The Mysterious Case of the Allbright Academy (12 page)

“Horace,” Dr. Bodempfedder said, “here's what I've been thinking. He'll be on campus soon for the board meeting. Ask him to stay the weekend, say we want to discuss some future plans for Allbright with him. Then maybe we could give him some of that ‘Nuclear Option' you've been working on, have a nice long talk over dinner. Maybe we could get him back in line, rescue the situation.”

Dr. Gallow got up and began pacing again. “It's not ready yet, the new stuff. It might not work. It might do a lot of damage.”

“Horace, you had it listed with your moderation chemicals back—when was it—in 1986, '88?”

“Look, I had something I thought had potential back then, but it turned out to have some serious side effects. And to be frank, I thought we were doing fine with what we had already.”

“Well, we're kind of in a time pinch here,
Horace. The board meeting is in two weeks. You might as well try it. What have you got to lose?”

“What have I got to
lose
? My perfect candidate—of age and ready to roll. The only other kid I have in Toby's league is in bloody sixth grade! I'll be using a walker before
she's
ready to run for office.”

Omygosh,
I thought.
He's talking about Zoë!

“Well, then, you need to find some other way to, what is that charming phrase you use sometimes, Horace? ‘Scrub his brain'?”

Oh please, oh please, oh please, oh please
be recording this, I thought. Even if they caught me right that minute and smashed my cell phone and kicked me out of Allbright, we'd still have enough on tape to put those two in jail!

“Okay,” Dr. Gallow said. “Get him up here for the meeting. That will give me two weeks to do some more testing. If I'm not sure I have a good product, we'll just go with Big Gun. And ask him to stay over for a day or two. Say we'll put him up at that little B and B on Summit Drive. He'll like that. We're going to have to go at him from every angle. It may take a while.”

“I'll call him tomorrow.”

“Okay. I'm going home,” he said. “I'm dead on my feet. And, Katrina, make sure this current chaos on campus doesn't get back to the board. I've got
enough on my plate already. I don't want Jonas Ford or Martha Evergood snooping around out here.”

“I'll do my best.”

Then, to my great relief, they both got up and walked to the door. The light went out. The keys jingled in the lock, and I was alone in the dark.

“B
eamer?” I said. I was in my room with the door bolted, calling on my forbidden phone.

“Franny?”
He was, needless to say, surprised to hear from me. We hadn't spoken since Thanksgiving.

“Yeah, it's me, believe it or not. Beamer, I'm going to be home this weekend and I really need to see you.”

“Wow, Franny,” he said, “gold stars to you for being the first one to call. I was so mean to you. Then I was too embarrassed to apologize. Is it too late to say I'm really, really sorry?”

“Nope. Apology accepted—especially since you were right.”

“

“I was?”

“Yeah, unfortunately. Totally right. It's a long, sad story, though. I'll tell you all about it this weekend.”

“Wow.”

“Also, Beamer, I'm going to need your help with something. It has to do with what we argued about, and it's really important.”

Beamer sucked air through his teeth. “I'm not going to have a whole lot of time this weekend, unfortunately. I've got to finish my project. The happiness film, remember? It's due next week and it's, like, my whole semester's grade, so I'm up to my eyeballs in editing. But I definitely want to spend
some
time with you.”

“Well, let's talk about it. I'm kind of under pressure myself. Can you come over Friday night? Have dinner with us? Then we can go into the den and talk.”

“Sure,” he said. “And Franny—I really missed you!”

Suddenly I had tears running down my cheeks. I sniffled, then squeaked out, “Me too. See you soon,” and hung up.

 

That Friday morning all four of us went into the office and signed up for the van to Baltimore. We had work to do.

Brooklyn was going to spend the weekend filling
yet more plastic bags with ChokoDream brownie mix (we didn't think my mom would buy our homeless-shelter story a second time). He had gone over to the kitchen the day after our visit to Dr. B's office. Reuben told him that Dr. Gallow had arrived first thing that morning with a huge box of Recipe Variant I, and hauled away all our carefully filled bags of brownie mix. Unless we brought Reuben something to put in place of the Variant I, the whole school would change back to its original state of robotic perfection in about a week.

Prescott was going to check with the lab, to see if any progress had been made on the patent search. But his main job—and it would take all weekend and then some—was to read the entire contents of Dr. Bodempfedder's hard drive.

How, you're probably wondering, did he happen to have that material in his possession? Well, it had been alarmingly easy.

After Dr. Bodempfedder left and I let the others into the Allbright administration offices that night, Cal, Brooklyn, and I started going through the files with the aid of our mini flashlights. Meanwhile, Prescott made a beeline for the computer. Now Prescott, for all his faults, is your basic law-abiding person, and he did what he did for a law-abiding reason—to bring criminals to justice. All the same, it was pretty creepy to see what a mere eighth
grader was capable of, spy-wise. And everything he used was perfectly legal and for sale on the Internet.

Here's what Prescott did:

He turned off Dr. B's computer, popped a CD into the drive (it contained a Linux program called Knoppix), and plugged a 4-gigabyte jump drive into a USB port. Then he started the computer back up again and, bypassing Windows and Dr. B's password protection, went straight into the guts of her computer. He copied all her Word files—and anything else he thought looked promising—right onto his jump drive. Then he just slipped it into his pocket. Amazing!

Prescott had a
lot
of reading to do.

As for Cal and me, our job was to meet with Beamer and see if he could do something with the tape we'd made. The problem was the quality of the sound. It had been recorded on a cheap machine off my cell phone, and the phone hadn't exactly been close to the people who were talking. Bottom line: It was barely audible. We hoped Beamer could use some of the equipment at his school to take out background noise and amplify the voices.

Beamer, being the wonderful friend he is, offered to do more than we asked of him. And being the creative soul he is, he saw possibilities we never considered.

“First of all, fixing the sound won't be a problem,”
he said. “It's fussy work and it'll take some time, but I can do it. Then I'll copy it into a PowerPoint presentation, with voice-over and visuals. It'll be much more compelling that way.”

“What visuals? All we have is that recording.”

“Well, you said you have the formulas for those compounds. That could be a visual.”

“Oh,” Cal said. “We didn't bring the documents. We didn't know you'd have a way to use them. But we have more than just the formulas. We found some really good stuff in Dr. B's files.”

“Well, when you get back to school, why don't you scan them and send them to me? Really, give me everything you've got. Pile on the evidence.”

“Scanning those documents in the Cyclamen computer room? I don't know,” I said. “Pretty scary. What if somebody saw what I was doing?”

“All right, then take digital pictures of them in the privacy of your own room and send that to me as a JPEG.”

“We could,” Cal said, “but I don't have a digital camera. Do you, Franny?”

“No.”

“I do,” Beamer said. “I'll bring it over tomorrow. You can take it with you to school for the week.”

“That should work. Thanks, Beamer. We'll need to be really careful, though. I mean, we don't want a big picture of some document coming up on the
screen in the computer lab, where everybody can see it.”

“No, you won't need to. Just load the pictures onto the computer through a USB port, then send me all the JPEGS as e-mail attachments. Don't even bother to open them. But be very careful to delete them afterward. I'll show you how tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

“And why don't you take a picture of a bag of that brownie mix, too? Get some nice photos of the school. Maybe a picture of the people who are talking on the tape. Can you do that? You could probably get them out of a yearbook.”

“Yeah, that's no problem. But I don't understand what you're going to do with all that stuff.”

“Well, when this bottom-feeder lady is talking…”

“Bodempfedder.”

“Yeah, her. When she's talking, we'll show her picture on the screen. When the other guy's talking, we can show his. I can pan in on the still pictures too, which makes it more visually interesting. They do it with documentaries all the time.”

“Sounds good,” I said.

“I can make more of a story out of it, not just some tape you're listening to. I'll start with the pictures of the school—get more than one, nice pretty ones, and make sure you get at least one shot of the building where this conversation took place. I can
do a short voice-over about the founding of the school and how it was intended to train leaders, then segue into the conversation. I can even add subtitles. In case you can't understand every word they're saying, it'll be up on the screen so you can read it.”

“That would be great,” I said. “But it sounds complicated. Do you have time to do all that, with finishing your movie and all?”

“Sure.”

“You don't either,” I said. “You've got your own stuff to do.”

“How about we just say I have the time and leave it at that? Okay, Franny?”

“Okay, Beamer. But you're a saint.”

“I know. It's true. And I'd stay and let you worship me, but I'd better go. I can get a head start on my editing over the weekend. That'll free me up to work on the tape at school on Monday. Then as soon as you send me the documents and photos, I'll put the whole thing together. I'll see you tomorrow, though, when I come by with the camera.”

As Beamer talked, I noted that his hair had grown down over his ears—not hippie-long yet, but well on its way. I remembered how I'd been so worried about that hair, afraid my friends would think he looked scuzzy—and the memory made me sick.

“Thank you, Beamer,” I said, trying to keep from
crying. “You really are the best friend ever.”

This was absolutely 100 percent true. As it turned out, Beamer's working on our project meant his film wasn't ready on time. Because it was late, the highest possible grade he could make was a C, when it should have been an A+. The teacher actually told him it was the best film any of his students had ever made.

I hadn't realized what helping us would cost him. But Beamer had, and he never even thought twice about it.

D
r. Linnaeus Planck is not listed in the phone book. Famous people never are. But we had his address anyway. Prescott had found it on Dr. B's computer.

We got a ride out there with Beamer's cousin Ray, who was still living at their house and playing in his dad's band. Lucky for us, they didn't have a gig that Saturday.

After much heated discussion we had decided to show Beamer's documentary (which is what it was, and a good one, too) to Dr. Planck. We made this decision because: (a) we were 99 percent sure he wasn't part of the conspiracy, since none of the creepy stuff we'd found in the files dated from
Planck's active years (it all started after he retired, when Dr. Gallow took over and Dr. Bodempfedder arrived), (b) we were nervous about going to the police ourselves, since the story we had to tell was so unbelievable, especially coming from a bunch of kids, and (c) we really wanted the Allbright board of directors to see the presentation, since they had the knowledge and the power to do whatever ought to be done. They were, after all, this incredible group of hyper-famous, extremely powerful people who were unquestionably trustworthy and totally dedicated to the school. Unfortunately, there was no way we could get into that board meeting. But Dr. Planck could.

And so, there we were, crammed into Ray's rickety car—all six of us (including Ray and Beamer). Extremely cozy.

Dr. Planck lived in Montgomery County, Maryland, near Chevy Chase. We left early Saturday afternoon, hoping to get there around five. We figured he'd be up from his afternoon nap by then (we felt sure that all old people took naps), but wouldn't have started dinner yet. Unfortunately, despite our Google Maps directions, Ray got lost. There was a construction detour and he made a wrong turn. Then we hit some traffic. It was after six by the time we arrived.

The house was grand and beautiful, as you might
expect, considering who lived there. It was a two-story, white colonial house, surrounded by big, old trees. As we pulled into the circular drive, we saw lights on downstairs.

A woman in a white uniform answered the door.

“May I help you?” she asked, clearly surprised to see us. I guess Dr. Planck didn't get a lot of visitors. She probably thought we had the wrong house, or maybe we were selling chocolate bars for our school's baseball team.

“Sorry to just show up like this,” I said, the very model of politeness, “without an appointment. But we're here to speak with Dr. Planck. We're from the Allbright Academy.” I waited to see if the name meant anything to her. She wasn't giving any clues, however, so I added, “Dr. Planck founded the school back in the seventies.”

The nurse nodded. Apparently she knew perfectly well what the Allbright Academy was. But she still didn't invite us in.

“We were hoping we could just have a word with him,” Prescott said. “It's about the school.”

Before she had a chance to answer, a tall, skeletal figure came loping down the hall toward us. His white hair—so neatly combed in the pictures of him I'd seen hanging on the walls at Allbright—was wild, fanning out from his head like a halo. He was so thin that his eyes seemed to protrude from their
sockets. It made me think of Egyptian mummies.

“Hide them in the bathroom!” he croaked, terror written all over his face. “Hurry! The wolves'll get 'em!” He tried to push past the nurse and scoop us into the house. He grabbed my arm, and was surprisingly strong.

“Now, Doctor P,” said the nurse, prying him off of me, “you let go of that little girl, hear? There are
no
wolves. Don't I keep telling you that? They were just on the TV.”

“No!” he cried, terribly agitated. “Hide them in the bathroom!”

“Honey, they don't
want
to hide in the bathroom. They're just fine where they are.”

He kept turning to look behind him for any sign of the approaching wolves, clinging desperately to the nurse. There were tears in his eyes.

“'Scuse us just a minute,” she said, and gently shut the door.

“Cheez,” I said. “Poor guy.”

“Yeah,” Cal agreed. “Do you think we should leave?”

“Let's wait a minute,” Brooklyn said. “Seems kind of rude to walk away. He was trying so hard to save us from those wolves and all.”

We stood in the growing dark for a full ten minutes, thinking gloomy thoughts. Then the door opened again, and the nurse stepped out on the
porch, pulling the door shut behind her. “He's resting now,” she told us.

“Sorry,” I said, though I wasn't exactly sure what I was sorry about. Mostly that this really great man, who had once won the Nobel Prize for physics, had turned into this frightened child in a shriveled-up body.

“You got something important you need to talk to him about? 'Cause if you do, he'll be a lot sharper in the morning. It's the Alzheimer's, you know. He's ‘sundowning' now. Happens most every night, though not often this bad. Usually he just wants to go home—you know, to Nebraska, where he grew up. Wants to know where his mama is. But like I say, if it's important, he's more himself in the mornings.”

I wondered if there was any point in going all the way out there again. I mean, how much better could he be? Even at his morning best, Dr. Planck wasn't going to be up to attending a board meeting, much less organizing an investigation or talking to the police. But, I thought, if he turned out to be a
whole
lot sharper in the mornings, we could show him the CD. Then maybe Beamer could film his shock and outrage, add it to the presentation. It was better than nothing.

“Is he really himself in the mornings?” I asked. “I mean,
really
? It's a long drive out here.”

“Well, honey, that's hard to say. Some things have
stuck in his mind, you know, but some are gone forever. Most of the time, even when he's at his best, he doesn't remember that he ever had a wife—and they were married nearly sixty years. But he can recall his childhood like it was yesterday. And he talks about physics all the time—not that I understand any of it, though he seems to think I should. And he talks about that school he started. Funny that those things would be more important to him than the woman he loved.”

“The mind is a curious thing,” Brooklyn said. “But since it's the school we wanted to talk to him about, it's good he still remembers it. If we do come back, what would be the best time?”

“I'd say around nine. He'll have had his bath and his breakfast by then.”

“We'll try to make it,” Cal said. “It depends on whether we can get someone to drive us.”

“Well, I need to go back inside. You kids do what you want; come or don't come, doesn't matter. We're not going anywhere.”

 

“That didn't take long,” Ray said when we got back to the car.

“It wasn't a convenient time, as it turns out,” Beamer said, loading his bag of equipment into the trunk of the car.

“What—you mean you didn't have an appoint
ment with this guy?” Ray was furious. “We drove all the way out here just on the off chance—”

“I know, Ray. Sorry. But we've got it all set up for nine o'clock tomorrow morning.”

“Tomorrow morning? You expect me to drive you out here again?”

Beamer winced. “Sorry,” he said. “But it's really important.”

“Gaw!” said Ray, slapping the steering wheel in disgust.

“It won't take nearly as long next time,” Brooklyn said. “It'll be Sunday morning, so there won't be any traffic, plus you know the way now.”

“We'll have to get up at the crack of dawn,” Ray groused.

“How about we take you out to dinner tonight?” Prescott said, clearly hoping to put Ray in a better frame of mind. “I know this great Italian place in D.C.”

Ray seemed to think that might be all right. Eventually he calmed down. We had a delicious dinner, which Prescott paid for, and by the time we got to the cannoli, Ray had agreed to take us out to Chevy Chase the following morning.