by Rick Riordan
Professor Mitchell sat in the back, smiling, taking notes, sipping a Sprite one of the students had given him, while we went through some last-minute questions from the study guide.
After the class broke up Mitchell offered to walk me back to my office. "You're a hell of a teacher," Mitchell told me.
I refused to blush. I looked straight down the hallway of yellow bolted panels, thinking about the corridor as it had been a few weeks ago, filled with FBI and bomb-squad men and police.
"You should see me on semesters when I don't get shot."
Mitchell chuckled. As we walked he brought out some student evaluation forms, the kind they use to assess each class.
"I hope I get that chance," he said. "These reports are excellent — the dean was very pleased to see them after such a hard beginning to the term. There've already been quite a few questions about your classes for next fall."
"Next fall?"
"You're interested, I hope? Same arrangement? Same hours?"
"Dividing my time with Erainya Manos? You're willing to have a part-time P.I. on staff?"
Mitchell laughed. "Probably keep everybody honest when it comes to post-tenure review time, knowing I've got my own investigator. Absolutely, son."
We stopped at the door of my office. Mitchell patted me on the shoulder, grinned. His white sideburns inched back. "Well?"
"I'm on board," I said.
"You've got a future here, son. Unofficially speaking, I think you'll be around for some time."
"My landlord and creditors will be happy to hear that."
Mitchell patted me again, then said, "I'll see you at the department party?"
He turned without waiting for an answer and went whistling down the hallway.
I closed up the office and got home around one, just in time to change for my next engagement.
It was the first Friday in May. Some friends and I had a date. I put on one of my new dress shirts, some slacks, and a tie I had been able to afford with my first paycheck from UTSA. My tie was a springtime explosion of rose on yellow. I looked in the mirror and wondered if there had always been a little streak of gray above my left ear.
Around one-thirty, Erainya did her unsyncopated rap-ta-tap on the door. Jem and Michael burst in, followed by their mothers. The boys looked like miniature versions of me — slacks, white shirts, same rose-and-yellow ties, sawed off and hemmed to their sizes. They'd insisted on their own ties when they'd gone shopping with me a few days before. I told them we would look like a clown troupe if we went out in public together, but that just made them more determined.
Erainya and Ines, mercifully, had chosen their own clothes. Erainya wore her standard black T-shirt dress, black sandals, a black leather purse that looked like an S&M mask. Her only concession to the May Festival atmosphere was a single red plastic bracelet on her wrist. It somehow looked more like the remnant of incarceration than a spring fashion statement.
Ines wore white slacks and a blue Guatemalan shirt that made her red hair glow like neon. She gave me a kiss on the cheek, then went to rein in Michael, who was helping Jem capture Robert Johnson from the top shelf of the closet — his normal hiding place from children.
Erainya came up and straightened my tie. "You're how old? And you can't tie a tie?"
"I'm new at this formal dress business."
She sighed. "So you going to grace us with your presence at the office one of these days?"
"Tuesday," I promised. "Same day George'll be back. Things have just about settled down at UTSA. You close out the Brandon case?"
She stepped back and examined my outfit critically. "They sent the check. It didn't bounce. Things are fine."
"No more death threats to the English department?"
"Ah." She waved her hand. "Not unless you keep dressing like this. No."
Jem was raking Robert Johnson down the sleeves of my shirts. Michael was giggling.
We granted the poor feline a reprieve and told the boys to come on to the car. As it turned out, Jem and Michael's new school was not going to be the one they'd visited together three weeks before. During the course of the police investigation, one of Erainya's lawyer friends who was representing Ines had learned that both women were looking into private education for their sons. The lawyer had put in a good word at his daughter's school on the North Side, which just happened to be short on boys' enrollment for the fall. Lo and behold, Jem and Michael received acceptance letters and half-tuition scholarships a few days later, along with invitations to visit for the annual Spring Celebration to meet their future classmates.
The school was just north of Loop 410 but it seemed a thousand miles from town — an isolated village of Spanish-style limestone buildings and courtyards and covered walkways nestled amid hundreds of acres of live oaks on the banks of Salado Creek.
Today the huge front lawn of the school was overrun with families and food booths. The trees were bedecked in ribbons. Hand-painted signs advertised Beanie Baby tosses, peppermint sticks in lemons, a dunking booth. In the breezeway by the theater, a junior school jazz band was foot-tapping their way through a tune that sounded like Miles Davis struck with baseball bats and strained through an organ grinder's box. Parents in suits and flowing white summer dresses floated along, smiles in place, tickets in hand, children in whirlwinds around them, faces painted like spiderwebs or rainbows. Within fifteen minutes of our arrival, Jem and Michael were tugged into a group of kindergartners and taught to play fishing-for-treats with a stick and a glittery sheet.
Erainya was pulled into a conversation with her lawyer/parent friend who wanted to introduce her to a state senator who might have some business for a good P.I. They walked off talking about the possibilities and eating Sno-Kones. Ines Brandon smiled at me nervously. "What the hell are we doing here?"
"Pretending to be rich," I said. "Come on."
We walked along the periphery of the festival, trying our best to avoid little bodies. I glanced at Ines in her bright colors and tried to convince myself she really was the same woman I'd met just a few weeks ago.
We bought two lemons with peppermint sticks and sat in the shade of a live oak. Jem was showing some kids a trick with a yo-yo. Michael was betting the other kids a carnival ticket each that Jem couldn't do it three times in a row.
"I don't know about this new Jem/Michael alliance," I muttered.
Ines twirled her peppermint stick. Her lips were turning unnaturally red from the candy. "Hardly fair to the rest of the kids in the world, is it?"
We watched as Jem completed the third around-the-world/walk-the-dog combination with the yo-yo and Michael started collecting tickets, smiling for the first time I'd ever seen. He suggested the other kids try double or nothing. The junior high band managed a drumroll and a horn crescendo, then unraveled into a very odd waltz arrangement of Glenn Miller's "String of Pearls." I got the feeling it wasn't really supposed to be a waltz arrangement, but I wanted to give them the benefit of a doubt.
"I'm wondering," Ines said. She had her legs crossed at the ankles, the tips of her loafers tapping the air with the music. "Should I thank you, or apologize for inflicting myself on you?"
"No apologies," I assured her.
"My problems almost got you killed, Tres."
"Technically speaking."
"And now I feel like I've been adopted. You and Erainya, George and Kelly, your other friends."
"It's an odd family," I admitted. "But our weirdness makes us strong. You'll fit right in."
She slapped my knee. "How can I thank you?"
"Feed Robert Johnson every day?"
"Guess again."
I smiled. Jem and Michael trotted over to us and plopped down on the grass, still counting their winnings. Jem appropriated my peppermint lemon and told me he was going to like this school.
The junior high band's waltz kept going. A daddy in a three-piece suit was now dancing with his little girl on his toes.
It looked like fun. "How about this dance?"<
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Ines smiled radiantly. "That's what you want as a thank-you?"
"It's one of the things on my wish list, yeah."
Michael let out a giggle, then caught himself. His mother looked at him, amazed. His ears turned bright red. She looked back at me and her eyes grew suspicious.
"What's the joke?" she demanded.
"You want to dance or not?"
"A dance. To this music."
I nodded. "Have to start somewhere."
She pointed her peppermint at me, daggerlike. "Someday, Tres Navarre, you'll regret saying that."
The hell of it was, I believed her immediately.
But when she stood and offered me her hand, I took it anyway.