Trial by Fire (11 page)

“And I don’t want to hear anything more about that fire,” she added.

I cleaned up the kitchen while Aunt Ginny silently finished her ice cream.

TEN

Charlie was red-faced and breathless when I answered the door the next morning. Ashleigh
was with him, drenched in sweat. Their bicycles were leaning against the porch.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Water,” Charlie croaked.

“Mr. Martial Arts needs more cardio.” Ashleigh laughed and nodded at Charlie.

I brought them inside and gave them something cold to drink. Charlie collapsed in
a chair, took a few gulps and then held his glass against his forehead.

“So?” I prodded.

Ashleigh pulled a folded sheet of paper from her pocket, unfolded it and handed it
to me.

“This was posted on the notice board at work.”

It was a Help Wanted ad. I skimmed it.

“And?”

“I went in to get some things for my mom,” Charlie said. “I saw Madison tear that
off the bulletin board and throw it in the garbage. She looked so mad, I got curious.
I thought we could apply.”

The help was wanted by Aram. He was advertising for people to pick his father’s berry
crop.

“Did you call the number?” I asked. Then: “We?”

“He’s too chicken to do it alone.” Ashleigh said. “He wants you to go with him.”

“Aram doesn’t bite,” I said.

“Please? Maybe his dad said something to him about me. If you come with us, it’ll
be easier. Plus, I thought you might want a job too. We could work together.”

“We could all work together,” Ashleigh said. “I only have three shifts at the store
this week. I could use the extra money.”

If it would help Aram, I was all for it. We got on our bikes and rode over to the
farm. Aram was thrilled that we were interested.

“There’s a market up in Clarkson,” he said. “I spoke to a woman up there who told
me she’d be happy to sell the berries for a small commission. But I have to get them
picked. It’ll be a full day’s work.”

I introduced Ashleigh and Charlie. Charlie flinched when I said his name, as if he
expected Aram to recognize it and throw him off his property. I hadn’t told him
that Aram and his father hadn’t spoken to each other for years.

Aram welcomed Charlie and Ashleigh. He took us into the garage and gave us each a
bucket.

“What are we picking?” Ashleigh asked.

“Blueberries.”

She frowned. The buckets Aram had given us were large, like the kind you’d use to
mop a floor. She glanced around.

“Those would be better.” She pointed to smaller containers stacked on a bench. “Do
you have scissors and some string?”

Mr. Goran looked puzzled but found what she wanted. Ashleigh punched holes near the
rims of each container with the scissors. She cut off lengths of string, threaded
them through the holes and tied them.

“If we wear these around our necks, we’ll have both hands free for picking. It’ll
go faster.” She demonstrated. “And smaller pails will stop the berries from getting
crushed.”

“You’ve done this before,” Aram said with a smile.

“Only every summer,” Ashleigh said. “But usually I get paid in Mom’s blueberry pie
or blueberry jam.”

The three of us grabbed a handful of containers and set off for the blueberry patch,
where Ashleigh gave us some pointers.

“Look for the round blue ones,” she said. “If they’re white, they haven’t begun to
ripen—and they never will if you pick them. If they’re small and feel hard, they’re
sour, so leave them. Same thing if they don’t come off the stem easily. And make
sure the skin isn’t cracked.”

We started to work, each in a separate area but close enough that we could talk.
I asked Ashleigh if she had heard about the break-ins at Mr. Goran’s farm.

“Sure. It was Mike, every time.”

“How do you know?”

“Are you kidding? He can’t keep his mouth shut. If Mike comes equipped with a mute
button, no one has ever found it.”

“So he admitted he broke into the barn?”

“Admitted? He announced it to everyone, even if they weren’t interested. He was proud
of himself.”

“I never heard that,” Charlie said.

“That’s because you’re not part of his crowd.”

“And you are?” I asked. That surprised me. Ashleigh seemed so nice, and Mike seemed,
well, the exact opposite.

“Not me exactly. You remember Taylor? Her father is a cousin of one of Mike’s uncles,
so they’re friendly. And Madison has a thing for Mike. So she’s always pumping Taylor
for information. I can’t help knowing what’s going on with him.”

“So what’s the story on the break-ins?” I asked. “Did he want to vandalize the barn?”

“Maybe, but what he really wanted are the brasses.”

“Brasses?”

“Horse brasses. His grandfather had a collection of them.”

“You’re talking about those decorations people put on harnesses, right?” I asked.

“Right. Mike’s great-grandfather used to raise heavy horses,” Ashleigh said. “Raised
them and bred them. He’s the one who started the collection.
Supposedly it’s amazing.
And valuable. Did you know that horse brasses have been around for centuries?”

“No. And I’m kind of surprised you know.”

“Mike gave a talk about them one year in school. He said they’ve been around in one
form or another for over two thousand years. Lots of people collect them. And they
aren’t all made of brass either. Some are made of ceramic. Some are silver. There
are even gold ones, although I don’t think Clyde had any of those. Mike says he kept
them in the barn, on harnesses hanging from the rafters.”

I’d seen them the afternoon before the fire, when Mr. Goran gave me a tour of the
farm. I’d wanted to ask, but at first he’d been pointing out things so enthusiastically
that I didn’t want to interrupt him, and then he’d been fussing and worrying about
some loose boards he found that could give a fox or some other animal access to his
barn. After that, I forgot about them.

“Why didn’t he take them when the bank foreclosed on the place?”

“The way I heard it, everyone assumed he’d taken all his personal property off the
place before the auction. That’s what Taylor says anyway, and she
always seems to
know what’s going on. She says she heard that Clyde was embarrassed about the foreclosure.
He didn’t say anything to anyone until the auction notices went up. That’s when Mike’s
father found out about it. By then Clyde was living in an old trailer on a friend’s
place and had boxes of his stuff stored in the friend’s shed. Ted didn’t go through
them until months after Clyde died. That’s when he realized the brasses were missing.”

“Missing as in stolen?”

“Missing as in Clyde had left them in the barn.”

“So why didn’t Mike just ask for them back?”

“The way I heard it from Taylor, the place was auctioned off as is. Whatever was
on the property at the time of the auction was considered part of the sale. So if
the brasses were there, Mr. Goran owned them.”

“But if Ted or Mike had asked nicely…”

Ashleigh and Charlie sighed and shook their heads in unison.

“Can you really picture Mike doing
anything
nicely?” Charlie said. “Besides, by the
time Ted realized that Clyde had left the brasses in the barn, the whole family had
been shunning Mr. Goran for nearly a year, and Mike had been so rude that I’m sure
there was no
way Mr. Goran would have given him the time of day, let alone a collection
of valuable brasses.”

“So Mike decided to break into the barn and steal them instead?”

“He tried it twice. Mr. Goran chased him off both times, which only made Mike more
determined. Mr. Goran did something to the door so that it would trap you inside.
Mike was trying to figure out how to beat it. Then the fire happened.”

“I wonder what happened to the brasses,” I said.

Ashleigh shrugged. “Maybe they melted.”

Maybe. If the fire had been hot enough, I guessed. It was something to check out.

“Has Mike mentioned them lately?” I asked.

Ashleigh’s eyes narrowed. “What are you getting at, Riley? You don’t think Mike started
the fire, do you?”

The thought had crossed my mind. He seemed to have a motive. And if the brasses were
missing, that could further point the finger at Mike. He could have figured out how
to beat Mr. Goran’s new lock, broken into the barn, taken back his brasses and set
fire to the place. He could also have locked Mr. Goran in—accidentally or on purpose.
If he had, and if Mr. Goran
didn’t recover, it could be the difference between manslaughter
and murder.

“I sure would like to know what happened to those brasses,” I said.

“You could ask Taylor’s dad,” Ashleigh said.

“Why? Does he know Mr. Goran?”

“He’s handling the arson investigation. He would probably know if the brasses were
there or if they melted or whatever.”

Taylor’s dad was handling the arson investigation? “You mean he’s a cop?”

“Detective Sergeant Joshua Martin.”

Joshua. Josh. Aunt Ginny’s boss. Small world. Smaller town.

“Or you could ask Ted. He might know,” Charlie said. “He must have been there that
night.”

“Why would Ted Winters be at the fire?”

“He’s the head of the volunteer fire department.”

I stared at Charlie.

“I guess I forgot to mention that, huh?” he said.

“I guess you did.”

We picked blueberries all morning. While I worked, I thought about what Ashleigh
had just told me. And I wondered about those brasses. Had they been in the
barn when
it was set on fire? If they had, and if they’d survived, where were they now? I had
the feeling that might be the key to the arson. And Mike Winters was the likeliest
suspect.

Maybe Ashleigh was right. Maybe I should talk to Taylor’s dad. But would he tell
me anything? More important, what would Aunt Ginny do if she found out I’d even tried
to talk to him?

Aram came down to the blueberry patch with sandwiches and cold drinks, and we all
sat in the shade of a massive oak to eat.

“You kids are doing a great job,” Aram said, looking at how much we had picked. “My
father would be pleased if he knew that his berries were going to the market.”

“How is he?” Charlie asked.

Aram gazed over the fields that surrounded us. “It will be a long time, if ever,
before he can farm again. I don’t relish the job of telling him he might have to
sell the place. This farm was all he ever wanted.”

Charlie looked down at the half-eaten sandwich in his hand. From the somber look
on his face, I guessed he was thinking about how he had treated Aram’s father. I
could have been wrong though.

“You seem to know your way around a farm,” I said to Aram. “Maybe you could run the
place for him.”

He shook his head. “Despite what my father thinks, I’m happy in my work.”

“Your father doesn’t like what you do?”

“It makes him afraid. We can’t even talk about it.”

“What do you do?” Ashleigh asked.

“I work for a relief agency in Afghanistan. My father thinks I’m wasting my time
and that something bad will happen to me. I was taken hostage once a few years ago
by some extremists. I managed to negotiate my way out of it. It helped that I speak
Pashtu. But my father was furious. He demanded I return home.” He shook his head.
“My father thinks I should help only myself. He thinks everyone should help themselves
and then all the problems in the world would be solved.”

We were all silent for a few moments. Then Ashleigh said, “I want to be a dancer.
My parents say it’s a good hobby, but it’s not practical to think I could support
myself by dancing. They push me to stay on the honor roll.”

“Your parents and my father would get along,” Aram said. “Except that immigrant parents
are even
more determined that their children should succeed—and succeeding means
making lots of money. My father says that’s why he moved here—to make sure that I
had opportunities he never had in Kurdistan.” He shook his head again. “I hate that
the last time we spoke, we argued.”

None of us knew what to say. The silence that followed was broken only when Aram
stood up. “I’d better let you get back to work. I have some chores to attend to.”

“I feel sorry for him,” Ashleigh said as she watched him go. “I think he loves his
father. Can you imagine how terrible he’ll feel if his father dies before he can
tell him that?”

We headed out into the sun to continue working. We were about to take a midafternoon
break when someone called Charlie’s name.

“That sounds like Rick. What’s he doing here?”

“I could use a drink,” Ashleigh said. “Let’s take a break.”

We carried our picked berries up to the shed.

“It
is
Rick.” There was a second pickup parked behind Mr. Goran’s in the driveway,
and, sure enough,
Rick was standing beside it. Aram was standing with him. Neither
was talking and both looked relieved when we appeared.

“Your mom wants you home pronto,” Rick said to Charlie.

“How did you know where I was?”

“My mom said someone saw you at the supermarket with a flyer, so she called your
mom, and…” He glanced apologetically at Aram, whose face remained expressionless.
“She sent me to get you.”

“But I’m working,” Charlie protested. “Mom’s been bugging me all summer to earn some
money so I don’t have to ask her every time I want something.”

“Hey, I’m just the messenger, so there’s no point arguing with me. All I know is
that if I go back without you I’m going to have both your mom and mine on my back.
You don’t want that, do you? Because I sure don’t.”

Charlie fumbled in his pocket for his cell phone. He pulled it out, looked at it
as if he was contemplating making a call and then slipped it back into his shorts
pocket. “I’d better go,” he said at last.

“Atta boy,” Rick said.

“I came on my bike.”