Trial by Fire (8 page)

“I’ve been looking for you,” I said.

“Really?” Her tone was as icy as a January morning.

Ashleigh and Taylor stared at me. They were probably wondering the same thing—how
could I have been looking for someone whom, as far as they knew, I had just met?

“I need a witness,” I said.

“Witness to what?” Ashleigh asked.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Madison said. She looked me right in
the eye when she said it. For a second I was confused. Was I mistaken about who she
was?

“At the market. You saw those boys who trashed my stall. Do you know any of them?”

Ashleigh shifted her gaze to Madison.

Madison shook her head. “I don’t know what you mean.” Before I could jog her memory,
she turned and walked away.

“What was that about? What stall? Who trashed it?” Ashleigh asked.

“It’s a long story.” I didn’t want to ruin the party mood, especially when I was
the new kid in town.

Taylor gave me a sympathetic look. “Don’t let Maddy get to you. She’s in a bad mood.
She has guy trouble.”

“As in the guy she’s hot for totally ignores her,” Ashleigh said. She leaned closer
to me. “You’re going to tell me later all about what happened at that stall, and
I mean it.”

I promised I would.

We strolled closer to the fire, where the action was, and Ashleigh introduced me
to more kids—so many that I doubted I would remember everyone’s name. She announced
that my aunt and I were new in town but said nothing about Aunt Ginny’s job. I was
grateful. I knew they would all find out sooner or later,
but there was no reason
it had to be right now. Taylor asked me a lot of questions. She wanted to know where
I’d lived before and how come I was living with my aunt now. She was fascinated when
I told her that I had more or less grown up on a tour bus with the famous sixties
rocker Jimmy Donovan.

“My parents have a bunch of his
CD
s,” she said. “They’re not bad. It’s only music
my parents play that doesn’t make me want to puke.”

I wasn’t surprised. Jimmy had survived on tour as long as he did because his music
appealed to everyone. In fact, his fan base seemed to expand the older he got.

The kids I met all talked about people I didn’t know or events I had never heard
of, but I was used to that. I’d spent most of my life traveling with Jimmy and the
band. That meant I was the new kid practically everywhere I went. Once school started,
I would catch up.

After a while someone opened a cooler full of hot dogs, and someone else passed around
sticks to roast them on. Bags of potato chips appeared. So did icy cans of soda.
The music got louder, and more kids started dancing. From the way some of them were
acting, I guessed they were drinking something other
than soda. But Ashleigh wasn’t
into that. Neither were her friends. A boy named Charlie Edison asked me if I wanted
to dance. He looked about my age and was my height, and he had a sweet, goofy smile.
Ashleigh assured me he was okay, so I said yes. That’s when the trouble started.

Charlie and I were dancing when someone stepped between us. A tall someone with a
mop of dirty-blond hair. The ringleader from the market. He stood close to me—too
close.

“Who invited
you
?” he demanded.

“What’s your problem, Mike?” Charlie said.

Mike didn’t even turn around to look at him. “No one’s talking to you, Lightbulb.”
I later found out that “Lightbulb” was what some kids called Charlie because of his
last name. Mike’s eyes drilled into mine. “No one wants you here.”

“Wrong as usual.” Charlie circled Mike, who was at least a head and a half taller
and much more muscular, and looked up at him. He didn’t seem intimidated.

Mike shoved Charlie—so hard that Charlie ended up on his butt in the sand. The kids
closest to the action stopped what they were doing and turned to watch.

“No one wants you here,” Mike said again. He was so close that I could smell the
hotdog on his breath.

Charlie jumped to his feet and tapped Mike on the shoulder.

“Hey, Beanstalk, for your information, I’ve been spending my summer studying. You
want to see what I’ve learned so far?”

“Buzz off, Shortstop.” Mike still didn’t look at Charlie. He reserved his squinty
little eyes for me and me alone. “If you were smart, you’d stay away from that Paki—and
from me.”

“Paki?” I hated that word. “I have no idea who you’re talking about.”

“He means the guy whose barn burned down,” Charlie said.

I stared at Mike. “Then you’re an idiot. Mr. Goran is from Turkey, not Pakistan.”

“Whatever,” Mike said. “And by the way, this is
my
beach and
my
beach party. You’re
not welcome here.”

Right. Like he thought I was going to fall for that.

“It’s not your beach. It’s a public place, just like that conservation area.” I nodded
toward the shore.

Char lie tapped Mike on the shoulder again. “Ahem.”

Mike spun around. “I told you to buzz off.”

I’m not one hundred percent sure what happened next because it happened so fast.
But for sure Charlie executed some kind of martial-arts move, and for sure Mike flew
into the air and described a perfect arc before landing flat on his back in the sand.
A collective
oooh!
went up from the crowd.

Charlie smiled down at Mike. “How about that?”

“Nice move,” I said.

“When there are guys like Mike in this world, and when there are people like me who
are, well, vertically challenged…” He shrugged. “I spent the first year of high school
being shoved into lockers. I got sick of it. So I’ve been taking measures.”

“And studying hard, I see.” I didn’t really approve of fighting, but it was quite
a move.

Mike rolled over. Some kids hurried over to him. One of them, I noticed, was Madison.

“Are you okay, Mike?” she asked.

A couple of guys helped Mike to his feet. He was seething. He glared at Charlie—and
at me.

“What’s going on here?” someone—a man—demanded. I didn’t remember seeing him around
the fire.

“That’s Ed,” Charlie told me. “He’s a park ranger—and a good guy.”

Ed must have overheard him, because he said, “That’s right, Charlie. I’m a good guy.”
If we’d been standing in daylight instead of the glow of a beach fire, I’m sure I
would have seen Charlie’s cheeks redden. “As long as there’s no trouble on my turf,
that is. No trouble means no fighting.” He looked pointedly at Mike and his friends,
who were lined up in menacing formation. “So again, what’s going on?”

“She works for Goran,” Mike said, jabbing a thumb at me. Some of the kids who weren’t
part of his posse peered at me with new interest. Some of their faces betrayed disdain.
I was glad Ashleigh wasn’t among that group. Neither was Charlie.

“I don’t care if she works for the Wicked Witch of the West,” Ed said. “No fighting,
period. If I catch you guys at it again, I’ll shut down your beach parties—for good.
You got that?” He stared at Mike until Mike nodded. Then he turned and looked at
every face in turn. One by one, kids nodded. “Good. And don’t think I won’t be keeping
an eye on you guys.”

Ed stood where he was until Mike and his buddies backed off to the edges of the crowd.

“Hey, Madison,” I heard Mike growl. “Did you bring my jacket?”

Ed watched them for a few moments before melting into the darkness.

“Is it true?” Ashleigh asked. “Do you work for Goran?”

“I helped him sell vegetables at the market this morning. Mike and his friends showed
up and destroyed the stall and the produce. What does he have against the Gorans?
What does everyone have against them?”

“
Them
?” she asked. “There’s more than one?”

“Mr. Goran’s son is in town. He’s the one I was helping.”

Ashleigh shook her head. “If you want to fit in around here, maybe you should stay
away from him.”

“You mean Mike?”

“I mean Goran. People don’t like him.”

“
Most
people don’t like him,” Charlie corrected. “And even that’s an overstatement.
The Winters and their friends don’t like him.”

“The Winters?” I said. “There was a Winters Farm stall at the market.”

Ashleigh nodded. “That’s them.”

“What do they have against Mr. Goran?”

“You haven’t heard?”

“Well, I know Mr. Goran—the father, not the son—bought the farm from Mr. Winters.
And Mr. Winters told Mr. Goran’s son that Mr. Goran stole the farm. But that’s it.”

“That’s exactly it,” Ashleigh said. “Ted Winters’s family has farmed in this area
since the mid-1800s. Up until two years ago, his father, Clyde, was farming the same
land his great-grandfather cleared and planted way back when. I don’t know much about
farming, but I do know that there are good years and bad years. Sometimes the bad
years have to do with the weather, and sometimes they have to do with things like
prices and subsidies. My dad tried to explain it to me, but it’s complicated.”

“All you really need to know is that Clyde had a bunch of bad years in a row,” Charlie
said. “And that they couldn’t have come at a worse time.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’d loaned Ted a lot of money for new equipment. Then there were a couple of drought
years. At the same time, Clyde decided to change his crop mix—that turned out to
be a bad decision. He’d taken out a
second mortgage on his place to get the equipment
for Ted, and then he started losing money because of the new crop. Finally, the bank
foreclosed on him and put the farm up for auction.”

“So what’s the big deal?”

“The big deal is that the auction wasn’t supposed to turn out the way it did.”

“Wasn’t
supposed
to?” I said. “Who knows how an auction is supposed to turn out?
It turns out the way it turns out—the highest bidder wins.”

“Boy, do you ever not understand Moorebridge!” Ashleigh shook her head again. “Ted
felt terrible that his father was going to lose the farm on his account. He didn’t
have the money to bail out Clyde. So instead he organized the other farmers in the
area—they’re a pretty tight bunch, especially the old-timers. He got everyone to
put up some money to help buy Clyde’s farm. It wasn’t a lot from each person, but
altogether it would meet the reserve bid—”

“Reserve bid?”

“The bank set a minimum price for the farm. That’s the reserve bid.”

“Oh.”

“But a couple of other people showed up at the auction who weren’t supposed to be
there,” Charlie said.

“Like Mr. Goran?” I asked.

“If you ask me, Ted should have talked to him and explained the situation,” Charlie
said. “Maybe he didn’t think Mr. Goran could outbid them. But he did. You should
have seen the look on Ted’s face.”

“You were there?”

Charlie nodded.

“How does Mike fit into this?”

“Clyde was his grandfather.”

“Was?”

“He died six months after he lost his farm at auction,” Charlie said. “Car accident.”

“
Single-car
accident,” Ashleigh said in an ominous voice. “Ted’s brother-in-law tried
to hush it up, but my dad knows the doctor who did the autopsy. Apparently Clyde
had been drinking, and his car went off the road. Ted says it happened because his
dad was depressed after losing the farm. He blames Mr. Goran.”

“All Mr. Goran did was show up at a public auction,” I said. “He just wanted a farm.
He’d wanted one ever since he left Kurdistan.”

“He just happened to pick the wrong farm in the wrong town,” Ashleigh said.

“And I guess farming here isn’t the same as farming in Kurdistan,” Charlie added.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he burned down his barn to collect the insurance money, didn’t he? So the
place must have been in trouble.”

“Maybe he didn’t do it.”

Both Charlie and Ashleigh looked at me as if I were a hopelessly muddled newcomer.

“You said Ted Winters’s brother-in-law tried to hush up the autopsy results,” I said.
“So the Winters family must have a lot of influence around here.”

“Not really. But Brian’s a cop, just like—” Ashleigh caught herself and stopped abruptly.
She’d been going to say just like my aunt.

Brian?
“Brian Shears?” I asked.

“Don’t tell me you know him too,” Ashleigh said.

“I met him at the market this morning. He’s Mike’s uncle?”

Ashleigh nodded.

No wonder he hadn’t been overly keen to find out who had trashed Aram’s stall.

We stayed at the party until well after midnight, which is when Ashleigh started
yawning.

“I did a ten-hour shift today,” she said. “It’s catching up with me. You ready to
go?”

I was.

Charlie looked disappointed.

“Relax, Romeo,” Ashleigh said. “She’s spending the night at my house. She’s not leaving
town. You two can get together another time.”

“Can we?” Charlie asked me shyly.

Suddenly I felt just as shy. He was cute. He was fun. And he was spunky enough to
have taken on Mike Winters.