“Nicky?” I asked, sitting down, too.
Sam turned to me. “This is Nicky Williams. He’s in my AP English class. And,” she said, giving him a pointed look, “he was in Mr. Tipkins’s precalculus class last year, too.”
Nicky shrugged. “A lot of people have had Tipkins.”
“A lot of people didn’t just send their flunkey to pick up cash from the kids’ playland.”
“Hey!” Drea protested. “I’ll have you know I’m not flunking any subjects this semester.”
I rolled my eyes.
Nicky, on the other hand, ignored his girlfriend’s lack of IQ. His eyes went from Sam to me again. “You’re the girl who found Sydney, right?”
“Yes. I’m doing a story for the school paper on her death.”
He nodded slowly. “Yeah. That really sucked.”
“Sucks losing customers, huh?” Sam said.
Nicky grinned and crossed his arms over his chest. “Customers? Gosh, I’m sorry. I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The mock innocence thing was getting old. I grabbed Sam’s phone from her pocket and dialed the number of our seller.
Immediately, the Black Eyed Peas starting singing from Nicky’s pocket.
Nicky bit the inside of his cheek, not bothering to pull his phone out as I shot him a pointed look.
“Okay, fine,” he conceded. “Look, you wanna know about Sydney? I’ll talk. Off the record,” he added.
As much as I didn’t like the sound of that, I nodded. Better than no talk at all.
“Fine. Off the record.”
“What do you want to know?”
“You are the guy we texted last night?” Sam asked.
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“And you’re selling cheats to people at school?”
Again with the nod.
“Did you sell the cheats to Sydney Sanders?”
He paused this time before answering. “She was in a jam. I helped her out.”
“For a fee.”
“A guy’s gotta eat, ya know?” he said, gesturing to the pile of chow mein in front of him.
“Where did you get the answers?”
“I have a source.”
“What kind of source?” Sam asked.
“The kind I’m not gonna talk about. Next question,” he said, nodding my way.
“Fine,” I said, switching gears. “How many people at Herbert Hoover High are involved in this?” I asked.
“How many have I sold to?” he asked. “Maybe a dozen this semester.”
Sam whistled low. “That’s it. I’m never getting into Stanford now.”
“And none of those people know who you are? It’s all been anonymous?” I asked, ignoring her.
“Yep.”
“Did Sydney know who you were?”
Nicky shook his head. “No. No one did.”
“Is it possible she found out about your ‘source’?” I asked.
Nicky narrowed his eyes at me. “Why do you ask?”
Unlike Drea, I could tell he was no dummy. So, with little left to lose, I leveled with him.
“Sydney was going to tell me something important the day she died.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. She died before she could tell me. But I assume it had something to do with where she got the cheats.”
Nicky shook his head. “Look, if it did, it had nothing to do with me. Sydney dropped the cash. I dropped the drive with the answers. That’s it. She was clueless. Trust me.”
Despite his suggestion, that wasn’t something I was totally prepared to do yet.
“Where were you the afternoon that Sydney died?” I asked instead.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, do you have an alibi?”
“Whoa!” Nicky put both hands out in a defensive gesture. “Sydney committed suicide, right? What do I need an alibi for?”
“We don’t think it was suicide. We think it was homicide.”
Sam nodded in agreement beside me. “Twittercide, to be exact.”
“Well, it wasn’t me,” Nicky said defiantly.
“Then where were you?”
“Home.”
“On a school day?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at him.
“I was sick. I had a cold.”
“Can anyone vouch for that?” I asked.
“Drea can,” Nicky said, nodding across the table at the girl who’d been conspicuously silent during our exchange. “She stopped by before school to check on me.”
“Before school,” I said, honing in on the word. “So, when Sydney died after school you were alone.”
Nicky bit his lip. “I guess. So what?”
“So maybe you thought Sydney knew too much and needed to be shut up before she blew the whistle on your whole operation,” Sam offered.
He shook his head. “No way. Like I said, Sydney didn’t know who she was buying the cheats from.”
“Are you sure about that?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at him. “Because it wasn’t all that hard for us to find out.”
He paused, looking from me to Sam, letting the truth of that sink in. “Anyway, even if she did know, she wouldn’t tell.”
“She ratted out her best friend,” Sam pointed out.
“Look, I told you I was sick. I had a fever. I couldn’t have killed Sydney that day even if I wanted to.”
“Then where was Drea at three thirty?” I asked, turning on the cheerleader.
“Me?” she squeaked out. “Why would I want to hurt Sydney?”
“Why did you pick up the cash for Nicky today?” I countered. “Maybe he told you to do another little favor for him and silence Sydney.”
Drea paled beneath her layers of makeup. “Nicky would never ask me to do that. He’s a sweetheart.”
“A sweetheart who sells illegal cheats.”
“But he doesn’t hurt anyone!” Drea protested.
“Ha!” Sam countered. “You think messing with a grading curve is a victimless crime? I’m pulling an A-minus average this semester. A-minus!”
“Dude,” Nicky said, putting his hands out in front of him again. “Enough. I didn’t kill Sydney and neither did Drea, okay? Period. End of story.”
Only it did not feel like end of story to me. “Look, you can either tell us where you were,” I warned, “or we can turn you in to the police and you can talk to them.”
Nicky put his hands palms up. “Turn me in for what? I haven’t done anything.”
“Seriously?” Sam asked, putting her hands on her hips.
Nicky grinned. “Well, anything that you can prove. I’ll deny everything I just told you.”
“What about the cash?” I asked.
“Drea found it. Plain and simple.”
“Quite a coincidence.”
“What were you doing buying cheats anyway?” Nicky said, giving Sam a pointed look.
“It was for a story!”
“Says you.”
“Wait-what do you mean ‘says you’?” Sam asked nervously.
“Anything you say is your word against mine. You turn me in, I turn Sam in to the vice principal for trying to cheat. Dig?”
Sam narrowed her eyes at Nicky, thinking all sorts of dirty words if I could read them correctly. “You fluff-eating son of a monkey with a rash up his-”
“Fine,” I said, breaking in before Sam could get any more creative. “I guess we’ll just have to find your ‘source’ another way.”
Nicky shrugged, then leaned back in his seat and dropped a chow mien noodle into his smug mouth. “Good luck with that, girls.”
I hated to admit that he was right. We were in serious need of some luck.
Chapter Ten
“I GUESS NICKY’S A DEAD END,” SAM OBSERVED AS WE walked back through the mall.
“Agreed.” Unfortunately. “But maybe we need to look at this a different way.”
“Such as?”
“Well, what if Nicky’s right and Sydney didn’t know who was giving Nicky the test answers?”
She frowned. “Okay. But then who killed her?”
“Sydney being caught cheating affected other people. What if her murder-”
“Twittercide,” Sam supplied.
“Right. What if her Twittercide wasn’t because of the cheating itself but fallout from getting caught?”