20
As Rachel approached the intersection of Federal and Palmetto Place, she realized that she hadn’t asked Lee where he’d be waiting. Out by the street? At the entrance to the store? Then she saw the bus shelter, and she knew. She pulled into the turn-out and leaned over to open the passenger door. Her ribs shrieked in protest. “Lee, what in the world?” she panted.
Lee climbed into the car, instantly filling it. Rachel hadn’t seen him in so long that she’d almost forgotten his size.
Lee stared straight ahead, and Rachel stared at Lee.
“Where to?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“OK. Then start by explaining why you’re sitting in your mom’s bus shelter in the middle of the night.” Rachel peered at him with eyes that refused to focus.
“It’s kind of a long story.” Lee ran his fingers through his beard and scratched at his chin. He still hadn’t looked directly at her.
“Do you want to tell me what’s going on, or will this remain forever a mystery?”
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the dashboard and pushing the heels of his hands against his eyes. “I know I have to tell you what’s happening,” he said, “so that you can tell me what you think I ought to do. I just need some time to figure out where to start.”
“Fair enough,” she said slowly. “But I should warn you that I’m not sure I’m fit to advise anyone about anything.”
Lee dropped his hands and squinted at her in the dim light. “You’re slurring,” he said. “Rachel, are you drunk?”
“No.” She gripped the steering wheel, hands still held precisely at 10 and 2. “But I might be a little bit high.” When his eyes widened, she laughed. “Pain meds.”
He popped open the passenger door and shifted his bulk. “Get out. I’m driving.”
Rachel hadn’t planned to get out of the car at all, since she’d assumed Lee would just need taxi service. When she followed him into the 24-hour restaurant a few minutes later, she found that she had just enough self-esteem left to be embarrassed by her outfit: fuzzy slippers, gray sweat pants, and bleach-splotched hoodie—topped off with a messy red bun. At least she’d had sufficient brain power to wrestle on a bra before stumbling out to the car. Small mercies. In her case, very small.
Lee ordered two coffees and a stack of pancakes from a waitress who looked so bored that she might yawn in the face of the apocalypse.
Lee looked Rachel full in the face. “I’m sorry I’ve been avoiding you.”
“I forgive you,” she said as the waitress set a coffee in front of her. “As long as you forgive me.”
Lee narrowed his eyes, and then grunted. “Drink your coffee. You’re still slurring.”
Ah, yes. The drugs. She sipped obediently. “You have a terrorist beard.” She smiled at Lee. It was so good to see him. “Has anybody ever told you that?”
“Frankly, no.” He sipped his own coffee and sat in silence. Then his gaze cut back to her and he frowned. “Maybe you should just go home and sleep it off.”
“No.” Rachel guzzled the last of her coffee and plunked the cup onto the table. The coffee hadn’t quite been cool enough to drink comfortably, but that was a good thing. The heat burned down her throat and pooled in her core, warming her from the inside out. “Hit me again.” She gestured toward the pot of coffee, and he poured her another.
The waitress returned with the pancakes and several mini bottles of syrup, with which Lee liberally drenched the entire stack. By the time the pancakes were gone, the room seemed to have righted itself, and Rachel found that ninety percent of the time, her eyes focused where she told them to.
“I’m ready,” she said. “Tell me.”
Lee told her.
She turned her coffee mug in her hands. “This is bad.”
He hung his head, beard brushing his chest. “I know.”
“It’s bad, but it’s not your fault.”
“I know that too.” He lifted his head, stared at the ceiling, and rubbed the back of his neck. “So…” he dropped his hands and looked at her, waiting for her to throw him a lifeline. “What’s the right thing to do?”
“I’m not sure. But I have someone we can ask.”
~*~
Ian Smith picked up on the first ring.
“Rachel?” He did not ask if she was OK or why she was calling at 4:00 AM. It was there, though—the focused concern—all implied and wrapped around her name. Right then, sitting half-drugged in her sweats in a diner with her hair straggling out of her messy bun, Rachel fell a little bit in love with the way Detective Smith said her name. She remembered him looking down at her in the dim lights backstage, quoting Sara Teasdale.
You are the rarest soul I ever knew.
He really was. Across from her, Lee cleared his throat, jolting her back to the present.
She clutched the phone tighter. She had to get a grip. “I have a question.”
“Shoot.” Some of the tension left his voice, like someone tapping the breaks to ease into a curve without skidding out.
“I have a friend who needs—um—legal advice.” That sounded ridiculous. “Not legal advice exactly. It’s complicated.”
Someone in the kitchen dropped what sounded like an entire tray of silverware. Rachel jumped.
“Where are you?” he asked.
~*~
Ian Smith nodded at the stone-faced waitress as he jogged in. Although he’d come quickly, it seemed that he’d had time to dress himself.
Rachel tugged at the bun on the top of her head, feeling suddenly self-conscious. What must he think of her, lounging in her pajamas with Lee at a restaurant in the middle of the night? He’d understand when he heard the whole story, of course, but in the meantime—
“Sorry to wake you,” she said, although truth be told, she hadn’t given a thought to waking him until now. She’d like to blame the medication for this lapse, but she feared this was yet another example of her inability to consider the thoughts and feelings of others.
“I wasn’t asleep.” Instead of sliding into the booth, he picked up a chair from an adjoining table, turned it around, and straddled it. “My partner and I got called out to work a case over on Fifth. We were just wrapping up, so I was nearby. I have a little time—” he stopped to thank the waitress for bringing him coffee—“and I’m not sure how much I’m going to be able to help right now.”
“Oh,” Rachel stammered. “It’s fine. We just had a question…I mean, Lee did. A legal question,” she said, in case he had forgotten. “You remember Lee, of course.”
Lee took the reins. “What Rachel’s trying to say is that earlier tonight my mother stole my car. I’d like to get it back without having her arrested, but I’m not sure how to go about doing that. She already has a record, so I’m hesitant to involve the authorities.”
Detective Smith sipped his coffee and nodded, apparently processing.
“I hadn’t seen her in a while, so I went looking for her. She doesn’t have a cell phone, so I was driving around, checking all of her favorite places.” Lee ran his hands through his hair and watched Detective Smith with hooded eyes. “Sometimes she sleeps in the bus shelter on Federal and Palmetto Place.”
Rachel’s heart squeezed tight.
Detective Smith accepted this without a flicker.
“Anyway,” Lee continued, “that’s where she was. I pulled my car up and got out to talk to her. Sometimes she’s sweet. Sometimes she’s argumentative. Sometimes she’s completely out of it and not sure who I am. Tonight…she was belligerent.”
“Does she have dementia?” asked Detective Smith.
“No,” Lee said flatly. “She’s hooked on meth.”
Ian Smith nodded. He cut his gaze to Rachel, who, caught staring, flushed. “Do you know her?”
“Yes. She doesn’t like me. At all.”
He nodded to Lee. “Go on.”
“Well, she was in bad shape. She wasn’t full-on tweaking, but she was definitely out of it. I don’t take her to my house anymore, because she always trashes it and steals stuff and makes my neighbors hate me. I usually take her to the women’s shelter. But when I had her half into the passenger’s seat, she double-barrel kicked me in the chest, slammed the door, scooted over behind the wheel, and took off.” He set a hand against his chest, reliving the betrayal. “I should have known better than to leave my keys in the ignition.”
“Do you know what she’ll do? Where she might go?”
“I’m assuming she’ll try to sell the car and snort the proceeds.” Lee said this as if he were discussing the weather.
Rachel could have wept.
Detective Smith leaned back in his chair and rotated his head to loosen his neck. The light hanging above the booth, shining down on them, pooled deep shadows in the hollows under his eyes.
Rachel wondered what sort of case would call a detective out in the middle of the night and how long he’d been awake. She checked her phone, saw the time, and squawked.
The two men looked at her with raised eyebrows.
“It’s almost six.” She glanced toward the windows and saw the first blush of dawn creeping up the sky. “I have to get ready for work.”
Lee reached across the table, touched her forearm. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“I’m sorry you didn’t get any sleep.”
“I got a little.” She patted the hand that rested on her forearm. “I’m glad you called me.”
“OK.”
“Lee, really.”
“I said OK.” He shook his head with a begrudging smile.
Rachel smiled back.
“Why don’t you go ahead and go,” Detective Smith said to Rachel. “I’ll take Lee home.” He folded his arms over the back of the chair and turned his gaze on Lee. “I think I can help you if you’ll let me.”
“I don’t see that I have any other options,” said Lee.
Rachel slid out of the booth, feeling the bun on the top of her head shifting sideways. She tugged her hoodie into place and shuffled away in her ridiculous slippers, conscious of the eyes of both men following her.
At the door, she turned to look back. Thank you, she mouthed to Detective Smith. He nodded. It was hard to tell from across the room, but Rachel was fairly certain that the edges of his eyes did not crinkle.
~*~
All through the day, she waited to hear from Lee. When no messages came by evening, she sent him a single question mark and waited for his response. It was to be a long wait.
When she hadn’t heard back by the next day, she sent another question mark. She considered contacting Detective Smith, but couldn’t find the courage.
At least she knew that whatever held Lee back from contacting her, it wasn’t anger. They’d mended fences. When he wanted to tell her how the situation had worked out, he would.
So she struggled through the week, working to keep her ribs from popping away from her sternum. She limped through the week on a swollen toe and nursed a full-body bruise, keeping the classroom running and leading the drama cast into their last week of regular rehearsals—all while keeping her eyes peeled for suicidal tendencies among the cast.
During rehearsal Friday afternoon, Rachel overheard Shayla asking Jessica Potts if she knew who “the hottie with Ms. Martinez” had been at lunch, “the one who came to play practice that one time.”
So, he’d come. Detective Smith had come to the school and hadn’t bothered to see her. As Rachel had suspected, the 4:00 AM Denny’s session had been too much.
Student speculation on his identity varied wildly: the “hottie with Ms. Martinez” was either a city inspector or a prospective staff member. The girls definitely favored the latter, speculating that he must teach math or science since he “looked smart.”
Little did they know. The man could quote Sara Teasdale.
“Maybe he’s a coach or a P.E. teacher,” Chris reasoned. He swung his cane over his shoulders and threw both arms over it, hands dangling loosely. “He looked fit.”
Rachel prayed for patience before barking through her megaphone. “Enough! Opening night is next week,” she reminded them. “Next week! And you’re still forgetting your lines.”
“Aw, Miss Cooper,” said Shayla. “Only sometimes. And I never forget the same ones twice. It’s always different.”
“That’s not comforting,” Rachel said.
Shayla lifted her chin. “We can do it.”
“I know I can do it,” Jessica Potts said, hand propped on hip, prompting eye-rolling all around.
“I’m glad to hear it,” said Rachel. “Now show me.”
~*~
If Rachel’s prior experiences with youth theatre had taught her anything, it was that a disastrous dress rehearsal typically led to a successful opening night. A smooth dress rehearsal, however, often heralded a flop. She wasn’t quite clear on the reasons behind this phenomenon, but she knew one thing: she’d rather have a hot mess of a dress rehearsal than anything else.
Fortunately, the rehearsals during the direct run-up to Murder Came Knocking were just as wretched as she’d hoped, and their final rehearsal went completely off the rails. It started when Chris lost his cane backstage. Rather than come out with nothing, he appropriated a 2x4 as an improvised replacement. Todd Perkins had shoved the 2x4 into Chris’s hands at the last minute—which wouldn’t have been a problem, except it had been propping up a bit of the baffling making up the outer façade of the manor house. Halfway through the second scene, the entire set piece crashed backward, partially squashing Candice and Alice. Alice, who had just been preparing for an entrance, sustained a series of thin cuts that looked like cat scratches down the right-hand side of her face.
“I’m fine,” Alice assured them. “Nobody will be able to see them from the audience.”
After ascertaining that Alice’s wounds weren’t serious, Rachel told them not to worry about whether or not the audience would notice. Personally, she thought the scratches lent Alice’s appearance a dangerous air—perfectly in keeping with Agatha Turnweed’s character.
Chris looked ready to beat Todd Perkins with the 2x4.
Todd stood over in a corner, looking pitiable.
It took the crew nearly half an hour to piece the set back together, and by that time, everyone had lost focus. The action limped along with all the grace of a square-wheeled bicycle. Distracted, Chris forgot his lines and made several false entrances. When the rehearsal ended, he offered to quit. “You’ll do much better without me. I’m a ruiner.”
“You’re not a ruiner,” Rachel assured him, having joined them onstage under the floodlights for one last pep talk before sending them home. “You’re going to kill it.” She lifted her gaze to make eye contact with all of them—all but Jessica Potts, who seemed intent on picking at her cuticles. “All of you. And I mean that in the best possible way.”
The doors to the auditorium opened and closed. She shielded her eyes against the floodlights and called back to whoever’s parents had come in to see what was taking them so long, “We’re almost done.”
“Take your time,” came Ian Smith’s cool voice.
Rachel nearly fell offstage a second time.
Shayla reached to clutch Candice’s arm. “It’s him,” she hissed.
Rachel had no doubt he heard, since the mics were still live.
“The hottie.”
“Right,” said Rachel, reeling. “You,” she poked Chris lightly in the chest with her cane. “Get your act together.”
He nodded, eyes downcast.
“And the rest of you,” she swung her cane in an arc, encompassing them all in its trajectory. “Go home, get a good night’s sleep, and drink plenty of water. Whatever else you do, don’t look at your scripts.”
Jessica Potts finally looked up from her nails, surprise in every line of her face. “What—wait. Don’t look at our scripts?”
Rachel nodded. “There’s no point. You either know your lines or you don’t. Come back tomorrow well-rested and ready to do it right. Any questions?”
A chorus of disheartened no’s greeted this. Rachel dismissed the cast with pats on the back and words of encouragement where needed. She looked around for Alice, wanting to praise her again for her spot-on timing, but Alice had managed to slip away unnoticed.
Rachel thunked down the steps, leaning heavily on her cane. She found Ian waiting at the bottom, arms folded. She wondered how she’d ever described him as ordinary. Certainly he lacked the flashy sort of attractiveness that drew the eye, but she had to admit that he was actually quite easy on the eyes. No wonder the girls thought he was a hottie.
He was looking her over. She tried not to emit radiation-level blushes.
“You should probably sit down before you fall down.”
She nodded. “I’m very tired. This week has been a little ridiculous.”
She offered this as an opening to bring up their early-morning encounter at the restaurant and the subsequent help that she assumed he’d given Lee, but he didn’t take the hint. Instead, he put a hand under her elbow, led her to the first row, and eased her down. She relaxed into the chair and nearly cried with relief.
He settled on the steps opposite her, backlit by the floodlights. Rachel felt she might need to shield her eyes just to look at him.
He broke the silence. “I’m sure you know that I was here earlier in the week to observe.”
Rachel nodded, waiting.
He looked around, as if checking to see if they were going to be overheard.
“I’m pretty sure they’re all gone,” Rachel said. “Except for Candice, who should be—”
The floodlights shut off, leaving them in the dark.
“Still here,” Rachel called.
“Whoops!” came Candice’s voice from backstage. The house lights flicked on. “Sorry, Miss Cooper!”
“It’s OK! I’ll shut it down and lock up when I leave. You go ahead.”
“Thanks! See you tomorrow.” A door slammed, and silence descended.
“Is it serious?” she asked.
“I’m not sure. It’s hard to tell. As you said, these kids are actors. But I saw enough to cause concern.” He looked at her with those cool, impenetrable eyes. “I already gave my list to Ms. Martinez, but I wanted to tell you personally. I have the names of a few whom you’ll want to watch.”
~*~
Of course, this called for a summit at Stu’s.
“I’m sure he’s right,” Rachel said sounding as if she were trying to convince herself. “I mean, he’s the expert. But there’s just no way.”
Well acquainted with Rachel’s unique brand of logic, Ann sighed and took a huge bite of breakfast burrito. Lynn stirred her coffee meditatively.
“He only observed the kids for a half an hour,” Rachel continued, pushing her eggs around with her fork. “And in the cafeteria, too. That’s like observing sharks during feeding time.”
“Which is actually beneficial for some researchers,” Ann pointed out.
Rachel tapped the piece of paper wedged under the side of her plate. “None of the kids on this list seem suicidal.”
Lynn laid down her spoon next to her mug and tested her coffee before adding more cream. “Didn’t you say that no one in any of your classes seemed suicidal to you?”
“Well, yes—”
“So, technically, you’d reject anybody he suggested.”
“That’s not fair.”
“It’s also not fair to ask for people’s advice and then ignore it,” observed Ann. She lifted her burrito, poised for another bite. “No, wait. You’re not ignoring it. You’re arguing with it, which is way worse. If I were Ian, I’d be super annoyed with you.”
“I’m not arguing with him,” Rachel defended.
“You’re not listening to him, either,” Lynn pointed out. “I’m sorry to say it, but it’s true.”
“Not that I’m surprised.” Ann muttered. “She never listens to anybody.”
Rachel raised herself to her full height and puffed out her chest, then coughed and groaned as her ribs protested. “I don’t think he’s wrong. Not exactly. I just think…” she sighed and leaned her head down, resting her forehead against the heel of her hand. Her whole body hurt. She was so tired. Tired of arguing, worrying, being wrong, falling down—all of it. “I don’t know what to think.”
Ann brought both hands down against the table. “Finally. An honest answer.”
Lynn reached to pour Rachel more coffee.
“But what do I do now?” Rachel moaned. “Call all of their parents and say ‘Hey, I don’t buy it, but I know this detective who thinks your child might be suicidal—oh, and by the way, does your child read a lot of Sara Teasdale?’”
“I’m sure you could do better than that,” Ann said. “And besides, wouldn’t contacting the parents be the Administration’s responsibility?”
Lynn replaced the coffee pot and leaned her arms against the edge of the table. “Ann’s right,” she said. “Ask Yolanda. Check your teacher’s manual to see what the protocols are.”
Rachel rubbed her eyes. “First we get through tomorrow. I’ve got classes to teach and opening night to pull off—complete with kids who don’t know their lines and a tricky stunt. Once we get through all of that, then I’ll decide what to do.”