Peeled (4 page)

Not bad for a start. Of course, I needed more, like who was arrested. If the sheriff wouldn’t talk to me, how could I find that out?

It would have helped if we’d had an adviser. Mr. Loring, our beloved adviser, took early retirement last June and moved to Florida.

How he could leave us, I’ll never know.

Darrell stomped in, enveloped by journalistic passion. “This just in, Hildy. The man arrested in the break-in is going before Judge Forrester today at two o’clock.”

Darrell checked the chart on the wall where he’d taped the staff’s class schedules.

“Perfect. You have a study hall from 1:50 to 2:45 today,” he noted. “Are we on top of this or what?” Darrell looked at me with emotion as the overhead fluorescent light flickered. “I want the story behind the story. So get over to the courthouse and let them know who we are!”

“The bold voice of Banesville High,” I mumbled.

Darrell jabbed the air as Royko buzzed around his head.

I’d never been in a courtroom before. A man in a brown suit sat at one of two tables in front of the judge’s elevated desk. I had no idea what to do, but jumping in with both feet is one of my endearing qualities.

“Excuse me,” I said to the man. “Are you here about the attempted break-in at the Ludlow house? I’m supposed to cover this for my high school newspaper.”

“I’m waiting for the judge,” he said dismissively.

Nobody takes teenage reporters seriously.

A uniformed man walked into the courtroom and announced, “All rise.”

Judge Forrester walked in, looking stern. He was the father of Nathan Forrester, my first former boyfriend, who cheated on me with Leandra Penn.

I waved at the judge and he looked surprised to see me. I found a seat in the back, and whipped out my notepad.

A middle-aged man wearing black pants, a black shirt, and sneakers was brought in.

The uniformed man told the judge this was the defendant, Houston Bule.

Great name. I wrote that down.

“Mr. Bule,” Judge Forrester began, “can you tell me why you were on the Ludlow property at five o’clock this morning?”

Bule said, “I was there working security.”

“For whom?”

The man in the brown suit stood. “Your Honor, my client works part-time for D&B Security.”

Judge Forrester interrupted. “I’d like Mr. Bule to tell me his story.”

“I was brought in by D&B,” Bule explained. “People had been trespassing on the property. We were looking to see how to make the house safer. That’s all I know.”

“Now, I’m just a simple country judge, Mr. Bule, but explain to me why that needed to be done
at five o’clock in the morning.”

“That’s when they told me to do it.”

Judge Forrester looked at some papers. “The arresting deputy’s report, Mr. Bule, said you were trying to pick the lock at the Ludlow kitchen door. Why would you do that, sir?”

“I forgot the keys.”

“I see. And who told you to pick the lock?”

“The boss, Donny Lupo. He said Martin would be mad if we didn’t do the job.”

“Who’s Martin?”

“No idea.”

Judge Forrester pressed on. “Where is Mr. Lupo now, Mr. Bule?”

“I don’t know. I went one way; Donny went the other.”

The man in the brown suit stood again. “Your Honor, D&B Security is a bonded—”

The judge raised his hand for silence. “Your client has three prior breaking-and-entering convictions. Until we locate Mr. Lupo, we’ll keep Mr. Bule safe and well-fed in our county jail.”

“Your Honor, I propose under the circumstances that bail be set.”

“Picking a lock is a serious offense in this county.
Remand.”
Judge Forrester slammed his gavel down.

I can see why Nathan twitched whenever his father came in the room.

I wrote,
what’s remand?

Bule was led away. The man in the brown suit marched past me out the double doors.

I walked out of the courtroom, too. I stopped at the front desk and asked the woman behind it, “What does
remand
mean?”

“Held in custody until the next court appearance,” she explained.

“Cool.” I wrote that down, then looked up at the town banner hanging on the wall.

Uh…
not
quite…

When I got home, I added the new information to my article.

The alleged intruder, Houston Bule, was arrested and is being held without bail in the county courthouse while another man—

A knock on my bedroom door. My cousin Elizabeth came in carrying a yellow smiley-face candle. We’ve lived together for three years, ever since Mom and I moved here after Dad died. Her blond hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail. She has a pretty, heart-shaped face.

“Nan says we have to come down now.” It was Friday night—our family’s big push to get ready for the Saturday farmers market. Elizabeth put the smiley-face candle on my desk.

“I think the entire Ludlow thing is beyond creepy, Hildy, and I think we should all light candles or something, you know, to dispel the darkness.” She lit the candle; the flame illuminated the happy face. She put a card next to it that read:

Little candle burning bright

Bring your light into this night.

“I’m praying you’ll be okay writing about the ghost,” she said.

I smiled. “So far it’s working.”

“I don’t think you realize, Hildy, that Darrell gave you this assignment because he knows you’re the only one who can handle it.” She plopped on my bed, exuding sweetness. It wasn’t fake, either, although I admit, when we first started living together, I didn’t think she was for real. Nan said Elizabeth was like God’s little flower blooming in a land of weeds.

This begged a question.

“Am I a weed?” I asked Nan.

“You’re a flower, too, Hildy.”

“Which one?” I hoped she wasn’t going to say a snapdragon.

Nan pointed out the window to her garden, a gift to the neighborhood. “Why, you’re a rose, darlin’. You’ve got a few prickly parts, but they’re nothing compared to the beauty you put out.”

I could live with that.

Elizabeth hugged the bed pillow she’d made me that read,
NEVER
,
NEVER
GIVE
UP
. “You don’t ever seem afraid, Hildy.”

That surprised me. “I’m scared lots of times. I guess I don’t like to show it.”

“I think you’re brave.”

“Well, thanks.”

Elizabeth is brave, too, but in less obvious ways. Her mom died when she was a baby, and she and her dad, Felix, are a lot like cheese and chocolate—it’s hard to imagine them blending together. I mentioned this to her once, but Elizabeth found the exception. She made dinner that night—chicken with melted cheese and Mexican mole sauce, a kind of chocolate gravy. Nan, Mom, and I loved it. Uncle Felix had fourths.

“We’d better get downstairs, Hildy.” Elizabeth headed out the door.

I didn’t mind working on Friday nights. The “early to bed, early to rise” farming gene missed me completely, but I loved helping with the food that came from our kitchen.

I watched the smiling candle melt into a fiendish grin.

Little candle burning hot

Do we have a ghost or not?

Huge pots of Nan’s chunky applesauce cooled on the stove; the aroma of cinnamon filled the kitchen. Nan’s applesauce is famous in these parts, and bottling it fresh was a family enterprise.

My mother opened the box of new applesauce labels she and Elizabeth had created. It had a photo of Nan looking caring and rural.

Mom, the marketing brains of the family, said
grandma, homemade
, and
country
were buzzwords to success. She was cutting blue-checked fabric to put over the jar lids. Mom’s strawberry blond hair was pulled back in a braid, the freckles on her cheeks at their peak as summer was ending. People say I look a lot like her, which is such a compliment.

“I heard the Hardines might be selling their place dirt cheap,” Nan said. The Hardines lived next door to the Ludlow house.

“The Schmidts on Red Road are thinking about selling, too,” Mom added. “And I don’t know if the Hortons can make it.”

That was Lacey’s family. “Not even with a good harvest this year?” I asked.

“We don’t know what they had to borrow to get through the last two years, Hildy.”

“And they’re not big enough to do a pick-your-own business,” Felix added. We had forty acres and counted on school groups and the tourist trade to keep going. “If we had to rely on just selling to wholesalers, the way the grocery market’s changed, we’d be on the street.”

“I’d sell a kidney first,” Nan muttered.

She always threatened to do that.

Nan checked the caramel sauce for her apple cake, then took two pans of apple brownies from the oven. The big wooden kitchen table was piled high with apple chutney, apple syrup, apple brown Betty, and apple bread. Juan-Carlos, our best worker, was packing the food into crates. I sipped a glass of Nan’s cider. We Biddles have unfiltered cider flowing in our veins.

Mom looked up, her eyes sparkling. “Okay, everyone, what’s the underlying reason that people buy apples?” As vice president of the county’s Apple Alliance, she’s always asking the big apple questions.

“Because they taste good,” Elizabeth offered.

“Go deeper,” Mom said.

“They’re good for you,” Elizabeth added. This was true—apples were low in carbs, had no fat, were a major source of fiber—a dieter’s dream because they fill you up.

“Color,” I mentioned. “Crunch, crispness.”

Uncle Felix sat at the table, picked a Jonagold apple from a crate, and held it up. His face was tired from working all day, but his eyes shone when he held the fruit. There was something unusually tender in the way he said, “I think it’s because of something we all remember and want to hold on to.”

Mom smiled and wrote that down. Felix can be a philosopher, depending on his mood. He tried to sneak an apple brownie.

“I saw that, Daddy.” Elizabeth snatched it from his hand. “You know what the doctor said.”

The doctor said Felix needed to lose seventy pounds, and never had a man been less committed to the process.

“Man wasn’t meant to be thin,” he complained. “It’s unhealthy.”

Nan ladled applesauce into sterilized jars. “I’ll tell you what’s unhealthy—what’s happening over on Farnsworth Road.”

“Let’s not start in with that,” Felix grumbled.

Elizabeth beamed. “Hildy’s writing about it.”

All the adults turned to me.

“Just a little,” I muttered. My family didn’t think much of the Ludlow legend.

“She went to the courthouse today,” Elizabeth added.

“It was during my study hall,” I explained. This news wasn’t going over big.

Thankfully, the phone rang. Being a teenager, I lunged for it. “Hello?”

“This is Sheriff Metcalf calling for Felix.”

“Oh, hi, it’s Hildy.”

He didn’t respond to that. I handed the phone to Felix. “It’s the sheriff.”

“Kind of late to be calling,” Nan said.

It was ten-thirty. I tried to read Felix’s face.

“Uh-huh…,” he said into the phone.

All females present listened.

“Where was he found?” Felix said flatly.