Pushed by Franklin W. Dixon

Author:Franklin W. Dixon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aladdin

10.

THIEF

“Nice love note, guys,” Sean said.

“Jealous?” I shot back.

Frank reached out and ran his fingers across the dripping red letters of the word “die.”

“I really thought this was written in blood last night,” he said.

“Well, it’s not like you wear a lot of nail polish. Only on special occasions, am I right?” I asked.

Frank snorted. “Somebody must have used a whole bottle of the stuff to write this.” He pulled the sheet off the wall and folded it up. Then we headed out to the hallway where we could talk without an audience.

“Any idea who the somebody could be?” I used my fingers to smooth down my hair. I could feel I had some intense bed head going on.

“‘Get out or die.’ That sounds a little like what Evan’s dad said to us yesterday. He said we’d get more than we bargained for,” Frank answered.

I did my one-eyebrow raise. “Death is definitely more than I bargained for.”

“Yeah,” agreed Frank. “It’s hard to imagine Mr. Davis sneaking into the Haven in the middle of the night, though. For one thing, if he got caught, it would create the kind of scandal he’s trying to avoid.”

“We talked about Mr. Davis maybe having hired somebody to kill Evan. Maybe he hired somebody to deliver the warning,” I suggested.

“It wouldn’t have been hard at all for Tess or Sandy to get into the dorm. But if they did, it would mean that somebody’s figured out we aren’t just your basic runaways,” Frank said.

“I don’t think we’ve given ourselves away,” I told him. “Lily’s the only one who knows the truth about us. And she wants us to figure out what happened to Evan. She wouldn’t be trying to scare us off.”

“Olivia’s our other big suspect. But I don’t think she’s figured out we’re detectives either,” Frank said.

“Not after my masterful performance as a pickpocket,” I agreed. “There’s one thing that bugs me about Olivia as a suspect, though. Our theory is that she might have been blackmailing Evan, and he went on the attack.”

Frank nodded. “That still makes sense to me.”

“Me too,” I agreed. “But the timing is really convenient, don’t you think?”

“What do you mean?” asked Frank.

“Well, Evan was killed when he was on his way to talk to a reporter about something going on at the Haven,” I explained. “If Olivia killed Evan, that means she just happened to prevent him from talking to the reporter—because Olivia wouldn’t care if Evan talked to the press about this place.”

“It would be a weird coincidence. But those do happen sometimes,” Frank said.

“So who else do we have on our suspect list?” I asked.

Joe didn’t have time to answer before the shouting started up from downstairs.

“You’re not getting away with it!” somebody yelled.

A softer voice murmured a reply.

“I wasn’t sure before, but I am now! You’re sick!” the first voice shouted. You could hear the raw fury.

“Let’s check it out,” said Frank. He took the stairs two at a time. When we hit the downstairs hallway, we saw Mark facing off with Tess.

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