The Fall Guy

by Barbara Fradkin

  THE

  FALL GUY

  THE

  FALL GUY

  BARBARA FRADKIN

  RAVEN BOOKS

  an imprint of

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  Copyright © 2011 Barbara Fradkin

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Fradkin, Barbara Fraser, 1947-

  The fall guy / Barbara Fradkin.

  (Rapid reads)

  Issued also in electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-55469-835-6

  I. Title. II. Series: Rapid reads

  PS8561.R233F34 2011 C813'.6 C2010-908113-7

  First published in the United States, 2011

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2010942252

  Summary: Handyman Cedric O’Toole is set up to take the fall for a murder he didn’t commit. He’ll need all his inventive power to save himself. (RL 4.0)

  Orca Book Publishers is dedicated to preserving the environment and has printed

  this book on paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Design by Teresa Bubela

  Cover photography by Getty Images

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  PO BOX 5626, Stn. B PO BOX 468

  Victoria, BC Canada Custer, WA USA

  V8R 6S4 98240-0468

  www.orcabook.com

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  14 13 12 11 • 4 3 2 1

  To Leslie, Dana and Jeremy

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Titles in the Series

  CHAPTER ONE

  The first hint of trouble was when I saw the big black Buick roaring down my lane. I didn’t recognize the car. But the way the guy drove, he was either showing off or too stupid to realize he’d blow his shocks in six months. Too late, he slammed on the brakes and skidded to a stop in a spray of gravel, flattening my front gate. It was an old gate, hanging by a piece of chicken wire, but still…

  A few choice swear words came to my mind but died when the guy unfolded himself from the car. Six foot and easily two-fifty. Beer gut and a couple of extra chins, but I doubted that would slow him down much.

  He wiped the dust off his bumper and inspected it. That seemed to take forever, as if he was daring me to start something. I didn’t, even though I could feel my blood beginning to boil.

  Finally he shrugged, reached into his front seat and took out an envelope.

  “Are you Cedric Elvis O’Toole?”

  I should have just said yes, but I didn’t like his tone. Besides, I hadn’t been called that in so long I’d almost forgotten it was my real name. What can I say? My mother had always expected Elvis to sweep in and marry her, but he died the day I was born. When she got over her shock, she decided Cedric would make a better name for a doctor anyway. When you’re from a scrubby backcountry farm, who was going to set you straight?

  I’ve been calling myself Rick ever since Barry Mitchell laughed out loud at roll call the first day of kindergarten.

  “Who’s asking?” I said instead.

  “Jonathan Miller from Hopper, James and Elliston, Attorneys at Law.”

  That was my second hint of trouble. There’s only one law firm in the township, and Hopper and his pals aren’t it. But before I could even reply, he slapped the fat brown envelope in my hand.

  “Consider yourself served.”

  “With what?”

  “A summons to appear in court.”

  I let the envelope fall to the ground. A million thoughts raced through my head. Had the tax guys finally caught me? I’m just a simple handyman trying to give myself and my customers a break on the occasional job. Not the big ones that require permits or guarantees, just the little fix-its like painting the shed or repairing the chain saw. I need that couple of bucks way more than the tax man does.

  “What for?”

  Mr. Fancy Car smirked. The guy had no class. Take away the blue suit and the skinny tie, and he was just a goon. “My job is to deliver it, not read it.”

  He was standing there, hands in his pockets, like he was waiting for some answer. I bent down and dusted the thing off. It felt thick enough to hold down a tarp in a gale. I started to sweat. Legal documents—in fact, just about any document—made me sweat. But I tried to look cool as I tore open the flap and pulled out a stack of papers. They looked very official, like the ones I got for this piece of scrub when my mother died. She called it a farm, but no one had been able to grow anything on it except weeds for years.

  I could see the guy looking around, taking in the scrap heap of rusted cars and engine bits all over the yard. I liked to invent things. Who knew when a broken lawn mower might come in handy? There were more bits of engine and metal inside the sheds. When I ran out of room for my inventions, I built another shed. The result wasn’t pretty, but it had been a few years since I’d tried to impress anybody.

  I did keep a few chickens and a goat, but they didn’t exactly improve the look of the place. And out back on the sunny side of the barn, there was a vegetable patch I was pretty proud of. When you’re an inventor still looking for that big break, you don’t have a lot of spare cash to throw around in supermarkets.

  Thinking about money brought me back to the papers in my hand. Even without reading them, I knew this was going to cost me money. I scanned the front page and made out the words plaintiff and defendant. Then the name in bold letters right in the middle stopped me cold.

  Jeffrey Wilkins

  2 Wilkins Point Road

  I’d just done a job for Jeff Wilkins. A big job, building a new deck on his fancy waterfront cottage. We’d squeezed it in just under the size limit. So no permit, no paperwork, no taxes. My mouth went dry.

  I put on some bluster. “What is all this about? Somebody complained?”

  The smirk grew wider. “Don’t you read the papers? Watch the news?”

  “No,” I snapped. I never read the paper. My jerry-rigged TV antenna did a fine job of getting me the hockey games and nature shows I liked to watch, but I never bothered with the news. Who wanted to know what big-city drug dealers and snake-oil politicians were up to anyway?

  Then he said the words I was most afraid of hearing.

  “You might want to get yourself a good lawyer.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  As soon as Mr. Fancy Car peeled out of there, I was on the phone to Aunt Penny. I didn’t have much money, but I did splurge on a phone. When you lived five miles down a gravel road, how else were customers going to contact you for that big job? Aunt Penny owned the little grocery store on the main highway that runs through the village of Lake Madrid. If you don’t count the cottagers, Lake Madrid has maybe six hundred people, none of them from Spain. Someone was dreaming big.

  Penny’s Grocery has been there
for at least a hundred years, and the floors tell the tale. The cottage people never shopped there—they used the big supermarket farther away—but the locals knew it’s where all the gossip was. Aunt Penny stocked milk from Gerry’s farm and corn from Ripple’s down the road, instead of all that stuff trucked in from Peru.

  Everyone stopped in to pick up gossip along with their lottery ticket and their DVD for the night.

  That day, Aunt Penny sounded run off her feet.

  “I got some legal documents here about the Wilkins job,” I said. “Do you know what that’s about?”

  “I can hardly tell that, can I, Rick, with you there and me here?”

  “But I mean, has there been anything in the news?”

  “About Wilkins? Oh, you mean his wife.” She stopped and I could hear her talking to a customer. I thought about Wilkins’ wife. I’d seen quite a lot of her when I was working. A tiny blond who flitted around inside the house like a trapped chickadee. Wilkins hadn’t given her a car, so she was stuck at the cottage watching American Idol and decorating shows all day. She was so bored she even tried talking to me.

  Aunt Penny was back on the line. “Look, Rick, I got a lineup here. You better bring the papers over and I’ll have a look.”

  I hated running to Aunt Penny with my troubles. You never knew when she was going to bite your head off. Nothing warm and fuzzy about Aunt Pen. But she always seemed to sort things out. I loved the insides of an engine, and I was good with my hands, but not so much with people. I didn’t actually stutter anymore, but, boy, sometimes I got so tied up in knots I just wanted to bolt from the room.

  There were a whole lot of people at Aunt Penny’s when I walked in. I knew every single one of them, but that didn’t make it any easier. I’ve been the butt of jokes among the locals ever since my lawnmower-powered scarecrow blew up and scared the Canada geese from Ripple’s cornfield clear into the next county, along with most of his corn.

  “Hey, Rick,” said Bert Landry, piling his groceries on the counter. “That old tractor of mine mowed its last blade of grass yesterday. You interested?”

  One time a few years back, I had fourteen tractor lawn mowers in my back field before I put my foot down. Now I’d learned to laugh and shake my head. “I hear they make good scarecrows,” I said. A line Aunt Penny had taught me.

  Laughter and more teasing, as the crowd worked its way through the cash. Finally I was face-to-face with Aunt Penny. All five feet, steel-gray eyes of her.

  “What have you done this time, Ricky?”

  “I got a summons from a law firm,” I said. “Something to do with the job I did for Jeff Wilkins.”

  She took the papers and figured out the legal mumbo jumbo for me in a flash. That’s why I go to her, even though she gives me grief.

  “Jeff Wilkins is suing you for the shoddy job you did on his deck,” she said.

  I was outraged. I may cut corners with the tax guy, but only to give the customer and me a break. My work is never shoddy. If there’s one thing I know, it’s how to put things together so they work. Every inch of that fancy western-red-cedar deck had been perfect. Every screw, every cantilever, every support beam and rail.

  “Can he do that? Just ’cause he feels like it?”

  “He can do anything he likes, Ricky.

  He’s got lots of money for lawyers. Has he paid you for the job?”

  I pretended to think about it, but I knew the answer. Wilkins had said he was expecting a big payment next week from a bakery that bought a new fleet of trucks, but right now he had a small cash flow problem. An unlikely story. Everybody knew Wilkins was the richest man in the county, but tight as a drum when it came to parting with his money.

  Aunt Penny read the answer in my red face. “Jumpin’ Jiminy, Rick. When are you going to learn?”

  I wasn’t great with words, but this didn’t make sense. “If he’s got the money for fancy lawyers, how come he had no money to pay me? I bet those guys charge ten times more an hour!”

  Aunt Penny was silent. That’s unusual for her. She didn’t look at me, also unusual. A customer came in and bought some milk, some fireworks and a lottery ticket. Aunt Penny never even exchanged the time of day. I started to get a sick feeling in my stomach.

  “What’s going on, Aunt Penny?” I asked once the customer left.

  “Well, the thing is, Ricky, there was a problem with that deck. Yesterday afternoon, Jeff Wilkins’ wife was out on it, and she leaned over the rail to reach something, and the rail gave way.”

  A jolt of panic shot through me. Impossible! “What! She must have been…,” I sputtered, looking for an explanation. Maybe she climbed up on it, or…“Was she drunk?”

  “I don’t know if she was drunk, Ricky. But I don’t think the courts will care. She’s dead.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  I spotted the black and white suv just after I swung into my lane. There was no turning back. The plume of dust behind me gave me away even if I’d had any place else to go. I slowed the truck so I could take stock and figure out what to say.

  As far as I could see, there was just one cop. He looked small standing on the front stoop, his hat pulled low and his hands on his hips. He was looking out over my yard, watching the goat nibbling the daisies by the chicken coop. Chevie, my collie mix, was sitting at his feet, wagging her tail. Some watchdog.

  I pulled the old truck to a stop and was about to get out when the cop turned toward me. I froze. It was a woman, hardly older than me. Even with the vest, the gun belt and the huge wraparound sunglasses, there was no hiding those curves. Or the long blond ponytail hanging down her back. I thought I knew all the cops at the local detachment, but this was a new one.

  She stepped off the porch. “Cedric O’Toole?”

  Heat rushed up my neck. I knew I was bright red, and that didn’t help me find my tongue. I just nodded.

  “You live here?” she asked. Heavy on the live.

  I looked around my yard. Weeds had grown up through the rusted-out Ford on blocks by the door. They were covered in bright purple flowers, but still…There were more weeds around the tractors and washing machines down by the barn. The goat wasn’t doing her job. I guess daisies are tastier than thistles.

  I didn’t think the cop expected an answer, so again I just nodded.

  She stepped another two feet closer, her sunglasses hiding her eyes. But her mouth curved, like she was secretly laughing at me. “You make a living out here?”

  “It suits me,” I mumbled. “I do repairs and stuff.”

  “They warned me about you down at the station. Live in your own dream world, but you’re no trouble. I hope they’re right.” She pulled out a notebook and pencil. “I’m Constable Swan, and I need to ask you a few questions.”

  The afternoon sun was beating down. Constable Swan didn’t seem to notice, but sweat soaked my shirt. “What about?”

  “Two weeks ago you completed a deck at Jeffrey Wilkins’ cottage, is that correct?”

  No point in denying that. The whole county knew. Rumor was Wilkins had been too cheap to hire a real contractor, that’s why I got the job. Half the price and no taxes.

  “Can I see the plans and the permit for that job?”

  “Is there some problem?”

  “Would you get the plans, please? County office doesn’t have them.”

  “I-I…It might take awhile to find them. Is there a rush?”

  She frowned and wrote in her notebook. In the silence I felt the sun burning. Finally she took off her sunglasses and looked up at me. She had amazing blue eyes. No makeup, but she didn’t need it. The sun burned hotter.

  “Mr. O’Toole, this is a very serious matter. An individual has died, and there have been questions raised about the quality of your deck. Mr. Wilkins is alleging that you cut corners in order to cut costs.”

  “That’s bullshit. That deck is solid as a tank. Mr. Wilkins was the one who wanted to cut costs, not me.”

  “But you’re not the one who’s
friends with the police chief. Wilkins is talking about criminal negligence, even manslaughter. These are very serious charges, Mr. O’Toole. So if you have proof that the deck is solid and the cost-cutting ideas were Wilkins’, not yours, then you’d better produce them.”

  I looked at the ground. Criminal negligence. Manslaughter. Holy Crap. I’d had to argue with Wilkins every step of the way. About the thickness of boards, the spacing of joists, even the height of the railing. But if it came down to my word against his, I was a dead man.

  I felt my face flush as fear raced up my body. “There are no plans. Not on paper. Just in my head.”

  Her head shot up. Her blue eyes narrowed. “No plans? No permit?”

  “It didn’t need a permit. Not… technically.”

  “No inspection? No one else checking over the plans?”

  I shook my head miserably. “I know what I’m doing. I know code, and the design was solid.”

  “Then why did the railing give way the first time someone leaned on it, Mr. O’Toole?”

  “I don’t know.” I didn’t understand how that could happen, but I didn’t feel up to explaining screws and spindles. Constable Swan continued to glare. “It shouldn’t have,” I added lamely. “I’ve done lots of decks.”

  “Then provide us with something in writing. Draw up the design and the specs you followed.”

  I was starting to feel mad. It felt better than fear. “What does Mr. Wilkins say I did wrong?”

  She was already heading to her suv. She barely paused. “Just get the specs.”

  I yanked open the door to my own truck. “Then I’ll just go over there and ask him.”

  She spun around. “Mr. O’Toole, you are not—I repeat, not—to contact Jeffrey Wilkins for any reason. Is that clear?”

  I said nothing. Sometimes that’s a good thing. She glared at me a minute longer before climbing into her suv. She rolled down the window. “And until our investigation is complete, don’t leave the county either.”

  Then she was off in a swirl of dust.