“Ned,” he said with a smile.
“Well, he’s sure not here.” Nancy laughed.
“Exactly,” said Victor, gazing meaningfully into her eyes. “I am. So let’s forget about Ned.”
“I can’t,” said Nancy. “Anyway, I’m your tutor—I don’t think I can go out with students.”
“It’s not like you’re a real teacher. Come on, why not?” Victor replied.
Nancy felt herself melt a little in the warmth of his gaze, but all she said was “I have a couple of errands to run. Let’s get the check.”
“I should get home, too,” said Victor. “My computer must be starting to wonder what happened to me.” He signaled the waiter and paid for their burgers, and then they left.
As she drove home, Nancy reviewed the case. Even though she liked him, Victor Paredes definitely had to be a suspect. He had bragged to her that he could do whatever he wanted with the computer system. He hadn’t made a secret of his poor grades in English or about his need for money to go to college. What if he had first cracked the school records access code while trying to change his own transcript, then realized that he had a very profitable product to sell? He was no dope—he might have decided to leave his own grades unchanged for the time being, just in case suspicion fell on him. Hadn’t he been awfully quick to bring up just that point?
Nancy laughed. That was like saying that because a criminal might try to look innocent, anyone who looked innocent must be guilty!
Pushing Victor out of her thoughts for the moment, Nancy started to think about Kim. Had her attack on Nancy really been caused by jealousy? Or was she somehow connected to the case? But Nancy didn’t see how Kim would know that she was a detective, or that there was a grade-changing scheme.
And what about Randi, the newspaper reporter? Was she as straight as she seemed? She obviously knew how to use the computer very well, and she had seemed anxious to clear her computer screen when Nancy showed up. In addition, she was petite and a brunette, just as Mrs. Tillman had described I. Wynn. So far, she was the only one who fit that description.
And, of course, there was Phyllis Hathaway. She was still Nancy’s number-one suspect. Nancy resolved to find out more about her and her mysterious friend Dana the next day.
The next morning Nancy had a break after her third student. It wasn’t long enough to do any investigating, but it did give her time to go to the faculty lounge and fix herself a cup of tea. As she was carrying it back to the learning lab, she ran into Victor. He was standing in the hall talking to a heavyset young woman with curly dark hair and green eyes. She was wearing a navy blue business suit and had a still-damp raincoat draped over her arm. It had poured all morning.
“Hey, Nancy,” Victor called. “Come here, I want you to meet someone.” When Nancy joined them, he continued, “You were asking questions about the school computer system? Here’s someone who knows it inside out. Meet Ms. MacCauley, president of PointTech Computers and queen of the River Heights hackers.”
“Victor!” the woman said in mock outrage. “I’ve told you before, you don’t call people hackers these days. It’s like—oh, I don’t know what, but don’t do it.”
Victor saluted. “Yes, ma’am!” Then he turned back to Nancy. “Ms. MacCauley heads up PointTech, the company that designed the system here at Brewster. Whenever it goes down, she’s the one who catches the flak and puts it back on line.”
“Does the system go down often?” asked Nancy.
“No,” Ms. MacCauley answered.
“Yes,” said Victor at the same moment.
“Let’s put it this way,” Ms. MacCauley said, smiling. “It’s a complex system that’s had a lot of different demands put on it. It’s designed to handle them, but sometimes the pressure makes it a little ornery. That’s when I step in, to give it lots of strokes and a few well-placed strategic kicks.”
Nancy returned the woman’s smile. “I can easily imagine kicking a computer,” said Nancy. “But how do you go about stroking it?” Maybe this was her chance to learn something helpful about the computer system at Brewster. “Do you have a few minutes to show me a little more about the system?”