Truth and Lies

First U.S. edition published in 2014 by Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

Text copyright © 2004 by Norah McClintock. All rights reserved.

Published by arrangement with Scholastic Canada Ltd.

All U.S. rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McClintock, Norah.

Truth and lies / by Norah McClintock.

p. cm. — (Mike & Riel ; #2)

Originally published by Scholastic Canada, 2004.

Summary: Mike's lies are spinning out of control and now he's the number-one suspect in a murder. Okay, so he can't explain his bruised and skinned knuckles, and he can't explain why he was spotted near the park where Robbie was killed. But if Mike really is innocent, then why doesn't his alibi check out? And why are the police so sure that he's guilty?

ISBN 978–1–4677–2606–1 (lib. bdg. : alk. paper)

ISBN 978–1–4677–2614–6 (eBook)

[1. Mystery and detective stories. 2. Foster home care—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.M478414184Tr 2014

[Fic]—dc23

2013017549

Manufactured in the United States of America

1 – SB – 12/31/13

eISBN: 978-1-4677-2614-6 (pdf)
eISBN: 978-1-4677-5101-8 (ePub)
eISBN: 978-1-4677-5100-1 (mobi)

Riel was standing in the kitchen in his sock feet, frowning, when I came down to breakfast. He glanced up from the newspaper. His already grim expression deepened.

“What happened to you?” he said. He was looking at my hands.

Jeez. I had to fight the urge to hide them behind my back or stuff them into my pockets. My main thought: He knows. He knows, and now I'm in for it—the third degree.

Stay calm
, I told myself.
Admit nothing. Question everything
.

“What do you mean?” I said. I pitched my voice lower to compensate for the squeak that always creeps into it when I get nervous.

He was still staring at my hands. “Have you been fighting, Mike?”

I glanced at my knuckles. They were skinned in a few places and bruised in others. I forced a smile. “I was just horsing around with Sal,” I said. That's what guys did, right? They horsed around. Stupid stuff.

“Yeah? How come I didn't notice that last night?”

“Maybe because you were marking papers right through supper.” Riel had got home late, after I'd already cleared away my dishes, and he had worked while he ate. He'd dropped mustard on some kid's essay and then went nuts trying to get it off—like the kid would even notice, let alone care. So maybe he hadn't looked at my hands.

He pondered my answer for a moment and must have accepted it because he said, “You're running late.” He sounded—what?—grumpy? Riel was a nice enough guy when he was relaxed—like on Friday nights when he didn't have to worry about prepping classes for the next day and made it a rule never to mark essays and tests. Or on Saturday nights if he was going out with Susan or if Susan came over for dinner. But on weekday mornings, forget it. On weekday mornings he was like some kind of manic efficiency expert, fussing and fretting if everything didn't run precisely according to schedule.
His
schedule. All that was missing was a stopwatch around his neck.

I checked the clock over the kitchen table.

“We've got plenty of time,” I said. But Riel's idea of being on time was showing up fifteen minutes early, whereas I figured I was in the clear if the bell was still
ringing when I dashed through the door to homeroom.

Riel dropped a couple of slices of whole grain bread into the toaster. Bread packed with little seeds. It was the only kind of bread he ever bought. Say Wonder Bread to him and he was ready to cross himself, like good old white bread was some kind of sin.

“Was it my imagination,” he said, “or did I hear you wandering around down here pretty late last night?”

I yanked open the fridge door—it blocked Riel's view of me—and ducked to look inside. The fridge air cooled my hot face. I pulled out a carton of milk.
Organic
milk, what else?

“I had trouble sleeping,” I said. That part was true. I reached for a glass in the cupboard, focusing my whole attention on it, like getting hold of that glass and not dropping it was the most important thing in the world. “I came downstairs to get something to drink.”

Riel didn't say anything. I poured my milk before I dared a glance at him. He was studying the newspaper that he had spread out on the kitchen counter.

“Big story?” I said.

He shook his head. “No story,” he said. “Not in the paper yet, anyway. I heard it on the radio.”

“Heard what?”

“You know a kid named Ducharme?” he said.

There was a Ducharme who sat near the front of my math class. A guy who carried a calculator in his shirt pocket. He was that kind of guy, always wearing shirts that had pockets in them. “Robbie Ducharme?” I said.

“Radio said Robert.” The toast popped up. Riel dropped both slices onto a plate and set it in front of me. “But, yeah, Robbie. You know him?”

“Robbie Ducharme's in my math class.” Then, maybe because I'm never too swift in the morning, because it took time for it to sink in, I said, “He made the radio? How come?”

“He's dead,” Riel said. There was that tone in his voice again. Not grumpy, I decided. More like angry. Even more like furious.

“Dead?” I said. “Of what?”

“All I know is what I heard on the radio.” I got the feeling that this was something else that was bugging Riel. Now that he was “just” a teacher, he didn't have the inside track. He had to rely on the same sources as everyone else. “Seems he was kicked to death,” Riel said. “Why would anyone want to kick a fifteen-year-old boy to death?”

Yeah, definitely angry.

“Is he in one of your classes?” I said.

He shook his head. “But I know the family.”

Robbie Ducharme dead. Jeez. Robbie Ducharme with his calculator. Pulled a minimum ninety, ninety-five on every math test, even pop quizzes. Scored a lot of perfects too. I tried to remember who he hung out with, but came up blank. The truth was, I didn't pay much attention to Robbie Ducharme if I could help it, and believe me, I went out of my way to help it. Robbie and I weren't in the same league, let alone the same club.

“I'm sure the cops will figure it out,” I said. Which, maybe they would and maybe they wouldn't. In the movies, they always nailed it. In real life … well, I knew the stats, especially now that I was living with Riel. The homicide clearance rate in Toronto was down. The cops made arrests in three out of four cases, if they were lucky. Some cases they never closed. But that wasn't why I'd said it. Mostly I had said it because of the look on Riel's face, the one he always had when he heard about the big cases on the news. Back before he had turned teacher, Riel had been a cop. Sometimes he acted like he was still on the job.

“You want peanut butter?” Riel said.

I shook my head. No way. Riel bought his peanut butter at the same health food store where he bought his seed-packed bread. The peanut butter was thick and hard to spread, and you had to stir it up with your knife first because there was always a gross layer of yellowish oil floating on top. Peanut oil, Riel said. Good for you—no additives, no fillers, no emulsifiers, whatever they were. No spreadability either. Maybe that's why he bought bread that was full of seeds—it didn't tear like good old soft sweet evil Wonder Bread.

Riel was staring at my knuckles again, studying them. It was probably eating at him that he hadn't taken a good look at my hands the night before.

“Looks like some serious horsing around,” he said. “What's Sal look like? Am I going to hear from his parents?”

Give me a break!
I made a face—he'd expect that from me—then shrugged, doing my best to play it easy.

“Sal looks fine,” I said. “He ducked. I hit concrete.”

There it was again, that look:
Does not compute
.

“With
both
fists?” Riel said.

“It was a one-two,” I said. “I was pretty sure the second one would connect.”

“With?” Disapproval was coming at me in waves now.

“With his shoulder. I already told you, we were just horsing around.” Jeez. “We got any jam?”

“Some strawberry, I think,” Riel said, moving toward the fridge.