“No, I guess not.” Nancy fell silent. Could she believe Victor? He was acting uncomfortable. Was it simply because he knew his comment might be misunderstood? Or was this a sort of double-whammy, in which he gave away something embarrassing but harmless in order to convince her that he was being completely open?
“I just told this to Mr. Friedbinder,” Victor added. “But I couldn’t tell if he believed me. I hope he did. I hear colleges pay a lot of attention to your headmaster’s letter of recommendation, and if he shoots me down, I’m dead.”
Nancy realized the conversation was starting to get a little too personal. She was supposed to be tutoring Victor, after all. “Why don’t we see about bringing up your marks in English,” she said brusquely, reaching for her stack of books, “and let Mr. Friedbinder worry about what he says in his letter? Okay, Stu?”
Victor grinned. “Sure thing, Teach!”
After twenty minutes of solid work, Nancy said, “Nice going. Keep this up and I don’t think you’ll have any more problems.”
Victor stretched his arms and yawned. “Thanks,” he replied. “But I can’t help thinking that a lot of what you’re doing could be done by a computer. Not the really creative part, of course, but all those drills.”
“You should talk to Mr. Friedbinder about that,” Nancy told him. “He wrote a doctoral dissertation on creative problem solving. It was even published. I wanted to read it, but his only copy is packed away.”
“Really?” asked Victor. “I bet I could find you another copy somewhere. Let’s see.”
He leaned over and switched on the terminal, then entered a series of commands, separated by pauses. “I’m logging onto an interactive database,” he explained. “One of the things it has is a directory of published dissertations in different university libraries. Do you remember the title and the name of the school?”
Nancy told him, and he typed in the information. After a short while he entered some more commands, then still others. Finally he sat back. “Nope,” he said. “No good. There is one dissertation that sounds kind of similar, but it’s by someone else at a different school. I guess you’ll have to wait until Friedbinder unpacks his copy of it.”
Suddenly the phone rang. Harrison Lane was on the other end. “Right now, at the Ivy Avenue branch. You’d better—”
“Thanks, so long,” said Nancy, not waiting for him to finish.
Grabbing her coat, she ran for the door.
“What’s the matter, Nancy?” Victor called after her.
“Uh—nothing, Victor. Tell anyone after you that I had an emergency. Had to go.” Without another word, Nancy tore down the hallway and out to her car in the parking lot.
Nancy reached the bank in a record-breaking five minutes. She parked right in front and jumped out of the car. Her heart thumped hard in her chest. There, coming out of the bank, was a petite teenage girl with long, almost black hair. She fit the description of I. Wynn exactly.
The girl raised her head, and her face went white when she made eye contact with Nancy. That gave Nancy a good look at her face.
It was Kim! She was wearing a wig, but Nancy recognized her anyway.
“Stop!” Nancy cried as Kim bolted for a red car parked down the street.
Chapter Ten
Sprinting to her car, Kim jumped in and turned the key to rev the engine. With a squeal of rubber, the red car roared away from the curb and tore down the street.
Nancy didn’t hesitate. She jumped into her Mustang and broke her own personal record for getting under way. Soon she spotted the car several blocks ahead. It was turning left onto a side street. Nancy followed as fast as the law allowed.
At the side street, she made a racing turn and sped down the winding, tree-lined avenue, the red car still far ahead of her.
Nancy pressed down on the accelerator. Her blue Mustang responded instantly, and the gap began to narrow. They were heading into Sally Lane’s posh neighborhood. The street went down a little hill and curved to the left before straightening out. As Nancy came out of the curve, she muttered, “Oh, rats!”