  “She went over to the faculty cubbyholes to put in some mail,” Ned recalled. “So someone could have been at the desk without being noticed. There were loads of students roaming around the department office that afternoon—professors, too.”

  “Anyone specific you can remember?” Nancy kept on. “It’d help us to have other witnesses.”

  Ned concentrated. “Only one person I remember for sure—Paul DiToma.”

  Nancy frowned, stowing the pages from the printer in her shoulder bag. “That’s right—he said he was here Monday afternoon. That’s when he first ran into Steve Groff.”

  Ned nodded. “Maybe he knows who else was around then. Why don’t you ask him? He should be at the Omega Chi house. We can pick up a quick sandwich there.”

  Ms. Belzer returned, and Ned and Nancy headed back to Greek Row. The campus was beginning to fill up now, and several students called out to Ned as they walked along. It’s as though a special glow surrounds Ned, Nancy reflected as she looked up at him. He’s one of the top guys on campus. I’m lucky to be with him.

  She slid an arm around his waist, and he instantly responded by putting his arm around her shoulder. She turned her head sideways and upward to study his square jaw, generous mouth, and sparkling dark eyes. She noticed his handsome features light up as he saw another friend approach.

  He really does love this place, Nancy thought to herself. No wonder he’d be so upset at getting expelled. I have to make sure it doesn’t happen!

  They parted outside the Theta Pi house, so Nancy could drop off her sweater now that the day was growing hot. She climbed the stairs and walked down the hallway to Brook’s room.

  The door stood ajar, as usual. The Theta Pi sisters trusted one another so much that they rarely locked or even shut their doors.

  As Nancy stepped through the door, a length of rope hanging over the door frame brushed against her head. Surprised, she pulled back.

  The rope had been tied in the shape of a noose. Pinned to it was a scrawled note:

  Stay away or your going to get hurt!

  Chapter

  Twelve

  NANCY WAS STANDING in the doorway rereading the handwritten note when Brook came up the hall from the bathroom. “Hey, Nancy, where’ve you been?” she asked cheerfully.

  Brook peered over Nancy’s shoulder. When she saw the noose, she came to a dead halt. “Whoa,” she said softly, clearly shaken.

  Nancy tried to slip the note into her pocket, but her jeans were too tight to do it easily. Brook reached out for the paper. “What’s that?”

  “It came with the noose,” Nancy said dryly.

  Brook read the note. “What’s this all about?”

  “Oh, I’m sure it’s nothing. It’s pretty routine in my line of work.”

  “But you’re not working on a
case now,” Brook responded, confused.

  “Well, maybe just a little case,” Nancy admitted. “One of the professors here at Emerson found out that some kids were cheating on a test, and he asked me to look into it. Minor stuff.”

  “Oh.” Brook glanced at the note again. “With this demented handwriting and the lousy grammar, I thought it was from a weirdo or something.”

  “Nah, it’s probably just a nervous student,” Nancy guessed, fingering the smooth white sheet of note paper.

  “Good.” Brook stepped past her into the room. “Because with all this stuff that’s been happening to Paul, not to mention your fall at the concert Saturday night, I was starting to worry.”

  “Well, whatever it is, I’m sure you’re in no danger,” Nancy reassured her. “But it does mean that I’ll need to stay on a couple of days.”

  “Great!” Brook exclaimed, smiling.

  Dropping her sweater on the bed, Nancy said goodbye to Brook, promising to check in with her later. She went downstairs, where Ned was waiting for her, and they walked over to the Omega Chi Epsilon house.

  On the way, she showed him the weird note she’d found. Ned frowned, looking worried. “Someone really is trying to scare you off this case.”

  Nancy shrugged off his concern. “This isn’t such a threatening note,” she pointed out. “If anything, it tells me I’m closing in on the test thief—and that’s good news.”

  Inside the fraternity house, Ned buzzed Paul’s room on the intercom, but there was no answer. “Let’s hang out till he shows up,” Nancy suggested. “I have a couple more calls I ought to make, anyway. I should check my other suspects’ alibis for Monday afternoon, which was probably when the test was printed out from the computer.”

  “Why don’t you use the phone down the hall?” Ned offered. “No one’s around.” He handed her a copy of the campus directory, and she settled down at the desk.

  Her first call was to Tom Mallin.

  “Monday afternoon, after three o’clock?” Tom sounded surprised. “I was working at the pizza restaurant.”

  A quick call to the pizzeria confirmed Tom’s alibi. Next, Nancy tried Annie Mercer. She wasn’t in, but her roommate Claire promised to have Annie return the call. Nancy phoned Gary Carlsen next.

  “He’s at the library,” his roommate reported.

  “But classes haven’t even started yet,” Nancy replied in surprise.

  Gary’s roommate gave a sardonic chuckle. “He just likes to browse around there. The other night, in fact, he stayed there all night. He told me he went down into the stacks and hid from the librarians at closing time—nine-thirty. He took a flashlight with him so he could read all night. He says a senior he knows from chess tournaments does it all the time. Bunch of nerds, if you ask me. Want to leave a message?”

  “No, thanks,” Nancy said, smiling. More than ever, she couldn’t imagine Gary being her culprit.

  Her last call was to Linda Corrente. “Monday afternoon?” Linda repeated. “A week ago? Let me see—I was in my room, working on a poem.”

  “Was anybody else there?” Nancy asked.

  “No,” Linda said. “I need solitude to write.”

  Not much of an alibi, Nancy thought, but then Linda wasn’t a very strong suspect in this case.

  “One more question,” Nancy said. “Do you use a computer?”

  “Not really,” Linda answered hesitantly. “I’m taking a crash course on how to use a Mac—they offer it as part of orientation—but I have to say that I’m still pretty lost.”

  Nancy quickly pictured the English department office’s computer. It was an IBM, not a Macintosh. “Thanks. ’Bye.” She rang off. Linda clearly didn’t know enough about computers to have printed out that test on the spur of the moment.

  Just as she hung up the phone, Paul DiToma came strolling out of the kitchen. “Hey, Paul,” she called out. “We just buzzed your room—I thought you were out.”

  “I was in the kitchen. I signed up for lunch dishes duty this week,” Paul said. “Now Brook and I are driving out to the country. We’ll have dinner at Bob’s Barbecue—want to come?”

  “No, but can we walk with you to the car?” Nancy asked. Ned grabbed them a couple of sandwiches before they followed Paul out the door.

  “I’d like to pick your brain a little,” Nancy said.

  Paul shrugged. “About what?”

  “You remember when I saw you in the English department office last Monday?” Ned asked.

  “Yeah, I was picking up a reading list for my modern poetry seminar.”

  Ned nodded. “Who else was there?”

  Paul seemed puzzled, but he slowed to a stop and tried to visualize the scene. “I saw a couple of friends signing up for conferences with their advisers—Larry Bowen and Phil Epstein,” he recalled. “Oh, I saw that girl from my hometown, the Mercer twin, signing up for the freshman lit test. And so was Steve Groff. That’s when he asked me about Professor McCarty’s class and somehow I ticked him off.”

  “Steve said he found the test in the trash bin right after that,” Ned reminded Nancy. “So that really pinpoints the time of the theft.”

  “What theft?” Paul asked.

  “Professor Tavakolian suspected there was some cheating on the placement test for the required literature course,” she explained. “Apparently, someone found a copy of the test in the trash bin outside the English department office on Monday afternoon—and sold it to other students so they could cheat.”

  Paul looked over at Ned. “You were there photocopying the test for Tavakolian, weren’t you?” Ned nodded, and Nancy saw Paul putting two and two together. “Tavakolian’s accusing you?” Paul exclaimed. “That’s absurd!”

  “Not only that, Paul,” Ned declared. “Nancy received a note accusing you of stealing the test.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding! I’d never steal a test!” Annoyed, Paul began to stride down the sidewalk, and Nancy and Ned scurried to keep up with him.

  “Steve Groff admitted to me that he sent the note to make you look bad,” Nancy said.

  “What does that guy have against me?” Paul complained. “Did he mess up my jacket, too?”

  “He says not,” Nancy said.

  “What about the glass in my pizza?” Paul wondered. “You think that was his handiwork, too?”

  Just then they reached the corner where Paul’s car, a beat-up black station wagon, was parked. As Paul began to pull his keys out of his pocket, Ned stared aghast at the car. Paul and Nancy followed Ned’s gaze. They both stopped suddenly and froze.

  The window on the driver’s side had been smashed into a mass of small white- and aquatinted crystals. Someone had then jabbed a hole through it.

  “No. Not my car, too,” Paul moaned softly.

  He reached in through the hole and popped up the door lock. As he opened the door, Nancy glimpsed a piece of paper on the seat.

  “Can I look at that note, Paul?” Nancy asked him in a level voice.

  Paul nodded dumbly, picked up the paper, and handed it to Nancy. He and Ned read it over her shoulder:

  You think your really cool but, I’m telling you now, you cant get rid of me this way. Your going to pay for this!

  Chapter

  Thirteen

  THE NOTE WAS handwritten on a plain white piece of paper. Nancy recognized the writing at once. It was the same as the handwriting on the note attached to the noose in Brook’s room that morning!

  “I knew I shouldn’t park my car on the street,” Paul muttered.

  Nancy turned to look him straight in the eye. “Paul, you’ve got to face up to the fact that somebody—either Steve Groff or someone else—really has it in for you,” she said firmly. “And that person is connected to this stolen test. I’ll explain the connection in a minute, but first, we have to call the police.”

  “The police?” Paul fretted as Nancy began to walk toward the phone booth across the street.

  “This isn’t just vandalism,” Nancy expl
ained as he followed her. “The note that was left on the seat is pretty threatening. Who knows how far this person will go?”

  When the police operator answered, Nancy asked for Sergeant Weinberg, the police officer she’d worked with on previous cases. She briefly explained to Weinberg what had happened to Paul’s car, and he agreed to come and investigate right away.

  Paul and Nancy waited on a grassy bank by Paul’s car. Meanwhile, Ned took off to pick up Brook. Soon they returned, with Brook wearing a hot-pink T-shirt and khaki pants. Paul showed Brook the note found in his car.

  “It’s the same handwriting as the note on that noose, Nancy!” Brook declared.

  Nancy nodded, fishing her note out of the pocket of her jeans to compare with Paul’s.

  “Nancy, you said Steve Groff confessed that he sent you that other note—the one about me,” Paul mused, idly plucking blades of grass. “Do you think he wrote these two notes, too?”

  “It may just be a coincidence,” Nancy answered cautiously. “His note was typed, and these two are handwritten.”

  “Did his note have the same bad spelling?” Brook asked.

  Paul managed a little smile. “You can tell she’s an English major,” he kidded.

  “That’s a good point, Brook,” Nancy said. “I’ll have to inspect the three notes carefully.”

  When Sergeant Weinberg arrived, however, he took the note from Steve’s car and began to put it into an evidence bag. “Sergeant,” Nancy said. He stopped and looked at her questioning^. “That note could be a very useful clue in this case I’m working on now.”

  “But I have to include this in my report,” the sergeant said. “Can I photocopy it for you?”

  She looked doubtful. “I need to examine the paper type, to compare it to some other notes I’ve received lately. They all may be connected.”

  The sergeant was interested. “If they’re connected, I should see all of them myself.”