Nancy’s blue eyes focused on the door’s heavy padlock. Maybe she’d find an easier way in around back. Before going, she grabbed the padlock and gave it a yank, to make sure that it was locked. To her surprise, the screws that held the hasp to the doorframe pulled right out of the rotted wood. The door swung slowly in, as if inviting her to enter.
Glancing over her shoulder to reassure herself that the street was deserted, Nancy took a quick step inside and pushed the door closed behind her. Then, rumbling with the switch on her flashlight, she started forward in the gloomy hallway.
Suddenly, with a loud crack, the floor under her feet gave way. Nancy let out a gasp as she felt herself falling through space!
Chapter Three
Instinctively, Nancy flung her arms out to the side. She let out a cry of pain as her hands and forearms slammed against the floorboards an instant later.
Her arms felt as if they were about to snap in two, and the splintery edges of the broken boards were digging painfully into them through the denim of her jacket. Her legs flailed uselessly below her, but the worst pain was in her shoulders. Nancy felt as if her weight were about to pull her arms from their sockets.
Gritting her teeth, she moved her legs carefully in every direction, groping for anything that might give her extra support, but there was nothing. If her arms slipped, she was bound to fall!
Okay, Drew, think. What if you let yourself down and hang full length by your arms, then drop to the basement below? She glanced nervously down into the murky darkness, imagining the jumble of sharp-edged pieces of machinery or nail-studded boards she might land on. No, the only sensible way out was upward.
Nancy tried using her arms to push herself up out of the hole, but after half a minute, she gave up. She didn’t have enough leverage.
Looks as if I’ll have to come up with plan B, she thought. Taking a deep breath, she let it out slowly and began to pull her right knee up toward the floor. Her aching arms felt as if they couldn’t hold on much longer, but soon the toes on Nancy’s right foot were touching the underside of the floorboards. With one last effort, she turned her foot to one side and pulled it toward her. It just barely cleared the far edge of the hole.
With a loud sigh of relief, Nancy extended her leg onto the floor and let it take some of the strain off her arms and shoulders. She rested that way for a few moments, then pulled her other leg up and rolled cautiously to one side. If there was one weak spot in the floorboards, there might be others.
Just above her head, a little daylight filtered in through the dusty windows on either side of the front door. Nancy spotted her flashlight in a corner next to the door. She crawled over and retrieved it, then got carefully to her feet.
Beyond the yawning hole, the floor of the hall was thick with dust. A few pieces of old furniture kept the place from being completely empty. Nancy decided it was too dangerous to investigate the house. She’d have to find out about I. Wynn some other way.
Nancy squinted in the sunlight as she stepped out onto the rickety front porch. For the first time she noticed a small nameplate on the side of the doorframe opposite the bell. On it, the name Ignatz Wynn was written in small, shaky handwriting. Ignatz, huh? thought Nancy. That was hardly a girl’s name. What was the story here?
She checked the mailbox that was nailed to the porch railing, and discovered a letter. It was from the People’s Federal Bank, a bank statement from the look of it. It had been mailed only a few days earlier. Nancy put it back into the box. There was no need to read it; she’d already seen the transaction records of the account.
A movement in the house across the street caught her eye. Someone had parted the Venetian blinds and was peering at her through the slats. In the next instant the person was gone.
Crossing the street, Nancy knocked on the door of the house. No one answered, so she rapped harder. Slowly the door opened, just enough for Nancy to see a short, gray-haired woman in a worn housedress. “What?” the old woman snapped, gazing up at Nancy suspiciously.
“Excuse me, but I was wondering if you could tell me something about Mr. Wynn?” Nancy asked.
The woman’s blue eyes narrowed. “Who wants to know?”
“I’m his niece,” Nancy told her, mentally crossing her fingers.
The woman’s face softened a bit, and she opened the front door wider. “Well, I hate to tell you this, honey, but your Uncle Iggy passed on. He just lay down one night and didn’t wake up. It was a peaceful death, I guess.”
Nancy’s mouth fell open. “You mean, he’s—dead?” That was news!
“Has anyone—I mean, anyone else—in his family been by?” she inquired after a moment.
“I didn’t know he had any family,” the woman told her. “I saw a woman come by one day. And a man the next. But I don’t know who they were.”
“Was the woman small?” Nancy asked. “That would be my cousin, Marie,” she added quickly.
“This was someone else, then. She was kind of fat. The man was on the tall side. I didn’t get a good look at them. I mind my own business.”
Nancy smiled to herself at this last remark. “Do you know what’s going to happen to the house?” she asked.
The old woman snorted with laughter. “Sure I do. The government is taking over ownership. Iggy owed so much on back taxes that the state owns that house for sure. They were trying to blast him out of there for years, but he wouldn’t go. Bless that stubborn old wino. He wasn’t budging.”
Nancy nodded.
“How long ago did—uh, Uncle Iggy die?” she asked.
After thinking a moment, the woman replied, “Two weeks ago. It was in the paper and all—just a single line crammed in with all the other unimportant dead folks’ lines. Wasn’t like they put his picture in or anything.”
“That would explain it,” murmured Nancy, thinking out loud.
“Explain what?” asked the woman, raising an eyebrow.
“Huh? Oh—nothing. Thank you very much for talking to me,” Nancy said hastily. “I’ve got to be going.”
The woman nodded and shut the door.
Nancy’s mind was racing as she headed back to her car and slipped behind the wheel. The real I. Wynn didn’t have anything to do with this scam, she realized. The culprit must have picked the name from the obituary column. It was perfect. Ignatz Wynn had no relatives, according to the woman across the street, and his house was empty. How had the culprit learned Wynn’s Social Security number, though? That was a mystery for now.
Nancy drummed her fingers against the steering wheel as she pondered another question. Who were the man and woman? They could be in on the grade-changing scheme. Or they could be real estate people or officials from the state. The only thing she knew for sure was that neither of them was the petite girl who had opened the account as I. Wynn.
Starting up the engine, Nancy headed for home. The muscles in her arms were throbbing. She was sure she had some cuts and bruises that should be taken care of, too. She let out a sigh. This case wasn’t going to be as easy to solve as she had hoped. Her culprit was very clever.
Time to go undercover, she decided. It looked as if she wasn’t going to visit Ned at Emerson this weekend.
By four o’clock that afternoon, Nancy had taken a long, hot bath and rubbed ointment on the scratches on her arms. Still wrapped in her bathrobe, she picked up the phone on her bedside table and called Sally Lane at home. After saying hello, she asked, “Can you think of a believable reason for me to be hanging around the school, asking questions?”
After a brief pause, Sally’s high-pitched voice came back over the line. “What about the new tutoring program? That could work. One of the tutors just dropped out, and they’re looking for a replacement.”