In Too Deep (9 page)

“I'll go start the popcorn.”

While Morgan made her way back up to the house, I flipped open my phone and keyed in the number on the business card.

“Mr. Wilson? This is Robyn Hunter. About that tune-up you offered me ...”

  .    .    .

“I might be a little late getting back after work,” I told Morgan the next day. “You sure you don't want to run me across to the marina? That way you'll have the boat.”

“I'll be fine,” Morgan said. “I've still got a pile of magazines from yesterday.” I had picked her up after work and taken her into town for some shopping. She had loaded up on magazines, which, of course, I had to carry for her. “What's up? Do you have to work late?”

“I'm getting the car tuned up. At Larry Wilson's place.”

Morgan gave me a look. “Does Nick know?”

“Not yet.”

“Didn't he tell you—”

“Now that I know where he is, it's torture not to be able to see him.”

“But you're not supposed to know him.”

“I'm not planning to talk to him. I'm just getting the car tuned up. That's all.”

“Right,” Morgan said. “That's all.”

“Well, plus I'll be able to see for myself that he's okay. Nothing's going to happen.”

  .    .    .

As soon as I finished work, I drove out to Mr. Wilson's place. I stopped at the gate and pressed the buzzer attached to an intercom on the fence. The gate started to rumble open. I drove slowly up the gravel driveway to the garage. Mr. Wilson was working on a beat-up old car with two group-home residents. Bruno had a couple more with him. Nick wasn't in either group.

“Robyn, good to see you again,” Wilson said. He wiped his hands on a rag as he came out to greet me. “Hey, guys, you remember Robyn.”

Most of the boys looked away as soon as I smiled at them—except Bruno, who grinned and asked me if I was managing to stay out of ditches.

“So far, so good,” I said. Morgan would have melted if she'd been there with me. He had his shirt off and was displaying his awesome six-pack. Even I couldn't help but admire the shape he was in.

“Give Bruno your keys,” Mr. Wilson said. “He'll take care of your car. We'll go to the house to wait. The kitchen crew is working on dinner. I'm sure we can get someone to rustle us up some lemonade.”

As we walked up to the house he pointed out the compound's garages, its classroom building, its bunkhouse. “The place started out as a car graveyard. I salvaged and fixed whatever I could. Still do. I trained as a mechanic in the armed forces. Then I spent some time teaching at a technical high school. That's what got me interested in what I'm doing now. I'd get these kids in my class—tough guys who were only there because they weren't old enough to drop out yet. They figured my class would be an easy credit. Well, they were wrong about that. I made them work—really work. Some of them couldn't hack it. They'd skip, just like they skipped the rest of their classes.

“The ones who stuck with it, though, started to change. They'd fix something and it would work, and it was like they couldn't believe it. Then they'd want to learn more. The kids had finally found something they could do, and that made them feel good.

“One thing led to another, and I left teaching and moved up here. But I'd read about some of the stuff that was happening down in the city, some of the trouble kids were getting themselves into. I started to wonder what would happen if I got some of those kids out into the country, laid down some rules, and taught them a trade. Maybe they'd end up with decent jobs instead of prison sentences.”

We climbed the porch steps, and he held the door open for me. This time when I entered the house, it was full of life. Music was coming from speakers in the living room. Mr. Wilson immediately turned it down a few notches. A guy poked his head in, looking like he was ready to yell at whoever had messed with the volume. But when he saw it was Wilson, he quickly disappeared again. Mr. Wilson winked at me.

“Come on,” he said.

He led me through to the spacious kitchen. Three guys in chef's aprons were preparing the evening meal. One was chopping vegetables for a salad. One was adding seasoning to a huge pot of something on the stove. The third, Lucas, who had been banned from the record store, was setting the kitchen's long table.

“Smells good, guys,” Mr. Wilson said. “This is Robyn. We're giving her a tune-up. Lucas, how about getting us a couple of glasses of lemonade?” He turned to me. “We'll sit out on the back porch. It's nice and cool out there this time of day.”

I followed him outside. That's when I finally spotted Nick. He and Derek, one of the guys who had rescued me from the ditch, had their shirts off and were chopping wood beside a lean-to that was half-full of firewood.

“I keep the boys busy,” Wilson said. “But none of it is busywork. Come winter, that wood will help to keep the house warm. I've got fifty acres. In season, we even do a little hunting, get a deer or two. They make good meat.”

Lucas appeared with two frosty glasses of lemonade on a tray. Mr. Wilson waved me into a chair. We sipped lemonade while he asked me about my job and my plans for the future. I glanced at Nick every now and then, but he never looked back at me. He was right about Wilson, though. He was no-nonsense but really nice. It seemed like no time at all before Bruno appeared and announced he'd finished with my car.

“Supper is almost ready,” Wilson said. “You're welcome to stay, Robyn.”

“Thanks,” I said. “But I can't. I already made plans.”

“Perhaps another time then.” He stood up. “Bruno will show you to your car.” He walked to the veranda railing. “Nick, Derek, time to wash up for supper.”

Nick put down his axe and grabbed a T-shirt that was balled up on the ground. He used it to wipe the sweat from his face, neck, and torso. He glanced at me, but there was no recognition in his eyes.

“Come on,” Bruno said. He led me around the house and back down to the garage.

“How long have you been here?” I asked him.

“Me? Eighteen months. Maybe a little longer.”

“No offense, but aren't you kind of old for a group home?” I said. Except for Bruno, Derek, and Mr. Wilson, all the guys looked like they were Nick's age or younger.

“I help Larry,” Bruno said. “And I teach the kids about cars.”

“You like it?”

“Yeah. Larry's a good guy, not that anyone in town would ever believe it.”

“They probably just don't know you guys well enough.”

“They don't want to know us. But that's their problem, right?”

He stood beside my car as I started it and seemed pleased when I agreed that the engine seemed to be running more smoothly.

“Maybe I'll see you around,” he said.

  .    .    .

The next day, Mr. Hartford poked his head into the newspaper's cramped file room. “Looking for something?” he said.

I was seated at a small table with a stack of newspapers in front of me. It was my lunch break, and I was using the time to read through back issues of the
Lakesider
.

“Just curious,” I said.

“About?”

“Larry Wilson and what he's doing for the kids who live with him.”

He nodded.

“They've gotten a lot of coverage,” I said.

I had started out looking for an article about Alex Richmond's death and had found it. It wasn't long. Alex's death was mentioned in the first paragraph. The rest of the article was about how Wilson's place was the subject of local controversy. I'd flipped through more issues of the paper and found articles that had been written when Wilson was just starting the place. Most of the articles consisted of coverage of town meetings at which residents protested the group home. They didn't want “a bunch of thugs” coming into town and causing trouble. But the smaller towns that were closer to Larry's place supported the idea of a group home and looked forward to the business it could bring. I had also found a few articles that dealt with scuffles between townspeople and some of the kids.

“Most of what's been reported is pretty negative,” I said.

“Most of the time Larry keeps his kids in line,” Mr. Hartford said. “They go about their business out there. They don't bother anybody. It's not news. But every now and then there's some kind of flare-up when a kid comes into town.”

I'd read about that, too. Residents claimed that Larry had misled them. He'd said his kids would rarely, if ever, come to town. And at first their trips had been limited to once every couple of weeks, when Larry needed auto parts or hardware and came to town to get them. But over time that changed. Larry began to let the kids come to town once in a while for a treat. Once in a while turned into once a week.

“The times when there have been kids who got themselves into trouble or have taken off, those are the times when Larry's place makes the news.”

“Taken off? You mean, ran away?”

He nodded. “Generally they seem to be kids who don't like the discipline out there. From some of the reaction around here, you'd think they were criminals making a prison break. People get nervous, check that their doors are locked, that kind of thing.”

I thought about what Tal had said the night I'd gone into the ditch and what Bruno had said while he was walking me to my car. I also thought about what Nick had said—that kids like the ones out at Mr. Wilson's place could do things without thinking. Maybe some of them had run away because they didn't like the discipline. Or maybe they'd had other reasons for taking off, reasons that had something to do with whatever happened to Alex Richmond.

“News doesn't have to be all bad, does it?” I said to Mr. Hartford. “Maybe if the paper ran an article about the good work that Mr. Wilson is doing—”

“We're stretched pretty thin up here,” Hartford said. “I know we seem like small potatoes compared to the big-city dailies, but our subscribers and advertisers have certain expectations, especially this time of year. It keeps Tom and Nan and me running.”

“What if I did a story?” I said. “I could interview Mr. Wilson and talk to some of the kids out there, find out what they're learning and what they're planning to do with their lives.”

“I don't know, Robyn. We may be small, but we try to practice solid journalism here. We don't do puff pieces.”

“It wouldn't be a puff piece,” I said quickly. “I could talk to people in town, too. I could get both sides of the story.”

He looked doubtful.

“Tom said my story on the camp opening was pretty good,” I said. “He made a few changes, but not many. He said I was a natural.”

“I don't know ...”

“I'll work on it on my own time.”

He eyed me critically. “You're not interested in any of those boys, are you? Some of the girls around here seem to fall for those tough-guy types.”

I shook my head. “I already have a boyfriend. I just think it could be a good story. I'd like to try it.”

He thought for a moment. “What you do on your own time is your business. Go for it, if that's what you want. But I can't promise I'm going to print it.”

“I understand.”

  .    .    .

“Great plan,” Morgan said. We were boating our way across the lake to dock. She had called me late that afternoon to complain that she was bored. She asked me to come and get her so that we could have dinner in town.

After we ate, Morgan wanted to check out the local park. She had heard—don't ask me how; she seemed to have a special radar—that there was a soccer game going on and she was sure the place would be crawling with well-built guys. So we strolled down the main street. Or tried to—I had to keep slowing down to wait for Morgan, who was hobbling along beside me and grumbling about how her crutches were hurting her underarms and how her leg inside the cast was starting to itch and it was driving her crazy that she couldn't reach inside to scratch.

“Wait a minute, Robyn,” she said—again.

I sighed, braced myself for more whining, and slowed down for what seemed like the hundredth time. Morgan had come to a complete stop and was gazing across the street.

“There's Nick,” she said. “And that cute guy from the supermarket.”

“That's Bruno. He's the one who rescued me from the ditch.”

He was getting out of a pickup truck parked in front of an auto parts store. Nick was with him.

“Introduce me,” Morgan begged.

“Does the name Billy ring a bell?”

“I just want to look. Please, Robyn?”

I sighed. It would give me a chance to get close to Nick. “All right. Come on.”

I dashed across the street. Morgan hobbled after me with surprising speed.

“Bruno,” I called.

He grinned when he saw me. “Hey, Robyn. Hi.”

Morgan staggered to a halt beside me and eyed Bruno. I introduced them and then glanced at Nick, who was staring sullenly at me.

“I guess you guys haven't met,” Bruno said. “Robyn, Morgan, this is Nick.”

Nick nodded curtly at us.

A police car was coming down the street. I glanced at it, wondering if Dean Lafayette was behind the wheel. But it was the other officer, the one who had searched the kid who had stolen the DVDs. He turned his head to look at Bruno and Nick as his car slid by.

“We were just on our way to watch a soccer game,” I said to Bruno. “You guys want to come?”

“Can't,” Bruno said. “We're here to pick up some parts, then we have to get back. Plus, soccer's not my game. We're in a baseball tournament a week from Sunday—Larry's kids against the volunteer fire department, all proceeds to the fire department. That's a game you won't want to miss.”

“I'll keep it in mind,” I said.