“You talked to Charlie?”
“He’s my friend. How long will it take to get results?”
“That will depend on how long it takes us to find the jacket.”
“What do you mean? Charlie said he told you what he did with it.”
Aunt Ginny looked warily at me. “He did.”
“In the charity clothing box outside the church, right?”
“Right.”
“So why haven’t you found it?” Oh. “The charity box has been emptied. Where did the clothes go? You have to find out, Aunt Ginny.”
She looked evenly at me. “The box hasn’t been emptied in weeks.”
“So the jacket must have been there.”
She shook her head.
“That can’t be right,” I said. “Someone must have taken it.”
Aunt Ginny was silent for a few seconds before she said, “Who would do that?”
It was a good question. One I couldn’t answer.
“Riley, you’ve only known Charlie for a couple of months. So you don’t know enough about him to be able to tell whether he’s lying or, for that matter, exactly what he’s capable of.”
This was a point on which Aunt Ginny and I didn’t see eye to eye. She was suspicious by nature. It made her a good cop, I guess. The problem was that she never turned it off. A person had to prove himself to Aunt Ginny. There was no such thing as presumption of innocence for her.
“I know Charlie a lot better than you do, Aunt Ginny, and I know what kind of person he is. That’s why he’s my friend.”
“I have to get to the station, Riley. So unless there’s something else…”
There was. It was why I’d wanted to talk to her in the first place.
“Did you talk to Andes?”
“Andes?”
“A football player. Andrew Maracle. He’s the one who said he saw Charlie on the roof with Ethan. Did you talk to him? Or was it Detective Martin? Because if it was Detective Martin, I don’t know if he got the right story, Aunt Ginny. Andes didn’t actually see Charlie. He just made certain assumptions based on what he heard and saw.”
Aunt Ginny was looking at me through narrowed eyes.
“Forget football players for a minute. How would you know what any witness might have said to the police?” She chose her words carefully, neither confirming nor denying what I had told her.
“Everyone knows. My whole school is talking about it.”
“Are you implying that a witness lied to the police?”
“Not lied. Assumed incorrectly. He didn’t actually see Charlie up there. He saw a yellow jacket. But he didn’t see Charlie’s face. He didn’t hear Charlie’s voice. It could have been anybody.”
“How do you know this? Did you talk to this witness?”
“Yes. That’s what I’m—”
“Stay out of it, Riley.”
“Just think about it, Aunt Ginny. Think about what your eyewitness actually saw.”
I slid out of the passenger seat before she could say anything else. I hoped she would consider what I’d said. But I had no way of knowing if she would, which made it impossible for me to stay out of it. Someone had to believe in Charlie, and I had already decided I was that person—despite the fact that his jacket wasn’t where he’d said it would be.
I decided to check out a few things for myself. But first I called Ashleigh.
TEN
“I still don’t get why we’re up here,” Ashleigh said. “How can anyone tell what another person saw or heard?”
I located the vent immediately. Charlie had said it was right across from the door to the roof, and, sure enough, there it was.
“Stand right here.” I positioned her where Charlie had described Ethan boxing him in. I opened the door to leave.
“Hey, where are you going?”
“Keep glancing at the door,” I said.
“Why? What am I looking for?”
“The second you see me opening the door, tell me.”
“Okay.”
I stood in the stairwell with the door closed. It didn’t have a round knob but instead a handle that you had to push down to open. I counted off five seconds and then, as slowly and quietly as I could, began to ease down on the handle.
“You’re opening the door,” Ashleigh shouted.
“You’re guessing,” I called back.
“I saw the handle move.”
“Were you staring at the door the whole time?”
“You said to watch it.”
“I said to keep glancing at it. Charlie said Ethan wasn’t staring at it. He said he glanced at it.”
“What am I supposed to look at in the meantime?”
“I don’t know. But find something and alternate between glancing at it and glancing at the door.”
“Fine.”
I closed the door again and counted to seven this time. I applied the tiniest bit of pressure to the handle.
“Opening the door,” Ashleigh called.
“You were staring!”
“I was not! I was glancing back and forth like you said. It’s a big handle, Riley. You can’t help but notice when it moves.”
“Let’s try it again.”
Ashleigh sighed. This time I pushed down almost immediately.
“Door opening!” she called out.
I tried a fourth time, much to Ashleigh’s annoyance. This time I waited a lot longer. She spotted the movement of the handle right away. I stuck my head through the opening.
“This time—”
“This time? How long are we going to be up here?”
“Just another couple of minutes, I promise. And this time, when I open the door a crack I don’t want you to call out. I just want to see what I can see. Okay?”
I opened the door a total of ten times—which turned out to be the maximum number of times before Ashleigh lost her patience. Every single time, no matter how tiny the crack through which I looked, I could see her perfectly. All of her. Not just her arm or sleeve or whatever it was Andes said he had seen of the yellow jacket, but all of her. Charlie was right again. There was no way anyone could open that door and not see who was standing there. But Andes had told me he’d seen the yellow jacket and that was how he knew it was Charlie that Ethan was angry with.
Andes was lying.
“Are you done?” Ashleigh asked.
I nodded.
“Good. Let’s get out of here. I have to work on my entry.”
“Entry?”
“For the photography competition. You could at least try to remember that I have a life too, Riley.”
“But you already took your pictures.”
“I know. But I have to go through them and pick the best one and then make sure it’s cropped right so that the eye focuses where it’s supposed to. You can’t believe how many kids enter this contest, Riley. You have to make sure that what you send in is your absolute best and that it captures the theme perfectly.”
“I’m sure you’ll do great.”
“You want to come over and see what I’ve done so far?”
After what she’d just done for me, I felt I had no choice.
Half an hour later, she turned away from her computer and said, “If you say uh-huh one more time while you stare out into space, I’m seriously going to strangle you.”
“What?”
“Just as I thought. You aren’t paying attention.”
“Andes lied.”
“You’ve already said that—a hundred times.”
“But why? And why would he say he saw Charlie’s jacket instead of saying he saw Charlie? I mean, if you’re going to lie, why not go all the way and say you saw the person?”
“Maybe he isn’t lying. Maybe all he saw was Charlie’s jacket.”
“Which Charlie swears to me he wasn’t wearing because he had already gotten rid of it.” I shook my head.
“Maybe Charlie was wrong about where he was standing.”
“He was positive. And
he said he kept glancing at that door because he had the feeling that Ethan was expecting someone and seemed anxious about it. But every time I opened that door so much as a tiny crack, you noticed. Charlie would have noticed too. But he says the door never opened the whole time he was up here.”
“Well, someone is either lying or mistaken,” Ashleigh said. “Because there’s no way they can both be telling the truth.”
“It has to be Andes. But why would he lie about Charlie?”
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe Andes is trying to frame him. Think about it. Serena and Ethan break up. Ethan starts hanging around you. Andes starts hanging around Serena. He has a thing for her, Riley. He always has. But then maybe Ethan says something or does something that makes Andes think he’s going to get back together with Serena. The next thing anyone knows, Ethan turns up dead. Who benefits? Andes. Now there’s no way Serena and Ethan can get back together, and Andes can comfort Serena and get close to her that way.”
“So long as he doesn’t get charged with murder.”
“The thing is, we don’t know if that’s what really happened. If Ethan was planning to get back together with Serena, I mean.”
“Maybe he said something to somebody.”
We looked at each other.
“Maybe someone on the football team,” we said in unison.
“He hung around with Andes, Tonka and Munster the most.” I said.
“Then you have to talk to one of them. Tonka or Munster, I mean. If one of them knew, then they probably all knew.”
“Which means that Andes would have known. We’ve already proved that he lied about what he says he saw that day. And someone had a fight with Ethan—a physical fight. That’s why the police are saying that even if it was an accident, someone else was involved. It could have been Andes. Okay. I’ll try Munster first. I talked to him once before.”
“He’ll be at the rec center.”
“How do you know that?”
“He works out there. Come on.”
Sure enough, he was where she said he would be, in the fitness area, jumping rope. Ashleigh led me onto the floor, past sweaty bodies walking, running, cycling and weight-lifting their way to physical perfection. She waited until Munster, in sweat shorts, sweat band and tank top, stopped at the two-hundred count. She pushed me forward. Munster looked down at me expectantly.
“Did Ethan say anything about getting back together with Serena?”
He laughed. “You never quit, huh?”
“Did he?”
“Did someone tell you that, or did you figure it out yourself?”
“So he did?”
“He said she was wrong about him and that there was something he had to do, and after he did it, it was going to be cool. He’d make her see. It was going to be okay.”
“He told you that?”
“Yeah, he told us. We’re not just teammates. We’re friends.”
“We?”
“The starting lineup.”
“Ethan, you, Tonka and Andes?”
“Right.” He glanced at the fitness band around his wrist. “I gotta get back to work.”
“Now what?” Ashleigh asked me. “Are you going to talk to your aunt?”
“I already tried.” If I was going to get Aunt Ginny’s attention, I would need rock-solid information. Andes knew that Ethan wanted to get back together with Serena. He had already lied to me—and the police—about what he had seen on the roof. I had proved that. What else had he lied about?
“Is Andes working today?” I asked.
“He never does shifts on Friday. That’s one of the days he works for his dad. Fridays and weekends. You’ll have to wait until Monday if you want to talk to him.”
“I need to talk to him now. Come on.”
“Come on? As in me and you together?” She shook her head firmly. “No way. I know you think I’m exaggerating, but I’m not. Andes’s dad is one of those guys who moved to the country to get away from the city. He served in Bosnia and Iraq. He’s more than weird. Everyone says he has PTSD or something.”
“I don’t want to talk to his dad. I want to talk to Andes. And you know what they say—there’s strength in numbers.”
“Maybe if we had an army with us.”
“How far is their place from here?”
“Four or five kilometers.”
“So we could get there by bike?”
“Riley, you’re not listening to me. I don’t want to go out there. There’s no way. Those dogs are vicious. So is Andes’s dad.”
“Please?”
“No.”
“I’ll take you out for ice cream later.”
“There won’t be a later. We won’t survive being torn to pieces by those dogs.”
“It’s not like we’re going to rob the place or anything,” I said. “The dogs are inside the fence, right?” Ashleigh nodded. “So we can stay outside the fence. Andes can come out and talk to us.”
“What if he doesn’t want to come out?”
“Then we talk to him through the fence.”
“What if we run into his dad?”
“We tell him we want to talk to Andes.”
“We tell him?”
“I tell him. I’ll do all the talking. I just want you for a little moral support.” Not to mention as a witness to anything I could get out of Andes. A witness would make it harder for him to deny what he’d said. “You don’t have to say a word.”
“Do I have to stand beside you, or can I stand behind?”
“You can stand behind me.”
“I’m going to regret this,” she muttered.
“No, you’re not. Nothing bad is going to happen. This is real life. This isn’t the movies.”
ELEVEN
I started to doubt myself when Maracle Salvage and Scrap came into view after approximately four kilometers on a road that changed abruptly from asphalt to gravel about halfway to our destination. The graveled surface made cycling much more difficult. Twice Ashleigh hit a rock and almost toppled from her bike.
We passed the turnoff to the county dump. Another half kilometer of bumping along brought us to a fenced-in swath of land sitting in a clearing that had been made by someone cutting down every tree within fifty meters. Stumps dotted the landscape.
The dogs caught our scent and started barking. And growling. Halfway to the chain link, I caught sight of two muscular, squint-eyed canines clamoring against the chain link, their long, sharp teeth bared. For a split second I made eye contact with one of them. He hurled himself against the fence, snarling and snapping. His partner followed suit. Ashleigh and I leapt back.
“See what I mean?” Ashleigh hissed. “What kind of person keeps dogs like that? A psycho person, that’s what kind.”
As if on cue, a man stepped from behind a rusted-out pickup truck.
“What are you girls doing around my place?” His eyes were as squinty as those of his dogs. He was carrying a shotgun.
I glanced at Ashleigh. Her face was white.
“We…I was wondering if I could speak to your son, Mr. Maracle,” I said.
The man told the dogs to sit. They stopped barking instantly and plunked down onto their butts. “You want to talk to Drew?” he said.
“We go to school together.”
“Is that right?” He turned his eyes on Ashleigh. “Looks like something’s the matter with your friend.”
“She’s afraid of the dogs.”
“Don’t tell him that!” Ashleigh hissed.
Mr. Maracle offered the smallest hint of a grin. “Just the dogs?”
“And you too. I guess because of that gun.”
He glanced at it and then back at me. “What about you? You’re not afraid of guns?”
“My grandpa had a ranch that we stayed at when he wasn’t on the road. He had guns there.”
“So you’re a country girl.” He seemed to like that.
“I’m an everywhere girl. My grandpa was also a musician. He toured a lot.
All over the world.”
“Musician, huh? Would I have heard of him?”
“Maybe. His name was Jimmy Donovan.”
Mr. Maracle’s face changed instantly from guarded and scary to surprised and smiling. “The Jimmy Donovan? Rockin’ Jimmy?”
I nodded.
“I heard he died last year. I’m sorry. Now what do you want with Drew?”
“I just want to talk to him for a few minutes. Is he here?”
Mr. Maracle answered by walking over to a gate and pushing a button. With a loud whirring sound, the gate slid to one side. I stepped forward to enter the compound. Ashleigh stayed put.
“Aren’t you coming?” I asked.
“No.” She was still staring at the two dogs. Not directly into their eyes. I’d warned her they could see that as a challenge and attack her. She was keeping a watch on them out of the corner of her eye.
“I don’t think they’ll attack unless they’re told to.”
“You don’t think they’ll attack?” She shook her head. “I’ll wait here.”
“But I need—”
“Or I won’t wait at all. You can’t make me go in there, Riley. I mean it.” Her jaw was set, her entire body was rigid, and her expression was deadly earnest. I walked through the opening alone and shuddered when the gate whirred shut behind me. I was inside with no easy way to get out.
I followed Mr. Maracle’s directions and found Andes at one end of the scrapyard between two towering rows of old tires, car parts, metal pieces of various sizes, shapes and sources, geriatric automobiles, rusted-out tractors…anything, I suppose, that might fetch a dollar or two. I didn’t know anything about the scrap and salvage business, but it didn’t seem all that lucrative, judging from the condition of the office—a weather-beaten, pod-shaped camper perched on cinder blocks—and the house, which was set back near the rear fence and consisted primarily of faded and chipped clapboard and mossy shingles.
When I got closer, I saw that Andes wasn’t alone. He was talking to a man on the other side of the fence. I wasn’t 100 percent certain, but it looked as if the man was pushing something through the fence. I hung back behind a wall of tires and waited. When I poked my head out again to take another look, I found Andes’s broad back blocking my view. All I could see was a sliver of the man’s face and one of his eyes—which was looking right at me. I dove back behind the tires and waited, my heart pounding. Who was that man? Why was he talking to Andes through the fence? Why hadn’t he come in through the front gate, like I had? What had he pushed through the fence?
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