“I was so sure you had to be involved. I just couldn’t see Victor running this on his own,” Kim continued. “He loves fooling around with the school computer and getting it to do weird tricks, but once he’s figured something out, he gets bored and goes on to something else. He couldn’t be bothered to do the same thing over and over, not even for money. So I figured he had to have a partner. Then you showed up, and I was sure.”
“If Victor did have a partner, it would be someone at the school,” Nancy pointed out, perching on the edge of the sofa. “But I’ve only just started there, and this grade-changer has been operating for almost two weeks. Besides, what makes you so sure Victor’s involved?”
Kim stared down at her lap and said so softly that Nancy had to lean in closer to hear, “He told me so. He said that he’d changed someone’s grades. He pretended to feel really bad about it, but now I can see that was just a put-on. If he’d meant it, he wouldn’t have kept doing it, and he wouldn’t have forced me to get involved.”
Nancy’s breath caught in her throat. “Why did you write that note to the headmaster?” she asked after a pause. “It was you, wasn’t it?”
“Sure. I was furious at you and Victor for what you were doing to me,” Kim replied, her pale blue eyes flashing. “I wanted to get you in as much trouble as I could without getting myself in hot water. It didn’t work, did it?”
“It might have,” Nancy told her, “except that Mr. Friedbinder knows who I am and why I’m at Brewster. How did you get involved in this racket?”
“There was a message in my E-mail,” Kim explained. “Whoever sent it knew I couldn’t afford to pay to have my grades changed, but he said I could improve my transcript if I ran a few errands. He also said that if I didn’t agree, my transcript could end up looking a lot worse than it really is. So I opened the account wearing this dumb wig. And he tells me when to pick up the money.”
“Why didn’t you go straight to the headmaster and tell him about it?” Nancy asked.
Kim shook her head sharply. “I couldn’t bring myself to turn Victor in. I’m really hung up on the guy.”
“Victor’s not the only one who could be responsible,” Nancy told Kim. “If I’m going to catch the culprit, I need to know how the money transfer works. I know you have a bank card for that account, but how do you know when to use it, and what happens to the cash?”
“I get an E-mail message,” Kim replied. “In code. If it says M five, I know I should withdraw five hundred dollars on Monday. T ten means one thousand dollars on Tuesday, and so on. It’s usually after or before school, but today the message said to go at lunchtime. I’m missing math right now.”
“How do you deliver the money?” Nancy asked.
“I put the bills in a brown envelope and leave it in one of the faculty mailboxes before school.”
“What?” Nancy exclaimed, straightening up. “Which one?”
Kim shrugged. “It’s not labeled. It’s on the bottom row, on the side near the door.”
Nancy frowned and stared into space. Then she said, “I’m going to need your help to put the person behind this out of business. How about it?”
Kim nodded hesitantly.
“Great,” Nancy continued. “Now, here’s what I have in mind. I want you to deliver the money you picked up today.”
“You do?” said Kim incredulously.
“Yes, I do,” Nancy replied. “And then I want you to stay home from school for the next two days. Think you can play sick for that long?”
“No problem,” Kim said. “No problem at all.”
At eight forty-five the next morning Nancy was standing near the coffee urn in the faculty lounge, paging through a news magazine. She glanced up just as Kim came in, stuck a brown envelope into a mailbox on the bottom row, and scurried out.