I went back the way I had come, gingerly pulled open the screen door, and slipped inside.
The rest was easy. In a crouch, I passed through a small utility room and kitchen, entered the hallway, and followed the lamplight to the open bedroom door. Jared and Kaylee were busy, and it would have taken a hand grenade to distract them. So I snagged the shorts and crept back the other way until I was on the stoop. Thirty seconds, in and out.
Once I had eased the screen door closed, I removed the cash from the left rear pocket of Kaylee’s shorts and transferred it to my jeans. Then I found her smartphone in the right rear pocket. And now that I had the cash, I decided to allow myself some curiosity. I tapped the screen and it came to life, displaying the last text message Kaylee had seen before taking off her clothes.
GLAD U R OK, it read. ALL OK W ME 2. NO HAY PROBLEMA.
The sender was identified as MRSA.
Maybe Marisa hadn’t screwed up Kaylee’s deal after all. Maybe they had been working on something together.
I didn’t know what kind of deal took twenty-two hundred bucks and turned it into fourteen hundred. But whatever it had been, these kids now had nothing other than the bitter lesson that crime doesn’t pay.
Not enough, anyhow.
No longer worried about making a little noise, I jogged between the Honda and the PT Cruiser, across the driveway, and back into the trees. From there, with the aid of my trusty penlight, I would make my way along a few deer trails back to the side road where I’d parked my Toyota Corolla.
I left Kaylee’s phone and shorts on the stoop. I was glad there hadn’t been any underwear inside the shorts. That would have made me feel creepy.
As it was, I could tell myself that even though I was a lowlife, I wasn’t a pervert. I would cling to that.
That, and fourteen hundred dollars swiped from a gang of teenage sousaphone thieves.
5. No Puns Allowed
When I arrived at Kingman Rural High School on Monday morning, feeling like a fraud in khakis and a blue sport shirt, I encountered a sixtyish sheriff’s deputy just inside the front doors. He was blocky and big-nosed, and he occupied the center of the brick-and-tile foyer like a monument to local law enforcement. He was wearing aviator sunglasses with his deerskin-colored uniform and Stetson, and he was chewing gum with slow menace. The holster for the .357 revolver on his hip was unsnapped, and there was nothing else on the gunbelt except a handcuff holster. I hadn’t seen a cop carry a weapon other than a semiauto since I was a kid, and most were also adorned with radios, Tasers, collapsible clubs, mace canisters, and all sorts of other toys. But this guy was old-school.
I didn’t recognize him, even though I’d grown up in Kingman County, which meant that despite his age, he was new around here. So I decided to have a chat. Whenever possible, I like to be on friendly terms with potential problems.
“Some kinda trouble, chief?” I asked as kids poured into the building around us. I had to raise my voice to be heard over the yammering teenagers.
The deputy didn’t look at me as he answered. “Break-in and theft last Friday night. School property stolen.”
I cocked my head like a confused spaniel. “How’s standing here on Monday morning gonna help that?”
The deputy’s eyebrows pinched closer by a few millimeters. “Just doing what I can.” He looked at me over the top of the sunglasses. “I told the sheriff I suspect students. So her idea is the culprits will see me and get nervous. And nervous kids tell tales. In theory.”
I glanced around at the rushing influx of tall and short, fat and skinny, white, black, and brown teenagers. Half of them were staring down at their phones as they flowed past, and the other half were either engrossed in conversation or rolling their eyes at us.
“Well, good luck with that,” I said.
The deputy pushed up his sunglasses. “I’m well aware that these little bastards aren’t intimidated by a fat old man. But as I say, I’m doing what I can. And I get to have my second cup of coffee when the bell rings.” He glanced at the clock on the wall behind him. “Thirteen minutes.”
I nodded toward the unsnapped holster. “Just be careful you don’t shoot any of the little bastards in the meantime, hoss.”
One of his eyebrows rose. “So far, you’ve called me ‘chief’ and ‘hoss.’ I suspect sarcasm. So if I shoot anybody, it’s gonna be you.”
I checked my wristwatch. “I’ll take a rain check on that, colonel. The principal wants to see me, and as you’ve pointed out, I only have thirteen minutes to the bell.”
“That’s a shame,” the deputy said. “I’ve been so enjoying your company.”
“Name’s Matthew Marx, by the way.” I stuck out my hand. “Substitute teacher par excellence. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Deputy—”
I looked at the name on the rectangular tag over his badge.
“ ‘Beeswax’?” I asked.
He didn’t extend his hand. “As in none of yours.”
“But we have something in common, jefe. Our names both end in ‘x.’ ”
His face was like a big-nosed rock. “Ain’t no such thing as alphabet brothers.”
So I turned my attempted handshake into a salute and then moved into the main hallway, weaving through the throng until the brick wall to my left turned into glass panels. I cut across the hall, stopping twice to avoid kids who wouldn’t look up from their phones, and then opened the door to the school office.
Lester, the office manager—he didn’t like being called the secretary—was leaning on the long counter that split the room between his workspace and the waiting area. Lester was a retired history teacher and coach who had taken this job, he claimed, because his wife had threatened to stab him with her garden shears if he stayed home. At the moment, Lester had his bald head in his hands, propping his ruddy lump of a face in the steam from a jumbo travel mug. His necktie was slung over the shoulder of his plaid shirt so it didn’t hang down into the mug.
“She’s with a student,” Lester said without looking up. His voice was like gravel in a blender. “So just stand there and don’t say nothin’. I’m hungover like a mother.”
I leaned on the counter, too, facing him. “Did your mother get hungover a lot, Lester?”
“If you’d met my daddy, you wouldn’t ask. Now shuddup.”
I clucked my tongue. “Boy, everyone’s in a mood this morning. Deputy Beeswax out there nearly bit my head off, too.”
“That’s Ernest,” Lester said. “ ‘Beeswax’ is what they called him in the Houston P.D. Dunno why. Now he’s a Kingman deputy, which is his idea of semiretirement. The sheriff must agree, because Ernest showed up here this morning driving his own car. Now, it’s a nice new Chrysler, but it ain’t got a police radio or a prisoner cage or even a shotgun rack. So I think Ernest’s plan is to stand at the entrance in the morning and afternoon, looking vicious, and read Louis L’Amour paperbacks in the parking lot in between. Maybe catch a few winks. I reckon his driver’s seat reclines.”
“Maybe I’ll stick a firecracker in his tailpipe,” I said. “Like I used to.”
Lester’s eyes widened, and he let out a low whistle. “No, you don’t want to do that. I played football with him at Southwest Texas back in the Cretaceous period, and I saw him break a linebacker’s neck with a fair hit. Guy wound up driving a ButterKrust delivery truck he had to turn by blowin’ into a straw.”
The inner-office door at the far end of the counter opened, and a small, dark-haired girl in jeans and a bright red KINGMAN COUGAR BAND T-shirt stepped out. She juggled a blue backpack from one hand to the other and closed the door behind her, then looked at me. It was Marisa.