2 Death Makes the Cut (10 page)

“Stand back!” I shouted to Eric, and when he threw himself backward, I emptied the icy contents over Mr. Richards’s leg.

To say he was less than grateful was an understatement. By this time he had pulled off shoe and sock and was busy rolling up his trouser leg, frantically brushing the clinging little insects away. I could see the ant bites welling up on his hairy calf, already red and angry. By nightfall, they would be tiny blisters. The cursing was perhaps a bit uncalled for, but I’d heard worse even if not at quite such an impressive volume. His primary goal seemed to be that of informing me and the world in general that I was a bitch, and I figured everyone pretty much knew that already.

The kids’ response surprised me though. The two largest boys, Dillon Andrews and Travis Longman, positioned themselves between me and Mr. Richards, while Brittany Smith and McKenzie Mills came and stood beside me. I was more touched than I could say. For a moment Eric sat frozen in the dirt where he’d landed, horrified at his father’s stream of profanity and rage, but then he scrambled to his feet and grabbed his father’s arm. For a terrifying instant, I thought Mr. Richards would strike the boy.

“Get in the car, Eric!” he ordered. “We’re going.”

Eric took a single step backward. “No. I’m … I’m not … practice isn’t over yet.” He threw me a desperate glance.

“It is for you. And get your racquet. You won’t be back.”

Gently tugging away from McKenzie’s death grip on my arm, I stepped forward. “I’m afraid that’s not possible. Eric can’t leave now. He is enrolled in the tennis class, and he’s required to come every day. Besides, there’s no way I can release him without a signed note from the front office. You’ll have to go there and fill out a form first.”

The second part was a lie. School had ended for the day, and the kids could come or go as they pleased, but it sounded official. Mr. Richards face turned a richer shade of purple. I waited for either an explosion or an aneurysm, but he whipped around and stalked away, kicking the orange cooler viciously on his path back to the black SUV.

In silence we watched him drive away, tires squealing on the asphalt as he turned and accelerated far too quickly out of the parking lot.

When he was definitely gone, I turned to my team, noting the shaken expressions with some concern.

“You all…” I stopped, not sure how to express my feelings. I finally settled for “Thank you.”

They looked pleased. I glanced at my watch. The whole incident from start to finish had taken less than ten minutes, and it was hard to believe we still had another hour of practice left. I wanted nothing more than to go somewhere cool and gulp down a very large beer, but responsibility called.

“Okay, time for the games. Brittany, can you get the roster off my desk and tell everyone which court they’re on today? And Eric, will you help me refill the cooler?”

Brittany ran inside to get the roster from my desk, and Eric, still very white, picked up the orange cooler where it lay on its side. The hard orange plastic was a little dusty, but showed no other sign that it had been kicked like a soccer ball. I scooped up the white lid, and we walked slowly toward the cafeteria.

“Coach, I’m … I’m really sorry,” he said in an undertone, not meeting my eyes.

“Not your fault.”

“I’ll drop the class,” he offered miserably. “I can get my PE credit some other way.”

I glanced over at the hunched shoulders, the downcast eyes under the bright flaxen hair. He looked like a puppy who’d been slapped over the nose with a rolled up newspaper, and I didn’t like it.

“I don’t want you to drop the class. You are part of our team.” I stressed the “our” ever so slightly.

“My dad…” he started.

“Yeah, your dad.” I could not allow myself to say what I really thought, not to this unhappy boy. “He really does seem to want the best for you,” I said.

He raised his eyes, a quick flash of bright blue, then lowered them again. “He does. He’s always wanted the best for me … and for me to be the best. The thing is, sometimes we don’t exactly agree on what that is.”

I nodded. “You’re not alone in that. Lots of gifted kids run into that problem with their parents.”

This struck a nerve. “I’m not gifted!” his voice rose, then he looked ashamed. In a softer tone he added, “I’m not gifted.”

“It’s not an insult, kid,” I said with a smile. “And I didn’t mean it in the institutionalized, tested, and stamped sort of way. I just meant that you are smart, funny, and athletic.”

“Oh,” he said, relaxing a little, then turning red as he took in my words.

We had reached the cafeteria kitchen, and I pulled open the giant ice maker. Eric set the cooler on the floor and began scooping ice into it.

I went on. “I’ve seen you on the courts. You’re great with the other kids. They’re learning a lot. They like and respect you.”

“Not after today,” he said, his voice flat. “They won’t want to talk with me. They’ll blame me for my dad.”

“You’re wrong there. I suppose that things might be awkward for a day or so with one or two of them, but most of them are already one hundred percent on your side. They want you to stay on the team, and they don’t want to see your dad force you off. And you have to remember that there’s not one person alive whose parents haven’t embarrassed them in front of their friends.”

He managed a small smile at that. “Not usually so loudly.”

“Maybe not,” I admitted, “but that’s just a matter of degree.”

He finished scooping ice and closed the door of the ice maker. He was a little taller than I was but his skinny shoulders, though promising future development, were still those of a boy. I doubted he would ever reach his father’s massive girth and strength. It struck me how young and vulnerable he was.

I felt a flash of fear on his behalf. “Eric, how much trouble are you going to be in when you get home tonight?”

He looked honestly surprised. “None. He’ll have calmed down by then. He gets pretty mad, but it doesn’t last.” He thought for a moment, then added, “He’ll probably try to talk me off the team, though.”

He put the lid on the cooler and lifted it with a grunt.

“Let me help you with that,” I offered.

“Nah, I’ve got it.”

We started back to the courts. “There’s one more thing I have to ask you, and I don’t want you to take it the wrong way. I also want you to tell me the truth. Does he ever hit you?”

Again, the flash of wide blue eyes, surprised but not evasive or alarmed as far as I could tell. “No, ma’am. He never has. He shouts a lot, and he kicked the door off a cabinet once. But he’s never hurt any of us.”

I supposed I would have to be content with this, although I hated the thought of the boy going home to face that man.

“Okay, then. You know if you are ever worried about that or anything else, you can always tell me. There are lots of things we at the school can do to help families.”

This was a bald-faced lie. There was jack shit we could do, other than call Child Protective Services. On the other hand, I could always get Kyla to go over to his house with her little Glock and put the fear of God into the bullying bastard.

Eric shook his head. “Really, he’s not like that. It’s okay.”

When we got back, I sent him out to join his friends on the courts. Catching sight of Eric, Dillon shouted for him to hurry up because he, Dillon, was getting his ass kicked. I had to grin. I wandered around the courts, offering occasional advice or rulings, but my mind wasn’t on coaching.

Regardless of Eric’s opinion, Gary Richards seemed to be always riding pretty high on the rage wagon. What if he’d returned to the school on the night of Coach Fred’s death? What if he’d restarted the same fight, maybe threatened the old man, and finally lost his temper and taken a swing at him? A hard blow from a big man like Gary Richards might have been enough to kill Fred, especially if he’d struck his head on something. Like the desk in the shed. Or wait, Detective Gallagher had said that he didn’t think Fred had died in the shed. I looked around. If Mr. Richards had accosted him in the parking lot, maybe his head had struck the asphalt, or something like a car bumper. There had been a moment back by the anthill when I thought he was going to hit me, and he’d been close to striking his own son. He wouldn’t have meant to kill. Just lost his temper and then panicked. It wouldn’t have been hard for him to pick up Fred and carry him into the shed. I didn’t see how he would have known the combination to the shed door, although it was possible Eric had mentioned that it was the school’s street address. But it was also possible that Fred had the door open because he was doing something inside.

I thought about Eric and didn’t want the killer to be his father, but there was no getting past the thought that he was definitely a possibility. I was going to have to talk with Detective Gallagher.

Chapter 6

DIRECTORS AND DETECTIVES

Practice over, I returned to my classroom to pick up my purse and the stack of papers I still needed to grade. How had Fred done it all? I felt as limp and worn out as a napkin at a barbecue, and all I wanted was a cool shower and an evening on the couch. Which I wasn’t going to get. I’d arranged to meet Kyla at Artz Rib House for dinner and drinks. Glancing at my watch, I thought if I hurried and if traffic wasn’t too bad, there was time for a quick dash home to shower and change clothes. And maybe the routine would get easier if it ever cooled down. I walked back into the blast furnace that we in Texas liked to think of as a balmy August evening and stopped dead.

In my brief absence, a giant unmarked cargo trailer like those pulled by semis had appeared as though by magic, and now squatted solidly behind my car, a set of wooden steps leading up to the double doors on the back end. I couldn’t have been out of sight for more than ten minutes. Hurrying over, I crossed behind it to examine my car, which was now trapped between the trailer and the trunk of a very large and very solid live oak. With less than three feet of brittle dry grass between my bumper and the shiny silver side of the trailer, my car wasn’t going anywhere.

I went looking for the driver.

Fortunately, the sound of voices led me around to the back of the school, where a group of ten or twelve strangers was scurrying like especially industrious ants, setting up large lights on silver stands and dragging industrial electric cords through the dust. Several burly men in jeans had already discarded their shirts, revealing sweaty tattooed arms and backs. They squatted in the dirt, thin streams of smoke rising from the cigarettes dangling from their lips, busy laying rails that looked for all the world like miniature railroad tracks. A couple of others wrestled with microphones and a massive camera with a lens the size of my head. A film crew.

I caught sight of a skinny blond guy with a ponytail and recognized him as one of the trio who had been with Larry right before school had started. Sure enough, not far away was the woman with the glasses. So this was the reason behind Larry’s Lord of the Manor walk—he’d been making arrangements for a movie crew to do some filming on campus. I wondered if they were making a commercial.

I stood for a moment trying to figure out who was in charge, when a voice at my shoulder said, “This area is off-limits. You can’t be here.”

I turned. Another ponytail was approaching fast. It belonged to a man somewhat older than the rest of them, maybe in his midthirties, who was bearing down on me with a hostile expression. He wore purposely distressed jeans, a shirt buttoned one button too low, and a two-day growth of stubble which I suspected he went to some effort to keep like that full time.

The unfriendly tone was annoying, but I just said, “I don’t want to be here. Your trailer is blocking my car.”

He gave me a disbelieving glance, then turned to look. Judging the distance between tree and bumper, then bumper and trailer, he pursed his lips and said, “You have plenty of room to back out. And you need to do it now. We’re about to start filming. Go on now, or I’ll call security.”

Security? He was going to call security on me? That son of a … It was too much. With a flick of my wrist, I tossed my keys toward his chest with some force. Reflex kicked in, and he caught them at the last second with a startled look.

I said, “You back it out. And if you so much as scratch my car, you can deal with my insurance company … and my attorney. Oh, and what’s your name so I’ll know where to send the claim?” I pulled a small notebook and pencil from my purse and stood waiting.

After a long pause, he said, “Michael Dupre,” and then looked at me expectantly.

I wrote it down and then stood back, waiting. We stared at each other in silence. I finally said, “Well? Are you moving my car or not? I’m in a hurry.”

Without turning his head, he shouted, “Carl!”

A brown, sweating tattoo-covered roadie materialized beside him, cigarette dangling on his lower lip without visible means of support. His pants also had no visible means of support and hung dangerously low on his skinny hips.

“Carl, move this … woman’s car for her, please,” said Michael Dupre, handing him the keys.

The cigarette bobbed upward, tip glowing red on the inhale. “Be easier to move the trailer, boss,” Carl answered, the words slipping out with the stream of smoke.

“Are you a professional driver or not? Move the goddamned car!”

Carl shot him a sidelong glance, then shrugged and started for my little blue Honda.

“Whoa,” I said. “Plus shirt, minus cigarette.” They both turned. “Hey, I don’t want my seat soaked, and no one smokes in my car. You know, if you move the trailer, I could move my own car,” I pointed out.

Carl shot a questioning glance at his boss, apparently saw the answer in his face, then stomped off to find a shirt.

Michael Dupre and I stood without speaking. Around us, the film crew continued setting up, calling to each other for power cords and the like. In the trees the cicadas buzzed their summer song happily and loudly. On the football field, coaches shouted at their players. But under the big live oak, all was silent, which tended to make a certain type of person very nervous. Michael Dupre was that type of person, because he started shifting from one foot to another. I could feel him staring at me, but I ignored him.