Partners in Crime (9780545463119) Read online

  “So, um, what’s going on with you and Zane Munro?” I asked.

  Maya’s head snapped up and her eyes widened. “Nothing! Nothing at all!”

  I’d never heard her speak so loudly. That wasn’t the reaction I was expecting. She seemed … nervous. I said, “I was just wondering —”

  Maya interrupted me. “I have to go.” She picked up the remains of her lunch and stood to leave.

  I held up a hand. “Wait. Why are you so nervous?”

  Maya chewed her lip for a second. “I can’t talk about it,” she said.

  “Talk about what?”

  “Zane’s secret.” As soon as Maya said the words, she squealed in horror, dropped her lunch, clasped both hands over her mouth, and ran away.

  After school, Darcy, Fiona, and I walked home together. I so desperately wanted to tell Darcy about Maya’s freak-out in the library. But I worried that she’d just assume Zane’s secret was about the note in my locker. And I still didn’t think he’d do something like that.

  We went to Darcy’s house this time. As we grabbed some snacks from the kitchen, Fiona asked, “Where’s your mom?”

  “Work,” Darcy said, shoving a pretzel the size of my face into her mouth.

  “Does she work every day?” Fiona asked.

  Darcy nodded. She couldn’t really speak. Due to the giant pretzel.

  “You have the house to yourself every afternoon?” Fiona sighed. “Oh, man, I’m so jealous of you guys.”

  Darcy and I shared a skeptical look. Fiona Fanning was jealous of us?

  “The whole house to yourself every afternoon,” Fiona said dreamily. “Your mom is probably the type to let you do whatever you want, too, isn’t she?”

  Darcy shrugged a yes. She was still eating that pretzel.

  Fiona turned to me. “And your mom is so pretty and cool. She was a cheerleader at our school, did you know that? And your dad was this big jock. There are trophies with his name on them in the glass case in the school hallway. You must be so proud.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” I’d never really thought of Mom and Dad as parents other kids would envy me for. They were just, you know, my parents.

  Darcy pointed upstairs to tell us we should go to her room. Thankfully, by the time we got up there, she could talk again. I slid into the bacon chair.

  Darcy’s closet was open and Fiona peeked inside.

  “Your whole wardrobe is black and purple,” she said, aghast.

  “Yeah, so?” Darcy said, leaning back in a chair.

  “Well, don’t you own anything that doesn’t look like it’s for a Halloween theme day?”

  “I have my style. You have yours.” Darcy chomped on another pretzel. “So are you going out with that disgusting Slade this weekend?”

  Fiona hopped onto Darcy’s bed and crossed her legs. “Nah, I pushed him off until next weekend. I have too much to do right now with cheering, homework, an absolutely crucial trip to the mall, and of course this investigation. Plus, he wants to double, so I have to organize that.”

  “Double-date? With who?” Darcy asked.

  “One of my cheerleader friends,” Fiona said casually.

  “Yeah, but which friend of his?” Darcy asked again.

  “Hunter,” she admitted.

  “Oh, double puke!” Darcy exclaimed.

  “Can we focus here, girls?” I said.

  Darcy reached into the bag for another giant pretzel, and I grabbed it out of her hand. “Seriously. Let’s go over anything we’ve learned since our last meeting.”

  I wasn’t quite ready to tell them about Zane, so I said to Fiona, “Did you find any other clues in your house?”

  Her shoulders sagged. “No. And they’ve started keeping the den locked, which is strange.”

  “They’ve never locked it before?” Darcy asked.

  “Nope. And I tried eavesdropping last night when they were talking in there, but all I heard was something about someone who’s moving.”

  They could have been talking about anyone. “That doesn’t help much,” I said.

  Darcy’s laptop made a pinging sound and she picked it up off the floor and slid it onto her lap.

  “What’s that?” Fiona asked.

  “It’s a computer,” Darcy said.

  Fiona rolled her eyes.

  Darcy laughed. “It’s my tone for new e-mail.”

  She keyed in her password. As she read the e-mail, her face changed. I knew immediately this wasn’t good.

  “What?” I asked.

  Darcy looked up at me, then at Fiona. “I think we just heard from whoever left the note.”

  “What does it say?” Fiona and I asked at the same time.

  Darcy cleared her throat. Gripping the laptop tightly, she read the e-mail out loud. “‘Darcy and Norah: Stop. You are putting Fiona’s life … in danger.’”

  The little blond hairs on my arms stood up as a chill went through my whole body.

  Fiona said anxiously, “Can I see that?”

  Darcy walked the laptop over to the bed, where Fiona was sitting, and placed it on her lap. Darcy and I sat on either side of her and read the message again and again. The e-mail address was unfamiliar — just a random string of numbers. Whoever was sending us these messages meant business.

  “How could we be putting her life in danger?” I wondered out loud.

  “Maybe we are,” Darcy said. “Or maybe we aren’t.”

  “What do you mean?” Fiona asked with a quiver in her voice.

  “Whoever this person is, he or she realized that the note didn’t stop us from investigating. So they’re trying something different. Instead of ordering us to back off, they’re giving us this life-or-death warning. Thinking maybe that will work.”

  I wrung my hands together nervously. “But what if they’re telling the truth? What if we really are putting her in danger?” And ourselves, too, I thought.

  Darcy cracked her knuckles. “Okay, give me back the computer. It’s time for Senora Hacker to get to work.”

  Fiona handed the laptop over. “What are you going to do?”

  “Give me five minutes,” Darcy answered. “I’m going to find out who this person is.”

  “How?” I said.

  “After all the anonymous e-mails we got from our client” — she motioned at Fiona — “I decided to research e-mail-tracing software programs. I convinced my mom to get me one.” She grinned and said conspiratorially, “I told her it was an educational game.”

  I rolled my eyes at Darcy’s behavior but was secretly glad she’d done it.

  Darcy grinned at me. “Anyway, it’s complicated and involves Internet Protocol addresses and stuff that would bore you as much as your chattering on about astronomy bores me.”

  “Point taken,” I said. “Do your thing.” Sometimes it was best to just let Darcy work.

  Fiona and I had a staring contest with the floor, silently sitting, waiting for news. My pulse was racing. When five minutes turned to ten, I started to wonder. Darcy was a computer genius. When she said something was going to take her five minutes, that meant three. Something was up.

  Darcy’s narrowed eyes stared at the screen as she pounded the keyboard and grunted and groaned. If looks could kill, that laptop would’ve been on fire. Finally, after another few minutes, Darcy slammed it closed.

  “What’s up?” I said, almost too scared to ask.

  She let out a long exhale. “Well, I don’t think it’s anyone from our school.”

  “Really?” Fiona’s voice bubbled with excitement. “Your computer program told you that?”

  “Tone it down, Happy Pants,” Darcy said. “This is bad news.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Some kid at school couldn’t do what this person did.” Darcy paused. “The e-mail is encrypted.”

  “What’s that?” Fiona asked, much less excited now.

  “It means that the person who sent the e-mail was technologically savvy enough to hide the e-mail’s origins. I ca
n’t find out for sure where it came from. But that tells us one thing.”

  I gulped. “What?”

  Darcy shifted her gaze out the window. “That we’re dealing with something much bigger than we imagined.”

  “Like … dangerous people?” Fiona said in a small voice.

  “Maybe,” Darcy said.

  I put my hand on Fiona’s shoulder. “Do you want to stop the investigation?”

  She looked down at her hands and thought for a long moment. Then she straightened her posture and said, “No. I want to keep going until I find out the truth.”

  I was glad she said that, because I felt the same way. We had come so far and were in so deep. We couldn’t quit now. I looked at Darcy and nodded slightly.

  Darcy said, “Okay, then, Fiona. If you’re still in, we’re still in.”

  Fiona forced a nervous smile. “Thanks, guys. So, what now?”

  “I think it’s time to talk to your parents,” I suggested.

  Fiona shook her head quickly. “My parents are so overprotective. If they find out someone is kind of threatening me, they will freak out and never let me out of the house again!”

  “But what if they know something?” I said. “They might be able to steer us toward who’s doing this. They had Bailey’s birth certificate, after all.”

  “This is bigger than my parents,” Fiona said. “This is like … like … a conspiracy! My parents wouldn’t know anything about crypticized e-mails —”

  “Encrypted,” Darcy corrected.

  “Yeah, whatever,” Fiona continued. “They wouldn’t know anything. My mom can barely coordinate tops with skirts.”

  I got up and started pacing the room. Fiona was insistent on not telling her parents. But I couldn’t think of any other next step to take. This is when I usually counted on Darcy to come up with something brilliant, but she was staring into space. Fiona nervously twirled a strand of hair around her finger.

  After a few minutes of silence, Darcy stood and faced Fiona. “Okay. Your parents might hold a clue to this mystery, but I understand if you don’t want to ask them. That just means there’s only one thing for us to do.”

  Fiona pulled her hand from her hair. “What?”

  Darcy smiled mischievously. “We’re going to spy on your parents.”

  Friday night, I went to the movies with a boy, and then we went to the most popular girl in school’s birthday party!

  Just kidding. I went to Darcy’s house and we got pizza. But it was still probably the most exciting Friday night I’d ever had. Because I was getting ready to go undercover.

  We were sitting at her dining room table with a pepperoni pizza, a laptop, and a checklist. Darcy’s mom was watching a movie in the other room. When she’d asked us if we wanted to join her, Darcy said, “No thanks, Mom. We have a secret stakeout mission tomorrow and we have to plan.”

  “Okay, honey,” her mom called over her shoulder.

  I raised my eyebrows. I didn’t know if she thought Darcy was joking or if she was just too tired to deal with it. Either way, it was time to get to work.

  Darcy scanned the list. “Okay, I think we have all the equipment we need. Don’t forget your part.”

  I nodded. “I know where to bring my telescope in the morning.” I took a bite of the pizza slice, holding it tightly so the cheese wouldn’t slide off and land on my chin. “Does Fiona know everything she has to do?”

  Darcy nodded, but looked worried. “I went over everything twice. Hopefully, she remembers.”

  I wiped my hands with a napkin and slid her laptop over to me. “Mind if I go online? I want to do a little research on Fiona and Bailey’s place of birth.”

  “Sure thing. I’ve been working on something in my clue book anyway.”

  I typed Garretson, South Dakota, into the search engine and clicked on the first listing. It was an online encyclopedia that would give me some general information about the place. I took a few minutes to read through everything.

  “Find anything interesting?” Darcy asked, tapping a pencil on her head.

  “Well, it’s home to Devil’s Gulch.”

  Darcy looked up. “Cool name! What’s that?”

  “A place where that outlaw from the 1800s, Jesse James, nearly got captured. But he escaped by riding a horse over a twenty-foot gorge.”

  “Whoa.” Darcy gave an impressed nod. “Anything more recent?”

  “Yeah, looks like Jesse James wasn’t the only outlaw to hide in Garretson. Some guy who’d wronged the mob in the New York City was hiding out there, thinking they’d never find him in South Dakota.”

  “Let me guess, he thought wrong.”

  “Yeah, the mob boss caught up with him and killed him. Unfortunately there was a witness.” I squinted at the screen. “Some guy named Neil.”

  Darcy let out a low whistle. “I bet things didn’t turn out well for him. They never do.”

  Totally. I remembered an episode of Crime Scene: New York that Darcy made me watch that had a similar story line.

  But I had to focus back on Bailey and Fiona’s place of birth. I scanned the rest of the information. “Wow,” I said. “I thought Danville was small. Garretson has less than twelve hundred people.”

  Darcy shrugged. “Mr. Fanning probably moved the family here for a job.”

  “Yeah.” I sighed. “But we’re still no closer to figuring out where Bailey went.” I pointed at her notebook. “What are you working on there?”

  “This could just be a coincidence, but I figured out something kind of cool. Remember how Fiona said four is the family’s lucky number?”

  “Yeah …” I remembered when Darcy jotted something down in the investigation notebook that day in the bathroom. It must have been that fact about the number four.

  “Well, if you add four to each letter of the alphabet, the initials BAB become FEF.”

  I pictured the alphabet in my mind. Darcy was right. If you’re at B and then you move down four letters, you get F. If you’re at A and move down four letters, you get E. I gasped. “So Bailey Ann Banks plus four is Fiona Erin Fanning.”

  “Yeah!” Darcy said, but then frowned. “I don’t know if it means anything, though. It could just be a coincidence.”

  Darcy’s find was cool. And it might mean nothing. But Mrs. Fanning loved puzzles. It would make sense that she’d name her children using some kind of code. That didn’t get us any closer to finding Bailey, though.

  We’d have to make a breakthrough tomorrow. If our plan didn’t work … we might never find out the truth.

  I felt like a real undercover detective. We had our spy gadgets, we had a plan, and now all we had to do was put it into action.

  But first … cheerleading.

  I’d never gone to a sports game of any kind at Danville Middle School. But sometimes, in undercover work, you have to pretend to be something you’re not. Like someone who has school spirit. So on Saturday, Darcy and I showed up at the school fields, ready to cheer on our team.

  “What sport does Fiona do cartwheels for again?” Darcy asked as we walked behind the school.

  “Football,” I said. Behind our school were two large fields surrounded by a track for running. It looked like both fields were being used. Soccer in the front field, football in the back. I pointed at the far field, where a bunch of girls on the sidelines were pumping their pom-poms in the air. “She’s down there.”

  Darcy heaved a sigh. “Okay, let’s go pretend we care if our school wins or not.”

  I bumped her with my elbow. “It won’t be that bad. Look at the scoreboard. We timed it perfectly.”

  As part of the plan, we needed to meet Fiona here. But of course we didn’t want to sit through an entire game. So I’d found out the start time, Googled how long a middle school football game lasts on average, and figured out approximately what time we’d have to get there for only five minutes to be left in the game. The scoreboard showed seven minutes left. Very close! If there weren’t a bunch of parents a
nd kids watching from the bleachers, I would’ve reached over and patted myself on the back.

  The soccer game was ending as we passed by. Dozens of sweaty boys in uniform ran off the field as coaches and parents high-fived them. The team in white jerseys seemed to be happier, so they must have won. Whether they were our team or the other town, I didn’t know, and I wasn’t planning on getting close enough to any of the sweaty boys to find out.

  Until I heard my name.

  “Hey, Norah!”

  I stopped and started looking around, but Darcy must have figured it out before I did, because she gave me a sneaky smile and whispered, “I’ll meet you over there.”

  I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to face Zane. His hair was all wet and crazy and he had a dirt streak on one cheek. But he was still cute.

  He wore one of the white jerseys, with the telltale word Danville written above the number on his chest.

  “Congrats on the win!” I said.

  He took a giant gulp from his water bottle, then said, panting, “Thanks. It was a tough game. I’m glad we were able to pull out a win with that final goal. Did you see it?”

  My thoughts raced. Should I lie and say I did? But then what if he asks me a question about it and I can’t answer and I look stupid? Oh, man, why do I always get tongue-tied around him? I’m smart. I had the vocabulary of a fifth grader by kindergarten, but I cannot form a single sentence right now!

  Since my voice box was in panic mode, I just did this jerky body movement that was half shrug and half shake of the head.

  “So Maya told me she saw you in the library the other day,” Zane said.

  It seemed like those two shared all their secrets.

  “She said you invited her to sit with you and Darcy at lunch,” he continued. “That was nice. I’ve offered that before, too, but she doesn’t want to sit with a bunch of guys.”

  Ugh. Why didn’t they just get a romantic table for two in the corner? That ugly green monster — jealousy — was starting to rise up in me and I wasn’t proud of it. I told myself it wasn’t Maya’s fault Zane liked her instead of me.

  “I just wanted her to know she didn’t have to eat alone,” I said.