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different cops told you that one day your luck would run out. You think we were making it up? We’re not that creative.”
    They were, however, punctual. Within the hour, six uniformed officers were riffling through drawers, tapping walls, searching cupboards, and running metal detectors along baseboards while the family waited out on the lawn.
    “Well, Griffin, give us a heads-up,” Dad said wearily. “Any chance they’re going to find it?”
    “Of course not!” Griffin snapped. “I thought you trusted me!”
    “We
do
trust you,” Mom soothed. “It’s just that most parents don’t even go through this once. Our street is starting to look like the parking lot of the police station.”
    “It’s different this time,” Griffin insisted. “Whatever happened to that ring, I had nothing to do with it.”
    The preliminary hearing was scheduled for the next day at ten a.m. Everything about the courthouse seemed as if it had been designed to make Griffin feel small — the massive stone building, the towering marble columns, the security checkpoint, where uniformed guards directed visitors through a metal detector, like at an airport.
    Police officers were everywhere, along with judges, jurors, lawyers, and people on trial, some even in handcuffs.
    “I don’t belong here,” Griffin said to his parents. In the soaring atrium, his voice sounded high-pitched, like a four-year-old’s.
    “You don’t have a thing to worry about,” his father replied grimly. “You didn’t take that Super Bowl ring, so all you have to do is tell the truth.”
    Dad was trying to sound upbeat and positive, but when he went off to ask directions to courtroom 235, he looked like a man marching to his own execution.
    At last, they located the right room. Their lawyer was already there — Dalton Davis of Davis, Davis, and Yamamoto. He looked like Griffin felt — very dark and very serious. Together, the four of them spent the longest forty-five minutes of Griffin’s life on a hard, wooden bench, waiting their turn to appear before the judge.
    It wasn’t much like the legal dramas Griffin had seen on TV. There was no prosecutor, no witnesses. In fact, the only other people there were Judge Koretsky herself and a stenographer with lightning fingers who typed every single word, including
ahem
and stomach gurgles.
    Judge Elaine Koretsky was an incredibly compact woman, probably in her midfifties. Despite her small size, though, she radiated power and a no-nonsense attitude. She spent a few minutes glancing at papers in a file folder before turning her attention to Griffin. “Why don’t you tell me your version of what’s happened here?”
    “Well,” Mr. Davis began, “as I hope we’ve established —”
    “I’d prefer to hear it from Griffin,” the judge interrupted.
    It was the umpteenth time Griffin had told this story. He should have had it letter-perfect by now. But he began to falter as he watched the judge’s deepening frown.
    When he was finished, she asked the one question he had no answer for: “So how did your retainer wind up inside the locked case where the ring used to be?”
    “I can’t explain it,” he admitted, his face crimson. “I only know I didn’t put it there.”
    The judge was not unkind, but her words fell like bombs. “You are convincing, but so is the evidence against you — especially in view of your past pattern of behavior.”
    “Griffin has never been convicted of a crime,” Mr. Davis put in quickly.
    “Maybe not,” she returned, “but he’s a regular trivia question in the police department quiz bowl league. I’m setting a hearing date for October twenty-ninth. If that ring should happen to turn up before then, it would make all our lives a lot easier. Especially yours, Griffin.”
    Griffin could only shake his head.
    “In the meantime,” Judge Koretsky went on, “I’mnotifying the school district that you are being removed from Cedarville Middle School. Until this matter is