Peeled (17 page)

“But I already asked him and this is what he said. Zack heard it, too!”

“Call him back.”

I did. Three times. The receptionist said he couldn’t take the call. I told Baker.

“Call back. Say you’re on deadline.”

“I think he knows that!”

I called back, but no, Pen Piedmont wasn’t available.

“Write it up,” Baker told me.

“You mean say he lied?”

“Just quote him. That’s all you have to do.”

As fear grows in Banesville, Pen Piedmont, editor and publisher of
The Bee,
said about the story, “I think it’s going big-time is what I think.” Mr. Piedmont said his “instincts” told him so—instincts developed over the years working from the ground floor up at several newspapers in the Midwest. When asked about which newspapers he worked at, Piedmont remarked, “Oh, a few have gone belly up.
The Des Moines Sentinel, The Green Bay Ledger.”
However, after careful checking
, The Core
has discovered that those papers never existed. Mr. Piedmont was unavailable for comment.

Darrell whooped when he read it.

“Run it,” Baker said. “Front page.”

If you’ve never been in print, you don’t understand the sheer energy you get seeing your byline, especially when it’s on the front page.

Unfortunately, this time my name was misspelled—
Hilly Biddle.

But
The Core
sold out—sold out, that is, for a freebie, meaning there were no more papers. Mrs. Kutash was strutting around the high school. “That’s fine reporting,” she said to me.

But Pen Piedmont called it something else.

“Now, I remember when I was in school working at the paper,” he wrote in his editorial, “trying to keep up my grades and get out some interesting copy. I think we have to give some slack to inexperienced reporters, but inexperience is no excuse for deliberate misrepresentation,
which to my mind is what came out in
The Core.
The pen is a mighty weapon. I offer some advice to the young Hilly Biddle—journalists don’t make things up—we leave that to the novelists.”

Now it was my turn to throw
The Bee
down.

“I’d be flattered if I were you,” Baker told me.

Flattered?
“He just insulted me in his Wednesday editorial!”

“He wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t think you were a threat.”

It’s between sixth and seventh periods and I have now proved unequivocally that Boston, Massachusetts, has too many people named Martin working there in the real estate business.

Martin Anderson, Martin Cholmsky, Martin DeKalb, Martin Associates, Martin and Sons Real Estate, The Martin Group, Martin Properties, Bimmer and Martin, Robert Martin, Raef Martin, Alexandra Martin-Holdercoff, etc., etc.

Lonnie had called him “a big real estate guy.”

That could mean a lot of things—he was successful, he was tall.

I called D&B Security. That number was now disconnected. I tried to find a Lonnie Lupo, an L. Lupo, in the phone directory. All I got was a listing for Lupo the Lion—
children’s parties a specialty.

I tossed my history book into my locker and slammed it shut.

Joleene Jowrey, the lead in
Desperate People
, opened her locker two down from mine.

“How’s the desperation coming?” I asked.

She groaned. “Lev keeps going off script, the set is falling apart, Mrs. Terser has become this demon director. All she does is scream.”

“I’ll be there for opening night.”

“Thanks.” She headed off.

I stood there trying to get a grip.

“Hildy, can we talk?” I turned around to see Elizabeth.

“Sure.”

She took a deep breath and said, “Look, I’ve been pretty angry at you, but I’m not anymore.”

“That’s good,” I said.

“You can be a total pain, Hildy, but I know you don’t mean it.”

I laughed. “Sometimes I do.”

“But not with me.”

“You’re right. Not with you.”

“So, here.” She handed me a plastic bag with peanut butter fudge in it. That’s my favorite. It had a little heart-shaped sticker:
Made with love by Elizabeth.

“How did you know I needed fudge?”

“Everyone needs fudge, Hildy. It’s how God helps us cope.”

The fudge was gone when I got the call from Pinky Sandusky the next day, asking me, “How soon can you get to my house?”

Pinky was sitting out back in a green Adirondack rocker, wearing her red Elders Against Evil sweatshirt. She reached down and gave her mutt Lester a biscuit.

“I knew Clarence Ludlow,” she began. “He was a cold, calculating man. He told me once he liked the fact that people were afraid of him.”

I sat on the rusty bench. “What kind of person would like that?”

“A mean one.” She leaned back in her chair and looked across her yard at the last of the red and copper leaves on her trees. The colors of fall were fading now; the leaves were dropping everywhere. “You know the gift of living in town like Banesville?” she asked me. “We learn quick we can’t control the weather, but we don’t chuck in the towel because of it. We deal with what comes and we figure out a way around the problems.”

“That’s right,” I agreed.

“So we’d better deal with this. My friend lives out on Red Road. Someone came to her house asking if she wanted to sell her family’s orchard.”

Pinky rocked and rocked, staring at the Ludlow house in the distance. “And this fella said to my friend that he was representing some investors who were interested in her property. They weren’t offering a whole lot of money,
but she’d better take their offer now because land prices were only going to get lower in that part of town.”

I was writing this down, but still watching her face.

“And my friend told him to get his big, honking Cadillac with that Massachusetts license plate off her land, because her great-grandfather had bought and worked that ground and she wasn’t selling it.”

My brain clicked. Massachusetts—like in Boston?

She stopped rocking and pointed a warning figure at me. “The next day that fella had the gall to come back. He told her, ‘Granny, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. It’s up to you.’”

“That’s awful! Did she tell you his name?”

“I don’t think she knew it. The man just barged in.” She leaned toward me, hard truth burned in her eyes. “That’s what’s sneaking in here, Hildy Biddle. Somebody ought to start writing about the real menace.”

“Could I talk to your friend, Mrs. Sandusky?”

“I don’t know. Right now she’s pretty scared.”

I walked into the kitchen, got a glass of water, and turned on the little TV on the table.

“It can happen at any time,” said the stern-faced anchorman. “Toxic chemicals soaking into the very water we drink.”

I looked nervously at my water.

“How sick is your drinking water making you? Stay tuned for a story that could save your life!”

I put the glass down, grabbed my throat.

Mom walked in angrily. “Well, it’s official!” She picked up my glass of water, put it to her mouth.

“Don’t drink that!” I shouted.

She stared at me. I mentioned the toxic chemicals, the guy on the news. She slammed the glass down.

“The Town Hall meeting about the mayor’s plan has been moved up.”

“To when?” Nan asked, walking in.

“Tonight!”

“What?”

“Tonight,” Mom assured us. “And it infuriates me. They’re trying to sneak in this meeting so they can say they had it, but keep the crowds away.”

“I would imagine,” Nan said, “what they’re going to be presenting isn’t going to thrill all the folks.”

Mom took out her cell phone. “Start calling everyone you know. The meeting is at seven
P
.
M
. Spread the word!”

Mayor Frank T. Fudd stood in front of the banner made by the Senior Women’s Auxiliary, some of whom couldn’t see like they used to, which was why the letters were different sizes:

He looked out at the crowd that had gathered in Town Hall. Not too many of them were happy.

“Well, it’s sure good to see so many folks coming out at the last minute.” He forced out a smile.

“Didn’t give us much choice!” a man shouted from the back.

The mayor wiped sweat from his brow. “I’m sorry about the rescheduling.” More people were coming in the side door, so folding chairs were set up. “Without
further ado, folks, let’s get down to the business of this meeting.”

Mom shot up. “I move we wait until everyone is seated!”

“I second that!” someone shouted.

Mom could be a force at town meetings.

The mayor stepped away from the microphone and spoke to a handsome man in an expensive suit. I saw Mr. Grasso in the corner talking to a group of people, Tanisha was taking photos, and Darrell had his tape recorder set up. T.R. and Elizabeth were two rows in front of me. The sheriff was guarding the exit. Nearly every seat was taken now. Mayor Fudd bounded to the microphone.

“This is a meeting about Banesville, friends. This is a meeting about our future. I’m excited, friends. Excited about the future that spreads before us. You know, generations ago, our forefathers came to this land and saw things that needed to be done, and they did them!”

Mayor Fudd could really put a room to sleep. The handsome man in the expensive suit sat there with a Hollywood smile.

“We’ve got challenges in town,” Mayor Fudd continued, “there’s no way around it. These last two years of bad harvests have hurt you, hurt our budget, and hurt our future. I’m as resistant to change as the next fella, but you can’t survive in this fast-changing world without adapting. And that’s what we need to talk about tonight.” He nodded to the handsome man who walked toward the
microphone. “Now, over the last few months, Midian Associates has been doing an assessment of the best and the worst in Banesville. Mr. Midian is here to present their findings and to offer their suggestions on how we can keep Banesville a force in the twenty-first century. It’s not—and hear me well, now—cast in stone. But I’ve reviewed this and I think they’re onto something. So all I ask is that you open your hearts and your minds and let the man talk.” The mayor handed the microphone over. “Martin, this is your show now.”

Martin?

I dropped my notepad.

Martin turned to us, smiling with bright white teeth. “I’ll get right to it, everyone.” He had a rich, warm voice. “I want you all to know that in these last few months—my Lord, have I fallen in love with your little town. I’m even a homeowner here now myself. I just bought the Ludlow place up on Farnsworth Road.”

A gasp shot through the crowd.

The lights went out.

A big screen to the left of Martin filled with a hazy image that became a 3-D replica of Banesville’s downtown.

“Growth,” said Martin, “is what the world needs. And how does something grow?” He chuckled. “That’s a presumptuous thing to say here in apple country, where you understand the seasons of growth and harvest better than most Americans. But the basics of growth for an orchard are the same as for a town or a city. You’ve got to have
space to grow. You’ve got to understand what the soil is good for. You’ve got to prune back the dead leaves on a tree. Growth is only possible when we work at it.”

I took notes, even though Darrell was taping this.

More 3-D pictures of Banesville came on the screen and then morphed into a map of the town. Jazz music began to play. “And what’s the growth that can happen here? Oh, you can plant more trees. Trees are a fine thing. You can increase the size of your farmers market, spruce up your yards, add a couple of new buildings. But where’s the energy of bold new beginnings? The creative thinking that would make Banesville, New York,
the
travel destination in the Northeast?”

People started murmuring.

“What,” Martin asked, “could turn this sweet, sleepy town into a mecca of new ideas, bold technology, and good old family togetherness?”

“I bet you’re going to tell us, Martin,” Mom whispered.

The 3-D map changed into an amusement park with rides and stores. Beyond that were more buildings. “We want to build here,” Martin said with feeling. “We want to highlight the mythology of your little apple valley.”