Half Court Press

by A. J. Stewart

  “Student-athlete?”

  “Baseball and football.”

  “Dual sport? Tough road.”

  “It was. What’s your point?”

  “Why did you choose Miami?”

  “Great programs, baseball and football both.”

  “Is that the only reason?”

  I watched her for a moment. I knew it wasn’t the only reason. In fact, it wasn’t even the main reason, and I had a feeling that offering her a glimpse of the truth was going to be to my benefit.

  “I came to Florida because it was as far away from Connecticut as I could get.”

  “Right. And you obviously got a scholarship. What if you had gotten a better scholarship at a Connecticut school?”

  The fact was, I had gotten a better offer. My dad had worked as a janitor at Yale for decades, and the president of the college had promised me a free ride as long as I got good enough grades to be admitted.

  Coach Parkinson continued. “What if that had been the only offer you got? Would you have taken it and stayed, or would you have cut and run and joined some minor bus league and taken your chances?”

  I said nothing but she knew what that meant. I would have cut and run.

  “So try to imagine that impulse in reverse. She wants so badly to stay near home that she makes what other people consider to be irrational choices. But to her it’s no choice at all, because to her, it’s not a choice between playing and not playing, because she can play anytime she wants down at the local Y.”

  Or the Boys and Girls Club, I thought.

  “So you’re saying she chose Miami because it was the closest option? But there are colleges near West Palm.”

  “I suspect her mother was applying a fair bit of pressure, so Tania did what she thought she had to do to satisfy her mother while remaining true to the feeling in the pit of her belly. Miami’s only a short drive away.”

  “She doesn’t drive.”

  “No, that’s true. I know sometimes she’d get a Greyhound, and sometimes she’d get a ride from her roommate.”

  “Roommate?”

  “And teammate. Jemma Price.”

  I thought about this for a moment and an uncomfortable idea crept into my head.

  “Coach, do you think it’s conceivable that Tania would make up these threats herself to avoid having to go away to play?”

  Coach Parkinson gave it a good long think. “Tania is one of the most levelheaded, dedicated, and hardworking people I have ever known.”

  “That doesn’t answer the question.”

  “My freshman-year roommate married an insurance salesman. Nicest, most buttoned-down guy you’ve ever met. Good job, nice house, European car. Twenty years of marriage later, he walked in one day and said he wasn’t happy, he wanted to quit and leave and play zydeco in a band in New Orleans. So he did. Sometimes you can’t tell what’s going on inside, especially when the outside presents the exact way you want it to.”

  “What happened to the husband?”

  “Last she heard, he was waiting tables at Café Du Monde and playing a small club at night.” She shrugged. “Living the life.”

  I nodded. There was a lot to chew on there.

  “Listen, I got to get back to it here,” she said. “But keep me in the loop. She’s one of my girls, I don’t want her making a decision she’ll regret.”

  “Sure thing.”

  Coach Parkinson turned toward the court.

  “Coach,” I called. “Do you know what happened to Tania’s roommate, Jemma?”

  “She’s on my coaching staff, doing her graduate study in exercise science. You’ll probably find her in the wellness center. I’m sure you know where that is.”

  I nodded. I knew.

  “Thanks, Coach.”

  She nodded and returned to the court, watching tall teenagers lope like giraffes.

  Chapter Twenty

  I wandered back out through the loading bay and around the arena, and got the evil eye from the security woman who didn’t seem all that charmed by my wave and winning smile. I headed back into the wellness center, which was in better condition and smelled a hell of lot nicer than the athletic center. I spent about two minutes asking around before I was pointed in the direction of a young woman lifting weights on a bench.

  She was clearly strong, but her muscles were more defined than large, and as she racked the barbell and sat up, I noticed that she looked thin across the shoulders. Her hair was tied in a ponytail—red hair that was so light it was almost blond.

  I wandered over as she made notes in a journal, and I stood before her.

  “I’ll be ten minutes,” she said, and she lay back down under the bar.

  “I’ll wait,” I said. “You need a spotter?”

  “No, I’m good.”

  She did ten more reps and then sat back up to jot down more notes.

  “My name’s Miami Jones.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep.”

  “Were you conceived on campus?”

  “You mean like an IVF thing?”

  “No, you look too old for that. I mean like in the back of a Cadillac.”

  “No, I played football and baseball here a few years back.”

  “Good for you.” She dropped the notebook and stood up to add plates to her barbell. I took the opposite side.

  “Ten pounds?” I asked, and she nodded.

  I hefted a ten-pound plate onto the barbell and slipped the cuff back on and then stood back. She sat on the bench and frowned at me, and I realized that she had no idea why I was really there and that the whole thing was starting to feel a little stalker-ish.

  “I’m a private investigator,” I said. “I’m working for Tania Bryson.”

  “Tania? Is she all right?”

  “She’s fine. I’m just helping the police with inquiries into a few things that have been going on around her.”

  “What things?”

  I didn’t feel like giving her the complete rundown. I had heard her name suggested as a possible perpetrator, and although my theories were leading me in other directions, I didn’t want to play all my cards just yet. Besides, if she was doing it, she knew why I was there.

  “You’re Jemma Price, right?”

  “Yes.” The frown deepened. “What’s wrong with Tania?”

  “Nothing. You were her teammate here, right?”

  “Teammate and roommate, best part of four years. She’s like a sister.”

  “Do you still get along?”

  “Get along? Did you hear what I just said?”

  I knew plenty of sisters who didn’t get along, but I left it alone.

  “Why didn’t you declare for the WNBA draft?”

  Jemma watched me for a moment. She clearly wasn’t prone to flying off the handle, and she was going to be difficult to rattle, if it came to that.

  “You want the long answer or the short one?”

  “Long,” I said.

  She raised an eyebrow but rolled with it. “The draft only selects thirty-six girls, so I had to be in the best fifty-odd players to have a shot at being picked. I knew I wasn’t in the best fifty, so I didn’t bother.”

  “Can’t win it if you’re not in it.”

  “Look, Tania was going number one, we all knew that. So did the franchises. Every single WNBA team visited us here with an eye toward Tania, but they looked at all of us while they were here. I knew what their interest level was in me, and I knew I wasn’t getting drafted, so I didn’t bother. I moved straight into my graduate studies.”

  “Did that make you jealous?”

  “What exactly are you getting at? Has something happened to Tania and you’re hunting for suspects or something?”

  “You’re evading the question.”

  “So are you.”

  “Yes, I’m looking for suspects,” I said.

  “Well, you should get your facts straight. I’m the last person who’s jealous of Tania.”

  “I’ve heard otherwi
se.”

  “From who?”

  “I’ve just heard.”

  “Well, you’ve heard wrong. She’s my closest friend. I’m excited by her success, not surprised by it or jealous of it. She’s the most talented girl I ever played with or against, and she’s the hardest worker I ever saw.”

  “You didn’t work as hard?”

  “Honestly, I don’t think anyone did. But I didn’t make the WNBA because I wasn’t talented enough, okay? It’s simple. There were other girls who were just better. I got to play in college and get a degree and I worked hard for that, but that was as far as I was ever going to go. I’m happy with my decisions, and I’m nothing but supportive of whatever Tania wants to do.”

  “Yet you haven’t called her anytime lately.”

  She frowned again. “What are you talking about? We text every day.”

  “Really?” I put a good dose of doubt in it.

  She leaned down toward her notebook and picked up the phone that lay on the floor beside it. She opened it and handed it to me.

  “See?”

  I looked at the screen. It was full of text threads, back and forth between Jemma and Tania. I opened a couple and read them. I didn’t want to pry into their personal stuff, but I also needed to check the box from a professional point of view. It didn’t matter either way. I didn’t understand any of them. There were all gibberish, like the ones I had seen on Tania’s phone—some variation on English where consonants counted for naught and numbers seemed more important than letters. There were as many emojis as there were words. Smiley faces and downward-pointing thumbs and hearts and little basketballs. I flicked the app off and quickly swept across the screen to see what other apps Jemma had. I saw one of note.

  I handed back the phone.

  “You use SneakyChat much?”

  “Not much. A bit here and there. Photos and stuff. Now are you going to tell me what’s happened to Tania?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Okay, I’ll just call her myself.”

  Jemma hit the phone but didn’t put it to her ear. I heard the sound of a dial tone, the call trying to connect, nice and loud on speakerphone. I shook my head. I didn’t get the whole speakerphone thing. Once upon a time, it had been for business meetings or conference rooms. Now people used their phones like walkie-talkies, wandering the streets or sitting in bars yelling into their phones, their calls open for the world to hear. I didn’t get it. I guessed that meant I was getting old.

  Tania’s voice came on the line to tell the entire gym that she wasn’t around, and Jemma hung up without leaving a message.

  “You don’t want to leave a message?”

  “I’ll text her.”

  “Of course. So you haven’t seen her lately?”

  “No, but she doesn’t need me right now.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because she’s at home.”

  “With her mom.”

  “Hardly.”

  “Meaning?”

  “You don’t know Tania very well, do you?”

  “It would seem not.”

  “The WNBA, the international leagues, the Nike deals—that’s all Camille’s dream. Tania just wants to play basketball with the girls. She likes the challenge of working hard to be her best, but she doesn’t care about the money or the fame or any of that. That’s all her mom.”

  “So why doesn’t she need you now?”

  “She’s near her dad. Look, you know her parents are divorced, right?”

  “I do.”

  “So, there were long times when Camille didn’t let Draymond anywhere near Tania. He had to take Camille to court to enforce visitation rights. Tania missed him. She always has. They were close, I guess, when she was little, before her parents split. He’s the reason she’s okay now.”

  “Is he the reason she went home most weekends after games?”

  “You know about that.”

  “I do. I heard you drove her.”

  “Sometimes. She never got a driver’s license, and sometimes she was really down about it, so I would drive her home instead of her getting the bus.”

  “Long drive.”

  Jemma shrugged. “Not so long. Couple hours.”

  “Each way. That is the act of a good friend.”

  “I told you.”

  “So she’s going to need a friend when she moves to Atlanta. Are you that friend?”

  “It will be end of term here soon. I plan to go up to Atlanta for a while.”

  “In return for what?”

  She frowned again. “You don’t have any friends who would do anything for you, no questions asked?”

  “I do.”

  “Then you know what I expect in return. Nothing.”

  “All right, if you know her so well, you might know this. Do you think Tania might try to sabotage her own career so she doesn’t have to leave her dad?”

  The look on Jemma’s face told a story, or maybe even two. Like maybe this wasn’t the first time it had happened.

  “You said she was okay.”

  “She is,” I said. “All she has received are some demands for money, with unsubstantiated threats against her parents.”

  “Threats? What sort of threats?”

  “Like I say, very nonspecific and very unsubstantiated.”

  “Against both her parents?”

  “One to her mom, two threatening her dad.”

  “And you think she’s doing it herself?”

  “I didn’t, but evidence is mounting that makes me ask the question.”

  “She isn’t doing it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “She wouldn’t threaten her dad.”

  “Even if the threats were hollow, never designed to be acted upon?”

  “No. I’m telling you, they’re tight.”

  I nodded and thought about it, but came to no conclusions. People could be tight and still do the strangest things.

  “Well, I’ll leave you to your workout.”

  “I’m going to call Tania.”

  “I’d be worried about you if you didn’t.”

  I walked out through the back of the gym and around the tennis courts and back past the athletic center and Cobb Stadium to my SUV. I hadn’t received a ticket, so I figured the campus gods were on my side.

  I was done with Miami. I needed some time and wise counsel and beer, all for thinking purposes. As I drove out to I-95 and headed toward all three, my phone rang.

  “Miami, it’s Penny Morgan.”

  “Penny, how’s things in the fast lane?”

  “Business as usual.”

  “Hey, I wanted to thank you for your time the other night.”

  “Did it help?”

  “It helped me. Not sure how it helps my case yet, but I know it will. Despite the tequila.”

  “You didn’t go home and drink it all, did you?”

  “Not all.”

  “Oh, Miami. Listen, that’s why I called. I’ve been thinking about you.”

  “About me?”

  “Yes, and about Tania Bryson. Do you have time for dinner tomorrow night?”

  “I might. I’m leaving Miami now so I’ll have to check what time I can get back down to you.”

  “No need. I’m going to be in Palm Beach tomorrow, showing condos to an overseas buyer. How does six sound?”

  “Sounds fine.”

  “Great, The Breakers at six. I’ll talk to you then.”

  I heard the call die and watched the freeway zoom by, and I wondered what was going on. Was the full-court press being played on me? Penny knew I was engaged—hell, she had found us Danielle’s studio. So why was she plying me with alcohol and inviting me to dinner? Maybe I was reading more into it than was there. These high-powered business types always did things around lunches and dinners and drinks. Perhaps that was all it was.

  Or perhaps I wasn’t reading enough into it. The thought occurred that I was getting into something I didn’t understand, like one of those
less-talented players on Coach Parkinson’s theoretical teams, getting full-court pressed because it led to me making bad decisions.

  I needed wise counsel more than ever.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  As I drove the bland freeway, my thoughts drifted from Penny Morgan, and for reasons I couldn’t explain, I started thinking about families. They were complex organisms in their own right, and I had long ago come to the conclusion that they were each completely normal and at the same time weird and messed up in their own way.

  Mine had been a case in point. My childhood was the typical suburban one, not having everything but never wanting for anything. It was a time when one income fed a family well, and I remembered long summer days in New Haven, my mother singing in the house along to one of her records, my father walking home from work, me playing something somewhere with the neighborhood kids. It was as normal as could be. And then my mother got cancer and died, and my father got lost in drink, and I spent less and less time at home, and by the time I graduated I wanted to be anywhere other than with what remained of my weird and messed-up family.

  Tania Bryson’s family was no picnic. I had no idea how normal her childhood had been, but her parents had divorced when she was young, which tended to throw a wrench in things. Some families handled that as well as could be expected and others did not handle it at all. Tania’s parents obviously weren’t fans of each other, or at least Camille didn’t think much of Draymond. I had no idea what had caused that animosity. Perhaps the act of divorce was enough.

  The net result was that Draymond had not been around as much as his daughter would have liked. I’d seen it before. Estranged fathers were often vilified for not being around when the courts said they couldn’t be, and just as often romanticized for being the parent that got to play on the weekends but never had to wrangle a child into doing chores or homework or anything else unpleasant. I didn’t know where Draymond fell on that scale, but it was clear that father and daughter had a bond that at least one of them was finding tough to break.

  The family that I had been born into was long gone, but my Florida family remained strong. I pulled into the lot behind Longboard Kelly’s and saw Ron’s car. I parked beside him and wandered in. He was sitting in his spot under the palapa that covered the outdoor bar, chatting with Muriel as she cleaned the taps. She was in her normal Longboard’s tank top, and I got the same sense of permanence that other people get when they return to their childhood home for Thanksgiving.