by Dave Cravens
Parker gleefully clasped her hands together. “Oh good, we’re bantering now. I love banter. When will she be back?”
“Monday—maybe.”
“Maybe Monday?”
“Or Tuesday.”
“Tuesday!” Parker repeated with feigned astonishment, pumping her fists in the air.
“Maybe.”
“You don’t say!”
“I can’t say, really.”
“You can’t say, or you won’t?”
“She didn’t say, therefore I won’t.” Fox’s eyes slyly narrowed. “Huh. Banter is fun.” She began to type away on her keyboard again, ignoring Parker.
“Yeah?” Parker refused to be ignored. “You put a lot of banter into the smutty romance novel you’ve been writing during office hours?”
Fox’s eyes flashed with anger. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Her finger reached for her monitor’s power button.
Parker intercepted Fox’s move, and quickly turned her monitor to the side so she could better read it. “Yeah?” her eyes scanned the screen as her arm fended off Fox’s hands. “Well, the Glamazons of Uranus beg to differ!” Parker read further down the page. “Oh, wow, they’re begging for a lot more than that!”
Fox shot up from her chair. “How dare you!”
“How dare me?” Parker balked while reading a few more lines. “You know, I was just bluffing before, but this really isn’t half bad! Though, I doubt the Superintendent’s Office would appreciate you using a school computer to write adult material.”
Fox threw her hands on her hips. “What do you want, Ms. Monroe?”
Parker twisted the monitor back into place. “I want to know where the hell Mendez has been all this time!”
“I don’t know! Okay?” yelled Fox. She huffed and puffed. “She comes, and she goes, she never explains herself, and she’s hardly ever in her office! I’m the one who had to arrange for Mr. Ward’s substitute today. Not her! Never her! I do all the work, and Mendez is a terrible, terrible Principal!”
Parker smiled calmly, satisfied with the shade of red in Fox’s face. “Alright then. If you see her, please let her know she needs to send a list serv out about Boo Fest next Friday.”
Fox blinked as she tried to reclaim her breath. “That’s it?”
Parker headed toward the door. “What’s your pen name for your smutty novel?”
Fox rolled her eyes. “Veronica Naples.”
“I look forward to reading your finished work, Veronica.” Parker pressed the door open. “Now, I’ve got to go see a man about balloons.”
89.
“Can you not make it look like a man’s penis?”
Parker asked Glory after he presented his meticulously crafted balloon sword in the Bean Coffee Shop later that morning. The arrangement of the double rings around the sword’s hilt gave Parker the strong impression of a man’s genitals, and the placement of the tie at the top of the blade was practically sperm coming out of the tip. Parker couldn’t discern as to whether Glory intentionally had made the balloon to look so phallic, or whether it was some unconscious reflection of something deeper.
“A man’s penis?” Glory’s eyes widened, confused by the question. “Are there other kinds?”
Citing no other patrons in the shop to be offended, Bearded Man-Child couldn’t help but to interject into the conversation from behind the safety of his bar as he mixed a drink. “If you include the entirety of the animal kingdom, there are several kinds,” informed Man-Child.
Glory appeared concerned by this new revelation, as if somehow these other penises might mean more competition for his own. “Woah.”
Parker tried to stay on task. “Can, you just remove one of the ball sacks and then flip the blade around?”
“Oh, sure.” Glory did as instructed, and in no time, his edited balloon appeared as a family friendly pirate sword. “How’s this?”
“Perfect! What else can you make?”
Glory held out his hand to count on his fingers. “I can do princess crowns, elephants, horses, poodles, and a bunch of other crap.”
Parker sighed. Her bet that somewhere in Glory’s wide array of useless talents was a master balloon sculptor had paid off. “You’re hired.”
“Wow, really? The gig pays?”
“No. I didn’t mention it was volunteer work for the school?”
“Uh, no,” Glory looked down at the floor.
“But, I’ll buy you a coffee,” offered Parker.
Glory smiled brightly. “Alright!”
Parker turned to Man Child. “My friend would like a drink. What do you want, Glory?”
“I’ll have whatever Parker’s having!” Glory declared.
Man-Child nodded. “So, a caramel Frappuccino with whipped cream, a shot of determination and sprinkles of hope?”
Glory blinked. “Uh, yeah. That.”
“Coming right up.”
Glory turned to Parker. “Say, you haven’t mentioned anything about what happened last night. I’ve been dying to talk to you about it!”
Parker slowly shook her head. “Nope! I’m waiting to hear Joe’s side of it. And Bernstein’s. The Sheriff’s already made up his mind.”
Glory hunched his shoulders. “I know, but it’s so crazy!” he clenched his fingers. “I don’t know what that phone call was about but whatever it was, it like, turned Joe into some kind of wild man!”
Parker’s eyes narrowed. She spun on her heel to face Glory directly. Come on, Parker, you need to focus. “What phone call?”
“I was talking with some people after the Sheriff left, and they said before all the shit went down between Joe and Bernstein, somebody saw Joe reading his phone while waiting at the bar. He got super agitated after some text, like with crazy eyes and all that, and then he bolted toward the bathrooms. That’s where he found Bernstein and the two just started going at it!”
“Who told you this?”
“That lame second grade teacher who was trying to hang out with us. Billy! Bob?”
“Brad?” Parker nearly choked on the name.
“Yeah! Brad!”
Parker closed her eyes. Well, I can’t not follow up on a lead like that – right?
90.
“How’s Holly?”
asked Brad solemnly at his desk during his lunch break at school. He played with his ham sandwich, as if food had lost all taste after being separated from his lover. “Has she said anything about me? I feel like it’s been forever since I’ve felt her touch.”
Parker folded her arms. “You touched her plenty last night. Are you going to elaborate on what Glory told me or sit there and stew like a star-crossed twit?”
“Harsh,” Brad gulped. “Well, like Glory said, I saw Joe start pushing Bernstein around just outside of the bathroom. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but Joe was pointing at him threateningly. Then he shows Bernstein something on his phone, and Bernstein’s eyes get super big. Like golf ball big. You play golf?”
“No.”
“Holly and I used to play golf together.”
“Focus, Brad.” Parker emphasized the teacher’s name as if it was some awful word used to describe the lowliest of miscreants in ancient times.
“So, Bernstein starts yelling back at Joe, and knocks the phone out of his hand. Joe flips out and then pushes Bernstein into the back alley. A bunch of us follow, a crowd forms around them, but no one dares get in Joe’s way. He starts wailing on the poor guy. And well, you saw what happened next. I couldn’t believe it!”
Parker’s blood began to boil. How did I not hear about this? “Was all this in your statement to the Sheriff?”
“I didn’t make a statement.”
“Why the fuck not, Brad?” Parker clenched her fists.
“I panicked. I couldn’t find Holly. I looked everywhere for her. I just wanted to make sure she was okay. By the time I got her text telling me she’d gone home, the Sheriff and his deputies had left the scene.”
Pa
rker slammed her hands down onto Brad’s desk, startling him. “You’re going to go down to the Sheriff’s office and make your goddamn statement. Today. You got that, Brad?”
Brad gulped. “Yeah. Sure.”
Without a word, Parker turned and marched toward the classroom exit.
“What are you going to do?” asked Brad with wide eyes, as if watching a super hero about to jump off the ledge of a rooftop to fight an upswelling of crime.
Parker flashed back an angry glare. “I gotta see a woman about painting faces.”
91.
“You want me to do what?”
Julie didn’t even bother glancing at Parker. Instead, she kept her eyes focused on the spin class instructor at the head of the gym room full of exercise bikes.
“Come on, people!” the instructor yelled. He wore a bright purple spandex unitard that revealed his over-accentuated pectorals that could have served as a life-model for any comic book character. “Pump those legs! Move! Pump! Move! Pump!”
Parker panted uncontrollably on her stationary bike, her feet rotating at barely a fourth the speed of Julie’s. “I want you to,” she gulped air, then wiped the sweat off her forehead. “I want you to paint unicorns and flowers and shit on tiny faces for Boo Fest!”
“Parker, I hate kids!” shouted Julie.
“Don’t you have kids?” Parker panted.
“Yeah, but they’re mine! Everybody else’s suck!” Julie lifted her butt off her bike’s seat to get better leverage and cycle twice as fast. “I thought you wanted to talk about last night!”
The instructor pointed Julie out to the rest of the class. “You go, Julie! You show us how it’s done!” shouted the instructor. His finger aimed at Parker. “Your momma must be so proud!”
Parker winced as she realized the instructor was talking about her. “What – me? I’m not her mom! We’re the same age!”
“That’s right! You’re as young as you feel!” the instructor agreed. “Wooooooooooo!”
Parker’s legs felt like jelly. Defeated, she started to dismount.
“What, you’re leaving?” Julie balked. “You said you wanted to make a change! Come on, I thought this would be fun to do together!”
Parker rolled her eyes. The picture on Heller’s phone had certainly helped inspire this moment of insanity, but one spin class wasn’t going to erase a decade of decadence. “But, I’m so tired,” gasped Parker.
Julie frowned. “Fine! I’ll do the face painting thing!”
Parker perked up. “You will?”
“But you have to woman up and finish this class!”
Forty grueling minutes later, Parker slowly trailed Julie into the locker room. “Sweet mother of fuck, you do this every day?” Parker whined.
Julie bounced over to her locker. “Every other day. You gotta mix it up. Three hours in the gym plus yoga six days a week can help you look like this!” Julie turned around and struck a model’s pose completely naked.
“Holy!” Parker held up her hands to cover her eyes. “How did you undress so quickly?”
“I’m not ashamed of my body.”
Parker tossed Julie a towel. “Impressive, but my eyes are still reeling from what I saw last night.”
Julie scowled. “What do you mean? You mean Joe whomping on Bernstein? Or did you see something else?”
Just Holly grinding on Brad. “Of course, I mean Joe and Bernstein. Didn’t you see it?”
“I arrived late to the fight,” explained Julie. “I got my phone out so I could snap some shots, but everyone was pushing and shoving so much, I dropped it. So, I pick it up, but I can’t unlock the damn thing. Then, I realize I picked up the wrong phone, so I had to wait for everybody to clear the hallway, so I could find my phone.”
Parker’s eyes bulged. “You picked up the wrong phone?”
Julie wrapped the towel around her chest. “Yeah, but it’s okay because I found my phone.” She retrieved it from her locker, showing off its spider cracked screen. “Stupid thing got stepped on, so now I got to have that fixed.”
Parker waved her hands. “What about the other phone?”
“You mean the not-my-phone?”
“Yes. What did you do with the not-your-phone?”
Julie pulled out another phone from her purse. “I kept it in case it belonged to one of your dorky PTA friends. I was going to post it under the school’s lost and found and hold it for ransom.” Julie felt the phone buzzing in her hand. “Holy shit, it’s ringing!”
Parker lifted her own phone. “That’s because I’m calling it. I’m calling Joe Ward’s number. You found Joe Ward’s phone!” Parker’s heart raced. She could hardly believe her luck. “God, Julie, this is huge! I’m so excited, I could kiss you!”
Julie held up her index finger in protest. “Hey. I don’t do that. Not since college.”
Parker held out her hand. “Can I have that phone, please?”
Julie gladly handed the phone over. “What do you think is on it?”
“Whatever it is, it could go a long way to explaining what happened between Joe and Bernstein,” answered Parker. She tried accessing the phone, but it was locked with a six-digit passcode. “Shit. Of course, this phone is locked.”
“Are you going to turn it in to the Sheriff?”
Parker continued to examine the outside of the phone as she mulled the question over. If she surrendered the phone now, before she had a look inside, it was unlikely she’d get another crack at it. Then again, if she waited too long, Bill would get mad and technically she could be charged with obstruction of justice.
He wouldn’t do that – would he?
92.
“Bill!”
hailed Parker over her mini-van’s speaker phone as she raced back to Oak Creek to pick up her kids. “I need to talk with Joe Ward as soon as possible. Can you get me in to see him today?”
“Parker?” Bill fumbled. “Listen, I—"
“Come on, man, haven’t the drugs worn off?” she blasted. “He’s had all night and all day!”
“You found something didn’t you?” asked Bill. “What is it?”
Parker pulled into the car lane, six or seven cars behind the pick-up area. She hesitated, not wanting to give up Joe Ward’s phone just yet. But she had to give him something. “Brad Somebody-Somebody is going to be coming down to your station today to make an official statement.”
“Brad Somebody-Somebody?”
Parker pulled her car up to keep pace with the line. “I forget his last name. He teaches third grade at Oak Creek Elementary. He was a witness you guys didn’t get to interview last night. Brad is going to tell you a compelling story about a phone call Joe Ward received before he went nuts on Bernstein. I think it might—”
“Parker, it doesn’t matter.”
“What do you mean it doesn’t matter?” Parker slammed on her brakes to keep from ramming the car in front of her. “Bill? Explain. You found something, didn’t you?”
“We searched Joe’s apartment this morning. We found a hand gun hidden in a loose floorboard.”
“Okay, and—”
“The ballistics match the gun that shot Karen Heller.”
Parker’s heart sank. Shit. Bill was right this whole time? Time slowed down as she searched for another explanation. Any other explanation. A car honking from behind returned her to the moment at hand. “I got it!” she yelled at the car behind her. Parker slowly pulled forward, watching Maddy and Drew emerge from the crowd of children.
“Parker?” asked Bill, breaking the silence.
Parker swallowed. “I need to speak with Joe Ward. I need to understand why.”
“You and I both. But he’s not talking, Parker. He’s made it clear he won’t see anyone, you included, until his lawyer arrives.”
“When is that going to be?”
“Probably Monday at the earliest. She’s coming in from San Diego. We don’t have anyone in the county qualified to handle this.”
“Damnit,” Parker
bowed her head. Maddy and Drew would get in the car any second. “Okay. I have to go. Can I call you later?”
“Of course. And Parker? I’m sorry.”
93.
“This doesn’t make any sense!”
cried Maddy, wiping her tears away. She sat at the kitchen table with Valerie and Parker at her sides, each resting a hand on her shoulder in an attempt to comfort her. “Why would Mr. Ward do any of that?”
Parker gently massaged her daughter’s back. “I’m sorry, Maddy. I don’t understand it myself. I just thought it would be better for you to hear it from me. Before everyone started talking about it at school.”
Maddy sniffled. “We all knew something was up when we got a sub for gym. Some of the kids said their parents talked about how Mr. Ward went crazy. I thought they were joking. But killing Principal Heller?”
Vice Principal. Parker lifted her hands in surrender. “I don’t get it, either!”
“But!” Maddy wiped her nose on her sleeve.
“Don’t do that dear,” Valerie pulled a handkerchief from the cleave of her bosom and handed it to her granddaughter. “Use this.”
“Sorry,” Maddy blew her nose in the handkerchief. “What proof do they even have?”
“They found the gun used to kill Heller in Mr. Ward’s apartment,” explained Parker. “They found Heller’s phone on his person when they arrested him. And they claim he was obsessed with yours truly.”
“God, of course, he was,” Maddy moaned with a roll of her eyes.
What is that supposed to mean?
“And how was he obsessed with you?”
“He took pictures of me with Heller’s phone. Picking you up at school, walking into the funeral home, even from the fence line of our own backyard.” Parker noted the tone of her own voice. Am I starting to buy into this explanation too?
Maddy wiped the last of her tears away as she sat up in her chair. “The funeral home?”
“Yeah, that was one of them.”
Maddy ruffled her brows. “Was the picture outside or inside?”