AHMM, May 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "How do I know you didn't throw it away right after I gave it to you?"

  Faulkner and Mary Beth banged their gavels on the table simultaneously. Personally, I'd been enjoying the carnage, even holding out a slight hope that it would get physical.

  Mary Beth said, “Roxanne, can you prove you were wearing the tail before gym class?"

  "Absolutely. I have witnesses,” she said, and three juniors in the audience stood up and nodded.

  "What about you, Caroline?” Faulkner said. “Can you prove you didn't swipe the tail?"

  "I have Spanish fourth period,” she said, “and I was there the entire time."

  No witnesses were needed to confirm that. Señora Casali was infamous for not letting anybody leave class even uno momento before the bell rang.

  "Then if neither of you has anything to add,” Faulkner said, “we'll make our decision."

  We huddled once more.

  "This one's tricky,” Mary Beth said.

  "What's tricky about it?” Faulkner asked. “Roxanne didn't wear the tail, so she has to pay the penalty."

  "But it's not her fault if the tail was missing."

  "You don't really think Caroline managed to sneak out of Casali's class, do you?"

  "Maybe it got lost."

  "Come on. She just didn't want to wear it. Guilty."

  But this time Mary Beth looked stubborn. “I don't think Roxanne would lie. If she says the tail was gone, then it was gone."

  "Okay, one vote for guilty, one vote for not guilty. That makes you the tiebreaker, Garnet."

  "So it does.” Caroline or Roxanne? Damned if I wasn't torn. I didn't know which of them to believe any more than I knew which of them I disliked the most. For a second I considered flipping a coin. What difference would it make really?

  If I ruled for Caroline, Roxanne would have to do something embarrassing or forgo her Rat Day privileges the next year. Not exactly hard time at San Quentin. The only thing was, that would make Caroline happy, which I really didn't want to do.

  So maybe I should rule in favor of Roxanne. Only that would be like putting out an ad that Caroline had stolen the rat tail and set Roxanne up, which wouldn't do much for her reputation. And in a school like Jackson's Bridge, reputation counted for a lot. Yeah, I hated her with a fiery passion and all that, but even if I had been willing to ruin her school career, I wasn't willing to do it unless I was absolutely sure she was at fault.

  Faulkner and Mary Beth were still looking at me expectantly. In fact, everybody in the whole freaking auditorium was looking at me expectantly. I was stuck, and getting pissed about it. If only Caroline hadn't caught Roxanne without that damned tail!

  That's when I figured something out. So I turned the microphone back on and said, “I have a few more questions.” Caroline and Roxanne both looked irked at the delay, while Faulkner and Mary Beth looked confused, but I didn't let that stop me. “Roxanne, you said that Caroline was outside the locker room when you came out."

  "That's right."

  "And Caroline, you said you had Spanish while Roxanne was in gym."

  "Yes, Your Honor."

  "So what were you doing near the gym?"

  For the first time, Caroline looked uncomfortable. “It was my lunch period."

  "So? The gym isn't on the way from Señora Casali's classroom to the cafeteria."

  She fidgeted a bit, then finally said, “I heard Roxanne wasn't wearing the tail, so I went to check."

  "How did you hear this?"

  "I got a text message."

  No wonder she hadn't wanted to admit it. Cell phones were supposed to be turned off during school hours, and if she'd been caught receiving a message, hers would have been confiscated for the rest of the semester.

  But enforcing that wasn't my problem. I said, “Who sent the message?"

  "Erin Mitchell."

  Better and better. Erin was the defendant from our first case. “Erin was in gym class with Roxanne?"

  "I guess."

  "Do you have your cell phone now?"

  "Only on silent mode!"

  "Let me see it."

  She looked reluctant, but surrendered her top-of-the-line Razr, which I handed to Faulkner. “Can you check the call history to see when she received the message from Erin?"

  It took a while because Caroline was apparently a text messaging addict, but he finally located the record and announced, “She got the message at 11:58."

  "Roxanne, what time does gym class end?"

  "Officially at twelve, but Coach Odo sends us to the locker room at 11:45 to get dressed."

  "So you left the locker room at the noon bell?"

  "More like a quarter after. Between having to sing that abominable song Annette ratted us with and looking for the tail, I ran late."

  "And Caroline was waiting for you?"

  "Right."

  "Was Erin with her?"

  "I didn't notice, but she probably was.” She rolled her eyes. “Erin's always following along behind Caroline."

  I said, “Bailiff, call Erin to the stand."

  After a moment, the scrawny junior came down to the stage and arranged herself so that she was standing near Caroline.

  "Just to remind you, you're still under oath,” I said.

  "Okay, fine,” she said, not meeting my eyes.

  "So Erin, when did you leave the locker room after gym class yesterday?"

  "I'm not sure."

  "Was it before or after you sent the text message to Caroline?"

  "Um ... I'm not sure."

  "It must have been before 11:58,” Mary Beth put in helpfully, “or you wouldn't have been able to send the text message. Everybody knows you don't get decent reception in the locker room."

  I'd known that, thanks to the first case, but was happy to have Mary Beth point it out. “Is that right?” I asked Erin.

  "I guess."

  "So at 11:58 you sent the message that Roxanne wasn't wearing her tail, even though Roxanne was searching for it at that very moment."

  The girl blanched. “She was already dressed before I left the locker room."

  "Dressed, maybe, but still looking for the tail. How did you know she wasn't going to find it?"

  Now all of those faces that had been watching me were watching Erin.

  "I heard her tell somebody she wasn't going to wear it,” she stammered.

  "Who did she say that to?” I asked. “We can bring up the entire gym class to confirm."

  "Um ... Maybe I only thought I heard it."

  "Or maybe you knew where the tail was. We already have sworn testimony that you didn't sing with the others in the shower room. Isn't it true that you disobeyed Annette so you could stay in the locker room, take the tail from Roxanne's locker, hide it, and then call Caroline to get Roxanne in trouble?"

  She jerked her head around like a trapped rat, appropriately enough. “Well, Caroline said to—"

  "You skank!” Caroline hissed. “Don't you dare try to pin this on me!"

  "No, no! It's just that I knew that— I mean, everybody knows you hate Roxanne, and I was trying to help you."

  "Help me? You call this helping! You douche bag!"

  "Language,” I said, but it was hard not to grin.

  Faulkner gestured, and we three judges leaned away from the microphones to confer. It didn't take long.

  Then I announced, “The case of Hendry versus Burns is hereby dismissed. Roxanne, would you like to press charges against Erin?"

  "You bet I will!"

  "No, I want to!” Caroline said. “She's the one who got me into this."

  "You can be co-complainants. The case of Hendry and Burns versus Mitchell is now added to the docket.” I turned to Erin. “Do you have anything to say in your defense?"

  "I didn't mean— I just wanted—” Then she hung her head. “No."

  "Then we will render our verdict. Erin, you have been found guilty of interfering in Rat Day proceedings. You are to retrieve the tail from wherever it was y
ou hid it and then to wear it to class every day for the next thirty days. If you are seen without it, or if you in any way try to avoid your sentence, you will lose all Rat Day privileges in the future.” The three of us banged our gavels in unison, and Faulkner declared the session of Kangaroo Court complete. As the bailiff told the gallery to rise, the three of us hopped out the way we'd hopped in.

  "I still think we should have gone ahead and taken away Erin's privileges for next year,” Faulkner groused.

  "No, this is enough,” Mary Beth said with an uncharacteristic gleam in her eye. “Can you imagine how Caroline is going to treat her for the rest of the year? That's what she gets for trying to suck up!"

  "You go, girl! Let that bad self out!” I said proudly.

  Then she had to go and ruin it by saying, “Poor Erin's going to be really lonely from now on. Maybe I should go talk to her."

  "Mary Beth, you don't have a bad self, do you?” I said.

  She just smiled and went along her decidedly non-bad way.

  "She's too good to be real,” I said wonderingly.

  Faulkner nodded. “We'll have to keep an eye on her just to make sure she doesn't get taken advantage of."

  I lifted an eyebrow at the “we” part, but didn't question it. I kind of liked the way it sounded.

  "By the way, that was an impressive piece of deduction,” he added.

  "Thanks. Of course, it means that I've helped maintain Rat Day, which I despise, and missed my best opportunity to strike a blow at either of the school uberbitches."

  "True. But you made sure that both uberbitches owe you, big-time."

  I considered it. “So you think Caroline will let me be a cheerleader?"

  "Please tell me you're kidding."

  I grinned. “Then do you think Roxanne will let me submit to the literary magazine?"

  "Forget that pretentious rag. I'm putting together an online zine that's way cooler."

  "Yeah? Do you take genre fiction?"

  "Is there any other kind?"

  "I'll e-mail you a story tonight."

  "Boffo.” As we picked up our backpacks, he said, “You're going to drama, right? Want to grab a Coke first?"

  "Sure."

  We started out of the auditorium together, and I even forgot I was still wearing the kangaroo crap. Maybe Jackson's Bridge wasn't a complete hellhole after all.

  Copyright (c) 2008 Toni L. P. Kelner

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Fiction: THE BONDHOLDER by R.T. Lawton

  Edward Kinsella III

  * * * *

  "We have a problem."

  At the sound of the proprietor's voice, Theodore squeegeed the abrupt perspiration off his pale balding dome with one hand, then glanced quickly around the room. Since the only other ones present in the Inner Sanctum were Cletis Johnston, proprietor of the Twin Brothers Bail Bond firm, and Moklal Feringheea, currently serving as the firm's executive secretary even though foreign intelligence records alleged him to be descended from a long line of hereditary Thuggee families, Theodore Oscar Alan Dewey, as the firm's solitary bail agent, was pretty sure who was going to be on the pointed end of the stick when it came time to rectify whatever this current situation demanded.

  "One of our special clients,” continued the proprietor, “a certain Mr. Jovanovich, has gone missing. Perhaps you remember him? About six foot, extremely slender build, straight brown hair parted on the left, wears dark-colored European suits, size seven black shoes—rather small for one of his height—and he walks with a slight limp."

  Theodore immediately reflected on some of their special clients who had fallen from high places, gone deep-water swimming without the appropriate underwater breathing apparatus, or had been otherwise rendered deceased by their suddenly outraged partners in crime. And of course, how could he forget those special clients who had been fatally struck by speeding taxicabs? However, as Theodore often rationalized, these latter ones had been jaywalking outside of well-marked crosswalks at the time, so what could they expect? In any case, each client capped off his long or short criminal career by taking up temporary residence at an establishment owned by one of the local morticians. Naturally, the bail bond firm made an extraordinary profit upon the demise of said client. Business was good and the profit margin remained exceedingly high, but then, the firm only accepted “special clients."

  At this point, Theodore couldn't help but pick up on the growing agitation in the proprietor's voice.

  "As you well know, if we as the bondholder cannot produce the client, either alive or dead, at the appropriate time for court, then our bond is forfeit."

  Theodore raised his left hand, the one with the permanently straight pinky finger where the bone had been broken and improperly reset. A finger that Theodore preferred not to talk about, mainly because it referred back to a previous labor-management dispute involving the proprietor and one of Theodore's earlier employee reviews.

  "Excuse me, sir, but don't we have one of our usual under-the-table agreements in force with our missing client?"

  Careful not to crease the sleeves of his newest Shantung silk suit in soft tones of beige to complement his ebony skin, Cletis Johnston tented his fingers on the desktop and gazed at his minion. The proprietor's almost Oriental eyes seemed to have an extra hardness to their gaze on this particular day.

  "Yes, Theodore, that particular contract is currently in force, and the firm will greatly benefit from the stolen stamp collection that Mr. Jovanovich gratefully put up as extra collateral in order to meet our terms. The collection contains several very rare stamps, however..."

  These “however” points in the proprietor's presentation were where Theodore's pulse tended to develop an increased rhythm, which insisted on thumping alarmingly along in an irregular pattern.

  "...due to the recent past elections, our economy hasn't yet made up its mind whether we are in a recession or a period of boom. Thus it grieves me to have any losses that affect our bottom line. Net profit is everything in our business."

  Theodore bobbed his head in apparent agreement. It was the wise thing to do: After all, he still had nine fingers that worked as they should. Albeit, when he contemplated the proprietor's last statement, he found himself in a bit of a quandary. In the past, the proprietor had made various statements indicating that secrecy and stealth in their operations were everything. Also, that loyalty to the firm was everything. And once, the proprietor had even said that finding the right special client was everything. Now Theodore wasn't sure which of these many statements he was supposed to focus on. Everything was so confusing.

  "We have no choice,” muttered the proprietor, “our client must be brought to light."

  Suddenly realizing his left hand was still raised in the air, Theodore figured he now had two options at this point. He could surreptitiously lower his hand and hope no one had noticed his lapse of memory as to what his extremities were doing, or he could ask another question since his hand was up anyway. If it hadn't been for that cadaverous Thuggee, Moklal Feringheea, who saw and remembered everything, standing right next to him, Theodore would've gone for the lowered hand option. However, it soon became a moot point as Theodore found that his brain had already sent a signal for his mouth to say something.

  "Begging your pardon, sir, but where should we start looking?"

  Cletis Johnston shifted his gaze back to his solitary bail-bond agent.

  "It would seem the obvious place for you to start is the location where our missing client had last been seen."

  Theodore mulled that information over for a while, then opened his mouth again.

  "Yes, sir, but where exactly was he last seen?"

  The proprietor barely glanced at a document lying in the precise center of his rich mahogany desktop.

  "Mr. Jovanovich was observed stepping onto the deck of a dinner cruise ship docked at Pier 38 in the harbor, but no one has sighted him onboard since the ship cast off from the dock."

  "Maybe...,” began
Theodore.

  But the proprietor raised his hand, palm out, in a stop-right-there motion.

  "Wait until I give you all the facts, Theodore. And, whereas I normally prefer that you not have a written record on your person during the beginning of one of our—shall we say—incidents, in this particular instance, you may wish to take notes here in order to refresh your memory at a later time."

  Theodore scrambled to find his small flip-top spiral notebook usually stashed in the inside breast pocket of his plaid sport coat. And, oh yeah, a pen to write with. The notebook was right where it should have been. He opened it up, found a blank page, and prepared to write.

  No pen.

  Cletis Johnston was now up from his executive leather chair and pacing back and forth behind his desk, reciting facts of the case without further use of notes.

  "Rumors concerning our rival, Herr Morden, have recently surfaced. It appears he has returned to Bay City and wishes to interfere in our business affairs once again. Thus I suspect he may have something to do with the disappearance of our client."

  Theodore tucked the last words, “...disappearance of our client,” into the back of his memory as he searched for a pen. None visible on the proprietor's clean desktop. He turned toward the cadaverous Hindu beside him, but no, he couldn't very well ask him for one. Quickly, Theodore searched the side pockets of his own sport coat. Inside the left pocket, he found a small hole in one corner of the lining. However, by using his index finger to probe deeper into the hole and directly below said pocket, he felt the outline of a stubby wooden pencil trapped in the lining, the kind of short pencil used in keeping score during one's golf game, no eraser. The best Theodore could recall, the pencil came from a round of miniature golf when he was conducting surveillance on a potential client. In any case, it would serve his purpose now. All he need do was push the pencil back up through the small hole in his pocket lining and start writing.

  Meanwhile, the proprietor continued with his recitation.

  "In anticipation of any problems that Herr Morden might cause our firm upon his return, I therefore hired a detective agency to shadow our Mr. Jovanovich these last few days and thus keep watch over him. The agency's operatives followed Jovanovich to Pier 38 and watched him go onboard the dinner cruise ship, appropriately named the Bay Watch. Mr. Jovanovich, unaccompanied by anyone else, proceeded into a large room on the main deck where meals are served during the cruise ... and then he disappeared from sight."