The Cheating Heart Read Free Page A

cabinet was locked when I got here, too.”
    â€œDid you notice whether the answer key was in the file yesterday morning?” Nancy inquired.
    Tavakolian huffed slightly. “Well, no—I didn’t check inside the folder Wednesday morning. All I needed were the tests to hand out to the students. I took the completed tests home with me last night, and I didn’t return until this afternoon, when I came to get the answer sheet.”
    â€œWere the office door and the file cabinet locked this afternoon when you got here?” Nancy was closely studying the surface of the file cabinet, looking for scratches that might indicate someone had jimmied the lock.
    â€œYes, definitely,” Tavakolian answered as he took out his key and unlocked the cabinet. “I kept the test folder in the bottom drawer.”
    Nancy opened the deep bottom drawer of the cabinet and glanced over the folders crammed into it. “Aren’t you going to dust for fingerprints?” the professor inquired curiously.
    Nancy hid her annoyance at his meddling. “I doubt that that would help us here,” she said politely. “A surface like this is probably covered with many people’s prints. Besides, we’re not looking for a criminal whose prints would be in a police file. Now, do you still have the original copy of the test?”
    From the drawer, Tavakolian pulled out a ten-page document on plain white copy paper from a manila folder. Nancy held it up to the light to study the typeface. “I took my disk and printed the test out on the laser printer in theEnglish department office,” the professor said. “It’s faster than my printer here.”
    Nancy nodded, rapidly checking out his desktop computer setup. Then she scanned the test itself. “If someone cheated on the test, he or she would get a high score, right?” she asked.
    â€œWell, you see, there are two sections of the test,” Tavakolian pointed out. “The first part is multiple-choice, with fifty questions—the answers are A’s, B’s, C’s, and D’s. Whoever stole the answer sheet would get a perfect score on that part. But the second part of the test wouldn’t be easy to cheat on.” He flipped the pages to show her. “It consists of five essay questions.”
    â€œAnd the answer sheet didn’t list answers for essay questions,” Nancy concluded.
    Tavakolian shrugged. “For each essay question, I did write down a few phrases, indicating topics that should be covered by the student. But when I grade such a test, I also give points for clear, intelligent thinking.”
    â€œSo we might be able to identify the cheater,” Nancy mused, “if a student gets a perfect score on the multiple-choice section and mentions the correct topics on the essay questions, but doesn’t really seem to understand them.”
    â€œTrue,” said Tavakolian.
    â€œAlthough the only clear proof of the theft would be to find the missing answer sheet in a student’s possession,” said Nancy. “But if youhad the tests graded, we could zero in on the most likely cheaters.”
    â€œI hadn’t planned to grade them at all,” Tavakolian said, “since the test has to be thrown out. But if you wish, I will grade it. I’ll do the multiple-choice section first.
    â€œOf course,” he added fussily, “it will take me a number of days to correct the essay section. In any case, I’ll give you the names of any students who get a perfect score on the multiple choice.”
    As Nancy jotted down her phone number at the Theta Pi house for the professor, she asked, “Does anybody else have a key to this office?”
    â€œNo. Oh, there’s the cleaning woman,” he remembered, “but she doesn’t have a key to the file cabinet. Besides, she barely speaks English. What use could she have for a literature exam?”
    About as much use as Ned