Power of Suggestion (11 page)

“So?” Nancy asked.

Maury pointed to the screen. “So it says here that the subliminals work. Edberg is almost done with his study, and he's had very good results.”

Seeing the frown on Maury's face, Nancy said, “It sounds as if you're not so sure.”

“Well, there's a lot of statistical stuff here that I haven't had a chance to examine, so I don't know yet if he's right or not,” Maury said. “I've been checking out the files on individual students to see how he interpreted their results. Some of the reasoning is still confusing to me. I have to sort it out.”

Nancy was starting to feel discouraged. So far he wasn't telling her anything that showed a motive for any of her suspects. “What about Parker's file—have you accessed it?”

“That's interesting, too,” Maury said. “I haven't been able to locate it yet. Maybe there are files I still haven't accessed—”

“Hey, how's it going?” a new voice asked.

Nancy and Maury turned to see Dave Webb standing in the doorway, munching on an apple.

“They keep coming by,” Maury explained to Nancy. “The whole house seems to have taken Parker on as their personal cause.”

“Brotherhood is powerful,” Dave agreed, ambling into the room. “Have you proved he's innocent yet?”

“I appreciate your faith in me, Dave,” Maury answered, “but these things take time. You see—” He began to explain everything all over again, but Dave held up his hands and started to laugh.

“Whoa! I just need a simple answer.” He looked around at the papers scattered on Maury's desk. Then his gaze fixed on the brochure Nancy had taken from Positive Tapes, half-buried among the pile of papers. She had pulled it out of her pocket when she gave Maury the diskettes and had forgotten it on his desk.

“Nancy! You found him!” Dave said.

Nancy gave him a puzzled glance. “What do you mean? Found who?” she asked, reaching for the brochure.

Dave pointed to the color photo of Larry Boyd on the cover. “He must be wearing a wig here,” Dave answered. “But this is the bald guy I saw at the psych building the night Wayne was killed!”

O
KAY, SO WHAT
'
S
the plan again?” Dave asked a short while later. He and Nancy were sitting in Nancy's Mustang, which was parked outside a large split-level house in Emersonville's wealthiest neighborhood.

After checking the local phone book for Larry Boyd's home address, Nancy and Dave had driven right over. Nancy wanted Dave to get a face-to-face look at Boyd, to be absolutely positive that it was the same person he'd seen the night of Wayne's murder.

“I guess the easiest thing to do is simply ring the doorbell,” Nancy said. “When we interviewed Boyd he insisted that he'd never been on campus. If you can identify him as the person
who was in the psych building, then he was lying.”

Dave nodded. “And the only reason he would lie is if he was up to no good—say, murdering Wayne Perkins.” Dave let out a whistle, then reached for the door handle. “I'll try my best, Nancy.”

They stepped out of the car. The morning air was crisp, but a hint of approaching spring hung in the air. Nancy and Dave were about to cross the street, when the front door of the house opened and a man stepped out. He was wearing a heavy robe and slippers. As he bent down to pick up the Sunday paper, Nancy saw that he had a fringe of hair around his temples, but the top of his head was completely bald. “That
is
Larry Boyd!” Nancy exclaimed. “But without hair.”

“See? I told you it was him!” Dave declared excitedly. “I'm positive.”

Larry Boyd must have heard Dave's enthusiastic outcry. He looked up and saw the two young people, and his face suddenly paled. He spun around quickly and hurried back into the house, slamming the door behind him.

Nancy and Dave stood on the sidewalk facing the house. “I didn't expect that reaction from him,” Nancy confessed. “I wonder which one of us he's so scared of?”

“Beats me. What do we do now?” Dave asked.

“I still think we should try to talk to him.” Squaring her shoulders, Nancy marched up the
walk to Larry Boyd's house and rang the doorbell.

“Go away!” Boyd's voice came from behind the door.

“Mr. Boyd. I just want to talk to you,” Nancy called out.

“I have nothing to say to you.”

Nancy wasn't going to give up that easily. “You lied to me the other day when you said you'd never been on campus,” she pressed.

“Go away or I'll call the police!”

“That's not a bad idea, Mr. Boyd. You have a lot to explain to them.”

Nancy and Dave stayed on the front steps of the Boyd house, fruitlessly trying to get Larry Boyd to come out and talk with them. Soon a brown sedan pulled up to the curb, followed by a police car. Lieutenant Easterling climbed out of the sedan, and a pair of uniformed officers emerged from the patrol car. They stood by their car while Lieutenant Easterling approached the house.

“Lieutenant Easterling, I'm glad to see you,” Nancy said.

“Is Lieutenant Easterling out there?” Boyd's voice came from behind the door. Then the door flew open, and Boyd rushed outside. “Lieutenant! This young woman is harassing me,” he accused. “Arrest her!”

“What!” Nancy cried, astonished. “I am not!”

Easterling held up a hand. “Hold it, both of
you!” he ordered. He turned to Nancy. “Now, what's this all about? It's Sunday morning, and you're disturbing the peace and quiet of this man's home. What's your problem?”

“I'm investigating the Wayne Perkins murder, and I consider this man to be a prime suspect!”

“You consider
me
a suspect!” Boyd sputtered, his face turning bright red. “How dare you!”

“Let me ask the questions here, okay?” the lieutenant said. “But he's got a good question, and I'll ask it,” he went on, turning back to Nancy. “How dare you stick your nose in a police investigation? How dare you badger prominent citizens in
my
town?”

“But I'm not—”

“Oh, no? Didn't you tell both Mr. Boyd and Dr. Edberg that you're a reporter for the college newspaper? I got calls from both of them on Friday about you. You're not even a student there.”

“I can explain.”

Lieutenant Easterling brushed Nancy's explanation away. “Don't bother, I've heard it. You're an amateur detective, and you don't think the college boy shot his tutor, so you're looking for somebody else to pin it on. You think you've got evidence linking Boyd and Edberg to the crime, so that gives you the right to stick your nose where it doesn't belong?”

Nancy had heard about all she could take. “Wait just a minute,” she said, glaring at him. “I have every right to try to get at the truth. And it
so happens I
do
have several suspects besides Parker Wright, and I
have
found evidence linking others to the crime. If you'll just give me a minute to tell you what I've found—”

“Save it, kiddo. I don't want to hear the fantasies of a teenager with an overactive imagination!” The lieutenant's face was just inches from Nancy's. “I've been a cop for twenty-two years and a detective for the past fifteen. The last thing I need in the middle of a murder case is some kid who's supposed to be a hotshot detective telling me I don't know how to do my job!”

He took a deep breath, reining in his anger. “I'm going to say this just once: I've got a suspect, I've got motive, opportunity, and a murder weapon registered to the suspect's daddy with the suspect's prints all over it, and the suspect hasn't been able to offer even the lamest alibi. It's an open-and-shut case, and I want you to back off!”

Nancy stood her ground, struggling to control her anger. Glancing at Larry Boyd, she saw that he was standing with his arms folded across his chest, a smirk on his face. At last Nancy said, “Lieutenant, I'm trying to help your investigation, not hinder it. But if you can't see that—”

Dave Webb finally spoke up. “Save your breath, Nancy, this guy's not interested.” He turned to Easterling. “But I'll tell you what, Lieutenant. I told you I saw a man in the psych building on Thursday night, and this is him.” He pointed at Larry Boyd, who responded with a look of injured innocence. “Mr. Boyd told Nancy
he'd never been on the Emerson College campus,” Dave continued. “Maybe you've got the case pinned on Parker Wright, but if I were you I'd ask Mr. Boyd why he lied about that.”

With that, Dave took Nancy's arm and led her toward her car. “Come on, let's let the police do their job.” As they walked away, Lieutenant Easterling was eyeing Larry Boyd speculatively.

Nancy wished she and Dave could stay around to hear Boyd's explanation, but she didn't think Lieutenant Easterling would be crazy about the idea.

“Thanks for sticking up for me,” Nancy said as she and Dave drove back toward the college.

“Just because he's a cop doesn't mean he's got a right to be rude,” Dave answered. “So what happens now? Do you quit the case?”

“Absolutely not! I know we're close to breaking this thing wide open. The more we learn, the closer we get. Let's go back to the fraternity to see if Maury has broken into that second diskette.”

“Do you think Boyd's the killer?” Dave asked.

Nancy shrugged. “It's obvious that he has something to hide. But is he the murderer? It's still too early to tell.”

Dave wanted to work out, so Nancy dropped him off at the gym before returning to the fraternity house. When she went upstairs to Maury's room, she was startled to find Diana DeMarco there, sitting next to him in front of his computer.

“What are you doing here?” Nancy asked the brunette.

“Oh, hi.” Diana looked embarrassed. “I've been trying to find you, Nancy. You weren't in the dorm, so I tried here.”

“Diana knows a lot about programming,” Maury explained. “I asked her if she wanted to give me a hand.” Suddenly he looked doubtful. “Is that okay?” He looked at Diana. “I mean, maybe you shouldn't be looking at this stuff . . .” His voice trailed off.

Nancy and Diana regarded each other. After a long silence Diana spoke up. “Look, I know you don't trust me, and you have no reason to. But after our talk, I realized I couldn't just run away. I really cared for Wayne, and I want to know who killed him and why.”

“What about your job with Subliminal Suggestions?” Nancy asked.

“I—I don't know. I haven't really given them anything about Edberg's study yet,” Diana said. “Being with Wayne made me question the ethics of spying. I haven't decided yet.” She straightened in her chair. “But after what Maury and I have seen on these diskettes, I know I have to stay here until this mystery is solved.”

“Why?” asked Nancy, hurrying over to the computer. “What have you found?”

“Well, I broke the code to get into the blocked diskette,” Maury told her.

Nancy felt a rush of adrenaline. “And?”

“Professor Edberg's data seemed to prove that subliminal tapes worked really well,” he explained. “But I had trouble following his interpretation of the evidence. Apparently Wayne had the same problem, so he reevaluated all the data. The second disk has Wayne's results. He worked through all the data, eliminated the statistical discrepancies, and when he was done—”

“What did he find?” Nancy asked.

“Wayne concluded that, while the study doesn't
disprove
the effects of subliminal suggestion, it doesn't
prove
it either. In each group some students improved, some stayed the same, and some even got worse.”

Nancy thought about this for a moment. “So what you're saying is—”

Diana broke in. “What he's saying is that Wayne discovered that Edberg was lying! Edberg falsified the data to support the conclusions he and Boyd were looking for.”