“You want to check out SportsMania?” Ned guessed.
Nancy nodded. “If we hurry, we can be in and out before Mr. Lorenzo leaves here.”
Fifteen minutes later Ned, Nancy, and George paused just outside the patch of yellow the store lights shed on the sidewalk outside SportsMania.
“It looks like the place is empty, except for Jimmy,” Ned said.
“Mr. Lorenzo’s employee?” Nancy peered through the display window at the young man behind the counter. He was tall and gangly, with dark brown skin, black hair cut close to the scalp, and baggy clothes.
“You guys distract him,” Nancy said. “I’ll try to get inside Mr. Lorenzo’s office and look around.”
“Can I help you?” Jimmy asked as they came in.
George launched into a story about needing a warm-up suit. The young man led her and Ned up to the loft area. Nancy hung behind, looking at skis.
As soon as Jimmy was out of sight, she tiptoed to the office door at the back of the store, turned the knob, then frowned.
“Locked,” she whispered as she pulled a credit card from her wallet. Quickly and carefully she worked the card against the lock.
“Yes!” she whispered as the lock clicked open. One quick step took her inside. Nancy shut the door quietly behind her and looked around.
A desk, some shelves, a copy machine, and a filing cabinet took up most of the space. It all had the same modern look as the rest of the store, but more cramped and messy. Papers and books cluttered the desktop.
Nancy began leafing through the papers on the desk. “Receipts, order forms, catalogs … Hmm. What’s this?”
She plucked a thick computer printout from beneath some forms. At the top of each page, the words “Accounts Payable/Accounts Receivable” were printed.
Daily sales figures were listed, along with expenses for inventory, rent, insurance, and some payments labeled Miscellaneous. Nancy saw nothing suspicious, so she abandoned the printout and went through Mr. Lorenzo’s desk drawers.
“Supplies, printer cartridges, business cards, more catalogs …” she murmured. Again, nothing suspicious.
“What now?” she wondered, sitting back in the desk chair.
At that moment Nancy’s gaze fell on a trash bin that was tucked under the desk. It was a long shot, but …
Leaning forward, she began to pick through the crumpled napkins, old order forms, coffee containers, and discarded bits of paper.
Right under a Styrofoam dish still half full of fried rice was a crumpled piece of paper. After shaking a few greasy kernels from it, she smoothed the paper out on the desktop and read the words printed in capital letters:
MY PRICE JUST WENT UP TO $1,500. PAY UP … OR I’LL TALK.
“Whoa!” Nancy’s whole body jolted to attention. She looked at the note again, zeroing in on the amount. Fifteen hundred dollars. Hadn’t she seen something for that amount in the accounts printout?
Nancy shot her right hand out and grabbed the printout. Her finger moved like lightning over the entries until she found the one she was looking for, near the end.
“Here!” she said under her breath.
It was a Miscellaneous payment for fifteen hundred dollars. And the date was …
“Yesterday!”
Nancy paged back through the printout. Exactly fourteen days earlier she found another Miscellaneous payment. This one was for one thousand dollars. And another thousand-dollar payment was listed fourteen days before that.
Flipping back, Nancy made note of every Miscellaneous payment in the printout. There were seven in all, made exactly two weeks apart. Each payment was for a thousand dollars except the last one.
“When the blackmailer’s price went up,” Nancy said quietly.
Her mind whirled at top speed. The note she had found made it pretty clear that Mr. Lorenzo was being blackmailed. But whoever had left that note wanted more than just the answers to the Clues Challenge.
Someone was blackmailing Mr. Lorenzo for serious money.
10
Blackmail
George and Ned were still in the loft of Sports Mania with Jimmy when Nancy found them again. She paused at the top of the metal stairs, watching while George modeled a bright red warm-up suit.
“I don’t know about the color …” George said.
As soon as Nancy gave her a thumbs-up sign, George pulled the suit off and handed it back to Jimmy.
“I’ll pass for now,” she said, grabbing her parka and heading for the stairs.
Ned dumped another warm-up outfit into Jimmy’s arms and followed George. They clattered down the stairs behind Nancy, leaving Jimmy alone in the loft area.
“You found something?” Ned said as soon as they were outside.
Nancy showed him and George the note and told them about the miscellaneous payments.
