062 Easy Marks Read Free Page A

“It’s obviously a fake name, don’t you think?”
    Lane shook his head. “It’s real. We checked it against the Social Security number the person gave.”
    Suddenly Nancy remembered the initials in Sally’s message-sender’s password: I.W.! “Can I speak with the bank official who opened the account?”
    “Certainly.” Lane ushered her over to one of the customer service desks, to the left of the long tellers’ counter. A slender African-American woman in her thirties sat behind the desk. She smiled at Nancy as Harrison Lane introduced Nancy and explained what she wanted.
    “Mrs. Tillman here opened the account. I’ll let her tell you the rest,” said Lane, leaving them.
    “Do you remember what I. Wynn looked like?” Nancy asked as she settled into the chair beside the desk.
    “I certainly do. It was about ten days ago. She was a strange-looking little thing—”
    “She?” Nancy interrupted.
    Mrs. Tillman nodded. “Oh, yes. A dark-haired girl, about your age, maybe a little younger. Her skin was very pale and her hair was jet black. It looked dyed. Perhaps it was a wig.”
    “And you say she was small?” Nancy prompted.
    “Yes, very petite, and nervous. But, you know, I figured she was just a kid. It’s easy to be nervous in a big bank like this. Her information checked out—at first, anyway.”
    “What do you mean?”
    Mrs. Tillman opened the desk’s file drawer and flipped through the manila folders, pulling one out. Nancy could see the name I. Wynn written across the top. “Well, like this, for instance,” Mrs. Tillman told her. “The previous bank reference she gave was for a savings and loan company in Texas. There is such a place, but it folded a few months ago.”
    After consulting the file again, Mrs. Tillman added, “She used her Brewster Academy student ID for signature verification.”
    Nancy nodded. “Do you have an address for I. Wynn?” she asked.
    Mrs. Tillman punched some numbers into the computer terminal on her desk. “Fourteen twenty-one Sycamore,” she read off the amber writing on the screen. “She opened the account with one hundred dollars. Ninety-five of it was withdrawn from a machine two days later. A few days after that a thousand dollars was deposited in cash. That was all withdrawn the day after that.”
    Nancy looked over Mrs. Tillman’s shoulder to check the dates. The thousand dollars had been deposited the previous Tuesday—exactly when Sally said she’d made her deposit. There were three other similar deposits and withdrawals. It seemed as if Sally was not the only student the grade-changer had contacted.
    “Were all these transactions done at a cash machine?” Nancy wanted to know.
    “Two different cash machines—one located at Archer Avenue, the other at Ivy Avenue,” Mrs. Tillman confirmed.
    Both those branches were quite close to Brewster Avenue, where Brewster Academy was located, Nancy noted. “Thanks very much,” she told Mrs. Tillman.
     
    Ten minutes later Nancy turned her car onto Sycamore Street and began looking for number 1421. The neighborhood was run-down and deserted. Most of the houses were faded and sagging, as if they were simply waiting for a good excuse to collapse. Scraps of paper and debris littered the branches of the scraggly bushes lining the cracked sidewalk. There were only a few cars parked along the curb, but Nancy had a feeling that few, if any, people actually lived there.
    She parked in front of the address Mrs. Tillman had given, then took a long look at the place. If the other houses on the block were neglected, this one looked flat-out abandoned. She was tempted to leave. Still, it was possible that the house held some clue to the identity of I. Wynn. She had to check it out. After taking a flashlight from the glove compartment, she got out of her car and walked up to the front door to ring the bell. No one answered.
    Nancy’s blue eyes focused on the door’s heavy padlock. Maybe she’d find an easier way