Killer Connections Read online

  “Ew.” I made a face as I picked at a particularly gross chunk of bird crud. “I almost wish I was back at Firth picking up doggie doo.”

  Frank looked at me from the other side of the cage bars. We were back home in Bayport. It was a crisp late autumn afternoon. And what were we doing? That’s right. Cleaning Playback’s cage. Aunt Trudy never gives up.

  At least it gave us a chance to talk over the mission in private. We’d barely had a moment alone since getting back.

  “I still can’t believe it was Dr. Montgomery all along,” Frank mused. “We should have guessed sooner.”

  “How could we? Who suspects a doddering old man of that kind of stuff?” I flicked another plop of poo off the bars.

  “True,” Frank agreed, dipping his scrub brush in soapy water. “He never could have done most of it without Mrs. Wilson.”

  “Loyal to the end.” I grimaced as I remembered the way she’d cursed at the police as they’d cuffed Montgomery.

  But before that, he’d admitted to everything. It turned out he didn’t like the changes Dr. Darity was making at his beloved school all along. But what had sent him over the edge at the beginning of the semester was when Darity had accepted Lee, Tommy, and the other scholarship students, and then asked for Destiny to be admitted as well.

  “From the way he was talking, it sounds like he went even nuttier when Lee and Destiny started doing so well,” I said. “Destiny at soccer, and Lee in general.”

  Frank nodded. “Even being admitted to GTT and then the BoE.”

  That was when Montgomery had decided to try to scare those two away from Firth. And/or make Darity look bad. So he’d enlisted the help of his faithful—and equally snobby and tradition-bound—servant, Mrs. Wilson.

  They’d done much of the early sabotage, including all the computer threats. It turned out Montgomery himself had taken care of the high-tech stuff. As a science teacher, being old-fashioned had its limits. He was actually quite the techie, as I’d noted after spotting his PDA.

  Angry about Destiny and Lee making the varsity soccer team, he’d had Mrs. Wilson grease the soccer coach’s floor to send a message. Unfortunately, the swim coach had been caught in the crossfire.

  “I guess we should have paid attention when people told us Montgomery knew everything that went on at Firth,” Frank said as he scrubbed at a perch. “Maybe we would’ve realized he’d be one of the few who knew about Destiny’s blood supply.”

  “And that hunting cabin, and the old tunnels beneath campus,” I added.

  Montgomery had sent Mrs. Wilson to rig that runaway soccer truck. He’d had her tamper with Destiny’s water bottle to give her food poisoning. He’d also set the bomb at the frat house and stolen the anticonvulsant drug by using his old master key.

  “But what definitely should have tipped us off was the vandalism at the headmaster’s house.” Frank shook his head. “Only Mrs. Wilson would care about leaving all the Firth stuff intact and only trashing Darity’s own stuff.”

  “Yeah. Then there was that rope trick.” I shuddered as I remembered how close Frank had come to being badly hurt—or worse. “Montgomery must have had her rig that rope to break when someone was halfway up. And then he made sure it would be either you, Lee, or Destiny who fell.”

  “Guess he threw me in there because he thought we might be onto him.” Frank shook his head. “If only he knew we had no idea!”

  I nodded slowly, feeling kind of stupid. We’d missed so many clues….

  “Guess he started that FirthFirst blog to stir up resentment against the people he didn’t like, including Darity,” I said. “But it backfired when it caught Nigel Nabb’s attention. I wonder why Montgomery waited so long to take Nigel out, anyway? It’s not like he couldn’t have had him kicked off as soon as he turned up on campus. He didn’t have to kill him.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that.” Frank stopped cleaning for a second and glanced at me. “My guess is at first he was tolerating Nigel hanging around because it was making Darity look bad. But when Montgomery realized just how sleazy Nigel and his show really were, he knew he couldn’t let him drag his beloved Firth’s name through the mud.”

  “Yeah, that makes sense. Though Mrs. Wilson claimed he only told her they couldn’t let Nigel degrade Firth on national TV, and she did the rest.”

  We were both still pretty skeptical about that one. Mrs. Wilson had insisted to the police that she’d concocted the second explosion on her own, telling Montgomery she was only planning to blow up his equipment.

  “Sounds like they’re both sticking to that story,” said Frank. “Maybe it’s true.”

  “Or maybe it’s just a faithful servant being loyal to the end.” I shrugged. “Guess we’ll never know. But either way, they’ll both be in prison for a good long time. I’m just glad Hunt didn’t end up there too. She comes across as kind of a loner or whatever. But she’s okay.”

  Frank grinned. “You have to say that. She saved our lives.”

  “Yeah. She and Killer.” I smiled fondly at the thought of the dog.

  That’s right, I said fondly. Now that I wasn’t stuck walking the creature umpteen times a day, I actually missed Killer. A little. Okay, not really. But I’d never forget him, that’s for sure.

  “It’s cool that Darity gave Hunt her old job back,” Frank said. “I bet Killer’s happy about that too.”

  I nodded. Hunt had confessed to the dognapping. Dr. Montgomery had approached her, promising that if she helped spirit Killer away from Firth, he’d pay both their ways to Canada so they could start a new life there, with more than enough cash for Hunt to open the dog training center she’d always dreamed of.

  At first she’d gone along with the plan. But in the end she’d felt guilty. She loved hanging with Killer again but knew it was wrong to make it happen that way. Plus, she didn’t really want to move to Canada and leave Mr. Westerley behind.

  See, that was the one bit of Firth gossip that we’d known about and Montgomery hadn’t. Hunt was dating Firth’s English teacher.

  So she’d been sneaking Killer back onto campus when he’d picked up the scent of that chlorine gas. I guess something in his training told him it was trouble. And you know the rest.

  Anyway, Darity had seemed impressed by Hunt’s (eventual) honesty. Plus, I guess he still felt bad for firing her the first time for false reasons. So he’d offered her old job back, and she’d gladly accepted.

  “It’s weird,” I said, grabbing a sponge and squeezing it out. “I haven’t heard a peep in the news about any of this.”

  “Except that blurb on R and F Report.” Frank grimaced. “Remember? Aunt Trudy was all upset because Nigel Nabb was supposedly killed in ‘a tragic motor vehicle accident while on location in New England.’”

  “Hey, it’s true. A golf cart counts as a motor vehicle.” I soaped up one of Playback’s perches. “Still, like, wow. Firth really knows how to cover up a juicy story!”

  “Yeah.” Frank glanced at me. “Like the truth about the Brothers of Erebus.”

  He had a point. We never had gotten to the bottom of the shadowy secret society. At least not this time. Maybe someday we’d track down the truth.

  Maybe. Either way, this was one mission I was relieved to have closed at last. After our time at Firth, it was almost a relief to be back scrubbing bird poop under Aunt Trudy’s watchful eye.

  Almost.