“She’s a good kid. She didn’t deserve the crappy way they were treating her. I’d say that she ought to try to blend in more, but that just wouldn’t be Ronnie, would it?”
“No,” Phyllis said. “I don’t suppose it would.”
◄♦►
By the time Phyllis got there, all the students were in the classroom, waiting for fifth period to begin. She had to put everything that was going on with Ronnie and Chase out of her thoughts and concentrate on the lessons she needed to teach that afternoon.
When classes were over for the day, though, she allowed herself to think once more about the dilemma facing her. Sam still didn’t know anything about what had happened. Phyllis had uncovered a great deal in the past twenty-four hours, and she could share all of it with him. She was sure he would be very interested, especially because the bullying Ronnie had undergone in Pennsylvania went a long way toward explaining her behavior problems over the past year. The girl had kept it all to herself, unwilling to share the burden with her parents. That was admirable in a way . . . but probably not very wise.
Even though Sam and his daughter and son-in-law probably would be upset to learn the truth, it might be a relief as well. At least they would know Ronnie hadn’t been using drugs.
But then, as Phyllis sat at the desk in the now empty classroom and frowned, she realized that she didn’t know that. Everything Chase had told her could be absolutely true, and none of it eliminated the possibility of Ronnie having a drug problem. Phyllis closed her eyes, raised a hand to her temple, and moaned slightly.
“What’s wrong? Got a headache?”
Sam’s voice, speaking unexpectedly from the doorway, made her give a little start and jerk her head up. “What?” she said, then realized what he’d asked and went on, “No, I’m fine. Nothing at all to worry about. It was just a long day, that’s all.”
“Most of ’em are. And yet when you get to be our age, time seems to shoot by so fast.”
“Yes, that’s a paradox, isn’t it?” Phyllis started gathering up the papers stacked in various places around the desk. This was Friday afternoon, and she’d have some grading to do over the weekend. But at least she didn’t have to get all of it done by the next morning.
“One week until the Friday the Thirteenth dance, too,” Sam said, reminding Phyllis that she probably should do some recipe experimenting over the weekend, to go along with the grading. “Still lookin’ forward to it?”
“Of course,” she said. “I’m not really superstitious. I hope Friday the Thirteenth turns out lucky for all of us.”
Chapter 11
Phyllis set the plate of cookies on the kitchen table in front of Sam, Carolyn, and Eve and asked, “What do you think?”
Carolyn leaned forward, studied the cookies, and frowned. “There’s something about them,” she said. “That white icing, with the drops of red icing scattered around . . . it reminds me of something, but I can’t think of what . . .”
“Blood!” Eve suddenly exclaimed. “Blood on the snow! That’s the title of something, isn’t it? Some mystery novel?”
“I don’t know about that,” Phyllis said, “but I call these killer sugar cookies. That’s supposed to be blood.”
Sam laughed. “When did you get so vicious? This is the way some of those Eighties horror movies started, and I didn’t think you liked those.”
“Well, I don’t,” Phyllis said. “But this is what I thought of when people kept talking about Friday the Thirteenth.”
“Is that the one with the killer in the hockey mask?”
“I wouldn’t know. I’m also doing chocolate mint brownies decorated like black cats.”
Eve said, “That’s Halloween, isn’t it?”
Sam said, “That’s the one with the guy in the hockey mask!”
“Friday the Thirteenth is bad luck, and so are black cats,” Phyllis said. “Supposedly. All the black cats I’ve ever known were very sweet.”
She looked down at Raven, who was rubbing around her ankles.
Carolyn pointed at the cookies and said, “You can’t serve these gruesome things at a school dance.”
“I know. Frances Macmillan and I have already talked about that. I’ll make plain sugar cookies for the dance. But I had this idea in my head and wanted to see how they would look and taste. So . . .”
Phyllis waved a hand at the plate in invitation.
“Thought you’d never ask,” Sam said with a grin. He reached out and plucked two of the cookies from the plate.
Carolyn and Eve each took a cookie, as well. Carolyn had been trying to avoid foods with gluten in them, but recently she had been sticking more to a low-gluten, rather than a completely gluten-free, diet. She had found that eating a small amount of foods with wheat in them wasn’t enough to make her arthritis flare up.
“That’s mighty good,” Sam said when he had eaten one of the cookies. “Aren’t you gonna try ’em, Phyllis?”
She laughed. “I ate two when they were fresh out of the oven, as soon as I put the icing on them. I think they’re good, too, but it’s always nice to have other people agree. Of course, other than the icing they’re just plain sugar cookies—”
“Nothing wrong with that,” Sam declared.
“I’ll second that,” Eve said. “These are excellent.”
“Very good,” Carolyn admitted. “But I still think the bloody icing is a bit much.”
“You know what they say,” Sam said. “If you’re goin’ over the top anyway, you might as well go way over.”
“I never heard anybody say that in my life,” Carolyn said.
“Well, now you have.”
Eve said, “We don’t have to wait until Friday the Thirteenth for the chocolate mint cat brownies, do we?”
Phyllis laughed and shook her head. “No, I thought I’d bake those tomorrow.”
“Good,” Sam said. “That’ll give us time to finish off these cookies first.”
◄♦►
That was on Saturday afternoon. Phyllis had been waiting all day for a good opportunity to present itself for her to talk to Sam about Ronnie, Chase Hamilton, and everything that had happened in Pennsylvania. So far that hadn’t happened.
On Sunday morning, she baked the black cat brownies, and the rich, wonderful aroma of chocolate filled the house. That put Sam in a good mood to start with, and the brownies themselves, which everyone thought were delicious, only helped matters. Throw in a victory that afternoon by the Dallas Cowboys, and Sam was positively mellow that evening.
Now or never, Phyllis thought as she approached him after supper. Carolyn, Eve, and Ronnie were all upstairs, so Sam was alone in the living room except for Raven. He sat on the sofa with a Western paperback in one hand and the other hand rubbing Raven’s ears as the cat lay curled up in his lap. He smiled as Phyllis sat down beside him. Their shoulders and hips touched companionably.
“Well, this was a pretty good day,” he said as he lowered the book.
“I hope you still think so in a few minutes,” Phyllis said.
A wary look appeared on Sam’s face. “You sound like you’ve got some bad news to tell me,” he said.
“It’s not necessarily bad news. But it’s news, I guess you could say. It has to do with Ronnie.”
Sam stopped petting the cat. He picked up his bookmark, inserted it in the pages, and set the book aside. His expression was solemn as he said, “I’m listenin’.”
“A few days ago—last Thursday, it was—when I was leaving the school that afternoon, I saw Ronnie outside.”
“She rode home with you that afternoon, didn’t she?”
“Yes, but this wasn’t in the parking lot. She was in one of those little alcoves behind the gym where there’s a service entrance. And she wasn’t alone.”
Sam’s eyebrows, which were a little on the bushy side to start with, became more prominent as they lowered in a frown. “You’re fixin’ to tell me she was there with some boy, makin’ out.”
Phy
llis couldn’t contain her surprised reaction. “How did you know?”
“I didn’t know, but it’s easy enough to guess where you were goin’ with that. And I can’t say I’m all that surprised, either. Isn’t that what teenagers do?”
Eve had made pretty much the same comment, although Phyllis wasn’t going to mention that. She didn’t want to tell Sam that she had discussed the matter with Carolyn and Eve before she said anything to him about it.
“I suppose that’s right.”
“She needs to be careful and not get carried away, of course. I know things are different now than when we were kids and they think they ought to get away with a lot more than we did, but there are still consequences if you make a mistake. Did you know the boy?”
“Not really, but I found out who he is. Ray Brooks caught them at it and threatened to get them in trouble. He told me about the boy.”
“Brooks? The security guard?”
“That’s right.”
“Ronnie didn’t get written up, did she? I didn’t get a call from any of the vice-principals—”
“No, Brooks didn’t do anything except warn them. But later he told me . . . the boy has a bad reputation.”
Sam’s frown reappeared, darker this time. “Bad how?”
“He . . . Chase Hamilton is his name . . . he runs with a group of students who are suspected of dealing drugs.”
For a moment, Sam didn’t do anything. Then, carefully, he picked Raven up and set the cat on the floor. He started to stand.
“Sam, wait,” Phyllis said. “What are you going to do?”
Sam’s voice was grim as he replied, “Have a talk with the girl.”
He hadn’t made it all the way to his feet yet. Phyllis put a hand on his arm to stop him and said, “There’s more. You need to sit back down and listen to me.”
Sam looked at her, then sank onto the sofa again beside her. “You say this happened last Thursday?”
“That’s right.” She knew what his next question was going to be.
“And you’re just tellin’ me about it now?”
“I promised Ronnie that I wouldn’t tell you about it right away. She was very upset.”
“She was upset at gettin’ caught. Does she know about this boy bein’ a drug pusher?”
“I’m not certain that he is. But I have a feeling Ronnie doesn’t know anything about it.”
Sam shook his head as if he hadn’t heard her. “I was worried all along that she’d gotten messed up with drugs somehow, but I didn’t want to believe it.”
“Just listen, and I’ll tell you the rest of it,” Phyllis urged.
After a moment, Sam sighed and nodded. “Go ahead. And I’m not mad at you for not tellin’ me until now. I know you were just tryin’ to do right by the girl.”
“I thought it would be a good idea to have more information, too, before I told you about the situation.”
Sam cocked his head a little to the side and said, “I get it now. You wanted to carry out your own investigation.”
“I guess I’ve gotten into that habit,” Phyllis admitted. “Anyway, all I had to go on at first was what Ray Brooks told me, and to be honest, I don’t like that man very much.”
“I don’t think anybody does. Go ahead.”
For the next few minutes, Phyllis explained what she had found out about Chase Hamilton and his history as a student at the same high school Ronnie had attended in Pennsylvania. Several times, Sam started to break in, but he restrained the impulse and let Phyllis continue.
She told him about the information Mike had given her and finally about her conversation with Chase Hamilton himself on Friday after lunch. Sam’s craggy features flushed with anger as Phyllis explained how the bullying directed at Ronnie had gotten her involved with Chase—and how her gratitude toward him had turned into an overpowering crush.
“And now this boy turns up down here in Weatherford the same time as she does?” he said when Phyllis was finished. “That seems mighty fishy to me.”
“It did to me, too, but Chase seemed honest enough when he told me why he came here.”
“You reckon Ronnie knew he was here when she decided to run away?”
“There’s no way of knowing without asking her,” Phyllis said. “I think it’s possible that was just an honest coincidence and she didn’t know Chase was here until she saw him in school. But think about it, Sam. If that’s how it was, then Ronnie must have regarded that as an omen, a sign that the two of them are supposed to be together.”
“Yeah, that’s just the sort of grand, romantic notion a smart kid like Ronnie would get in her head, all right.” Sam clasped his hands on his knees. His grip tightened visibly as he went on, “Do you think he’s sellin’ drugs to her?”
“I don’t have any proof that he is or isn’t . . . but when I talked to him, he seemed like he genuinely cared about her, just not in any boyfriend/girlfriend way.”
“So he sells drugs to other kids, but not her.”
“I don’t have any proof of that, either. He hasn’t been arrested for anything down here, and the charges in Pennsylvania were dropped.”
Sam waved a hand and said, “You know that doesn’t mean anything. He could’ve gotten off on a technicality.”
“That’s true.”
Sam sighed again. “This is a lot worse than just her makin’ out with some kid. This Chase Hamilton sounds like he could be bad news.”
“I agree. That’s why I knew I had to tell you, once I found out everything I did. I’ve just been trying to find the right time.”
He shot a sharp glance at her. “If it had turned out different . . . if the boy was just a normal kid . . . would you have said anything? Or would you have kept it to yourself?”
Phyllis wished he hadn’t asked that question, but she wasn’t surprised that he had. Sam had a keen intellect behind that affable, folksy exterior. And she respected him and their friendship enough that she wasn’t going to lie to him.
“I might not have told you about it. She’s sixteen years old, Sam. She can kiss a boy without her grandfather’s permission.”
“But not a drug-dealin’ boy.”
“No,” Phyllis said, “as long as Chase has that cloud over his head, it would be better for Ronnie to stay away from him.”
“The way she feels about him, how are we gonna get her to do that, short of lockin’ her in her room and not lettin’ her go to school?”
“That’s a mystery I haven’t solved,” Phyllis said.
Chapter 12
The atmosphere was subdued at the breakfast table the next morning. Sam didn’t say anything to Ronnie about the discussion he had had with Phyllis the previous evening. Phyllis knew that was because he hadn’t figured out what to do about the situation yet. She was glad, though, that he didn’t start blustering and laying down the law to Ronnie. That tactic would have backfired, almost certainly.
When Phyllis got to school, she found Frances Macmillan waiting outside her classroom. The other teacher wore her usual harried look as she said, “You’re still going to volunteer at the dance this Friday, aren’t you?”
“Of course,” Phyllis replied. “I said I would.”
“Some people’s word evidently doesn’t mean as much as yours does. I’ve had a couple of them drop out who said they would chaperone, which means I have to hustle up some replacements. I’m checking with everybody to make sure I’m not going to have to find even more.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry about me and Sam. We’ll be there.” Phyllis smiled. “I made sugar cookies and brownies over the weekend, just to double-check my recipes.” She didn’t mention that she’d included the “blood-splattered” icing on the sugar cookies, since she wouldn’t do that for the dance. “My friend Carolyn came up with the idea of taking little smokies and wrapping thin strips of dough in them to look like bandages. She calls them Mummies in a Blanket.”
Frances stared at her for a moment, then said, “Oh, that’s disg
usting! But . . . the kids will like it, and I think we can get by with that one.”
“She said she could make chocolate cupcakes with icing to look like bandages, too, and put eyes in them so they’ll look like mummy faces.”
“She must like mummies.”
Phyllis had to laugh. “No, not really, and this sort of thing really isn’t in Carolyn’s usual nature. But she’s making an effort to be helpful, and I think my friend Eve is egging her on a little, too. That is the sort of off-kilter thing Eve would come up with. She’s a writer, you know.”
“That explains it, I suppose. Those artistic types are always a little bit off.”
“And she used to teach English.”
“Oh, well, then, I’m not surprised.”
Phyllis could only laugh as she said goodbye to Frances and went on into the classroom. A lot of things were still “hanging fire”, as Sam would say, but for now it was time to concentrate on schoolwork again.
◄♦►
When Phyllis’s lunch period arrived, she walked from the wing where her classroom was located over to the one where Sam’s classroom was. She wanted to make sure they ate together today. Maybe he had figured out what he was going to do about Ronnie and Chase Hamilton . . . if there was anything he could do that wouldn’t just make Ronnie’s crush on the young man even stronger.
Maybe it was because she was thinking about Chase, but at first, she didn’t realize he was walking along the hall in front of her. It was busy, of course, with dozens of kids on their way to lunch or their next class, and Chase didn’t look back, so he didn’t notice Phyllis behind him.
Phyllis knew he had lunch this period because she had seen him in the cafeteria the week before, but he wasn’t going in that direction now. She caught her breath a little when she realized that he appeared to be heading straight for Sam’s classroom. Did he think that Sam knew about him and Ronnie? Was he intending to confront Sam?
That prospect worried Phyllis. Sam could take care of himself, but he was getting on in years. Chase was young and had a reputation for trouble.
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