Vanished! Read online

  (Detective tip #2: When people lie, they often try to cover it by using formal speech like Putney did twice in this sentence. He said, “I am” instead of “I’m” and “did not” for “didn’t.” Liars also tend to add terms like “I assure you.”)

  “But since you bring it up, I must admit I am confused,” he continued. “When I spoke to the admiral over the weekend, he led me to believe he was offering the help of the Special Projects Team.”

  “That’s correct,” said Marcus.

  The headmaster waited to see if there was more to the answer but there wasn’t. Then he looked at the three of us and asked, “Will they be coming soon?”

  “We are the Special Projects Team,” Marcus replied with a smile. “And I’m certain he informed you that our role must be kept a secret from everyone. Including your staff, faculty, and the board of trustees.”

  He eyed us again.

  “Then I really am confused. I assumed that the team might consist of some forensics specialists to discreetly look for evidence or maybe a computer expert to figure out who hacked our server.”

  “Forensic evidence can only help if we can fingerprint your entire student body,” Marcus said. “Do you think their parents would be okay with that?”

  “Well, no,” he admitted. “But . . .”

  “And as for a computer expert, for that we’d need access to all of your internal files, accounts, and records storage.”

  “Well, there are privacy concerns . . .”

  “More important, you’re not looking for a criminal mastermind or a cyber thief. You’re looking for a kid, or perhaps a group of kids. So that’s what we’ve brought you. The quickest way to find out who’s been pulling pranks at your school is to let Florian and Margaret go undercover as visiting students.”

  “Undercover?” He practically choked on the word. “You’re not infiltrating a street gang. This is a prestigious prep school. We can’t just have them snooping around and interrogating people. Our student body is very special and—”

  “So is theirs,” Marcus interrupted again.

  “I beg your pardon?” he asked, confused.

  “Their student body at Alice Deal Middle School,” he said. “It’s also very special.”

  “Of course.”

  “In fact,” Marcus continued, “so is the student body at every school in Washington. For example, Duke Ellington School over on Eleventh Street Northwest. That’s where I went.”

  “I’m sure it’s very nice,” Putney said condescendingly.

  “I also went to Harvard,” added Marcus. “And Georgetown for my PhD.”

  “I didn’t mean to imply . . . ,” Putney said, backpedaling.

  This is when I came to his rescue. (Detective tip #3: If you help someone when you don’t need to, they’ll be more willing to help you later.) I appreciated Marcus standing up against the headmaster’s snobbiness, but I needed Putney to like us, to want us to be there. It was the only way we were going to be successful.

  “Agent Rivers, I think Dr. Putney just meant that many of the students here are in a unique situation because their parents hold very public positions in the government. It’s important that what happens during this investigation doesn’t get swept up into that.”

  “Exactly,” he exclaimed. “That’s all I was saying.”

  “You have nothing to worry about, Dr. Putney,” I assured him. “We’re discreet. We’ll approach it the same way you approached your church mission. Just like when you went to Brazil and adapted to their customs, we’re guests and will respect the customs and traditions unique to Chatham while we do our work.”

  Marcus shot me a wink.

  “Y-y-yes,” he stammered, trying to make sense of what I’d just said. “But how did you know that?”

  “How did I know what?” I asked. “That you went on a mission? Or that it was to Brazil?”

  “Both,” he replied.

  “TOAST,” I said.

  “Toast?”

  “The Theory of All Small Things,” answered Margaret. “The idea is that little details often give away much bigger pieces of information than you think. When you add them up, you have an indisputable truth. That’s how we’re going to find who’s responsible for the pranks. Florian and I are going to use TOAST.”

  He looked back and forth at us like we were speaking a foreign language. “What little details could possibly tell you that I took a mission to Brazil?”

  “On the wall beside your desk are your college diplomas,” I explained. “They’re from Brigham Young University. Over ninety-eight percent of the students at BYU are Mormon. And roughly a third of all Mormon men go on a mission.”

  “Okay, but that means two-thirds don’t,” he said as a challenge. “What makes you think I did?”

  “You’re featured in the welcome video not only as the headmaster but also as a graduate of Chatham Day,” I replied. “But there’s a six-year gap from your high school graduation until the date you received your bachelor’s. That’s four years of college with two years left over for your mission.”

  “As to Brazil,” Margaret said, picking up without missing a beat, “that was easy. There’s a picture of you on the far bookcase when you were about twenty years old. You’re standing in front of the giant Christ the Redeemer statue, which is in Rio. There’s also a picture of your family on your desk. It looks like a vacation shot and in it you’re wearing a yellow-and-green jersey. Anyone who plays soccer knows it’s the jersey of the Brazilian national team. I’m guessing you became a fan while you lived there and you’ve continued ever since.”

  He sat for a moment flabbergasted, unsure what to say. That’s when I decided to really show off. “We’re here to help. We understand you can’t have another embarrassment like you did with Alexis Fitzgerald.”

  And just like that, the color drained from his face.

  “The Wicked Witch of Wall Street?” asked Marcus, unsure where I was heading but delighted by the potential. “The woman who was arrested for stealing millions of dollars from charity? What does she have to do with Chatham?”

  “She paid for the new gym, didn’t she?” I asked Putney. “With some of the money she stole.”

  He let out a slow, pained breath.

  “We had absolutely no idea where she got it,” he said defensively. “And we’re repaying it to the charities with interest. It’s just going to take a little time.”

  “Rich private-school kids playing in a gym paid for with money stolen from the homeless,” said Marcus. “It’s funny how I never heard about that.”

  “Almost nobody has,” he said, looking at me. “Who told you? Admiral Douglas?”

  “Never,” I answered. “The admiral keeps secrets. He doesn’t share them. You’re the one who told me. Or at least your assistant did, when she made us watch Welcome to Chatham over and over again.”

  I let him sweat that for a moment.

  “There are two abrupt edits in the video,” I explained. “Visually they’re fine, but the music skips both times. I had the same problem once when I was trying to make a short movie on my computer. It’s really hard to re-edit a video after you’ve added the music. Once you know that, it’s obvious something was taken out. The two cuts are where sound bites from Alexis Fitzgerald’s interview ran, right? All you had to do was clip her out. Except you forgot to have the credits redone. She’s the only person mentioned in the special thanks who’s not in the video. Of course no one ever looks at the credits. Well, almost no one.”

  “But how did you know she donated the money for the gym?” he asked.

  “When we walked by it on the way to your office, I noticed the name above the entrance is off center. It says Tate Gymnasium, but there’s way too much room over to the left. It was designed to read Fitzgerald Gymnasium. That’s the problem with chiseling names into marble. It’s hard to fix a mistake.”

  “And you figured out all of that while you were waiting in the Founder’s Room?” he asked.


  “Actually, I figured out more than that,” I said ominously.

  This is when he gulped.

  “I looked her up in one of the old yearbooks and realized both of you were in the same class. That got me thinking. I bet you’re the one who called her up when you were trying to raise money for the gym. Just like you called the admiral to solve this problem. And while you’ve been able to keep the story of her involvement out of the press, the board of trustees knows it was you. They blame you. That’s why you can’t have another mistake. That’s why you need us to make this problem go away.”

  There was silence in the room for a moment.

  “Don’t feel bad,” Marcus said. “He does that a lot.” He turned to Margaret and asked, “What do you call it again?”

  “Getting toasted,” she replied.

  “That’s right.” Marcus smiled and turned back to Dr. Putney. “You just got toasted.”

  4.

  Loki

  ONCE WE WERE DONE WITH our TOAST display, Dr. Putney was an entirely different person. The snobby headmaster with an attitude had been replaced by a much humbler man with a problem.

  “Why don’t we start over?” he said apologetically. “How can I help you?”

  “First of all, tell us about the two incidents,” replied Marcus.

  “Of course,” he said. “Two weeks ago someone put superglue into the mechanisms of five lockers, totally ruining them. It’s the type of prank you’ll see at schools, but not typically at Chatham. Still, I wouldn’t have been too concerned if it weren’t for the fact that one of the lockers belonged to Lucy Mays.”

  Margaret and I shared a look at the mention of the president’s daughter.

  “Do you have any idea who might’ve done it?” asked Marcus.

  “None,” he said. “There are too many possibilities. It happened near the library in the main hallway. And since none of the girls went to their lockers between lunch and the end of the day, there’s a two-hour window during which it could have taken place.”

  “All the lockers belonged to girls?” asked Margaret.

  “Yes,” he said as though he hadn’t considered that this might be important. “Do you think that matters?”

  “At this point we don’t know what does or doesn’t matter,” said Marcus. “But I’m curious to know if the girls are part of the same friend group.”

  “I can’t help you there,” he said. “The social lives of middle school girls are more complicated than Russian literature. Besides, other than Lucy, the only one of the five I know well is Victoria Tate.”

  “Tate, as in the name on your gymnasium?” I asked.

  “And the name on our library. The Tate family is a thread deeply woven into the fabric of Chatham Country Day. In fact, Moncrieff Tate is chairman of the board of trustees.”

  “We saw him in the video,” Margaret said. “I love that name—Moncrieff Tate. He sounds like a law firm.”

  “He’s Victoria’s grandfather,” he replied. “She’s the fifth generation to attend Chatham and the queen bee of the middle school.”

  “Queen Victoria,” grumbled Margaret.

  Putney laughed. “That’s exactly what they call her.”

  “We’ll need the names of all five girls,” said Marcus.

  Putney pulled out a legal pad and started writing them down.

  “And what can you tell us about the computer hack?” I asked.

  “That happened last Thursday night,” he answered. “Someone got into the server and flooded the system with spam until everything crashed. Our tech expert doesn’t think any grades or records were accessed, but we’re still checking that.”

  “Any idea how the hacker got into the system?” asked Marcus.

  “More than an idea,” he replied. “We know it was accessed through Chat Chat.”

  “What’s Chat Chat?”

  “Its official name is the Chatham Day Chat Forum,” he replied. “But everyone calls it Chat Chat. It’s an internal messaging system for students and faculty. It started as a project in a coding class a few years ago and really caught on. Now everyone uses it to post notes, bulletins, homework assignments, pictures, whatever.”

  “In other words your school has its very own social media network,” Margaret said with a mixture of envy and admiration.

  “Well, we did,” he replied. “We’ve had to take it off-line until we can put in some security safeguards to prevent any future hacks.”

  “And only students and faculty could access it?” asked Marcus.

  “That’s right,” he said. “The app only works if you have a Chatham e-mail account.”

  “So for both pranks we’re looking for people at the school,” reasoned Marcus. “The lockers were vandalized during the school day, and the computer was hacked through a closed system.”

  “Actually,” Putney said. “I think they were both pulled by the same person.”

  “What makes you think that?” asked Margaret, echoing my own thoughts. “Superglue in a locker sounds pretty caveman compared to computer hacking.”

  “I’d think the same thing except for this.” He crossed over to his desk and opened a drawer. “The lockers were vandalized the same day the National Junior Honor Society announced its new members. They made the announcements by placing a sign on the locker of each inductee. This is the tag from Lucy’s locker.”

  He pulled out a small piece of blue poster board with gold glitter and placed it on the table in front of Margaret. Marcus and I leaned over to look at it too. WELCOME TO NJHS, LUCY MAYS was written across it. But someone had used a marker to change it from “Lucy” to “Loki.”

  “Loki?” asked Margaret. “Like Thor’s brother?”

  “He’s Thor’s brother in the movies and comic books,” I said. “But in Norse mythology Loki is the trickster god who loves to create havoc.”

  “Of course you’d know that,” Margaret said, shooting me a look.

  “He’s right,” said the headmaster. “And that’s exactly what our Loki is doing. Creating havoc. When the server was hacked, the junk mail we all received read, ‘Have a Nice Day!’ And was signed, ‘Loki.’ ”

  “So you have a trickster named Loki,” I said, thinking out loud. “What’s his motivation? Maybe he doesn’t like the five girls. Maybe he’s angry about something that’s happened to him and wants to disrupt school.”

  “Don’t assume Loki’s a he,” said Margaret. “It could be a girl. I told you the girls here are . . .” She stopped when she realized she was about to bad-mouth the school in front of the headmaster. “Well, I’m just saying it could be a girl.”

  “Have you ever had pranks like this before?” asked Marcus.

  “Harmless pranks used to be common,” said Putney. “Back when I was a student they were practically a tradition. But there haven’t been any since I came back as the headmaster seven years ago.”

  “So we need to figure out what triggered their return,” said Marcus. “Something had to get the ball rolling.”

  “It could be the honor society,” I offered. “Maybe someone didn’t get in and was jealous because Lucy did.”

  “Then why attack the other lockers or the e-mail server?” asked Margaret.

  “To cover his or her tracks,” I said. “So the motivation wouldn’t be obvious.”

  “That’s possible,” said Marcus.

  “Ms. Stewart is the faculty sponsor,” said Putney. “I’ll ask if anyone was angry about not getting selected.”

  “When you talked with Admiral Douglas, you said there were connections to Lucy Mays regarding both incidents,” said Marcus. “I know her locker was one of the five, but how is she connected to the computer hack?”

  “We were able to track the hacker’s path back to a Chat Chat group page set up for the school orchestra,” he replied. “Lucy’s quite an accomplished cellist. She’s in the orchestra and would have had access to that page.”

  “Okay,” said Marcus. “That’s a pretty loose connection,
but we’ll need those names too. Anyone who’s part of the orchestra.”

  Next we spent thirty minutes going through class schedules figuring out how Margaret and I could go undercover without falling behind in our schoolwork. (Thanks, Mom!) Putney opened up Lucy’s schedule on his computer and Marcus handed him a copy of our records that he’d gotten from Deal Middle.

  “Impressive scores,” he said, admiring them.

  “I told you they were special,” Marcus said proudly.

  The headmaster looked at my file and then up at me. “You lived in Paris?”

  “Yes,” I said. “London and Rome too. My family moves a lot.”

  “How’s your French?”

  “Maybe not fluent still, but close.”

  “Excellent,” he replied. “Lucy takes an immersive French class over in the upper school. Everyone else is in high school, but I can slip you in. The rest of your core classes are the same, so you can stay with her throughout the day.”

  “What about Queen Victoria?” asked Margaret. “Can you put me with her? If she’s the alpha girl at the school, then she’s the best way to learn all the dirt.”

  Putney pulled up her schedule on his computer and compared it to Margaret’s. “Yes. That’ll work just fine. You take all the same courses except for music.”

  “Great,” said Marcus, much happier now that we were all working together.

  “I understand your need for secrecy,” Putney said. “But we have to inform the Secret Service about anything involving Lucy. I have a very close working relationship with them and it’s essential that I maintain it.”

  “I’ve already spoken with them,” replied Marcus. “And as soon as we’re done, I’m going to have a meeting with the head of her protection detail so they know exactly what we’re doing.”

  “Excellent,” said Putney. Satisfied with the plan, he called his assistant on the intercom. “Ms. Caldwell, can you please send for Lucy Mays and Victoria Tate and have them report to my office?”

  “Yes, sir,” came the response.

  Putney turned back to Margaret and warned, “One thing about Victoria. She’s . . . I guess the most delicate way to say it would be . . . assertive.”