Good Enough: A Shay James Mystery Read online

Shay didn’t tell lies. In fact, she was proud that choosing not to lie was further proof that she was different from her parents. Even though she didn’t trust anyone else, she made sure that everyone could trust her. But Shay knew that if she was going to keep the horses in her life, she was going to have to resort to some desperate measures. In many ways, her effort to save the horses was like saving her own life. Shay had been pushed around by adults for as long as she could remember. No one had ever made her the most important person in their life, but everyone expected her to do what she was told. And, so far, she pretty much had. But not this time. Even though Dave and Jolene were really nice people, they were still only foster parents who were paid to take care of her, and Shay knew she would be moved on to another foster home sooner or later. All she had that was just for her was the horses, and the only group she’d ever belonged to was the regulars. No, she wasn’t going to stand by and let anyone take all of that from her without a fight. So, when Shay looked Jolene straight in the eye and told her that she and Larissa were going to Grace’s house for the day, she knew that Jolene would believe her.

  “You promise me that you girls will stay away from Fletcher’s barn and property?” Jolene asked.

  “Yes, we promise,” Shay answered for Larissa as well. She didn’t want Larissa to have to lie, too. It was bad enough that she was including Larissa in the activity.

  Jolene still looked concerned. “You know you girls really don’t have to worry about the horses. Tom Jacobs told Dave that he would take care of the horses till Fletcher can arrange an auction. He lives with his mother on Pettigrew Road and she’s got a couple of horses that she’s too old to take care of herself, so he does that for her. He’ll know what to do at the barn.”

  Tom Jacobs was raised in Proctor, but succumbed to the lure of the big city and moved to Vancouver over twenty years ago. Not too long ago, he had moved back to the rural area and was living with his mother in the old family home.

  “Why is he willing to work for Mr. Fletcher?” Shay asked. “There can’t be enough money for a grown up to want to do the job. Does he like horses or something?” It seemed strange to Shay that a grown man would take care of the horses for the small amount of money that Fletcher would pay.

  “I guess so. He grew up with horses on his mother’s farm and he rode the horses at Harrop when he was young, so maybe he has a soft spot for Mr. Fletcher like the rest of you kids. Anyway, there isn’t much work for Tom this time of year. Seems like he’s had some hard times for a while now, and I imagine he’ll do anything for a couple of dollars here and there. By the way,“ Jolene added, “you should know that he was in prison for a time a few years back, and he messes with drugs and he can’t hold a regular job with his drinking, so you make double sure you don’t go over to the barn. I don’t want you to be around someone who might be under the influence.”

  Shay suppressed a smile. Her parents had been stoned, drunk or hung over almost every moment of her life, as had their friends who dropped by at all hours of the day and night. Shay knew more about how to behave around drunks than she did about how to behave with sober, responsible adults. And, from what Larissa had said about her mother, the younger girl was also all too familiar with out of control adults.

  “You know, it seems to me that you’ve never taken Larissa with you before,” Jolene said suspiciously. “And she is a good bit younger than you. Is something going on here that I should know about?”

  “Well, we’ve become better friends with all the things happening at Fletcher’s. She’s sort of become the little sister I never had.” Shay was surprised, and dismayed, at how easily the lies flowed out of her. “Grace has to clean out her chicken coop today and since she helped us with the horses, we thought we should pay her back by helping her with the chickens.” Shay stopped talking. Too many words can easily give the lie away, her father had always told her. That was another useful piece of parental information she had never expected to use.

  “Okay,” Jolene said slowly. Shay knew the foster parent had no reason to doubt the girls and Shay was taking full advantage of that. “Be sure you’re back by supper. I’m putting on a roast for tonight and I know how you love my Yorkshire pudding,” Jolene added, and waved them off.

  The two girls hurried to meet Grace at Fletcher’s barn. They cut across the small lakeside park and followed the railway tracks to avoid the main road. They didn’t want anyone to see them walking to the barn and later mention it to Dave or Jolene. It took Shay and Larissa almost half an hour to pick their way along the frozen shore, and Grace was waiting for them as they trudged up from the beach to the front of the barn.

  “Okay,” Shay said. “We’ve got lots of time to look for clues, and we should see to the horses’ water and feed as well. You can’t trust a druggie to take care of animals properly. Whatever care we give them might be all they get today.”

  “What do we do if Tom shows up?” Grace asked. “He must know that we aren’t allowed to be here.”

  “I don’t know. I’ll think of something,” Shay hadn’t considered the possibility of anyone else showing up later in the day. She was used to Mr. Fletcher’s routine of going to the barn in the early mornings. “I’m sure that the most he’ll do is make us leave. He isn’t the type of person that the Halliwell’s or your parents would ever talk with, so it’s not likely he’ll tell them even if he sees us.”

  They walked into the barn and without thinking, Shay reached up and flicked the light switch. The lights came on.

  “Hey,” Grace said as the place lit up, “who fixed the lights?”

  “That’s weird,” Shay said. “I forgot they weren’t working that day. I don’t know how they got fixed…Tom Jacobs must have done it.”

  “Well, that’s doubtful,” Grace said. “My dad says that Tom Jacobs is a useless drunk who’s never done an honest day’s work in his life. Why would he bother fixing a frozen electrical circuit when he’s just supposed to be giving the horses food and water? He doesn’t need lights during the day.”

  “Maybe he’s coming here in the late afternoon or at night to take care of the horses,” Larissa said. “Guys like Tom Jacobs don’t have a regular kind of schedule. Anyway, how do you know freezing caused the lights to stop working?” Larissa asked.

  “The lights in the barns around here always go out in the winter because the wires freeze and break. You can’t use them much or they get overloaded in the cold. My dad fixes ours all the time, but it takes special tools and it’s not easy. Whenever I hear him swearing, I know the wires have gone again,” Grace replied.

  Shay knew some things about electricity from her dad, too. He had often made money by renting isolated houses that he never intended to live in and using them to grow large amounts of marijuana in the basements. The power boxes were always in danger of blowing fuses from all the electricity that the grow lights and fans sucked up. Shay had learned to replace fuses before she could even read. Again, she could feel the invisible wall between her life and the life that Grace had been given.

  “Where’s the breaker box?” Shay asked, looking around the barn until she spotted it on the side wall a few feet from the door. She walked over to it and opened the metal door covering the fuses and breaker switches. “Some of these fuses are newer than others. And a couple of them looked like they blew from an overload,” she said, noting the familiar black burn around the back of the box. “Mr. Fletcher wouldn’t overload the power box with just the barn lights. He hardly ever needs lights during the day when he’s here, and he wouldn’t add anything that would risk a blow out. He’d be afraid of the sparks igniting a fire.”

  “Wow, we’ve already found our first clue!” Larissa exclaimed.

  “We might have,” Shay agreed. “But it doesn’t tell us anything helpful. At this rate we’re more like the Girls Electricians Club instead of the Detectives Club.”

  “Okay, we search on,” Grace laughed.

  Shay and Larissa decided to look around the hay lo
ft and Grace, declaring her fear of heights, decided to poke around the front part of the barn that housed the snow plough and other large, decrepit looking outdoor equipment.

  Shay and Larissa climbed up the heavy ladder that was securely attached to both the floor of the barn and to the hay loft above. Shay scooted quickly up the thick rungs; she was used to climbing the ladder to throw down the hay bales each weekend. When she had first started riding, she could barely move the bales, but a few months of doing this chore had strengthened her upper body better than anything her gym routine would ever do.

  “What is it we’re looking for?” Larissa asked.

  “I’m not really sure,” Shay said. “I guess we look for anything that doesn’t seem like it belongs in Mr. Fletcher’s barn.”

  “But there are always lots of kids and teenagers going in and out of here on the weekends, so they could have dropped anything.”

  “Yes,” Shay agreed. “But only the regulars have been here since the last load of winter hay arrived, and they can identify their own stuff. Like I said, just look for anything that Mr. Fletcher wouldn’t bring, or allow us to have on the property, and then we can decide what to do about it.”

  They searched the loft quietly, each girl concentrating on the ground and looking through the rusted tools and small farm implements that lay scattered about.

  “It’s too dark up here. The bales are in the way and the lights are too far away to do any good here,” Larissa complained. “Can we open that little door to let in some day light?” she pointed at the opening in the dormer. It was shaped like a window, but it had wooden slats covering it instead of glass. When the hay loads arrived, the hay was lifted by a rope and pulley with a grappling hook attached and loaded into the loft for storage.

  “Yeah, that’s a good idea. I’ll do it,” Shay worked her way across the loft, climbing over and between the hay bales that covered most of the rough plank floor. Grabbing onto a wooden truss above her head and leaning forward, she swung the small door outward. The winter daylight flooded in, filling the gloomy loft with stunningly bright afternoon sun. Shay, disoriented by the sudden brightness, lost her balance and fell back onto a stack of hay bales, knocking the top one over.

  “Ooof!” the sound came out of her like a popping cork.

  “Are you okay?” Larissa asked.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” Shay answered as she straightened up. “The light really got my eyes for a second.” She brushed the hay off her backside and grabbed the hay bale to move it back into place. “Good thing I didn’t fall out the door.”

  “No kidding. We’d have been caught for sure if you broke a leg or died from the fall,” Larissa said in a relief-tinged voice. “Jolene would never have let us out of the house again.”

  Shay smiled and shook her head. “Well, at least you know what’s important here.” Shay pulled again on the heavy bale. Something glinting in the sun caught her eye. Lying close together on the floor and wedged between two bales of hay were the end of a half smoked marijuana joint, a digital camera and a beer bottle cap. She picked them up and called to Larissa.

  “Come here! Look at this,” she said. Larissa moved as quickly as she could over the hay bales. Shay held out her hand and showed Larissa the items. “They must have been under the edge of that hay bale.”

  Larissa took the cap and joint in her gloved hand. “I know lots about beer bottle caps and joints, but not much about cameras.” She looked at Shay and blushed. “My mom did that kind of stuff, you know, the beer and the joint. It was always lying around our apartment.”

  “I know,” Shay said kindly. “My parents did the same thing. Come on, let’s show Grace what we’ve found. Her family wouldn’t know much about dope but they’ll know enough about cameras.”

  The girls crossed the loft and went quickly down the ladder.

  “Grace, look what we found,” Shay called to her friend.

  Grace looked up from her position on the floor. She had been crawling around on her hands and knees, looking for anything that didn’t belong beneath rusted farm equipment. So far, she had only found a large cache of broken wires, rusted metal bits, rat droppings, and pieces of old rubber tubing.

  “What is it?” she stood up and wiped her dust and dirt covered gloves on her jacket.

  Shay showed her the camera and the other two items.

  Grace glanced briefly at the bottle cap. It was a standard type of beer bottle, like her dad occasionally drank and her older brother snuck from the house on weekends. She looked more closely at the camera but didn’t turn it on.

  Larissa was excited. “These might be more clues, right? We’ll be able to figure everything out now, won’t we?”

  Shay cocked her head. “Well, they’re sure something. I don’t know if Mr. Fletcher drinks beer at home, but he’d never bring alcohol here, and he sure wouldn’t let anyone else. And as for the marijuana, he’d have a fit if he knew anyone used drugs around his property. You know how he’s always going on about insurance and law suits. So it has to have come from someone who doesn’t ride here, at least not in the winter. But I don’t know about the camera,” she said. “I guess he could have one. But why would it be with this other stuff?”

  Grace walked over toward the open barn door and held the camera up. “Let’s see what’s on it.” She turned it on, while the other two girls looked over her shoulder to see the tiny screen.

  The screen brightened and Shay gasped as the images became clear. Larissa stood on her tiptoes, trying to get a better view. “I can’t see anything from this angle, it just looks all shiny,” she said. “Turn the camera my way for a second, Grace.”

  Neither Grace nor Shay moved. Their eyes tracked the images on the screen for another minute while Grace manoeuvred to get a better visual.

  Grace suddenly turned the camera off and quickly moved away from Larissa. “Larissa, don’t look at this, it isn’t something you should see,” she said.

  “What isn’t?” Larissa asked. “What can’t I see?”

  “It’s nothing,” Grace answered quickly.

  Shay hesitated. She knew what it was like to be lied to by everyone in her life, and she didn’t want to do the same thing to Larissa. “It looks like it might be porn,” she said, “And you’re only twelve. You don’t need to see this kind of thing.”

  “Like I’ve never seen that kind of thing before,” Larissa said indignantly. “I told you my mom was a hooker and my dad was a pimp. I’ve seen lots of stuff I bet you two haven’t even thought about.”

  “Well,” Grace said patiently, “that doesn’t mean you should see more of it.”

  “So why is it okay for you two to look at it?” Larissa asked. Her bottom lip was trembling and Shay knew that it wasn’t about what was on the camera, she knew that Larissa was feeling excluded and her feelings were hurt.

  “It isn’t okay for us to look at it either. We’ve already seen enough,” Shay said.

  “Okay, if you guys aren’t going to look at it, then I don’t have to either. Hey, why would anyone have this in the barn?” Larissa asked, already feeling better.

  “I think someone has been taking dirty pictures in here,” Shay said. “The people were sitting on hay bales like these and on some equipment that looked like the old stuff on the barn floor.”

  “Wow!” Larissa said. ”Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure,” Grace said impatiently. “We’ve just spent hours searching this place. I know it better than my own house. I recognized the old equipment and the horses and the stalls.”

  “They took pictures of the equipment and the horse stalls? That’s really weird,” Larissa said.

  “No, no, no,” Grace shook her head and grimaced. “Those things are in the background. In a couple of them, the girls are sitting on the old tractor. Well, that explains the overload on the electrical system.”

  “What do you mean?” Shay asked.

  “They had those big lights you use on driveways. You can even see one
in the background of one of the pictures,” Grace replied. ”You can get them at hardware stores. They’re portable and they light up any space. Obviously the photographer would have to have more lights than the barn’s lighting system could handle, in order to take proper pictures in this dingy place.

  “Okay, that makes sense. Who are the people in the pictures? Do you know them?” Shay asked.

  “I don’t know the name of the woman but I’ve seen her lots of times around Nelson and Balfour. She really stands out. You’ve probably seen her too. She has the weirdest hair and makeup you could ever see--it’s like something from forty years ago. She’s got dyed blonde hair that she wears like an old country singer and she wears way more make up than anyone I’ve ever seen. It’s really gross. The girls in the picture are Sharon Little and Ginger Bronson.”

  “Whoa, those two losers?” Larissa exclaimed. “Who would want to take pictures of them?”

  “I bet it’s for Internet porn, that’s why they used a digital camera, so they could download it onto the ‘net” Grace said. “There are lots of perverts who like to look at naked pictures of teens. Don’t you ever read magazines or listen to news stories about this?”

  Larissa shook her head. “Jolene and Dave would never let us listen to that kind of thing, even if it was on the news.”

  “How do you know about this kind of stuff?” Shay asked. Her own knowledge of porn was more extensive than she liked to admit. Her father had bought magazines full of it and left them openly around the house, and it was always on his computer screen. Her mother ignored it, just as she did with most of the really embarrassing things that her father did. But, Shay couldn’t understand how someone from a normal family, like Grace, would make the connection from the camera to the Internet.

  “My brother, Charles, of course,” Grace said. “Mom caught him looking at it on the Internet one night. She gave him a lecture and then gave him a chance to be trusted on the ‘net again. Was that dumb or what! My father caught him the second time and that was the end of sweet little Charlie having access to any computer in our house unless my parents are in the same room. Because of him, I have to use my dad’s computer in his home office if I need it for school work and I can only use it now when my dad is there to supervise me. As if I’d ever look at that stuff,” Grace scowled and shuddered. “Anyway, Charles told me that people take pictures on their digital cameras and then download it and sell it on their own web sites. I’ve read about this and I’ve seen news reports on it. Teen porn is a really big industry.”

  “Can’t I just have one look at the pictures?” Larissa asked, overcome by curiosity.

  “No,” Shay answered emphatically. “We only needed to know what was on the camera so that we would know if it was a clue. That’s enough.”

  “That’s for sure. I don’t need to look at those again,” Grace said. “But who would do this? Do you think it was Mr. Fletcher?”

  “I don’t think so,” Shay said slowly as she worked this out in her mind. “He just isn’t the type. I’ve known lots of creeps, and my creep meter has never registered with him. Besides, he’s been around teenagers since before we were born, and Jolene said there’s never been any kind of rumour about him. It just doesn’t seem like something he’d do or let anyone else do on his property. It must be someone who’s using the barn to take the pictures.”

  “Well, it’s so easy to do this kind of thing, you’d think that people would just do it in their own house,” Grace reasoned.

  “Yes, that would be the logical place,” Shay replied. “So why would they need to some location other than their own home”.

  “Maybe they just wanted interesting backgrounds, like on calendars,” Larissa suggested”

  “No,” Shay shook her head. “This isn’t for art. They don’t care what’s in the background. Maybe it’s because they can’t use their own places. Maybe they’re married to someone who wouldn’t like it going on, or maybe they don’t have a house. Sharon and Ginger can’t use their parents’ houses,” Shay thought of the two girls. She had seen enough of them around school to know that their lives weren’t much better than hers had been before she went into foster care. She shuddered. “It’s really gross that he’s taking pictures of teenagers, especially pictures of kids we know. There are a lot of laws against that.”

  “How could he get anyone to do that?” Grace asked innocently. “Why would any teen let a grown man take naked pictures of her?”

  Shay and Larissa looked at her silently. Shay had never done anything like this and she didn’t even know anyone who did. But she knew that it was pretty easy to get a lonely and lost kid to do anything for enough attention, especially if there were no responsible adults watching over the kid’s life. And Sharon and Ginger, both only seventeen, and both the children of alcoholics, were barely making it in school, and had reputations as druggies and misfits. They would be easy prey for any adult who offered attention.

  “I guess some kids just get so desperate to be noticed, that it doesn’t matter what they’re being noticed for,” Shay tried to explain.

  Grace chewed at her lower lip a moment, “You never get that desperate, do you?” she asked.

  “No,” Shay answered quietly, “I’ve learned to live with no one noticing me. Besides, I make my own choices about the kind of person I want to be. But I guess some kids just can’t live with being invisible. Maybe that’s the way it is for Sharon and Ginger.”

  “What about you, Larissa?” Grace turned to the younger girl.

  Larissa looked away from Grace. “I’ve never even been asked to do anything like that,” she said. “But I know what Shay means. It’s just so hard when you don’t belong to anyone.” Larissa tried to stifle a small sob, but it slipped out anyway. “I guess I sort of belong to my grandparents, but I don’t belong enough for them to want to raise me.”

  Shay wanted to reach out to Larissa, but she felt frozen by her own feelings of anger and hurt built on a lifetime of yearning to be important to someone, to anyone.

  “Why are you asking us about this?” she snapped at Grace.

  Tears of compassion welled in Grace’s eyes. “Because you’re my friends,” Grace answered as she leaned forward to put her arms around Shay and Larissa. The two foster girls kept their own arms to themselves, but they did not fully pull away. Finally, when it was clear that Grace was not about to let go, Shay gave in and returned the hug. Larissa laid her head against Shay’s shoulder and began to sob loudly.

  “Are you okay?” Shay asked Larissa, finally pulling herself out of the hug.

  Larissa choked back her cries and yanked a tissue out of her pocket. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose. “I hate this kind of mushy stuff. That’s why I hated therapy. Those therapy people always want you to cry. As if making me cry is some kind of accomplishment. Any jerk can do that.” She stopped and looked at Grace. “I didn’t mean you’re a jerk!” she said. “Really I didn’t, I just meant, I mean…”

  Shay giggled and Grace laughed out loud. They all wanted to get off this uncomfortable topic.

  “It’s okay. I’m a jerk and proud of it,” Grace laughed again.

  Shay was uncomfortable with the mushy stuff too, and she wanted to change the subject and get back to the search.

  “We don’t have all day, guys. We need to keep on looking. This might not be all we find, and it might not even have anything to do with Mr. Fletcher getting attacked.”

  “Well, if we don’t know for sure that this is it, then I guess we should keep looking” Larissa said, wiping her nose again.

  “Good point,” Grace said. “Let’s make sure we cover every inch of this barn before we leave because we aren’t going to get any chances to come back and search again.”

  Shay kept the beer cap and the joint and pocketed the camera. The three girls continued their search, but after a couple of hours they finally gave up.

  “We aren’t going to find anything more,” Shay said. “We’ve searched the barn
from top to bottom and around the yard. There’s nothing more here.”

  “Okay, why don’t we go to my house for a while? That way you won’t have totally been lying,” Grace said. ‘I can tell my mom we got bored at your place.”

  “Wow,” Larissa grinned. “You mean I can come to your house? And hang out with you guys?”

  Grace nodded. “You’re part of this, too, Larissa. We cover for each other till we find the bad guy.”

  “We’re like the Three Mouseketeers,” Larissa said eagerly.

  Shay sighed and shook her head again, “That’s Musketeers, Larissa, not Mouseketeers.”

  Grace giggled, “I don’t know about that, Shay, she may be right.”