by Joan Bauer
—A concerned citizen
I couldn’t believe it! Someone was contacting me. This could blow this story wide open.
Or it could be a fake.
Even worse, it could be dangerous.
I showed the message to Baker, who half smiled at the calligraphy. “Run it by the sheriff.”
I called Sheriff Metcalf, read it to him on the phone.
“A pink envelope doesn’t sound too threatening, but you never know. Have you got a white towel?”
4:37 P.M.
I put a white towel on the front porch railing and looked up and down the street clandestinely. I hoped it was big enough to see; all I had was a hand towel.
My phone rang. It was Zack.
“I need to talk to you,” he said gravely. “I need to come over.”
“I’m here…”
I sat by the window, peering out. A gust of wind knocked my towel onto the ground. I ran outside, put it back in place, and stuck a garden rock onto top of it just in case.
Okay, source, all has been made ready.
The only car that pulled into the driveway was Zack’s. He trudged up the steps, looking worried.
“I have to ask you something, Hildy.”
“What?” I kept looking out the window.
“I need some help with an experiment. I have this hypothesis and I need to test it. One part I know for sure, the other I don’t.”
“What are you testing?” I was watching for my source.
He took a deep breath. “Well, here’s the thing. I know how I feel about you, Hildy. What I need to know is how you feel about me.”
What did he just say?
I turned from the window and looked at him. He scratched his head. He was so cute when he did that.
“I really like you, Hildy. All the data confirms it.” He laughed. “And I’ve been collecting a lot of it.”
I grinned. “I really like you, too.”
He took my hand; I heard a sound in the driveway. I ran to the window, saw a rear bumper heading down the road. I slapped my hand against the door.
“I can’t believe it!” I shouted.
Zack looked at me strangely.
I put my head in my hands.
“Did I say something wrong?” he asked nervously.
“No, no.” I took both his hands, told him about the pink envelope and everything.
“If you let go of one of my hands,” Zack finally said, “I could put it around your shoulder.”
“I can do that.”
He moved in close. “I know this is kind of fast,” he said.
I laughed. “You call this fast?”
He cleared his throat. “Well, glaciers take centuries.”
He kissed me right there, too—a good slow one.
I stepped back, breathless. The best things take time.
Chapter 24
Right after Thanksgiving, the mayor’s big Town Hall meeting was cancelled. Then anothor pink envelope arrived in my mailbox.
I tore it open to the curlicue writing.
I’ve been sick.
Meet me at Toys “R” Us in the Barbie section tomorrow at 5:00 P.M.
Come alone.
I showed it to Baker, who said, “Bring someone with you.”
Toys “R” Us. Zack put on a wool cap and sunglasses.
“You look like a bank robber,” I observed.
“No toy is safe.”
“You go to the Barbies,” Zack said. “I’ll go to the action toys.” He flexed his muscles. “You have your phone if anything goes wrong?”
“I’ll probably just scream.”
“I’ll listen for that.” He kissed my nose.
To appear normal, I got a cart and put a Strawberry Shortcake All You Can Be makeup set in it—half off, too.
I walked past the weapons section—handguns, plastic rifles, machine guns, swords, extra bullets. A miserable father stood with his son in front of the model airplanes.
“We can put one together, just you and me, Mikey.”
“I don’t want one in pieces, Daddy! I want a whole one!”
Not my source. I turned left to the Barbies—rows and rows of them.
“Psst.”
I looked around.
“Psst.”
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Go to the Fashion Fever Barbie,” a woman’s voice directed.
“Which one is that?”
“Hair highlights, glam outfit.”
I found a Barbie in an iridescent purple dress.
The voice said, “I am standing in the other aisle to not be detected.”
“Okay, that’s working.”
“I have information for you. Are you ready to receive it?”
I took out my pad. “Yes.”
“I have information that Pen Piedmont is being paid to write articles about the Ludlow house and the Red Road properties,” she said.
Wow. I wrote that down. “Who’s paying him?”
“Midian Associates.”
I shouted, “How do you know this?”
A child looked at me strangely.
“Keep your voice down. I work there, okay? I know what money is going out and coming in.” Her voice sounded so familiar—that touch of irritation, that nasal tone.
“You work at Midian Associates?” I asked to clarify.
“I work at The Bee.”
This was unbelievable! “Do you know why they want him to write these articles?”
“So that the real estate prices would go down and people would want to sell cheap.”
My breath caught in my throat. If this was true…
“I think they’re paying the psychic, too,” she said. “That’s all I can say for now.”
“No, wait. I need to—”
“That’s it. Don’t leave where you are for fifteen minutes. If you do, I won’t contact you again.”
I stood there waiting. All the Barbies’ eyes seemed to be watching me. A man walked down my aisle and eyed the dolls. That seemed suspicious.
Then it occurred to me—how would she know if I left? Did she have spies?
“Hildy!”
It was Zack running toward me. “I followed her out,” he said.
“You saw her!”
He held up his phone. “I got a photo of her.”
“You’re a genius.”
He smiled intelligently and showed me the picture.
The face was fuzzy but unmistakable. It was Veronica Blitzer, my old babysitter. She always had an obsessive thing for Barbies, too. Zack pressed 411, got the number for The Bee, and called it.
“Veronica Blitzer, please.…When will she be back?…” He wiggled his eyebrows at me and said into the phone, “Who else do I talk to about running an ad?… Oh, she doesn’t handle ads?… Got it.… I’ll call back.” Zack snapped his phone shut and smiled. “It’s better than we could imagine.”
“What?”
Zack laughed. “It’s just so good.”
“What?”
“She’s the bookkeeper. She knows where the money goes.”
I grabbed Zack’s arm. “Did I mention you were a genius?”
He put his arm around me. “It’s always okay to repeat it.”
I told Baker what I’d found out. I told the sheriff, too.
“I’m not sure that a bookkeeper would have access to that kind of information,” Baker said. “How certain are you this person is on the level?”
“I’m pretty certain.”
“Is there any other way you can confirm the information?”
What does he want? A signed confession? “I’m going to lose this story!”
“Before you accuse the local publisher and a real estate tycoon of gross misrepresentation and manipulating the public trust, do yourself a favor, Biddle—make sure you’re right.”
On Red Road the news was grim. Two more families were about to sell their farms to Midian Associates at painfully low prices. Lacey Horton’s family was barely
holding on. Lacey told me their phone had been disconnected; they couldn’t pay the bill.
Nan had put together one of her blessing baskets for the Hortons, with baked goods, applesauce, and a ham. Zack and I drove to Lacey’s house to drop it off.
A black Cadillac was in the driveway when we pulled up. We ran out and headed to the kitchen door. It was open, and through the screen door, we heard a man’s gruff voice.
“You’ll never survive. You think you’re going to sit here in the middle of progress and not sell to us?”
I gave Zack the basket, took out my notepad, and started writing what I heard.
“That’s what I aim to do, mister.” Was that Lacey’s dad talking?
“I’m telling you people once more. This is the best price we’re willing to pay for your orchard.”
“That’s not even close to a fair price, mister!”
“We don’t want your house, we don’t want your apple trees. We’ve got bulldozers on the way, pal. I’m telling you now, it’s not going to be pleasant around here. We’re razing the land we’ve bought. That’s what this is about.”
“Get out!” Lacey’s dad commanded.
Zack motioned to me and we ran to the side of the house.
We heard the sound of a car pulling fast out of the driveway.
“Massachusetts plates, Hildy. I got the license number.”
“Good!”
I could hear a woman crying in the kitchen.
Lacey’s dad was shouting, “Who in God’s name do they think they are?”
“We’ve got a basket to deliver,” Zack said. He took my hand and we walked to the Hortons’ back door.
We knocked and walked into the kitchen. Mrs. Horton and Lacey were sitting at the table. Mr. Horton looked up.
Zack put the basket on the table.
“I heard what happened, Mr. Horton. I hope you’re going to call the sheriff. You need protection.” I yanked my phone out, offered it to him.
Mrs. Horton said, “I’ll get the phone book for the sheriff’s office.”
“I know the number.” I had it on speed dial. I gave Mr. Horton the phone.
“It’s going to be all right,” I said to them. “We’re going to stand together on this.”
“Well, well, well,” said Baker. “Look what we’ve got here.”
Here was Baker’s computer screen. He’d called an old friend at the DMV, who’d quickly traced the Massachusetts license plate on the black Cadillac of the cold-hearted creep who had threatened Lacey and her family.
“Seems the bad guy’s car is registered to none other than D&B Security in Boston.”
“What?” That’s where Houston Bule and Donny Lupo worked. “I thought they’d gone out of business!” I shouted.
“Guess not.”
My mind tried to make sense of this. “So that means the creep in the Cadillac doesn’t just work for D&B, he works for Midian Associates.”
“You’ve got it, kid,” Baker said. “Call your source. Tell her what you already know.”
I punched in Veronica Blitzer’s number as Baker walked out the door.
After five rings she answered.
“Veronica,” I said into the phone, “this is Hildy Biddle.”
No sound.
“Veronica?”
A quiet “yes.”
“I believe you contacted me because you want to help this town. I need to understand what you know and how you know it. I will never use your name. I promise.”
Absolute silence.
“Veronica, please help me.”
She took a big breath. “A while ago, I found some holes in The Bee’s financial records that didn’t make sense—big checks were coming in from Midian for ‘advertising’ and we’d never run any advertising for Midian—not once. I went to Pen. He said we were publishing advertorials for Midian. That didn’t sound right. I started looking deeper.”
Their master plan is to turn the Ludlow house along with the Red Road properties into a haunted tourist attraction. In the process, Pen Piedmont, editor and publisher of The Bee, has been paid twenty-five thousand dollars by Midian Associates to write articles denouncing the state of the properties in addition to being a partner in the enterprise. Midian hired Donald Lupo and Houston Bule of D&B Security to break into the Ludlow house allegedly to use scare tactics to frighten neighbors, but that plan was stopped when Bule was arrested and, later, Lupo was found dead on the property from a heart attack. Midian Associates also paid Madame Zobek to come to Banesville and con local residents into believing that the ghost of old man Ludlow was present, dangerous, and deadly. The amount Zobek was paid for her part in this corrupt corruption is unconfirmed, a source close to the investigation said. At least three people were paid by Pen Piedmont to put up the frightening signs that appeared on the Ludlow property beginning in the summer.
The strong-armed tactics of Midian Associates were well known among the orchard owners of Red Road. “They sent a big guy to threaten us,” one owner recalled. Other orchard owners felt that the safety of their families could be at risk if they did not sell their property at below market prices to Midian.
I wrote and rewrote and checked my notes and ate cinnamon cookies until my sugar level had me on the ceiling. Finally, at 5:00 A.M. I was done.
I sent the article to Baker, leaned over my desk, and fell asleep.
Mom woke me at 8:00 A.M., holding out the phone. “Baker for you.”
Reaching for consciousness, I croaked out, “Hi.”
“It’s great, Biddle. You nailed them.”
“Thanks.”
“Take out corrupt corruption. It’s too much.”
I liked that.
“But you’re still not done.”
I caught my reflection in the mirror—rumpled hair, sallow skin, dark circles. I sure looked done. Overdone.
“Call Piedmont and Midian. Read the article to them over the phone. Ask them if they have any comments.”
That woke me up. “Are you kidding?”
“Cover all the bases, kid.”
“But I’m clandestine.”
“So, you’re calling on behalf of The Peel. You want to give them a chance to respond.”
“But Piedmont has never done that for us!”
“That’s right. Remind him of how it’s done.”
Chapter 25
It was a slow morning for crime, and Sheriff Metcalf was eating a glazed apple doughnut when Zack and I walked into his office, holding hands.
“Can I use the phone, Sheriff?” I asked him.
“Are you all right?”
I explained about calling Martin Midian and Pen Piedmont and what I’d discovered. I showed him my article. “I thought I should call from here.”
He pressed line three. “Take it at the back desk,” he said. “I’ll pick up when it starts ringing.”
It’s easy to be brave when you’re writing in a room all by yourself. It’s much harder to hold on to courage when you have to confront someone.
Zack put a hand on my shoulder as I tried to reach Martin Midian. He was unavailable for comment.
Suit yourself. I made the next call.
“The Bee,” the receptionist answered cheerily.
“Pen Piedmont, please.”
“Who’s calling?”
I took a deep breath. Time to come out of the shadows. “This is Hildy Biddle calling on behalf of The Peel.”
She gasped. I heard a click.
“Piedmont.”
No turning back now. “Mr. Piedmont, this is Hildy Biddle. The Peel is running an article and we wanted to give you the opportunity to respond.” No sound on the other line. “Mr. Piedmont… ?”
“Read it to me,” he snapped.
I did and it wasn’t easy, especially since after every sentence he started yelling that it was all a lie and he was going to call his lawyer and if we published that fiction he’d bring us down every way he knew how.
I wrote down everything he said. “Is
that all you have to say, sir?”
Not exactly. He let loose a string of four-letter words and hung up. I wrote those down, too; my hand was shaking.
If you need to be popular, journalism is not for you.
The sheriff said, “We’ll make sure your papers get distributed.” He stood up and headed out the door. “I’ll be over at The Bee. Mr. Piedmont and I are going to have a nice long talk.”
We don’t know whether the talk was nice or not. We do know that it was long. Pen Piedmont denied everything and accused The Peel of libel, which meant we knowingly printed things about him that weren’t true. Then Sheriff Metcalf called Martin Midian as The Peel came out in full voice. My headline read:
BANESVILLE’S REAL GHOSTS
The sheriff took the papers to the official drop-off centers and guarded them as shopkeepers and other distributors picked them up.
It was a new day, all right.
Piles of unopened Bees were left on the streets for recycling.
Signs in shops sprouted up.
We do not carry The Bee anymore.
Proud distributors of The Peel.
The sign at Lull’s Cheap Gas was my favorite: Get Peeled Here.
Pen Piedmont tried to backpedal, saying that Midian Associates was paying him for “advertising consultation” on the ads they were planning to run for the real estate project.
Madame Zobek declared that ghosts were gathering on the high school property and we’d better watch out!
Zack and I were feeling the rightness of our relationship. I trusted him so much, I told him about how Nathan and Lev had cheated on me.
He held me close. “I can’t imagine anyone with a brain wanting any other girlfriend except you.”
I was sitting with Zack at Minska’s, watching Jarek’s cousin lift huge barbells up and down outside. Weightlifters get the point across that a place is heavily guarded.
“Do you like guys like that?” Zack asked quietly.
I took his hand. “I like brainy guys.”
“I’d better keep reading then,” he said, squeezing my hand.
That’s when Madame Zobek walked in. She paused at the door for an extra moment to make sure everyone saw her.
