Trial by Fire by Norah McClintock Read Free Book Online Page B

I’m going to write up a report
and keep an eye out for the kid you described.”
    “What if I see him again?”
    “Call us.” He seemed impatient to go.
    “Wait,” I said again. He shot me a look of undiluted annoyance. “Aren’t you going
to give me your card?”
    “I’m all out.”
    “Your name then?”
    He looked me in the eye. “Shears. Brian Shears.”
    He walked across to the Winters’s stall and spoke to Ted Winters, who shook his head.
He approached another stall, and then another. All he got in return was more head-shaking.
Meanwhile, Aram and I cleaned up the mess and packed our things. By then everyone
else was winding down too. Aram offered me a ride home, but I decided to stay behind.
    I was angry. Officer Shears couldn’t have been less helpful if he’d tried. I didn’t
know what his problem was, but there was no way I was going to let the incident slide.
I went from stall to stall and talked to the people who were packing up for the day.
Some people seemed sincere when they told me they’d been surprised to glance over
and see everything on the ground. Some were too far away to have noticed the commotion.
But there were other people, people whose booths were close by, who seemed less than
genuine when they said they’d seen nothing amiss. Some of them didn’t look me in
the eye when they spoke to me. None of them had any idea who the tall boy was that
I described to them, even though most of them had signs that advertised their farms
as being in Moorebridge. Were they some of the people who wouldn’t have lifted a
finger to call the fire department? What did they have against Mr. Goran?

SEVEN
    I walked up and down every street and alley in town, but I didn’t see the tall boy
or any of his friends. Or the girl who had silently watched the whole thing.
    When I finally gave up, exhausted, I realized that I would have to walk home—unless
I asked Aunt Ginny for a ride. After the mood she’d been in the night before, I decided
to take the exercise option.
    By the time I reached our driveway, I was sticky and sweaty. I let myself into the
house, had a shower, got something to eat and stretched out on a chaise under a massive
oak tree behind the house. I didn’t budge until Aunt Ginny shook me awake.
    “I’ve been calling you,” she said. “I even tried your cell.”
    “It’s in the house. What time is it?”
    “After six. I bought chicken. Let’s get supper ready.”
    When Aunt Ginny buys chicken, she doesn’t mean chicken that you can roast or fry.
She means a ready-to-eat chicken. If I’m lucky, it’s barbecued chicken from a grocery
store. If I’m unlucky, it’s fried chicken pieces from a fast-food joint. This time
it was a barbecued chicken. We made a salad to go with it and ate on the patio.
    “Did you find the dog beater?” I asked.
    “As a matter of fact, I did. One good thing about a small town: there’s always someone
who notices something.” That sure hadn’t been my experience, not today anyway. “I
kept asking around until I found a woman who’d heard about someone who supposedly
said something to someone else about hearing a dog yelping as if it was being beaten.
I tracked down that person, and she pointed me to a man who heard his neighbor’s
dog yowling a few nights ago. I showed him a picture, so I knew it was his neighbor’s
dog. When I talked to the neighbor, he said his dog had run off. He also said he
knew nothing about any beating and that someone else must have hurt the dog after
it ran away. But I finally got him to confess.”
    “How?”
    Aunt Ginny grinned. “I told him what a pain dogs are and how much I hated having
to chase them down to satisfy people like the mayor’s wife who put animal welfare
above people welfare. Then I told him about a dog I had once that never shut up and
how I’d got a friend of mine to drive it far away and dump it so I could tell my
parents he’d run away.” I must have looked horrified, because she added,