The Cheating Heart by Carolyn Keene Page B

and Rich close in on either side of Steve. Each guy took an elbow, and they steered Steve calmly toward the door, before he could disrupt the party.
    At the door Steve twisted around for a parting shot at Paul. “Hey, Mr. Intellectual Snob! You think I’m not good enough for your lousy frat? I wouldn’t join Omega Chi if you paid me! You wait until I tell folks what I know about you.”
    Jerry and Rich gave Steve a final heave out the door. Arms crossed, they stood casually on the steps, preventing him from reentering.
    Nancy jumped up and left the table to go to Paul’s side. “Are you okay?” she asked.
    Paul gave his head a shake and then looked at her. “I’m fine.” He smiled weakly. “You think I’d let a crude jerk like that get to me?”
    As Paul slipped away through the crowd, Nancy thought he had been shaken by what Steve hadsaid. What had they been arguing about? she wondered. What did Steve mean when he threatened to “tell” people about Paul? Could this have any connection to the anonymous ad in the Emersonian?
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    By six-thirty the last guests had left the Omega Chi house. As the cleanup committee chased the stragglers out, Ned, Paul, and Nancy went out to meet Brook on the lawn.
    The four young people walked across campus to the student center for dinner before the Dillon Patrick concert. By now, the weather had changed dramatically. A cool breeze had sprung up, the first sign of fall. Brook shivered in her short-sleeved dress, and Paul took off his leather bomber jacket and draped it over her shoulders.
    â€œI met a friend of yours at our open house, Paul,” Brook mentioned, snuggling into his jacket.
    â€œReally? Who?” Paul asked.
    â€œAnnie Mercer,” Brook replied.
    Nancy perked up. She couldn’t let on that she knew Annie—neither Brook nor Paul knew about her investigation. Still, even though she thought she’d caught her thief, she might learn something useful about another suspect—especially if more than one student had cheated.
    Paul was frowning. “Annie Mercer? Oh, yeah, I remember her. I saw her over at Ivy Hall the other day, but I couldn’t remember her firstname. I just remembered she was one of the Mercer twins. They were two years behind me in high school.”
    â€œShe has a twin?” Brook asked. “I only saw one girl at our party.”
    â€œOh, the other twin didn’t come to Emerson,” Paul said. “I think she went to Yale.”
    So both sisters seem to be brains, Nancy thought.
    â€œWell, anyway,” Brook said, giving Paul a sideways glance, “I got the impression that she knew you real well. But when I said I’d be seeing you tonight, she shut up and walked away.”
    Paul shrugged. “That’s weird. I remember her as super friendly.”
    Nancy noticed the slight tightening of Brook’s features. She guessed that Brook was trying to figure out whether Paul had any old girlfriends hanging around. Nancy could sympathize with that. But Nancy was interested in other sorts of secrets, and for the second time that day, she wondered uneasily if Paul was hiding something.
    â€œSpeaking of weird behavior,” Nancy said, “what was Steve Groff so mad about, Paul?”
    â€œOh, he’s just a guy with an attitude,” Paul said. “I saw him at the English office the other day, trying to talk his way into Professor McCarty’s American lit course. McCarty told him no way, that he had to take the core course first. Groff was embarrassed. I was standing rightthere, so I tried to explain to him what a tough course American lit would be without the core course as background. Somehow, he took it as an insult—like I was saying he wasn’t smart.
    â€œWhen I saw him this afternoon, he blew up at me,” Paul said. “He said I was trying to discourage him from joining the frat because his grades