Missing Pieces Read Free Page B

his front foot, quick hands through the strike zone, and bam the ball was gone.
    I wondered if Randy would be playing on some prison team if I kept up my investigation.
    Randy’s team won by three runs, and everybody shook hands. One guy from the other team actually apologized to the umpire in the parking lot.
    Randy drove us back to his house so he could take a shower and go to a movie with Leigh. While Leigh talked with Randy’s mom, Derek showed me his room. He had a pretty cool video game collection. Even though I don’t usually like hanging out with sixth graders, it was fun.
    When Derek’s mom called him downstairs, I walked into the hallway and heard the shower still running. Randy’s room was across the hall, the door open. I crept inside. Little trophies dotted the shelves. The bed wasn’t made, and his desk had books piled high.
    His DVD collection included a lot of sports movies— Remember the Titans, Miracle, Hoosiers, stuff like that. I was about to leave when something caught my eye. Under the bed was a video with something written on the side.
    It was one word with several of the letters smudged. It started with MA, and ended with an X .
    Mailbox!

Chapter 19

    As I ate my waffles early Saturday morning, I wondered how I could find out about Mrs. Garcia if she wouldn’t talk to me. If it was personal, like a guy leaving her, I was sunk. But if it was a car accident or some other tragedy, maybe it’d be in the files at the newspaper.
    Little Dylan came down the stairs with half his car collection stuffed in his pockets. I had to wonder if he’d slept that way. He picked out about five boxes of cereal and some cherry Pop-Tarts. I knew what was going to happen next and didn’t need to watch, so I cleaned my plate and went into the living room where I sat at the computer.
    I found Mrs. Garcia’s first name in our yearbook.
    I typed in Renee Garcia at the Web site for The Gazette in Colorado Springs. Articles popped up with the name Renee, but none with Garcia as the last name. I checked a couple of the Denver papers too. Nothing.
    I was going to have to go to the bakery to get any answers.

Chapter 20

    I found Ashley at the computer and told her what I had seen at Randy’s the night before.
    “Did you watch the video?” Ashley said.
    I shook my head. “When that shower turned off, I had to get out of there.”
    “How do you know it’s a video of them smashing mailboxes?”
    “I don’t. But if we can’t find any more clues, we’ll have to grab it.”
    I walked into the kitchen and noticed a list of chores on the blackboard. Mom puts the list up every Friday night, and whoever wakes up earliest gets first pick. Ashley had already picked the easiest—vacuum living room. The others were clean Dylan’s room and doggy cleanup. The last one meant taking a plastic bag out back and picking up dog droppings.
    Leigh came up behind me, snatched the chalk from my fingers, and put a check by “Clean Dylan’s room.”
    “Hey, I was going to pick that!” I said.
    Leigh slapped the chalk from her hand. “You snooze, you lose.”
    I gritted my teeth and wanted to yell at her, but then I remembered she was dating a criminal she’d soon be visiting behind bars. Destroying mailboxes is a federal offense—they’re actually government property, after all. It made me scared for Randy.
    “Have fun last night?” Leigh said.
    I nodded. “Interesting game.”
    “Could you believe the way those players acted?” she said. “That’s one reason I don’t go to church.”
    “Because of softball players?”
    “They’re a bunch of hypocrites,” she said. “Praying before the game and then acting like babies during it. The only reason they want Randy to play is because he’s good. They don’t care about his soul .” When she said the word soul, she made quote marks in the air.
    Ashley and I had tried to be nice to Leigh and prayed for her, but she had a habit of knocking church and Christians. Mom told