But then she relaxed a little as she saw Chase walk on past the door of Sam’s classroom. Obviously, he didn’t have a confrontation in mind after all.
Then he paused at the door of the next classroom and stood there for a moment, seemingly hesitating, before he grasped the knob, turned it, and walked inside. That classroom, Phyllis remembered, belonged to Amber Trahearne.
Chase was in Amber’s home room, Phyllis recalled. Amber had told her that. So there was probably a perfectly good, school-related reason Chase had stopped by to see her between classes. Phyllis knew that.
The knowledge didn’t stop her from angling closer to the door as she tried to see through the glass pane set into the upper half of it.
You’re the world’s worst snoop, Phyllis Newsom, she told herself. But as long as Ronnie was still involved with Chase—and she hadn’t promised to stop pursuing him—and as long as Sam was Phyllis’s best friend, Chase’s actions weren’t completely none of her business. Some might see her reasoning as convoluted, but it made perfect sense to Phyllis.
From the door, she couldn’t see anything except a couple of rows of student desks. Amber’s desk was set in one of the corners, out of sight from this angle. Amber and Chase had to be somewhere around there, or Phyllis would have been able to see them.
A feeling of unease stirred to life inside Phyllis. Despite his reputation, Chase had never been anything but polite when she was around. But he had been involved with some pretty unsavory characters at his old school, there was no denying that. Phyllis couldn’t bring herself to believe that Amber would be in any danger from the young man, but worry nagged at her brain anyway.
Maybe she would just go in there, ask Amber to have lunch with her and Sam . . .
She reached for the knob, closed her hand around it, and tried to turn it.
Locked.
Phyllis’s breath hissed between her teeth as she drew in air sharply. The door shouldn’t have been locked, and no one had approached it from the inside while Phyllis was walking toward it a moment earlier. That meant Chase must have locked it when he went in. He shouldn’t have done that. The reason couldn’t be anything good.
“There a problem here?”
The question made Phyllis jump a little. She looked around and saw Ray Brooks standing there with his usual suspicious glare directed at her. She shook her head and said, “No, I was just going to ask Miss Trahearne a question, but her door’s locked. I guess she’s already gone to lunch.”
Brooks just grunted, nodded, and moved off into the crowd of students, which was thinning now that the passing period would soon be drawing to a close.
Phyllis glanced at the locked door and thought, Now why in the world did I do that? This would have been the perfect opportunity to make sure Amber was all right. Brooks probably had a master key that would unlock any door in the school, including this one. He could have gone in there and checked to see what was going on.
And if he had, there would have been no way Phyllis could deny that she was spying on Chase. She wasn’t sure why that possibility bothered her, but it did.
She saw a shadow move on the floor inside the classroom. Someone might be coming to the door. Phyllis turned away and took several quick steps toward Sam’s room. No one would wonder why she was there.
She heard the door open and close behind her and risked a glance over her shoulder. Chase had stepped out of the classroom and now started along the hall, heading in the opposite direction. He didn’t look back. Phyllis knew he had to be unaware that she’d been lurking just outside the door.
She paused with her hand on the door of Sam’s room as Amber’s door swung open once more. Amber stepped out and closed it behind her. In that moment before Amber realized she was there, Phyllis got a good look at the young teacher. Amber’s face was flushed and she appeared to be breathing a little harder than usual. A few strands of her always carefully styled hair were awry. Her lips were slightly puffy, the lipstick smeared just a tad.
If Phyllis didn’t know better, she would say that Amber had the look of a young woman who had just been doing some serious kissing.
But that was impossible, because apparently the only other person in the room just now had been . . . Chase Hamilton.
“Oh, my goodness,” Phyllis said under her breath.
She barely managed to get a smile on her face in time as Amber glanced in her direction, spotted her, and smiled as well. “Hi,” she said, obviously believing that Phyllis had just arrived at Sam’s door.
“Hello,” Phyllis said, forcing her voice to remain calm and normal even though her mind was whirling. She had heard plenty about teachers becoming romantically involved with students, and for some reason it seemed to almost always be female teachers and male students. Amber never would have struck her as the type to do such a thing, though.
Maybe she was just misinterpreting the signs, she told herself. She hoped that was the case.
“Come to go to lunch with Sam?” Amber asked. She smoothed back those strands of hair that had gone astray and patted them into place.
“That’s right.”
Amber’s smile was bright and friendly. “We can all go together.”
The door opened while she was saying that. Sam grinned as he stepped out and asked, “Go where? Lunch?”
“No, Timbuktu, silly,” Amber said.
Sam shook his head. “I think I’d rather go to lunch, if that’s all right with you.”
“Oh, all right, but I thought you had more of a spirit of adventure than that.”
“I tend to do my adventurin’ vicariously these days.”
Sam started toward the cafeteria with Phyllis on his right and Amber on his left, clearly pleased to be walking along accompanied by the two women.
They reached the end of the hall, where it opened into a large, mall-like area in the center of the school, the hub from which the “spokes” of the different halls ran outward. The cafeteria was on the other side. As they emerged from the corridor, Phyllis looked over and saw Ray Brooks standing there, apparently leaning casually against the brick wall. However, his gaze was sharp and intent as he looked at them.
“Hello, Miss Trahearne,” he said.
“Mr. Brooks,” she replied. Phyllis heard the sudden stiffness in the younger woman’s voice.
“How you doin’ today?”
“Just fine,” Amber said, not sounding sincere at all. She didn’t slow down, so she, Phyllis, and Sam passed Brooks before the security guard had the chance to say anything else.
“That fella rubs folks the wrong way,” Sam commented when they were out of earshot. In the hubbub of students going in for lunch, only Phyllis and Amber could hear his words.
“He can be pleasant sometimes,” Amber said, “when he wants to be. The problem is that he usually doesn’t think people are worth the trouble.”
Phyllis remembered that moment the previous Friday when she and Amber had been sitting in the cafeteria and she had noticed Brooks staring at her with a peculiar intensity. She had thought then that his scrutiny was because of the run-in with Ronnie and Chase the day before.
But maybe Brooks hadn’t been staring at her at all, she realized. Maybe his gaze had been directed toward Amber instead. Across the big room like that, she might not have been able to tell the difference, since she and Amber were sitting side by side. Was Brooks attracted to the young teacher? Amber was pretty enough she probably received a lot of looks like that.
And she had just said that Brooks could be nice when he wanted to. She’d sounded like she was speaking from experience, as if she and Brooks had had some sort of relationship in the past.
That was insane, Phyllis told herself. Amber was too sweet, and Brooks was too surly . . .
But there was no predicting such things, Phyllis reminded herself. After all, she had just been wondering if something could be going on between Amber and Chase Hamilton.
Not for the first time, Phyllis found herself glad that she was t
oo old for such entanglements!
Chapter 13
The rest of the day went by peacefully enough. Phyllis didn’t even see Ray Brooks or Chase again. The idea that there might be a relationship between Amber and Chase still nagged at her, but she wasn’t going to come right out and ask Amber about it. Such things inevitably ruined a teacher’s career, and because of that Amber would just deny it anyway, no matter what the truth was.
Ronnie rode home again with Phyllis, but this time she was waiting at the car in the parking lot, instead of making out with Chase in some alcove.
Chase’s name didn’t come up at supper, and Phyllis could almost believe that Sam had decided to let things stand as they were. She knew better, though. Sam was a deliberate man. He was just biding his time until he figured out exactly what he wanted to do.
After supper, Phyllis was in the living room grading papers. Carolyn and Eve were watching TV, some sitcom to which Phyllis was halfway paying attention as she worked.
All of them jumped a little as a metallic crash came from the kitchen, followed instantly by yowling and barking. “Oh, dear Lord!” Carolyn exclaimed as Raven streaked into the living room, launched into the air, bounced off the back of the sofa between Carolyn and Eve, landed on the coffee table, scattered the papers Phyllis had placed there, and slid off to fall in the floor with the lack of grace that cats occasionally demonstrated, to their great and utter humiliation.
Buck was right behind the black cat. The Dalmatian’s loud, furious barking filled the air and assaulted the ears. Phyllis made a grab for his collar as he went by but missed.
Raven rolled over and came up on her back legs, balancing there as her front paws shot out toward Buck with all claws extended. Buck must have remembered what had happened before, because he came to a clumsy, skidding halt. Phyllis saw that his tail was wagging. This was all a game to him, she realized. He didn’t want to hurt Raven; he was just chasing her for the fun of it. But animals sometimes got carried away, so this rough-housing needed to stop.
It wasn’t a game to Raven. She leaped at Buck, swatting furiously with both paws. Buck jumped back so abruptly that he got tangled in Sam’s long legs as Sam rushed into the room. Sam yelped, “Whoa!” and started to go down as he lost his balance.
Phyllis had already gotten to her feet. She grabbed Sam to steady him, and the impact made both of them stagger a little. Neither fell, though, which was a good thing because at their age, a tumble like that often meant a broken bone—or two.
“What in the world!” Carolyn said.
Eve moved in behind Raven, bent over, and scooped the cat from the floor, holding Raven so that she couldn’t scratch her. Raven squirmed and hissed, but Eve hung on.
“Buck!” Sam said. “Get outta here!”
The dog retreated toward the kitchen. Sam turned to Phyllis and went on, “Thanks for catchin’ me. I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
“No, I’m fine,” she assured him. “What happened?”
Before Sam could explain, Ronnie called from the top of the stairs, “What’s going on? Is everybody all right?”
“Fine,” Phyllis said again, raising her voice so Ronnie could hear her. “Just a little cat and dog commotion.”
“Are they okay?”
“Yeah, don’t worry,” Sam said. To Phyllis he added, “Let me go put Buck back outside, and then I’ll tell you about it.”
He hurried toward the kitchen. Phyllis heard the door to the back yard open and close. When Sam returned a moment later, he was shaking his head ruefully.
“I sure am sorry about that,” he said. “And don’t worry, Phyllis, I’ll clean up the mess in the kitchen.”
“I’m not worried about any mess,” she said. “I just want to know what happened.”
“I was on my way out the back door to feed Buck . . . had his bowl in my hand and everything . . . when he caught sight of Raven behind me and decided to have some fun. I reckon he’d forgotten what happened last time, or else he was just excited and didn’t care, right that minute. So he took me by surprise, charged inside, banged into my leg and made me drop his food bowl, and then took off after the cat. Y’all saw what happened after that.”
“We certainly did,” Eve said. She still had hold of Raven, who had settled down as soon as Buck was out of the room. She dropped the cat lightly on the sofa, where Raven curled up in a corner, started licking a paw, and looked very satisfied with herself.
Ronnie had come down to the bottom of the stairs and stood looking through the arched entrance to the living room. “That’s probably the most excitement this place has seen in a long time,” she said.
Phyllis thought about the night she had found a bludgeoned body on the front porch and the time she had been attacked by a killer right next door. She could do without that sort of excitement. She was glad that neither Buck nor Raven seemed to have been hurt in this incident.
“And that’s more than enough for tonight,” Phyllis said.
◄♦►
By the next morning, she couldn’t stand it anymore. She was up first, so she had the coffee brewing but was by herself in the kitchen when Sam came in, yawning. After she had told him good morning, Phyllis took the opportunity to ask, “Have you decided what you’re going to do about Ronnie?”
“I’m gonna tell her to stay away from Chase Hamilton, and if she doesn’t, I’ll ground her. I may not be her legal guardian, but I figure I can do that much, as long as she’s stayin’ here with me.”
“You don’t think that will just make her more determined to pursue Chase?”
“Maybe it will. But sometimes you’ve got to take a stand and see how it plays out.”
Phyllis nodded slowly. Sam wasn’t the sort to let a situation fester for too long without taking action. Honestly, he had held off from confronting Ronnie longer than she had expected him to.
“Do you want me with you when you talk to her?”
“Yeah, I’d appreciate that.” He smiled. “I’ll be countin’ on you to rein me in if I get too riled up. I don’t want to say anything that’ll make Ronnie think she did the wrong thing by turnin’ to me for help.”
“I don’t believe she’d ever think that,” Phyllis said as she put a hand on his arm for a second.
Carolyn came into the kitchen a few minutes later, followed almost immediately by Ronnie. Sam handed his granddaughter a cup of coffee and slid his arm around her shoulders for a quick hug, then said, “You and me got to have a talk.”
Ronnie groaned. “This early in the morning?”
“Yep.”
Carolyn filled her cup and said, “I think I’m going to take my coffee and go read the newspaper . . . such as it is, these days.”
Phyllis knew her friend was making a discreet withdrawal so Sam could talk to Ronnie alone. She would have retreated, too, if Sam hadn’t told her that he wanted her here.
Ronnie frowned suspiciously and said, “Uh-oh. I’m not going to like this talk, am I?”
“It won’t be that bad. I just want to say a few things about this boy you think you like.”
Ronnie’s head jerked toward Phyllis. She glared and said, “You told him. You promised!”
“I promised not to tell your grandfather right away, until I’d thought about it,” Phyllis said, remaining calm. “And I might not have told him if I didn’t believe it was necessary.”
“What’s necessary about it? You’re meddling in things that don’t concern you.”
“Don’t get too feisty now,” Sam warned. “I think a lot of Phyllis, and you’re gonna show some respect for her. She’s done a lot for me, and for you, too, in the time you’ve been here.”
“I appreciate the place to live,” Ronnie said grudgingly. “You know that, Mrs. Newsom.”
“We all care about you, Ronnie,” Phyllis said. “That’s why we don’t want to see anything bad happen to you.”
“Nothing bad is going to happen to me! Chase helped me. He saved me from those terrible bullies up there a
t home—”
“He was arrested for dealin’ drugs,” Sam said.
Ronnie’s eyes widened. She stared at him for a second and then said, “How do you know—” Her head turned toward Phyllis again. “You told him. You’re the big crime-solving detective. You . . . you investigated Chase!”
Phyllis started to say something, but Sam lifted a hand to stop her. “You’re dang right Phyllis looked into the boy’s background, and she had every right to do it. We’re all just tryin’ to look out for your best interests.”
“Did you find out that all the charges against Chase were dropped?” Ronnie demanded. “Because he didn’t do anything! Just because some of his friends were no good, it doesn’t mean that he is.”
“Yeah, but as soon as he got down here, he started hangin’ out with the same sort of kids,” Sam said. “That ought to tell you somethin’ right there.”
“It tells me that this is none of your business.”
“You’re sixteen years old and my granddaughter, so it dang sure is my business. And here’s somethin’ else for you to consider. You may be in love with this boy, but he’s not in love with you. He felt sorry for you, that’s all.”
Phyllis tried not to wince. Sam had said that he wanted her to “rein him in”, and she had failed to do so in time. The hurtful words were already out, and the pain and anger on Ronnie’s face were unmistakable.
Ronnie’s expression closed off abruptly, though, as she said, “What do you want me to do?”
“Well, I think you should stop runnin’ after this boy. Chances are, he’s gonna wind up in trouble, and you don’t want to be anywhere around him when he does.”
“Is that an order?”
“I’d rather consider it me askin’ you to do something for me . . . and because it’s the right thing.”
“And if I don’t, what happens? You’ll ground me?”
“I might, if it comes to that.”
“You’re not my parents.”
The sneer in Ronnie’s voice as she said that grated on Phyllis’s nerves. She would have had a hard time controlling her temper, and she was proud of Sam for doing so. He sounded cool and collected as he said, “Stay away from Chase this week. Go to the dance Friday night. Maybe you’ll meet somebody you like better. Just let things simmer down some, and maybe we’ll talk more about this later.”
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