Nancy felt her heart sink. She couldn’t let her cover be broken—not now! “As I told you yesterday, I just started working in the tutoring program,” she replied in a rush. “You might have seen my picture because I just won the River Heights art contest. Second prize.”
“Maybe that was it,” said Randi suspiciously. Then she shrugged. “Hey, why don’t I interview you about the program now?”
As the girl reached for a pad and pencil, Nancy hastily said, “I’m not the one you want. I just started, I’m only temporary, and I don’t know that much about it. Why don’t you interview Ms. Hathaway or Mr. Friedbinder?”
Randi wrinkled her nose. “They’re not actually working in the tutoring program; you are. I want to get a ground-level view of it.”
“Then the people you ought to talk to—” Suddenly Nancy clapped her hand over her mouth. “Uh-oh, I just remembered, I left someone in the learning lab waiting for a tutoring session!”
Randi was staring at her as if she had lost her mind. Too late Nancy remembered that she’d just told Randi she was meeting a student there at the newspaper office. Luckily, all Randi said was, “Okay, but I still want that interview with you, Nancy Drew.”
Shooting Randi an apologetic smile, Nancy hurried back down the hall.
Suddenly she gasped and stopped short so quickly a guy with a big stack of books under one arm, obviously late to class, walked straight into her. She helped him pick up his books, thinking about what Randi had said.
Randi had called her Nancy Drew—not Nancy Stevens. Somehow she’d uncovered Nancy’s real identity. Randi wasn’t the only one who had addressed her by her full name in the last hour, either. The author of that threatening message had done the same. Walter Friedbinder and Sally Lane were supposed to be the only ones who knew her real name, but if Randi knew, others might, too.
Nancy groaned. It was going to be even more difficult to track down the grade-changer now.
When she reached the learning lab, it was empty. The girl must have gotten impatient and left. Nancy turned on the computer and checked her E-mail. No new messages had come in for her.
“Hey, there,” a familiar voice called from the doorway. “Sharpening your computer skills?”
Nancy turned to see Victor stroll into the room. “Something like that,” Nancy answered him. “Listen, will you excuse me? I have to make a phone call.”
Victor’s face fell, but all he said was, “Sure. I just sneaked out of class to say hi. Catch you later.”
Once he was gone, Nancy dialed the number of the People’s Federal Bank. Harrison Lane came on the line at once.
“Nancy!” he said. “I was just going to call you. Eight hundred dollars that was deposited yesterday in I. Wynn’s account was withdrawn from the Archer Avenue bank machine at eight-thirty this morning.”
“Before school hours,” Nancy noted. “Mr. Lane, is there any way you can program the bank’s computer to alert you the next time somebody tries to make a withdrawal or deposit from that account?”
“That shouldn’t be too hard,” the banker said. “We’ll just put a flag on the account number, with instructions to telephone me when it pops up. We can also tell the computer to take extra time to process any transaction for that account. That way, we’ll have enough time to react to the alarm.”
“Great,” said Nancy. “Can you set it up right away? I don’t want our crook to decide to pull out of this scheme before we have a chance to catch whoever it is.”
“Neither do I,” Lane agreed. “I’ll flag that account the moment we get off the phone.”
“Thanks.” As she hung up, Nancy’s stomach growled, reminding her that it was almost time for lunch.
Nancy’s heart sank when she entered the anteroom separating Phyllis Hathaway’s and Walter’s offices. She’d rushed there after grabbing a quick bowl of soup in the cafeteria, hoping to find Phyllis out to lunch, but apparently the assistant head was eating in that day and was hunched over some papers on her desk. As Nancy watched, Phyllis took a bite from a sandwich, then turned her attention back to her work.