School was now closed for the day, and the hallways were nearly silent, but for the slow, quiet footfalls of Chief Fresco. It was a strange contrast to the raucous noise that oftentimes filled the space, when students would hustle and bustle to class, recess, and lunch.
Each side of the corridor was lined with lockers that were for the students’ use during the school day. The lockers were painted in alternating colors of red and blue, which matched the pattern of the tile floor. At equally spaced distances, there were breaks in the rows of lockers, where the classroom doors were placed.
Each of these wooden doors had a window, and Chief Fresco peered into them as he passed by. He saw nobody inside, for the teachers had departed for the day, now that the students had been sent home. The staff had been placed on edge by the shenanigans that had occurred in the auditorium, and they had no desire to hang around preparing lessons and correcting assignments after school.
For the time being, Chief Fresco was one of only a handful of people remaining in Hollow Oak Elementary. The principal and the lunch lady were still in the cafeteria, finishing the process of cleaning up.
The chief cautiously made his way down the hallways, and the only noise was the rubber soles of his boots as they struck the tile floor. His eyes were narrowed, and he was summoning all his focus and alertness, calling upon his police training, his quick reflexes, and his many years of experience.
He had changed out of his police uniform, and he now wore ordinary civilian clothes. Blue jeans, a gray hooded sweatshirt, and casual tan boots were what his current attire consisted of. In addition, he wore a baseball cap with the logo for his daughters’ team, the Green Beans.
It wasn’t much of a disguise, he acknowledged, but he had simply wanted to wear something that didn’t blatantly advertise that he was a member of law enforcement. While he conducted his investigation, he wanted to blend in a bit more, and perhaps be passed off as an ordinary civilian who was doing some contracted work around the school.
Chief Fresco had spent the day searching the building for clues as to the Phantom’s identity and location, but he had come up empty handed. He had also tried to puzzle through some sort of motive for the culprit’s odd behavior, but he couldn’t figure out what it could possibly be.
However, the chief was undaunted, and he continued his investigation into the hours following the school day. He was determined to catch and unmask the Phantom, and he would do whatever it took to bring him in.
As Chief Fresco slowly walked the hallway, he pushed a wheeled cart in front of him. It was loaded with the so-called salary that the Phantom had demanded: foodstuffs. There were heaping piles of macaroni and cheese, platters of pizza, crates full of chocolate milk, boxes of snack crackers and cookies, and a bunch of other tasty treats that had been thrown in for good measure.
The goal had been to create an appealing array of food that would be hard to resist, and the chief thought they had done a darned good job, for the sight and smell of it was making his mouth water and his belly rumble. If the Phantom truly was after nothing more than food, then this cart full of edible ransom should be more than enough to draw him out, Chief Fresco believed.
He was in the process of wheeling the food from the cafeteria, where it had been put together by the lunch lady at the direction of Principal Funkmeyer. The cart was to be taken to the auditorium, just as the principal had been instructed.
And if the Phantom did show up to claim the food... Chief Fresco would be ready for him.
Of course, the chief wasn’t ruling out the possibility of an ambush, so he proceeded through the corridors carefully, his alertness pushed to the utmost. It was feasible, he knew, that the Phantom had only ordered the food to be delivered to the auditorium stage as a means of misdirection.
If that was the case, and the Phantom attempted to claim the food en route to its destination... the Chief would still be ready for him.
Of course, the Phantom’s behavior and requests were so downright bizarre, it was impossible to predict what he might do or what he really wanted. A salary of macaroni and cheese, snacks, and chocolate milk? What kind of skullduggery was that? Chief Fresco pondered the implications for the hundredth time, but he was still no closer to reaching a sensible conclusion.
As he continued wheeling the cart down the hallway, he felt a drop of sweat trickle its way through his hair and run down the side of his face. He paused for a moment to remove his baseball cap and wipe the sleeve of his shirt across his brow.
It was awfully hot, and the temperature seemed to have increased dramatically since the close of school. But why would the thermostat have been turned up, the chief wondered? Was this more of the Phantom’s doing? Or was it simply the consequence of a furnace that was on the fritz?
Chief Fresco remembered that in recent days, his daughters had mentioned that the school thermostat had been acting erratically, resulting in their classrooms becoming too hot or too cold. It was certainly curious, he thought, but it was impossible to say if it was related to the strange actions of the Phantom.
Having wiped his brow of the sweat that had gathered, Chief Fresco returned the cap to his head and resumed his careful pace. He had taken no more than a dozen steps when a strange sound suddenly came from above, causing him to freeze in his tracks.
He raised his eyes to the ceiling, where everything looked perfectly normal. However, there was a faint tapping noise that was coming from the other side of the ceiling tiles.
It wasn’t very loud, but the chief was sure he had heard something. He stood on the balls of his feet, tilting his ear toward the ceiling, straining to identify what the noise might be.
“Come on, you sneaky little devil,” Chief Fresco muttered.
Shortly, the noise subsided, though the chief thought he may have heard a muted giggle coming from above, trailing off into silence.
“What on earth...?” he murmured to himself. “What kind of a lunatic am I dealing with here?”
For the first time, he considered the notion of calling one of the neighboring towns and requesting some backup from their own police departments. Since Hollow Oak was such a small, rural town, Chief Fresco was the solitary member of the local law enforcement.
Therefore, he was on his own - a condition that typically didn’t bother him in his sleepy little town, but he had never before been faced with such odd circumstances. He was in uncharted territory here, a frontier that went beyond his experience.
“Nah, I’ll be fine,” he assured himself. “I’ve never had to call for backup before, have I? Besides, I’ve got a feeling that I’m about to crack this case...”
Chief Fresco resumed walking down the corridor, pushing the cart full of food before him. As he continued toward the auditorium, he heard another strange sound, and he once more halted in his tracks, freezing in place and gathering all of his focus.
This time, the noise was coming from one of the many lockers that lined the hallway. There was a brief rattle, followed by a muted thwump.
Chief Fresco stared at the locker uncertainly. “What the…? How can that be?” he muttered.
Leaving the cart in the middle of the hallway, he cautiously approached the locker. Why he should be so alarmed, he did not know, and he realized it was silly to think that some danger could possibly lie on the other side of that metal door.
After all, the lockers were tiny. They were narrow and short, with one row stacked atop the other, designed to accommodate little more than a middle grader’s backpack and a spare set of sneakers.
What could possibly be hiding in a space so small? Nothing, Chief Fresco knew. Certainly not a man claiming to be the Phantom of the Auditorium. Yet, the chief’s intuition made him oddly suspicious as he approached, and it was with a cautious hand that he reached out for the locker’s latch.
With his breath held and his muscles tensed, he pressed his index finger against the cool metal of the latching mechanism. Ever so slowly, filled with apprehension, he exerted the small amount of upwar
d force that was required to release the latch… and with a faint squeak of revolving hinges, the door began to swing open.
Chapter Eight
Throwing Thoughts
The Green Beans, Volume 5: The Phantom of the Auditorium Page 7
