Free Donut Days by Lara Zielin Page B

was thinking about buying land in Owosso County,” Jake said. “ Mollico land in Owosso County.”
    I stared at him. The church had been looking at buying land for years so it could expand. I wasn’t surprised they’d look into buying it from Mr. O’Connor. He’d probably cut them a deal. “So?” I asked.
    “So,” Jake said, glancing around again, “all of the land that Mollico owns in Owosso is polluted.”
    “Polluted?”
    “Shhh,” Jake hissed. “Keep your voice down.”
    “All right,” I said, dropping my voice. “Polluted land?”
    Jake nodded.
    I grabbed my knit bag and took out my pen and paper. It was practically a reflex. “How do you know this?” I asked, pen in the air, poised to start writing.
    Jake glanced at the pen, then at me. “Is that really necessary?”
    “I’m not trying to write an exposé, I’m just trying to keep track of things. I’m practically confused already. So just tell me what you know.”
    Jake tapped his foot nervously against Java Nile’s sparkly floor. “I found some documents,” he said. “I wasn’t trying to be nosy, but I was home for spring break and I was in my dad’s office looking for paper clips.”
    “Paper clips?”
    “I was trying to organize my bank statements. I glanced down and the documents were just sitting there.”
    A mug clattered to the floor somewhere nearby us and I jumped. About ten feet away, two people scrambled to clean up spilled coffee.
    “Anyway,” Jake continued, “what I saw was a land contract between the church and my dad for ten acres out in Owosso. I wouldn’t have thought anything about it except right next to it was a printed e-mail from Jerry Dean to my dad. Jerry’s one of Mollico’s attorneys. And the e-mail said something to the effect that if the church buys the land, then it, um . . . ‘assumes the responsibilities for any environmental hazards on the land’ is I think how it was worded.”
    “Except how do you know this memo wasn’t just, like, a formality or something?” I asked, scribbling away.
    Jake looked out the window where the camp lights glowed. “Mollico is a chemical company, Em. All their by-products go somewhere.”
    “But in Owosso? It’s a county. People live there.”
    “Yeah, but fifteen years ago when my dad started Mollico, it was just fields and trees. I’m not saying he’s dumping stuff there now. But back in the day, when he was getting started, I know he did some shady stuff. The company wasn’t always this profitable. He cut corners where he could, and I’ve definitely overheard him mention Owosso before. And now, if he can unload the land to the church and have the church own it, all the better for him. The land becomes the church’s problem, not his.”
    I tapped my pen against my teeth and looked at my notes. Suddenly, a spark flared in my memory. “Didn’t the Paul Bunyan Press run something about Mollico a couple years ago?” I asked. I closed my eyes, trying to remember the exact headline, but all I could recall was Molly huffing at Nat and me, saying her dad was being falsely accused of something.
    “Yeah,” Jake said. “Some of the farmers in Owosso had cows that kept getting these weird tumors, and they asked the Minnesota Department of Environmental Quality to look into it. The Mollico land was suspect for a while, but they were never able to prove the connection to the tumors. In the end, just to be safe, my dad buried the whole thing by giving the farmers a bunch of cash. But even still, the state flagged the land and said they would keep an eye on it. If my dad can unload it before someone finds something, he skates out of the mess free and clear.”
    I chewed on the end of my pen. Jake’s theory was starting to look more credible. “The documents you found,” I said, “where are they now?”
    “I left the originals there, but I took a picture of them with my phone.”
    I nodded. It was good work, but something still wasn’t clicking with me.