Saltwater Secrets - Amelia Addler Page 0,62

to her.

Morgan and Tiffany joined them on stage, but it was starting to get too loud to hear each other. They decided to sneak out of the back of the building to avoid the crowd.

Once they returned home, Jade was able to tell them the full story of what happened with Eddie.

As expected, before she could even start, everyone scolded her for going to Eddie’s house on her own.

“I wasn’t alone,” she argued. “I had Toast. And…I took the pepper spray.”

“Oh good!” her mom said. “Now you see how useful it is! Okay, you can go on with the story.”

She told them everything that Eddie had told her. Apparently, Jared approached Eddie early on in the process – right after Jade got the county council to agree that there needed to be a vote.

Jared argued that Jade’s plan would be bad for all of the business owners on the island; he said that it would make more sense to allow developers to build something grand that would bring in more profit overall. Eddie bought into it at first, especially because Jared offered to pay him to scare Jade out of advocating for the vote.

“But as you remember,” Jade said, “Eddie’s attempts were pretty halfhearted. I wasn’t even really that scared.”

“I was!” her mom said.

Morgan laughed. “Yes, even when our house caught on fire, you weren’t afraid – apparently it only angered you more.”

Jade shook her head but couldn’t help smiling. “It wasn’t quite like that. And anyways, Eddie told me that he was trying to make another warning – it was supposed to be the word ‘stop’ made out of firewood. When he tried to catch it on fire, it got out of control.”

“If I ever see him again…” her mom grumbled.

Jade held up a hand. “Please Mom. Don’t be upset. He’s really sorry about what he did – and instead of me being scared off, he was scared off. He told Jared that he was done. And Jared got really angry but he didn’t think that I had a good chance of winning, so he didn’t do anything else.”

Morgan shook her head. “Thank goodness for Eric Burke’s extravagant parties making us look like amateurs! Please, go on.”

Jade smiled. Those parties were a morale killer. “Also, apparently Jared couldn’t find anyone else to do his dirty work – thank goodness. And Eddie regretted that he ever did it – he even tried to give the money back, but Jared wouldn’t take it. He wouldn’t even speak to him.”

Tiffany shuddered. “What a weird guy. I don’t even know him, but he sounded so strange when he was yelling at Eddie. I mean you could tell he was mad – but he was also so cold. What a psychopath.”

Jade thought for a moment. “I don’t know that he’s a psychopath. I don’t think he should be able to get off the hook that easily. He’s just…really greedy. Apparently, he was going to make a lot of money off of this. Not from Eric directly, so I’m not sure how and Eddie didn’t know – but all he cared about was his own gain. He’s really selfish. Once I heard the full story, I didn’t care about getting Eddie in trouble.”

Her mom made a tsk sound, and Jade went on. “Really – I didn’t. He’s kind of a fool for getting involved, but he’s not as bad as Jared. So we came up with the plan of convincing Jared to wear the microphone on his jacket.”

“Oh wait!” Morgan said. “Is that why you were being so weird about the microphones?”

Jade nodded, smiling. “Yeah. I bought them.”

“No!” Morgan’s jaw dropped. “All of them?”

Jade nodded. “Yeah, the theater only had two that clipped on like that. The ones that I got were remote controlled, so I could turn them on and off whenever needed. When I offered one to Jared, he took it right away. I think it made him feel important.”

“Wow.” Morgan sat back. “Nice work on that.”

“Thank you,” Jade replied. Truth be told, she was quite pleased with herself. It went even better than she expected – there were about a hundred things that could’ve gone wrong, but they didn’t. “I had to slip the audio guy twenty bucks so he’d help me set them up, and so that he’d keep the speakers on during the break.”

“You thought of everything!” her mom said. “I’m just so impressed with you honey. Not just for catching this creep – but for your presentation! We didn’t