Trial by Fire (18 page)

“Maybe not,” I said. “Maybe they paid Mr. Johnston here to set fire to the barn to
make Mr. Goran look bad. Maybe they even told him to lock Mr. Goran inside.”

“Now you just wait a minute,” Johnston said. “I had nothing to do with that barn
fire. I swear it. I wasn’t anywhere near the place that night, and I can prove it.”

“What about Curtis?” Aunt Ginny asked.

“I can’t say he was unhappy when he heard about the fire. Said it would make things
easier all around.”

“I don’t believe you,” I said.

“I’m telling you the truth. Curtis wanted the place, all right. He has big plans
for the land,” Johnston said. “He said he had a partner who was going to help him.”

“Who is this partner?” Aunt Ginny asked.

I was pretty sure I already knew—Mr. Kincaid.

“He didn’t tell me. He just said she could make sure the seller was motivated.”

She?

“By making Mr. Goran think he needed money and then denying him a loan. Have I got
that right?” Aunt Ginny asked.

I’d been wrong about Deirdre Parker. I’d told her what I had on my hard drive. She
must have told
Curtis, who dispatched Johnston to dispose of the problem. I guess
he’d never heard of backups. But why had Deirdre gone along with the plan? The plant
she’d sent to Mr. Goran seemed to suggest she was sorry for what had happened. Or
maybe she’d just wanted to give that impression.

“Nobody mentioned anything about a fire, and I swear on my mother’s grave, I never
set one. I broke into the old man’s house. Your place too. But I never hurt anyone.
I told you everything I know, and you have to believe me when I tell you I would
never set a fire deliberately.”

“What about Ted Winters?” I asked. “Do you know who beat him up?”

“Riley, please—” Aunt Ginny began.

“No,” Johnston said. “Curtis asked me to rough him up some. He wanted to get Goran’s
son out of the way. The idea was, I’d say I’d seen Aram fleeing the scene. But I
told Curtis the same thing I told you. I don’t hurt people, especially good people
like Ted.”

“Do you know who did?”

“No. I swear.”

Tires crunched on the gravel outside. Car doors slammed. Aunt Ginny shouted, and
Josh Martin
appeared, along with two uniformed cops. Aunt Ginny directed the uniforms
to handcuff Mr. Johnston while she explained to Josh what had just happened.

He frowned. “Computer? What computer? What are you talking about?”

Aunt Ginny filled him in. “I’m surprised you didn’t seize the computer as part of
your arson investigation,” she added. The remark sounded innocent enough, but the
look in her eyes was pure wolf. She had caught Josh in a rookie error, and she wasn’t
about to let it slide by unnoticed.

Josh called out to one of the uniforms. “I thought I told you to find anything relevant
in the old man’s house.”

“I did,” the officer said, apparently confused by what was
going on.

“He had a computer. How come I never saw it?”

“That old man had a computer?” The officer shook his head. “I never saw it.”

“Did you look?” Josh was barely managing to keep his anger in check.

“Well, no. I mean, who would have figured—?”

Josh dismissed him with the wave of a hand and ordered him to take the prisoner in.
He turned back to me. “Do you think your computer still works?”

It did. I showed him and Aunt Ginny the email and the letter from Deirdre, turning
down Mr. Goran’s loan application. I also told them my suspicions.

I made a formal statement at the police station. While I waited for Aunt Ginny, two
uniformed officers brought in Donald Curtis. He was full of bluster, angrily demanding
to know why he was being brought in for questioning like a common criminal. His bluster
evaporated when Aunt Ginny paraded Tom Johnston past him. Then she made him sweat
it out a little longer while she brought Deirdre Parker in for questioning—and made
sure that Curtis saw her too. Aunt Ginny told me that Deirdre confessed everything.

“She’d been doing some freelance secretarial work for Curtis to make some extra money,”
Aunt Ginny said. “Once, against her better instincts she says, she accepted money
in return for giving him some information about a bank customer. If anyone had found
out, she would have been fired immediately. Curtis used that to blackmail her into
helping him get his hands on Mr. Goran’s farm.”

Confronted with Deirdre’s statement, Curtis admitted to his part in the scheme. He
seemed to think no great harm had been done. His plan hadn’t worked, after all.

“What about the fire? It put Mr. Goran in the hospital,” I said.

“He insists he didn’t have anything to do with the fire,” Aunt Ginny said.

“And you believe him?”

“He says once the fire happened, he figured the farm would be his for sure. And then
Aram showed up, and he was in no rush to sell off his father’s place. So Curtis exploited
Ted Winters’s animosity toward Aram’s father and then toward Aram. He heard about
what happened at the market and then about their altercation in front of the café.
He admits to assaulting Ted. His plan was to jump him from behind and claim he saw
Aram. But Ted must have heard him, because he started to turn around just as Curtis
was about to clobber him, and the next thing Curtis knew, he was in what he called
‘a fight for his life.’ He claims that what happened to Ted was in self-defense.”
She shook her head at the logic. “The grand plan was to get Aram arrested and out
of the way.”

“And Ted couldn’t tell that it wasn’t Aram?”

“Curtis was wearing a balaclava.”

“But Mrs. Winters said she recognized Aram…”

Aunt Ginny just shook her head. “Eyewitness testimony can be shaky at best. But
on a dark night, after already seeing Aram and her husband together, she could have
thought that’s what she saw.”

“Or she could have been lying.”

“It’s possible,” Aunt Ginny said. She didn’t seem troubled by it. But, like I already
said, she is suspicious by nature. It’s an asset in her job.

“What are you going to do now?” I asked.

She lifted a thick file folder off her desk. I read the label.

“That’s the arson report,” I said.

“You were right about Aram,” Aunt Ginny said. “I’m not discounting that you may be
right about his father too. But somebody set that fire. I need to know everything
there is to know about it.”

The file was on the coffee table the next morning when I got up. Aunt Ginny was asleep
on the couch. I tiptoed
to the table, grabbed the file and read it while I ate breakfast.

“And what do you think you’re doing?” Aunt Ginny, bleary-eyed, was in the doorway.

I flipped the file closed. “Nothing.”

“You’re snooping again.” She glanced at the coffeemaker. It was empty.

“I’ll make it.” I put my cereal bowl in the sink and got the coffee out of the fridge.
“There’s a lot of information in there,” I said. “Like this.” I pointed. “It talks
about burn rates and melt rates, how hot the fire was in certain places, how fast
it burned, what damage was done.”

“And?” Aunt Ginny had gotten herself a coffee mug and was eyeing the machine as it
started to drip.

“What happened to the brasses?”

“Brasses?”

“Horse brasses.” I explained how Mr. Goran had acquired them. “But there’s no mention
of them.”

“Maybe he kept them somewhere else.”

“He didn’t. And when Aram did a walk-through of the damage, he found his father’s
keys. But no brasses.”

“Maybe they melted,” Aunt Ginny said.

“But the keys didn’t.”

“Maybe they have a different melting point.”

“Could you find out, Aunt Ginny? Could you ask the fire marshal?”

She opened her mouth, I think to say no. But when I took her cup from her and filled
it with coffee, she relented.

“I guess I could make a call,” she said.

SIXTEEN

“What’s the matter?” Ashleigh asked. “You haven’t touched your ice cream. This is
supposed to be a celebration.”

“Yeah.” Charlie frowned at me. “You got Aram out of jail. You figured out a ransom-blackmail
scheme. You’re a hero.”

“But I still haven’t cleared Mr. Goran. Curtis and Johnston deny having anything
to do with the fire, and I have nothing that even begins to prove them wrong.”

Ashleigh didn’t say anything. Neither did Charlie. Instead, they exchanged glances.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing,” Ashleigh said.

“Yeah, nothing,” Charlie agreed.

I studied their faces and shook my head. “You think Mr. Goran burned down his own
barn, don’t you?”

Ashleigh looked down at her sundae.

“Don’t you, Ashleigh?” I said.

“If he did, would anyone really blame him?” Her eyes met mine. “He thought his son
had been kidnapped. And Curtis made sure he couldn’t take out a loan anywhere else.
Maybe Mr. Goran thought he didn’t have any choice.”

“I bet if he gets a good lawyer, he can get off,” Charlie added. “You know, considering
that he was tricked.”

“There’s no way he would have set that fire or committed insurance fraud,” I said.

“But he didn’t actually commit fraud, did he?” Ashleigh said. “He didn’t have a chance
to contact the insurance company because he ended up in the hospital. So really,
all he did was burn down his own property. Charlie’s right. “I bet nothing happens
to him.” She paused. “Well, nothing legal, anyway.”

I understood why they thought what they did—that Mr. Goran had started the fire.
But I knew him better than they did, and not only was I positive that
he would not
do such a thing, I was equally sure he couldn’t. Not with his past.

“Mike burned down that barn.” It had to have been him. “Or his father did. Or both
of them. I know it.”

“I know you don’t like Mike,” Charlie said. “I’m not crazy about him either. But
I don’t think he did it.”

“Or, at least, he didn’t mean to lock Mr. Goran in,” Ashleigh said.

“Are you serious?” Okay, so maybe I didn’t understand why they thought what they
did. “Look at the facts. Both Mike and his father hate Mr. Goran for buying the farm.
They blame him for Clyde’s death. Ted doesn’t have a solid alibi for that night.
He says he was visiting his father’s grave, but he could be lying. No one saw him
there. He could have set that fire. He could have locked Mr. Goran in the barn. Then,
when he got the call about the fire and drove to the fire hall, he made sure that
he mentioned that he’d been at the cemetery. When he finally got back to Mr. Goran’s,
he pretended he didn’t hear Mr. Goran trying to get out of the barn.”

“Maybe he really
didn’t
hear him,” Charlie said quietly.

I glowered at him.

“
And
Mike is lying about being with his friends. I know he is. He hates Mr. Goran
as much as his father does. Maybe more. He broke into the barn more than once and
bragged about it at school. You said so yourself, Ashleigh. He hassled Mr. Goran
every chance he got. He trashed Aram’s stall at the market. And, Charlie, he refused
to allow your team to take that big donation from Mr. Goran, even though it meant
you guys didn’t win the prize.”

Charlie went red in the face. “Riley—” he began.

Ashleigh cut him off. “What big donation?” she asked.

“The hundred-dollar donation that Charlie got from Mr. Goran.”

“You got a hundred-dollar donation from Mr. Goran?” Ashleigh stared at him. “How
come you never said anything about it to me?”

“Thanks a lot, Riley,” Charlie muttered.

Uh-oh
. I had promised not to tell.

“I’m sorry, Charlie.”

He glowered across the table at me. “I would never tell anyone something you told
me in confidence. I would never do that.”

He stood up, dug some money out of his pocket and threw it onto the table before
storming out of the café.