Calamity Jayne and the Sisterhood of the Traveling Lawn Gnome (35 page)

"Manny's on it," I said, and I could see her visibly relax.

"Thank God!" she said. "I told Mick he should get Manny involved, but he wouldn't do it."

"Speaking of involving adults," Taylor said, "What about Miss Banfield? Did she know the extent of what was going on?"

"I don't think so. I think she lost control but didn't want to admit it, so she looked the other way. It's not her fault that Cissy flipped out and got totally obsessed—"

"Not her fault?" Kari jumped to her feet. "She's a teaching
professional
. She not only crossed boundaries, she obliterated them. And talk about trust. Students should be able to trust that their teachers are going to act in a manner consistent with the standards and ethics of their profession. She failed you. She failed all of you. And the saddest part? You still don't realize it."

 "Well, I think we know what the next step has to be," I told Jada. "You have to come clean with the police."

It was like I'd told her Justin Bieber was dead.

"No! God no! I can't do that. I can't betray The Sisterhood. Cissy will make good on her threats. I know she will."

"Not if she's held accountable, too."

"She'll lie and say it was all me. I was the one who planned it all. I stole the gun. I hurt that UFO guy. You already said all the evidence points to me. I'm not going to take that chance. I'm out and staying out."

"Well, I can tell the police. They'll believe me."

Dixie's snort spoke volumes.

"If only we could catch your 'sister' in the act," she said.

Jada gasped. "Oh, my God! Maybe you can!"

Five heads turned to look at her.

"What do you mean? Are they planning another girls' night out?" I asked.

Jada nodded.

"'Paint the past pink' Cissy called it. Like destroying the past was something majorly cool. I told you she was screwed up."

"Wait a minute? Are you saying what I think you're saying?"

"Earlier tonight Cissy took Fides to the Historical Village. Tonight," Jada said. "After the
Blast to the Past
. They're hitting the museum."

Marty Freakin' McFly!

First pink Appaloosas. Now pink museums.

It was time to pull the plug on the sister act and take back the night.

Jada gave us a quick overview of the "trust exercise." It was Harry and Marv in
Home Alone 2
all over again.

Before the museum was locked up for the night—two of the girls (Portia and Kiera) would hide inside the building among the exhibits. The other four "sisters"—a generous supply of hot pink spray paint cans in their arsenal—would come to the back door of the museum at 2 a.m. to be let in. And in the time it takes to say "Kodachrome" what had been displays of the rich culture, heritage, and history of the county would be reduced to sticky, worthless, pink junk.

Oh, hell no! Not on Martha Jane Cannary's watch!

"So what do we do with this information, exactly?" Shelby Lynn asked.

"I say we let the police handle it," the Pioneer Prude said.

"I say we contact the parents," Schoolmarm Kari said.

"I say we go out there, sneak in the museum, and go a little
Revenge of the Nerds
on some cheerleaders," Party Pooper surprised me by saying.

I looked at her.

She shrugged.

"I like history. And I hate cheerleaders."

"How about we split the difference?" I said. "Shelby Lynn, you've got a contact with the sheriff's office you're keeping from me, right? Can you trust him?"

"Her," Shelby Lynn said.

"
Oo
kay. Her. Is she on the up and up?"

Shelby Lynn nodded.

"Get ahold of her, and tell her we're working on a case that requires…discretion. Explain we have reason to believe a crime may be about to be committed, but the information comes from a confidential source. Don't give her specifics until you're sure she won't do an end run around us."

"I hear you," Shelby said.

"Kari. Sorry, sweetie. Parents at this point would only complicate matters, but thanks for the input. Miss Destructor," I told Dixie. "I like the way you think. I feel confident that with some insightful tweaking we can work with your suggestion."

"Tweaking?"

"We'll have to lose the cheerleader whooping," I told her. "They're minors."

"So what are we doing, exactly?" Shelby asked.

"Here's how I see it. Like our crafty cheerleaders, we too hide in the museum before it's locked up. We wait for the cheerleaders to reveal themselves—and by revealing themselves, I of course mean come out in the open. We surprise them. Shelby rides in to the rescue with the county. The juveniles are detained. Parents are called. The museum is saved. And order is restored to Knox County."

"Just one minor detail. Won't we also be guilty of breaking and entering if we hide in the museum before they lock up?" Taylor asked.

"Our intentions will be pure, honorable, and upstanding ones. Remember, I'd rather—"

"—ask for forgiveness than permission," Taylor finished. "I remember."

"I suppose you'll want us to dress in black," Dixie said.

I shook my head.

"We're supposed to blend in, right? With these frontier getups, we could almost pass as mannequins."

"Note she didn't say 'dummies,'" Dixie said. "I don't know if you've forgotten or what, but I'm not wearing a costume."

I looked at her.

"You're not? Don't worry. There's bound to be a barrel or old time wash tub you can hide behind," I said. I put my hand on Jada's shoulder. "I'm not comfortable with you being involved, Jada."

"But I have to be! Don't you see? If I don't show up, they won't go through with it! Cissy will realize I narked them out, and there's no telling what she'll do then. I'll be fine. All I have to do is be at the meeting place and ride to the county park. That's it. We get there, and go in. Busted! It's over. Don't you see? The best protection for me is to pretend to participate. Please! What would you do if it were you?"

I squeezed her shoulder.

"The same thing you want to do," I told her.

"That's what I thought," she said. "Is there a restroom? I really need to use it."

I took her into the hall and pointed at the door across the hall.

"It's going to be okay, Jada." I said. "Really. It is."

She hurried into the bathroom, and I went back to the break room.

"Are we really going to let her do that?" Taylor asked.

I shook my head.

"Thank God!" Kari said.

"You know, I've been thinking about Martina Banfield," Taylor said.

"What about her besides she's totally unprofessional, dangerously immature, and has a seriously messed up moral compass?" Kari asked.

"It's all this stuff about psychological trust and those bizarre exercises and her telling the girls that in order to trust, they had to put themselves at risk. It's just out there," Taylor said.

"And then there was her freak-out when you challenged that dude's pyramid," I said. "Beyond bizarre."

"Another thing," Kari said. "As an educator, it's hard for me to believe she didn't have a clue what was going on, how her social experiment was going horribly wrong."

Taylor nodded.

"If I didn't know better I'd almost think she was manipulating those girls. Programming them. And watching how they reacted under certain circumstances like a cognitive behaviorist."

I frowned. "I'm not sure what that last part means, but do you mean like those mazes with rodents?"

"The Tolman research," Taylor supplied. "Very new and revolutionary."

"So research, huh?"

She nodded.

"Very avant-garde at the time."

"I'll take your word on that," I said. "Hmm. So, would that kind of research be anything like the research one might conduct if they were working on say, a thesis for a master's degree in the field of psychology?"

Taylor's eyebrows lifted.

"Yes. I suppose."

I thought about it for a second.

"You need to call Brian, Kari," I said.

"We're not on speaking terms at the moment," she said.

I shook my head.

"Kari, just call the man and find out what Martina Banfield's master's thesis is about!"

"Okay! But what should I say when he wants to know why I'm asking?"

"Tell him it's a quiz to see if he really is just helping her with her thesis. He'll probably think you're tipsy anyway."

"Okay. I'll make the call, but I won't grovel!"

She shinnied to the other end of the room.

"What are you thinking?" Shelby asked.

"I'm thinking if my theory is right, Miss Banfield is looking at more than a trip to the principal's office."

Kari was back in record time.

"You're not going to believe this!" she said.

"Try me," I said.

"Martina the Mentee's thesis analyzes," she stopped and read from a scrap of paper in her hand, "female gang dynamics within a rural, upper middle class population and its culture and identifies the hierarchy of needs relevant to that demographic."

And there it was!

The missing link!

"Oh, my God!" Taylor gasped. "Oh, my God! She's been using those poor girls! Using them as lab rats for her research!"

"It sure does look that way," I said. "It looks like she got them to trust her, treated them as equals and friends, spent time with them, lavished them with gifts and affection, and solely for the purpose of using them as research subjects."

"She pulled their strings and observed their reactions like some psycho puppet master," Dixie said. "That's what she did."

"Brian confided that the principal is worried about how close she's getting to her students and had asked Brian, as her mentor, to see what he could find out before they brought her in. I knew she was trouble the first time I laid eyes on her," Kari said.

"I can't believe she would do that to her students," Shelby Lynn said.

I shook my head.

"Those poor girls. When they find out how she used them, they'll be devastated," Taylor said.

"That's why we keep it to ourselves. Don't say anything to Jada. Not yet. She has enough on her plate right now. She still thinks Miss Banfield is Mary Poppins," I said. "Let her believe for a few more hours."

"Speaking of Jada, she's taking a long time in the bathroom," Shelby said, and I hurried out into the hall.

I rapped on the bathroom door.

"Jada? It's Tressa? Are you okay?"

No answer.

"Jada?" I knocked again before turning the knob and opening the door. The bathroom was empty. "Jada!" I checked the other offices before I returned to the break room.

"She's flown the coop," I said.

"Where do you suppose she went?"

"My keys!" Taylor said. "I left them here on the table. They're gone!"

We ran out back. The Buick was also gone.

"Great. What do we do now?"

I thought a second. Chances were Jada was on her way to meet up with the others—which meant she would be expecting us to be at the museum. I wasn't about to disappoint her.

"We stick to the plan," I said.

And then show little Miss Master's Degree how females within a rural, middle class population look out for their own.

It'll be a lesson worth learning.

Trust
me.

We were in.

And playing the waiting game.

Waiting for all hell to break loose, that is.

Since Jada had absconded with the Buick, we'd all piled into Shelby's Jeep and headed back to the county park and, to our surprise, discovered the Buick parked on the way end of the parking lot near a line of trees.

We went over our plan.

Our objective, we finally agreed, was to prevent damage to the museum and its contents—to wrest relics from the grip of thugs and safeguard history for its posterity.

If the culprits got away, we'd let law enforcement deal with that later.

Our mission was to protect and preserve the past.

Sniff. Sniffle
.

I get all teary-eyed just thinking about it.

We'd searched the dwindling crowd for The Sisterhood, without luck, concluding that the two sisters assigned to hide in the museum were already in place. We'd mingled a bit more before making our way, one-by-one, into the museum.

I'd tried to dissuade Kari from participating in the 'intervention,' but the possibility Miss Banfield might show up was like telling me George Strait was saddling up again for just one more farewell concert two doors down and giving my ticket to someone else.

Not. Gonna. Happen.

Getting by the county historical society members took a bit of doing. They're serious about their historic treasures. We used the old divert-and-conquer routine. It didn't hurt that most of the committee members were of my gammy's generation and their reflexes a bit…rusty.

With a little maneuvering (okay, I got hung up on a nail and ripped my hobo vest) I'd managed to conceal myself in the back of an old farm wagon in the agriculture section of the museum. I had no clue where the others were—friend or foe.

Shelby's "contact" had agreed to our conditions, and the county would be in the area to assist when the time came. We'd silenced our phones and planned to communicate via text if necessary.

The museum, a fixture at the historical village, had seen various forms until they finally decided on a steel building similar to those you find in farm operations. Rectangular in shape, it could accommodate many more exhibits than its previous structure.

The museum had no high-tech security, no video cameras, no faux video cameras. Just keys and locks and what some people might deem an old-fashioned and naïve trust in the better natures of their fellow citizens.

As far as I knew nobody had ever messed with the museum before.

Until now.

I checked my cell.

Two o'clock and all was definitely not well!

The damnable itching! It was driving me nuts!

Boots crossed at the ankles, I tried to keep from scratching.