Torched Page 3

  “Petalina Police,” a male voice shouted. “Open up!”

  All the air rushed from my lungs, and I felt about to faint with relief. That would explain the flashing lights. I went downstairs and peeked out the window. The cars were official black-and-whites, so the likelihood of this being the kind of scam you sometimes hear about, of fake police officers robbing people and such, was small.

  Then came a new, more frightening fear.

  “Mom. Dad.” I threw the deadbolt free and yanked open the door. “What’s happened? Are they okay?” I asked the two policemen on the stoop. “My parents, are they okay?”

  “Are you Rose Whitfield?” one of the policemen asked. Frantically, I nodded. Visions of car crashes, skiing accidents, or even terrorist attacks flashed through my head. I was almost in tears when the second officer held out handcuffs.

  “Rose Whitfield,” he said, “you’re under arrest for second-degree arson. You have the right to ...” The words kept coming in a wave but, stunned, I didn’t really hear. The only thing that stuck in my head at that moment was, If they’re arresting me, my parents must be okay. An idiotic thought while you’re being carted off to jail, right? But there it was.

  Torn between shock, bewilderment and relief, I let them bundle me like a marionette into a police cruiser.

  Chapter 3

  So. Jail cell. Not platinum.

  Somewhere between the ride to the station and being frisked by a female officer, my brain freeze thawed, but by the time I got up the nerve to ask what was going on, I was cooling my slippered heels in a steel-barred holding room.

  As the minutes passed, a seed of irritation bloomed, growing until it smothered my worry. Obviously this was just some mix-up, but swinging a hammer at the float today was not going to be safe for my fingers unless way more sleep was slept.

  “What is it I’m supposed to have done?” I asked a passing guard. “What happened? Why am I here?” The guard ignored me.

  “You don’t know why you’re here?” asked my cell-mate, a middle-aged woman who smelled like she’d bathed in a martini. I shook my head, and she laughed like it was the funniest thing she’d heard in her clearly misguided life.

  “This is just a big mistake,” I told her, as if by convincing her I could convince the police who weren’t listening. “Huge. Planet-sized.”

  “What planet?” she asked gravely, then hiccupped. I sighed.

  “Mercury. I hope.” I knew the police must have said what happened during the flood of words when they arrested me, but I’d been too shocked by the deluge to hear. Except for the word “arson,” of course, but what could I have possibly set on fire?

  “Hey, don’t I get a phone call?” I shouted at another guard. “I’ve got rights, and my parents are going to skewer you if they hear I’m being mistreated.”

  The guard walked over to my holding cell with a conciliatory expression. The police had to answer to the mayor, and the mayor was very invested in keeping the well-heeled citizens of Petalina happy. I knew if a teenager complained of police bullying, it would raise a stink worse than the boys locker room.

  “I need to call my parents,” I told the guard.

  “You under eighteen?” she asked. I nodded. “Then we’re already trying to reach them. You got someone else you want to call?”

  Like a lawyer? I considered, but my contacts list on my cell phone wasn’t exactly bursting with legal aid. Besides, this was all a mix-up blown out of proportion. I didn’t need a lawyer. “No, I just want to go home.”

  “Someone will be with you soon. Okay?” The guard had a sympathetic face. “You need anything else, hon?” I shook my head and sat down, her politeness draining my anger. I just needed to be calm, let this sort itself out.

  As minutes ticked by, though, annoyance reared up again. I was tired, Alina would be pissed at me if I missed the float build, and the sheer randomness of the arrest bewildered me. This whole thing was so ridiculous. Which is exactly what I told the steel-haired woman who, accompanied by a tall man with the jowls of a bulldog, finally questioned me.

  “Look, this is crazier than an ADD ferret,” I said. We were in a windowless room, around a table that had seen better decades. Finally presented with people who would talk to me, I was sure we’d have this cleared up soon. “The only thing I’ve ever burned is myself, with a curling iron.”

  “Cute,” the woman said. Detective Kendricks. Her eyes were sharp and dark, and something about the way they caught on the panther-and-pom-pom design on my sweatshirt told me she thought I was dumb and spoiled, just an idiot cheerleader.

  My mouth was open to demand to know what, precisely, I was charged with, but suddenly I couldn’t ask, couldn’t confess that I’d blanked out on such a crucial bit of information. Couldn’t give life to the stereotype. The hard set of Detective Kendricks’ mouth and shoulders indicated that whatever it was, it wasn’t a joking matter.

  Sitting up straighter, I dropped the facetious tone.

  “No, seriously,” I said. “I don’t even own a lighter.”

  “Matches are difficult to procure these days,” her colleague, Detective Baker, deadpanned.

  “Cute,” I shot back, annoyance getting the better of me again. They’d dragged me all the way down here to make fun of me? “I didn’t do anything. Can I please go home?”

  “We have some questions for you first.” Detective Baker’s flash of humor disappeared as if into a black hole. “Where were you last night, Miss Whitfield?”

  His seriousness spooked me. I crossed my arms.

  “Should you even be questioning me without my parents here?”

  “We haven’t been able to reach them at their hotel yet. If you prefer, we can wait for them, but it could be a while. I was given to understand that you wanted to talk.” I sat there mutinously until Detective Baker sighed. “Alright,” he said, “I’ll have someone escort you back to your holding cell until--”

  “No,” I said. Maybe I should wait for my parents, or ask for a lawyer, or someone. I could tell Detective Kendricks thought I would be stubborn, be a bratty cheerleader cliché. Part of me wanted to kick up the fuss she expected, but that was the tired, bewildered part of me. My level-headed side knew the police were just doing their jobs, and that the faster I cooperated, the faster I’d be released. “It’s fine. I just want to get all this cleared up.”

  “Alright, Miss Whitfield. Let’s see what we can do about that,” Detective Baker said. “Now: where were you last night?”

  “At home, alone. All evening.”

  “Doing what?”

  “TV for a while, then homework.” My interrogators exchanged glances. Disbelieving glances. My hackles rose. “Why? What happened?”

  “No one was with you last night?” Kendricks asked.

  “That’s what alone means.” Okay, so that was more snippy than cooperative. But I was fed up with the whole Don’t Answer the Teenager game these people were playing, and my nerves were shredded.

  “If no one can corroborate your alibi, Miss Whitfield, you have no alibi,” Baker said.

  That word was like icy Gatorade down my back. “Why do I need an alibi?” Unnerved past caring about Detective Kendricks’ judgmental gaze, I added in a small voice, “What exactly am I charged with?”

  “Let’s try this again.” Detective Kendricks brushed a strand of steely hair from her eyes. “Where were you between the hours of nine PM and one AM last night?”

  I took a deep breath and held tight to my temper. Mouthing off to the police wouldn’t get me anywhere. All I had to do was tell the truth, and they’d figure out on their own that this was a mistake.

  “I told you. At home. I wrote a paper on the Great Depression.”

  Kendricks sighed. “You’re a popular girl, aren’t you, Rose?” I shrugged. “And yet you
expect us to believe that on a Friday night, with your parents away, you were at home. Alone. Doing homework.” She paused. “On a Friday night,” she repeated, as if I didn’t already feel lamer than the marching band’s tuba player for having stayed in.

  “My boyfriend cancelled our date, and everyone was busy.”

  They exchanged another glance, like I’d said something important.

  “Your boyfriend is Ryan Appleton?” Baker asked.

  “You can call him; he’ll corroborate that.” It was like they thought I was making this up. I thought again about waiting for my parents, or asking for a lawyer. I’d signed a waiver before this interrogation, but it stated that I could call for legal representation at any time. But who would be awake this time of night? I didn’t want to go back to my cell and pace for hours until they found somebody, and if my parents hadn’t listened to their messages by now, they wouldn’t until breakfast.

  Besides, on TV shows, the guy who called for a lawyer was the guilty one.

  I hugged my sweatshirt tighter. I didn’t want a lawyer; I just wanted someone to tell me what was going on. But with Detective Kendricks scrutinizing me, I didn’t ask again.

  Kendricks put a clear plastic bag on the table. It held a red tank top with Rose Whitfield and the panther logo on the front. I sat up straighter.

  “You found my shirt!” Wait, why did the police have my missing cheer tank?

  “Then you confirm that this is indeed your shirt?” Detective Baker asked.

  My stomach suddenly felt like it was filled with rocks. “Where did you find it?” I looked closer. It looked like someone had set fire to the bottom half. “And what happened to it?”

  “We found it with this picture,” Kendricks said, and slid a bagged photograph onto the table. It was one of my favorite snapshots of me and Ryan together. Ryan’s face had been crossed out in permanent marker. One of the corners was blackened. Crispy.

  Bewildered, I sat back up. “I don’t understand.”

  Detective Baker put a file folder on the table, then slid something out of it. His movements, deliberate and slow, warned that whatever he was showing me wasn’t good. Sweat beaded at the small of my back.

  “Miss Whitfield, have you seen this photograph before?”

  This picture was also in a plastic baggie. It was small, about two by three inches, and showed the Appleton’s front door, framing Ryan. On the stoop was ... Georgette Richmond? Or maybe Francesca. It was hard to tell from this angle. But Ryan was smiling at her. I shook my head at Detective Baker, who slid two more bagged photos over. “Or these?”

  The second must have been taken just after the first: the Richmond girl was walking inside, and Ryan was in profile. Still smiling. The third photo showed two figures silhouetted in the living room window. They clung together like magnets, obviously making out.

  I sat up straight, outrage stabbing through me.

  “What is this, the police union’s annual attempt at a joke?”

  Detective Baker’s eyes narrowed. “The photographs were taken last night at approximately nine P.M.,” he said.

  I flipped the bagged pictures over, but the backs were blank. “There’s no timestamp.”

  “We’ve spoken to the Appleton family already. They confirmed the timeframe.”

  “Then did Ryan explain this? Is it for, I don’t know, a school project or something?” In the trust category, I was winning all sorts of girlfriend points by not leaping to conclusions here. Ryan would never cheat on me. Never. But then why would he lie and say he was hanging out with just his brother tonight? No, I told myself. No leaping, no conclusions.

  “Ryan’s involved with this girl, Francesca Richmond,” Detective Kendricks said. “Romantically,” she added, as though I might not get it.

  “That’s impossible. He’s my boyfriend.” I touched the third picture, the one with the silhouettes. “That’s probably not even him. It could be anyone.” Besides, what did this have to do with my shirt and the mysterious arson charge? I started getting a very bad feeling, like an earthquake was about to hit.

  “He confirmed it himself.” At my expression, Detective Baker shook his head. “Miss Whitfield, stop playing the blond bimbo. You took these pictures. You found out your boyfriend was seeing other girls. You were upset--completely understandable--and decided to get revenge.”

  This was too much to process. Not to mention so far off-base it was out of the stadium. Ryan wasn’t cheating on me. That picture--maybe Francesca had surprised him, and he was about to push her away. Maybe he was secretly trying out for the school play, and she was helping him run lines. There were any number of explanations. Right?

  “Watch who you’re calling bimbo,” I said, letting anger drown my doubt. “I’m front-runner for valedictorian.”

  “A smartie, huh?” Kendricks pretended to be impressed. “Well, you weren’t very smart last night when you set fire to the Appleton’s yacht in the harbor.”

  “The Orchard? I would never.” Then what she said sunk in. My eyes felt as big as the bay windows in our kitchen. “Someone torched The Orchard?”

  Kendricks pulled out an ink pad. “We’ll need to take your fingerprints.”

  When she said that, everything snapped into focus. Panicky focus. This was serious, and they thought I’d done it. “Wait. My shirt--it’s been missing. I couldn’t find it earlier. And of course my prints will be on the boat. I’ve been there tons of times.”

  “There’s a print on one of the photos, which were found on the yacht after the fire was put out.”

  “It won’t be mine.” If there was one thing in this murky situation I’d bet my squad captainship on, it was that. Kendricks held out the ink pad.

  “Then it shouldn’t be a problem, should it?”

  So a half hour later I was back in the holding cell, rubbing ink off my fingers. And attempting to figure out what the hell was going on. None of this made any sense.

  “Still a Mercury-sized problem?” my cell-mate asked.

  “Maybe Neptune,” I said, trying very hard not to freak out. Cheering was about composure, about smiling even if your legs ached or you were on your period or your parents went to Spain and didn’t take you with them, and I summoned that calm façade now. My voice was even when I said, “They think I burned down my boyfriend’s boat.”

  My cell-mate whistled. “Hope you had a good reason, honey.”

  “I didn’t do it,” I said.

  My cell-mate shrugged. I could tell she didn’t believe me.

  She was only the first of many. Soon steel-haired Detective Kendricks stopped by and held up a paper. “Fingerprint report.”

  “Thank the freaking pixies,” I said, already mentally regaling Alina with the tale of the ridiculous mix-up that landed me in the slammer. And already grilling Ryan about those surely-explainable pictures. “Can I go home now?”

  “Sorry, kid. Your prints are a match for the one on the photos.”

  My mouth dropped open. “But I never saw them before you showed them to me.” What was going on? Had I dropped into some kind of alternate universe? “I wasn’t even at the harbor last night!”

  “Well, your fingers were.” Kendricks sounded cynical, and a little bored. As if she weren’t accusing me of a felony. A felony.

  All of a sudden, tears were running down my face.

  “I didn’t do anything, I swear. I swear on ... on Cloudmonster.” Kendricks frowned, and I realized how flippant I sounded. “That’s my car, I love it and ... never mind. I just swear I didn’t do anything. Please, you have to believe me.”

  “Your dad said to call the Country Club’s lawyer,” Kendricks said, unimpressed. “He’ll be here soon.”

  “My dad?”

  “The lawyer. Your parents won’t be here until noon.”

 
; Of course. Aspen. It would take a while for them to drive back. “I didn’t do anything,” I said again. My voice sounded like one of my dad’s wool coats. Detective Kendricks shook her head and walked away.

  “Now what planet is your problem?” my drunk cellmate asked. I didn’t answer, and she gave a loopy giggle. “Sounds like Jupiter.”

  I sat down hard on the bench and wiped tears from my cheeks. I wasn’t normally the wet-tissue type, but I was scared out of my skull. When I’d gone to bed last night, everything was fine. Had I sleepwalked? Was sleep-arson a thing people did? I’d heard stories of people sleep-climbing to the top of construction equipment, or eating the contents of an entire fridge. Was I a dangerous freak who lit things on fire during REM cycles?

  I shook my head. Taking those pictures required a camera, and a printer. There was just no way I could have done these things while unconscious. So what the hell was going on?

  Calm down, Rose. Think. I took a deep breath.

  Fact: my tank top goes missing, then reappears to incriminate me.

  Fact: my fingerprint was found on photos I’d never touched.

  There was really only one logical explanation: I was being framed. But why?

  Then it hit me.

  Paxton.

  ~ ~ ~

  “He’s framing me. Paxton’s the one who set fire to The Orchard.”

  Mr. Prichard, my dad’s lawyer, raised a thin brow. Everything about him was thin: his shoulders, his fingers, even his voice.

  “And why would he do that?” We were in the interrogation room, just the two of us. Mr. Prichard had a laptop out and was typing notes from the papers the police gave him.

  “To get back at me. For siphoning the gas out of his car yesterday.”

  That didn’t help. If anything, Mr. Prichard’s brow climbed higher.

  “Do you make a practice of damaging your friends’ property?”