Thread of Hope jt-1

by Jeff Shelby

  “Hey, Coach,” she said.

  “Hi Megan. You alright?”

  “Yeah, sure. Why?”

  “Just asking.”

  I wasn’t just asking. Megan was normally as laid back as was humanly possible while being awake. But her shoulders were bunched, there was no smile on her face and she was clutching her backpack like her hand was glued to it. The tension in her face, body and actions was tangible.

  “You hear anything from Meredith?” I asked.

  She looked down at her shoes and shook her head. “Nope.”

  “You sure?”

  Her head snapped up, her eyes now filled with something other than tension. “What? I mean, yes I’m sure. I haven’t seen her.”

  “Talked to her?”

  Color flushed in her face. “No. Why?”

  Going through Meredith’s phone records had shown me more than a couple of unidentified phone numbers. Every day, without exception, Meredith and Megan spoke by phone and texted one another, to the point that it was unnecessary to count how many times. Sorting the calls and text messages by the hour would’ve been more effective. I knew they were good friends, but those phone records demonstrated how close they were. I was no longer buying the idea that Megan didn’t know what was going on in Meredith’s life.

  “You told me the rumor about Meredith being a hooker,” I said. “Why?”

  She pulled harder on the backpack and licked her lips. “Because I thought it might help.”

  “No. You knew it wasn’t a rumor. Meredith was involved in prostitution and you knew.”

  The pink in her cheeks glowed into a red. “Why would I do that?”

  Goose bumps popped on the back of my neck, as I felt like I was getting close. “Because you wanted to help her. You didn’t want to come straight out with it and betray her. I get that. So you fed it to me as if it was a rumor so I’d look at it. I know what she was doing, Megan. And so do you.”

  She’d slipped a fingernail into her mouth and was gnawing on it, her eyes darting from me to her feet and back again. She looked to me as if she was trying to make a decision. I stayed quiet and let her make it.

  “Can we talk after the game?” she finally asked.

  “I don’t wanna wait, Megan,” I said. “Meredith’s been gone too long and I don’t want to waste anymore time.”

  She mumbled something, but I couldn’t understand her.

  “What?”

  “She’s alright,” she whispered.

  “You’ve talked to her?”

  She hesitated, then nodded.

  The goosebumps popped harder and my heart rate spiked. “Do you know where she is?”

  She started to say something, then glanced over my shoulder and something in her expression changed.

  I turned and followed her gaze. Kelly Rundles was talking to Stricker at the other end of the hall. She looked up and waved. I waved back.

  “After the game,” Megan said quickly. “Not now. We can’t do it now.”

  I turned back to her. “Why?”

  She started backing away from me, toward the locker room. “After the game. Meet me on the other side of campus, near the admin building.”

  “Megan, come on,” I said. “Talk to me.”

  “After the game,” she repeated. “Just trust me, please. And don’t tell anyone yet. Please. Don’t tell anyone.”

  I didn’t want to let her go, but there was something in her voice and in her face that made me realize I didn’t have a choice. And I didn’t want to push her to the point that I lost her. Plus, I knew I’d be sitting on the bench and she wouldn’t be out of my sight for the next two hours.

  I nodded in her direction.

  The tension drained out of her face and something close to a smile found it’s way into her expression as she disappeared into the locker room.

  SEVENTY-THREE

  The girls were out of it and so was I.

  It was nearly halftime and we were down by fifteen. It should’ve been more. They couldn’t shoot, they couldn’t pass, they couldn’t defend and they couldn’t execute. It looked as if they had never played a game together before. Everything that Kelly tried failed. When she wasn’t screaming herself hoarse, her jaw was set in a concrete mix of frustration and anger.

  Megan, the best player on the team in Meredith’s absence, was atrocious. Throwing the ball away, taking ridiculous shots and letting opponents drive by her as if she was nothing more than a turnstile. Kelly had called her over to the sideline several times, alternately coaxing and berating her, Megan nodding at her with an absent expression, then returning to the floor to continue her ugly play. She was now at the far end of the bench, a towel draped around her neck, her eyes glued on the floor.

  I was no help, either. I was watching the game, but my mind was on Meredith and Megan. And Kelly Rundles.

  The phone calls bothered me. A few phone calls would’ve been normal, maybe a few text messages. I could recall calling my coach in my high school several times, but they were nothing more than short courtesy calls. Times had changed and relationships between players and coaches had changed, as well. If Meredith was being recruited by top notch colleges, it was likely that Kelly would’ve acted as a filter between Meredith and recruiters which would’ve meant regular phone calls and communication.

  But the sheer number struck me as odd. They were nearly every day and many were late into the night. That just seemed abnormal, particularly after Kelly herself had cautioned me about how the relationship between coach and player could be construed differently if the adult wasn’t careful.

  As I watched the seconds tick off the clock in the second quarter, though, something else was bothering me.

  When I spoke to Megan before the game, her demeanor and voice changed when Kelly showed up at the opposite end of the hall. Was it just a player shrinking beneath the gaze of her coach? Or was there something else?

  Every time I glanced at Kelly stalking the sideline, I wasn’t thinking about the game. I was thinking that maybe she had lied to me.

  The horn sounded ending the quarter and the girls jogged out of the gym toward the locker room. Several glanced anxiously at Kelly, no doubt anticipating an ass-chewing over their horrendous play.

  Kelly snatched her whiteboard off the bench, her jaw still locked in place. She walked over to the scorer’s table, took a look at the scorebook, shook her head and came back in my direction.

  “It’s like they don’t even give a shit tonight,” she spat. “Sixteen turnovers. In the first half. Jesus Christ.”

  “Yeah.”

  She walked past me, still talking. “I’m thinking we just go straight man, full-court, press the rest of the way. See if that shakes them awake.” She bounded up the steps that took us from the gym floor to the hallway that led to the locker room, her feet stomping against each stair. “They wanna lose, fine, but they’re gonna run their asses off doing it.” We stopped at the door to the locker room and she turned to me, sweat on her forehead and the skin around her eyes pinched tight. “What do you think?”

  I massaged the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger. A trace of a headache was forming in my skull, as if my brain hurt from everything I was putting it through.

  “Joe?” Kelly asked. “Are you alright?”

  “You were talking to her,” I finally said. “To Meredith. A lot.”

  Her face screwed up with confusion. “What?”

  “Phone calls. I looked at Meredith’s phone records for the last couple of months and there were hundreds of calls between you and Meredith.”

  The confusion wound tighter on her face. “What are you talking about?”

  “Why was she calling you so much Kelly?” I asked. “Daytime, night time. You two were on the phone together a lot.”

  Her eyes were narrow slits now and her hands were balled into fists. “We’re in the middle of a game, Joe. It’s halftime and I’m trying to figure out how to stop the ass kicking we’re on the wrong e
nd of. You wanna talk about Meredith, we’ll talk about her after the game.”

  “Ever since she disappeared,” I said, pushing on. “It’s like you’ve forgotten about her. You haven’t been worried about her, you’ve barely mentioned her. It’s been about basketball all the time.” I paused. “You know where she is, Kelly?”

  The confusion folded itself into anger and for a moment, her right elbow cocked and I thought she was going to hit me. Instead, she stepped in closer to me, our noses no more than a couple inches apart.

  “I am in the middle of a game,” she growled. “And I am not interested in discussing anything else right now. But fuck you for the insinuation. Get the fuck out of my gym.”

  That was fine. I wasn’t doing her or the girls any good on the bench. I didn’t belong there anymore.

  “I’ll find you after the game then,” I said.

  She held up a finger like she had one more thing to say, her teeth bared, her cheeks sucked in, anger plastered on her face. But then she abruptly turned and her fist slammed against the door as she disappeared into the locker room.

  SEVENTY-FOUR

  I watched the rest of the game from the stands.

  The second half of the game went much like the first half. The Coronado girls made a bit of a run to start the third quarter, but it was nothing more than a token show of effort. They quickly reverted to the poor play they’d shown in the first two quarters and when Kelly benched Megan near the end of the third, it was as if she was waving the white flag. The girls appeared listless, tired and uninterested and they were rewarded with a thirty-one point spanking. They looked the part of a defeated team as they left the floor-heads down, shoulders slumped, embarrassment sitting heavily on their backs.

  The exiting crowd made getting back to the locker room a slow process and my phone vibrated in my pocket as a I trudged along in the herd.

  “Joe, it’s me,” Mike Lorenzo said.

  “You get my message?”

  “Yeah. Sorry I’ve been hung up on something else.”

  “That’s okay. Find anything on the number?”

  “Not yet. Just got back to the station and I’m trying to run it down now. What exactly am I looking for?”

  I explained to him the discrepancies in the phone records and the little bit of information that Jordan and I had cobbled together.

  He stayed quiet for a long moment before he responded. “I’ve never heard anything that went the wrong way against Rundles, Joe. Everyone seems to like her pretty well.”

  “I understand that,” I said, stepping out of the slow crawl to the exit. “And I’m not saying she’s done anything wrong. But I need her to spell it out for me. Just because everyone likes her doesn’t mean I can’t ask her a few questions.”

  “Settle down, Joe,” Mike said. “I wasn’t saying you couldn’t ask her questions. I can’t tell you what to do anyway. I’m just telling you what I know. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t follow up.”

  I watched the crowd trickle out the door of the gym. “Sorry. I know. I’m just…I think I’m close. Getting a read on that other number might help, too.”

  “I’ll call you as soon as I have something,” he said. “Hey, you free for breakfast tomorrow?”

  “Yeah why?”

  “Just something I wanna show you.”

  “Alright,” I said.

  He named a diner near the high school and we settled on eight o’clock.

  “Call me if you get a hit on the number,” I said.

  “Will do,” he replied.

  I shoved the phone back in my pocket and left the empty gym.

  The girls were slowly emerging from the locker room, most with the hoods of their sweatshirts pulled over their heads. They brushed past me without saying a word. I didn’t see Megan or Kelly and I waited for a couple of minutes, assuming Kelly was talking to her about her poor performance. Kelly wasn’t one to let things go or to let things ride. She addressed them immediately with the intent that always clearing the air made it easier to move forward.

  But after ten minutes, I was tired of waiting and stuck my head into the locker room.

  A locker room that was already empty.

  SEVENTY-FIVE

  I drove over to the opposite side of campus to my rendezvous point with Megan, cursing under my breath that I had taken so long to get back to the locker area. It didn’t bother me as much that Megan was gone. If she was really going to meet me, it made sense that she would’ve made a fast exit.

  Kelly’s absence, though, felt wrong to me. She was always the last one out of the locker room after a game and several girls stepped out after I’d gotten there. I’d taken awhile, but it hadn’t been empty by the time I’d arrived. I expected her to be there if for no other reason than to tell me I was officially relieved of any and all coaching duties.

  But she was already gone and I wondered why.

  I pulled my rental into the small square lot near the admin building. It was dark except for a single street lamp in the middle of the parking slots. The buildings were shadows and there were no other cars.

  I parked beneath the light and waited.

  After a five minute wait that seemed like thirty, headlights split the darkness near the entrance and a car pulled up next to me.

  Megan.

  Her window was down and she motioned for me to lower mine.

  “I’ll drive,” she said.

  I was just relieved to see her, so I didn’t argue.

  The interior of her car was warm and music drifted softly from the speakers.

  “You didn’t tell anyone, right?” she asked. “That we were meeting?”

  “No.”

  She chewed on her bottom lip for a moment.

  “Megan, I didn’t say a word, even to a cop who’s helping me out,” I assured her.

  “Why weren’t you on the bench for the second half?” she asked.

  “Long story,” I said.

  “Coach was pretty pissed when she came in at halftime,” she said.

  “She should’ve been. You guys were terrible.”

  “Yeah, but it was a different kind of pissed.” She watched me. “It was more than the game.”

  “Where are we going, Megan?” I asked, not having any intention of telling her about my conversation with her coach.

  We circled my car and headed out of the lot and off campus.

  I wanted to ask her more questions about our destination and Meredith, but I wasn’t ready to push it yet.

  “What was going on out there tonight with you guys?” I asked to break the silence.

  She had one hand on the wheel and an elbow on the door. She raised her shoulders in a lazy shrug. “I don’t know. Just wasn’t into it, I guess.”

  “Doesn’t sound like you.”

  She sighed. “We’re tired, all of us. It’s such a long season. It’s a grind. And the last week, it’s been even tougher.” She rapped her knuckles against her window. “I think we just hit a wall tonight.” She glanced at me. “And it didn’t help that you weren’t there in the second half.”

  “Game was already over, Megan.”

  “Maybe. But Rundles was already flaming pissed. We needed a steady voice. Yours.”

  A twinge of guilt hit me in the stomach. Despite all the girls had done to make me a part of the program, I still felt like an outsider. I hadn’t considered that my absence would’ve mattered to them. Taking up Meredith’s disappearance with Kelly at the half had not only been pointless, but selfish, too.

  “I’m sorry about that,” I said. “Couldn’t be helped.”

  She nodded and I couldn’t tell whether she cared or not.

  We cut through the center of the island, across Orange and over into the neighborhoods near the golf course on the east side of the island.

  “Kind of a weird route to take to the bridge,” I said.

  “We’re not going to the bridge,” she said.

  “We’re staying here on Coronado?” I said, too surpr
ised to bother hiding it. “Where are we going then?”

  She turned left and cut the headlights, coasting to the curb. She shut off the engine, then pointed to my window. “There.”

  The dark house outside my window took a moment to register with me. It was a small square bungalow. The yard was slightly overgrown. It looked empty.

  It was the Jordan buy-in house I’d seen on my first day back.

  The only thing that was different was that the windows had been empty before, but now there were curtains blocking the view to the interior of the home.

  “This is the Jordan's home, right?” I asked.

  Megan was flipping open her phone and stopped mid-flip. “How do you know that?”

  “It’s the address listed for Meredith’s enrollment,” I said. “It’s a buy-in, right?”

  She processed everything I said, then nodded. “It belongs to the Jordans, yeah.” She opened up the phone and started punching the keys. Then she shut it.

  “What are we doing, Megan?” I asked. “Why did you bring me here?”

  “Just wait,” she said.

  “I’m tired of waiting,” I said. “What the hell are we doing here?”

  She started to say something, but her phone chimed. She flipped it open, nodded at it, then closed it. “Come on.”

  “Come on where?” I said, no longer hiding my agitation.

  Megan got out of the car and I did the same. The street was dark and quiet. The only nearby lights seemed to be the faraway lights on the bridge crossing the bay. The air smelled of dead grass and dampness.

  I was more acutely aware now that I was without my gun. I’d brought it with me on the trip, but I’d left it in my bag for most of my stay. I wasn’t comfortable carrying it around teenagers and the amount of time I’d spent on the Coronado campus precluded me from carrying it. I had gotten careless in not planning ahead and I hadn’t even put it in my rental when I’d gone to the game.

  I could handle Megan, but I wasn’t sure what else there might be to deal with. I had no idea if she was helping me or setting me up and that uncertainty was now jabbing me in the gut.