J.M.J.
Author's note: Thank you so much for reading and reviewing! The next chapter will be September 2. God bless!
August 31 – Thursday
Exam 1 NEXT THURSDAY 9/7 during regular class time—NO LATE EXAMS ALLOWED
Professor Weirmarten's handwriting on the white board was just as severe as the words and her personality. Callie stared at it incredulously. That would only be the third week of classes. It seemed early to be having an exam already. Besides that, Callie didn't remember seeing the first exam that early on the syllabus. She pulled it out of her backpack and began flipping through it while she waited for Dr. Weirmarten to return after she said she had to make more copies of a handout.
"Don't bother," Casey said from where he was sitting next to her. "The syllabus says the first exam is supposed to be on Wednesday, September 16."
"That's what…" Callie started to reply, but then she stopped herself. "Wait. This is a Tuesday-Thursday class. And the sixteenth isn't a Wednesday."
"It was whatever year Weirmarten made the syllabus, and the class must have been a Monday-Wednesday class that semester."
"You mean, she doesn't make a new syllabus every semester?" Callie asked incredulously.
"Nope, and she doesn't even pretend to follow the one she hands out."
"How does she get away with that?"
Casey shrugged. "She's tenured. Not a lot that the college can do. But didn't you notice that the dates were all wrong?"
"I didn't look that closely." Callie sighed. "I've been so brain-fried the last couple weeks, trying to settle in with a new apartment and a new school and a new job."
Casey gave her a sympathetic smile. "Good luck with this exam in that case. Weirmarten doesn't cut any slack, and before you ask, she doesn't believe in extra credit."
"Why doesn't that surprise me?" Callie murmured. She groaned and put her face in her hands. "I should have dropped this class last week. Now it's too late to register for something else, and I need to keep up a full credit load."
"So you can graduate in the standard four years?"
"Yes, but mostly because I have a scholarship that I'll lose if I drop to part-time status. I can't afford to lose that scholarship."
Casey grimaced. "I feel your pain. Maybe we should do a study session together. We might able to figure some of this stuff out if Weirmarten isn't in the room."
Unfortunately, Dr. Weirmarten chose that exact moment to return, but she didn't seem to have heard Casey's comment. Callie grinned wryly.
"Sure," she said quietly. "If you have even a modicum of understanding of what we're supposed to be learning here, you understand more than I do."
"Okay, everybody, quiet down," Dr. Weirmarten said in her grating voice. "You've only got yourselves to blame if you waste class time. Don't forget, you're paying for this."
Callie sighed, but she noticed that Casey was rapidly writing something down in the corner of his notebook. He tore it off and handed it to Callie. The note read: Study session, Saturday 2:30? Callie looked up at Casey and nodded.
HBNDHBNDHB
Chet was sneaking around the cabin, trying to avoid being seen by Biff while trying to get the attention of any of his other friends. That didn't look like it would be easy to do. Phil was in the cabin, sitting on the floor cross-legged while he read, but Frank and Tony had gone exploring and Joe was out in front of the cabin, talking to Biff. Obviously, Phil was the only option to talk to, but Chet wasn't sure how productive that would be.
He went inside and Phil barely looked up. "Are you busy?" Chet asked.
Phil looked mildly annoyed, but he closed his book and set it to the side. "Is something the matter?"
"No, but do you know what day it is?"
Phil shrugged helplessly. "No. What day is it?"
"It's the thirty-first," Chet replied. "That means it's basically just one week till Biff's birthday, and we don't have anything planned."
Phil sighed. "Yeah, I guess so. Did you have anything in mind?"
"Well, no," Chet admitted, "but I thought if we all put our heads together, we might be able to think of something. You know what would be really great? If we could make ice cream."
"That would be great, but we don't have any cream or any ice, which are kind of important for making ice cream."
"Right, so I was thinking we could do what the Hawaiians do and have shave ice."
"That eliminates the need for cream, but the ice is still a problem."
"I know, but maybe there's something we could figure it out," Chet insisted. "Maybe we could put a bottle underneath one of the streams."
"It's not going to be cold enough to freeze anything," Phil told him. "The best you'll wind up with is semi-cold, watered-down fruit juice."
Chet frowned. "That won't be much fun. Okay, well, there's got to be something we can do. I just don't have any ideas."
Phil took in a deep breath. "Well, I don't either and I probably don't have to tell you that I'm not really in a mood for celebrating, but I'll try to think of something."
"Thanks," Chet told him. "I'll check with the other guys and see if any of them have ideas, too."
HBNDHBNDHB
Geroge readjusted the sound mixing options and restarted the short segment of audio. After spending all her free time over the last couple days listening to this recording, she was really wishing she had never agreed to do this. The first time she had listened to it, she had had to walk away from her laptop for a long time. She had even called Bess and had Bess talk her through it. Now, after George had listened to it what felt like a hundred times, she just felt strangely numb toward it. That almost horrified her more than the recording had, that she could listen to it without really feeling anything. For instance, the part that she was analyzing right now should have been sending shivers down her spine. Instead, here she was, listening to Captain Coswell talking about mopping blood off his deck and knowing perfectly well whose blood it was, and all she could think of was to adjust the sound settings slightly.
As far as she could tell, the recording didn't seem to have been tampered with. She couldn't find anywhere that the dialogue appeared to be stitched together from other sources. There were neither seams nor abrupt changes in sound quality. If the recording was edited, it had been done by someone who knew exactly what they were doing. However, George didn't think it was edited.
She was still working on it when Bess came in. "Any luck?" Bess asked.
"Not really," George replied. "Let me concentrate."
Bess was immediately quiet, watching George intently and hopefully. George was using headphones, so Bess couldn't hear any of the recording. That was fine with her. She hadn't heard any part of it yet, and she didn't want to. She waited and watched George's face, trying to guess what her cousin was thinking.
Finally, after listening several more times, George took the headphones off, sighing in disappointment. "If I know anything about editing audio, I'd say this recording is one hundred percent genuine."
"Is that a bad thing?" Bess asked. "I mean, that means that that Roger Stanley guy wasn't trying to trick Mr. Hardy after all, and so we've finally got some leads."
"That's true," George conceded. "Still, I was kind of hoping that it might turn out it was fake."
Bess leaned forward slightly. "George, do you think there's any chance that if the recording was faked, then maybe the murders were faked?"
George hesitated as she considered that. It was exactly what she was thinking, if she was to be honest. What else could it mean for this recording to be fake? Yet there was quite a bit of evidence to refute a theory like that. They had a dying declaration from one of the murderers that he had indeed killed the boys. They had the sworn admission of the other thugs who had helped capture the boys that the orders were for them to be killed and that they had been taken onto a boat for that exact purpose. They had no idea where that fishing boat had gone with the boys, so they couldn't even begin to search. They had the reputation of the murderers to back up the fact that they had never simply refused orders such as this. Not a single one of the witnesses stood to benefit by lying and saying that the boys were dead when they were actually alive, and any of them would benefit from admitting that the boys were alive if that was the case. Then, too, there was the fact that there was no motive for capturing the boys and keeping them alive all this time, without any word to their families. In fact, this recording and the other things that were with it were the first communication that could have possibly come from the kidnappers.
What was more, there could be other reasons for tampering with the recording, even if that turned out to be the case. Maybe it was an attempt to throw blame on someone besides the actual killers. If the Hawaiian gang was really behind it, they might have planted all those supposed clues to frame the cartel, and they might have edited the recording to remove anything that would implicate themselves. Or there could be any number of other reasons that George couldn't think of.
"I don't know," she said finally. "I wish there was some chance that that was faked, but I just don't see how."
Bess sighed. "I guess there probably isn't much chance. I hope Nancy has some ideas what all this means."
HBNDHBNDHB
"I should have listened to all of you," Iola was saying in between sobs. Over the phone, she was hard to understand, but Nancy listened sympathetically.
"Hey, it's okay," Nancy reassured her. "I don't blame you for thinking what you did, and it's not a bad thing to need evidence."
"There was evidence," Iola admitted. "I was just refusing to look at it. I just…I didn't want to believe it. Don't pretend that I was being clear-headed, wanting evidence. I was just being silly and selfish and…"
"Iola, it's okay," Nancy told her again. "You weren't hurting anyone. There's no need to be so hard on yourself."
"What about my parents?" Iola countered. "They needed me, and I wouldn't even admit that…And what about Callie? We haven't even talked in weeks now. Do you think she'll ever forgive me?"
"Of course she will. Callie's much too good a person to hold this against you, especially now."
"Oh, Nancy, what am I going to do?" Iola moaned. "Why did this have to happen? It's so unfair. The boys deserved so much better than this."
"I know. I know," Nancy told her as soothingly as she could. She wished was there in person. This wasn't the kind of conversation to take place over the phone. She hadn't expected Iola to call like this. For that matter, she wished that Mr. Hardy hadn't told the families of the other boys about the recording just yet. No doubt, he thought that they deserved to know, but it was still no doubt hard on them. Clearly, hardest of all on Iola, since she had still been holding onto some hope. Nancy didn't see why Iola would call her. She must have really felt that she had alienated herself from her family and friends.
Nancy did her best to try to console her, and finally the conversation was ended. Once it had, she stood up and paced around her hotel room a few times. She was back in Butte, Montana, trying to track down the fake Roger Stanley. She had been here less than twenty-four hours, but already she was starting to feel it in her bones that this was a dead-end. Whoever had been posing as Stanley, he probably left town as soon as he had delivered his message.
After a few minutes, she realized that she really needed to hear one voice in particular. She called Ned's phone. She wasn't sure what time it was in New Zealand, but she thought he would most likely be asleep. She would just listen to his voicemail greeting and leave a message for him to call when he woke up. She knew that she wouldn't be asleep.
What she didn't expect was for Ned himself to answer with a cheery, albeit slightly sleepy, "Hi, Nancy."
"Ned! Isn't it the middle of the night there?"
Ned chuckled. "You didn't call me just to ask me that, did you?"
"No, but I didn't think you'd answer. I was just going to leave a message."
"Well, then, since you can look it up easily enough, yeah, it is the middle of the night here. But, hey, I'm in college. You're supposed to stay up all night studying while you're in college."
"Uh-huh," Nancy replied doubtfully.
"And I feel bad for not being there for you. The least I can do is answer the phone when you call, especially since you wouldn't be calling me when you know it's so late here if you didn't really need something."
Nancy sighed and sat on the bed. "I'm just so discouraged. I don't even know where to begin looking for this Roger Stanley, or whoever he really is. And I just got off the phone with Iola. She heard about the recording and, well, she's convinced now."
There was a pause on the other end of the line for a few seconds. "Nancy, I can…"
"Don't even think about it," Nancy cut him off. "You've always wanted to study abroad and you're there. It would be ridiculous for you to come home."
"I just want to do something."
"You are doing something. Just…keep answering the phone when I call."
"I can do that, Nance."
Nancy froze, the Hardys' old pet name for her falling strangely on her ears.
"Is something wrong?" Ned asked when Nancy made no response.
"Frank and Joe are the only ones who ever used to call me that."
"Oh. I'm sorry, I didn't realize that." Ned sounded embarrassed.
"No, it's okay," Nancy assured him. "It just reminded me how much I miss them." She paused for a second and then she added, "We've got to get to the bottom of all this, and I just don't know how. You wouldn't have any ideas, would you?"
"I wish I did. I guess I don't understand why Mr. Hardy went down to Mexico when it's so likely to be a dead-end."
"He figured that the fake Stanley wanted him to go to Mexico, and if he didn't, it would make him suspicious. On the other hand, if he's down there, Dad and I might be able to find Stanley more easily. Then, too, there's always the chance that the cartel really does have something to do with what happened to the boys. We've always all agreed that it was possible, but not very likely, so we've focused on other things."
"Nancy, this is a little out there, but is there any possibility that this Roger Stanley was with the FBI instead of the bad guys?
"That is pretty out there," Nancy said. "The funny thing about it is that that's exactly what I was thinking."
