Trial by Fire (16 page)

“You told me you hadn’t been in contact with your father in years. Was that a lie
too?”

“No.”

I tried to read his face, searching for any clue to what he was thinking. I found
nothing.

“Then why is there an email from you on your father’s hard drive?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never emailed him.”

A car turned in to the driveway and raced toward us, traveling faster than seemed
wise and shooting gravel all over the place. It was Aunt Ginny. She came to a stop,
got out of the car and shouted, “What part of
no
don’t you understand, Riley? Get
over here and into the car this minute. I mean it.”

I looked at Aram. “I read the email, Aram.”

“I didn’t send any email.”

I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. “Are you lying to me again?”

“No.” He met my eyes. “I’m not.”

“Riley, did you hear me? Get over here
. Now!
”

I had no choice. I waved the white flag again, and again it was a tactical maneuver.
So was the apologizing I did all the way down Mr. Goran’s driveway and all the way
up ours.

“I just wanted to see that he was okay.”

“I said no.”

“But he’s a neighbor.”

“Damn it, Riley, I said no. And when I say no, I expect you to obey, especially when
it comes to police matters.”

“But—”

She gave me the fiercest look I had ever seen. She definitely needed more sleep,
but she wasn’t going to get it if she kept yelling at me.

“Sorry, Aunt Ginny.” If you ask me, I sounded genuinely contrite. I weighed the
pros and cons of telling her what had made it so important that I talk to Aram. She
was already furious with me. If she found out I had taken Mr. Goran’s computer, she
would be enraged, possibly even homicidal. Of course, I hadn’t known it belonged
to Mr. Goran when I took the hard drive. I thought it was Aram’s. But I doubted Aunt
Ginny would be able, let alone willing, to make the distinction. She would throw
it all onto the ever-growing heap of What Happens When Riley Meddles, and she would
punish me accordingly. Unless, of course, I could get to the bottom of this new development
myself, in which case she would still become enraged but would be forced to concede,
given the outcome, that punishment was perhaps not warranted.

Someone had sent Mr. Goran that email. It said it was from Aram. It was possible
it wasn’t. Either way, that email had set the stage for everything that followed.

FOURTEEN

“I’m sorry.” Two words that people don’t hear often enough, according to Jimmy. Two
words that go a long way toward placating the aggrieved party. Two words you’d think
were made out of gold, so reluctant are some people to part with them. Two words
that, once spoken, usually bring peace. The lesson Jimmy meant to impart was, if
you’re in the wrong, apologize. There is an equally valid lesson, deduced from living
with Aunt Ginny. If someone
thinks
you’re in the wrong and is therefore angry with
you, apologize.

“I really am, Aunt Ginny,” I said. “I know you want me to do the right thing, not
just whatever pops into my head. And I didn’t do that. And I’m sorry.”

“Well, I should hope so,” she grumbled. There wasn’t anything more to say that I
hadn’t said already. Apologizing always worked with Aunt Ginny. She went back to
bed, and I went into town.

I was locking my bike to a No Parking sign near one of the town’s two funeral homes
when Mike and his buddies sauntered out of a store right in front of me. Mike scowled
when he saw me but started to circle around me.

“How’s your dad?” I asked.

Mike turned. “As if you care.”

“I do.” I cared because I didn’t want anything bad to happen to Aram. But I also
cared because, well, why wouldn’t I? Ted Winters hadn’t exactly made a good impression
on me, but that didn’t mean I wanted him to be hurt or worse.

“You’re a friend of the guy who put my dad in the hospital. And of the old man too.
You don’t care about my dad or my grandfather. He died—did you know that?”

I nodded. Mike’s friends had gathered around.

“He died because he was expecting to get his farm back and he didn’t. It wasn’t fair.
My grandfather made that place what it is, and this guy who wasn’t even born here
comes and steals it from him. And because of that, my grandfather died.”

Behind him, Mike’s friends nodded.

“I’m sorry your grandfather lost his farm, Mike,” I said. “And I’m sorry he died.
But that’s no reason—”

He stepped toward me.

I stood my ground.

“I’m sorry about your dad too,” I said. “But that fire in Mr. Goran’s barn was set
on purpose, and Mr. Goran was locked inside. If the fire department hadn’t arrived
when it did, he would be dead now. Maybe that’s what the arsonist intended.”

“I had nothing to do with it,” Mike said. “Neither did my dad. And if that old man
doesn’t make it, I’m not going to be sorry.”

“What do you have against him? You don’t even know him,” I said.

“I don’t want to know him. I don’t want anything to do with him.”

“Then why did you keep breaking into his barn?” I asked.

“He had something that belonged to me. He wouldn’t give it back.”

“You mean the horse brasses?”

Mike seemed surprised that I knew about them. “My grandpa meant for me to have them.”

“Maybe if you’d been nicer, Mr. Goran would have given them to you. But you weren’t.
You trashed him every chance you got. You trespassed on his property. You wouldn’t
let your friends accept that donation from him. Then you sent him that phony email—”

“What email? What donation? What are you talking about?”

“You know what email. You sent it.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Were you hoping he’d sell the farm? Is that it, Mike? Were you hoping he’d sell
it cheap enough that your dad would be able to get his hands on it? Was that the
idea?”

Mike stepped so close to me that I could smell bacon on his breath. His hands clenched
into fists. One of Mike’s friends—one of the smarter ones—touched him on the arm.

“We should go,” he said. “Your mom has enough to worry about without having to bail
you out of jail. Her aunt’s a cop, remember?”

Mike didn’t retreat, but he didn’t come at me either. His friend tugged on his arm.
Mike finally let himself be led away. The rest of his buddies trailed after him.
I watched them go. When I turned again, Charlie was coming up the street, a bulging
plastic supermarket bag hanging from each hand.

“Was that Mike?” he asked.

I nodded. “You need help?”

In answer, he handed me one of the bags. It was heavy.

“Pineapple, half a dozen oranges and two melons,” Charlie said. “If you had them
in a box and were carrying them close to your chest, it would be no big deal. But
with all that weight concentrated in one place and hanging from one small piece of
plastic, it feels like it weighs a ton.”

He was right about that. A few moments later we turned the corner and he led me up
a walkway to an old-fashioned brick house with a wraparound verandah and white trim.
It looked like something out of a storybook.

“This is your house?” I asked.

“Yeah. I could use something cold to drink. You?”

He led me around back, and we clattered through a wood-framed screen door into a
huge, spotless kitchen. The whole place smelled like cinnamon.

“My mom was baking for the church,” Charlie said. He opened the fridge and grabbed
a couple of cans of soda. He tossed one to me. “What did Mike want?” A glance at
me led him to amend his question. “What did you want with Mike?” He flipped open
the tab on his can, took a long swallow and sank down onto one of the kitchen chairs.
I told him what I’d found on my computer and what I suspected.

“What did this email say?” Charlie asked.

“It’s supposedly from Aram.”

“Supposedly?”

“Aram says he didn’t send it.”

Charlie seemed to be struggling to understand what I was saying. “Okay. So how do
you get from there to thinking Mike sent it?”

“The email says that an extremist group is making him write the email and that he’s
being held hostage.”

“That must be an old email. Aram told us he was held hostage a few years ago.”

“It isn’t. It’s recent. It was sent just a couple of days before the fire. Think
about it, Charlie. You want to get Mr. Goran’s farm away from him. You know he has
a son. So you send a fake email to Mr. Goran saying his son has been kidnapped and
that if Mr. Goran doesn’t raise the ransom money, his son will be killed. What if
whoever sent that email did it because they wanted him to sell the farm to raise
the ransom money? But…” It was falling into place now. “Say he went to the bank and
arranged a loan.” I told him about Deirdre Parker and the bamboo plant she had delivered
to the hospital. “It’s the only way she could know Mr. Goran. She arranged a loan
for him so he didn’t have to sell the farm. So then the only way Mike could get even
with him was to set his barn on fire.”

“There’s just one thing,” Charlie said.

“What?”

“I don’t think Mike is smart enough to pull off something like that. He’s not even
smart enough to think of something like that.”

“It’s not exactly the most brilliant idea in the world.”

“Yeah, but it means Mike had to know that Mr.

Goran had a son, what his son’s name was and where he worked. And this is a guy who
couldn’t find Afghanistan
on a map if his life depended on it. He probably can’t
even spell Afghanistan. He got fifty percent in world geography, Riley, and it was
a pity pass. Mr. Randall didn’t want him back in his class again. Ever.”

“So maybe it wasn’t Mike. Maybe it was his dad. He would have known how to find out
about Aram.”

“I don’t know.” Charlie still sounded doubtful. “I know Mike pretty well. His dad
too—at least, his reputation. I’ve never heard anyone say anything bad about him.
The opposite, in fact. He’s well liked, Riley. Well regarded too. How well do you
know Aram?”

He had a point. I at least had a good reason, Aunt Ginny notwithstanding, to believe
that Mr. Goran had not started that fire. But what did I know about Aram, other than
that he was a sort of prodigal son? He had lied to the police—Aunt Ginny—about the
computer. So why was I so eager to believe he was telling the truth about that email?

“You’re right,” I said. “Do you have a computer?”

Charlie rolled his eyes. “Do I have a computer? It’s a small town, Riley, not a technological
wasteland.”

He led me up to his room, where he had a laptop, a tablet and an iPhone.

“Take your pick.”

I chose the laptop, went online, got into my email account and shot off an email
to IT. He responded immediately, and I had to pull up the attachment with Mr. Goran’s
email file in it to give him what he wanted.

“I still don’t get it,” Charlie said. “It’s not like Ted could give the farm back
to his father the way he originally planned.”

“Maybe he wanted to pass it on to Mike.”

“I don’t think Mike wants to be a farmer.”

I was starting to get impatient. “Okay, so maybe he just wanted to force Mr. Goran
out. I know Mike did. He also wanted his horse brasses. That’s why he kept breaking
into the barn. It’s also why he stopped your team from taking that donation—he hated
Mr. Goran and didn’t want anyone else to like him.”

“My team?” Charlie looked baffled. “Oh. That wasn’t—”

My cell phone pinged. It was Ashleigh:
On break. Mike news?

While I texted her back, Charlie turned the computer around so that he could read
the email signed by Aram.

Ashleigh was working a long shift and then had to go straight home. Her grandma was
visiting.
We agreed to meet up the next day. I slipped my phone back into my pocket.
Charlie was still reading what was on the screen, except now it wasn’t the same email.

“You said you thought that whoever sent that email to Mr. Goran wanted to force him
to sell his farm, right?” he asked, frowning.

“Right.”

“And that he must have got a loan from the bank so he didn’t have to sell.”

“Or something like that,” I said. Unless, of course, Aram really had sent that email
and had been trying to get money from his estranged father. Was that also the reason
he’d showed up here? To profit from the sale of the farm should his father die? I
heard Aunt Ginny’s voice in my ear.
Just because someone tells you something doesn’t
make it so.
“Assuming that Ted and Mike were behind the fire.”

“Which assumes that Mr. Goran got the loan he needed from the bank. But he didn’t.”
He turned the laptop around so that I could see the screen. “Read this.”

This
was a letter on bank letterhead, turning down a loan application made by Mr.
Goran. The letter was dated the day before the fire. I stared at it, stunned.

“You know what that means, right, Riley?”

I did. But I didn’t want to admit it.

“
If
Mr. Goran believed his son was kidnapped,” Charlie said, “and
if
he thought he
needed money for a ransom, and—this is the big one, Riley—
if
the bank turned him
down, then he could have decided to commit insurance fraud to get the money. That
would raise the ransom he needed but save him from having to sell the farm.”

I stared at Charlie. He was saying out loud exactly what I was thinking: “He might
be guilty, just like everyone says he is.”

I stared at the letter. There was one thing Charlie hadn’t said. That if he was right
about what he had just laid out, then it was also possible that Aram had sent the
email that started everything. Aram had pushed his father to arson.