I made myself some breakfast and rode into town. I was going to meet Ashleigh on her lunch break, and then I was going to visit Charlie.
I was on my way to the grocery store where Ashleigh worked when someone called my name. It was Aunt Ginny. She was standing in front of Eldridge’s garage. She waved me over.
“I thought you’d be interested in my second opinion,” she said. “Come on.”
She took my bike from me, leaned it against the garage door and led me inside. Rick Grenier was waiting just inside the door.
“I believe you two have met.” Aunt Ginny looked at me when she said it.
“Riley, good to see you,” Rick said.
“Hi, Rick.” What else could I say?
Aunt Ginny turned her attention to Eldridge, who was making a good show of being hard at work on her car. Only his feet were visible beneath it. He walked himself crablike out from under it when Aunt Ginny demanded to talk to him. He rose slowly, muttering something about his knees, and wiped his greasy hands on a grape-juice-purple rag before thrusting one out to greet her. She looked icily at it.
“I’m here for the second opinion we discussed,” she said.
Eldridge glowered at Rick, who smiled benignly.
“I have everything under control now, Detective,” Eldridge said.
“Nevertheless.” Aunt Ginny nodded at Rick, who went over to her car and began his inspection.
“I can have it ready for you Monday morning, first thing,” Eldridge said. “I can have a new estimate by this afternoon.”
Aunt Ginny’s phone beeped. She pulled it out, looked at the read-out and stepped aside to answer. When she returned, she said, “I’m leaving you in charge, Riley. I have to get to work. Rick can tell you what he thinks, and if it doesn’t match up with what Eldridge told me, turn the car over to Rick. You got that?”
I nodded.
“You understand that, Eldridge?” Aunt Ginny asked.
Eldridge said he did. He watched nervously as Rick slid under Aunt Ginny’s car.
I sat down on an old crate. Aunt Ginny’s coffee had helped a little, but a few more hours’ sleep would have helped a lot more. My eyes kept fluttering closed. It seemed I’d been there forever before Rick asked me to hand him a light. I looked around and found a caged lightbulb at the end of a long extension cord. I took it to him. It was only after I’d handed it over that I saw the thick cord was smeared with grease. My hand was filthy.
“Eldridge must keep some rags around here somewhere,” Rick said as he slid out from under the car and saw my predicament. He scanned the messy garage. “Over there.”
I followed his finger to a dingy canvas bag hanging off a hook near an equally dingy sink and reached in to grab a rag. What I got was a handful of chiffon. It looked like part of an old-fashioned party dress. I held it up for Rick to see.
“Figures,” he said. “Eldridge does things on the cheap.”
“Hey!” said an indignant voice. “I heard that! And I do not do things on the cheap. I economize.”
I dug in the bag for something stronger with which to degrease my hand.
“By using your old underwear for rags?” Rick taunted.
Eew! I snapped my hand out of the bag.
“For your information, those are perfectly good rags.”
Rick contemplated the purple one he was using to wipe his own hands. He picked up another on the floor and shook it out—large pink rose blossoms against a mint-green background. Polyester, I think.
“Where did you get these, Eldridge? The church charity store?”
I thought about the chiffon I had first grabbed.
“The church donations box,” I said. “Wait until I tell Aunt Ginny.”
“No need for that, young lady.” Eldridge held his hands out in front of him as if he were face to face with doom. “And anyway, people threw out those things. I’m just recycling them.”
“They donated them to the church. They’re supposed to go to the store where they help people who are less fortunate,” Rick said.
“Less fortunate? You mean poor!” Eldridge’s indignation improved his posture immensely. “I grew up poor. I know what poor people will wear and what they wouldn’t be caught dead in. I just take the stuff they don’t want and put it to good use.”
“So you say.” Rick wiped his hands on a rag that hung from the back pocket of his jeans. “Tell your aunt that Eldridge may be slow, Riley, but he’s doing an acceptable job as far as I can tell. I have to get back.”
I nodded, but most of my attention was on the canvas bag. I stuck my hand in again and pulled out every scrap of fabric inside. And there it was. There were several pieces, all the same, all a blindingly bright yellow.
“Is this the kind of thing you recycle from the church charity box?” I asked, holding up a piece for Eldridge to see.
“Oh sweet Lord, exactly like that.” Eldridge shook his head at what I was holding. “That was a jacket, if you can believe it. Who in their right mind would walk around in a jacket that color?”
“Do you remember when you took it from the charity box? I mean, when you decided to recycle it?”
“Sure. I was on my way to work Monday morning, and I needed a resupply. So I saved the church ladies a little time and did some presorting for them.”
“In other words, you took a yellow jacket—and some other things?”
“Yeah.” He looked plaintively at me. “Are you gonna tell your aunt?”
“You’re sure it was Monday morning?”
“I’m sure.”
“Can I have this?” The pieces of yellow jacket.
“Be my guest. But whatever else you tell that aunt of yours, you make sure you tell her what Rick just said. Eldridge is doing a good job. A darned good job.”
Actually, Rick had said acceptable job.
Before I left Eldridge’s garage, I pawed through the rags more carefully and dug out more pieces of yellow. One sleeve was missing. So was the collar. But I had enough to be convinced that I had the remains of Charlie’s jacket in my hands. Before I turned it over to Aunt Ginny, I wanted my own second opinion. I headed for the recreation center.
“Excuse me, sir.”
The uniformed guard, whose name tag identified him as Lloyd McKenna, was on the phone when I stepped up to his desk. He held up a finger. He was well past retirement age and had stooped shoulders, gray hair and thick glasses. I wondered what type of security he was able to provide. I waited for him to get off the phone.
And waited.
He was talking to someone named Al about something that was scheduled for that evening. A poker game, it turned out. Al was bringing the cold cuts. Lloyd himself volunteered a plate of “Jeannie’s lemon squares—you know the ones I mean.” Only when all the details were settled did he turn his attention to me.
“Can I help you, little lady?”
“I hope so. I’m doing an experiment—it’s a school project. It’s on memory and age.”
Lloyd chuckled. “Well, I guess you’ve come to the right place. You need a lab rat, and you decided I’d fit the bill, is that it?”
“I need a number of subjects,” I said. “And since you’re a security guard, I thought you would be a good one. It’s part of your job to notice things and remember them.”
“That’s right. It’s always been part of my job. Before I retired, I was a vice-principal at a school down south. Vice-principals have to be on the ball.” He had that right. Vice-principals are the chiefs of police in every school. “So are you going to show me something and see if I can remember it afterward?”
“Actually, I want to ask you a few questions about what you’ve already seen.” I pulled out my history notebook, flipped it open to a random page and pretended to read what was written there. “There was a terrible accident here on Monday.”
Lloyd’s cheery, cooperative face grew somber. “The Crawford boy. A tragedy, if ever there was one.”
“The police asked you some questio
ns,” I said.
The old guard tensed up. “Well, yes, they did. But I don’t know that I can discuss that with anyone.”
I smiled sweetly at him. “The police detective who spoke to you, Detective McFee? She’s my aunt.”
“You don’t say!”
“I checked with her. She doesn’t have any objection to my questions. You can call her if you want to.” I prayed that he wouldn’t.
“Oh, I don’t think that’ll be necessary. If she’s your aunt and she cleared it, that’s good enough for me. Shoot.”
“The police—my aunt—spoke to you about what you saw that afternoon.”
Lloyd beamed. “That’s right. I told her I saw someone carrying a yellow coat or jacket. Even with all the chaos around here that day—it was the big annual swim meet—that stood out. Is that what you wanted to know?”
“Actually, no.” I consulted my phony notes again. “My question is, can you describe the jacket to me?”
He cackled with delight. “Another easy one! Sure. It was yellow.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“More specific? It was bright yellow. Is that specific enough?”
“Was it solid yellow? Did it have pockets in it? How many pockets? What kind of collar did it have? Was there a hood attached to it?”
He considered my questions. “Your aunt didn’t ask me anything like that. I said bright yellow, and that seemed good enough for her.”
“So you don’t remember anything else about it?”
“The fellow wasn’t wearing the jacket. He was carrying it. I saw it in his hand when he came through the door. I can’t say about pockets, but I do know there was no hood. And it had black on the collar and on the cuffs.” He thought hard. “Now that you mention it, I think there were pockets because there was at least one horizontal black stripe on one side of the jacket, and I can’t imagine what that would be if not trim on a pocket. Yes, sir, a bright-yellow jacket with at least one pocket and black trim. That’s exactly what I saw.”
“But you didn’t see the person carrying it?”
“Not clearly, no. This place was jam-packed for the swim meet. I’m not even sure why the jacket or coat or whatever caught my eye, there was so much going on, but it did. If you were to quiz me on what anyone else was wearing, I’d disappoint you for sure. But I was standing here, and a parent came along to ask for directions, and as I was showing her which way to go, I saw that swoosh of yellow flash out that door over there.” He pointed across the lobby to a door marked STAIRS. “Like I told the police, I figured it was one of the high school kids who hang out on the roof.”
“Great. Thank you. And thanks for your time.” I closed my notebook.
“How did I do?” Lloyd asked.
“You did great!” I could hardly wait to report my findings to Aunt Ginny.
I raced outside. I had accomplished something—something big. Three big somethings, as a matter of fact. First, I had proved that Charlie had told the truth when he said he’d dropped his jacket in the church donation box. Eldridge had subsequently raided the box for rags. One of the items he’d taken and ripped to pieces was Charlie’s jacket. I had most of the pieces. I doubted Eldridge had cleaned it before ripping it apart. Aunt Ginny could have it tested if she wanted to. She could test it as much as she wanted to, and it would get her no closer to Ethan’s killer because, second, the jacket that Lloyd had seen the day Ethan died wasn’t Charlie’s jacket. Charlie’s jacket was solid yellow. It didn’t have black trim around the collar, the sleeves or the pockets. Someone that day had been wearing a bright-yellow jacket, but it wasn’t Charlie. Finally, Andes couldn’t possibly have seen Charlie on the roof that day. Charlie had come and gone before Andes ever got there. And Charlie had ditched his jacket by then too.
I headed around the back of the rec center to cut through the schoolyard next door. It was the quickest route to the police station. I paused on the way to look up at the roof and wondered, for maybe the millionth time, whose head I had seen when I looked up that afternoon. Who had been up there, and how had that person gotten out of the building undetected?
It was so frustrating. There had been more people in and around the rec center that day than there had been for months before that. Yet no one had seen a thing, because no one had had the proper vantage point. You’d have had to be a bird to have seen what really went on up there. And birds don’t talk.
That’s when I saw it.
I gazed up at it, and I wondered again.
Then I decided on a quick detour.
“Sorry—I can’t stay for lunch after all,” I told Ashleigh. She’d been waiting for me at a picnic table behind the grocery store.
“Why not? What happened?”
Quickly I filled her in on what I had found.
“You mean Eldridge takes stuff from the charity box?” She sniffed in disdain.
“He calls it recycling. But that’s not the point, Ashleigh.”
“Still, I’m going to report him. Stealing from the poor is despicable.”
“It may save Charlie from going to jail.”
She considered this. “So where are you going?”
“I need to talk to Mike.”
“Mike? Mike Winters? Are you feeling okay, Riley? You’ve spent the past three weeks avoiding him. Now you want to talk to him?”
I rode out of town and into farm country and dismounted at the opening to the graveled driveway that ran back a hundred meters or so from the concession road to a Victorian-era brick farmhouse with white gingerbread trim and a wraparound porch. Ashleigh was right. I’d spent weeks avoiding Mike, and now here I was, about to ask him for a favor. What were the chances he’d want to help me—especially when helping me might mean helping Charlie? Mike had been bullying Charlie ever since the two started school. But what choice did I have?
I pushed my bike up the driveway and left it next to the house. I climbed the porch steps and rang the doorbell.
Mike’s mother answered. She was small and plump, with gold-frame glasses and a ready smile that faded only slightly when she saw me.
“Riley, isn’t it?” There were crinkles around her eyes, but I didn’t see any genuine delight in her eyes.
“I was wondering if Mike is home.”
“He’s probably in the milk house. That’s the little building in front of the barn. His father had him rinsing out milk cans.”
I gulped. Did that mean he and his father were in there working together? Would I have to face both of them at the same time? My feet were as heavy as blocks of cement as I trudged toward the milk house. I stopped in the doorway. Mike was bent over a milk can, sluicing it with water. I was relieved to see he was alone. He straightened when he spotted me, but he didn’t speak. He looked at me with disdain, as if I were a barn rodent he wanted to get rid of as quickly as possible.
“Your mom said you’d be here,” I said.
He stared at me, one hand holding a hose and the other a wet rag.
“Ashleigh told me you entered the photography competition.”
No reaction.
I tried again. “Is this the first time you’ve entered?”
He set the can aside to dry and reached for another. “What do you want?”
“Ashleigh said you went to the top of the water tower for your entry.”
“Yeah. So?”
“I was wondering if I could see the pictures you took.”
“What for?”
Before I could even think of an answer, a man came out of the barn and into the milk house. Mike’s father. He got the same look in his eyes when he recognized me as his wife had: what is she doing here? He turned to Mike.
“When you’re done here, fill a couple of bottles for your mother. She’s making cakes for the bake sale.” He left again without acknowledging me.
Mike shut off the hose. “Why do you want to see my pictures?”
I hesitated. If I told him I was trying to help Charlie, would he be less likely to hel
p me?
“You were on the water tower the afternoon Ethan Crawford died, maybe even at the exact time he fell. There might be something in one of your photos. You were shooting the whole town from the water tower, right? Maybe you caught something you don’t even know about. Maybe you have a picture that shows who was on the roof.”
Mike upended a second milk can and set it to dry.
“Have you looked at your pictures?” I asked. “Did you see anything?”
“Do I look like an idiot to you? I’m up in the water tower, and before I even come down, I start getting texts about what happened. What do you think I’m going to do? Of course I looked at them. It’s the first thing I did. I knew Ethan. I knew him since we were kids.”
Implication: And you didn’t.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“There was nothing in the pictures. I wish there was. But I looked at those pictures a hundred times. There’s nothing.”
“Can I take a look anyway?”
He shook his head. “Is it, like, a hobby for you?”
“What?”
“Thinking you’re better and smarter than anyone else?”
What? “I don’t think that.” I was raised to think just the opposite. Rich man, poor man, they both put their pants on one leg at a time, Jimmy used to say. People are just people. Nobody is better than anyone else.
“Then why do you want to look at my pictures when I just told you I already looked at them and there’s nothing there? Don’t you believe me?”
“I just want to help—”
“Or do you have some kind of magical powers? You can look at things and see what no one else can see. Is that it?”
“The police think Charlie did it.”
“I know.”
“But he didn’t.”
“And you want to help him?”
“He’s my friend. You’ve got nothing to lose, Mike. If you’re right—and you probably are—and there’s nothing in your pictures, you’ll still be right after I look at them. You can say I told you so.”
“Probably? I know I’m right.”
“So can I look at them?”
He looked at the half dozen milk cans he still had to wash. In a weary voice he said, “Come on.”
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