From Above

by Norah McClintock

  I waited.

  Nothing.

  I heard a sound—thump, thump.

  I counted to ten slowly and peeked out again.

  The man at the fence was gone.

  Andes was bent over a massive heap of metal parts. He grunted as he untangled them one by one and threw them to the ground. Thump, thump. He was wearing a T-shirt and jeans, and his back was drenched in sweat despite the coolness of the autumn afternoon.

  I stepped into the open. “Andes?”

  He spun around.

  “You again?”

  “Your dad said you were back here. He seems like a nice guy. I wanted to ask you something.”

  He straightened up until he towered over me. He was huge. I thought about Charlie with his ankle monitor, and I plunged on.

  “Did you tell the police that you knew Ethan was planning to get back with Serena?”

  “What’s it to you?” He slapped his forehead. “Right. You and the Lightbulb—”

  “But you knew, didn’t you? Ethan told you. And Munster and Tonka.”

  “So?”

  “So you were interested in her.”

  “And?”

  I felt like a tiny mouse in the shadow of an elephant who might step on me and squash me at any minute.

  “And you must have been disappointed when you heard Ethan was planning to get back together with her.”

  He stepped so close we were almost touching.

  “Is that what you think?”

  “All Ethan had to do was say he wanted her back, and she would have gone running.”

  I hardly dared look at him, but when I did the face I saw was filled with scorn. “That’s what Ethan thought too,” he said. “He thought that just because he decided he wanted her back, that meant she was going to go back. He thinks Serena and I have nothing in common. He doesn’t think anyone could have anything in common with me, because of this.” He spread his arms to encompass the scrapyard. “To him, I’m just some ignorant, backwoods mass of muscle with no brains. But he didn’t know me. He never did. What he sees—what you see—you don’t know anything about it. But if you think I killed him, you’re wrong. I didn’t. But I could have stopped him from getting killed—do you believe that? I could have stopped that little twerp, and I didn’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like I told you, I went up there to meet with Ethan, only he was having some kind of argument with Lightbulb. So I left them to it. And in case you think I’m lying, Tonka was with me.”

  He hadn’t mentioned that before.

  “Did he see Charlie too?”

  “No. But he was in the stairwell behind me. I ran into him and his girlfriend as soon as I got free of Cavendish. We went over to the rec center. They waited when I went up to talk to Ethan. Then we went to get something to eat. Tonka and Lina even came into the stairwell. There were little kids everywhere. Tonk didn’t come all the way up, but he saw me the whole time. He knows I didn’t go out there. I didn’t kill Ethan, if that’s what you think.”

  It sounded like a pretty good alibi, unless Tonka was in on it too and would lie to back him up. But, Tonka’s girlfriend had been there too. That seemed to remove Andes from the suspect list.

  “The cops told me what time Ethan went off the roof. It probably wasn’t more than a couple of minutes after I went back down the stairs with Tonka. We were scarfing down burgers by then. I didn’t even know it had happened until Serena called me. She was hysterical. If I’d stayed in the stairwell for another couple of minutes, or if I’d gone out on the roof to see what was going on, this never would have happened. No way Lightbulb could have taken on both of us.”

  “Wait a minute.” I was getting confused. “You said you went to find Ethan right after school.” Charlie had done the same. “But now you’re telling me you were in the stairwell only a few minutes before Ethan went off the roof. But that didn’t happen until three forty-five.”

  “I said I went up there as soon as Cavendish sprang me. He kept me in after school. You can ask him.”

  That was news to me. “When you and Tonka and Lina went to the rec center, did you go in the front way?” I asked.

  He gave me a sour look, as if the front door was for losers.

  “We went in the side, same as we always do.”

  He bent to his work, effectively dismissing me.

  “Andes?”

  He didn’t bother to look up. “What?”

  “Do you think Mr. McGruder is pushing steroids on the team?”

  He spun around. “Serena’s off base on that. Coach told us about his past. He told us he got fired on account of steroids and that he realized he was wrong. He said it’s one thing for professional athletes to decide what they want to put in their bodies and whether the risk is worth the reward. But for kids like us, he said the best thing is to rely on your body, to do your best, eat right, work out, stuff like that. He says we need to learn how to think, too, and that short-term gain isn’t always worth the risk, especially if that risk includes premature death from stroke or heart failure.”

  “So as far as you know, no one on the team takes steroids?”

  He looked at me evenly. “You asked me if I thought Coach was pushing steroids. The answer is no, not to my knowledge. I gotta get back to work.”

  I made my way back to the gate. It whirred into action. Mr. Maracle was sitting on a three-legged armchair outside the broken-down trailer. Both dogs lounged at his feet. He nodded at me. I waved goodbye.

  Ashleigh was waiting up the road a hundred meters or so with our bikes.

  “Did you get what you wanted?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Well, just so you know, there’s no way I’m ever coming out here again. I mean it, Riley.”

  I didn’t argue with her.

  TWELVE

  It started to rain five minutes after I stepped into the kitchen. It was still raining the next morning when I got up.

  “I need to go to the library, Aunt Ginny. I have a group project in history, and my group is meeting there. Can you give me a ride to town?”

  “I have to leave right now.” She gulped down the last of her coffee and glanced at the clock on the stove. “The library doesn’t open until nine.”

  “I’ll go and have a hot chocolate,” I said.

  “How will you get home?”

  “When do you get off?”

  “You know that depends on how the day goes.”

  “I’ll call you. I can probably hang out at Ashleigh’s until you’re off work.”

  Aunt Ginny dropped me off at the Sip ’n’ Bite at seven thirty, where I lingered over a hot chocolate until nine. I was practically the only customer the whole time, probably because the rain was coming down in buckets. My feet were squelching when I got to the library, and my shoes stayed wet all day.

  By three o’clock that afternoon, my group-project work was done. I called Ashleigh. No answer. I texted her. Still no answer.

  I texted Aunt Ginny too. She said she had a couple more hours of work to do. It was still pouring. I resigned myself to staying put. Half an hour later I got another message from Aunt Ginny. She still had a ton of paperwork to do, but she would take the time to drive me home. An unmarked police car pulled up in front of the library a few minutes later, and I climbed in. The rain continued to pound down.

  “People are starting to worry about flooding,” Aunt Ginny said. “Apparently the last time it rained this long and this hard, the river overflowed and some kids almost drowned.”

  She drove slowly, windshield wipers slashing back and forth at full speed, but even then visibility was minimal.

  “Are you sure you want to drive back to town in this downpour?” I asked.

  “I have no choice.” She was straining forward so that she could peer out the windshield in the brief moment between the passing of the wiper blades and the onslaught of rain.

  “Aunt Ginny, look out!”

  Something wa
s barreling down the road toward us. Something big.

  A truck.

  It was going far too fast.

  It swerved toward us.

  “Aunt Ginny!”

  Her face lit up in the rush of oncoming headlights. She white-knuckled the steering wheel as she wrenched it to the right to avoid the truck that was careening toward us. I wanted to close my eyes, but I was terrified that if I did, I might never open them again.

  The truck’s horn tore through the rain. Its headlights blinded me. Aunt Ginny yelled at me to hold tight. The car accelerated and slid sideways. It slammed into something and heaved up into the air. The passenger side, where I was sitting, landed with a crunch in the drainage ditch alongside the road. The impact lifted me up off my seat. With a phssst, the air bags deployed and knocked the air out of my lungs. When I finally looked at Aunt Ginny, her hands were still wrapped around the steering wheel, and the wipers were still beating at full speed.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  She looked at me, her face ashen. “Are you okay?”

  “I think so. You?”

  “I think so.” She unbuckled her seat belt and started to slide toward me. She had to grab the steering wheel to stop herself. Holding on to it with one hand, she shoved her shoulder against the driver’s side door. It was jammed. She maneuvered herself around and kicked it. The door budged. A second, harder kick opened it.

  Aunt Ginny climbed out first. Once she was on firm ground, she reached in to help me.

  The rain came down in sheets, drenching us. I peered into the darkness and saw red lights in the distance.

  “Is that the truck that hit us?”

  “It had better be,” Aunt Ginny said grimly. “Because if it isn’t, I am going to track it down and make sure the driver gets charged with careless driving and leaving the scene of an accident.” She reached back into the car and pulled the keys from the ignition. She walked around to the back of the car and popped the trunk—or tried to. It refused to open all the way. She shoved in one hand, groped around and pulled out what she was looking for—a flashlight and a rain slicker. She tossed the slicker to me.

  “No point in both of us drowning.”

  I wrapped the slicker around me. It was yellow with green neon letters on the back that spelled out POLICE and neon bands on each arm so the wearer would stand out in the dark.

  “Stay off the road,” Aunt Ginny said. “I’m going to call a tow truck.”

  I huddled under the slicker and waited. The driver of the truck backed up and jumped down to see if we were all right. His face went white when Aunt Ginny introduced herself as a police officer. His voice shook as he invited us to sit in the cab of his truck while we waited for a tow, and he even produced a couple of towels so that Aunt Ginny and I could dry ourselves. He apologized over and over again.

  “The road is greasy,” he said. “I downshifted. I swear I did. But that last curve threw me. This is the first time I’ve driven this route.”

  Aunt Ginny didn’t comment. She demanded to see his license and registration and wrote all of his information into her police memo book. Her lips were tight and her expression somber. She was in full cop mode—and she was furious.

  When the tow truck arrived, I stayed put while Aunt Ginny, taking the police rain slicker from me, went out to talk to the tow-truck operator.

  “Are you in trouble with her too?” the truck driver asked me, his eyes on Aunt Ginny.

  “Most of the time,” I said. “She’s my aunt. I live with her.”

  “Is she as tough as she seems?”

  “Tougher.”

  The driver’s already pale face turned paler. “I’m new to this company. I’m on probation. If I get fired, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  I felt sorry for him, but I didn’t see what I could do. Maybe if Aunt Ginny calmed down…

  I also felt sorry for the tow-truck driver who showed up. It was Eldridge, the mechanic who’d had Aunt Ginny’s car in his garage for almost a week now without fixing it. I sat in the cab of the truck, where it was warm and dry, and cracked the window just enough to hear Aunt Ginny light into Eldridge. If he was halfway competent, he would have fixed her car by now and she wouldn’t have been driving a squad car that had seen better days and none of this would have happened, etc. Her logic was off—who could say whether an accident that happened in one car wouldn’t have happened in another? Eldridge slouched miserably, the rain soaking him, until Aunt Ginny had vented enough that he could go about the business of hauling the squad car out of the ditch.

  She came back to the truck and climbed up beside me.

  “He’s going to tow the car back to town,” she said. “Then he’s going to give us a loaner because he hasn’t made any progress on my car. There has to be a better mechanic somewhere in this town.”

  “Rick Grenier,” the truck driver said.

  “What?” Aunt Ginny paused in her struggle to free herself from the rain slicker.

  “You need a mechanic around here, Rick Grenier is your man. He’s first-rate.”

  “Where do I find him?” she asked.

  I could have answered her question, but I decided to leave it to the driver. Rick was Charlie’s cousin. That didn’t mean he couldn’t fix Aunt Ginny’s car. But it did mean that if Aunt Ginny knew about his relationship to Charlie, she would probably refuse to go to him when, to my mind, his family background was irrelevant.

  Aunt Ginny handed the rain slicker to me. Before she jumped down from the cab, she said to the truck driver, “Follow us back into town and report to the police station. Wait for me there.”

  We ran through the rain and squeezed into the cab of the tow truck, which smelled, for some reason, like salami. As soon as we were under way, Aunt Ginny asked Eldridge to tell her exactly what was wrong with her car and precisely how much longer it would be in his shop. Eldridge glanced at her, smiling reassuringly.

  “You don’t have to worry about a thing, officer. Like I told you, I have it under control.”

  “It’s Detective,” Aunt Ginny said. “And as I told you, I am not satisfied with your service to date.”

  Eldridge’s smile wavered, but only for a second. He came back with an easy grin. “Detective, I promise you I’m going to get that car of yours back on the road in no time, just you wait and see.”

  “You said that a week ago when I brought it in, and I’m still waiting. As I understand it, you have a contract to work on municipal vehicles. You wouldn’t want the police department to be dissatisfied with your work, would you?”

  “Dissatisfied? Eldridge never has anything but satisfied customers.”

  “I’m not satisfied. Just so you know, I’m getting a second opinion.”

  “A what?” Eldridge turned to stare at her. A car horn blared. Eldridge’s head snapped forward just in time for him to see he was about to collide with a car whose lane he had wandered into. He swerved. The whole truck shuddered. Aunt Ginny braced an arm across my chest.

  The tow truck straightened out and slowed down. Eldridge’s body was stiff. A muscle at the side of his neck stood out like a thick rope as he hunched over the steering wheel, his hands still glued at the two and ten positions. He let out a long, slow breath. We drove in silence, all of us breathing faster than usual at first; then all of us slowing down and letting our bodies relax. It wasn’t until we were back at Eldridge’s garage and he was about to get out of the truck that Aunt Ginny said, “I’m going to have another mechanic take a look at my car.”

  “That car is in my shop. You can’t have anyone do anything without my say-so.”

  “I can, and I will,” Aunt Ginny said. “You’re lucky I don’t just take the car away and have done with you.” She turned to me. “Did you know that some mechanics try to pull fast ones on women? They give women padded estimates. They take their time so they can charge more time for labor. They think women don’t know any better.”

  “Hey, I don’t do that. I would never do that,�
�� Eldridge said.

  “We’ll see.”

  Silence reigned for a few moments. Eldridge’s hand twitched on the door handle.

  “I can take a second look at that estimate,” he said. “See where maybe I can knock off a few bucks. Professional courtesy, for the boys—I mean, for the officers—in blue. How about that?”

  “That’s totally up to you,” Aunt Ginny said. “But I’m still getting a second opinion. And if what he says doesn’t match up with what you say, I can promise you that I will be on you each and every day, ticketing those cars parked illegally around your place of business.”

  “Those are customers’ cars.”

  “That are illegally parked and whose owners, I am sure, will not be pleased to see the price of a parking ticket or two added to their costs.”

  Eldridge opened his mouth to protest, but Aunt Ginny cut him down with a sharp look.

  “I have to go back to work,” she said. “There’s going to be paperwork to do. Lots of it. I’ll call you a cab, Riley.” She fished out her phone and made a call. A few minutes later a taxi slid up in front of the garage. Aunt Ginny pressed some money into my hand. I started for the cab. “And take this,” she said. I heard a loud ripping sound and spun around. Aunt Ginny was holding the large POLICE patch from the back of the rain slicker. It had been held in place with Velcro.

  “I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea,” she explained as she handed the slicker to me.

  I pulled it tightly around myself as I ran for the taxi.

  THIRTEEN

  It rained most of the night. I know because I was awake almost the whole time, thinking about what Charlie had said, about Ethan, and about who else was up on the roof and what he or she might have been doing there. But it didn’t do any good. My thoughts just got more and more tangled. By morning the sky had cleared, but my thinking hadn’t.