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And the cheater had won. Maybe they should have told the girls they knew who the cheater was. Maybe that would have made them more interested in winning immediately.

Their teacher had tried calling the potato chip factory, hoping to speak with Dmitri Simon, but he was never able to get a human being on the line. Winston wanted to ask Mr. Garvey what they were going to do now. They didn’t know for a fact that West Meadow had won, but it seemed a good bet. When Brendan and his teammates were called up as the winners, was Mr. Garvey going to stand up and yell, “Not so fast!” That would be an ugly scene.

“At least your rival didn’t win,” Mal, in the passenger seat, said to Mr. Garvey. It was the first thing anybody had said in a good ten minutes.

Mr. Garvey grunted.

That seemed to be all the reply Mal was going to get. He turned and looked back out the window.

Jake and Winston exchanged a sad glance and then looked out their own windows. Nothing much else to do. Mr. Garvey was not about to be consoled. Yes, if the girls had acted differently, they would have won. But even before that, if Mr. Garvey hadn’t thrown the computer into a hard wooden bench, they would have taken the prize money themselves, with no need to split it. That was going to eat at Mr. Garvey for a long, long time.

Winston kept thinking about Brendan Root. It was hard to believe that kid had been the cheater all along—or, no, was working with the cheater. What was Brendan’s relationship to the man in the green jacket? How could that wacky seventh-grader possibly know that vicious and mean grown-up?

He kept hearing Brendan’s tunefully happy voice in his head. His excitement about meeting Winston, back at the start of all this. His remorse, in the Adventureland parking lot, that Winston had fallen behind. And most jarringly of all, the fact that Brendan had offered to help him—had offered to give him an answer.

That’s not what people do when they’re trying to cheat to win. They don’t offer to cheat to help the competition.

Winston was slowly becoming more and more sure that Brendan wasn’t the cheater. Maybe Brendan had called him, but there had to be some other explanation as to how Winston’s name had gotten into that memo pad. Somebody else was behind all this, not that enthusiastic, puzzle-happy kid.

It sure looked bad, though. Why else had Brendan called him—disguising his voice, no less!—if not to scope out the competition? Why did the man in the green jacket hit every team except for West Meadow? Their teacher didn’t even believe there was a cheater. Of course, that was before the man in the green jacket had made his dramatic entrance, complete with fireworks. Brendan’s teacher would certainly believe him now, after Winston pointed at Jake’s face, which was a rainbow of black-and-blue bruises.

“When we get there,” Mr. Garvey now said, “let me do all the talking.”

“What are you going to say?” Jake asked.

“I don’t want to make a public spectacle of this thing. I’ll try to reach Dmitri Simon and take him aside for a few minutes. If I’m able to do that, I’ll tell him about the cheater and how we have proof that it’s this boy on the West Meadow team.” Mr. Garvey tapped the steering wheel thoughtfully and continued, “I don’t know what Dmitri Simon will do at that point. Maybe he’ll divide the prize money among the rest of the teams. Maybe he’ll ask if anybody else had the final answer and give prize money only to those teams. All I know is, we’re not letting West Meadow and that kid get away with this.”

“I feel bad for the other kids on that team,” Mal said.

“For all we know, all the kids were in on it,” said Mr. Garvey. “Don’t feel sorry for anybody.”

They fell back into silence. Winston wished he had never thought to call Ray Marietta. Who knew that path would lead to Brendan Root? Winston was certain Mr. Garvey was going to accuse the wrong person of cheating, but there was nothing he could do to stop it. He thought ahead to the expression of disbelief