Die Like an Eagle (2 page)

“I've got my first aid kit if it's needed,” I said.

“Doesn't look too bad,” the dad said.

“I think he'll be all right,” Michael said. “Getting hit by a baseball's pretty painful, but it goes away fast. Right, Chase?”

The kid nodded. He was still sniffling a little, but looked as if he was feeling better. Michael set him on his feet beside his father.

“If he feels well enough to keep on practicing, that's great,” Michael said. “And if he doesn't, just be sure to have him here by eight thirty tomorrow morning so we can do a little warm-up before the game.”

“Okay,” the father said.

“I'm fine,” Chase said. “Can I go back to practice?”

Michael and Chase's father peered at his eye for a little while longer, and Michael performed the league-mandated tests to make sure Chase wasn't showing signs of concussion. They finally gave in to the boy's assurances that he was fine and wanted to practice. The fathers and I watched with approval as Michael and Chase walked back to the outfield together. Michael, at six foot four, dwarfed Chase, even though he was leaning down to demonstrate some fine point in the use of a baseball glove. Perhaps the trick of holding it so missed balls hit the chest rather than the face. It was a cute scene, so I pulled out my phone and took a few photos.

Then I turned back to the posse of fathers.

“Okay, let me get this straight,” I said. “This Biff person makes up rules as he goes along and just expects people to follow them.”

“That's the way he was when he ran the local Little League,” one of the fathers said. “I don't expect him to do it any differently now that he's running Summerball.”

“He's the reason we're in Summerball instead of Little League,” another father said. “Biff used to run the local Little League, but last year we all got fed up and formed a Summerball league.”

“And the Little League just imploded because almost no one tried out,” another said. “Just Biff's kids and his cronies' kids. For the fall season, pretty much everyone else came over to Summerball. Lemuel Shiffley ran the league, and everything was great. Then Lem got sick.”

I nodded. Lem's nephew, Caerphilly Mayor Randall Shiffley, was both a good friend and my current boss, so I knew all about Lem's recent cancer diagnosis and his still very uncertain prognosis.

“We were trying to give Lem some time to figure out if he wanted to go on with running the league,” a father said. “We figured maybe one of us could fill in for him till he got better, but we didn't want to push it if he wasn't ready to delegate. And suddenly Summerball National informs us that Biff is our new league president.”

“The jerk got the job on the strength of his years of experience running the local Little League,” another said. “Talk about irony.”

“We thought you and Michael must be cronies of his,” another father said. “But I guess you're just newcomers, like poor Chuck.”

They all laughed, and shook their heads.

“Looks as if Michael and I should be talking to you guys,” I said. “To help us stay out of trouble.”

“You have no idea,” one said. “By the way, I'm Evan Thornton. My son's Zack. Number twelve.”

“Luis Espinoza,” said another. “Mine's Manny; number nine.”

The other fathers introduced themselves in the same fashion with both their names and their kids' names and uniform numbers.

“Meg Langslow—Waterston,” I added. “I go by my maiden name professionally, so if I absentmindedly don't answer one of the kids who calls me Mrs. Waterston, just yell ‘Meg!'”

They laughed at that. They probably thought I was kidding. There were still times when I'd hear someone calling for Mrs. Waterston and look around to see where Michael's mother was.

“Maybe we should go back to the bleachers and pretend to be just watching the practice,” Evan said. “We don't want Biff to think we're plotting anything.”

We all arranged ourselves in the bleachers again—though now, instead of the fathers sitting at the far left and me at the far right, we were all in a clump in the middle.

“I have to say,” Luis said. “Even though we thought he must be one of Biff's cronies, we had come to appreciate Michael. At least he has some skill at the game.”

“Yeah,” said another—Vince Wong, if memory served. “I don't think poor Chuck's ever played an inning of baseball in his life.”

“All of us volunteered to be coaches,” Evan explained. “But all of us have been blackballed because of past clashes with Biff.”

“When our older sons were playing,” Luis added. “Are Josh and Jamie your oldest?”

“And only,” I said.

“That explains it,” Luis said. “You haven't had any prior experience with Biff.”

“That's good,” another father said. “If he doesn't hate her, or Michael or Chuck, he won't try to mess with the team as much.”

“Mess with the team?” I echoed.

“You'll see,” Vince said.

“If you've met him, you probably think we're crazy,” Luis added. “He can be very friendly. Talks a good game.”

“And it's all talk,” Vince said.

“He promises improvements to the field, but every year there's less grass and the bumps and ruts get worse,” Luis went on. “Eventually, he says, we will use the profits from food sales to build real bathrooms and a new Snack Shack with running water, and still all we have is that miserable porta-potty.” He pointed to the object in question, painted in a color of brown that was unfortunately all too reminiscent of its intended purpose. “Apparently it takes all the profits the Snack Shack earns to keep the field in its current miserable state.”

“He must not be managing the money very well,” I said. “Has anyone ever taken a look at the books?”

“No, and asking to is what got several of us blackballed,” Vince said. “Don't even think of it.”

“So Biff's teams will continue to win all the playoffs,” Evan said. “And he'll coach the All-Star teams, which will always include his kids. And we'll all do our best to make sure that Biff's antics don't spoil our kids' enjoyment of the game.”

“If I didn't love baseball so much, I'd try to steer Henry to soccer,” Vince said. “Here we thought we'd gotten away from Biff.”

“If anything bad ever happens to him, I hope we all have alibis,” Luis said.

“We should be so lucky,” Evan sighed. “No, I'm afraid we're all in for six more years of him.”

“Only five,” Luis said. “His youngest is eight. Almost nine.”

“You never know,” I said. “Maybe he'll move away. Get transferred or something.”

“Unlikely,” Luis said. “He's his own boss. Owns a local construction company.”

“A local construction company?” I echoed. I had a bad feeling about this. “Wait a minute—Biff
Brown
? Does he own Brown Construction Company?”

“That's him,” Evan said.

I winced. Biff Brown might not hate me yet. But only because he didn't yet know who I was.

 

Chapter 2

Just then Michael and Chuck called for a water break, and the herd of small boys thundered toward us. Some of them went straight to the dugout where they had left their water bottles, and the rest swarmed off the field to collect water bottles from their fathers and beg for Gatorade and bubble gum.

I found myself looking at the porta-potty. I'd been here half a dozen times before for practices—how had I missed B
ROWN
C
ONSTRUCTION
C
OMPANY
stenciled on its side? To say nothing of the much more visible graffiti advising us, in bright yellow paint, that
Brown stinks!
Of course, usually when I was at practice, I was trying to shove the annoyances of my day job out of mind so I could focus on Michael and the boys. Well, and the annoyances of my volunteer job as Team Mom. Still—was it a good thing or a bad thing that until now I'd missed Brown Construction's connection to baseball?

With the fathers' attention elsewhere, I walked a little away from the bleachers, pulled out my cell phone, and punched another of my speed-dial buttons.

“I'm working on it,” Randall Shiffley said.

“Working on what?” Technically, ever since I'd accepted the position of executive assistant to the mayor, Randall had been my boss. But he often behaved as if I was the one giving orders. Perhaps I'd done a better job than I thought of learning Mother's people-management skills.

“Whatever you're calling about,” he said. “Everything you've asked me to do is on my to-do list, and I'm motoring through it. Don't want anything to interfere with my enjoyment of Opening Day tomorrow.”

“What I'm calling about isn't on your to-do list,” I said.

“Not yet anyway.”

“How did the county end up giving Brown Construction the contract to do the renovations to the town square?”

“Damn,” Randall said. “Yeah, that would have been before your time. What's Brown done now?”

“Absolutely nothing as far as I can tell,” I said. “I know we still have six weeks before the Memorial Day celebrations, but it doesn't look as if he's even started. And he's dodging my phone calls. I've left daily messages on his voice mail for the last several weeks. And followed them up with e-mails, which he's also ignored.”

“Yeah, that's Biff all right.”

“So, getting back to my original question—why is Brown doing the town square? Instead of, for example, your family's company, which usually comes in on time and under budget and never fails to return my calls.”

“I appreciate the vote of confidence,” he said. “Trouble is, we started to get complaints about nepotism. Mainly from other companies we beat in a fair competition for contracts, but still—it's a problem. That's why I put my cousin Cephus in charge of the construction company for the time being. And then I decided we need to spread the work around a little. Award a few contracts to other firms, even if they weren't necessarily the absolute lowest bidder, as long as they weren't too far off. And even if those of us in the trade don't consider them the most qualified.”

“Oh, great,” I said. “So now we're hiring overpriced, unqualified contractors just to keep them from suing us?”

“Less qualified,” Randall said. “And not for anything mission-critical like the school roof. No way I'd let them get that. I figured the town square's pretty safe—mostly regrading, resodding, doing a little spruce-up on the bandstand. Only so badly they can screw that up.”

“You sure about that? Because under the circumstances, I suspect Biff's company's the one maintaining the county ball fields, and they're not exactly in a condition that would inspire confidence in Brown Contracting's landscaping abilities.” The rehydrated kids were back on the field where, as we'd been talking, I'd already seen two kids miss balls that had taken bad hops, thanks to the extraordinary number of bumps, dents, divots, hillocks, tussocks, molehills, and patches of tall dead weeds afflicting the field. And was it just the angle I was viewing it from, or was second base a good foot too far to the left?

“Good point,” Randall said. “And yeah, Biff's in charge of maintaining the ball fields—that's part of our contract with the league. If I'd known Lem was going to get sick on us, I wouldn't have agreed to that. Maybe you can figure out a way to wrestle that back from him. And if he does a half-baked job of renovations on the town square, or doesn't get around to it by his deadline, which as I'm sure you have already noticed is the Monday before Memorial Day weekend, I can send in my guys to get the work done in time for the celebration, and then we'll have solid evidence to show why we're never giving them any more contracts.”

“So I gather the optimal outcome is having them fail so we never have to use them again,” I said. “Under the circumstances, would you like me to stop bugging Biff so much?”

“No, you keep on giving him the benefit of all the encouragement and reminders you'd give any other contractor. I have every confidence that Biff's capable of hanging himself in spite of all your efforts.”

With that we signed off. I looked back into the outfield where Biff was still leaning over the fence.

Great. If I did my job for Caerphilly, I'd probably end up angering Biff and ending what had apparently been a rare stretch of relative peace for the Eagles. Maybe I could explain to Randall and get him to take over nagging Biff?

No. Hell, no. If Biff wanted work from Caerphilly, he'd have to fulfill the terms of his contract, and that didn't just mean putting in a lick and a promise on the town square, the way he'd done with the ball field. The town square had damn well better be in pristine condition, or I wasn't going to sign off on payment. For that matter, I was going to have the county attorney take a look at the contract between Caerphilly and Summerball, to see if we had any scope for forcing Biff to improve the field. And if Biff thought he could take out his resentment on my boys—or my husband …

I drew myself up to my full five feet ten and glared at Biff.

Obviously he couldn't really see me, but I was almost convinced he felt the heat of my stare. He glanced at his watch and then started walking along the fence on the first-base side of the field. I looked at my own watch. Only five minutes to six, when practice was over, and the Eagles would be expected to clear the field promptly to make way for the team that would be practicing from six to seven.

The Eagles were occupying the third-base dugout. Over in the first-base dugout, another dozen or so kids were unpacking their gear. It was only practice, so they weren't in uniform, but at least half of them wore brown t-shirts or hats with the word
STOATS
in bright gold letters.