THEY WERE DONE for, Nancy was certain of it! She braced for the impact, gripping her armrests tightly.
At the last second, however, the driver swung the wheel in the direction of the skid. The bus teetered crazily but slid to a halt without overturning.
Pandemonium broke loose. Amid the commotion, Nancy heard Ned shout, “Stay calm! Stay in your seats! Is everyone okay?”
A quick survey showed that no one was injured. Nerves were frayed, though, and it took several minutes for everyone to calm down enough to stop yelling.
Nancy checked the driver. He was unhurt but badly shaken.
“It’s my fault,” he said. “I shouldn’t have hit the brakes.”
“Don’t worry about it. Everything turned out all right,” she told him.
“Everything except the tire. What a time to have a blowout!”
Didn’t he know that the tire had been shot out? Obviously not. Nancy wondered whether to tell him, but decided against it. What good would it do? The Camaro was gone, and spreading the story would only make the players more upset than they were already.
The driver used an emergency roadside phone to call for another bus. It arrived an hour later, and the team transferred into it. When they reached the Haviland gym it was just minutes before the game was due to start.
“Those guys are really shaken up,” Bess said as the girls took their seats in the bleachers. She had been sitting in the back of the bus with cute Craig Watson and looked pretty shaken herself. “Do you think they’ll win?”
“Let’s hope so,” Nancy said.
George added, “If they don’t, it’s goodbye playoffs!”
At first, the game looked like a rout. Emerson ran fast and hard, and quickly built a twenty-five point lead. The trouble came in the second half. With just ten minutes to go, the Wildcats began to slip. Scoring opportunities went unnoticed. Foul shots missed. In no time, their lead faded to just twelve points.
Was it the shock of the near-disaster finally catching up with them? Nancy wondered. Probably. She cheered loudly, but her mind wasn’t really on the game. Instead, she was brooding about the black Camaro. First it had turned up at the scene of an assault, and then it had been used to shoot out the bus’s tire!
In her mind, that could mean only one thing: The beatings and the practical jokes against the team were connected. But how? And why? She had no idea.
When the final buzzer sounded, Emerson had won the game by nine points.
• • •
On the return trip Nancy reversed two of the seats so that she, George, Bess, and Ned could sit together. Softly, so that the other team members wouldn’t hear, they discussed the case. Ned was shocked when he heard about the Camaro and its part in the accident.
“Nancy, you should have called the police!” he said.
“There wasn’t any point. I missed the license number again. Anyway, why delay the trip even more by bringing in the cops? We almost missed the start of the game as it was!”
Nancy slumped in her seat. “The real issue is that Camaro driver. Why would someone who likes to beat up people also pull a practical joke? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Some practical joke,” Bess muttered. “That bullet almost got us killed!”
“Not true. Think about it . . . it wasn’t the shot that almost spilled the bus, but the way the driver hit the brakes.”
“Oh, sure. If that Camaro guy wasn’t trying to kill us, then what was he trying to do?”
“Slow us down,” Nancy explained. “He wanted the team to arrive late . . . maybe even late enough to make them forfeit the game.”
“Hmmm . . .”
George was puzzled about something else. “I don’t understand . . . why do you think it’s weird that the same guy is responsible for both the pranks and the assaults?”
“Yeah, it makes perfect sense to me,” Ned agreed.
Nancy shook her head. “Beating people up and playing jokes on them are two different things. One involves direct physical contact, while the other involves watching from a distance.”
“But the Camaro definitely ties the two cases together,” Ned pointed out.
“You’re right, it does.”
“Who do you think was driving it?” George asked next.
Nancy shrugged. “That’s the big question. I don’t know.”
Silence. For several minutes the foursome sifted the clues in their minds. For her part, Nancy felt that one suspect stood out more than any other—Mike O’Shea. He had not been with the team when the tire was shot. There was also the effigy material in his room. Should she voice her suspicion? She knew how Ned would react, but that was not the reason she kept quiet.
The reason was that she now had another strong suspect—Ray Ungar. That morning at the rifle range she had learned that he was a crack marksman. Could he have been the one who shot out the bus’s tire? Unless he had a rock-solid alibi, it was possible, she knew.
It was George who suggested the third suspect. “I think it’s that creep Tom Stafford,” she said forcefully.
“Tom! Why him?” Ned asked.
“Well, he wants the trustees to cut the P.E. department’s budget, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“There you go! He’s sabotaging the Wildcats’ season in order to give the trustees an excuse to zap the funding.”
“I don’t know . . . that sounds too elaborate,” Ned said doubtfully.
“Come on, the guy’s a fanatic! He’d do anything to further his cause!”
George had a point, Nancy had to admit. Tom was an idealist, and idealists sometimes got carried away. At any rate, they had a motive for Tom—more than she could say about Mike!
“I think you have it wrong, George,” Bess declared. “I think the joker is that weirdo Ray Ungar that Nancy told us about.”
“Oh? Why?”
“Because he hates the Wildcats. Or at least Coach Burnett. I say he’s playing the pranks as revenge for being kicked off the team.”
Nodding, Nancy filled them in on her encounter with Ray in the rifle range.
“That clinches it as far as I’m concerned,” Ned said grimly. “Ray’s our man. All we have to do is find out whether he has an alibi for this afternoon and if he drives a Camaro.”
“Forget it. It’s not going to be that easy,” Nancy objected. “Naturally, the joker’s going to have an alibi. And as for the Camaro . . . he’d be a fool to drive it around openly.”
“And our practical joker is no fool,” George added.
“I suppose you’re right.”
Another silence fell. Where did they go from here? Nancy wondered. Tom, Ray, Mike—any of them could be the practical joker. Each had points in his favor, yet there wasn’t enough evidence to pin down any of them.
Once again they were at a dead end. She felt more frustrated than ever. The bigger this case grew, the harder it seemed to be to crack. Whoever he was, this practical joker had earned her respect: With one possible exception, he had pulled off all his crimes without leaving any clues.
• • •
Back at Emerson, the young detective said an awkward goodnight to Ned and started back to the dorm with her friends. The three walked in silence. Their mood was gloomy.
Finally, Bess spoke. “This is awful. It seems like there’s no way to catch this guy. You’ve seen him, though, right?”
“Last night in the parking lot,” George said, “didn’t you get any idea about who he might be?”
Nancy sighed. “No, and believe me, I’ve thought about it plenty. All I could tell was that the guy is tall and thin. That description could fit lots of people.”
“Like Tom.”
“Or Ray.”
“Or Mike,” Nancy concluded.
Not even seeing the practical joker in the flesh had done any good! Maybe Bess was right, Nancy thought darkly. Maybe there wasn’t any way to catch him at all!
A few minutes later, the trio rounded the corner of a large, windowless brick building. From the tall smokestack rising above it, Nancy guessed that it was the college’s central heating plant.
Suddenly George grabbed Nancy’s arm. “Nancy, look . . . over there by that fence! It’s the Camaro!”