At Risk of Being a Fool (10 page)

The wiener dog walked stiffly beside her. He’d checked for the leash, right away. If the dog nosed him out, from the smell in the classroom, it would be big trouble. It was twelve years old, he’d heard. He had an idea that was kind of old for a dog, so maybe it couldn’t smell people as good as it used to. The dog couldn’t run too good, either, so if he kept his distance, he’d be fine.

A couple of times, he’d parked down the street, and done a little following. Both times, she’d gone to the old folks’ home at dinnertime, so today, he’d figured to poke through her house, while she was gone. But she was at home, after all. It was a helluva shock to see her come out of her house with the old guy.

It was the same old guy, too, the one who saw him last night. That was a bit of a coincidence, but maybe not. There weren’t many men at the place. It worried him some, that the guy might remember him. He’d doubled back later, but the guy just stood there, staring out the window like his brain got flushed down the toilet. So, he’d quit worrying. Mostly. Anyway, he’d solved the little mystery of why she kept quiet about family. And, along the way, he’d found out a thing or two. It was handy, knowing where to hide things, what places no one would suspect. She wasn’t a danger to him, not now anyway. But things changed when you didn’t expect it, and you had to be ready.

A guy jogged his way. He pulled the pen out of his mouth, circled the price on an intake, and dog-eared the page. The guy threw him a glance, registering the non-threat, and passed by.

No threat, that was the idea. Never look like a threat. The stupid sucker.

He liked to plan. His probation officer called it being proactive. Proactive, he liked the word. There were a lot of problems you could prevent, by watching people. It made him smile a little, the things his P.O. didn’t know.

The bomb went fine. Well, there had been two bombs, but one hadn’t gone according to plan. If he’d done more preparation, if he’d been more “proactive,” he’d have caught the problem before it happened.

He’d learned, though.

His probation officer said it more than once, admiring. He learned from experience.

CHAPTER
SIX

“Boy’s over there,” Mr. Walker said, jabbing his finger.

“Over there” hulked a vast mechanized rig. Under it, reaching into the belly, stretched two forearms. Tonio, it appeared, was in the pit.

“Ah,” said Jeanie. “Working on a—what is it?”

“Road grader. Scheduled maintenance.” Mr. Walker adjusted the toothpick in the side of his mouth with a thoughtful air.

Silly me, of course it’s a road grader.
Tonio didn’t work on cars and trucks, but road graders, cement mixers, flatbed trucks, street sweepers, and
...
er, things. Mackie said he worked in the
County
Yard
doing maintenance on motorized equipment, but the County owned a good deal more than she’d thought.

“We get a few of these kids in every year. They put in these charity cases, knowing we don’t got nothing better to do than baby-sit them.” She looked at him quizzically, and his derisive sniff turned apologetic. “Well, not him, but some of them can’t work worth beans. Always on a coffee break, or gabbing away. This one, this Tonio of yours, he’s pretty quiet, stays busy. Stays late sometimes, off the clock. If he don’t know what he’s doing, he asks, and more than that, I don’t expect at this stage.” The methodical crunching of his jaws reduced the toothpick to mangled splinters. “We’re good, I’d say. Who knows?” He spat the remains of the toothpick onto the gravel and gave her a wintry smile. “We may try to keep him on later. Handy with tools, more than I’d expected, considering. Like he’s had a lot of practice, you know.”

Good news, overall, Jeanie concluded, as she trundled her car along to the cannery. Local businesses blurred past her as she composed her mental notes. This wasn’t her bailiwick, visiting employers and filling out interview forms. Mackie had planned to do it today, but an emergency at Hills of Glory cropped up and Mackie was off to settle it. Hills of Glory was a religious nursing home for low-income families. Precisely why this affected Mackie escaped her. Still, if it related to poverty or crime, Mackie had her hand in it somewhere.

Jeanie leaped at the chance to meet the employers. She was suffering a bad case of maternal overload. Grudgingly, the police had conceded that Quinto was an unlikely suspect, and apparently they’d never seriously suspected Sorrel of engineering the bomb scare. Still, shivers went down Jeanie’s spine. If one more incident occurred, one more bit of violence connected with her program, official eyes would zero in on her kids and never look away.

Hence the employers. She didn’t know why she sensed this urgency to see her kids in other settings. She felt like a helpful beaver, gathering thousands of small sticks in hopes of building an unbreakable dam. A beaver didn’t wait until after the flood. Perhaps some bit of knowledge could prove innocence, if another crime occurred. Perhaps she could prevent violence, pour oil on troubled waters, cap the volcano before it erupted. Her efforts might be fruitless, but she couldn’t sit back and do nothing. She couldn’t help meddling. It was what teachers did.

The cannery’s loading docks were a sight to behold, with bay after bay of open doors and ramps. Huge trucks backed up to the docks, gaping open like vast baby birds awaiting Mama or Papa’s offering. Workers mobbed the trucks, the ramps, and the open bays, operating dollies and forklifts. In each bay stood a sharp-eyed clerk, checking items on hand-held computers.

Dillon manned a small forklift, virtually invisible beyond the stack of crates he hoisted onto a truck’s liftgate.

“He’s a touchy bastard,” said Millie Flores, warehouse supervisor, “but he’s settled into Manuel’s crew. We did have a little fuss about a crate or two that went missing, but Manuel says your guy’s clean.” Millie started to say something else, and caught it back. Jeanie smiled encouragement. “Manuel would know,” said Millie, but her voice was doubtful.

“Manuel’s been with you a long time.”

“Ye-es.” Millie looked over Jeanie’s shoulder and drew back. “Well,” she added, her voice raised. “Doing fine, he’s just fine. Did you need me to sign something?”

“Yes, if you’d initial here?”

Jeanie stole a look over her shoulder as Millie scrawled her initials. Dillon glowered at her from his forklift.

“I, uh, I’ve got to check something.” Millie beat a retreat to the third truck in her row.

“Hi, Dillon,” Jeanie said, waving her hand. He flipped a lever and rolled to the next stack of crates. His total involvement in his work denied her presence. She waved anyway, and headed for Rosalie’s workplace.

Rosalie worked at an experimental childcare run by the State. Or was it nonprofit, with government funding? At any rate, it served children from foster homes, or neglectful homes. Parents attended as well, to learn how to play with their children. The concept startled Jeanie. Didn’t everyone know how to play with children? You made silly faces, rolled on the floor, tossed them in the air, and made darned sure you caught them as they fell. Apparently, not everyone knew the basics. Mackie hoped that Rosalie’s fractured maternal skills could get a boost by working here.

Rosalie stood by the window, picking dead leaves from a large potted plant.

“You see what I mean,” said
Elizabeth
to Jeanie.
Elizabeth
moved rapidly, cutting paper jack-o-lanterns out of construction paper. “Rosalie. The children are waiting for you. The paints, remember? And the plastic coveralls?”

“Oh, that’s right,” said Rosalie, the sunshine breaking out in her face. “Come on, kids, around the table.” She thumped two tubs of finger paints on the table and turned to get more from the cabinet, oblivious to the small hands reaching for disaster.

Elizabeth
slapped the jack-o-lantern on a stack of black cats with unnecessary force. “Candy, help Rosalie out, would you?”

Candy lifted the paint tubs out of reach. She poured yellow paint into a small bowl, capped the tub, and reached for the green. Over her shoulder, she spoke to Rosalie. “Plastic tablecloth first. Now the coveralls.”

Rosalie enveloped the children with affection. The coveralls did not, in fact, “cover all,” especially when Rosalie arranged them.

“She’s gentle,” offered
Elizabeth
. “And kind. But she can’t concentrate.”

“She seems to like children,” Jeanie said.

“Oh yes, that’s the distressing part. I really had hopes— However, last week I left her with them while I took a phone call, and when I got back half of them were outside, and she hadn’t the least idea of it. She had a man in here, and was off giggling with him in a corner.”

“Do you know who he was?” Jeanie asked, aware of a sinking feeling. Dominic’s father? The one Daddy had chased off with a rifle? Or perhaps he was the mysterious Silvio.

“I didn’t even ask, I was so mad. I’ve never seen him before. She’s bright enough; she understands things when you tell her. But it never occurs to her, the things that can happen.”

Butterflies aren’t maternally inclined. “You don’t think, with a little more practice?”

Elizabeth
began tracing witches. “It’s not going to work. Tell Mackie to find her another placement. She can finish out the week here, but that’s the end.”

Jeanie tried to think of a job somewhere, anywhere, which didn’t demand an attention span of more than five minutes. Nothing came to mind.

~*~

Brynna had been the devil to place. Retail establishments, service organizations, and government offices were prejudiced against abrasive people with sticky fingers. Mackie had pumped her fist in the air triumphantly when she nagged the nurseryman into accepting her. Work skills first, people skills later, said Mackie, and greenhouses held precious little temptation to a city girl, as long as she didn’t lay hands on marijuana seeds.

Brynna grumbled. She hated scrabbling in the dirt. Still, it got her out of Estelle Torrez’s clutches every morning. Brynna lived at Bright Futures, like Sorrel, and her expressed opinion of Estelle Torrez provided Jeanie with a unique education in current cuss-words.

Jeanie passed the first rank of greenhouses, looking for the geranium sign. Geraniums, said Mr. Harris, the owner, were less touchy than most other plants. Possibly, he had said with the weighty air of a man considering an expensive gift, Brynna might advance as far as begonias in time, although she wasn’t to depend upon this. Jeanie understood things like tulips and daffodils. Begonias were just the fuzzy things with reddish leaves. Nonetheless, Jeanie gave this pronouncement the hushed reverence it deserved. Mr. Harris had nodded, a benevolent Buddha bobbing over his round stomach.

A voice pitched well above soprano screeched from a building down in the row. This solved the question of Brynna’s location. Jeanie made a beeline for the shuddering greenhouse and opened the door. At the far end of the aisle stood a woman, quivering with outrage from the toes of her sensible shoes to the top of her dandelion fluff hair. Her plump cheeks flushed an unbecoming purple.

“
...
Flinging yourself at him, corrupting him! He’s far too good for the likes of you! Dragging yourself out of the gutter, and mucking—”

Long trays of plants ran down each side of the building, and again down the middle, leaving two aisles. At the opposite end, the shelves stopped short behind the combatants, leaving an alcove with workbenches, bags of potting soil, and high stacks of pots. Brynna stood with her back to the bench. The older woman barred her way, shaking a finger at her. She was either brave or exceedingly stupid.

“Jason’s a jerk,” growled Brynna. “That fuckin’ son of yours grabbed my ass. Lucky for him I didn’t kick him in the balls.”

The woman gasped. “My Jason would never demean himself by touching such a—such a—”

“Like hell. Get real, you bitch. He grabs everything with boobs.”

“My Jason has been raised on the strictest principles—”

“Hello-o-o,” sang Jeanie with apparent delight, as she trotted to the rescue. Although, come to think of it, which one of them actually needed rescuing? “You must be Laramie Cooper. So nice to meet you in person.”

The other woman favored her with a cold look. “My name is Mrs. Cooper. I have no idea who—”

“Mrs. Cooper, my name is Jeanie McCoy.” She seized Mrs. Cooper’s limp hand and pumped it up and down. “I’m Brynna’s, er, program leader for the day. I’ve come to see how she’s doing. Repotting geraniums, I believe, is that right, Brynna?”

“Yeah,” said Brynna. She plunged her hands into a huge bin of soil. Her intent, Jeanie decided, was not to plant geraniums.

One thing about Brynna, she certainly added liveliness to each and every day. Jeanie swung into place between them by the simple expedient of hanging onto Mrs. Cooper’s hand and pivoting her out of Brynna’s reach. Regrettably, this put Brynna back in Mrs. Cooper’s line of sight.

“You’re supposed to use gloves,” snapped Mrs. Cooper. “Not that you should be potting geraniums. Only the good Lord knows what you’d plant! I saw you with that bag this morning, girl, don’t you think I didn’t. When I—”

“I gather Brynna hasn’t worked with you before,” Jeanie broke in.