by Diane Kelly
Busted.
I turned the cruiser into the school parking lot just as the tardy bell buzzed. The crossing guards in their bright yellow rain slickers trotted inside with their hand-held stop signs tucked under their arms. After waiting for a skinny redheaded boy intent on jumping into every puddle in the parking lot before darting into the building, I pulled up behind the Spyder. A red and blue sticker for Southern Methodist University, an expensive private college in Dallas, graced the back window of the car, along with another bearing three consecutive triangles, the symbol for Tri-Delta sorority, the school’s most exclusive social organization. The car’s vanity plates read “TIFFY T.”
Still sitting in the cruiser, I called Selena and she ran the plate. There was a crackle of static on the line, then Selena returned. “The car’s registered to a Kent Tindall out of Dallas.”
“Kent Tindall? Huh.”
Kent Tindall was the king of real estate development in Dallas. The man had an incredible knack for identifying undervalued properties, purchasing entire neighborhoods in blighted urban areas lot by lot. He’d raze the old homes and replace them with oversized mansions, enclosing the entire area with brick walls, gates, and security guards, turning them into modern fortresses built to keep out the riff-raff. Tindall bestowed elegant, pretentious names on his developments, such as Rivercrest Estates and the Arbors of Glenwood, selling the homes therein at an incredible profit to professionals looking for a short commute to their jobs downtown. His corporation also built an untold number of commercial properties, including at least one of the downtown Dallas skyscrapers.
Kent Tindall was my ex’s idol. The pinnacle of Chet’s career to date was handling an eighteen-million-dollar mortgage loan for Tindall’s development company, the largest loan Chet had ever brokered, though mere chump change to Tindall. After the closing, Chet and I had gone to dinner with Kent Tindall and his wife at the Mansion on Turtle Creek, the city’s most hoity-toity hotel.
For the occasion I’d bought a gently-used silk Versace dress at a resale shop near Highland Park and a pair of matching four-inch heels, the kind some women refer to as fuck-me pumps but which in my case were more like pick-me-up-when-I-fall-on-my-fat-ass pumps. My hairdresser had streaked three shades of highlights through my hair and added some layers to update my simple hairstyle. The clerk at the Neiman Marcus Lancôme counter worked wonders on me, covering my freckles in a thick coat of foundation, making my green eyes appear large and dramatic and my thin lips look soft and pouty.
I’d looked classy, chic, and sophisticated—and I’d felt like a complete phony. But I’d rather be me than a pompous prick like Tindall. He’d been so condescending to the waiters that I’d been afraid to eat my dinner, fearing what extra ingredients might have been added to the Bernaise sauce. His wife was no better, leaning toward me as if to share womanly secrets or inspiration, but instead whispering that “perhaps such a full-figured woman should avoid clingy fabrics.” If only I’d been carrying my Taser. I’d have given the woman a volt or two.
What would a car owned by Kent Tindall be doing in Jacksburg? Time to find out.
I pulled over to the curb and parked in the red fire zone, but hey, it’s not like I was going to write myself a ticket. Besides with all this rain coming down, the school wouldn’t be catching fire any time soon. Cowering under my umbrella, I trotted up the walk. By the time I reached the double front doors, both of which were smudged with tiny handprints, my legs were once again soaked from the knees down and an inch of water stood in my shoes. Uck. I propped my umbrella against the red brick wall outside the front door so it wouldn’t drip on the floor inside and pose a risk to the kiddos.
Last month, I’d come to the school to speak to the young students about safety issues. The kids had been more interested in knowing whether it was true prisoners were fed only bread and water, whether smoke came out of a person’s ears when they were fried in the electric chair, whether I’d ever killed someone. The answers were “no,” “I have no idea,” and a sharp “I’m not going to talk about that. Next question.”
I pushed the glass door open and was greeted by the strong scent of lemon disinfectant, the kind that was supposed to smell fresh but instead made you wonder what yucky event the fragrance was attempting to mask. As I sloshed my way to the office, my wet shoes sucking at my feet, the morning announcements concluded with the titillating news that it was sloppy Joe day in the cafeteria.
The redheaded boy trotted out of the office with a pink tardy slip as I reached the glass door. Gwennie Culligan, the school’s thin, elderly secretary, looked up from her rolling chair as I stepped into the office.
Gwennie, her silver pixie haircut, and her shapeless purple cardigan, had been around forever. The woman had worked at the school since before I entered kindergarten. Because virtually everyone in town had attended Jacksburg Elementary at one time or another, Gwennie knew everybody’s business. Which kids suffered from head lice. Which kids took ADD medication. Which kids were in danger of being left behind, yet again. She knew which parents earned so little their children qualified for free lunch, which ones couldn’t manage to get their kids to school on time due to a head-splitting hangover, which parents had gone their separate ways, revising their emergency information cards to provide two home phone numbers instead of one. But Gwennie was discreet, never breaching anyone’s trust, never sharing any sordid tidbits of gossip. Darn her.
Gwennie stepped up to the counter, pushing up the sleeves of her sweater. “Good morning, Miss Muckleroy.” She’d called me the same thing back in fourth grade when I’d been sent to the nurse for pink eye.
“‘Morning, Gwennie.” I stopped in front of the counter. “There’s a red convertible out front taking up both of the handicapped spots. Any idea who parked it there?”
Gwennie’s expression turned sour, her lips pursing into a tight sphincter of disapproval. “Sure do. That car belongs to Tiffany Tindall. She’s interning in Mrs. Nelson’s kindergarten class.”
“Is she disabled?”
Gwennie snorted and rolled her eyes. “That girl? Not hardly.”
“Mind calling her to the office for me?”
“No problem.”
Gwennie pushed a button on a panel in front of her and bent over to speak into a microphone. “Mrs. Nelson?”
A young woman’s voice came back. “She’s not here. She’s making copies in the workroom.”
“All righty.”
Gwennie released the button and looked at me. “That was Tiffany. She can’t leave them kids alone. Little buggers’ll tear the place apart. You want to go talk to her in the classroom?”
“Sure. What room number?”
“Eight.” Gwennie hiked her thumb to the left. “That way.”
“Thanks.”
I left the office and headed down the hall. When I reached room eight I peeked through the glass panel in the closed door. A dark-haired boy sat at a desk with an orange-tipped bottle of Elmer’s, gluing pencils and crayons to the top of the desk. Next to him was a small girl with a brown pony tail pulled back in a white ribbon, tears streaming down her face, her tiny shoulders jerking as she sobbed. A tow-headed boy near the door rested his head on his desk, fast asleep, his mouth hanging open to reveal a gap where he’d lost an upper tooth. I squinted through the glass. Sure enough, it was Zane Nichols, the youngest son of my best friend Savannah, my favorite of her three boys though I’d never admit that flat out.
A blonde sat in a rolling chair at the front of the room, yakking on her cell phone, her back to the children. I opened the door and walked in.
I grabbed the glue out of the boy’s hand. “You know better than that. Get some paper towels from the bathroom and clean this mess up right now.”
I bent down next to the crying girl, putting a hand on her back and rubbing it up and down a couple of times to calm her. “What’s the matter, honey?”
She half-choked, half-gasped as she tried to catch her breath between sobs. “I f
-f-forgot my,” she sniffled, “l-l-lunch money.”
I ruffled her hair. “That’s nothing to worry about.” I reached into my breast pocket where I kept a small, ready stash in case of an emergency Snickers craving. I pulled out a couple dollars. “Here you go. Enjoy that sloppy Joe.”
Her face brightened and she wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “Thank you. My mommy will pay you back.”
“Don’t worry about it, sweetie.” I stood and glanced over at Zane. No sense waking him. Didn’t look like he was missing anything.
As I walked to the front of the room, Tiffany continued to chat on her cell, oblivious to my presence. Good thing I’m not an axe murderer. “This internship sucks,” she said into the phone. “I have to spend an entire semester out here in east Bumfuck with a bunch of redneck booger-pickers. I was hoping to get assigned to a school in Highland Park.”
A chubby boy sitting near Tiffany chanted under his breath. “Bumfuck. Bumfuck. Bumfuck.”
I put a finger to my lips and shook my head at him. Stepping around the chair, I stood directly in front of Tiffany. “I need to speak with you, Miss Tindall. Now.”
She glanced up at me with unnaturally vivid ocean-blue eyes. Her lids were streaked with plum-tone shadow and rimmed with a gallon of mascara and heavy blue eyeliner. The enormous diamond studs in her ears sparkled in the fluorescent lights. She wore a low-cut, sleeveless top, much more appropriate for a Saturday night on the town than a school day in a classroom. She was thin and long-limbed like her mother, and her expression bore the same air of superiority as her father, the same merciless set of the jaw.
She said, “I’ll call you back,” before jabbing a finger at the screen to end the call. She looked up at me, cocking her head. “Yeah?”
“That your car out front taking up both handicapped spots?”
Her eyes narrowed, an unmistakable challenge in them. “That was the only decent parking spot left when I got here.” She lifted her skinny legs, clad in tight blue jeans, onto the desk, settling her black spike heels on a stack of papers waiting to be graded and knocking over a pencil cup, sending a cascade of yellow number twos to the floor. She pointed at her feet. “These shoes cost three hundred bucks. I couldn’t walk through the rain in them.”
She snapped her fingers at a tiny, pale-haired girl sitting in the front row. “You. Ashley. Pick those pencils up.”
“I’m Meagan.”
“Whatever,” Tiffany snapped. “Pick up the pencils.”
The girl climbed down from her desk and began picking up the pencils from the floor.
The radio clipped to my belt squelched and I turned the volume down. “You need to move your car, Miss Tindall. I’ll watch the class for you.”
“You’ve got to be kidding!” Tiffany gestured toward the rain splattering against the windows behind the desk and huffed. “I’m not going out there in this typhoon.”
So that’s how this spoiled little bitch wants to play it, huh? I shrugged. “Suit yourself. You can pick up your car later at the impound lot behind the police station. The fine shouldn’t be more than a couple hundred bucks. That’ll cost less than replacing your shoes.” I turned and headed to the door.
“Wait!” Tiffany jumped up from the chair and teetered after me. “You can’t tow my car.”
I never broke stride. “Watch me.” Out the door I went.
Tiffany click-clacked into the hall after me, surprisingly fast in her heels. “Don’t get your granny panties in a bunch. I’ll move it.”
I stopped and she tottered past me, muttering under her breath. She’d forgotten to take an umbrella or raincoat, but I didn’t extend her the courtesy of reminding her. I stepped back to the open classroom door to keep an eye on the kids.
A moment later, a hefty woman with cropped dark hair and a collection of chins overflowing the neck of her dress came up the hall clutching an armful of copies. When she saw me, her eyes grew wide and she scurried my way. “What’s going on?”
I held up a hand. “Nothing to worry about, Mrs. Nelson. Your intern just went to move her car out of the disabled parking spots.”
Mrs. Nelson frowned. “If Tiffany wasn’t working for free, I’d fire that girl. She has no interest in being a teacher. She only went to college for the parties, and she majored in education because she somehow got the impression that teaching would be easy. There’s nothing easy about this job.” Mrs. Nelson shook her head before making her way past me and ambling to her desk.
I turned to go. “Bye kids.” Several looked up and waved to me, the girl who’d forgotten her lunch money giving me a big smile. Zane’s only response was a soft snore.
Tiffany passed me in the hall on her way back to the classroom. Her wet clothes clung to her body and her hair hung in soggy clumps around her face. She glanced at me, her eyes blazing with fury. “These shoes are ruined. I hope you’re happy.”
What do you know? I was happy.
CHAPTER TEN
A NOT-SO-FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE DINER
My umbrella wasn’t where I’d left it. I finally found it in the bushes outside the front door, where Tiffany had tossed it after the wind had turned it inside-out. That Tiffany better watch her step. She’s on my shit list now. Cops are allowed a lot of discretion and I planned to exercise every bit of my discretion where this arrogant bitch was concerned.
“Marnie?”
I looked up to find Trey coming up the walkway, a large black plastic tackle box in one hand. He wore navy slacks today, with a red and blue plaid shirt visible through the unzipped windbreaker. The TreyTech badge was clipped above his left breast pocket. He was every bit as sexy as he’d been last night, maybe even more so with beads of water in his shiny black hair, his gray eyes sparking like lightning in a stormy sky.
I willed my racing heart to slow down. “Hey, Trey.” I eyed the tackle box. “Surely you’re not going fishing in this weather?”
“Nope.” He raised the box with one hand while running the other over his hair. “Carry my tools in here. I’m upgrading the school’s computer system. It’s hopelessly outdated.”
Just like everything else in Jacksburg. “We’ve got the same problem over at police headquarters.”
He pulled a business card out of his shirt pocket, holding it out to me. “I’d be glad to stop by and take a look.”
I held up my palm. “Sorry, not enough money in the budget. We’ll have to make do.” Unless, of course, he’d let me pay him in sexual favors. Heck, I might even throw in a generous tip.
“Take it anyway,” Trey said, still holding out the card. “You’ll need my number if you get a sudden urge for a Pac-Man rematch.”
I had some other sudden urges I’d like to call him about, other games I’d like to play with him, games in which we could push each other’s buttons and both score. I took the card and slid it into the back pocket of my pants.
He cocked his head. “Got any lunch plans?”
“Nothing I can’t change.” I’d packed a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and some carrot sticks in my Wonder Woman lunch box, but they’d keep until tomorrow. And who was I fooling anyway? The carrot sticks were for show. I’d never eat them. But if Trey picked me up at the station, Selena would spend the rest of the afternoon bombarding me with questions about him. “I’ll be out patrolling this morning. Why don’t I swing by here at noon and pick you up?”
He looked over at the cruiser parked at the curb. “In the patrol car?”
I nodded. “Ever ridden in one?”
“Once.”
I raised my eyebrows in question.
“When I was eight I ran away because my mom wouldn’t let me have a brownie before dinner. The police picked me up a mile from home. My parents grounded me from video games for a month. Worst four weeks of my life. I went through major Super Mario withdrawal.”