“Uhm,” Hamilton grunted.
“What’s it about?”
“Murder. A man named Mark Shelby is charged with killing his wife, but there’s no body.”
“Shelby? Mrs. Shelby was my second-grade teacher at Lewis and Clark. Remember?”
Hamilton’s face scrunched up. He shook his head apologetically. “I’m not sure I do.”
Madison was annoyed that her dad couldn’t remember her second-grade teacher. His brain was so full of legal facts that there wasn’t room for much else.
“Mr. Shelby’s wife
Madison put her spoon down, shocked. “Oh man,” she said, horrified. “Mrs. Shelby was really sweet. Is he guilty? Is Mrs. Shelby dead?”
“Well, she might not be dead, sweetie, so please don’t worry yet. My client says he’s not guilty. He has no idea why he was arrested. And, like I said, there’s no body.”
“If there’s no body, how can they arrest him?”
“Circumstantial evidence. If you don’t have direct evidence of a crime, like an eyewitness, you can still use circumstances to prove the defendant’s guilt. Mark’s neighbors have called the police several times because of screaming arguments. Yesterday, Mark and his wife had another argument. A neighbor claims she saw Mark put his wife’s body in the back of his station wagon and drive off at high speed. When the police arrived, the house was empty; there were traces of blood on the floor in the kitchen and a knife with blood on the blade on the kitchen counter. Ruth Shelby is still missing.”
Maybe the police had made a big mistake and Mrs. Shelby was okay. For now, all Madison could do was hope.
“Hopefully soccer tryouts won’t take too long so I can get to the office to help you,” Madison said, sobered.
“Tryouts, for a star player like you?” Hamilton said. “When the coaches see ‘Madison Kincaid’ on the list, they’ll put you on the varsity without a tryout.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Madison said, rolling her eyes. “First of all, junior high doesn’t have ‘varsity.’ You either make the team or you play club. And Pettygrove Junior High has won or placed second in the Junior High City Championship for the past five years. I just hope I make the team.”
“You’ll do great. Go get dressed and I’ll drive you to school.”
Madison ran upstairs and studied her face in the bathroom mirror. Thankfully, her pale skin was zit free. Not wanting to look like she was overly excited about her first day of school, she decided against any lip gloss, but she did blow-dry her hair. Today she needed her hair to be perfect to impress her new teachers and the other students.
When she was finished in the bathroom, Madison took out the outfit she had decided weeks ago to wear on her first day at Pettygrove Junior High. She was slightly bummed that Ann had been in Europe all summer so that she wasn’t around to consult about what to wear. She put on a simple black tank top and pulled on her newish J. Crew jeans, which she’d broken in. Even though she was tall enough for them, talking her father into buying her grown-up jeans hadn’t been easy, but she’d finally worn him down.
Madison felt like she’d been waiting for junior high forever. There would be new teachers, tougher classes, and extracurricular activities like debate club—perfect for someone like her who wanted to get a head start on lawyer skills. There would, of course, be a whole new crowd of boys and girls from the other elementary schools that fed into The Grove, and all of the eighth-grade boys and girls who would rule the school. That made her nervous.
To tell the truth, Madison admitted to herself, as she brushed her hair again, she was never completely comfortable when she wasn’t in a classroom or on a soccer field. In elementary school, she had been a soccer star and the other students assumed she was self-assured, but a lot of her confident air was a front. She was uncomfortable in social situations and never really felt that she totally fit in. A mother could have told her the way she was supposed to act with boys, but she didn’t have a mom to confide in. And Hamilton was clueless outside of a courtroom.
That’s where Ann came in. With her easy, friendly smile, Ann was at home in any social situation. Where Madison worried about saying or doing something stupid, Ann was spontaneous, and the right words always came out of her mouth. Everyone liked Ann, and with Ann by her side Madison knew she’d be okay.
Grabbing her cell phone, Madison tried Ann again. Right to voice mail. Weird; maybe Ann was sleeping in. Madison threw red, green, yellow, white, and black socks into her soccer bag to be safe, along with her well-worn black cleats, sweaty old shin guards, a shirt, shorts, a water bottle, and a snack of crackers and orange slices. Last but not least, she shoved the latest Max Stone legal thriller into her backpack.
Before she was ready to go, she picked up the picture on her night stand. “First day of junior high, Mom,” she said to the photograph of a tall brunette. “Any words of advice?” Even though she didn’t remember her mother all that well, Madison still found herself missing her, and often talked to her picture. Taking a deep breath, Madison put the photo back on her nightstand. Then she picked up her backpack and ran to her dad’s office. After some cajoling, Hamilton gathered up his papers and followed Madison to the garage, where they got into his black Prius.
The Kincaid house was high in the southwest hills of Portland, and the view on the way down to the city was spectacular on a clear day. The Willamette and Columbia rivers divided Portland into an east side and a west side, and cars streamed over the eight bridges that crossed the rivers. In the distance, Mount Hood towered over the foothills of the Cascade Range. The mountain’s snow-covered peak made Hood look peaceful, but every mountain in the Cascades was a dormant volcano. Mount Saint Helens had actually exploded in 1980, blowing out the side of the mountain and covering the city with ash.
The Grove was at the edge of downtown, a quick ride down the hill. They didn’t talk much on the ride. Hamilton was busy thinking about his new case and Madison was nervous about the day ahead. As they pulled up, Madison craned her neck to see if she recognized any of the kids streaming into the school. She looked hardest for Ann or Ann’s father’s Navigator but didn’t see either. Kissing her dad on the cheek, she jumped out of the car.
“Good luck today! And kick their butts at soccer!”
“Thanks, Dad! See you at the office when I’m done.”
Hamilton drove off, and suddenly Madison was in the middle of a moving mob of junior high school students. She froze, a knot forming in her stomach. Madison had taken a tour of The Grove on sixth-grader visitor’s day, but she had never seen it filled with a thousand students. Compared to her elementary school, it was huge. By sixth grade, Madison was a big fish at Lewis and Clark Elementary School, but here she was a minnow. Would she survive in these waters . . . or be swallowed up?
Chapter 3
The Bully
The Grove had been built in the 1960s and looked it. The wide, locker-lined halls had ugly, red-and-puke- brown-patterned linoleum-tiled floors. Located on the edge of downtown Portland, it had a reputation for being the richest, preppiest, best-for-preparing-you-for-the-rigors-of-high-school public junior high in the city. Many of Portland’s rich kids went to Prescott-Mather, the closest thing Oregon had to an East Coast prep school, but The Grove had its fair share of wealthy students as well.
An eighth grader’s backpack knocked Madison out of her trance, and she realized that she should keep moving. She didn’t want to pull her schedule out in the middle of the hall and look like some baby who had no idea where she was going, so she found the nearest girls’ room and snuck into a stall. Her first-period class was Pre- Algebra in MH 102.
