Back in the car, I glanced at the digital clock on the dash.School would be out soon.Maybe there was something I could do.
37
A Porsche.I should’ve known.
After leaving the Rocket, I’d driven up High Drive and found my way south to Fillmore High School.A Zip’s Burger was across the street from the faculty parking. I backed the Celica into a parking slot and waited.After a while, the smell of burgers and fries got to me. I wandered inside and bought a plain burger and some more coffee.My headache had subsided to almost nothing and I didn’t want it coming back out of hunger.
I sat in the driver’s seat of the Celica, munching my burger and sipping a cup of coffee that had a slight burnt taste to it.
When the kids got out, large groups streamed across the street for that post-school burger, a universal fixture since burgers were invented.I kept my eyes trained on the faculty lot, wondering how long it would take for Gary LeMond to leave.Was he the kind of teacher who stayed until five, working on papers and lesson plans?Or did he bust right out of there, getting off-campus even before some of the students made it?
I didn’t know.But of all the people I’d come into contact with since I started looking for Kris, LeMond was the only one I couldn’t put my finger on.He bugged me for some reason. Since I didn’t have anywhere else to go, unless Adam worked a miracle for me, checking up on LeMond was as good a place to waste time as any other.
A solitary figure strolled purposefully around the faculty lot. I recognized the shirt and the shape.It was the school security officer, Bill, pulling parking lot duty.He was probably there to make sure none of the kids vandalized a teacher’s car after school.Ah, the glamour.
I realized that LeMond might have some kind of after-school activity.Maybe the drama club was meeting or something.Hadn’t Marie Byrnes said something about it being his turn to produce a play?
The last of the burger tamped down my hunger.I balled up the wrapper and returned to sipping my coffee.
My questions became moot fifteen minutes later when I spotted LeMond speed walking out to the parking lot.He had some books and folders under one arm.Bill gave him a comradely wave but LeMond didn’t notice.He strode directly to a white Porsche 911 and got in quickly.
Like I said, I should’ve figured.
I started the car and slipped into traffic behind him.He drove like a maniac, slipping in and out of traffic like he was on a NASCAR tryout.Just in the short drive down to Twenty-ninth and over to Grand Boulevard, three separate cars honked at him. One guy in a Blazer shot him the bird.LeMond ignored them all and zipped along.
The nice part about long straight-aways likeTwenty-ninth was that it was easy to keep his car in sight.But when he turned right on Grand Boulevard, I had to speed up to avoid losing him.By the time I got to the intersection, the light had changed and the car in front of me was waiting to go straight.I looked frantically down Grand Boulevard and watched thedistinct Porsche rear end go around the bend.
When the light changed, I chirped my tires, pulled around the corner and accelerated hard.By the time I got to the curve in the road, LeMond’s Porsche was out of sight.
I slowed down and thought about it.Unless he’d sped up to about fifty or sixty, he couldn’t have reached the crest of the hill at Fourteenth, where Grand Boulevard drops down into the downtown area.Besides, Grand is a twenty-mile-an-hour zone and heavily patrolled by traffic cops.The traffic up near the park slowed to a crawl.More likely, he turned off on one of the side streets.
Manito Park appeared on my left, a huge park with a wide open grassy area around a duck pond and gentle, treed slopes.He hadn’t turned that direction, so all that remained was a right hand turn.
I took the next right and drove down the side street for several blocks until it approached the maze of streets next to Rockwood Boulevard.Another two blocks and the houses went from middle class to upper class in a hurry.I hoped that LeMond wasn’t privately rich or banging someone who was.At least that way, he had probably stayed to the west of Rockwood Boulevard.
I drove down the residential side streets on a serpentine course, looking at the cars parked in driveways and on the streets.It occurred to me that LeMond might have a garage of some sort to keep his Porsche, in which case I would never spot it.
Once I started looking for Porsches, it was amazing how many I came across.Only one was white, though and it was a 944 parked outside a large brick house that was several tax brackets above a teacher’s income.
I was down to Sixteenth and just about to give up when I finally spotted LeMond’s Porsche. He was parked in a driveway next to a small rancher, mid-block.The Porsche was rested under a portable carport directly next to the house.
The neighborhood was solidly middle class and bustling with late afternoon activity.A pair of elementary-aged kids were playing catch with a football in the front yard just two houses away from LeMond’s.Another, who might have been a high schooler or maybe only junior high, was trudging sullenly up the sidewalk.Across the street from LeMond’s house, a trim woman about thirty was doing some sort of yard work in the flower bed next to her porch, her breath pluming upward in the air as she worked on her knees.The rest of her yard was sharply manicured.I imagined it was a sight to behold once spring came around.
I drove around the block and parked four houses up from LeMond’s on the opposite side of the street.This put me as far away from the two kids playing football and the diligent yard mistress as possible, but still left me a decent view of his place.I wasn’t sure how long I could sit and watch without arousing suspicion, though in a neighborhood like this I didn’t think it would be very long.On a street like this, everyone knows everyone else’s cars.Plus, the house I was parked in front of didn’t have a driveway. That meant I was probably sitting right in what some resident felt was his personal parking place.
In reality, the street is public property and anyone can park there.But I didn’t feel like trying to explain that to an irate homeowner while the rest of the neighborhood looked on.Especially with the two kids, who I’d come to believe were brothers, playing half a block away.The last thing I wanted was someone thinking I was some kind of a burglar. Or a pervert.
As it turned out, I didn’t need to wait very long.Barely ten minutes passed and I saw exactly why LeMond had been driving so fast.A small red car pulled up directly in front of his house. A dark haired beauty stepped out.I put her at twenty or twenty-two at first. She carried school books, but she could be in college.But then I noticed how she still walked with the carefree step of a younger girl.I lowered my estimate and that put her in high school.
The girl’s hair was long and hung nearly to her waist above pert buttocks.This was a girl that would never buy her own drink in a bar when she was old enough to get in.A goddamn heartbreaker.
Like Kris Sinderling.
The girl rang the doorbell and LeMond answered almost instantly. He flashed a big, dopey grin at her. She gave him a quick embrace before stepping inside.LeMond cast a glance up and down the street before closing the door.
Sonofabitch, I thought.He was sleeping with her.
On the tailend of that came the devil’s advocate, arguing that maybe he was tutoring her.Or maybe she was in drama and he was going over lines with her.Or maybe she was a college girl and my first impression of her age had been dead on.Nothing wrong with a high school teacher sleeping with a college student, is there?
And who’s to say that he’s actually sleeping with her?Maybe-
I shut that argument down.The quick hug and the furtive look up and down the street told me all I needed to know.He was sleeping with her and for whatever reason, he wasn’t supposed to be.I didn’t know if that look happened because she was a student like Kris or because he had a wife or girlfriend and he was just cheating or what.But he was up to no good.