Teacher's Threat

by Diane Vallere

  “Which part are you more upset by? That she got business leads or that she went with Tex?”

  I waved Joanie’s question away. “Tex needed a date. It was totally innocent.”

  “Then it’s the business angle.” She dropped into a chair and opened the cover of my notebook. “Radical Business Strategy” was sprawled across the top of the first page, and underneath, my name. Like I’d learned to do in grade school. Some lessons were never unlearned.

  She closed the lid. “Don’t beat yourself up. You’re at a turning point. It’ll come to you.”

  “What’ll come to me?”

  “How to reopen your business. If you want to reopen your business.”

  “Of course, I want to reopen my business.” I jerked my thumb over my shoulder. “I have a partially completed room renovation at home. That’s how much I miss decorating.”

  “Yeah, but you gotta wonder...” Her voice trailed off. “Never mind.”

  Joanie was a businesswoman too. She’d left a corporate job and cashed in her 401K to start up her store and used her vast business knowledge to write up a business plan. Joanie looked good on paper, which helped her open her doors six months after she got the idea. If she had thoughts on the matter, I wanted to hear them.

  “You were going to say something. What?”

  She raised her hands to her head and adjusted her bobby pins. “This isn’t about money. I’ve seen you when you’re on fire. When you want something, you make it happen. Don’t just go through the motions, Madison. Your business is like a car that broke down on the side of the road. Figure out why you’re stalled, and either fill up your tank or get a different car.”

  “Speaking of cars,” I said, “Can you give me a ride to the police impound?”

  26

  Joanie drove a black Ford Mustang she acquired at a swap meet in Grand Prairie. We’d gone together, and by the time I finished negotiations on a collection of Russel Wright punch bowls in “Eclipse,” she traded her Volkswagen Bug for the Mustang. She fixed the busted air conditioner by replacing the spark plugs and planned to overhaul the rest of it when she found the time, the parts, and the right person to do the work.

  Mickey met us by the entrance. I got out of Joanie’s car and greeted him.

  “Madison, glad you got here early.” He glanced at Joanie’s black Ford Mustang. “Friend of yours or Uber?”

  “Friend.”

  He bent down to the open passenger window and looked inside. “Nice ride,” he said. He asked her a question about her chassis and horsepower, and to her credit, she knew the answers.

  “Mickey?” I interrupted. “Do you have keys for me?”

  He straightened up. “Oh. Yeah. Sure.” He handed me two sets of keys: mine and a set to a freshly washed pick-up truck. “She’s gassed up and ready to go.”

  “Thanks. You’ll let me know when I can get my car?”

  “You’ll either hear it from me or my cousin.”

  I thanked him and went in search of the truck while he leaned back down and resumed his conversation with Joanie. At this rate, they’d bond over her engine block before lunch.

  Sometimes, I wondered about Tex’s extended family. Until he told me he had a cousin who owned a towing company and oversaw the police impound lot, I hadn’t given much thought to him being from Texas. But in moments like these, I saw how Tex’s loyalty ran beyond simple cop lines. I liked that about him. I was even charmed by him hiring a topless dancer to accompany him to the club.

  Love does funny things to the mind.

  I still had to pay off my bar tab at Kanin’s, but with the banks being closed, I didn’t know if the hold on my available credit had lifted. Still, a promise was a promise, and a debt was a debt. In the interest of saving Rocky from having to sniff everything in our path, I led him to the truck, and we drove.

  It was after noon. Kanin’s lacked the energy of the previous night. There were a few cars parked to the far left but none in the customer spaces. I eased into a spot out front and cut the engine then turned to Rock. “This is a restaurant,” I said. “You’re not allowed.”

  He whimpered.

  “Be a good dog. I’ll be right back.”

  He dropped his head.

  I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t leave him alone in the truck. Not after a murder had taken place in a parking structure within walking distance. The bag I had with me was my backpack, and Rocky didn’t fit in there.

  I got out of the truck and went around to the bed. There was a duffel bag filled with tools bungee-corded to the side. I lowered the back panel and leaned in to get it. Another car pulled into the parking structure. I glanced up and saw Eric behind the wheel. Even on a Saturday, he wore a bowtie. I suppose he was as committed to his look as I was to mine.

  After our encounter last night, Eric was the last person I wanted to run into. I bent down behind the truck and tiptoed around to the passenger-side door. It was locked. Silly me, I hadn’t yet seen the benefit to teaching Rocky how to release locks on a car.

  I turned around and leaned against the truck door. If I could wait it out until Eric left, I’d be fine. I stepped my feet out in front of me and rested my tush on the floorboard. It was awkward at best.

  I listened for sounds that Eric entered Kanin’s, but what I heard instead was him ask a question. “Is the manager here?”

  “He’s in his office,” another male voice answered.

  “Does he suspect anything?”

  “Are you kidding? He gave us a standing invitation to return.”

  I twisted and peered through the window. The second voice belonged to the bartender. I rested my foot on the floorboard and stayed low, watching them through the corner of the glass. Rocky raised his head and looked at me but then rested his head back on the seat.

  I’d mistakenly thought Eric’s role was to coordinate the entertainment, but perhaps he rented out the building and supplied the staff? The bartender, along with the hostess and wait staff, had all been college-aged, which didn’t strike me as odd considering the club’s proximity to the campus.

  “Did you tally out? How’d we do?” Eric asked.

  Eric’s use of “we” confirmed my suspicion that Eric had partners. Curiosity took over, and I strained to hear how profitable event planning could be. Who knew, maybe once I locked down my second space, there would be a side business there for Mad for Mod?

  “Half a ticket,” the bartender said.

  “Sweet.” The men high-fived.

  Half a ticket? How much was a ticket? Were they raising money to buy tickets to a concert? That didn’t seem likely. This was the problem with spending my time around college students. They had a vocabulary that wasn’t available to fifty-year-olds. I’d considered investing in Babbel so I could refresh my French. I wondered if they had a language course on Millennial Grad Student.

  The men’s body language was relaxed. Eric was the more formal of the two, in his broadcloth shirt and bowtie with dark denim jeans cuffed at the ankle, no socks, and brown oxfords. The bartender was in a black T-shirt, low-slung jeans, and running sneakers and had a dishtowel draped over his shoulder. Whatever a ticket or half a ticket was, it seemed to have exceeded their expectations.

  “This place is a cash cow, man,” the bartender continued. “We have an open invitation and all green lights. Now that Gallagher’s out of the picture, there’s nobody to stop us.”

  “There’s one. The woman who demanded her credit card when she left, that blond lady. She’s in Gallagher’s class with me. She might make some noise.”

  “Madison Night? She won’t be back. After she left, I voided her transaction. If she calls the bank, they won’t even see what she’s talking about. It was worth sacrificing my tip to get rid of her.”

  “I still say it’s too risky,” Eric countered. “If Gallagher caught on, then she could too. We can’t take care of everybody like we did with him.”

  27

  The hair on the back of my neck bristled. At
tending a theme night on campus somehow put me in the same category as a man who had recently turned up dead. Suddenly the vandalism to my car felt less random. These guys were into something they shouldn’t be, and while I didn’t know exactly what it was they’d done, I knew it wasn’t safe for me to pop up and say hello.

  “What did she drink?” Eric asked.

  “Club soda. She made a point of telling me no matter what anybody ordered for her, she was to get club soda.”

  “Did she think the dean was going to get her drunk?” Eric asked. They laughed. “What about the other guy? The one with the sexy date? She spent a lot of time talking to him.”

  “He paid cash.”

  These two must have loved that. If they were skimming from the profits, then cash was king. Tex might have known that, but he also would have known a credit card could compromise his cover story.

  At that moment, Rocky barked. I’d left his window cracked to give him air, but that also meant his bark wasn’t muffled. The two men stopped talking. I dropped down out of their view but held onto the door handle. My knee screamed out in pain, but I bit my lip.

  “Whose truck is that?” Eric asked.

  “I don’t know. Kitchen crew? Janitor?”

  “There’s a dog inside.”

  This was no good. Had I locked the door? Would they come investigate and find me crouched on the other side? Would I fit underneath the truck? Was I really contemplating crawling under a truck in the parking lot outside of a restaurant?

  I leaned against the truck and pulled my phone out. I switched it to silent and sent a text: call kanin’s. ask for eric. Now. I hit Send and hoped Tex wouldn’t think I was being needy.

  Within seconds, a third voice called out from inside the restaurant. “Eric, you got a call. Says it’s urgent.”

  I turned around and peeked through the windows of the truck. Rocky saw me and came over to say hello. I craned my neck past him and watched both men go into the restaurant. I quickly moved to the driver side, started the engine, and peeled out of there.

  I drove two miles and pulled into a parking lot. There was no doubt the conversation I overheard indicated guilt. I removed my credit card from my wallet and called the number on the back. I navigated the prompts until I reached a summary of my recent charges. The last one was my purchase at Paintin’ Place. Unless the system hadn’t updated with recent activity, the bartender told the truth. The bar tab from last night wasn’t there. I put a hold on charges just to be safe and then disconnected.

  I called the police station, hoping to catch Tex. Imogene answered, which I hadn’t expected.

  “Captain Allen has you working on a Sunday?” I asked. I knew he was understaffed with police officers but expecting a volunteer to work six days seemed unusual.

  “I came in on my own. My air conditioner stopped working and I needed a place to write.”

  “I’ve heard people write at Starbucks,” I offered.

  “You have to get there early to get a table.” She paused. “He’s not here,” she said. “I can transfer you to his cell—”

  “That’s not necessary.” I could do that myself. “The last time we spoke, you mentioned doing research. You do a lot, don’t you?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Sometimes the research is more fun than writing.”

  “Have you ever heard the expression ‘half a ticket’?”

  “As in admission to a club or money?”

  “I don’t know. What does it mean in terms of money? How much is a ticket?”

  “A million.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  “It is,” she said. “It’s big in the hip-hop community. I was thinking of writing a sidekick, kinda like Lawrence Block has in his Scudder series, so I spent two days cataloging expressions.”

  “Half a million dollars,” I said, this time more to myself than to her.

  “Yep. That’s a lot of cheddar. You want me to add that to your message to Captain Allen?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  I thanked her and hung up. Was it possible the two men had made half a million dollars from bongo night? Sure, the place had been filled with partiers who benefited from a competent bartender, but even if the venue were at maximum capacity and every person racked up a hundred-dollar bar tab, that would be twenty-five thousand dollars. And that was before compensating the band or paying for booze.

  Twenty-five thousand dollars was no small change for one night, but half a million?

  Half a million dollars seemed a lot more possible if Eric and his friend had done something illegal, and this overheard conversation framed the trouble I’d had with my credit card in a whole new light. I didn’t know details or the extent of their crime, but none of that would matter if they figured out I knew. It was one more seemingly unrelated thing that I strongly suspected was related to everything else.

  The rest of Sunday passed without hearing from Tex. I grew more anxious by the hour. It was unlike him not to return my call unless he had a solid police-captain reason, so every time I picked up my phone to try again, I set it back down. I swapped out my tunic for another of the high school teacher’s pinpoint oxfords, this one lavender (and far less worn than the blue one) and applied the polyurethane sealant on the wood walls in my sitting room.

  I threw open the windows to air the place out and took Rocky on a scouting trip through the neighborhood to look for discarded furniture. Sundays had always been profitable in terms of freebies, and today was no different. We netted two aluminum TV stands, a globe lamp, and three different mismatched end tables. I always wondered why people gave away only one.

  The next morning, my body set a record for stiffness. The solution was swimming. I clipped on Rocky’s leash, pulled a yellow cotton sundress on over my bathing suit, and arrived at the Gaston Swim Club by six fifteen. I set Rocky up in the dog room, carried my towel to the pool deck, and tucked my hair under a swim cap. I was joined by an unlikely companion: Tex.

  I was growing accustomed to the wear and tear that took place on him while he was investigating a case. His hair was messy, as if he’d slept on it wet, and his facial hair was about two days into beard growth. Creases by his eyes indicated he hadn’t gotten much sleep lately, though I could give him a run for his money in that category. He had on a T-shirt, swim trunks, and rubber flip-flops.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey,” I said back. It seemed as though college had reduced our conversational skills to those of a twenty-two-year-old.

  “I wasn’t sure you’d show.”

  “I was tempted to skip, but my joints are screaming for a workout.”

  He eyebrows dropped down low. “You okay?”

  “I’ll survive.”

  There were two outstanding factors to swimming at six fifteen in the morning, one of which was the company of regulars. They were octogenarians, plus or minus a decade, who treated their morning swim with the regimented respect they gave their daily fiber intake. They had little interest in eavesdropping on Tex and me, mostly because those who knew me would ask me point-blank in the locker room when we were alone.

  This left us on the pool deck with no one around. “Are you going to the college today?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Classes were canceled. You remember that, right?”

  I nodded. “I didn’t know if you did.”

  It felt odd, knowing we shared an experience we didn’t talk about, yet after Saturday night, it no longer felt like we were at odds. There was a level of trust, an understanding that we would pick up where we left off when this was over, that settled onto my shoulders like a comforting gravity blanket. The most atypical aspect of my life—a relationship with Tex—had become the most reliable. I guessed it was true; when you release your worries and fears, things tend to work out.

  “Imogene told me you called. After I checked on the dean, I went to see Lloyd about the autopsy.”

  “Did he find anything?”

  “Nothing we didn’
t already know. Gallagher had a large dose of antihistamine in his system. Not lethal but more than the directions suggest. We’re working on obtaining medical records to see whether it was prescribed for allergies or if it was over the counter. Official cause of death was asphyxiation. All factors point to him being drugged before getting to his car with the expectation that he’d pass out and die from the exhaust fumes.”

  “What about the door being jimmied?”

  He scratched the side of his stubble. “Doesn’t factor. Could be random vandalism, could be a prank. Could be somebody had a crisis of conscience.”

  “Wouldn’t it have been easier to just take the rags out of the exhaust pipe?”

  “This way Gallagher would have known he was being threatened. If he took the car to a mechanic to fix the door, the whole set-up would have been discovered. Probably fixed. No harm, no foul, just a professor who knows someone’s trying to send him a message.”

  “Are you any closer to figuring out who the someone is?”

  “So far, just a list of persons of interest. Nothing solid.”

  I pulled my swim cap on and tucked my hair underneath. “I don’t know if Eric is on that list, but if not, he should be.” I recounted the conversation I’d overheard outside of Kanin’s. “I don’t think Eric runs a simple event planning organization. His partner said their profits were half a ticket.”

  “Imogene told me you asked her about that.”

  “I’ve been over it a hundred times, and I can’t figure out how they made that profit legally. Either they’re selling something on the side, or they’re skimming from the top.”

  Tex’s blue eyes pierced mine, and even though I had plenty of practice, I broke eye contact. “What aren’t you telling me?” he asked.

  “There was a problem with my credit card at the club and I threatened to tell the authorities that about the underage drinking and violation of occupancy limits if they didn’t give my card back. When I went back yesterday to pay my bill, I heard them say I might be a problem. Eric said he couldn’t get rid of me the way he got rid of Gallagher.”