No. They wouldn’t. She hadn’t thought of the search for Big Red as personal before, but if the guys in the squad were joining Eisley in blaming her for the failure to bag Zika, it was definitely personal now.
She refused to even think about what might happen to her career if they couldn’t find him.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
MASON PLANTED HIS SHOVEL in the soft earth at his feet and reached for the water bottle he’d left sitting nearby. The sun hadn’t climbed very high in the sky and a cool spring breeze rustled the leaves, but he’d managed to work up a healthy sweat digging compost into the tight clay soil.
He didn’t mind physical exertion. In fact, he’d always found it easier to think through a problem when he was doing some kind of manual labor.
He’d finally told Debra that she’d be staying in Tulsa for another six months, but since then her disposition had grown even more volatile and she’d skipped so many diving practices, her position on the team was hanging by a thread. Mason had given her the books he’d picked up at the library, but he didn’t think she’d even opened them yet. She still wanted him to spill his guts about his childhood.
When he wasn’t worrying about Debra, his thoughts strayed to Jolene, and that was another problem entirely. He could be loading the dishwasher, folding towels, studying landscape plans for the county project, talking to a potential new client, calculating payroll—it didn’t matter where he was or what he was doing, suddenly he’d be thinking about the warmth in her voice, the citrus scent of her shampoo or the intelligence in her eyes.
Their schedules had kept them apart all week, but they’d made plans to get together tonight over pizza. Knowing that he’d see her that evening had distracted him all morning, and he was anticipating the evening, even if he’d have to spend it talking about things he’d rather not.
It took a whole lot of effort to pull his thoughts back to the job. According to the schedule he’d given the county commissioners, this row of bald cypress trees should have been planted three days ago, but too many factors had conspired to work against them over the past few weeks, starting with missing shipments of plants and ending with the loss of two crew members.
Mason had always been a hands-on boss, determined not to ask his crew to do anything he wouldn’t do himself. That meant long hours most days and overtime on the weekends. Working twelve-hour days had never bothered him before. In fact, they’d been proof that he wasn’t turning into his own father—a shiftless loser who’d drifted from bottle to bottle and woman to woman in search of an easy way out. But now that Debra was here, the guilt over being away from home so much was starting to take its toll. More and more he found himself wondering where to draw the line.
He glanced over his shoulder at the three men digging behind him and gauged their progress. After the bald cypress were in the ground, they still had a shipment of summer-flowering bulbs to plant before they were ready for the shipment of annuals coming tomorrow. Even if everything went like clockwork today, they’d be hard-pressed to get back on schedule.
Tossing aside the water bottle, he reached for the shovel again when his cell phone rang for what felt like the hundredth time. Annoyed by the interruption, he pulled out the phone and answered without even looking at the caller ID. “Blackfox Landscape.”
“Is Mr. Blackfox in?” The female voice was unfamiliar.
“You’ve got him. How can I help you?”
“This is Shirley Carmichael, secretary at Edison Middle School. Mr. Davies, the school principal, asked me to call. He’d like to meet with you this afternoon if it’s convenient.”
This wasn’t the first time he’d been called by someone at Debra’s school, and he wondered what new crisis was on the horizon. More missing textbooks? Another unpaid locker fee? Had he topped off her lunch money account recently? “Today? That’s kind of short notice, isn’t it?”
“Yes, and I apologize. But it’s important. He wouldn’t ask, otherwise.”
Mason tugged off one work glove and brushed a clump of dirt from his knee. “Is this something we can handle over the phone? I have a very tight schedule today.”
“I’m afraid not. There’s been an incident involving Debra.”
“What kind of incident? Is she hurt?”
“Debra is fine,” the secretary assured him. “It’s just that some items of concern were discovered in her locker today during a routine search.”
Mason could have sworn the ground beneath his feet disappeared. “What exactly are ‘items of concern’?”
“I think Mr. Davies would like to explain that when he sees you.”
“And I’d like you to tell me right now. What did you find in Debra’s locker?”
The secretary took a deep breath, then gave him the list in a rush. “A baby’s pacifier, several sets of colorful beads and a cigarette lighter.”
“And those are a problem?”
“Well…yes.”
“You want to explain why? I can’t imagine what Debra’s doing with a pacifier, but far as I know there’s no law against having one, even if you’re twelve.”
“Admittedly, none of the items seems like much taken on its own, but together they form a pattern that concerns us all.”
Was the woman purposely trying to drive him crazy? Or was he just being especially dense? “What kind of pattern?”
“I really think it would be best if Mr. Davies explained the rest.”
“Look, lady, I don’t want to sound rude, and I don’t want to sound unconcerned about my daughter, but I’m not just sitting around home waiting for you to call. I’m up to my neck in work, and I’m not leaving here to drive all the way across town unless it’s something I can’t handle from here. I think it would be best if you just tell me now.”
She hesitated for a moment, then sighed heavily. “Fine. I guess there’s no easy way to say this. The school safety officer is afraid Debra is involved with drugs.”
The shovel slipped out of Mason’s hand and he came damn close to dropping the phone. “She’s been using drugs at school?”
“We don’t know that yet. The school district will require a test to determine that.”
The knot of tension shifted to his neck. His kid undergoing a drug test? What if she wasn’t using drugs? How traumatic would this be for her?
“Will you be able to come in and talk with Mr. Davies today?” the secretary asked again. “I’m sure he’ll have more answers than I do.”
Grim-faced, Mason cleared his throat. “I’ll be there.”
“Good. I’ll let him know. Just check in with the office.”
“Where is Debra now?”
“She’s in her counselor’s office. We’ll keep her there until you’re ready to take her home.”
Home. What in the hell would he do with her then? What would he say to her? Irrationally wishing that he’d never answered, he disconnected and stuffed the phone back into his pocket and shouted for Schweppe to walk with him to his car.
All he’d ever wanted was order in his life. Sanity. A feeling of normalcy. It seemed little enough to ask for after the chaos of his childhood—an experience he’d never wanted to create for his own kid. But it seemed that every time he took one step forward, he ended up taking two steps back, and he felt further from sanity and order right this minute than he’d ever been.
HE MADE IT TO THE SCHOOL in record time and was immediately led by a red-haired secretary into the principal’s large office. Mr. Davies, a tall man with rigid posture, stood as he entered, shook hands and motioned him to a chair. “Thank you for coming, Mr. Blackfox.”
Mason didn’t want to waste time on small talk. “What’s going on here? What did you find in Debra’s locker, and why were you looking for it?”
“It was a routine locker check,” Mr. Davies explained. “We had no reason to suspect Debra was doing anything wrong. I want to make that perfectly clear. Once each month, our school officer and administrators do a random check of a dozen lockers. This
month, we happened to draw Debra’s number out of the hat.”
“And this stuff you found. What was it again?”
“A baby pacifier hooked to her backpack. A collection of colorful plastic beads—” Mr. Davies reached behind him and produced the evidence “—and a lighter. As you can see, there’s nothing inherently worrisome here, but grouped together, they form a pattern than sets off a warning.”
“What about this makes you think my daughter is doing drugs?”
“The beads aren’t used to actually take drugs, but kids wear them at raves, and they’re a big part of the culture. As for the pacifier, people who use ecstasy carry them because the drug makes them clench their teeth. Chewing on a pacifier softens the bite a little.”
“Ecstasy?” Mason sank back in his chair. Three weeks ago, he’d been worried that she’d tried marijuana for the first time.
“If it helps,” the principal said, “I don’t think Debra actually did anything wrong. I think she’s just confused and suffering from peer pressure. She’s still not completely settled into the school and, according to her teachers, she hasn’t really found a close group of friends. She’s searching, I think. Trying to figure out where she fits.”
“She’s looking in the wrong place,” Mason growled. “So what happens now? Your secretary mentioned that she’d have to pass a drug test. Is that it?”
“Unfortunately, no.” Mr. Davies fixed Mason with a sympathetic look. “There’s a required suspension that comes with possession of drug paraphernalia, Mr. Blackfox. That’s mandated by the school district and out of my hands.”
“Suspension?” Mason watched his orderly life slip further out of his grasp. “For how long?”
“No less than three days, maybe longer.”
If Debra wasn’t doing drugs, three days would feel like a lifetime. If she was, three days wasn’t nearly long enough to straighten her out. And from a strictly practical standpoint, what would he do with a bored and sullen Debra on his hands for three days or more? He’d either have to leave her home alone while he worked, or he’d have to take an unplanned vacation. “You’re going to kick her out of school for having a baby pacifier? If I didn’t know these things were drug-related, what makes you think she knew?”
“She knew, Mr. Blackfox. The vice-principal warned several girls about the items just last week. Debra was one of them. As for the suspension, the timing of that is up to the district. If at the end of the required time a drug test comes back clean, Debra can return to class. She’ll have to leave the diving team, though. At least until the end of this semester.”
Mason stared at him, struggling to process everything he was hearing. “But diving is all she has,” he said, completely disregarding all the arguments Debra had been giving him against it. “If she hasn’t actually taken any drugs, why can’t she stay on the team?”
“Because she has the paraphernalia. I’m afraid this is bigger than Debra. We need to send a message to the entire student body.”
“Using my daughter to do it.” Mason’s temper flared. “This isn’t bigger than Debra, this is Debra. You’re going to take away the one place where she fits in because she made a stupid decision trying to fit in? What sense does that make?”
Mr. Davies scowled his disapproval. “I understand how you feel, but I have nearly eight hundred students in this school, and only one set of rules. From that, I have to keep the students in line and the school functioning. I can’t tailor the rules to fit the individual. If I did that we’d have pandemonium.”
“But you’re going to take away the one place where my kid has order in her life. You’re practically guaranteeing that she’ll fail.”
The principal’s stare was devoid of emotion. “Then I suggest you work closely with her while she’s home to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“Yeah. Well. The point is that leaving her home alone all day while I work isn’t going to help her.”
“Isn’t there someone she can stay with? A family member? A friend?”
“No. I’m it. I’m all she has.” The reality of that hit him full force.
Mr. Davies linked his hands together on the gleaming desk. “You seem like a caring father, Mr. Blackfox, and an intelligent man. I’m sure you’ll figure it out. You’ll need to meet with the administrators at the district level, and they may want a counselor to chat with Debra. We’ll be in contact over the details. And now, unless you have further questions, I’ll ask Mrs. Carmichael to bring Debra out.”
Further questions? Mason had a million of ’em, but it was damn clear he wasn’t going to find even one of the answers here. Obviously Debra had issues, but how could he help her if she wouldn’t tell him what they were?
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
MASON WAS NO CLOSER to finding the answers by the time Jolene rang their doorbell than he’d been when he walked out of the school’s front doors. Debra had spent most of the afternoon in her bedroom, blasting music loud enough to scrape paint off the walls while he tried to rearrange his schedule so he could be home with her during her suspension.
To his amazement, Debra’s attitude shifted abruptly when Jolene arrived, and he stood just inside the kitchen doorway looking at them and wondering how getting along with Debra looked so effortless for Jolene. He hated the envy that took root as he watched. He should be grateful that Debra would at least talk to somebody.
He just couldn’t stop wishing that somebody could’ve been him.
Later, when the only thing left of the gut-buster pizza he’d ordered were a couple of half-eaten crusts, and Debra had closeted herself in her bedroom with the library books—under protest—he spent five minutes dumping the garbage and loading the plates in the dishwasher, before carrying two glasses of iced tea into the living room. Jolene sat on the couch, shoes off, feet curled beneath her as she leafed through one of the old photo albums Henry had put together.
It was nothing fancy—just a few pictures stuck beneath self-adhesive plastic coating—but she seemed enthralled. If Jolene had an opinion about the absence of birth announcements and baby pictures, she didn’t share it.
She looked up as he came toward her, a smile playing across her lips, her dark eyes luminous. He knew she was expecting him to help her make sense of her life, and he wanted to. He just didn’t know how.
He handed her a glass and sat beside her, far more aware of her subtle scent and the warmth of her thigh where it touched his than he wanted to be. She must have noticed the contact, but either she didn’t feel anything or she was a whole lot better at hiding it than he was.
“Tea?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.
“I’d offer you wine, but I don’t drink.”
“Okay. Tea’s fine.” She met his gaze over the rim of her glass. “I wish you’d let me help clean up.”
“I had to throw away a cardboard box,” Mason said, settling back in his corner of the couch. “There’s really no way to split that job up.”
She grinned and glanced toward the bedroom doors. “I didn’t want to ask during dinner, but how’s Debra doing? Any more trouble?”
Mason’s smile faded. He’d half expected Debra to come clean about her trouble at school while they ate, but she’d skillfully avoided any mention of it. Maybe she didn’t want Jolene to know, but Mason could use the benefit of her expertise. “She was suspended from school today for having drug paraphernalia,” he said. “We’re both a little edgy.”
Jolene’s lips thinned and right in front of his eyes she turned into the cop he’d met that first night. “What did she have?”
Holding up one finger, Mason retrieved the items from the kitchen cupboard where he’d put them. “I talked to the principal. He tells me they’re relatively harmless, as paraphernalia goes.”
Jolene’s smile softened her features once more. “He’s right. It’s certainly not definitive proof she’s using drugs.”
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees and rubbed his face. “I feel like I’m watching her start t
o self-destruct. I know I should do something, but how do you stop something like this from happening?”
“If there were an easy answer, the world would be a far different place.”
Not for the first time since he left the school, Mason’s self-doubts overwhelmed him. “She shouldn’t be here. She should be with her mother.”
Jolene picked up one strand of beads and studied them thoughtfully. “I’m not so sure about that. If her mother’s focused on her new husband and their marriage, this might actually be a better place for Debra while she’s going through this.”
“She probably wouldn’t be going through it if she were home.”
“Stop selling yourself short. It’s not your fault Debra’s making these choices.”
Oh, if she only knew.
“You’re a good dad,” Jolene assured him. “Trust your instincts with her.”
“I’m not sure I have any instincts.”
“You had a great role model in Henry. Look how well you turned out.”
He almost laughed at that. “Yeah. Henry.” Who almost made up for his father.
Jolene looked away, and he had the sense that she was giving him time to compose himself. After a few minutes she ran her fingers across a picture of Mason and Ike standing with Henry in front of a small white frame house. “Did Henry adopt you?”
Mason shook his head. “We were an unofficial family.”
“The authorities just let you stay there? How does that happen in this day and age?”
“We lived on the reservation back then. I’m sure it would be different now, but nobody seemed very worried about me after my mother died. Frankly, I think they were just glad Henry was willing to take me.”
“Why would they be glad? You were just a boy.”
He shrugged, surprisingly touched by her emotional response and disconcerted by his unexpected urge to actually talk about his childhood. “You know what they say. The sins of the mother and all that.”
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