The Trouble with Talent

by Kathy Krevat

  She looked at her watch. “It’s too early to bother him.”

  But not too early to yell at me.

  “I’ll pick you up at eleven,” she said. “He doesn’t have students then.”

  “I’ll be ready,” I said and watched her walk stiffly back to her car.

  Trouble sat in the middle of the kitchen, probably waiting impatiently for her taste, but her expression said I told you so.

  I texted Zoey back to let her know that Quincy said he was fine and would see us tomorrow, so she wouldn’t badger me for more information. Quincy would fill her in if he wanted.

  She texted back. I couldn’t wait anymore and called him. It went right to voice mail. Is he mad at me?

  I texted back. He hung up fast because his wife was yelling at him. Maybe wait a few minutes.

  She texted back a laughing emoji.

  I opened the door into the dining room and saw the mayhem as a result of the previous day’s costume marathon. The earlier explosion of material, paint, and glitter was beginning to come together in costumes that were approaching Lani’s designs.

  Lani and I had become best friends years before, when she designed costumes for Elliott’s first junior theater group. I’d made the mistake of thinking that since I’d sewn one Halloween costume, I could handle being on a costume committee. Little did I know that the more experienced stage moms signed up right away to fill the volunteer slots for ushering and backstage monitoring—the costume committee required real work and long hours of measuring, fitting, sewing, and glue-gunning fake baubles onto anything from princess dresses in Cinderella to Egyptian tombs in Aida.

  My dad was still sleeping and I needed advice, so I texted Lani. You up?

  Yep, she texted back. Call if you want.

  I told her the whole story, grateful that she totally backed me up about confronting Benson.

  “I would’ve punched him in the nose.” Her indignation on my behalf made me feel momentarily better.

  “You aren’t far off.” I filled her in on Quincy’s one-sided fight and Yollie’s visit.

  She was quiet for a minute. “Oh man, that’s tough,” she said. “I guess you have to suck it up and apologize. I bet he’ll come around if you throw around words like ‘creative genius’ and not understanding his ‘creative process.’”

  “Shoot,” I said. “You’re right.”

  “I’ll be over soon to pick up a few costumes,” she said. “You can practice falling on your sword.”

  “Have you met the goats yet?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  “No!” she said. “But I’m willing to put these costumes aside for a visit.”

  “Let’s go see them when you get here,” I said.

  Ten minutes later, Lani arrived on her bright pink Schwinn cruiser with a flowered basket on the front. She bounced the bicycle up the porch steps and leaned it against the wooden rail.

  “How are you going to take costumes home on that?” I asked.

  She slid off her pink backpack that she’d decorated with painted flowers, and held it up in a “Ta-Da!” fashion. “They’ll squish in.” Then she took a deep dramatic sniff. “I smell coffee.”

  I reached for a Meowio travel mug with paw prints running across it from behind the rocking chair and handed it to her. “Bless you, my child,” she said and took a sip. Lani suffered from chronic indigestion and her wife Piper was a pediatrician who didn’t allow coffee in their house because it sometimes caused a flare-up. As a fellow caffeine addict, I understood that the risks sometimes outweighed the costs, especially where coffee was concerned.

  We were on our way to the farm when we saw Joss and Kai walking toward us with the goats on leashes. The goats didn’t know what to make of that, pulling this way and that, and getting the leashes tangled around their legs. Their bleating sounded like complaining today.

  “That looks fun,” I said when we were close enough to talk. “I never knew goats could be leash trained.”

  “They can,” Kai said. “But it’s going to take a lot of work.” She looked up at her dad, as if assigning the job to him. “Did I tell you that Percy and Pegasus are Nigerian Dwarf goats? My mom thought they were Nubian goats, but they’re Nigerian goats. When they get bigger, we’re going to milk them and make cheese. Isn’t that cool?”

  It was so cute how earnest ten-year-old girls could be. “That is definitely cool. I love goat cheese.”

  “And they’re really smart too,” she said. “I’m going to teach them tricks!”

  Lani dropped down to sit on the ground and both goats climbed on her. “Oof,” she said, as Pegasus jumped off and caught her in the side. Then he gently butted his head against her as if to apologize. “It’s okay. You’re just a baby, aren’t you? Trying to figure out how all of those legs work.”

  Percy seemed to take to the leash better. He crawled right into Lani’s lap, curled up and put his head on her knee as if going to sleep.

  “I think Percy needs a nap,” I said, and reached down to pet him behind his floppy ears.

  “He likes cozy things,” Kai said. She bent over to gently scold him. “Percy, it’s time to go. You need your exercise.”

  Kai was as cute as the goats.

  * * * *

  Yollie texted me right at eleven and I came outside to join her in her car, trying not to feel like a teenager who was being forced to apologize for something that was not my fault.

  Tension seemed to radiate from Yollie’s body, as if she still wasn’t sure this was the right move. I didn’t bother with small talk, worried that anything I said would make her blow up.

  She parked in Benson’s ten-minute parking zone, the car jerking to a stop as her nerves got the best of her. “Sorry,” she said, and took a deep breath.

  Her agitation was contagious, and I had to force my shoulders to relax as we walked up to Benson’s house. Clouds had moved in, getting darker gray as the day wore on. While everyone was hoping for the first major rainfall of the season, I couldn’t help but think of them as an omen.

  Yollie took the lead and knocked on the door.

  No answer. She knocked again and I felt a wave of relief when no one answered.

  “Well, that’s anticlimactic,” I said.

  She frowned.

  Okay, I got it. No joking allowed. “Sorry,” I said. “I’m nervous.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “Should we try the garage?” I asked.

  She tipped her head, listening for music, but the garage was silent. “I guess. It doesn’t seem like he’s practicing.”

  We walked down the driveway, the scuffling of the leaves now just sounding sad. The sky blue door seemed to beckon us, like a candy house in a fairy tale.

  I smelled a whiff of rotten eggs and ignored it at first. Then the scent grew too strong not to say something. “Is that gas?” I asked.

  Yollie nodded. “Natural gas, right?”

  We stuck our noses in the air like bloodhounds, trying to track down where it was coming from. The scent grew even stronger as we moved closer to the garage.

  “Is it going to blow up?” I asked.

  She looked uneasy. “The concentration has to be crazy high to do that,” she said. “I called the gas company once when we had a small leak and they told me that.”

  We stopped and eyed each other nervously, the smell of gas a clear warning. “This seems pretty concentrated,” I said, wanting to hold my nose and run away.

  “What if he’s in there?” she asked. “That can’t be healthy.”

  I reached for the doorknob.

  “Stop!” she said quickly. “What if the door makes a spark?”

  My heart raced. “I don’t think that’s the way it works.” I might have been trying to convince myself. “Okay.” I pointed down the driveway. “You go down there and call 911
. According to one online video I’ve seen, a cell phone can start a fire.” I straightened my shoulders. “I’ll go peek in there and see if he’s okay.” The idea of Schrödinger’s cat popped into my head. Right now that blue door was Schrödinger’s door. We didn’t know if anyone was even inside the garage, let alone affected by the gas.

  Yollie ran halfway down the driveway and pulled out her phone. After listening to the message, she clicked a button, which sounded cartoonishly loud. “Hi, I’d like to report a gas leak.”

  I ever so slowly turned the door knob, the creak it made sending me into a tizzy. An intense smell of gas swooshed over me as I pulled open the door.

  Two feet in black biker boots that I recognized were splayed on the floor. They were connected to two legs, and the rest of Benson.

  “He’s in here!” I said. “Hold the door for me!”

  She took a few steps toward me, and then stopped to throw her phone to the ground before running back to me. She held the door open with one foot, straining to see inside. “Hurry! That gas smells awful!”

  He was face down but it was definitely Benson. I grabbed him by the ankles, pulling him as fast as I could outside, his head bumping on the one step to the driveway while Yollie held the door open. I pushed aside the thought that his face would definitely be bruised.

  Yollie searched for something to prop the door open, her head turning back and forth wildly, but there was nothing close enough for her to reach. She let it close and squinched up her face as it met the doorjamb. I realized I was mirroring her expression.

  I breathed a sigh of relief as she came to help me. “Turn him over!” Her voice was urgent.

  I followed her orders, and she grabbed him under his arms as we awkwardly made our way down the driveway. “He’s bleeding!” she said.

  We shuffled away from the garage as fast as we could while carrying his full weight. I made the mistake of looking down at him. His shirt was soaked with blood.

  I heard sirens approaching and felt a wave of relief that everything would be okay.

  Then the air around us seemed to contract and my heart stopped.

  The garage blew up in a flashing burst of light and the loudest boom I’d ever heard, and the sky blue door hurtled toward us.

  Chapter 3

  In the movies, an explosion sends the actors flying through space with their arms and legs splayed out. This time, the hot blast sent us toward the ground in a heap of tangled limbs. My face bounced on Benson’s boots and I had the strange thought that the metal buckle outline would be forever pressed into my face.

  I sat up slowly and saw Yollie nearby, with a lifeless Benson in between us. She shook her head, looking as dazed as I felt.

  Somehow the door had completely missed us, squeezing past like the Knight Bus in the Harry Potter novels and landing almost in the street. Small bits of garage debris rained down all around us.

  A fire truck stopped at the end of the driveway and several firefighters raced up to help us.

  “You okay?” I asked Yollie, but my voice sounded like I was underwater.

  She stared down at Benson. “He’s dead.”

  I wasn’t sure I heard her correctly, but I scooted crab-like a few steps back. “What?”

  She pointed a shaking finger and I followed it to the small hole in the side of his neck.

  * * * *

  Pure chaos followed. EMTs swarmed all three of us, asking Yollie and me our names and checking our vital signs. The firefighters doused the small fire on one fragment of a wall, which was all that was left of the garage, but stayed away from the flames shooting from the open gas line.

  Once they made sure Yollie and I weren’t seriously injured, they moved us across the street to the waiting ambulance. I couldn’t take my eyes off the scene, details cascading through my brain like a roll of photos clicking by.

  The pulsing vein in the forehead of the man yelling into his phone at the local utility company to turn off the gas. The acrid smell of charred wood and melting plastic. The splat of boots on the wet pavement. The iridescent whiteness of the sheet covering Benson.

  Yollie and I waited in the back of the ambulance. The police officers who arrived in the first patrol car asked us if we were okay, and then moved to the body, waiting for someone further up the chain of command to take over. They placed crime scene tape to keep people a block away.

  A local news van showed up and I was suddenly grateful for the distance.

  My ears crackled and then seemed to release, like recovering from an airplane ride, and I could hear better. “Someone had to make that explosion happen,” I said slowly, figuring it out as I spoke. “To cover up Benson’s…murder.”

  “Oh my God,” Yollie said. “Benson is dead.”

  “Why would someone kill an oboe teacher?” I didn’t really expect her to answer.

  “I have to let Steven know I’m okay,” Yollie said. She felt around for her phone, but it was gone, now part of the crime scene.

  I pulled mine out of my back pocket and handed it to her. When she was done, I texted my dad a cryptic message. Had a problem at the oboe teacher’s house. Will text more when I know something.

  He responded right away. That explosion??

  Shoot. He’d already heard about it. We’re both fine but we can’t leave yet.

  I’m on my way.

  Please just stay there and take care of Elliott and I’ll keep you updated. Besides, you won’t be able to get past the crime scene tape.

  He sent me an emoji of an angry face, along with Fine, making me smile. I still couldn’t get over my dad using emojis.

  “I know I should feel bad about Benson,” Yollie said, with a hitch in her voice. “But I can’t stop thinking that now he can’t help Steven get into college. He just needed a couple more months. It’s like I have this selfish loop playing in my mind, over and over.”

  I reached out to grab her hand. “It’s the adrenaline. It’s making your brain think only about self-preservation.”

  More fire trucks arrived, probably because of the high fire danger at this time of year, and the firefighters spread out, monitoring the surrounding area.

  Then a sheriff’s car arrived and out stepped Detective Norma Chiron and her partner Detective Ragnor. She stopped to talk to one of the police officers before coming over to us.

  I’d met Norma the first time I’d found a dead body, and I recognized that hunter’s look in her eye. It didn’t matter that we’d become friends since then. Both Yollie and I were in her sights as possible suspects for whatever just happened.

  She walked up to us. “Are you two okay?”

  She must have heard from the officer that we were cleared by the EMTs, but wanted our confirmation before questioning us.

  When we both nodded, she told Yollie, “Detective Ragnor will drive you to the station and Colbie will ride with me. The patrol officer will bring your car.”

  We both gingerly stepped down from the ambulance. Yollie winced and I limped, the aches of being hit by an explosion making themselves felt. “Who knew being blown up could be so painful?” I asked.

  Yollie gave me a grim smile and glanced over at the sheet covering Benson. “It could have been much worse.”

  * * * *

  The only question Norma asked on the short trip to the sheriff’s station was, “Are you sure you’re fine?”

  I nodded, feeling somewhat as if I might cry. I excused myself to the ladies’ room once we got to the station and saw a bruise blooming on my cheek. For some reason, that made me tear up even more, but that stopped when Norma led me to the interrogation room. They called it a conference room, but I knew what it was.

  Norma was all business. She wanted to know why I was at Benson’s house with Yollie and was particularly interested in Quincy’s fight, asking me in several different ways what I knew about it.
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  “Look,” I said. “I was at one of Benson’s lessons exactly one time and heard him being abusive. There has to be lots of disgruntled parents, and students too. Plus, if he’s that much of a jerk to people who are paying him, how does he treat the rest of the world?”

  Norma raised her eyebrows. “But we know of only one person who punched him.”

  “Quincy is not capable of killing someone,” I said, understanding right away where she was going.

  She nodded. “Tell me again why Yollie chose this time to go to Mr. Tadworth’s house.”

  “Oh for crying out loud,” I said, losing my patience. “You think Yollie did this and used me as a cover? Why would she try to save him? Believe me, she was as surprised and shocked as I was when we saw he was dead. And especially when we were almost blown up.” The last two words were said very loudly.

  Norma didn’t let up, and once again I went through how and why we arrived at the house when we did. Then she asked for a detailed account of what I did all morning, which ended with, “And Trouble hated the bison dish.”

  She smiled a bit at that.

  After what seemed like forever, I was allowed to leave. “Please don’t discuss this with anyone, especially Quincy.”

  I nodded, but there was no way I was following that request.

  Yollie came out of another “conference” room at the same time, and we made our way to the lobby where Steven and Joss were waiting.

  I went right into Joss’s arms, tears springing to my eyes, and Yollie hugged Steven tightly.

  Steven just said, “Mom,” in a rough voice.

  Joss pulled me back to look at me, his fingers brushing my bruised cheek. “Are you okay? All your dad said was that you were near that explosion.”

  I shook my head. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Do you want a ride home?” he asked Yollie.

  When she looked confused that he was offering, he explained, “I brought Steven here. I’m pretty sure they’re keeping your car for a while.”

  Yollie’s face pinched with worry. “Can you drop me off at the Rent-A-Wreck off of Main Street?” she asked. “Detective Ragnor said I’ll get my car back in a day or two.”