2 Death Makes the Cut (21 page)

As I entered, Colin’s eyes darted to me then went immediately back to Alan. Alan, however, stopped and goggled, his expression slack-jawed and horrified. Instinctively, I tried to smooth down my hair.

“What happened to you?” he gasped.

And only then did I remember that, in addition to my other early-morning attributes, I also had the purple and green remains of a truly world-class black eye.

“She was assaulted and robbed while you were halfway around the world,” said Colin in the same tone he might have used to talk about the weather.

Alan’s eyes, green and dilated, widened in alarm.

I hastened to explain. “Assaulted like a mugging, nothing worse. And I’m fine, nothing to worry about.”

“Absolutely,” said Colin. “Of course, a man is dead and someone is targeting her. But except for those two things, she’s fine.”

“Well, when you say it that way, yeah, it sounds pretty bad,” I said, making soothing gestures with my hands. “But let’s not get carried away.”

“No, let’s not,” Colin agreed. He didn’t look as though he’d slept very well. Unshaven, with dark circles under his eyes and his wavy black hair disheveled, he looked both vulnerable and dangerous.

Beside him Alan looked neat and civilized, but a great deal more hostile. My flowers, still upside down, quivered in his hand. I half expected him to slap them across Colin’s face like a gauntlet.

Instead, he asked, “Who are you anyway? What are you doing here?”

“Your job, if you really are her boyfriend.” The stress on the word “if” was unmistakable, as was the contemptuous expression on Colin’s face as he looked Alan up and down. He picked up the gun in its holster from the coffee table where it had been resting. Alan’s eyes widened at the sight of it.

“I’ll call you later,” he said to me, then gave Alan one last cold glance and went out the front door, pulling it shut with a quiet click.

In the silence that followed, Alan and I stared at each other, neither one knowing what to say.

Explanations were going to take a long time. I went into the kitchen and began making coffee, opening the back door to let Belle out. Uncharacteristically, she hadn’t barked at either the doorbell or at Alan, instead looking both subdued and glad to get out of the house. I knew how she felt. Alan watched me, trying to gauge whether it was safe to speak or maybe just trying to decide where to begin. I was mildly interested myself to see just which of the many possible topics he would choose.

“Are you really all right?” he asked at last, proving again that he was one of the nicest people I know. And one of the most attractive. He was close to six feet tall, athletic and lean. His hair was a rich golden brown and his eyes a changeable gray green. Right now they glittered almost emerald.

I tried to sound reassuring. “I really am. I know it looks bad, but it doesn’t even hurt anymore.” Not much, anyway. “And are those for me?”

With surprise he glanced down at the forgotten flowers, then righted the bouquet and offered it to me. The yellow tissue paper was crushed around the stems, and I suspected a few of the stems were crushed as well.

“Thank you very much. They’re beautiful,” I said, taking them from him and opening a cupboard for a vase. “How was your trip?”

He frowned. “I don’t want to talk about my trip. I want to know what has been going on here. And who the hell was that guy?”

Where should I start? “He’s a detective. He was keeping watch on the house last night.” I gestured around the room, “Someone broke in and trashed my things. Kyla helped with the clean up, but look at my poor couch.” I pointed sadly. “Colin wasn’t convinced that whoever it was found what they were looking for.”

“And why does this … Colin think that?” asked Alan, unable to say the name in a normal tone. “What does he think they were looking for?” He stood stiff and tense, close to pacing or possibly throwing something.

I shrugged. “Both very good questions. I wish I knew the answers.”

The coffeepot was half full by now, and I poured two cups, then added a little more water to the top. Sinking into a chair, I pushed a second one out with my foot.

“You might as well sit down. This is a long story.”

He hesitated a minute, then finally sat down gingerly, as though afraid the chair was going to break or that he was going to hear something really bad. I marshaled my thoughts, trying to decide where to begin, and then finally launched into the whole confusing tale. I didn’t tell it very well, hopping back and forth in time as I remembered details. To give him credit, Alan didn’t interrupt me other than to ask one or two questions when my explanations became unclear. When I was done, he sat in silence for a few moments, cradling his cooling coffee cup between both hands, staring into the dark liquid as though into a crystal ball.

“So,” he said at last, “the bottom line is that this coach…”

“Coach Fred,” I supplied.

“… that this Coach Fred had an argument with a violent parent, that he also had some kind of connection with drugs or with someone who had access to drugs, and that he knew a secret that he planned to share with you and that he kept locked up somewhere. And someone killed him for one of those reasons.”

I frowned. “It doesn’t sound right when you say it like that. You don’t understand what he was like.”

“It doesn’t matter what he was like. You have to concentrate on the facts,” said Alan.

But it did matter. It mattered who Coach Fred had been, how he’d spent his life, what he’d accomplished. Colin and now Alan seemed to think that Coach Fred had done something very wrong, which had somehow led to his death. I did not agree. I frowned at Alan.

He went on without noticing. “What if he’d gotten in too deep with these drug dealers and he was going to leave you their names as insurance? Or maybe not their names—just the key so that you could find their names if something happened to him. That would explain what it was that he had locked up. Only they killed him before he could get it to you.”

“No!” I protested. “What the hell? This wasn’t a hit. Fred worked with kids, not the Corleone family. And it’s not like it was bags of cocaine—it was a few ounces of marijuana. Willie Nelson keeps more than that in his sock drawer.”

Affronted, he held up his hands. “Well, you explain it then.”

I sighed. “I can’t. Not yet anyway,” I said, thinking about my options. There were still things I could do.

For one thing I hadn’t spoken to everyone at the school yet. And I still needed to figure out why someone had attacked me. Had I unknowingly frightened one of the people I’d questioned, frightened them badly enough to make them act? If so, who could it be? And why the heck ransack my house? Unless, of course, it was to look for the key I no longer had?

“What do you mean ‘not yet’?” asked Alan. “You can’t seriously be thinking about pursuing this on your own.”

“I’m not on my own,” I said, thinking of Colin and Kyla and all they’d done for me. And there was Laura Esperanza, too, who’d promised to ask questions for me.

I frowned at that thought. I should call her today to let her know what had happened and to tell her not to ask those questions after all. “And it’s not a matter of pursuing it,” I went on. “I’m involved whether I want to be or not, and I need to figure out what’s going on.”

“No, you don’t. This is a job for the police. You can’t go around putting yourself in danger. In fact, you should get away for a while.”

His concern was touching, but his suggestion was impossible.

“I can’t do that. I have a job.”

“After what’s happened, I’m sure you could get a leave of absence for a few weeks.”

“Yeah, right.”

I thought about the school, wondering if there was someplace there that Fred might have hidden a lockbox or a little safe. I’d searched the tennis shed thoroughly, but maybe he had a hiding place in his classroom. Or somewhere at his home. Even if his wife hadn’t known about it, maybe she’d be willing to search or to let me search.

Alan slapped his palm on the table, and I jumped. “You’re not listening to me.”

“I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“I said you need to leave here.”

“I heard you. I just didn’t think you were serious. I can’t leave.”

“Yes, you can. You were injured at a school-sanctioned event. They’ll be so happy that you aren’t suing them that they’ll probably beg you to take some time off. You could come to Dallas,” he added quietly and reached out to take my hand.

I looked at him, really looked at him, for the first time since he’d arrived, taking in the furrowed brows and lines of tension around his mouth. I had no doubt that he was really worried for me. But was it anything more than the concern of the moment, of one human being for another? Feeling his warm hand around mine, I realized this was the first time we’d touched in weeks. And as much as I’d missed it, it no longer felt the same.

I squeezed his hand, then pulled away, rising to get more coffee, and tried not to notice the hurt look on his face.

“I can’t leave. I have students and classes and now the tennis team. And regardless of how it looks, I don’t think I’m in any real danger anymore. Whatever is going to happen has already happened. Plus, I’ll be watching more carefully. Coffee?” I asked, holding up the pot.

He watched me through narrowed eyes, as though he was trying to figure out a particularly complicated puzzle.

Leaning back in his chair, he said, “So tell me more about this cop.”

Chapter 14

STAGES AND STOOGES

On Monday night I met Kyla at the Hyde Park Bar & Grill on Westgate, which had a small outdoor patio where you could get a reasonably priced dinner and happy-hour priced drinks. It was true that the patio was basically in a mall parking lot, but it was enclosed by walls and potted plants, which masked the lack of scenery, and it was fun sitting outside in the twilight in the warm evening air. It was only seven o’clock, but already the clear summer sky was aflame with vivid orange and gold, fading into pearly grays. Autumn was undoubtedly on the way, even if the central Texas temperatures hadn’t received the memo yet.

I sipped on a Brazilian merlot in a long-stemmed glass, while Kyla took a long deep draft of a Bombay Sapphire martini, which came with its own frosty shaker. She gave a great sigh of satisfaction.

“These are so good here. You really need to try one. Here, you want a sip?”

I declined. “Infidel. It would war with the fruity nose and exuberant plumminess of my merlot.”

She laughed. “That would be more impressive if you knew what it meant. I want to be a wine snot.”

“We should take a class. It would be fun.”

“So how did things go yesterday with your boys?”

“They aren’t my boys. And it was awful. No, wait. Awful is at least two steps above what it was. What is worse than awful?”

“Catastrophic? Horrific?” she suggested.

“Yeah. Both of those.” I stared into the burgundy liquid in my glass, feeling deeply depressed. “What am I going to do?”

Kyla gave me a measuring look. “So Alan walked in on you and Colin?”

“You make it sound like something was going on. Which it wasn’t. But yeah. He finally came right out and asked if Colin was sleeping with me.”

“What did you say?”

I frowned at her. “I told him no. Because he’s not. But I was mad at him for asking.”

“I don’t see why. Seems like a reasonable question to me. A blind monkey could tell Colin wants to.”

“What? Why a monkey?” I asked, diverted for a moment.

“Why not? They seem stupid and unobservant. Pick another animal, I don’t care. The point is, wait … what’s my point?” She took another sip of her martini, which was apparently already working.

“God only knows.”

“Oh, I know. The point is that Colin is interested, and there’s definitely some major chemistry going on between you two. Alan isn’t stupid. Well, he’s stupid about the way he’s been acting, but he’s not stupid about that. And let’s face it, he walks into your house early in the morning and Colin is there. What’s he supposed to think?”

“He’s supposed to trust me.”

“Yeah, well that gets back to the stupid bit. But come on. If the situation was turned around, you’d be having some questions.”

“What, you mean if Colin answered Alan’s door early in the morning? Yeah, I guess I would have some major questions. About both of them.”

She grinned. “That’s a good one. But you know what I mean.”

“I guess so.”

The waitress arrived, a young woman with a pierced nose and an intricate band of tattoos running from shoulder to wrist. “Y’all ready to order?” she asked.

“Sonora salad, chipotle ranch on the side,” said Kyla.

“Chicken fried steak with extra gravy, please,” I said.

“And your side?”

“Macaroni and cheese,” I said, ignoring Kyla’s expression of outrage and poorly disguised envy.

The waitress went off to place our order.

“Wonder if her mom hates the nose ring or the tattoos more,” I said.

“I don’t know, Grandma,” said Kyla. “So where are your two men now?”

I shrugged, taking a sip of wine to stall. I finally answered, “Alan went back to Dallas. He didn’t seem very happy. And I haven’t seen Colin since he left after meeting Alan.”

“Have you and Alan broken up?”

“I’m not sure. Not formally, anyway.”

“And just how depressed are you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You just ordered enough comfort food for a football team.” I began to protest, but she held up her hands. “Never mind,” she said. “You’re entitled. So what are you going to do? And I’m talking about your two boyfriends, so don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean.”

“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be sitting here drinking with you, now would I?”

*   *   *

On Tuesday morning, I got to school early and went in search of Laura, finding her, as expected, in her classroom bent over a stack of papers, reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. Today, her waist-length brown hair was falling loose around her shoulders in a shining soft curtain. She looked up as I opened the door.