“I’m not doubting you,” he replied. “You can come help me organize my office sometime…”
Holly shook her head and wrapped her hand around her second drink, leaning close. “You paying me?” she lifted her eyebrows and shot him a look of amused-consternation. “I charge twenty-five bucks an hour. But I would be the best personal organizing assistant you’d ever find.”
“Twenty-five bucks for you to organize my office?”
“Will it only take an hour?” Holly asked with a smile on her voice.
The phone rang a third time and Joel put up his hand. “I’m so sorry. I think it must be an,” he turned up the screen and tilted his head, “emergency,” he finished and answered. “This is Joel,” he said. He went silent and ashen; Holly watched his face closely, her heart dropping as she realized he’d been with her—engaged, flirting almost, too—and now he was gone.
Whatever was on the other end of that phone had more of a draw than Holly and her whimsical flirting about office management. Poof. Joel was gone and the gritty reality in that bar shone bright.
“Yeah. What? Shit. Repeat that.” He glanced up at Holly, briefly, shook his head and said, “Yeah. I’ll, um, I’ll call him. Shoot me his number. Thanks.” He hung up and stared at the screen until Holly reached forward and touched him gently on the forearm, snapping him out of his daze.
“You okay?” she asked.
“No,” he answered and slid out of the booth, leaving his old fashioned mostly untouched. “Yeah. That was my principal…and yeah. Um, Claire Gregor, the girl Alex, um, wrote the note to?”
Holly nodded. The name transported her she froze—everything in the bar began to slip into slow motion. The bartender wiped down a spot in front of him on repeat, the voices near them died down to whispers, and she could no longer hear the thumping beat of the speakers.
Joel cleared his throat. He pulled out his wallet and threw a twenty on the table. “They found her at a park about two hours ago.” He couldn’t bring himself to look at Holly for the next part. “She’d been strangled. She’s dead.”
Chapter Four
Joel felt completely in control as he paid for the drinks and started out of the bar. But then he turned and watched Holly down her old fashioned quickly before getting up to follow him out, and he wasn’t sure if that was such a good idea. His brain was humming—purring along—trying to organize all the facts he knew into something that felt tangible, believable.
Claire Gregor was dead. Alex Gamarra was in juvenile detention for bringing a gun to school for her.
For her.
He could see Holly’s face and her determination. She wanted answers and he didn’t have any. Deep down, Joel wondered if this was going to come back and haunt him. If his latent crush on Holly Bloom from high school caused a ripple effect of pain. He’d known he should’ve just kept walking by her car.
His principal hadn’t told him enough details.
But there he was at drinks with the mom of the kid who said he was going to kill Claire? Jesus, Holly Bloom, he thought to himself. Why had she remained some wistful teenage fantasy?
Alex couldn’t have killed Claire. This was big. It was bigger than anything he’d ever experienced. By the time Joel got into the driver’s seat of the car, his mind was pulled in every direction.
He dialed his principal and put the call straight to his car speakers.
“Sorry, I was actually out with…” and he hit the gas instead of the brake, careening into the car in front of him.
Holly’s car.
“I gotta go. Again.” Joel said and he turned off his car and put his head on his steering wheel, fully chagrined.
She got out, wide-eyed, and walked slowly to their conjoined bumpers; Joel watched her inspect the damage and pick up a section of license plate off the ground and hold it up with a neutral expression on her face.
Joel took a deep breath and got out of the car slowly, not excited to see his mistake up close and personal, as steam rose from his hood into the night.
“If you wanted to get my attention,” Holly said slowly, no hint of a smile, “you could’ve honked?” Then she tossed the plate to the ground and shrugged. She took two steps up to him and kept her hands at her sides. “My friends can come get me,” she said slowly. “It’s no big deal.”
Joel found himself nodding. “Yeah. I’m sorry. I was distracted. I’m... I’ll get these towed.”
“Leave them,” Holly said. Her chin wobbled and she motioned toward the mess. He watched as she reached up and rubbed her neck. Joel slumped and resisted an urge to put his hand out and touch her on the shoulder.
“Police will definitely ticket them or tow them,” he said. He leaned down into his car and grabbed his phone out of the cup holder. He glanced down and noticed his screen lit up with messages. Students had started to find out; their parents; his colleagues. Everyone was texting. He’d missed two more phone calls.
“No, you should just leave them….I’ll get someone to get them…”
“I think you’re in shock,” Joel laughed tenderly and he rang up roadside assistance, following the voice commands. “This is my mistake. Let me get the tow here. I’ll call you a cab home. My treat.”
Without warning, she took another step forward, lifted her head and asked, “Do you think he had something to do with it?”
The automated woman in Joel’s ear said, “Please enter the address of your current location or say I don’t know.” And he lowered the phone away from his ear and asked, “What do you mean? You mean…do I think Alex…is somehow responsible for Claire?” He couldn’t bring himself to say Claire’s death or Claire’s murder, although that was exactly what he meant. A child had been murdered.
“Yeah,” Holly answered seemingly oblivious to the car damage next to her or the growing interest by passersby. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m afraid for him. He wrote that girl. I mean. He has an alibi.”
Joel wondered about how many moms would immediately be concerned with their child’s alibi.
“You’re afraid Alex was involved?” Joel clarified and his arm hair prickled with anxiety and hyper-attention. She was so vulnerable in front of him, her arms trembling, and her eyes pleading—and not because he’d hit her car, but because she was wrestling with the idea that her child could be apart of taking another child’s life.
He didn’t know shit about Claire Gregor’s death other than what his principal quickly told him over the phone. But he’d promised his boss he would call the police when he could and that would involve an interview about Alex’s note. The police already knew that and Holly had to know that, too.
A child turned up dead. That same child was threatened and a kid brought a gun to school to hurt her? Holly was right. Alex was lucky he was locked up at Donald Cooper otherwise all the circumstantial evidence pointed at him.
He watched her shrug, swallow, and run her hands over her forehead.
“I can’t imagine it,” she said, her voice quivering. “I just need to get home. I’ll call a car.”
He wanted to say: I’ll come with you, or when will I see you again? But those were incongruent to the idea they were both processing: a girl was dead and Alex would, no doubt, be included in interviews regarding his relationship with her. The situation at school went from bad, but manageable, to one of the worst things he could imagine. And there she was, in the middle, eyes glistening with fear and mania, her hair whipping around her face, her hands trembling.
She called a car via an app on her phone before he could protest. She walked back to her car and grabbed her purse. Her bumper was gone and the back panel had fallen off, but she was certain the damage was minimal. Inside, the gun safe, still packed tightly—seemed unharmed.
“You want me to come with you?” he asked.
He hadn’t meant it. He had meant to say, “Where would you like me to tow your car?” But instead, he threw out the idea that he wanted to continue the evening, and he wished he co
uld backtrack. Her world was breaking. He could see it in her face and her confusion and defeat. She’d been able to keep the evening light until then, but now her day was consuming her, and he loathed even more that the timing of his reunion coincided with her world breaking. He’d pictured it all differently.
“Sure,” Holly answered.
Joel didn’t think he had heard her correctly. “What?” he asked. “Really?”
“I say what I mean,” she replied, her voice steadying. “I wouldn’t have said yes…”
“Okay, okay,” he dipped his head in surrender. “That’s how I remember you,” he replied.
She snapped her head up and looked straight at him, her green eyes landing square with his, her head tilted. “Oh yeah?” she asked, unblinking. “How’s that?”
“You speak your mind,” he said, hoping the honesty would net him favor in the end. “I was a jock not allowed at the choir concert.”
“I never said that. And it’s not a universally beloved trait of mine,” Holly added quickly, crossing her arms after glancing at the phone. “We have two minutes. Silver Camry. Jorge.”
“I’m not scared of honesty,” he said and as the statement left his mouth, he didn’t know why he’d told her that.
Immediately, she threw her head back to the stars and tossed up her arms, as if to communicate to the universe how strange the night was. When she lowered her gaze, she put her hands on her hips; her eyes shifting between the rear of her car and him.
“You hit me,” she mused and sighed.
“It wasn’t how I wanted to reconnect, to be honest.”
Joel’s eyes scanned the tangled metal of their bumpers and then looked back to Holly. In one minute the Camry would arrive and he’d have to make a choice to get in the car and head home with her—to his own student’s house—or stay behind and deal with the aftermath of his distracted driving.
He wondered if he stayed behind if she would ever give him a second chance or even a second look again. Then he looked at her and wondered if she would even give him a first look.
It wasn’t something he was used to, not being able to read a woman and know if she was into him. Holly was guarded and a thin veneer of fuck-you covered every interaction. It was teasing and it was friendly, but it wasn’t an invitation.
Joel knew it was his own fault for holding a torch. If he hadn’t mystified Holly at age seventeen, he could’ve easily wiped the floor with someone like Holly Gamarra; buxom and gorgeous not only naturally but also with all the enhancements she could afford. Holly was a woman he wanted to spend with lazily on Saturday mornings and someone he’d want to get dolled up to take out on his arm. When she walked, people turned to look—he’d noticed already.
They turned heads together.
She didn’t notice.
“I’ll bring the gun safe in and assist,” he offered, couching his assistance in a chore to make it seem more legitimate. “I’ll get the cars towed.”
The silver Camry appeared on the curb opposite them and Holly waved and motioned for him to wait while they wrangled the box out of the back seat and lugged it forward, storing it in the cab’s trunk, which was luckily bigger than her own. The man confirmed her address, and they traveled in silence up the hill into Mt. Scott, depositing Holly and Joel at the end of a beautifully winding driveway lit with perfectly spaced out solar lamps.
Joel dragged and wrestled the safe up the driveway as best he could while Holly led the way, marching forward up her steps and into the house, not waiting for him at all. He finally made it into the foyer and put the box on the ground. When he looked up, he saw two women—neither of them Holly—standing in front of him. They eyed him with perplexed and curious expressions, a young woman with long brown hair and a thin face and a middle-aged woman with a searching look and a smile in her eyes.
“She went upstairs,” the younger one said and she nodded toward the back of the house. “Can we get you something?”
“Water, maybe,” Joel said and scratched at the back of his neck.
“Yes, darling,” the older woman said and she grabbed at his shoulder and made an impressed face to the younger one, in full-view him. “You’re the guidance counselor?” she asked with teasing on her voice. Holly must have texted them. He rolled with it.
“Yes,” he answered. “Didn’t you call for one?” he asked. “It’s our least popular exotic dancing character so it comes at a teacher-rate…three-fourths pay for full-time work.”
The younger one tilted her head and cracked a small smile. “He thinks he’s funny,” she said with a pitying and jokey laugh. “I’m Maeve.”
She reached her hand over to his and shook it, full and firm, and she looked him straight in the eye—no bullshit, no ga-ga eyes, either. Maeve was serious and assessing and for some reason he felt like he wanted to be on his best behavior around her. Like a teacher he’d wanted to impress.
“Gloria,” the other one said and also shook his hand. “Don’t worry. We aren’t staying long. We’ll be back tomorrow when the boy is home, to help out. As friends do. Let me get you that water.”
Joel nodded, unclear why she felt the need to tell him all that. They entered a kitchen and Joel admired the large island in the middle, the pots and pans hanging above it, a stove underneath. Maeve reappeared at his side and handed him a water glass with ice.
“Can you tell us about the girl who passed?” Maeve asked, skipping all pleasantries. He looked at her over the rim of the cup and tilted his head.
“What?” he asked.
“Holly texted us from the car. Also, we read the incident report at school and Alex’s note to Claire. So…”
“In an investigative way?” he asked, knowing that he couldn’t share anything and she was going to be painfully disappointed to find that like doctors and lawyers, teachers were bound to protect privacy, too.
“In a friend, way,” Gloria responded for Maeve.
He nodded and knew how best to answer to satisfy everyone. “He had an incident at school,” Joel started and cleared his throat.
“We already read the letter,” Maeve repeated and she motioned for him to sit at a kitchen nook. He followed them there, holding his glass of water tightly as if he were being questioned—he thought he saw Gloria eyeing his glass closely, but maybe he was paranoid. Had they drugged it?
“Oh. Well,” Joel answered, feeling a bit freer to talk from where they already had knowledge. “He appeared to have an issue with the girl who…died at the park tonight. And it’s really tragic.” As he said the word tragic, he felt the word in his chest for the first time since he took the phone call.
It was tragic and it was going to haunt him. Claire Gregor was not a child who was going to be mourned by many within the community of their school. It was a shit thing to think and a shit thing to say, but it was honest and true.
Everyone had a story about Claire. If a teacher whispered her name in the copy room, people chimed in with testimonials of solidarity—she was a kid looking for something that school couldn’t provide and she was on a fast track to dropping out.
Her backstory was as tragic as her end.
Claire’s dad was in prison and her mom tried to parent two kids and failed, so didn’t even attempt to parent the third. Claire ran wild. She never stayed in class, she was in fights with everyone; she was caught on camera smoking, twice, and breaking into the vending machines, four times. She swore at teachers and once emailed a picture of her vagina to her entire econ class. All of it seemed, to Joel and everyone else, a desperate plea for help, but the girl was set on self-destruct and they couldn’t get to her.
He hated thinking of her life ending in violence.
But it was a predictable ending for a girl hell-bent on becoming a cliché.
Before he could elucidate upon Claire’s tragic life, Holly appeared in the kitchen and walked straight over, her hands knotted into balls, her cheeks splotchy and red.
“He completely shut me out,” she said and p
ut her head in her hands. Maeve rubbed her back. Gloria poured her a glass of wine. He watched them work like a well-oiled machine to provide her comfort, and he was in awe of the synchronicity of their kindness. With a muffled voice, she continued, “I’m telling you, yesterday he was normal, joyful, laughing. At this point, I could be convinced of body snatching aliens because that kid, the kid who wrote that note to that girl….no, that is not my child.”
Joel listened and he kept his mouth shut.
How many times had he heard parents of teenagers spout off that exact same body-snatching phrase? He wanted to whisper to her, “Dude, that’s because it’s true! He was totally body-snatched.” But he didn’t want to mansplain hormones to Holly, so he shut up. He had the self-awareness to know that he may know a lot in general about teenagers, but he knew nothing about being a parent to one.
He listened though. He tried. Then she turned to him, and the other girls turned, too, and Holly said, “When he’s home, when he’s back. Will you talk to him? Maybe he needs to have someone totally unrelated from me to have as a support. Someone who he doesn’t view as being aligned.”
As soon as the request left her mouth, he knew it was a bad idea and he also knew he wasn’t going to say no.
His shoulders slumped a bit and he looked up and saw her staring at him, her eyes pleading and large, and her mouth pouty and expectant.
“Really?” he asked and he shook his head. “You don’t think that kid is going to freak out when his guidance counselor shows up at his house.”
“First of all, I think a guidance counselor will be the least of my child’s concerns when he gets back home tomorrow. And, honestly, I think I’ll do what I always do with my kid,” she said, straightening up a bit, finding her voice and her perkiness a bit, “I’ll be honest. I’ll tell him I know he needs a third party and until we can triage for mental health through my insurance which is…”
Gloria interrupted, “Eight-week waiting period.”
He drew a sharp breath. He’d bragged earlier about wanting to be more than a glorified schedule maker, and this felt like a chance. An opportunity to work with a kid and actually do some good. And a kid with a hot mom. A kid with a mom who needed his help.
Dispatched Confessions (The Love is Murder Social Club Book 2) Page 6