The Cheating Heart (12 page)

“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!

T
HE 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 explained
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.”

Nancy felt frustrated. “I'll make you a deal, Sergeant,” she said. “I'll bring what I have down to the station house, and we can go over all of it together.”

“Done,” the police officer said with a grin.

While the sergeant checked out Paul's car, Nancy ran back to the Theta Pi house to collect her evidence. Ned and Brook went back to their houses to wait while the sergeant drove Paul and Nancy to the station.

Paul filed his end of the report as Sergeant Weinberg led Nancy to a small interrogation room. It was furnished with a steel table, three sturdy wooden chairs, and a strong desk lamp. Nancy spread out the various documents she had gathered on the table and took out her magnifying glass from her purse.

The sergeant disappeared for a moment and
came back with a light table—a large, flat metal box with a glass window on the top. An electric bulb inside lit up the window, making it possible to inspect the documents carefully.

Nancy explained to the sergeant the facts of her case, then placed the three notes on the light table. As she and Brook had noticed, the two handwritten notes—the one with the noose and the one from the car—were clearly written in the same handwriting. The stationery was the same, too, an 8-by-l 1 sheet of smooth white rag paper.

The typed note from Steve Groff, however—the one that accused Paul of stealing the test—was on a cheaper paper. Nancy noticed at the edge of the sheet a few shreds of dried yellow adhesive, as if it had been pulled from a pad.

“We know that Steve Groff sent this,” Nancy told the sergeant, pointing to the typed note.

“The two handwritten notes are clearly from one person—but probably not this Steve Groff,” Weinberg said thoughtfully, poring over the notes.

Nancy bit her lip. “Why not? I'd like to see a sample of his handwriting, at least, before I rule him out.”

Next she placed on the light table the copy of the test answers Ned had found in his geology textbook. “This looks just like the answer key that was originally stolen,” she told Weinberg. “It was placed in Ned's textbook, I assume to frame him for stealing the literature test.”

“But I thought you said the answer key wasn't stolen after all,” Weinberg said, in some confusion.

Nancy nodded. “The
professor's
answer key was found later—but I think another answer key
was
stolen, straight off the computer, along with the rest of the test. And it must have been printed out on the English department computer.”

Next to the answer key, she placed the two-page document she and Ned had printed out in the English department that morning. “This is from that printer—same paper, same typeface.”

Weinberg absentmindedly pulled at his earlobe as he thought. “So you think the person who printed out that test kept only the answers and threw the rest of the test away?”

“Yes—and Steve Groff conveniently found it.” Nancy finished his thought. “It seems pretty stupid to throw away the test, though.”

“Maybe he or she thought it would be easier to carry just one sheet of paper out of the building,” Weinberg speculated. “Besides, once someone had the answers, who'd need the test?”

Studying the documents, Nancy frowned. “The typeface on Steve Groff's note is entirely different from the English department's laser printer,” she pointed out. “The letters on Steve's note don't have serifs—those little crosspieces on the ends of letters.”

“So he used his own computer for that note,” Weinberg said. “That doesn't prove he didn't use
the English department's computer last Monday.”

Nancy sighed. “Right. You see how complicated this case is?”

The police detective nodded thoughtfully, looking from one document to another. “Let's assume that the person who planted this test to frame Ned was the same one who left threats for you and for Paul DiToma.”

“I can see why the person who framed Ned would want to scare me off the case,” Nancy agreed. “Both actions were designed to disrupt my investigation. But why would that same person want to harass Paul DiToma?”

“This note says he stole the test,” Weinberg said, pointing to Steve Graff's note.

“No, Steve Groff just made that _up,” Nancy explained.

Weinberg groaned. “At least you've got a handwriting sample to go on.”

“That's true,” Nancy said, considering it. “Maybe that should be my next move—to check all of my suspects' handwriting. Thanks, Sergeant!”

In the main room of the station house, Paul had finished filing his report. Sergeant Weinberg asked a patrol officer to take Paul and Nancy back to campus.

“You can drop me off at the administration building,” Nancy told the officer as they reached the college.

“But, Nancy, it's almost six o'clock,” Paul said. “Why don't you call it a day? I know Brook and I won't be going anyplace tonight.”

“Just one thing I have to check,” Nancy replied. “Tell Ned I'll call him in a half hour or so.” She hopped out of the car and ran up the front steps of the administration building.

Ms. Karsten was still at her desk in the admissions office, though most of the staff had left. She looked surprised to see Nancy poke her head through the office door.

“I'm glad I caught you,” Nancy said. “Can I take another look at the freshmen files?”

Ms. Karsten looked at her watch. “I'm leaving in five minutes.”

“Oh, you don't have to see me out,” Nancy assured her. “I'll pull the door shut after me.”

The admissions director was hesitant, but she finally agreed.

Seated once again beside the huge files, Nancy went directly to the second drawer and pulled out Steve Groff's folder. On his application form, she found several paragraphs of his handwriting—a cramped, angular hand. It wasn't at all like the writing on the noose note and the note from Paul's car. “So we know Steve isn't our culprit,” Nancy muttered to herself.

Who next? Nancy remembered that Paul had said that Annie Mercer was in the English department office at the same time he was. Annie wasn't a strong suspect for stealing the test—her
grades were too good. But Nancy decided to check her handwriting anyway.

Thumbing through Annie Mercer's file, Nancy could find no handwriting. Everything, from her application form to her correspondence, had been typed, using a fairly common serif typeface.

Then as Nancy riffled through the file a second time, a letter caught her attention. She pulled it from the file and read it curiously:

March 4

Dear Admissions Director:

I am glad to accept your offer of a place in the freshman class at Emerson. Just one thing I thought you should know. I like to go by my middle name, Ann. All my friends call me Annie. So from now on, please address all correspondence to me as Annie Mercer, not Rona Mercer.

See you in the fall!

Sincerely,

Annie Mercer

Nancy felt a prickle running up her neck. She knew that feeling—it meant she was just about to solve a case.

She flipped the file folder shut and looked at the name tab. It read: Mercer, Rona Annie.

Nancy knew that Annie Mercer had a twin sister—named Rona. That meant that all of the application material had been filled out by Rona,
not Annie. And somehow Annie was now passing herself off as her twin sister.

That meant that Annie Mercer might not be such a hotshot student after all.

That meant that she very well might have needed to steal that literature test!

N
ANCY RAN OUT
of the admissions office, automatically locking the door as she pulled it shut behind her. Her mind was racing as she strode out of the building.

Why would Annie use her sister's application to get into college? The obvious reason would be that her own grades weren't good enough, Nancy reasoned. But she'd have a hard time keeping up academically after she'd started college.