Break Point (7 page)

“Those other kids are going to lie and weasel out of it, you watch. But Quinte? He's not smart enough to fool the cops. He's going to end up in jail. It's not fair. Those other kids put him up to it— you know they did,” she said. “How do you think his parents are going to feel? How am I going to face them every time I see them on our street?”

“Maybe it'll make him smarten up,” I said. Then I wished I hadn't, because Maddy shot me a look of disgust. I didn't want her to hate me. That would be worse than losing the club.

“I'm gonna go bash his face in,” I said.

“Don't you touch him, Connor,” said Maddy.

“Not Quinte,” I said. “Mike Baron.”

“Don't, Connor.”

“I am.”

I turned away from her. If I beat up Mike Baron, maybe the cops would arrest me. Then I would tell them the whole story. I'd tell them all about Quinte and Mike, and Maddy couldn't blame me because I'd only be defending myself. I thumped out the front door and ran down the stairs. My cell phone rang, and I grabbed it from my pocket reflexively, even though I didn't feel like answering it. I checked the caller id. It was Mom.

“Hi, Mom.” I tried to keep my voice under control.

“Connor, thank goodness I got you. I need you to bring me a file from my desk.”

“What? Mom, I'm busy.”

“Don't sound so annoyed at me, Connor. This is important. It's a blue folder, and it's labeled
Natural Heritage Regulations
. I'm pretty sure it's on my desk. If not, it's in the filing cabinet right next to the desk.”

A bunch of jerks had just destroyed the last chance of saving my club, and she was worried about natural heritage regulations?

“I can't, Mom. I'm busy. Besides, it'll take me half an hour to run home.”

“Take a cab, Connor. I told you, this is important.”

A cab? Mom couldn't afford a cab.

“What do you mean,
a cab
, Mom?”

“Connor, I'm at the Heritage Committee meeting at city hall. I have to give a presentation in half an hour, and I need you to do this for me.”

And then I remembered why she'd been up half the night. Today the Heritage Committee was holding its first debate on whether to save the Tree.

“Okay, Mom, I'll be there.” I hung up and called a cab. But I vowed that as soon as I was done, I would take my revenge on Mike.

chapter eleven

The room at city hall was packed. There were lots of people I recognized from the neighborhood, and lots of others I didn't know, many of them dressed in suits and ties.

A bunch of city politicians sat around a U-shaped table. In the middle was another table, where people sat to give their presentations. A guy was sitting there now, talking about “density guidelines” and “community design plans” and “easement agreements.” I listened for a couple of minutes, but I couldn't make much sense of it.

“How's it going?” I whispered to Mom, sliding onto the bench beside her and passing her the folder.

“Hard to say,” she whispered back.

All the people from my street were clustered together in one section of the audience, while all the people in business suits were sitting in a separate clump. One of them looked familiar from behind. He was tall with broad shoulders and had on a dark blue suit. A glint of gold flashed at his wrists. I leaned over to look at his face. Sure enough, it was Mr. Hunter.

“What's Rex's dad doing here?” I asked.

“Who?”

I pointed him out.

“That's Blaine Hunter,” said Mom. “The chief executive officer.”

“Chief executive officer of what?”

“Huntsboro. The development company. Do you know him?”

“Yeah. From the tennis club,” I whispered. “You mean he's the guy who wants to cut down the Tree?”

“Not just the Tree,” she answered. “They're acquiring property all over town. High-end condo developments. Big profits.”

Now I had one more reason to dislike Rex's dad, as if I needed one.

“I gotta go,” I said.

“Thanks for this.” She patted the folder in her lap and gave me a kiss on the cheek.

“Good luck.” If I couldn't beat Rex on the tennis court, maybe she could beat his dad at city hall.

I still had half a mind to hunt down Mike Baron, but instead I turned toward the Rideau Canal and started jogging back to the tennis club. I couldn't stop thinking about Rex's dad wanting to cut down the old oak tree and build his high-end condos.

Big profits. Big profits.
The words repeated themselves in my head as my feet pounded the pavement.
They're acquiring property all over town. Big profits.

Big profits.
Then the words from the police came into my mind.
Do you know anyone who would want to target the club? Big profits. Big profits. Do you know anyone who would want to target the club?

Mike and his gang had trashed the club twice, but why on the nights of the fund-raisers? Wasn't that kind of planning a bit too smart for those idiots? And if Mike wanted to vandalize the place, why not wreck the tennis courts? That would do more harm to his opponents, like Rex and me, by throwing us off our training. Why attack the pool and the common room? It didn't make sense. And what about the fifty bucks? Did Mike pay Quinte fifty bucks? Or did someone else pay Mike, Quinte and the rest of the guys fifty bucks each to do their dirty work?

Why would someone want to sabotage the club's fundraisers? I could think of only one reason. To drive the club into bankruptcy. If the club went bankrupt, the property would go up for sale. It was prime riverfront real estate in the heart of the city. It was the perfect spot for a high-end condo development.

Big profits. Big profits.

They're acquiring property all over town.

Do you know anyone who would want to target the club?

By the time I'd finished my run, I knew.

I burst into the clubhouse. Maddy was sitting alone in the office.

“Maddy, I know who did it,” I said.

“Connor, what are you talking about?”

“Just hang on and listen.”

I explained my theory. Rex's dad had paid Mike and his gang to ruin the two fundraisers so the club would go bankrupt and he could buy the property. She didn't say anything at first. Then she walked to a filing cabinet and pulled out a file folder. She opened it and laid it on the desk in front of me.

“Huntwin Equity Ltd.?” I read the logo at the top of the letterhead. “What is it?”

“It's the company we owe money to. The company that financed the club's debt,” she said. She leafed through the papers and finally pointed to a signature at the bottom of one of the pages. “Blaine Hunter, CEO Huntwin Equity Ltd.”

“Rex's dad?” I said.

“Yeah.”

“He's the guy you owe the mortgage to?”

“His company, yeah.”

“That means…”

“Exactly,” said Maddy. “It means if we can't pay the loan, Rex's dad takes over the club.”

“Then he comes in, bulldozes it and builds condos,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Maddy. “What a slimeball.”

I wasn't sure what to say next. But it didn't matter. I was interrupted before I could say anything.

“That's enough of that language, Madhavi.”

I turned in the direction of the voice. Maddy's mother stood in the doorway.

“Mom!” Maddy turned. Her mom walked over to the desk, closed the folder and put it back in the filing cabinet.

“That's enough of this too,” she said.

“But Mom, Mr. Hunter—”

Mrs. Sharma interrupted her. “Mr. Hunter has been very generous toward this club. The reason his company holds our loan is because he offered the refinancing on better terms than any bank would give us.”

“But doesn't that prove—” Maddy began.

“And, he bent over backward to help with the fundraiser,” Mrs. Sharma said. “He booked Alanis Morissette for us.”

“How do we know that he really booked her?” I broke in. “Did anyone talk to her? Maybe he was just making it all up.”

“Now, really, Connor,” Mrs. Sharma said. “I know you're angry over what's happened. And I know you have a rivalry going on with Rex. Maybe you're a little jealous of him. It doesn't mean you can go around accusing his father of criminal acts.”

“But what about the security guard?” I asked. “Isn't it strange that there just happened to be a false alarm at Mr. Hunter's office last night? So the security guard couldn't come by and check on the club?”

“Connor, that's enough,” said Mrs. Sharma. “I've spoken with Mr. Hunter, and he is doing his best to discuss some kind of a loan extension with his management team. We'll just have to sit tight and hope for the best. In the meantime, it doesn't do us any good to be throwing around accusations about Mr. Hunter. I do not want to hear them repeated outside of this room. Do you understand me?”

I understood her, all right. I understood that I would lose my job at the club if I went to the police with my suspicions about Mr. Hunter. I would lose my membership and my place to train. And I would probably lose my chance to ever go out with her daughter.

I nodded and looked at the floor.

“Connor, I appreciate the fact that you care about this club. I really do.” Mrs. Sharma put her hand on my shoulder. “I appreciate that you were trying to help. But please, leave it to me. All right?”

“Okay,” I said, still looking at the floor.

Mrs. Sharma left, closing the door behind her. Maddy came and crouched down in front of me. She looked into my face.

“We're right about this, Connor,” she said. I looked into her eyes. They were brown and soft and smart and beautiful.

“I know,” I said. “But what are we going to do?”

chapter twelve

Maddy decided to go and talk to Quinte. Meanwhile, I had a half-baked idea of finding Mike Baron and punching him in the face until he confessed everything. But when I tracked Mike down, he was hanging out with a bunch of tough guys at the mall. Mad as I was, I figured a five-on-one fistfight wasn't going to do anything for my case or my tennis career. In the end I called Maddy, and we met up at her place.

“We were right,” she said as we sat down on the curb outside her house.

“What did Quinte say?”

“Basically, Rex's dad paid them. He was a little garbled, but that was the gist of it.”

“I knew it,” I said. “I bet Mr. Hunter remembered Mike from the Rideau Club.”

After all, Rex and his dad had been members there for years. Probably the only reason Mr. Hunter had switched to our club a year ago was to get enough inside information to destroy it.

“I tried to get Quinte to go and talk to the police,” Maddy said, “but he got all freaked out. He thought that I was going to turn
him
in to the police and that he was going to go to jail. I tried to explain, but… you know how he is.”

“Yeah.” I picked up a pebble and threw it down the sewer grate at my feet.

“That big loan payment is due the Monday after next,” Maddy said. “A hundred thousand bucks.”

“What happens if you miss the payment?”

“They call in the loan.”

“And that's it?”

She nodded.

“End of the club. Unless Mr. Hunter gives us an extension.”

“Like that's gonna happen,” I said.

I pelted another pebble down the sewer grate. I couldn't stand this. The Hunters were beating me—beating me again.

“There's got to be something we can do,” I said.

Maddy gave me a bitter smile. “You got a hundred grand lying around?”

“I wish,” I said. “Do you?”

She shrugged. “There's always the Archibald Cross.”

The Archibald Cross Memorial Tournament was scheduled for Friday. My mom had the day off work, but she wasn't coming to watch me play. She needed to be at city hall, where the city politicians would be taking their final vote on whether or not to save the Tree.

On Thursday evening, I was lacing up my runners on the front steps of the club when I bumped into Rex. He was heading out to his motorcycle, and the usual bunch of girls was hanging around, hoping he would invite one of them for a ride.

I'd been avoiding Rex all week. I really wanted to confront him and ask him if he knew what his dad was doing to the club. But of course I couldn't do that, being under strict orders from Mrs. Sharma.

“Going out for a run?” Rex asked casually.

“Yeah,” I said. “Your dad says you're pretty fast.”

I couldn't resist goading him.

Rex shrugged.

“Y'know.” He flashed a fake-modest smile at the girls.

“Your dad told me you run five miles in thirty minutes.”

Rex shrugged again. “Yeah, that's about right.”

“But then I heard from someone else that you've never run a five-mile race in your life. So…”

I let the idea hang there, that his old man was a liar. The girls fell silent, watching him.

“Is that right?” asked Rex. “You wanna go? Right now?”

“Sure. Five miles?”

“You're on.”

Rex pulled a pair of running shoes out of his tennis bag. They looked brand-new. Hopefully it was a sign that Maddy was right—his coach had made him buy them, but he had never actually used them. Otherwise he really was a hotshot runner, and I was in for another “drubbing.”

Rex and I took off at a good clip down the first block. I matched him stride for stride. He slowed down as soon as he rounded the corner, out of sight of the girls. It was a pace I could have kept up all day and night, but I wasn't about to let Rex set the pace. For once, we were going to compete on my terms.

The downhill slope made it an easy run from the club to the Rideau Canal. We dodged traffic across Colonel By Drive, then hit the bike path, which paralleled the canal all the way downtown. I kept up my pace, even though we weren't running downhill anymore. Rex matched my stride, and we went weaving past the jock moms pushing their sport-utility strollers and the commuter cyclists in business suits, their suit jackets flapping in the wind behind them.