Choosing Sides (12 page)

Wayne laughed and grabbed a box. “Let's just say they fell off a truck.” He fished his key chain out of his pants pocket, then slit the factory tape open with a key. “And this is just one day's shipment,” he said proudly. “Caroline puts up the money that this load cost, then I turn around and sell it again for two, maybe three times that. She gets half the profit, and I get half.”

Nancy felt her stomach sink. All Wayne had to do was call
Today's Times
with this story, and Caroline's chances of winning would be zilch.

“How can you prove that Caroline received any money from you?” Nancy asked Wayne.

“I can't, she got paid in cash,” Wayne explained. He pulled a shiny black CD player out of its protective foam shell. “It's a nice little operation,” he said, holding the player up for Ned and Nancy to inspect. “But I can't be doing this stuff anymore. I've got an obligation to my kids to go straight.” For the first time, Nancy saw his expression soften.

“This is pretty impressive, Wayne,” Ned said lightly, looking around the room. “But do you realize how much you're hurting your sister by pretending that she's financing this operation?”

“I'm not pretending,” Wayne insisted. He shepherded Nancy and Ned out of the room ahead of him.

Suddenly the front door banged open, and a boy who looked about eight years old zipped past Nancy and Ned. “Dad,” he pleaded, hopping on one foot in front of Wayne while he juggled a baseball in his hands. “Can Suzy and I have some money for the ice cream truck? Please please please?”

Wayne's expression softened again. He reached into his pocket, then handed the boy a few dollars. “Here,” he said. “Now, make sure you share this with your sister.”

“Thanks!” Tommy exclaimed. As he took the money, he accidentally dropped his ball, and it rolled into the bedroom. Tommy ran after it and dove behind a stack of CD boxes. With a look of panic, Wayne ran in after him.

“Tommy, be careful in here!” he shouted, just as Tommy knocked into the boxes with one knee, causing the whole stack to rock. With a light touch, Wayne quickly steadied the boxes.

As Nancy watched from the doorway, a warning bell went off in her head. Wait a minute, she thought. Something about those boxes isn't right. Heavy audio components shouldn't be so easy to move.

She pulled Ned aside in the living room, while Wayne shooed his son out the door. “Try to distract Wayne in the kitchen,” Nancy whispered to Ned. “I want to take another look at those boxes.”

As Caroline's brother rejoined her and Ned, Nancy said, “Wayne, I'd like to get a photo of these CD players to show Caroline.”

“Sure, why not?” Wayne shrugged.

“My camera's in the car,” Nancy fibbed. “I'll be right back.”

As Nancy slipped out the front door, she heard Ned ask Wayne for a drink of water. She paused outside the door for a moment, holding it open a crack until she heard the two men walk into the kitchen at the far end of the apartment. Ned was
telling Wayne that he believed him, not Caroline, and Wayne fell for it.

Good work, Nickerson! Nancy thought.

Walking on tiptoe, Nancy sneaked back into the bedroom and lifted one of the boxes. It couldn't have weighed more than a few ounces—much lighter than it would be if it contained a CD player.

The box had to be empty! No wonder Wayne had managed to steady the stack so easily.

Reaching down, Nancy picked up the whole stack of seven CD boxes. They
all
felt empty.

Her excitement built as she quickly checked the other stacks. Except for the one Wayne Buckley had opened for her and Ned, every single one was so light that Nancy knew they were empty.

Her suspicions had been right. Wayne had filled this room with boxes so that it
looked
as if there was a fencing ring. But his stolen electronics story was really a big fake.

N
ANCY'S HEART LEAPT
. Finally she had some solid proof that would help prove Caroline's innocence.

Trying to control her excitement, Nancy sneaked back to the front door. She pretended to be coming in from her car and shut the door loudly behind her. Then she walked into the kitchen, where Wayne Buckley and Ned were still talking.

“I must have left my camera at home,” she said, trying to look disappointed. She decided not to confront Wayne about the empty boxes. She was fairly certain he wasn't in this operation alone, and confronting him would give him enough time to stock up on
real
CD players before leaking his story to the press. Then Nancy
would have a much harder time proving that the whole thing was a scam.

Turning to Wayne, Nancy asked, “Why didn't you go directly to the newspaper with the fencing ring story in the beginning? Why did you pick Caroline's ex-husband to talk to?”

“Who?” Wayne asked.

“Steve Hill, Caroline's ex,” Ned explained, shooting Nancy a glance. Wayne didn't seem to know who Steve Hill was!

“Oh, right!” Wayne said in a rush. “Steve Hill.” He laughed nervously. “I knew he wasn't crazy about Caroline, so I called him. I was hoping I could avoid getting myself in trouble, but that didn't work out.”

“I see,” Nancy said blandly. She was beginning to think that someone else, not Wayne, had given Steve Hill the story about Caroline. Now that person was using Wayne to back up the story.

Wayne clapped Ned on the shoulder and escorted Nancy and Ned out onto the sidewalk. “Then I'll be hearing from Caroline tomorrow?” he asked. “I mean, she won't still run for mayor once she hears that you've seen the evidence, right?”

“She'll call you at nine
a.m
.,” Nancy assured him. After saying goodbye, she and Ned walked to her car.

As they drove away, Nancy told Ned about the empty boxes.

“Wow! You're kidding! Well, that takes the sting out of Wayne's threat to Caroline,” Ned remarked. He pulled a map of Chicago from the doorflap and consulted it for the best way back to the highway. “What will you do now? Will Caroline confront him?”

“I guess that's up to her,” Nancy replied, stopping at a red light. “The thing is, someone else besides Wayne
has
to be involved in this fencing scheme. If Wayne was involved in a real fencing operation, he'd have to implicate himself as well as Caroline, which he wouldn't do. Besides, Steve Hill told Bess and me that the person who gave him the story had a deep, resonant voice.”

“Which Wayne Buckley definitely doesn't have,” Ned put in. “Also, it was pretty obvious that Wayne was lying when he said he called Steve. Wayne couldn't even remember who the guy was.” He pointed ahead. “Make a right here. The highway entrance is just ahead.”

Nancy nodded, turning her car to the right. “That leaves the question of who it was that Steve Hill
did
talk to. Could it have been Greenwood?”

“Whoever that is,” Ned added.

“Mmm. I hope to have another lead tomorrow morning after I talk to the mayor,” Nancy said. “My meeting's at eight, so maybe I can get back to Caroline with any new leads before she has to give Wayne an answer.”

Nancy certainly hoped so. Caroline's whole future could depend on it.

• • •

Nancy woke up the next morning at six-thirty, feeling nervous. A cold, drizzling rain didn't ease her mood at all as she got in her Mustang to go meet the mayor.

With her radio blasting rock music, Nancy drove north through town and turned onto Summit Drive, a narrow road that wound up into the hills overlooking the town. Nancy passed nothing but trees. She drove a mile or so through the rain-soaked woods to the top of the hill, where Summit Drive ended abruptly in muddy tire tracks that led into a small clearing.

Nancy peered through her rain-blurred windshield: no sign of another car. She got out of her Mustang and pulled up the hood of her yellow rain slicker, then trudged through the mud into the clearing. She saw nothing but tree stumps, a huge boulder jutting ten feet or so out of the ground, and a sign nailed to a tree off to one side of the tire tracks.

Looking around uneasily, Nancy walked over to read the sign. It was a legal notice stating that a hearing was scheduled for the end of the next week to rezone the land for an incinerator.

That's odd, Nancy thought. She hadn't heard anything about an incinerator being built. Wouldn't Caroline have known about it? With her strong environmental stance, Caroline would
definitely have an opinion about the effects an incinerator would have on the town's air quality.

She read on to the end of the notice, then gasped when she saw the name of the company that had requested the hearing.

“Greenwood Incorporated!” Nancy said aloud. So Greenwood wasn't the name of a person at all: It was the name of a
corporation.

How did Greenwood Incorporated fit into the frame-up of Caroline and Bobby Rouse's murder? Nancy wondered. Whoever ran Greenwood would have every reason to want to make sure that Caroline
wasn't
elected mayor. With her record, Caroline was sure to fight any plan that would pollute the environment as much as an incinerator would.

And that meant that whoever ran Greenwood Inc. had every reason to want Caroline to
lose
the election. This put a whole new angle on the case!

Nancy's thoughts were interrupted as a black sedan pulled up behind her car. Mayor Filanowski climbed out of the car and made his way over to her.

“Good, you're here,” he said simply. “I was afraid you wouldn't show up.” He was wearing a black raincoat, a hat, and boots.

“Of course I came,” Nancy said, turning her face up in the rain to look at him. “And my guess is that you didn't call me up here to yell at me for fooling you. Am I right?”

“Oh, that.” Filanowski chuckled. “I think
Miss Carlton was the one who was most upset. We both found out we'd been fooled when she called me to confirm her appointment on Friday. Somehow, she figured out that it was you.” The mayor started walking into the clearing. “That's when I realized that you were that young detective I've heard so much about.”

Nancy walked alongside the mayor. “Why did you want to talk to me?”

Filanowski smiled. “I'll get to that in a second,” he told her. “Let's climb up on this rock. You can get a good view of the city from here.”

Trying to keep her curiosity in check, Nancy started up the rock. The climb wasn't steep, but the rock was slick under Nancy's grip as she scrabbled up. “Are you sure you should be doing all this with your heart condition?” Nancy asked, giving Filanowski a hand up.

“No, I'm not,” he grunted, “so don't tell my doctor.” At the top he stood and looked around. All around them were trees. At the foot of the hill, Nancy could make out the gray outline of River Heights through the rain.

“Nancy,” the mayor began, gazing out, “I had to wait until this morning to tell you because I wanted to make one more attempt to convince an old friend that what he was doing was wrong. Unfortunately, he wouldn't listen to me.”

Convince who? Nancy wanted to shout. And what's he doing? But she had a feeling the mayor wouldn't be hurried, so she kept quiet.

“He's been my friend since he moved here ten years ago,” Filanowski went on. “He's done very well in business, and he's made many generous contributions to the town, including a new hospital wing. Then, six months ago, he came to me with an idea: He wanted to build an incinerator on this site, to burn the town's garbage. However, he didn't want to follow the city's restrictions on the amount that he could burn.”

“That's not fair—” Nancy started to say, but the mayor held up a hand to silence her.

“My friend convinced me to loosen the regulations and allow him to sell his incinerator service to other cities as well as River Heights. Chicago, for instance, is desperate to get rid of its excess garbage. That way, he could make a much bigger profit. In return, he planned to donate money to build a new public library for the city.”

“But in the meantime, his incinerator would be belching out pollution,” Nancy argued.

Filanowski nodded, a guilty look in his eyes. “At the time, it seemed like a small price to pay for a badly needed library that the city's budget just couldn't afford. I can see now that I was wrong. I guess I had become arrogant. I thought that after fifteen years in office, I knew better than anyone what was best for River Heights.

“Anyway,” he continued, “as mayor, I have control over who gets awarded contracts. My friend's plan made sense, so I agreed to go along
with it and look the other way when his incinerator took in too much garbage.”

Nancy's eyes widened with shock. The mayor had just admitted to breaking the law! “But why would you . . .” Before she even finished asking her question, she knew the answer. “He paid you off, didn't he?” she guessed. “That's how you can afford to retire to that expensive place in Florida.”