Nobody Girl (24 page)

Delia stepped towards him and physically confronted Chase or C.J. or whoever he was.

“And for that matter, how do you make A’s on everything I assign? And what do you have to do with Lena suddenly making A’s?”

“Oh my God.
You think I’m responsible for Lena’s murder too, don’t you? You think I had something to do with it.”

“I don’t know what to think.” Delia turned away from him. She couldn’t look into his dark blue eyes and let him know she thought he was a murderer. A painful silence befell them. They stood there sharing space, but not sharing understanding. Finally, Delia turned around to face him, but he was gone.

***

“Sammy, I’m done. I can’t do this anymore,” Chase announced as he burst into Sammy’s office.

Sammy scrambled to shut the door so no one else would hear. “What’s this about?”

“I quit. I’m done.”

“Look, kid. I know I was hard on you. I didn’t mean to lose my cool. I was just upset about an unnecessary casualty. Don’t give up on me now. You do good work. We’re so close.”

Chase whipped off his Saxon Arms blazer and plopped into a chair.

“Is this about Delia?”

Chase didn’t respond.

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should let you quit. She’s obviously distracting you.” Sammy sat behind his desk, twisted the chair around and looked out of the window.

Chase put his head in his hands. He never imagined that feelings for a woman would have this much of an effect on him. Her opinion of him mattered so much.  He just couldn’t live with the thought that she saw him as a murderer. She even thought that he was the one to attack her. All he could see was the look of disgust in her eyes. But, on the other hand, he had an obligation to fulfill.
An obligation that he began long before he met her.
An obligation he couldn’t turn his back on.

He was dying inside.  There had to be a way to make her see.

“So what do we know?” Donna Lee asked, sitting Indian style on her sister’s bed. She stared at Delia as she sat at the kitchen table amidst an array of papers. Somehow, Delia had turned the whole situation into a mathematical puzzle.

“Everything leads back to Chase. He’s the center of it all.” Delia crossed her arms and sighed.

“What if he’s a cop?” Donna Lee asked suddenly. “What if he’s like undercover or something?”

Delia sighed. “I thought of that, but what are the chances? This isn’t a TV show. I mean would the police really send someone undercover in high school? That’s crazy. Plus, I saw him get arrested at school the other day.”

She’d hoped that through her detailed evaluation she’d find an explanation for Chase’s involvement and all of his lies. But she couldn’t. In fact, one of her scenarios had him as the second in command of Promise Stone after Principal Howard. Principal Howard. She suddenly had an idea.
An idea that was either pure genius or downright stupidity.
She could ask him out on a date or something and try to find out more about him. Maybe he could lead her to the truth since Chase was less than forthcoming.

“That’s crazy,” Donna Lee said. Apparently, Delia had been thinking out loud.

“What? You don’t think I can seduce him into talking to me?”

“Men are easy. They can be seduced by cardboard cutouts if necessary. What’s crazy about it is that at best, this guy is a pervert who doesn’t mind his faculty getting it on with members of the student body and at worst he’s a murderer.” Donna Lee hopped off the bed and approached her sister. “Sorry, Dee, I don’t see a happy conclusion to that idea.”

“I’m not
gonna
put myself alone with him or anything. Dinner in a public place should suffice.”

Donna Lee shook her head disapprovingly. “Well, I’m going with you.”

“That would put a damper on the seduction aspect, now wouldn’t it?”

***

Amazingly, Principal Howard agreed to dinner with Delia the next night. She made it seem like she wanted to discuss some problems in her classroom. It was supposed to be a business dinner, but the outfit Delia borrowed from her sister definitely spoke pleasure, not business.

The smooth eggplant-colored silk dress hugged all her curves in the right places.  Considering Delia was much
more well
-endowed than her sister, she basically spilled out of Donna Lee’s dress. She noticed men staring at her as she waited at the table for Principal Howard to arrive. She looked across the restaurant and winked at Donna Lee, who had insisted on attending this little adventure.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said as he scrambled to the table. Delia stood to shake his hand. He breathed in sharply when he saw what she was wearing. “Wow, I feel a little underdressed or I guess I should say overdressed.”

Delia blushed and froze. Although, Donna Lee had tried to coach her on some flirtatious one
liners
, nothing came to mind. She began to think she’d made a mistake with the entire endeavor.

“Shall we?” he asked, indicating their seats.

She nodded and sat down suddenly forgetting what she wanted to say to open up the conversation.  Thankfully, Principal Howard spoke. “So, I assume this is about one of your students?”

“No … um … actually, I was thinking that we could just get to know each other better.” Delia tried to cross her legs seductively and instead kicked the table awkwardly.  Principal Howard’s mustache covered lips curved into a grin.

“Why don’t we order some drinks?” He called the waiter over and said, “I’ll have a glass of one third Bailey’s Irish crème, one third
Kahlua
, and one third Peach Schnapps.” The waiter grimaced, but wrote down the order. “Ms. Clark?”

“I’m fine with water, thank you.”

They sat in silence for a moment, waiting for his drink to arrive. She became increasingly nervous as his steady gaze seemed to never shift from her face. Delia could see a frustrated Donna Lee out of the corner of her eye willing her to say something, but Delia couldn’t think of a thing to say.

She decided to just forego the flirtation and come right out and ask what she wanted to know.

“Principal Howard, I was wondering if you can tell me all you know about C.J. Mitchell.”

The drink arrived and he took a couple of sips before setting it down and saying with a grin, “Well, that shouldn’t be too hard, considering he’s my nephew. And please, call me Sam.”

Delia felt her mouth go dry.
“Nephew?”
She didn’t know why that was such a shock to her, but the information just didn’t feel right. She guessed that was why he was admitted into Saxon Arms with his less than stellar grades and why Principal Howard didn’t want to make a big deal of the compromising position he’d caught them in. “C.J. is your nephew?”

“I think we both know his real name is Chase.” He smiled devilishly as if he were playing some sort of game. How could he find this situation the slightest bit amusing? She wondered if he and Chase sat around and joked about what a nightmare her life had turned out to be.

Delia cast her eyes downward as she grabbed her glass and took a sip of water.

“I hear you’ve met my mother Felicia. She’s quite a character isn’t she? Chase’s mother is my older sister from my mother’s first marriage.”

Delia felt her face flush. He knew everything. How embarrassing.

“I didn’t know how old he was. I swear.  He never told me how old he was.”

“Oh, I’m not blaming you for anything. I’m not here to pass judgment on you, Ms. Clark.”

“And … and I thought his name was Chase Donovan. Where did C.J. Mitchell come from?”

“His parents are going through a divorce right now. He’s having a bit of an identity crisis. He doesn’t know if he wants my sister’s last name or my brother-in-law’s.”

Delia could definitely relate to a loss of identity after something as traumatic as a divorce.

“Anyway, like I said, I’m not blaming anything on you. You didn’t know. And I’m sure my nephew pursued you.” Delia thought back to the underwear comment on the last night of their cruise. She realized that wasn’t exactly true. “I’m perfectly willing to put the whole thing behind us and move forward.”

She nodded sheepishly.

“The problem is
,
I don’t think Chase is ready to forget you.” He paused as he studied Delia’s reaction.  “Now, if you feel the same, which I hope not since he is still a child, I suggest you wait a year or so until he is of age before pursuing the matter.”

The night was not at all turning out the way Delia had planned.  She was supposed to be finding out about how Principal Howard and C.J. were connected to Promise Stone. Instead, she was receiving a lecture about her affair with a teenager.  She felt humiliated. 

Sam’s cell phone rang. He opened it and closed it quickly.

“Is there something else you wanted to talk about Ms. Clark?”

“Well, no, I mean, yes, I was kind of wondering how he, um, C.J., um Chase rather, is able to make straight A’s in my class but fail so many other classes.”

“He’s always been good at math and he’s probably trying to impress you.”

“But it’s just odd, especially since Lena started making good grades recently and the police mentioned something about an organized cheating and prostitution ring called Promise Stone. I was worried that Chase might somehow be involved.”

The same look of shock befell Sam’s face as did Chase’s when she mentioned Promise Stone.

He cleared his throat. “Unfortunately, I won’t be able to stay any longer,” he said as he avoided eye contact and reached for his coat. “I would suggest you stay out of police business, Ms. Clark.” Then he looked directly in her eyes with a cold glare and said, “We wouldn’t want you to get hurt, now would we?”

Delia shivered. Something in his tone frightened her.

The next day, Delia had a trigonometry test scheduled. Before class started she sat staring at the test mentally, making sure it was “cheat-proof.” There
were
no multiple choice, no true-false, no matching questions. No questions making it easy to just look on someone else’s paper to find the answer or give out signals to pass on the answers. She had even decided to make Chase take the test in a different seat. 

Five minutes before class started she noticed she had misspelled circumference on the second question. She must have really been stressed. She hated mistakes like that. She sighed and retyped the word in the original test on her computer then printed out fourteen new copies. No need for fifteen since Lena was gone.

“C.J., please take this test in the seat next to my desk,” she said as the class entered and took their regular seats.