Adam Canfield of the Slash (17 page)

Spring Boland was quiet. A hard question. It might be good to back off, let people forget, and have the Herbs go after the hoops later. Mrs. Boland was a firm believer that the public was pretty stupid and would forget almost everything, including their own names, if you gave them time.

But there was a principle at stake. Mrs. Boland believed in an iron fist when it came to zoning. That was the reason she’d asked her dear husband to get her appointed to the zoning board in the first place — she didn’t want Tremble turning into a slum. Someone had to keep up standards. Tremble might be one of the richest suburbs in the Tri-River Region, but as far as Mrs. Boland was concerned, it still had far too many homes with aluminum siding, chainlink fences, and aboveground pools. And those tiny shotgun houses in the Willows? What were people thinking? Why would anyone want to live like that? She envisioned a major beautification push; she wanted the county to buy all those nasty little houses, tear them down, and arrange for a builder to put up mini-estates on half-acre lots. One of the five real estate companies her Sumner owned had already bought a few of those horrible places and boarded them up, but at this rate, Mrs. Boland feared it could take years to tear down the Willows.

Basketball hoops were a perfect starting point for her master plan. And the best thing was, they were totally against the law, a blatant violation of 200-52.7A.

They had become an obsession; once she started noticing them, she couldn’t stop seeing the rusty, weathered monstrosities everywhere. Some fiberglass, some plastic, some wood, some metal; all in all, a mishmash of bad taste. Kids belonged on playgrounds, off the streets, safe and out of view. She had tried explaining this to that bothersome family living down the road from her West Tremble estate. Actually,
she
hadn’t explained it to them — she’d sent her caretaker. This family was one of those large, noisy, sticky-looking assemblages — four children — with a portable hoop out front and kids playing most of the weekend and weekdays after school with their friends. Sometimes there were a dozen juveniles on the street, their bikes, scooters, and skateboards sprawled on the sidewalk, and Mrs. Boland could barely navigate her four-ton Ford Excursion past them. When Mrs. Boland’s caretaker had politely suggested the playground idea to the sticky children’s mother, the woman had become quite agitated. Her exact words, as reported by the caretaker, were: “Tell that Boland woman to drop dead.”

Whenever she thought about that, Mrs. Boland wanted to rip down every last illegal hoop with her bare hands.

“Mrs. Boland?” said Herb Green into the phone, interrupting her thoughts. “Mrs. Boland? You still there? You want to give us any direction on this accessory structure situation?”

Did she ever. They were going on the offensive. There would be a major public campaign. They had the law on their side. “Boys!” she yelled. “Red-tag every last one of those freakin’ hoops!”

She hung up and called Mrs. Marris at Harris. “Marris!” she barked, and then reamed out the principal for letting the basketball story into the paper. Nor did she get any nicer when Mrs. Marris explained that she, too, thought every hoop should be torn down. “Marris, don’t you try to butterball me up,” said Mrs. Boland. “If you can’t control those little monsters, we can find another Harris principal mighty fast.” And she slammed down the phone.

The following week, Adam was channel surfing when he caught a report on Cable News 12. The anchor said it was the first in a ten-part series, “Zoning Violations: The Silent Scourge.” The one minute and forty-five second report consisted of Peter Friendly and a cameraman walking around poor neighborhoods in the Tri-River’s three big cities, showing knocked-over garbage cans, dilapidated chainlink fences, stray dogs, and boarded-up aluminum-sided houses.

To provide some perspective on the Silent Scourge, Peter Friendly had interviewed Mrs. Boland.

The report ended with an ominous warning to viewers at home: “This is what happens when zoning laws are not enforced. I’m Peter Friendly, with another exclusive investigative report from Cable News 12.”

Adam caught several installments — Mrs. Boland was in every one — but there was never a mention of a basketball hoop.

That month’s
Slash
had one other big impact. On a Saturday in late October, after Jennifer got home from basketball practice, but before she left for a cello lesson, the phone rang. Of course, one of the twins grabbed it — they hogged everything.

It was some grownup lady for Jennifer.

“Would this be Jennifer, the journalistic savant?” said the woman.

“I’m not sure,” said Jennifer.

“Well, I’m just calling to convey my gratitude,” said the woman. “Thanks to you, I have my cow back.” The lady on Breckenridge Road. The plywood cow! It had been returned.

“Do you have time for this, darling? You’ll enjoy it,” said the woman. “A few days after the
Slash
appeared, a man called the house while I was having my evening cocktail. Very mysterious conversation, reminded me of one of those pivotal moments in an Agatha Christie novel. The caller said he wished to remain anonymous. How delicious is that? He said he had overheard two boys talking about
the cow.
He gave me a phone number and a few useful tips on where it might be stashed.”

Jennifer grabbed the only thing handy, a pile of napkins and a Magic Marker, and started scribbling. “OK to take a few notes?” she asked.

“Be my guest,” said the woman. “So I dialed the number and a man answered. He said he didn’t know anything about a cow. I asked, ‘Do you think it might possibly be in your son’s room?’ The man said, ‘I don’t know. I’ll get back to you.’ I was surprised. He didn’t seem at all upset by my insinuation.”

“You didn’t call the police?” asked Jennifer.

“Oh no,” said the woman. “I always prefer back channels whenever possible. The intrigue is so superior. Well, the next day the man called back, said his teenagers would be by that afternoon with the cow. Sure enough, a few hours later, two young swells in a sporty convertible ride up our drive with the cow in the back seat. They seemed a bit sheepish about the cow and proceeded to tell me a confusing story about getting it from a friend who wanted to remain nameless. I didn’t ask questions. Of course, they lied like they breathed.”

Jennifer was having trouble keeping up; it was one juicy quote after the next. She was going to use up all the napkins and maybe the tablecloth, too.

“So my question,” said the woman, “is where do I send the check?”

“The check?” said Jennifer.

“The hundred-dollar reward,” said the woman. “I certainly am not going to give it to those hooligans in the convertible. You’re the one who got my cow back.”

“Ohhhh,” Jennifer moaned.

“What is it, my dear?”

“I can’t,” said Jennifer. “It would be like paying the newspaper for a story.”

“Really?” said the woman.

“No offense,” said Jennifer, “but if newspapers took money from people to do stories, pretty soon only the rich people would have stories.”

There was silence on the line, and Jennifer was nervous. Had she offended this nice lady? It was a real pain in the butt, being Miss Journalism Ethics. Why did she always have to be the responsible one?

“Jennifer,” the woman said finally, “you remember how I found you? Through your mother at the garden club? You probably don’t know this — your mother’s hydrangeas are legendary. But I see now, she has raised something even more extraordinary than those magnificent violet flowers.
You,
my dear! No one knows better than a rich old lady like me all the cheaty things people will do for money. It is so encouraging to know that you and the
Slash
cannot be bought. Tell me this — would it be a violation of anything to write you a check for a mail subscription to the
Slash
?”

“Oh no,” said Jennifer. “That’s perfectly legal. But we can only charge for postage; the paper’s free.”

“A deal,” said the woman. “I can’t remember the last time I so enjoyed a Tremble newspaper. Since that awful Boland man bought the
Citizen,
the
Gazette,
the
Herald,
and the
Advertiser
and merged them into one paper, there has not been an ounce of real news in Tremble. And this should make your day — did you know that Cable News 12 is following your story? They’re coming by this afternoon to do a special report on my cow.”

Jennifer gathered up all the paper napkins. Some had just three or four words. She’d used most of the bag; putting them in the right order would take forever. It was worth it, though. Adam would be impressed. They could run a photo of the returned cow in the November issue. She could see the headline superimposed on the back half of the cow: “A Happy Ending!”

Sitting alone in the kitchen, a rare quiet moment on a weekend afternoon, Jennifer was hoping maybe happy endings were contagious. Maybe they’d get a happy ending for the story on Marris stealing the seventy-five thousand dollars. They sure needed one.

They skipped lunch and ducked into 306. Adam ripped a sheet of lined paper from his science binder, and together he and Jennifer made a list of what they knew and what they still had to nail down for the Miss Bloch story. They felt certain about what had actually happened — that Marris had pocketed the seventy-five-thousand-dollar gift for her own greedy purposes. But as the two of them drew up their list, Jennifer shook her head more and more. “We don’t have every bit of proof,” she kept saying. “We need more sources.”

They knew the gift was supposed to be for kids. In his notebook Adam had highlighted the neighbor’s quote in yellow and read it out loud to Jennifer, banging his fist on the sofa for emphasis. “The money,” he read, “was supposed to be used to ‘generally improve the life of deserving children who do not have an easy time of it.’ Those are the exact words. On the record.”

Even Jennifer agreed that the neighbor was a superb source. She was Miss Bloch’s only friend and was letting the
Slash
print her name.

Also very important: everything the neighbor said could be checked with the lawyer who drew up Miss Bloch’s will, and Adam had the man’s phone number.

So they felt sure they had enough information to write about how the money was
supposed
to be used.

As to how the money was
actually
being used — what Marris did with the loot — this was the part where things got murky and Jennifer kept mumbling, “We haven’t nailed it yet.”

They could find no evidence that the money had been spent on kids; Jennifer had snooped around but had not heard of one new project or scholarship that seemed to be what Miss Bloch had wanted.

They knew that Marris had twisted Miss Bloch’s words, claiming the money could be used for “general improvements.”

“General improvements” was just the sort of vague phrase that could justify anything, including Marris’s own new bathroom, custom shelves, and electronic equipment.

“General improvements” set off the alarm in their coeditor brains that flashed
COVER-UP
!
COVER-UP
!

“General improvements” sounded really lame.

But how to prove that the money was actually used by Marris for her own purposes? How could they
prove
those were the very same dollars Marris had spent on the Bunker projects?

To Adam, it seemed obvious. “Come on,” he said, “it has to be true.”

“No, it doesn’t have to be true,” said Jennifer. “How do we know that Marris isn’t using her own money for the Bunker work or some special school fund and still hasn’t decided what to do with Miss Bloch’s money?”

Adam’s mouth opened, but nothing came out. There were times when he just hated Jennifer the editor. She could take the tiniest hole in his reporting and blow it up until it looked like the harvest moon.

“We need Eddie the janitor,” said Jennifer. “He did the Bunker work — he must know where the money came from. Eddie can break this story wide open. And you know who our ‘in’ with Eddie is.”

Jennifer jumped up. “I’ll send her a note through the twins.” Unfortunately, it was getting harder and harder to hook up with anyone at Harris. They were all getting busier, as impossible as that seemed. Marris had added two extra classes a week of before-school/after-school voluntary/mandatory. The principal had warned that without these extra sessions, Tremble would fall behind seven other Tri-River suburbs in the number of state test prep sessions per student per week.

“We’ll meet tomorrow, before school,” Jennifer called out, and disappeared out the door.

Adam sunk back into the couch. He was envisioning how bad he was going to feel asking Phoebe for a favor.

After school Adam leafed through his notebook and found the phone number for the lawyer who had drawn up Miss Bloch’s will. The law firm had an office in downtown Tremble, over a bank. Adam explained to the woman who answered the phone that he was a reporter for the
Slash
and then asked to speak to the lawyer.

“Sorry,” said the woman. “He’s deceased.”

“Wow,” said Adam. “How diseased is he?”