The Chardon Chronicles: Season One -- The Harvest Festival by Kevin Kimmich Page A

walked over.
     
    Tracy asked, “Oh man… is that??”
     
    Chloe hopped a couple of times and gestured
at the window in spokesmodel style, “It’s a brand new car! Well, a
used car.”
     
    A group of boys stopped by on their way
toward the building. Two of them wore letter jackets. “Whoa, Jetta.
Nice.” one of the guys said. He had short buzzed hair, and coffee
colored skin and hazel eyes. “I got a Golf GTI…” he pointed toward
the back of the lot. “It’s probably the same year.”
     
    “I like that GTI.” Tracy said.
     
    “Nobody’s got you beat though.” the other boy
said, and pointed with studied casualness at the Healey. “I’d love
to take a ride in that sometime.” He was tall and had wavy blond
hair and was tan from being out all summer. He was the tight end of
the football team and was the only kid in the school that surfed.
He actually went up to lake Erie in the fall to surf in his wetsuit
in the frigid water, but he modeled his personality and look on the
people in surf movies, like Endless Summer .
     
    “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your
gentlemen friends?” Chloe smiled and nudged Tracy.
     
    The boys looked around, the buzz cut said,
“Gentlemen? You mean us?” they laughed, “I’m Roberto
Marquez--people call me Berto.”
     
    “Richard Golden.” he shook hands with both of
them. They started heading toward the building.
     
    “Where you from?” Berto asked Chloe.
     
    “Well, here and there--mostly LA then
Nashville.”
     
    “A lady of the West, Nice. I got a cousin in
Nashville. I was there last spring break. Oh man we partied. That
was a cool town.”
     
    “Yeah, we just moved here before school. My
dad’s from Chardon.”
     
    “Oh nice. Nothing like coming home.”
     
    “Where you girls headed?” Berto asked. They
stopped at the main stairs.
     
    “We’re upstairs in Calc.” Tracy said.
     
    “Tracy’s a brain since 5th grade, bro. But
she’s cool… We’re gonna go with the other glue eaters and sit in
study hall.”
     
    “You busy after school?” Berto asked. The
girls looked at each other and shrugged.
     
    “No, I’m not.” Tracy said.
     
    Chloe added, “Me neither.”
     
    “We’ve got practice ‘til 4 today, but after
that?” they nodded.
     
    “Yeah, I’m on twitter. Check me there.”
Richard said.
     
    “Me too.” Berto said.

Chapter
Fifteen
    The clerk poked her head into Ralph’s office.
“Judge, there’s a courier here. Needs your signature.”
     
    “Be right there!” he said. He received all
kinds of things during the week--the vast majority of it was court
correspondence. He trotted down the stairs to the front desk. A
young man in a red vest and a red baseball cap waited. “That for
Judge Ralph?” The man looked at the label.
     
    “Yup. I need your John Hancock.” He gave the
judge a bulky electronic pad. Ralph scribbled on it with the stylus
then walked back to his chambers. It was a flat stiff envelope. A
red rubber stamp was on the front. “Pb”.
     
    He closed the office door and opened the
package with a knife. There were two photographic prints that had
been culled from the images taken at the Wells farm. Each one had
side-by-side images. One zoomed out with an arrow pointing to the
shelf location, the other zoomed in. One showed the spine of books.
One of the books was circled in red. “That one.” had been written
by some unknown hand on a computer screen somewhere, then made into
a print. The other print was similar, except two items, a book and
a notepad were highlighted. “ASAP. We’ll be in touch.” was scrawled
on the front in red marker and underlined twice.
     
    He got out the burner and texted “Court ASAP”
to Fonzi.
     
    The reply from the Sheriff was immediate.
“OK. There in 10.”
     
    He folded up the prints and put them in a
“Thank You” card from a local Scout troop and went outside to meet
Chuck. They met in the middle of the lawn, “I wanted to show you
this.”