“Hi,” he said a little nervously. “I hope you don’t mind, but I looked up your address in the phone book.”
An alarm went off in Nancy’s brain. In order to look up her address, Victor had to know her last name—her real last name. “Is that so?” she asked. “How did you know where to look?”
“Kim told me who you really are.” Victor’s tone was flat. The sparkle in his amber eyes and his easy grin were gone. He was pale and seemed anxious. “I’d like to talk to you,” he said. “Want to take a drive? It’s kind of important.”
“Okay,” Nancy agreed, grabbing her denim jacket from the hall closet. She called to Hannah to let her know where she was going. “Come on,” she said, pulling the door closed behind them.
They climbed into Victor’s beat-up car and began to drive. The night had grown foggy, and the streetlights gave only a hazy, dim glow. Occasionally Victor flipped on his wipers to brush the mist from the windshield. For five full minutes neither of them said a word. Then, pulling to a stop at the curb of a residential street, Victor turned to her.
“So you’re the famous Nancy Drew,” he said. “I guess I’m the guy you’re after, huh?”
Nancy shot Victor a quick look. What was he saying? Was this an admission that he was the grade-changer? “I don’t know,” she hedged. “Are you?”
“Don’t play games with me,” Victor said, a rough edge in his voice. “I know changing Phil’s grade wasn’t right, but I’d do it again.”
“Why don’t you just tell me how it all started,” she said carefully. Nancy didn’t want to reveal that she didn’t know about Phil or even who he was. I’ll just hear Victor out, she decided.
“That’s simple,” Victor replied. “About a year ago, a guy who’s been a close friend of mine since we were kids told me he was in big trouble. He’s an ace basketball player, and a couple of good universities had their eye on him, but he had flubbed one of his courses during fall semester. He was afraid that they were about to put him on academic probation, right before basketball season started. He’d be bumped from the varsity and lose his chance at a scholarship.”
“So he asked you to change his grade?” Nancy suggested.
Victor shook his head. “Not a chance! He never even knew. It was all my idea. I did a good job, too. I didn’t dare change that D he’d gotten. It would have been too easy to spot. So instead, I eased his other grades up, just enough to bring his average above the danger line.”
“I see,” Nancy said. “And once you found out how easy it was, you decided to keep doing it, only for money.”
Victor stared at her blankly for a moment before asking, “Is that what’s going on?” His amber eyes grew wide with surprise. “I figured you were trying to find out who changed my pal’s grades. I thought Friedbinder had noticed it and put you on the case. Boy, do I feel dumb! What you’re investigating is much bigger, isn’t it? Well, I can tell you for sure that it’s not me. I don’t care if you believe me or not, it’s the truth. I fiddled with my friend’s record—one time. Afterward I swore I’d never do anything like that again. And I haven’t.”
Nancy didn’t know what to think. Victor’s manner was very convincing, but all good liars could be convincing. She measured Victor against what she knew about the true criminal. Victor could be made to fit the profile, but only by making a number of unlikely assumptions.
She didn’t see why he’d tell her about his friend Phil if he really was changing grades for money. Then there was the fact that Nancy’s threatening messages had come from Phyllis Hathaway’s computer. It would probably be pretty hard, if not impossible, for Victor to gain access to her office. And why would he bother when he had easy access to so many other terminals?
Besides, Nancy had better candidates already, ones who fit the pattern of facts almost perfectly.