Crash Test Dummy

Chapter 30

"So you can say, I didn't know about Marlow's tablet per se but I did..." He paused. "Then lead into what you just said. That's a perfect way to field that question if it's asked."

"The next item says, 'Jake using church youth group as cover,'" Cory said. "You might need to explain that, CW."

"You said to write down anything that the guys might try to use. Jake suggested that I could pretend to go to youth group and meet them instead. But we never did that. I just included it in case he remembered it and tried to lie about it."

"That would be easy," Mom said. "I talk to the youth pastor every Sunday at church. Friday night youth was canceled from Thanksgiving through New Years. Unless CW told them that, they could trip themselves up by lying about it."

Three pairs of eyes focused on me. "I didn't tell them anything about youth group except that it met on Fridays. It never came up again after Jake's initial suggestion."

"Okay," Cory said. "How about playing hooky from school?"

"I only did it once, on my birthday. I erased the message on the machine. That was before I started hanging with Jake and Marlow. My friendship with them started as a result of my discovery that Mom had been sending letters back to Dad for six years. Jake and Marlow, though, skipped school several times. They got expelled for it. I just thought their lawyer might ask Mom if she knew about it. They wouldn't claim I cut out early, because it would be too easy to check."

"Well, I did know about Jake and Marlow skipping school. We talked about it when you started tutoring them."

"Good," said Brock. "Moving on. This says you used tutoring as a cover up and lied to the VP about homework."

"Yeah," I said. "I told the VP that I hadn't been doing Jake and Marlow's homework, but I was. I told him, and the guys that I used to hang with, that I was tutoring Jake and Marlow. That was kind of a stretch. I had been trying to tutor them, but they weren't much interested. But once they got detention, I really was tutoring them for their English test."

"So, yes I know that CW did Jake and Marlow's homework. If he asks, I found out after the fact," Mom said. "I did know that he was tutoring them."

"Why did you put cheating at laser tag on here?" Cory asked. "Why would they ask your Mom about it?"

"I don't know. You told me to write down anything that we tried to put over on Mom. I chose laser tag as a way to introduce Jake and Marlow to Mom with some of my old friends around. I didn't want her to suspect that I had abandoned all the guys I used to hang with. I knew she wouldn't like Jake and Marlow. We did sort of cheat at laser tag so that the three of us could beat the other three guys."

"So that covers six and seven," Cory said.

Mom sort of rolled her eyes. "I figured out that CW was using BJ and them as a buffer so he could introduce Jake and Marlow. He knew I wouldn't like him hanging out with guys that age. He had already told me about them and offered to introduce them earlier, but I told him the day of the party would be fine."

"Piece of cake," Brock said.

"The next item might not be," Cory said. "CW wrote drinking brews and hiding trash."

"Did you know that the boys were drinking beer in CW's crib?" Brock asked.

"I suspected that Jake and Marlow were. I found six empties in our trash when it got knocked over. I didn't figure a drunk had wandered down the alley, stood by my garbage can, and drank a six pack."

"Okay. Don't say Jake and Marlow. Either say they or the boys. Let the jury read between the lines this time," Brock said. "Did you confront CW?"

"I told him about it. He just rolled his eyes at me."