The rest of the scrimmage went totally our way. We finished with a ten-point lead.
I would have stopped to enjoy our win if not for one thing.
As the next three-on-three started, Coach Buckley called me over to talk to Ted Bothwell.
I grabbed a towel and wiped the sweat off my face and arms as I walked over to them.
“Yes, sir,” I said, half expecting Coach to yell at me.
“You know the situation with your father,” Ted Bothwell said matter-of-factly.
“He didn’t do anything wrong,” I said.
“That is very loyal of you, son. But I’m not here to find him guilty of anything. That is up to the legal system.”
“He didn’t do anything wrong,” I repeated.
Ted Bothwell smiled, briefly showing his white, white teeth. “I’m glad you feel that way. Perhaps you’ll be willing to help me then.”
“Sir?”
“Did your father give you anything in the last week?” he asked. “Anything that he wanted you to keep safe for him?”
“No,” I answered, wondering what he was talking about.
Ted Bothwell looked at me earnestly and put his hands on my shoulders. His palms contacted my sweat, though, and he pulled his hands away. He didn’t do a very good job of hiding the distaste he felt.
“Jack,” Ted said after a moment, “it is very important that you not lie to me about this. I imagine when he gave it to you, he told you to keep it a secret. But if you know he is innocent, you can tell me where you put it.”
“He didn’t give me anything,” I said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. My dad is not a liar and neither am I.”
“All right then,” he answered. “That’s all I wanted to ask you.”
He turned his attention to Coach Buckley. I had been dismissed as if I were a six-year-old.
They spoke for another ten minutes, just the two of them, huddled by the bottom of the bleachers.
And I was miserable for the rest of practice. All I could think about was my dad, in jail.
chapter eight
Most people don’t think much about jail, especially when they’re from Turner, Indiana. Sure, our little town has a sheriff’s office. Not because Turner is so big, but because it’s the biggest town for ten or fifteen miles in any direction. Our jail, though, is just a cell in the back of the sheriff‘s office. More often than not, Sheriff Mackenzie leaves the cell unlocked because his “prisoners” are just there to sleep off a night of too much alcohol. Our town, in fact, feels a lot like Mayberry, from the old Andy Griffith Show. And the jail looks a lot like the one in those black-and-white reruns.
So when I walked into the building where my dad was being held in South Bend, I was not prepared for what I saw. Or heard. Or smelled.
Sweat and old cigarette smoke and other body odors blasted my nose. From cells beyond the main doors, I heard yelling and moaning and, every once in a while, a high-pitched crazy laughing. The walls were dull white, pocked by cigarette burns and scratched with graffiti. It was a place of no hope.
I sat in the visitors’ area, waiting for someone to bring Dad out to see me. I could still hardly believe any of this was really happening. After practice, I had stopped briefly to see Mom in the hospital. Then I had made the hour-long drive to South Bend in the used Camaro I had bought early in the year from Ike’s dealership. Ike had given me an unbelievably low price—because Ike and Dad were such good friends, and because I worked at the dealership during the summers. While I drove, I had been too depressed to even listen to music. Dad? In jail? And here I was, driving a car that was nearly given to me by the guy Dad was accused of stealing from.
My depression, of course, only got worse as I waited.
Finally the door at the far end of the room opened. A guard brought Dad through. The door shut behind them with an awful solid sound.
Dad wore a bright orange jumpsuit like all the other prisoners. His face was smeared with grime. But worst of all, his hands were cuffed together in front of him.
I felt like throwing up.
Dad shuffled toward me, head down.
The guard pointed him toward a chair across the table from me. Then the guard walked over and leaned against the far wall. He lit a cigarette. Dad and I would not be alone as we talked.
Dad lifted his head and looked at me.
“How was the drive?” he asked. “No speeding tickets, right?”
He always made sure I drove the speed limit. He threatened to take away my driving privileges if I got a ticket. I wondered if he realized how funny it was that he was asking these questions from jail. But I didn’t point that out.
“No speeding tickets,” I answered.
“How is Mom taking this?” he asked.
“You didn’t call her?” I said in surprise.
“I tried,” Dad answered. “But the nurse said she was asleep. I didn’t want to wake her. Not for this news. And it’s not like I can call back whenever I want.”
“When I stopped by the hospital she was knocked out on painkillers,” I said. “So I just held her hand for a while.”
“Maybe that’s just as well,” he said.
A silence hung between us. A silence where we both thought about why Dad couldn’t call Mom. Because he was in jail.
“How long are they going to keep you here?” I finally asked.
“I’ve hired a South Bend lawyer because Mr. Rondell represents Ike and Turner Chev Olds.”
I understood. Mr. Rondell was Turner’s only lawyer. In something like this, Mr. Rondell couldn’t work for Ike and for Dad.
“Anyway,” Dad said, “this lawyer says I’ll have to stay until tomorrow. That’s when I get a hearing in front of a judge, who will set bail. After we post bail, I can come home again.”
“Oh,” I said.
Another silence hung between us.
I had heard the phrase “post bail” plenty of times on television, on cop shows and on lawyer shows. I knew what it meant. Basically a security deposit had to be paid. If Dad didn’t show up for his trial date, he would lose the deposit.
This time, Dad broke the silence.
“You haven’t asked me whether I took the money,” he said.
“I didn’t think I needed to ask,” I said.
Dad reached his cuffed hands across the table and squeezed my hand. “Thanks,” he said.
That’s when I realized exactly how tough this was on him. I mean, I imagine when I was little he would have picked me up or hugged me. But these days he barely even pats me on the shoulder. Being a man, he always says, means acting like a man. And that, he always says, means standing on your own. So he’s let me learn how to deal with my own cuts and scrapes and disappointments.
“Time’s up,” the guard called.
Dad stood up, and the guard led him back into the hallway that led to the cells and the noises and the smells no one should have to face for a night.
I wanted to cry, for Dad and for myself. Because there was one thing louder than anything Dad had said. It was what he had not said.
Dad had not told me he was innocent.
chapter nine
I got back to Turner at about nine o’clock. Somehow the tree-lined streets seemed different. Tall elms still rose gracefully on each side. But I no longer had a sense of old-fashioned small-town peace in seeing the trees that had been growing since before World War II.
And when I turned onto our driveway, the house in the glow of my car headlights seemed different too. It was still a two-story, country-style house with yellow paint, white trim and a wide porch. But it no longer seemed like home.
I turned the motor off and sat behind the steering wheel with my window partly rolled down. It was so quiet I could clearly hear the ticking of the car’s engine as it cooled down.
Why do things seem so different? I wondered.
I realized after a while that the town and my house had not changed. I had. I had spent my life among neighbors and friends in Turner who
knew me as well as I knew them. But I no longer felt like I could walk around town without being stared at. I felt like a freak because my dad had been arrested.
Home has always been the one place I felt secure, no matter how bad things were at school or on the basketball court. But it no longer seemed like a safe place where my dad was a giant rock of stability. I could always trust him, even when his rules and regulations and strictness drove me nuts or bored me to death.
It made me sad to realize that my home had been taken away from me in a small way.
I sat there for a few more minutes. Then I told myself to quit feeling sorry for myself. I took a deep breath and went into the house.
At seventeen, I’m old enough to spend the night alone. Especially in Turner, where help is as easy to get as shouting.
Inside the house, I hung up my coat, something I never seem to remember to do when Dad’s there. I put the newspaper in the magazine rack instead of leaving it on the front porch. As I straightened, I noticed the light blinking on the answering machine.
Three messages.
The first was a message from Ike Bothwell, asking me to call him no matter how late I got in.
The second was from Tom, telling me he felt bad about what had happened and that he was sure there was a mistake and that there was no way my dad could have done what people said he had.
And then there was the third message. I had to play it twice to make sure I heard it correctly. Both times the harsh whisper of the caller sent goose bumps in waves across my scalp.
“The wages of sin is death,” the voice rasped. “And the punishment of the sinner will be inflicted unto the second and third generations. The snake of evil will be crushed and killed.”
That was it. The creepy voice could have been a man or a woman, young or old.
Now my home seemed even stranger to me.
I waited five minutes to call Ike Bothwell. It took me that long to get up the courage.
“Jack,” he answered without waiting for me to tell him who I was.
My silence told him he had surprised me.
“I’ve got a caller ID phone,” he said. “It showed the Spencer number. And you’re the only one who would be there tonight.”
Yeah, I thought, because Mom is in the hospital. And Dad is in jail.
I kept my thoughts to myself.
“Anyway,” he said, “I’m glad you called. I want to talk to you about what’s going on.”
“Um, okay,” I said. Although I sort of just wanted to hang up.
“Good. When can you get here?”
“Well,” I said, “I’ve got basketball practice after school and—”
“No,” he said, “I meant when can you get here tonight?”
“Tonight?”
“Yes,” he said, “unless you’d rather just lie awake and wonder what I want to tell you about your dad.”
It was only about nine-thirty. And Ike was right: I would lie awake and wonder what he had to say.
“I guess I’ll be right over,” I said.
chapter ten
Ike Bothwell and his wife, Judy, lived in a huge ranch-style house on a spread just outside of town. I knew this from all the times my family had been invited over for Sunday barbecues. That was before Mom’s car accident, of course. And before Dad had been accused of stealing half a million dollars from Ike.
The Bothwells’ driveway was lined with floodlights that sent arcs of white and blue light into the trees. At the end of the long driveway, I could see Ike’s house and four-car garage.
Ike was waiting for me in the doorway when I got out of my Camaro. His public act of cowboy hat and checkered shirt wasn’t really a public act. He wore the same clothes at home. But tonight he wasn’t wearing his hat.
He invited me in.
The foyer had a tiled floor and led to a large living room with a fireplace so big you could roast a couple of cows. The floor was hardwood, with expensive area rugs. The walls were covered with large oil paintings, mainly western scenes.
Ike’s wife was waiting on the couch. She gave me a tired smile as I walked toward her.
Like my dad, at first she didn’t seem to suit Ike. Where Ike looked big and clumsy, she was a tiny woman and moved with the daintiness of a songbird. Where Ike looked country, she was clearly big city, with short blond hair and perfect white teeth and expensive clothing. Odd as they might look as a couple, I’d seen them together at all those Sunday barbecues, and it was easy to tell how much they loved each other.
“I’m so sad about what’s happened to your dad,” she said. “I hope you’re doing okay.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. Kids learn fast from grown-ups. In a situation like this, you’re not supposed to tell the absolute truth. You’re not supposed to admit that you just listened to a really creepy message that has you a little scared. You’re not supposed to say that you’re worried sick about your dad spending a night in a place full of horrible smells and noises, or about your mom in the hospital. You’re not supposed to say that you don’t even dare think that your dad might be guilty.
“Sit,” Ike said, pointing at a chair near a tray of cheese and crackers and a pitcher of lemonade. “Please sit. Judy thought you might be hungry.”
I sat.
Ike poured the lemonade into a glass and handed it to me.
I was surprised by how nice they were being.
And I was surprised to discover how hungry I was. Then I remembered I hadn’t really eaten since lunch.
“How’s your dad?” Ike asked.
I guess my face must have shown my surprise at the concern in his voice.
“Jack,” Ike said softly, “please understand. I had nothing to do with his arrest. Unless someone can convince me otherwise with hard proof, I can’t believe he did it. Even with hard proof, I would still have doubts.”
I nodded slowly. Ike couldn’t know how much better his words made me feel.
“Dad seems all right,” I said. “He told me they should let him out on bail tomorrow.”
“I’m angry that he has to spend any time in jail,” Judy said. “It should never have happened this way. Ted had no right taking this to the state police until we had a chance to—”
“That’s enough,” Ike said mildly. “Poor Jack here doesn’t need to get sucked into a family battle.”
Not that the Bothwell family difficulties were too secret in such a small town. It was well known that Ike’s brother, Ted, was the opposite of Ike. Ike was easygoing, loved having fun, and had no problem lending or giving people money. Ted was rigid—a rules and regulations guy without a heart.
Ike sighed and leaned back in his chair.
“You remember the pigeon promotion, Jack?”
“Yes?” I said slowly, wondering about the abrupt change of subject.
“Your dad fought me long and hard over it,” Ike said. “And when he realized I wouldn’t give in, he advised me to get insurance.”
“Insurance?”
Ike nodded. “You can get special insurance to cover a stunt like that. You pay a couple of thousand dollars, and if someone wins, the insurance company covers the cost of the truck you have to give away. I told your dad no. I thought there was so little chance the capsule would be found that it wasn’t worth paying a couple of thousand just to be safe.”
Ike shook his head. “But now I expect your dad was right on both counts. First of all, I’ll be lucky if the capsule doesn’t get found. And when someone finds it, it’ll cost me about twenty thousand for the truck.”
He kept shaking his head. “And second, it was just a dumb idea. I got publicity, all right, but the wrong kind. It didn’t help me at all that those pigeons did their little business on the heads of half the people in town.”
“Don’t beat yourself up,” Judy said softly. “You couldn’t have known that would happen.”
“That’s my point,” Ike told her. “Jack’s dad did. And I didn’t listen to him.”
Ike turned back
to me. “And it’s only gotten worse from there.”
“Worse?” I echoed.
“Do you have any idea how many complaints I’m getting from animal rights people, from police, from anyone who’s had pigeons land on their property?”
I shook my head.
“Let me put it this way,” Ike said. “I seem to have single-handedly started open season on brown pigeons. For a fifty-mile radius, idiots with shotguns are blasting at any brown bird that looks remotely like a pigeon, hoping to bring down a brand-new pickup truck with a dead bird.”
It would have been funny, I guess, if this were a cartoon where real blood and guts weren’t getting splattered, where real people weren’t endangered by trigger-happy hunters. That’s something I don’t like about television—it makes you forget that violence can have a real effect.
“Your dad told me that’s exactly what would happen,” Ike said. “But I told him he was a wet blanket who always looked for the worst in any situation.”
Ike reached past me and scooped up a handful of cheese and crackers.
“Ike Bothwell!” Judy said. “Remember your diet.”
“I remember it all right,” he mumbled. “I remember how much I hate it.”
He crunched a mouthful of crackers. Crumbs drifted down onto his big belly. His wife shook her head with an affectionate smile.
Ike swallowed, and then he continued, “So, Jack, my point is that your dad is not a stupid man. He thinks everything through carefully, even if it only involves pigeons. If he were going to steal half a million dollars, he would do it in such a way that he couldn’t get caught. He certainly wouldn’t leave a paper trail. In other words, I think he’s innocent. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you tonight.”
“One of the reasons?” I said.
Ike frowned. “The other reason hardly makes sense.”
“Don’t be dramatic, Ike,” Judy said. “Just tell him.”
“Jack,” Ike said, “I asked your dad point-blank if he stole that money. He wouldn’t say yes or no. All he’d say was that your mom’s car accident wasn’t an accident. And that he—your dad—should have known better.”
Titan Clash Page 3