The meticulous, repetitive nature of the work would seem maddening to most people, but Aaron found it peaceful. Comforting, even.
In fact, ever since he had started on his project, Aaron had been calm. His legs didn’t bounce when he sat down, not even at school, where he was often his most restless and bored. He wasn’t clenching his jaw and his arms as much, either.
And to top it all off, he was pretty close to getting his answer.
CLEARING OUT THE ATTIC
Ryan had just finished Mrs. Haemmerle’s front yard and was on his way to start the back when Ernest came over from across the street. He carried a grocery bag, and his eyes darted around furtively as he approached.
“Whatd’ya got there, Ernest?” Ryan asked as he emptied the clippings into a trash bag.
“My parents are selling Grandpa Eddie’s house,” Ernest said urgently. “My mom’s meeting with the realtor right now.”
“I know,” Ryan said.
“You know?” Ernest said, incredulous.
“Yeah, I have to do the lawn this weekend. Full works: mow, trim, turn over the soil in the flower beds.” Ryan caught how Ernest’s face sagged. “I’m sorry, man. I thought you knew.”
Ernest shook it off. “Anyway, there’s no telling when I might be able to get back into the attic again, so I grabbed Rollo’s last two presents.”
Ernest reached down into the grocery bag. The first thing he pulled out was a quilt. It was a patchwork design, green and blue patterns sealed tight in thick plastic wrap. The second item was an old toy, a ray gun, still in its original packaging.
“Can I leave these with you?” Ernest asked.
“Sure,” Ryan said, tying off the lawn trimmings. “Just put the bag in the garage and I’ll bring it home with me when I’m done here.”
“Thanks, Ryan,” Ernest said, looking sadly across the street at his grandfather’s house, a For Sale sign already in the front yard.
Ryan followed his friend’s gaze. “Had to happen sometime.”
“I guess so,” Ernest said.
THE ACCIDENTAL ARSONIST
It wasn’t Bigfoot.
Aaron had guessed as much a while ago, but knowing now for sure didn’t upset him like he thought it might. After countless hours of rendering, the image was clear, or at least as clear as it was ever going to get.
The mystery figure wasn’t Bigfoot; it was just some guy in a brown coat. An ugly brown coat, from what Aaron could make of it.
Aaron stared at the monitor for a few moments before he finally saw it. He could have kicked himself. All those hours and he hadn’t put it together.
The hardest part had been digitally removing the smoke, pixel by pixel, to get at the figure underneath. All that time removing smoke and he’d completely overlooked the fire.
He thought he’d been looking at Bigfoot. But now he knew he was looking at a man. A man running out of a cloud of thick smoke.
Running away from a fire.
Running away from his own fire.
GOODBYE
To Ryan’s surprise, Mrs. Haemmerle didn’t come out to check on him while he did the lawn. In fact, except for a wave from the kitchen window when he first wheeled the lawn mower out of the garage, Ryan hadn’t seen her at all.
By the time he’d finished and put the mower away, she still hadn’t come out. Figuring she may have just fallen asleep, Ryan considered simply cleaning up and going home. But if he didn’t even say goodbye, it might hurt her feelings. Or worse, it might confuse her, mess with her routine. He was already switching things around by doing her lawn on Tuesday, so as to free up the weekend to get the Wilmette lawn ready for the real estate showings next week.
Ryan went to the back door and knocked. When no one answered, he peered in through the kitchen window. Through the hallway he could see into the living room, where the reflection off the TV showed Mrs. Haemmerle asleep in her chair.
Something about the way she was slumped didn’t look right.
The back door was locked, but Ryan knew Mrs. Haemmerle kept a key hidden in an empty flowerpot in the garage. Ryan unlocked the door, turned the handle slowly, and stepped inside. Though he’d been in this house a hundred times, he felt uneasy.
In the living room, Mrs. Haemmerle was still, very still. He looked for signs of breathing, but her chest didn’t move at all. She drooped into the cushions, her arms tight to her sides, wrists crossed in her lap. Her mouth was open slightly, but it was taking no breath.
She looked cold.
Ryan’s mind started buzzing—he had to call his mom, call 911—but first he had to do something about the cold.
He walked quickly through the kitchen and out the back door to the garage. There he grabbed the quilt out of the grocery bag and ripped off the plastic covering, oblivious to the boxed toy ray gun tumbling to the ground.
Ryan brought the quilt back and draped it carefully across Mrs. Haemmerle’s body. He knew it didn’t matter, that she was dead and couldn’t feel warm or cold, or anything at all anymore.
But it mattered to Ryan. At that moment it was the only thing that did matter. He stayed with her a little bit longer, then went into the kitchen and picked up the phone.
After Ryan called his mom, she called Lizzy’s mom, and both of them hurried over. The paramedics arrived and officially pronounced Mrs. Haemmerle deceased. They talked with the moms. Then Mrs. Hardy came over to him.
“Ryan, honey,” she said softly. “The quilt on Mrs. Haemmerle. Did you put that on her after you found her?”
Ryan nodded. “Was that wrong?”
“No, not at all,” his mom said. “How are you doing?”
Ryan nodded with little conviction and looked away. His mom put her hand on his back, rubbing it softly.
“It must have been a shock, finding her,” she said. “A lot of kids—a lot of people—would have been scared finding someone that way.”
“It wasn’t that,” Ryan said. “It’s just …” He didn’t want to say the next part but felt like it was going to jump out anyway. “She was all alone, Mom. She died alone.”
He fell apart then, sobbing heavily, his whole body shaking with grief and frustration. For a long time his mom didn’t say anything; she just held him close as he cried. But then, as he started to regain himself, she eased him away slightly so she could look him in the face.
“Ryan,” she said tenderly. “I think you’re wrong. Mrs. Haemmerle wasn’t alone. She had you. She always had you.”
Ryan wiped his face with his sleeve. “But I was outside.”
“You may not have been in the room with her,” his mom said. “But she knew you were here. When she sat down in that chair, when she closed her eyes and let go, what do you think was the last thing she ever heard?”
The piece-of-junk lawn mower, Ryan thought, and he had to smile.
“That’s right,” his mom said. “The sound of you taking care of her. She did not die alone, Ryan. You were with her.”
AARON ROBINETTE AND THE CASE OF THE UGLY BROWN PARKA
Detective Art Dahl sighed the deep, heavy sigh of a man who had mistakenly thought the day’s headaches were all squarely behind him. Then his son, Jamie, and that hyper Robinette kid came bursting into the den.
The boys were talking frantically and at once. Art told his son to be quiet and let Aaron talk. After some yammering about Bigfoot, the kid finally got to the point.
“Anyway, after running some image-enhancing software, I think I found something you might want to see, Mr. Dahl.”
Aaron nodded to Jamie, who put a DVD into the player.
“Those are the woods by North Side Park,” Jamie said. “The day they had that fire.”
Art watched the footage. There was smoke and then, coming into frame, a figure.
In the ugliest brown parka ever made.
“Whoever this person is,” Aaron said, “he’s coming from the direction of the fire. I figured maybe he’s the one who started it, or knows who did?”
“You filmed this yourself?” Art asked Aaron.
“Well, filmed isn’t entirely accurate, since the recorder doesn’t contain actual … I mean, yes, sir.”
“And ran the software to sharpen the image? All by yourself?”
“Well, I had to know whether it was Bigfoot or not,” Aaron said, as if this was the most obvious explanation of his actions.
“Is it a lead, Dad?” Jamie asked eagerly.
“Oh, it’s more than that,” Art said.
It was his nephew. Buddy. The idiot.
HARLAN BRICKS
Tommy Bricks was happy. And as an everyday state of mind, he still wasn’t quite used to it.
Which was why Tommy didn’t think very hard about the fact that he and Winston had knocked off early today. Winston’s family was throwing a big party for his grandmother this weekend, and they had relatives flying in from Chicago.
But when Tommy got home he realized he had also not thought about the fact that his dad would still be there.
Tommy came in through the kitchen door and was halfway to his room when he heard his dad cursing a blue streak. Tommy thought about slipping down the hall and ducking into his room before his father noticed. But then he realized that his father was in his room.
“WHERE ARE THEY?” his father roared, kicking the box spring on Tommy’s bed.
Tommy froze in the hallway just as his father stormed out of the room. Harlan Bricks wasn’t a big man, but plenty of bigger men in Cliffs Donnelly gave him a wide berth. Years of working a factory line had given him lean, wiry arms and thick, weathered hands that could rip a phone book in half. To say he had a grip like a vise would be getting the metaphor backward. A vise, more accurately, had a grip like Harlan Bricks.
Tommy backed away, but his father reached out and grabbed him by the arm, squeezing hard as he pulled the boy closer.
“You have them, don’t you?” he sneered.
Tommy tried to jerk his arm free. “What are you talking about?”
A darkness came over his father’s face. “Sam’s tools—where are they?”
“I don’t have them,” Tommy said, his eyes drifting across his ransacked bedroom. “Sam probably gave them to one of his friends before he left.”
“Don’t you lie to me,” Harlan said quietly as he let go of Tommy’s arm. He took off his belt and started folding it in half. “Do you have any idea how much money I could get for those tools?”
“I don’t have them!” Tommy insisted, backing up slowly.
Harlan followed, smacking the belt against the wall as he pointed at Tommy. “You’re stealing, is what you’re doing! Stealing from me. Stealing from us all!”
Tommy took off down the hallway.
He had just made it out the front door when Harlan caught up with him and shoved him off the porch steps. Tommy fell hard on the unforgiving dirt patch that passed for a front yard. Harlan hopped off the porch and stood over Tommy, swinging the belt back and across like a reaper. Tommy blocked the first couple of blows with his forearm but eventually had to cover his face, exposing his back to the belt.
Then it stopped. Tommy remained curled in a ball, eyes closed tight, as he heard his father gasping for breath overhead. He glanced up, hoping to see that Harlan had stepped away, that he was done.
But his father stood there, still looking furious as he slowly turned the belt over in his hands.
He’s going to start swinging again, Tommy thought. Only this time with the …
“Harlan!” Tommy’s mother shouted. “Are you crazy? Out on the front lawn?”
“He ran,” Harlan said, winded.
“Of course he ran, you drunken fool,” she said. “Put your belt back on.”
Harlan squared his shoulders. “Don’t you talk to me like that,” he snarled.
Tommy’s mother didn’t move. She was a small woman but scary in her own way. She never forgot anything, never forgave anyone, could lie in wait as long as it took, and, well, everyone had to sleep sometime. Even a drunken fool like Harlan Bricks knew better than to cross her.
Harlan said, “What are you doing home?”
“Grabbing a shower and some food before I go back to finish my double.”
After some cursing and dark promises, Harlan Bricks got in his car and drove off.
“You eat?” Tommy’s mom said, looking down at him.
Tommy, still getting his breath back, shook his head.
“I’ll reheat some sloppy joes,” she said.
“Okay.”
His mother started up the porch steps, then turned around. “Tommy,” she said, not unkindly, “Sam’s not coming back. And your father’s not going away.”
“WHAT YOUR TEACHER’S EX-GIRLFRIEND ISN’T TELLING YOU”
Lizzy rubbed her eyes. She had been on her mom’s laptop all evening, learning everything she could about Andrea Chase.
The news wasn’t good.
Andrea was an investigative reporter. Her specialties were takedown stories, attack pieces that fed on the audience’s suspicions and fears. Lizzy watched a few of them. One segment was titled “What Your Pediatrician Isn’t Telling You,” and another was “So You Think You Can Trust Your Local Library.”
Her stories were what’s known as “yellow journalism.” That was a kind of news reporting where keeping people interested by playing on their emotions (fear and anger, usually) was more important to the story than actually telling the truth. Exaggerating, distorting facts, misrepresenting situations—all that didn’t matter as long as your story kept people watching.
And now Andrea Chase had set her sights on Cliffs Donnelly.
Lizzy couldn’t believe she’d almost let herself trust Andrea. Even worse, Lizzy had actually wanted to be like her.
Worst of all, tomorrow Lizzy would have to tell Ryan and Ernest the truth about their friendly neighborhood reporter.
FAMILY COMMITMENT
“It’s just for a couple of days,” Winston said. “Through the weekend.”
“Yeah,” Tommy said. “You said that already.”
Winston had hoped that his grandmother’s birthday party wasn’t going to completely disrupt his routine. But he was the oldest of three, and the minute his relatives started arriving from Chicago, his parents expected him to be home watching his siblings and playing host for pretty much every waking minute that he wasn’t at school.
Now Tommy was doing that thing. Sometimes he got cold, distant, when he had something on his mind. He had moods. Really dark moods. And he’d been in one all day. The worst thing would be to ask if he was okay. But that’s precisely what Winston wanted to do, because he had a strong feeling that this time Tommy really wasn’t.
“Your ride’s here,” Tommy said flatly, gesturing with his head toward the blue minivan that had just pulled up to the front of the school. Winston’s grandmother, a tiny old woman barely visible in the passenger-side window, waved at Winston while his mom gave two quick toots on the horn.
“Um, okay,” Winston said. “So, I’ll—”
“Yeah,” Tommy said.
As Winston stepped into the minivan, he snuck a look back at Tommy, standing alone in front of the school.
“All right, Winston?” his grandmother said, following his gaze. “Your friend there, does he want a ride?”
“No, Grandma,” Winston said. “He doesn’t.”
HERE COMES THE FUZZ
Buddy was barely one foot outside the high school when he saw his uncle’s dark blue sedan double-parked in the turnabout right in front of the building.
“Get in,” Uncle Art called out. Buddy got in.
In the car, Buddy’s uncle told him that he knew Buddy and his burnout friends had started that fire in the woods last month and that he better not try to deny it.
Buddy tried to deny it.
Uncle Art stopped in front of the fire station. “Deny it again and I’ll lock you up for the night,” he said, getting out of the car.
Uncle Art brought Buddy to
the fire chief’s office. The two men had clearly spoken already, because the minute the fire chief shut the door, they sat Buddy down and showed him some video of him running away from the fire in his telltale brown parka.
Buddy admitted that he started the fire. He explained how it all happened but wouldn’t tell who was there with him. Uncle Art and the fire chief seemed to buy his story—it was the kind of dumb accident that fit nicely with his uncle’s opinion of him. Uncle Art and the fire chief talked among themselves and decided to hand him over to someone named Julia.
Buddy had no idea who Julia was. But from the way the two men snickered, it didn’t sound like he was off the hook.
LOCAL COLOR
Andrea Chase had been at North Side Park with her cameraman, Chuck, doing interviews all afternoon. Thompkins Well had become a local tourist attraction, and Andrea was having an easy time getting people to talk about it.
Andrea hated this part of the job, the local-color interviews, but they were what really sold the story. It was an easy crowd, friendly and talkative, and before long, Andrea and Chuck had piled up a half dozen solid interviews. If she played her cards right, she was going to get two stories on this trip for the price of one. Once she finished her takedown piece on the Holyoke Red Diamond, she could tear apart this Thompkins Well fairy tale for dessert.
She had doubted the Holyoke Red Diamond story from the very start. The way the diamond was supposedly discovered just didn’t ring true to her. It was just too sweet, too cute, too hopeful not to be a lie.
What really sold her was the nonsense about the wishing well. The way the son of the thief had said that when he was a little boy he’d thrown a quarter in the town wishing well to learn the truth about what happened to his dad. That was the tell, the giveaway.
That’s when she knew she really had something.
Because however much people love a feel-good story, they love turning on a feel-good story even more. Audiences may hunger for the warm fuzzies, but they get positively ravenous for an exposed lie.
Andrea had built her career on it.
When she then discovered that her old boyfriend was a teacher in the town, that she’d have an inside track on the local scuttlebutt, it was like fate. She couldn’t have wished for a better setup.
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