Crowned and Moldering (9 page)

“They suck the wind right out of you sometimes,” Judy said. “But I haven’t seen them
so enthusiastic in weeks, so it’s all good.”

“Thanks.” I knelt down and returned my tools to their proper drawers in the tool chest,
then slid my business cards into the pocket of my briefcase. “You’re going to lock
the classroom, right?”

“Absolutely,” she assured me. “Your tools and laptop will be safe.”

“Thanks.” I stood and grabbed my purse. “Okay, I’m off.”

“Enjoy,” she said, walking me to the door. “I’ve got to run a quick errand, so I’ll
meet you back here in about forty-five minutes.”

“It’s a deal.” I took off down the hall, headed for the cafeteria to grab a sandwich.

“Is it really Shannon Hammer?”

I whirled around to see who was talking. “Mr. Jones!”

“No, it’s Brad.”

We both laughed and I gave him a hug. How could I not? He was still the cutest teacher
in school, even after all these years. “How are you?”

“I’m harried and hungry,” he said. “You?”

“About the same.”

“Come on, I’ll walk you to the cafeteria.”

Bradford Jones had been my absolute favorite teacher back in high school. I wasn’t
alone; Mr. Jones was everyone’s favorite, and not just because he was by far the best-looking
teacher on the faculty. He was also the nicest, most thoughtful man. All of my friends
had huge crushes on him. He taught biology, and there was always a waiting list to
get into his classes.

Nowadays the two of us were friendly because he and his wife, Denise, had hired my
construction company to remodel their kitchen a few years ago. During the job, he
insisted that I call him Brad, but I just couldn’t. Instead I continued to call him
Mr. Jones, and we always had a good laugh about it.

“How’s Career Day going?” he asked.

“I love it. I always have a good time.”

“That’s a great attitude. I’ve got Dr. Kersey talking to my classes.”

“He’s my doctor,” I said as we walked toward the lunchroom.

“Denise’s, too. He’s a great doctor and a good guy, but his presentation is a little
too intellectual for some of the kids.”

“They don’t seem to have that problem with me,” I said, and was pleased to hear him
laugh again.

If I hadn’t been watching him, I wouldn’t have seen the minuscule change in his expression
from cheer to dismay. At least, I thought that’s what I saw. A half second later,
the unhappy look was gone and he wore a bland smile, and I wondered what had happened.

“Hi, Brad!”

Ugh. Now I knew what had changed Mr. Jones’s mood. It was Whitney Reid Gallagher,
my oldest, worst enemy from high school. She and her posse of rich, snotty girls had
taken great pleasure in tormenting me about my wild hair, my clothing, my construction-worker
fingernails, and anything else they could harp on.

“What’s she doing here?” Whitney said, looking me up and down as her face wrinkled
in disgust. It wasn’t a good look for her, even though I had to admit that Whitney
was a very pretty woman. At least she had that one thing going for her. Two things,
if you counted her luck at being married to Tommy.

I turned to Mr. Jones. “What’s she doing here?”

He refused to make eye contact and it sounded as if he was choking on a laugh.

“I happen to work here,” Whitney said.

Working? “I know you can’t be teaching,” I said. “So what’re you doing?”

“If it’s any of your business, I coach the cheerleading squad twice a week.”

“Oh.” That actually made sense, since she’d been a cheerleader during our senior year.
“That must be fun. Good for you.”

As usual, Whitney was overdressed for the job, in stilettos, skinny jeans, and a sleeveless
pink-and-lime-green sequined top. If that wasn’t enough, she was carrying pom-poms
in the school colors of navy and gold. Somehow it worked for her.

I glanced down at my own casual outfit and gave a mental shrug. What could I say?
This was my daily uniform.

“You look great, by the way,” Brad said, grinning at me.

I beamed at him. “Thanks, Mr. Jones.” He had just earned my lifelong gratitude.

I watched Whitney seethe, and beamed even more.

Sadly, though, she wasn’t about to stomp away from the best-looking man in the building.
And even though my stomach was starting to growl from hunger, I didn’t want to leave
him alone with her.

“How are you, Brad?” Whitney asked, turning her back on me. “How’s Denise?”

“She’s fine. She’s working today.”

“She’s so dedicated to the nursery.”

“Yes, she is.”

“By the way, Brad,” Whitney said. “Did you hear they found human bones in the lighthouse
mansion?”

“What?” He looked from me to Whitney. “Is that true?”

“It’s true,” she said, her head bobbing affirmatively. She looked inordinately proud
of herself.

“That . . . that’s awful.”

Her eyes lit up. “I know. Shannon’s the one who found them. Again. Honestly, she spends
so much time with dead bodies, she should have gone to work at a cemetery or something.”

Mr. Jones gave me another horrified glance.

I frowned at Whitney. Why was she talking about this in front of Mr. Jones? Anyone
who knew him had to know about his weak stomach for that kind of thing. Back when
I had been demolishing his kitchen, he refused to watch, for fear we might find something
living behind the walls. And when I had tried to show him the petrified squirrel we
discovered, he’d cringed and hurried from the house.

Besides that, Brad’s wife, Denise, had been Lily Brogan’s best friend in high school.
I was afraid Brad might turn green if he heard the news about Lily from bigmouth Whitney.

“Tommy says it was the most gruesome thing he’s ever seen.” Whitney looked positively
giddy. “And that’s not even the best part. You’ll never guess.”

“Whitney,” I said in warning.

She shot me an evil look but kept talking. “They found a MedicAlert bracelet, too.”

I knew what she was doing. She was showing off to Mr. Jones and the rest of the world,
trying to prove that she knew more about what was found in the lighthouse mansion
than I did. Because Tommy had obviously told her I was there.

“Whitney,” I said again.

“What?” she snapped.

“Tommy wouldn’t want you talking about a police case.”

She planted her hands on her hips. “How do you know what Tommy would or wouldn’t want?”

“Okay, let me rephrase that.
Chief Jensen
wouldn’t want you talking about it.”

Those must’ve been the magic words, because she immediately began to pout. “You think
you know everything.”

“Not everything, but I do know that Chief Jensen swore us all to secrecy. So if something
leaks out, I’ll be sure to let him know who was talking about it.”

“You’re a little snitch, you know that?”

“And you don’t know when to shut up.”

She glowered, and I knew what it meant to have someone shooting daggers at me. But
I didn’t care. She shouldn’t have been talking about the bones.

Whitney tossed her hair back and turned, deliberately ignoring me as she grabbed Mr.
Jones’s arm to get his attention. “Listen to this, Brad,” she murmured. “They think
the bones were—”

His cell phone rang at that moment and he held up his hand to stop Whitney.

Saved by the bell,
I thought.

“Hello?” Mr. Jones said, and smiled. “Hi, honey. Everything okay? What?” His smile
disappeared and he shot me a look of pure fear. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“Is Denise all right?” I asked. “Is she hurt?”

“The police just arrived at my house,” Mr. Jones whispered, his face turning paler
by the second. He turned to Whitney. “They think the remains of the body they found
in the lighthouse mansion were Lily Brogan’s.”

“I hope you’re happy,” Whitney snarled, as we watched Brad Jones dash toward the exit.

“Of course I’m not happy,” I said. “He’s really upset.”

“Exactly. I was just about to tell him it was Lily, but you wouldn’t let it go. I
could’ve warned him if you hadn’t butted in.” Hands at her hips, she shook her head
and gave me a look most adults reserved for very stupid children. “You always have
to be so high-and-mighty, sticking your nose in other people’s business.”

What is she talking about?
“I’m not high-and-mighty. I just don’t think you should be talking about an active
crime investigation.”

“What. Ever. The fact is, Brad and Denise are really good friends of mine. I trust
them. Brad wouldn’t have said anything to anyone else.”

“That’s not the point.”

“It’s exactly the point. I wanted him to know that Lily was out of the picture so
Denise wouldn’t have to worry anymore.”

“Worry about what?”

She sighed heavily, as though it was such a burden having to explain things to me.
“About having to be friends with Lily again. You know, in case she ever came back
to town.”

I shook my head, hopelessly confused by her. “Denise and Lily were best friends all
through high school. Why wouldn’t they be friends again?”

“I don’t expect you to understand,” Whitney said, glancing around to make sure she
wasn’t being overheard. “But it was always obvious to some people that Denise had
a lot more class than Lily.”

I gaped at her. “How would you know? You never even met Lily.” Whitney hadn’t moved
to town until our junior year, and Lily had been gone by then.

She waved off my protest. “But I know her brother, Sean, and he’s not exactly the
most cultured person in the world. And didn’t their father spend time in jail? I mean,
they were practically poor.”

She said that last word in the same tone most people would say
Ebola
.

I had to grip my hands together to keep from slapping her for talking about Sean that
way. I wanted to defend my friend, but at the same time I knew that trying to explain
myself to Whitney was as useful as trying to empty the ocean with a sand pail. “Who
cares?” I said. “Lily was smart and generous and kind. Maybe that meant more to Denise
than money.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. You’re so naive.”

Why was I arguing with this woman? Whitney had no concept of the idea of friendship.
It was all about money with her. If you had enough money, you had status. Class. Denise’s
family had money; Lily’s didn’t. So how could they possibly be friends?

I checked my watch and almost groaned out loud. I no longer had time to get a sandwich.
I was going to starve, and I laid the blame directly on Whitney. “Never mind. I have
to go back to work.”

“Work? Where are you working?”

I pointed down the hall. “Room 117.”

She looked baffled. “Is there a leak in the pipes or something?”

“No.”
You blockhead,
I thought, then felt a wave of remorse for calling her names, even under my breath.
She couldn’t help being what she was. Though it would’ve been nice if she could just
stay home and not subject the rest of us to her blockheadedness. “It’s Career Day.”

“Okay, but why are you here?”

“Because it’s fun. I’ve done it for five years now.”

“But . . .” She shook her head, honestly dumbstruck. “Who would want your career?”

I had to walk away before I smacked her. But after taking two steps, I stopped and
said, “People who want to make a whole lot of money—that’s who.”

She grasped for something snotty to say, but came up lame. “Well, money isn’t everything.”

I choked on a laugh. Her chin jutted defiantly, but even she knew she was being ridiculous.
We’d already established that money meant everything to people like her.

I turned away. “See you around, Whitney.”

“You should do something with your hair.”

All the way back to my classroom, I imagined myself stuffing those pom-poms down her
throat.

*   *   *

At the end of the last session, I thanked Judy Cummings for a fun day and then hoisted
up my tool chest—why did it feel heavier at the end of the day?—onto the dolly, along
with my laptop and briefcase, and trudged down the hall and out the door. I’d had
a good time—no, thanks to Whitney—and I felt great. I’d given out my entire batch
of business cards and had twenty-eight names on my list of teens who wanted to interview
for one of our four paid internships over the summer. The internships were fun, sort
of like being at summer camp, except no canoes or campfires.

We taught our interns the right way to use all the tools, even power tools. And then
we put them to work, sometimes painting a room, sometimes helping raise a wall or
hammering drywall. Over the years, several of our interns had gone on to work full-time
in construction or related fields. A couple of guys ended up going into plumbing,
another started his own masonry business, and one boy wound up entering college to
study architecture, inspired after spending a summer with my crew.

Thinking about how enthusiastic the kids were today reminded me of Whitney’s stupid
comments earlier. I wished it wasn’t true, but I still found myself shocked and offended
by her statements.

I’d known her ever since she moved to Lighthouse Cove at the beginning of our junior
year. Her family used to spend summers here, and her parents decided it would be a
good place to raise their children. And it was. But Whitney had been miserable. Apparently,
she’d had really cool friends back in her San Francisco suburb that no one in Lighthouse
Cove could come close to matching for awesomeness and style.

My friends and I had tried to reach out, but Whitney refused to have anything to do
with the kids she referred to as townies. Even though by then she, too, could’ve been
considered a townie by kids who’d arrived more recently. Eventually she became friends
with some of the other privileged girls whose parents had also chosen to move into
the beautiful Victorian-style homes built along the Alisal Cliffs. Whitney would’ve
been appalled to discover that her parents and those of all of her snooty friends,
the ones who’d insisted on living in homes built by the best construction company
in Northern California, were the ones responsible for making my father a wealthy man.

I shook my head as I crossed the central quad and headed for the senior-class parking
lot, where I’d been assigned to park my truck. To this day, I didn’t quite know what
I’d done to make Whitney hate me so much. Was it because I’d had the audacity to offer
to be her friend, as though she were some yokel from nowhere? Or did it have more
to do with the fact that Tommy was my boyfriend? But even after she’d won him over
by sleeping with him and getting herself pregnant—something I had not been willing
to do—she continued to hate me. Her digs were always personal and usually had something
to do with my construction-crew wardrobe. I was a mess, she said. I dressed like a
boy. My nails were too short. My hair was hideous. That last one was especially funny
to me, because Tommy had always been crazy about my hair.

I didn’t understand her contempt until years later. I boiled it down to a complicated
mix of jealousy over my relationship with Tommy—the nicest, cutest boy in school and
the star quarterback on our football team—and suspicion over my easy acceptance of
my place in our small-town society. I’d grown up believing that everyone was my friend,
and until Whitney showed up that had always been true. She especially hated my oddly
buoyant personality that allowed me to bounce back from every sling and arrow she
hurled at me.

It had taken Tommy tearfully explaining that Whitney was pregnant and they were getting
married for me to face the ugly reality of Whitney Reid’s determination to hurt me,
but I finally got it.

Eventually I learned to avoid her and, except for those rare moments like today, when
I was forced into a face-to-face interaction, her anger wasn’t something I dwelled
on anymore.

But in a small town, it wasn’t always easy to avoid her. We crossed paths regularly.
I’d even saved her life twice, but still got no respect. That was because she’d considered
it my fault that she’d been in danger in the first place. She was wrong, of course,
but why would I ever expect her to face the truth?

“Shannon!” someone shouted.

“What?” On the edge of panic, I whirled around to see who it was. I’d been so involved
in my mental rant that I thought Whitney had followed me out to the parking lot. Talk
about paranoia! But it was only Ms. Barney, the school principal, waving at me. I
tried to calm my thundering heartbeat as she approached.

“Hello.” I made sure the dolly wouldn’t roll away and moved to greet her and shake
her hand. “How are you, Ms. Barney?”

“I’m dandy,” she said, jovial as always. “I heard you had a good Career Day.”

“I did. The students were great. They had lots of smart questions and really good
comments.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” She pointed toward the parking lot. “Well, the school board
should be making their decision any day now.”

I smiled. “You must be getting tired of waiting.”

“You think?” She laughed. “Let me walk with you to your car.”

We made small talk as we went. Ms. Barney had become our high school principal at
the beginning of my senior year and I had always liked her. She was a fair, no-nonsense
administrator who seemed to genuinely enjoy working with students. But beyond that,
she’d won my heart a few years ago when she hired my company to build a small extension
onto her living room. She wanted a cozy reading room with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves
and a fireplace.

Since we already had a working relationship, it wasn’t surprising when, about three
months ago, she had called me into her office to tell me about a new construction
job that the school board was about to open up for bidding by local building companies.

That day, she had asked me to walk with her out to the senior parking lot, where she’d
stopped and gestured at the crumbling, faded blacktop before us. “Pretty soon this
will be a brand-new solar-paneled parking lot with a shiny new blacktop surface and
space for at least five times more cars than we have now. The school board is taking
construction bids and I’m hoping you’ll submit one. I would love it if they chose
your company to do the job.”

I’d been pleased that she thought my company was capable of something like that. “It
sounds interesting and I’d love to have the work, but I have to confess we haven’t
done a solar-panel job like that before.”

“That doesn’t matter,” she’d confided, then gone on to explain why. “The solar-panel
company has already been chosen. They sent a designer and a team of engineers to do
a site analysis and survey last month.”

“So why would you need me?”

“The company recommended that we find a reputable local contractor to repave the surface
of the lot and help with the installation of the canopies and the panels. They’ll
have their own electrical engineer and a full crew, along with a project manager on-site
to supervise the entire project. And they’ll take care of all the testing and maintenance.”

She pointed to a swath of pressed gravel that formed a wide walkway leading to the
track field fifty yards away. “The plan is to tear up all of this old blacktop, along
with the landscaping all the way to the tennis courts and halfway to the track field.”

“That’s a big area.” I pointed to an incline covered in agapanthus. “You’ll lose a
lot of those plants.”

“We’ll transplant them to other areas around the school.” She flashed a broad smile.
“So it’s a win-win. We plan to expand the lot to seventy-two total parking spaces.”

“Wow, that’s a lot.”

“Yes. We’ll need three double canopies to cover seventy-some cars. The solar panels
on top of the canopies will eventually generate enough power to run the entire school
all year round.”

“That’s amazing.”

“I know. And a few of the posts will have hookups for electric cars, too. And get
this,” she added. “The canopies are configured with gutters down the middle that can
harvest rainwater to use for irrigating the student gardens, the football field, and
all of the landscaping.”

“Wow. You’ve covered all the bases. That sounds fantastic.”

“I’m getting excited just talking about it.” She’d glanced at me. “So, are you interested
in the job?”

I had scanned the parking lot and the surrounding school grounds, thinking quickly.
The way she’d explained it, I figured it wouldn’t be as complex a job as I’d first
thought. Basically a lot of digging, building supports for those canopies, and laying
down blacktop. And even though all of that had little connection to my specialized
field, which was new-home construction and Victorian-home renovation, it wouldn’t
matter. My guys and I could handle it.

The job sounded unique and interesting, and I liked the idea of involving my company
in a high-tech project like this. It would be a good thing for both the school and
the community, as well as for Hammer Construction.

“I’d love the chance to bid on it,” I’d said.

“Wonderful.” She’d reached into her satchel and handed me a manila envelope. “Here’s
the company’s bidding form. I’m bound by school-board regulations to obtain at least
one other bid, and I’ve already heard from three others that they’d like the chance
to bid, too. But, truth be told, I’d prefer to work with you.”

“I’d like that, too,” I said, but I knew the rules. “How much time do I have to submit
my offer?”

“The sooner the better, naturally, but I can give you up to one week.”

I could envision working several late nights doing research into the solar-tech industry
in order to feel competent enough to bid on the job. “I’ll try to finish it by the
weekend.”

“Let’s make it Monday.”