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Maybe it wasn’t a cheating team. The cheater could be flying solo—his or her teammates might not even know what was happening. Winston could almost see it: The cheater sees the signs in front of the planetarium theater and gets the idea to move them. His team settles into the theater, looks up at the fake starry sky and those floating words. The cheater says he has to go to the bathroom and leaves. He moves the signs and then comes back to help solve the puzzle. Easy.

Well, maybe not easy. The cheater had to drag those signs a good fifty feet without being spotted by any of the museum staff. But somehow he had accomplished this, just in time for Winston’s team to arrive and be thrown off track. The cheater sure had luck on his side.

Something in that thought shined out at him like a quarter on the sidewalk. There was a clue here to the cheater’s identity. But Winston couldn’t quite get a handle on it. “We were the last ones there,” he muttered.

Mal had been tapping a rhythm on the car window, but now turned to look at him. “What?”

Winston didn’t know he’d said anything out loud. He said, “I’m trying to figure out who’s cheating.”

Mal shrugged. “Sounds like a plan.”

“The cheater’s team got to the planetarium before we did. Right?”

Jake said, “Everybody got to the planetarium before we did.”

“Okay,” said Winston. “The cheater also arrived at the potato chip factory after we did.” Winston expected cheers or gasps at this revelation, but instead all he got was a thoughtful and puzzled silence.

Mal finally said, “How do you figure?”

Winston sat forward. “We pulled into the parking lot and went inside. Sometime after that, the cheater’s team arrived. Before they came inside, the cheater put that bottle under our tire.”

Jake said, “Why did it have to be then? Why not when we were all rushing back to our cars?”

Mr. Garvey chimed in. “That would have been incredibly risky, doing it with so many people around. Winston, I think you may be right. But let me ask you this: How did the cheater know which cars were involved in the contest? Not every car in the visitor parking lot belonged to a team.”

Mal said, “Maybe they pulled in just after we did. The cheater saw a grown-up and three kids. Not too hard to figure out why they were there.”

Jake twisted around in his seat and said, “Who came into the conference room immediately after us? Whoever it was, that’s our cheater.”

“Maybe,” Mr. Garvey said.

“All right, maybe,” Jake said grudgingly. “But who was it? Who came in after we did?”

They all thought about it.

“Those private school kids,” Mal said. “The ones dressed like waiters at a fancy restaurant.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I remember thinking they were somebody official, that the game was about to start.”

“How soon after did they get there?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t bring a stopwatch with me,” Mal said.

“Who else arrived after we did?” Winston asked. Silence greeted this question. “All right. Turn it around. Who was in the conference room when we got there? We can rule out all those teams.”

“Maybe,” Mr. Garvey said again, more loudly this time.

“That Brendan Root kid was there,” said Mal.

“The girls were there,” said Winston.

“Oh, you noticed the girls, did you?” Mal teased. Winston turned crimson.

“That other math teacher was there,” Jake said. “Your friend, Mr. Denham.”

Mr. Garvey said, “He’s not my friend.”

“There were other teams there, too,” said Mal, “but I can’t think who they were. So I guess right now we think the cheater is on that private school team. Right?”

“Okay, that’s enough,” said Mr. Garvey. “You have no idea one way or the other. We’re not going to accuse anybody of cheating unless we catch them in the act. I’m not a hundred percent certain that somebody is cheating at all. Go ahead and discuss this all you want, but I’m drawing the line at accusing anybody. Even here in the car. I don’t want to hear ‘I think so-and-so is the cheater.’ I don’t want to hear it. All right?”

The boys mumbled agreement.

“Let’s just see what happens next,” said Mr. Garvey.

The name Sutherland