Sabotage At Willow Woods (8 page)

George actually had to nudge me to remind me that I was Katrina. That’s how stunned I was. “Uh . . . no, sorry.” I did have room for one, but I wanted to be able to talk to my friends without censoring myself.

“Okay. Well, with Justin’s truck, I think we all have rides? I’ve marked Mr. Karlowski’s house on this map here. Everyone meets up there in ten. Got it?”

“Got it!” people shouted back, but I was still stunned into silence. Bess reached out to take a copy of the map from Eloise, with a big
X
drawn over where poor, ecologically irresponsible Mr. Karlowski lived.
My friends herded me toward my car, and I followed like cattle, still not sure what to make of all this.

“Hey, Katrina, see you there?” Barney looked over from the small group he was driving to give me a hopeful wave. I shook myself out of my confusion to smile at him.

“Sure, Barney. See you in ten.”

He grinned and gave me a thumbs-up, which I returned. Bess, George, and I arrived at my car, parked alone under a lonely lamppost. Parking safety: My father had drilled it into me.

I plopped into the driver’s seat and slammed my door as Bess and George closed theirs. “You have got to be kidding me,” I said, taking the map from Bess.

Bess clearly had other things she wanted to talk about. “That Barney kid is in love with you,” she said, poking her head between my seat and George’s. “You get that, right?”

I held up my hand to imply that she should stop.
“As I have indicated,”
I said, “I am aware of his feelings, but am choosing to ignore them for the greater investigative
good. Now, what are we going to do here?”

George sighed, examining the map. “This seems like a dead end, Nance,” she said glumly. “I’m sorry to say it, but it’s true. I guess it’s possible that the Green Club could still be working on scaring Carrie into quitting whenever
you’re
not around, but if you ask me? These are a bunch of kids egging teachers’ houses. I don’t think they’re nearly as ‘dangerous’ as they’d like you to believe.”

Bess tapped her lip thoughtfully. “We don’t
know
that, though.”

I groaned. “No, I think George is right,” I muttered. “We’re barking up the wrong tree. What do you think—should we just bail? The last thing I need is to explain to my dad why I was arrested in Boylestown for vandalizing some teacher’s house.”

George sighed and looked out the windshield. I could tell she was as disheartened as I was.

“Here’s the thing.” Bess held up a finger, and her clear, confident tone made both of us turn to face her in the backseat. “We struck out tonight; that’s clear. But there’s still some weird stuff going on with the Green
Club. They’re the only organization we know that has a definite issue with Carrie’s sports complex plan. And we still don’t know why Eloise had the BTA stationery in her locker, which seems fishy to me, to say the least.”

I twisted my lips to the side, fiddling with my seat belt. Bess was right. But I hated how few answers we were finding.

“I say we keep going,” Bess said. “We may still learn something that will be valuable down the line. And either way, Nance, despite my teasing, I do think it makes sense to keep Barney close. He definitely knows what’s going on with this club, and he might tell you everything you need to know, if you ask nicely.”

I looked at George. She turned to face me, and I could see that she saw the wisdom in Bess’s words too.

“I hate it when she’s right,” George said after a moment.

I nodded and put the key in the ignition. “So it’s settled. We continue with the mission and try to learn what we can.”

Bess nodded. “Settled,” she said, putting out her fist.

“Settled,” George added, tapping her fist to Bess’s.

“Settled,” I said, adding my fist to make it a trio. “Let’s just hope we don’t get arrested.”

Mr. Karlowski lived in a modest neighborhood up in the hills of Boylestown. I drove through the mazelike streets until I located his barn-red ranch house and saw several other beat-up cars parked on the street nearby.

“Here goes,” I said.

I turned off the ignition, and the three of us unclicked our seat belts and climbed out of the car, trying to make as little noise as possible. Barney had climbed out of an ancient black Ford down the street and gestured to us to hang tight—and stay quiet.

“Little speed bump. We have a special ally showing up with the eggs,” he whispered. “Stay put until then.”

We all nodded and climbed back into my car.

“Seriously?”
George asked, annoyance edging her voice. “She didn’t even bring
eggs
? What kind of amateur hour is this?”

Bess looked amused. “Like you’re some great expert on egging houses?”

“If you’re going to egg a house, bring eggs.
It’s simple logic!
” George fired back, glaring at her cousin in the rearview mirror. “I officially doubt that these guys are involved in harassing Carrie. They’re not organized enough.”

After a few minutes a brown SUV with tinted windows pulled up and parked right in front of Barney’s car. We all watched carefully as the door opened and a dark shape climbed out, arms laden with full egg cartons. At first all we could make out was a dark profile, but then the shape moved to Barney’s window, passing under a streetlight, and knocked.

“Oh
noooooo
,” George whispered, watching intently, her face paling. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me. I thought this couldn’t get any worse.”

I looked to where she was looking but couldn’t see any cause for distress; the shape had morphed into an older, bulkier-looking version of Barney. This version had dark hair cropped close to his head, and he wore
a rumpled-looking button-down shirt instead of a T-shirt, but the resemblance was unmistakable.

“I should have known,” George was moaning. “I should have seen the resemblance! Oh, man . . .”

I caught Bess’s eye in the rearview mirror, but she looked just as confused as I felt.

“What’s the problem here?” Bess asked. “I mean, besides the obvious Committing Vandalism in a Strange Town for Dubious Reasons problem.”

George groaned again. “I went on a
date
with that guy,” she said, pointing at Big Barney. “His name is Jake, and I’m guessing Barney is his brother. I think Carrie set us up, actually. It was a long time ago, but he’s going to know my name isn’t Jackie and that I don’t go to St. Mary’s.”

I was already automatically pushing the key back toward the ignition. We could make a break for it, make some stupid excuse to Eloise and Barney; Mirabelle got spooked, or I really had to use the bathroom. We could get away before anyone noticed the resemblance between Jackie and this girl Jake once went on a
date with. But then I was surprised by a knock on my window. Eloise!

I swallowed hard and rolled down my window. “You startled me!” I cried. “The thing is, um, Mirabelle
really
has to use the—”

“And this is Katrina!” Barney’s puppyish voice piped up behind my car, and I turned to find him just a few feet away with Jake beside him. Both of them were holding several cartons of eggs now. Jake looked down at me and waved, and then, horrifyingly, knelt to look inside my car. “Nice wheels,” he said, nodding, looking from the dash to the passenger seat. “Is this a two thousand . . . Hey, it’s you!”

George cringed. She’d been spotted. And it was too late—my chance to bolt had passed.

My heart sank.
Caught.

George slowly folded herself out of the passenger seat and opened her door, standing and smiling broadly at Jake. “Hey there, Jake,” she said in a confident voice. I realized she was still hoping she could save this. “It’s Jackie, remember?”

Jake frowned. He shook his head slightly. “No, your name isn’t Jackie,” he said. “Are you playing a joke? Because I’m sure of it. Your name was really unusual, for a girl—Bob or Steve or something. I know!
George.
”

George’s face fell. Barney looked from Jake to her, still smiling hopefully.

“Nah, man,” he told his brother, “these are Katrina’s friends from St. Mary’s. Mirabelle and Jackie.”

Jake furrowed his brow. “St. Mary’s? No, that’s not right either.” He put the eggs down on the roof of my car and pointed at George. “Her name is George, and she’s from River Heights. We went to a party together. She’s Carrie Kim’s friend. Remember her?”

A pack of confused faces turned to all of us, pale in the harsh streetlight. I felt my heart plummet into my stomach.

Eloise was the first to speak, all her friendliness disintegrating as she turned her hard gaze on me.

“All right,
Katrina
,” she said, her lips twisting into a snarl. “How about you tell us what’s really going on?”

“YOU DON’T GO TO BOYLESTOWN
high, do you?” Eloise went on, her nose wrinkling in disgust. “That explains why I’ve never seen you during school hours. I can’t believe I never even asked you what grade you were in!”

I looked uneasily at my friends. “We can explain. . . .”

“You’re Carrie Kim’s friend,” Barney said, pointing at George with an angry expression. “That’s what Jake just said, right?”

George looked doubtfully at me. “I—well, yes. She’s my cousin.”

A gasp went through the little crowd.

Barney turned his glare to me now. “You came up to me at the protest, asking me all these questions about how the sports complex would impact the environment, and the whole time you’re working for Carrie Kim’s campaign? Man, how could I be so dense! You were just pumping me for information she could use to crush us!”

I shook my head. “Barney, that’s really not true.”

“Then what
are
you doing, Katrina?” Eloise asked, folding her arms in front of her chest. “If that’s even your real name? Since Jackie is really
George
, and I’m going to guess
your
mother didn’t actually name you Mirabelle,” she added with a pointed glare at Bess.

I took a breath. “I’m Nancy,” I said. “Nancy Drew. Look, I’m really sorry. It was never my intention to mislead you guys.”

“Really?” Barney asked, his eyebrow raised in doubt.

I thought about that for a minute. “Well . . . okay. Honestly, it was. But it wasn’t just to mess with you or
hurt your feelings. I’m trying to find out who keeps harassing Carrie Kim.”

Eloise perked up. “Carrie Kim is being harassed?”

In brief, I told her the whole sordid story: the note at the block party, the manipulated recording, and finally, the deceased squirrel that arrived in the mail. Barney paled visibly at that story.

Eloise looked utterly disgusted. “My God,” she muttered. “You must think I’m an animal!”

“No, I don’t,” I insisted, then gave a helpless shrug. “But I didn’t know how committed you were to the environmental cause or how far you’d go to stop the sports complex.”

Eloise shook her head, then looked me confidently in the eye. “I’m
very
committed to the environmental cause. And I’ll do anything within my power—anything ethical, I mean—to keep the sports complex from being built. But I would never
kill a squirrel
. Jeez!”

I glanced at Bess and George, who looked just as sheepish as I felt. Okay, I’d totally misjudged this one.

“Anyway,” Eloise went on, placing a hand on
her hip, “I believe in democracy. The voters get to decide whether Carrie Kim gets a town council seat, not just me.”

“But,” I put in, as an important detail came back to me, “you had some Boylestown Teachers Association stationery in your locker.”

Eloise frowned. “Yeah?” she asked. “And . . . ?”

I explained. “The first note Carrie got, the one that was handed to her at the block party, was written on BTA stationery. That’s what led us to the high school in the first place. The paper smelled of smoke, and I was thinking Ms. Meyerhoff might have been involved.”

Kiki, the Mohawked girl, sneered at me. “Ms. Meyerhoff?” she asked. “Sheesh, you aren’t a very good detective. Ms. Meyerhoff wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

Barney nodded sagely. “She’s actually a member of PETA,” he explained, naming the famous animal rights organization. “There’s no way she would send you a dead squirrel. She’s the most peaceful person you’ll ever meet.”