Free The Cheating Heart by Carolyn Keene Page A

the force in the past, but she didn’t recognize these two.
    â€œWe saw there was some kind of commotionup here,” said the first officer, a middle-aged man with thick glasses.
    â€œYeah, this girl fell through the stands,” said a nearby student.
    â€œFell through the stands?” the officer said, squinting at Nancy.
    â€œYes, Officer,” Nancy reported. “Luckily, my boyfriend here grabbed my foot in time.”
    â€œWell, everything’s okay now,” the man said. “Why don’t you kids go back to your seats and wait for the concert to start.”
    â€œOfficer?” Nancy stopped him. “The reason I fell was because of my seat.” She knelt down beside the flip-up plastic seat and showed them that it had wrenched loose from its steel base.
    â€œI knew those fancy new seats weren’t safe,” muttered the second officer, a thin, black-haired man with a reddish face. “The way they flip right up when you stand up . . .”
    â€œIt had nothing to do with the flipping mechanism,” Nancy stated. “See this thick spring here? That’s what flips the seat up when you get up. It’s a good idea—it keeps the seats folded up when they’re not being used.
    â€œBut as you can see,” Nancy went on, “the spring is intact. It’s still attached to the base post. Normally, this metal plate attached to the spring should be bolted onto the seat.” Nancy pointed to Ned’s seat to show how the seat should have worked. The officers nodded.
    â€œBut those bolts weren’t attached—and theyweren’t broken, either,” Nancy finished. “It looks as if somebody may have unscrewed them.”
    The first officer frowned. Edging Nancy aside, he bent down and peered at the broken seat.
    â€œMaybe they weren’t screwed in tight in the first place,” the second officer suggested. “The workers only finished the seat renovations a week ago.”
    Brook shivered. “To think that I was sitting in that seat the whole first act,” she said.
    â€œThat’s right!” Nancy exclaimed. “So it couldn’t have been a plan to hurt me. Unless the person forgot where I was sitting. You didn’t notice anything wrong with it?” Nancy asked, turning to Brook. Brook shook her head.
    â€œThe way that bolt was unscrewed, there’s no way you could have sat there without dislodging it,” Nancy noted. “I’ll bet the damage was done during intermission—after you and Paul got up.”
    â€œDid any of you notice anyone tampering with the seat?” the officer asked the students who had been sitting nearby. They shook their heads. “There were lots of people walking around, talking to one another,” one guy mentioned.
    â€œThis could just have been a prank,” the older officer said. “We get a lot of them this early in the year, before you kids have knuckled down to your work.”
    â€œIt’s a pretty dangerous prank,” Ned said.
    â€œWell, we’ll make our report, and we’ll keep an eye out for any other mischief,” the officer said. “Meanwhile, why don’t you move to other seats and enjoy the music?”
    â€œThey sure weren’t very helpful,” Ned muttered as he and Nancy followed Paul and Brook up the aisle to the last few empty seats.
    Nancy shrugged. “What could they do? They can’t inspect every seat in the stadium to see if the bolts are loose. And I’m sure they wanted to play down the danger so that other people wouldn’t panic.” She gingerly tested her new seat with her hand before sitting down.
    â€œYou could have been badly hurt, Nancy,” Brook said, worried.
    â€œWell, I wasn’t,” Nancy said. “Thanks to Ned’s quick thinking.”
    â€œNot to mention my superhuman strength,” Ned added, joking. Nancy grinned, then slid her hand warmly into