The Wrong Chemistry (6 page)

Heading for the science building, Nancy spied Professor Maszak shouting into a pay phone. Seeing her, he lowered his voice and turned his back on her.

Nancy drifted into one of the phone booths a few feet away, lifted the receiver and pretended to dial. She strained to hear what Maszak was saying but his words were too soft. Then, just as she prepared to give up, he raised his voice.

“I'm doing it,” she heard him growl. “I've been doing it all along, and they haven't done anything with it!
They
are the ones wasting time waiting for the processing. You'll get your money. I'll go back to them and see what I can do. You can count on me.”

There was a short silence, then Maszak exploded again. “Don't tell me this is important. It's more important to me than it is to you. To me, this is a matter of life or death!”

B
EFORE
N
ANCY COULD REACT
, Professor Maszak slammed down the receiver and stalked away. She filed the conversation away. What was a matter of life or death? If Maszak was hiding important information from her, she wanted to know what and why.

Nancy placed the receiver in its cradle slowly. As a good detective, she knew never to rule out any suspect, no matter how innocent he or she might seem. In fact, it was often the people who seemed most innocent who were most guilty. Maszak could be involved in the thefts himself.

As Nancy hurried after the rumpled professor,
she thought about the explosion in the lab. When the beaker blew up, Maszak had been surprisingly understanding about Sara's clumsy mistake. Was he
too
understanding?

Tossing her head back with determination, Nancy resolved to find out as much as she could. If Maszak was lying, he was very good at it. Nancy decided she'd have better luck with Sara.

Turning, Nancy picked up the telephone again and called student information. In no time she'd found Sara's dorm and her room number.

Slipping through the busy lobby, Nancy quietly made her way down the long dorm hallway. Without pausing, she knocked on Sara's door. There was no answer. “Bad luck,” Nancy murmured to herself. Now she'd have to waste time tracking Sara down. She knocked once more to make sure, and to her surprise the door pushed open.

Nancy hesitated. Sara wasn't a suspect in the thefts, but she could be. And she might learn something from a quick search of Sara's room.

Inside, the late-afternoon sun bounced off the large mirror over the dresser on one wall. Opposite it, a standard-issue Formica desk was surrounded by posters of animals in the wild. Sara's bed was neatly made.

Moving swiftly, Nancy checked the desk drawers. Finding nothing unusual, she flipped through the looseleaf binders lying in neat stacks on the desk. Sara's notes were written in small, careful script. There was no chemistry notebook, Nancy noted. Sara might have that one with her. None of the other notebooks mentioned Maszak's experiments or CLT.

The bright sunshine playing off the dresser caught Nancy's attention. Among bottles of perfume and makeup samples was a familiar object. Nancy picked it up. A bronze-colored snake earring—the same as the ones worn by Karen Lewis and Angela Morrow.

Nancy felt suddenly chilled. Sara was a POE member, too. That was one coincidence she hadn't expected. Was the group somehow connected to Professor Maszak's research? Even to the theft of the CLT? Had they learned of Maszak's animal experiments? And were they trying to stop them?

Nancy stepped up her search, pulling open drawers, looking for anything that might link the CLT thefts to the environmental group. She heard a noise at the door and saw the doorknob turning. She barely had time to shove the drawer shut and whirl around before the door opened. Sara Hughes's chunky body was framed in the doorway.

Sara stared at Nancy in confusion. “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

“Looking for you,” Nancy answered. Her voice sounded surprisingly calm. “I have some questions I'd like to ask you.”

“About that story you're writing, right?” Sara eyed Nancy suspiciously. “Shouldn't you have called first?”

Nancy pretended to be a hard-nosed reporter without manners. “Your door was open,” she said, shrugging. “I decided to wait here.”

“Oh. Well, I guess that's okay.” Sara waved her hand at the desk chair and Nancy sat down.

“This is a very important story, Sara,” Nancy said. “I need to know exactly what you do for Professor Maszak. For instance,” she said casually, “what were you doing last night in the chemistry lab?”

Sara's face went white. Then, without warning, she burst into tears.

“I didn't do anything wrong,” she wailed. “I was only trying to catch up on all my work. I've fallen so far behind, and—I don't know what to do!”

Surprised at this outburst, Nancy shifted awkwardly in her seat waiting for Sara's sobbing to subside. “Sara,” she asked gently, “do you want to tell me about it?”

Sara took a deep breath. “I'm just so scared,”
she confessed, her voice trembling. “My father lost his job this summer and hasn't been able to find a new one. He's been doing part-time work, but I don't know whether he'll be able to send me back to school next semester.”

“What does that have to do with the lab?” Nancy asked.

“Everything!” Sara cried. “I've applied for every scholarship there is, but so far I haven't heard. I'm so upset I can't concentrate on anything. The more I worry, the more I seem to mess up. Professor Maszak already warned me—if I don't shape up, I'll lose my job in the lab.”

The anguish on Sara's face was genuine. Her eyes brimmed with tears. “I've been so nervous,” she went on. “Between the mistakes I'm making and the thef—I mean, well, I may not have my job for long.”

“Thefts,” Nancy repeated. “You were going to say thefts.”

Sara looked at Nancy with alarm. “No one knows about the thefts—only me and the professor.” She drew away suddenly. “Who are you, anyway? I don't believe you're a student reporter at all.”

Nancy took a deep breath. “I'll be straight with you, Sara, since you've already guessed the truth. You have to promise me, though, that this
is strictly between you and me. If not, the professor could be hurt. Emerson could be hurt.”

Sara paled. “I swear, I won't tell anyone. I'd never do that.”

Nancy believed her. She had a strong feeling that Sara was no thief. “I'm here to investigate the thefts of the CLT. I'm helping Dean Jarvis.”

“Are you from the government?” Sara's eyes widened.

“No way,” Nancy assured her. “I'm a private detective. I care about Emerson College, and I don't want to see the school suffer because of the thefts.”

Sara reddened and went to her desk, drawing a tissue from a drawer. “So that's what you were really doing in my room. You thought I stole the CLT.”

“I don't now,” Nancy said honestly. “Sara—will you help me?”

“I doubt if I can.” Sara's voice was flat. “All I know is, the CLT was stolen each time right before we were about to begin the experiment.”

“Is there something particularly important about that time?”

“No,” Sara said helplessly. “It's just another stage in the process. The professor gets the stuff, he treats it, and then we start the experiment.”

“Do you help with the treatment?” Nancy asked.

“No one does,” Sara said. “He's very secretive about the whole process. I just try to stay out of his way.”

Nancy nodded. “Who else knows when Maszak has finished the treatment?”

“The professor, me, and Dean Jarvis.”

“No one else? No students?”

“No. But the professor keeps a daily log of the experiment on his computer. I've never seen his entries.”

Nancy felt a faint twinge of excitement. “But someone could get into the program and find out that way,” she suggested.

Sara frowned. “I doubt it. There's a secret password. No one but the professor knows what it is.”

“It doesn't sound good for the professor,” Nancy muttered.

“I know,” Sara cried. “Ever since the CLT was first taken, I've tried to figure out who did it.” She paused and looked at Nancy pleadingly. “But I know one thing—there's no reason for Professor Maszak to take it.”

“You're probably right,” Nancy admitted. “Maszak has the most to lose if this gets out. And if he needed the CLT for unauthorized experiments, he could have found a better way to get it.”

Unless, she thought to herself, he got too greedy. Nancy remembered the telephone conversation
she had overheard. CLT was rare and valuable—Maszak said so himself. He also had a sick wife whose treatment was very expensive. Nancy didn't want to alarm Sara, but Maszak had a very good reason to steal the CLT: so he could sell it and pocket the money.

With Sara eliminated, Maszak became Nancy's number-one suspect. But that didn't explain the connection to POE.

Casually, Nancy rose and picked up the earring from Sara's dresser.

“This is a great earring,” she said, holding the bronze snake to her ear and modeling it in the mirror. “I've never seen one quite like it.”

Sara sighed distractedly. “Oh, that's not mine. I found it in the lab this morning. It must belong to a POE member. I asked around in morning and afternoon science classes and I even put a note on the bulletin board, but no one's claimed it yet, so I brought it back here.”

“Oh?” Nancy was intrigued. She turned to look at Sara. “Are there many POE members in your classes?”

“Oh, yes! Well, I mean, there are a couple hundred students in the lab each day. Freshman biology, advanced chemistry courses, there are tons of students in and out. Emerson requires everyone to complete two semesters of a lab science to graduate. The classes are extra popular
this year because of Professor Maszak's reputation.”

Nancy dangled the earring between her fingers. “Do you mind if I keep this until it's claimed?”

“No. I'll call you if I need it back. Maybe tomorrow—” Sara stopped suddenly.

“Is something wrong?” Nancy asked, concerned.

“Tomorrow.” Sara turned her face toward Nancy's. “The professor got his new CLT two days ago. He'll be finished treating it tomorrow. That means—”

“If the thief is going to strike again, it will happen tomorrow,” Nancy finished for her. She placed a hand on Sara's shoulder. “Don't worry. This time, we'll stop the person, whoever it is.”

As Nancy headed back to her dorm, she wished she was as sure of herself as she had tried to make Sara believe. She had only one day to stop the thief. She was going to have to come up with some answers, and fast.

After a quick dinner, Nancy returned to her room where she collapsed in a chair. It was late, and her head was beginning to ache where she'd been hit. She decided to take a shower and go to bed. Ned had a late practice, so they wouldn't be seeing each other until the next day.

As she went to the closet to grab her robe, Nancy noticed the doorknob on the closet door was smeared with a brownish film. She hadn't seen it that morning when she left.

Uneasily, she wondered what it could be. She checked the rest of the room quickly, but nothing had been disturbed. It was probably nothing, but then again, she wasn't about to take any chances.

Looking around, Nancy spotted a pencil on her bedside table. She picked it up. Going back to the closet, she paused. Gingerly, holding the pencil away from her body, she bent the tip to scrape off a dab of the film. That way, she could examine it.

Nancy gingerly touched the pencil point to the doorknob. But the instant the tip touched the brown film, there was a huge flash. Then, with a thunderous boom, the door exploded off its hinges and came crashing—right at Nancy.