Sabotage At Willow Woods (2 page)

She paused while the audience cheered.

“But in recent years,” Carrie added, “I believe that BHS, faced with some tough budgeting decisions, has let its facilities decline. As a town, we need to do more to support our high school athletes. The football field is in poor shape and on a rocky, uneven field. The bleachers are too small and in poor repair. Even the gymnasium at BHS is out of date. The football team has to work out at the Y, because they don’t have adequate facilities at the school.”

The football players, who were lined up to go onstage, all nodded their heads in recognition. The crowd let out a few stray boos.

“That’s why,” Carrie went on, “if I’m elected, the main goal of my first term will be to champion the building of an all-new football field and sports complex at BHS!”

If Carrie said anything after that, I couldn’t hear
it—her voice was immediately eclipsed by screaming, clapping, and cheering from what seemed like the entire crowd. Bess was hooting as loudly as anyone else, and even I found myself pretty excited by it all. But then I noticed that George herself was only clapping halfheartedly, and her expression was troubled. I nudged her, and George shook her head. “More money for sports,” she whispered to me. “Did you know BHS had to lay off three teachers last year? The town didn’t budget enough to pay them.”

That dampened my enthusiasm a bit. Was George’s cousin making a big mistake? But the crowd was still whooping and cheering. One of the football players ran up onstage and grabbed Carrie in a big bear hug. Carrie pulled away, laughing.

“I hope you’ll support my campaign for town council,” she went on. “Now, to the real reason we’re here: to introduce the State Champion Boylestown Raiders!”

The crowd got loud again, and the awkward moment was forgotten in pure celebration. After about an hour, when the speeches and awards were over, the
three of us moved off toward the BHS parking lot, where I’d left my car. George spotted Carrie moving through the crowd too. She seemed to be headed for the parking lot but was making slow progress because people kept stopping her to shake her hand or give her a high five. “Hey, cuz!”

Carrie spotted us and gestured for us to wait for her. A few minutes later—after several handshakes, three high fives, and one kissed baby—Carrie emerged, flushed and looking energized. “Hey, guys! I think that went well, huh?”

“Totally,” George said.

Carrie looked down at her hand, where she was clutching a folded piece of paper. “Someone handed me this in the crowd,” she said. “I hope it’s not some guy’s phone number!” She opened up the note and looked down at it, and suddenly her face paled. “Uh-oh,” she whispered.

“What is it?” Bess asked. When Carrie didn’t respond and just kept staring down at the note, George reached over and took the paper from her cousin’s
hand. She tilted the note so all three of us could read it. I leaned in to get a better look, then gasped.

NOT EVERYONE LOVES SPORTS. STOP YOUR CAMPAIGN —OR YOU’LL BE SORRY!

CARRIE WENT PALE. “WHAT—WHAT
is this?” she asked, turning around as though she expected to find the note writer smiling and waving.

“It’s a threat,” I said, a note of concern slipping into my voice. “An anonymous one. Unfortunately, politicians get them all the time.”

Carrie shook her head, looking back at the note. “I just don’t understand,” she said. “What I said was so basic. How could it make someone this mad at me?”

“I think the
someone
in question isn’t a rational person,” George replied, frowning. “And we need to figure
out who he or she is, before they act on that threat.”

Carrie looked up. Her expression was so vulnerable, it made her look like a little kid. “Nancy,” she said, turning to me. “George has told me a lot about the mysteries you’ve solved. I know you’re very smart and resourceful. Will you look into this for me?”

I smiled, taking the note from George and carefully placing it into my purse, trying to preserve the evidence. “I would have tried to catch the creep even if you hadn’t asked,” I said honestly.

“I hope Carrie doesn’t have to suspend her campaign,” George murmured later that afternoon, picking at my bedspread with jumpy, nervous fingers. We were all settled in my room, and I held the offensive note in my hand. I was using my own personal kit to dust it for fingerprints. Snooping 101.

“She won’t have to suspend her campaign,” I said comfortingly. “I’ll find whoever wrote this, and we’ll figure out what’s going on. But it’s going to be a little harder than I thought.” I put down the brush and pulled
over my trash can, shaking the bright-blue powder off the paper and into the trash. “I’m not getting a single print off this thing.”

“Ah,” Bess said with a knowing nod, “a seasoned threatening-note writer.”

I pulled my mouth into a tight line. “Right. Must’ve worn rubber gloves to write it.” That made things a little difficult.

Bess leaned over from where she was lying at the foot of my bed and took the note from me. “The handwriting is pretty standard, huh? Block letters, black marker.”

“Yup,” I agreed. “No distinguishing marks.”

Bess looked closer at the note and frowned. She brought the paper close to her face, then moved to get closer to the reading lamp on the bedside table and turned it on.

George perked up from her seat at my desk. “What do you see?”

Bess tapped her lip with a perfectly polished fingernail. “There’s a little bit of a logo here—like this was
written on some kind of official stationery.”

I leaned over to look, and Bess gestured to the top of the note. Sure enough, a tiny bit of embossed blue ink was visible at the very top—like whoever had written the note had cut off the identifying part of their stationery. It wasn’t much to go on, though—just a bit of a circle and the very bottom part of what looked like three letters.

“What letters are those?” George asked. She’d jumped up and was now standing over us, peering down at the note.

“I can’t tell.” I brought the paper closer to my face, then breathed in and coughed. “Ugh! Well, here’s another clue—this reeks of smoke.”

Bess sniffed the note and nodded. “Written by a smoker, clearly.”

I squinted at what remained of the letters. A curve with a flat bottom, a single line, and double equally spaced lines. I’d looked at enough ripped-up clues in my time to know what the letters might be. “The first
one has to be a
B
. The second could be an
I
or a
T
. The last one looks like an
A
or an
H
.”

George raised her eyebrows. “
B
for Boylestown?” she asked.

“
A
for Association,” Bess suggested.

I looked up. “George, where’s your tablet?”

George grabbed her purse and pulled out the latest addition to her gadget arsenal: a small tablet that she ran her finger across to wake up; then she pulled up her browser. “Let me do a search. . . . Boylestown Association. Hmmm.” She paused while the search engine did its magic, then read the results. “Boylestown Seniors Association.”

“No,” I said, frowning down at the note. “The middle letter definitely isn’t an
S
.”

“Boylestown Fire Safety Association. Boylestown Stamp Collectors Association?”

Beth groaned. “No to both of those.”

George read the next entry and looked up, crooking an eyebrow. “Boylestown Teachers Association?”

I looked down at the note again. “That’s it! George, go to their home page.”

George bent over her tablet and obeyed. “Here we go,” she said, lifting the tablet to show us the home page of the Boylestown Teachers Association. A round seal dominated—a seal that seemed to match right up with the tiny bit of circle left on the note in my hand.

“So it stands to reason,” I began, “that the person who wrote this note is a teacher at one of the Boylestown schools. And since Carrie is proposing a major change at Boylestown High . . .” I trailed off, but the gleam in Bess’s eye told me that she knew exactly where I was going.

“It makes sense to start there,” she murmured.

Luckily, RHHS had a teachers’ conference the next day, which left me free to begin my snooping. I snuck down into the kitchen while Hannah was dusting the living room, not wanting to answer a bunch of questions about why I was shoving a hastily made peanut butter sandwich into my mouth. Then I grabbed my
backpack and jumped into my car, checking my reflection in the mirror. A simple skirt and polo shirt Bess had picked out for me, an artfully messy ponytail: I looked cute enough to blend in, but not cool or noticeable enough to stand out.

I drove quickly to Boylestown High School and parked on a nearby side street. The bell was just ringing for their second lunch period—perfect! Soon the campus was crawling with kids carrying brown paper bags or trays laden with franks and beans, all looking for a place to eat. The school was pleasantly chaotic. Nobody would notice a girl who maybe, if you were really thinking about it, didn’t belong.

I walked confidently into the main building, smiling at any kids I passed, like I was just one of them. Most kids smiled back. Nobody asked who I was. I was able to make my way easily down to the basement level, past the cafeteria to the room I was seeking—which was exactly where the map I’d found online had said it would be.

A thick metal door, painted green, held a small
window that had been papered over so you couldn’t see inside.
Typical,
I thought. I raised my hand and made a few sharp knocks, my knuckles bumping against the
C
in
TEACHERS’ LOUNGE
.

The door finally swung open to reveal a tall man with longish sideburns and a shaggy mustache. He peered down at me through too-thick glasses, looking instantly annoyed. “This is the teachers’ lounge. It’s private. No students!” he barked, then pulled back his arm to close the door in my face.

“But wait!” I said, holding up my hand in the universal
please stop!
gesture. “I know the teachers’ lounge is private. It’s just that I found this lighter right outside the door here—I figured it must belong to someone inside?”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small butane lighter I’d bought at the drugstore a few hours earlier. I’d been careful to buy a gender-neutral color: green.

The man frowned, peering down at the lighter. “Hold on.” He closed the door again, briefly, while I
could hear him talking to the other teachers inside. “You sure? Okay.” He opened the door and shrugged at me. “I don’t know whose that is. It doesn’t belong to any of the teachers in here.”

I put on my best
oh gosh
face. “Oh, that’s too bad. I’d really like to return it. Do you know any teachers here who smoke?”

The man sighed, as if he were getting tired of this distraction from his rare “me” time. “Which teachers here smoke? Well, there aren’t many. It’s bad for you, you know that, right?”

I nodded solemnly. Oh, I knew. In fact, my dad had found that it was much easier to quit smoking than to put up with my constant nagging. Win for Nancy Drew!