“This is Texas. Sparks start wildfires and ruin hundreds of lives.”
“You’re exaggerating,” I said. “At most, we only ruined my life. You, on the other hand, are running one of the twenty or thirty finest high schools between Conroe and Nacogdoches. How many badass students you got now, anyway? About 666?”
Her smile flatlined. “I take it you still think of Kingman as ‘Satan’s cornhole.’ But I’m grateful you brought me here. I was scared to death of any part of Texas that wasn’t Austin, but Kingman showed me there are good people everywhere.” She gave an annoyed sigh that I remembered well. “Why’d you come back, Matt? Your parents are gone, and I’m a thorn in your side. And you can’t be happy in that tiny apartment over the hardware store.”
“Casa de Kingman Bolt and Supply is temporary,” I said. “Regardless of living quarters, though, this is where I grew up. It’s home. But I can’t idealize it because I know what’s under all the rocks. Such as the fact that this county harbors more than its fair share of plain old-fashioned racism. You know how many people said unkind things about our marriage?”
Actually, what I had heard most people say was that I wasn’t good enough for her. I could go to UT, make the Dean’s List, and get a master’s in education, but I would always be a third-generation delinquent to the older folks. They weren’t wrong, of course, but it was still unkind of them to comment on it.
Elizabeth gave a short laugh. “If I let a few garden-variety racists drive me off, I couldn’t live anywhere.” Then she frowned. “But if I couldn’t have this job, I’d go where I could. Which brings me to something I’ve been wanting to tell you.” She leaned forward. “Maybe you’re thinking if you watch and wait, a space will open up so you can join the Kingman faculty again. But that won’t happen anytime soon. Whereas you could go full-time right now in, say, Dallas. Or Fort Worth, or Oklahoma City.” Her eyebrows rose. “Or Canada. If you liked Chicago, you’d love Canada. Snow. Ice. Moose. All sorts of things you can’t have here.”
I made a face. “Naw. Some of those people speak French. I have a hard enough time with Spanish.” I checked my watch. “Bell’s gonna ring. Where do you need me? Which you could have told me in voice mail, by the way. If you didn’t want to banter.”
“I didn’t tell you because I wasn’t sure,” Elizabeth said. “But I knew we’d have a few teachers calling in sick. That happens toward the end of the term as they realize they haven’t burned through their sick leave yet. I thought one of them might be Morris again, in which case you could continue doing some actual English teaching. Except he’s here after all.”
“Too bad. Some of those kids verged on being bright.”
“I know.” She looked down at her desk. When she spoke again, her voice was quieter. “However, someone I didn’t expect to bail … did. He sent an ‘I can’t come in’ text this morning with no explanation. And now he isn’t answering texts or phone calls, either.”
I waited. Given the way Elizabeth was talking, it wasn’t hard to guess who the culprit was. But I wanted her to say it.
“It’s the band instructor,” Elizabeth said. “David Garrett.”
I swung my feet down. “You mean the guy you’ve been riding like a rodeo bull?”
It didn’t faze her. “That’s a gross mischaracterization,” she said. “And no one else knows. So don’t say anything.”
I gave a chuckle that came out a little bitter. “Hell, Lester probably has tiny red X’s on his calendar to mark the mornings when you and Mr. Garrett happen to arrive within five minutes of each other. This is a small town, Lizbeth. If the high-school principal is playing the slide trombone with the duke of the band dorks, I’m not the only one who’s noticed.”
Now Elizabeth gave me a look that could have cut glass.
“All I need to hear from you,” she said, “is whether you’ll take symphonic band for first hour, then kill an hour, then cover two back-to-back history classes. Ms. Conley left a Gettysburg DVD she says will be fine for both. After that, you can go home with a half day’s pay. Or you can take two study halls this afternoon. Final exams start in a week, and a few real teachers could use the planning periods.”
I tried to give her back the same stare she was giving me. But she was a whole lot better at it. “First of all, I don’t know nothin’ ’bout teaching no band. Second, kudos on the ‘real teachers’ shot. Third …” If only my weekend adventure had been more profitable. I could use the full eighty bucks. “Okay. I can do the afternoon, too.”
Elizabeth regained her leader-of-the-pack composure. “Don’t worry about the band. That’s why Marisa was here. She’s only a junior, but even the seniors respect her. So does David. I gave her a key to the instrument cabinets, and she’ll be running the rehearsal. All you have to do is make sure no one disrupts it. The spring concert is this Friday, and they have to play well. The bake sale and barbecue are right after, and people buy more cookies if they like the show. Our benefactor has provided some nice instruments and T-shirts, but we still need gas money to get the band to football games and district competitions next year.”
“You think your, uh, Mr. Garrett will be back by Friday?” I asked. “I mean, it’s worrisome that he wouldn’t say why he skipped today, don’t you think? Ditto the fact that he’s gone out of cell-phone range?”
These were neither nice nor helpful questions for me to ask. But then, I wasn’t as nice or helpful a guy as I had once been.
This time, Elizabeth stayed cool. “David has a brother in some sort of difficulty. He hasn’t volunteered details, and I haven’t asked. But I think that’s why he’s absent. In any case, he won’t let down the band. In fact, he was here yesterday, on a Sunday. We both were, installing new padlocks on the instrument cabinets. David paid for them out of his own pocket, by the way.” She took a breath. “And now I’m asking myself why you should care.”
“Hey, I just want to help out if I can,” I said. “I’m pretty sure I could learn how to conduct by Friday.”
“Ah. I’ll keep that in mind.” She was ready for me to leave.
But I wasn’t. “Speaking of new padlocks, the deputy out front told me about the instrument theft.” He hadn’t, exactly. But it was only a small lie. “That gonna be a problem for my class today?”
Elizabeth shook her head. “No. In fact, one of the stolen instruments—the tuba—has been returned. It magically appeared on the cafeteria loading dock yesterday morning. I guess the thief realized the banda black market doesn’t want sit-down instruments. When you mash polka, cumbia, ranchera, and pop together, nobody sits. Especially not the bass-horn players.”
I knew it had to be Marisa who had returned the tuba although I didn’t know why. And I had already figured, even before seeing how Carlos had been dressed, that the sousaphones had been stolen for resale to banda players—maybe in Texas, maybe in Mexico. Who the hell else would want them? “That’s why I prefer electric blues. You can sit or stand, you don’t have to pucker or blow, and you don’t drip spit all over the place. Unless you’re a drummer. Plus you don’t have to take orders from bass players.”
Now Elizabeth gave me a small but genuine smile. “I remember,” she said. Then she stood, stepped to the door, and put her hand on the knob. “As it happens, we have a pretty good bass-horn player here in our little school band. You’ll see.” The bell rang, and she opened the door. “Now you’re late.”
I stood up, looked at her, and had a pang. “I’ll bet Annie would have played something.” The words were out before I knew I was saying them.
Elizabeth closed her eyes, and I wished I had bitten off my tongue instead of thinking out loud.
Then her eyes were open again, and we were back in the present.
She opened the door. “The band room is in the new annex, away from the other classrooms. Just this side of the hallway exit to the rear parking lot. Go down the hallway between the cafeteria and the gym, and then—”
I stepped past her. “I’ll just follow
the sound of puppies being kicked.”
Elizabeth closed the door behind me, and I strode past the counter where Lester was still leaning over his coffee.
“You able to hear all of that?” I asked.
He gave me a bleary look. “I have to find my entertainment somewhere. It’s not like I get to stay home and watch the soaps with my wife. She’d stab me.”
“I don’t blame her, Lester.”
“Nobody does.”
I hit the outer office door and stepped into the now-empty hallway. I would have been feeling pretty good if I had only left Elizabeth’s office a minute sooner. After all, spending time with Elizabeth always made me feel good. The key was to keep it short.
But then, some things tend to be self-limiting.
7. Cetacean Flatulence
Marisa was short and slight, and the Gronitz tuba looked bigger than she was. When she held it propped on her lap in playing position, all I could see was a tangle of brass with a pair of feet in white sneakers.
But from the top row of the terraced band room, she bellowed orders and counted off time like a drill sergeant. And just as Elizabeth had said, the other kids respected her.
There were only fifty-six of them, but that was the biggest band Kingman had ever had. And they were good. Especially Marisa. She even took the solo on “Stars and Stripes Forever” that you usually hear played by a piccolo. And every note from the tuba was rapid-fire, articulate, and perfect.
Well, to be honest, every note sounded like a whale fart to me. But it was a rapid-fire, articulate, and perfect whale fart.
I was impressed. Also puzzled. The kid obviously loved playing in this rinky-dink high-school band. So how could she be part of the sousaphone-stealing ring that had ripped it off? Had she regretted it since she had brought back the tuba? Or had she only brought back the tuba because she had realized she wouldn’t have a decent horn to play otherwise?
Her co-conspirators and their buyer knew what she’d done. And their buyer packed a stupid-huge pistol loaded with shotgun shells. Which he wasn’t afraid to use. Regardless of her reasons, shouldn’t that have made Marisa think twice about returning the Gronitz?
None of those questions should have mattered to me. Marisa was a little crook, so I had stolen from her and her little-crook friends because stealing from crooks was what I did. Her motives weren’t my problem. Nor were her consequences.
But sitting in on the band rehearsal made it tough to quash my curiosity. Two of Marisa’s fellow gangsters were here with her. Kaylee, wearing another BAD BRASS T-shirt and playing trumpet, was seated one level down from Marisa. And Jared was on the bottom level, to the left of the conductor’s stool where I was perched. He was one of eight clarinet players, seated in the first chair. I assumed that meant he was hot stuff.
When I had come into the room at the top of the period, the first thing I had seen was the back of Jared’s KINGMAN COUGAR BAND T-shirt. It read WICKED WOOD.
“Guess it ain’t bragging if it’s true,” I had said.
Jared’s response had been, “Huh?”
Now, as the period wound down and “Stars and Stripes Forever” ended with a huge whale fart from the entire band, I rubbed my ears and pondered how to spend my upcoming free hour. Not the teacher’s lounge, where substitutes were treated like chicken-pox carriers and naps were impossible. The janitor’s closets smelled funny. And my Toyota didn’t have reclining seats like Deputy Beeswax’s Chrysler. So the band instructor’s office, marked by a door and a blind-covered window in the rehearsal room’s south wall, was my first choice.
Besides, what I really wanted was a chance to rummage through David Garrett’s desk. Maybe “Know your enemy” didn’t quite apply, but “Know your replacement” did.
Of course, the door might be locked. Which wouldn’t stop me. But I would have to wait until the kids were gone.
When the last note had stopped reverberating, Marisa stood with the tuba propped on her left hip, leaning far to the right for balance. “All right, let’s make sure Mr. Garrett doesn’t cancel the show!” she yelled. “Woodwinds, don’t leave your cruddy old reeds on the floor! Brass, mop up your spit! Percussion, get out of the way! If your instrument stays here, pack it up fast. Three minutes!”
She leaned down to the tuba mouthpiece and played seven quick notes: Shave-and-a-hair-cut, two-bits!
Not a single student looked toward me for confirmation but began following Marisa’s orders with case-snapping clatter. I just stayed where I was and kept watching Marisa, Kaylee, and Jared. None of them looked guilty or nervous as a result of their criminal weekend. But then, I supposed I didn’t either.
Nor did they look upset or depressed because their payoff had been stolen. That bugged me.
As the kids finished packing up, Kaylee and Jared joined Marisa at the north wall, which was dominated by a huge five-door oak cabinet. Trombones, French horns, baritone horns, and a few trumpets went inside, and Marisa and her friends locked the doors with the brand-new padlocks. The tuba went in last. After that, Kaylee and Jared followed the other kids out through the room’s big double doors, and Marisa threaded her way through the folding chairs to pick up her backpack. She paused beside my conductor’s stool on her way to the exit.
“Thanks for babysitting us,” she said. “Will I see you in English class later?”
“Afraid not. I’m a babysitter all day long. But getting a paycheck for doing nothing is …” I swept my hand in a gesture taking in the entire room. “How should I put it in this setting? Doing nothing is … my forte?”
Marisa gave me a sardonic grin. “A musical pun. Very clever, Mr. Marx. But don’t let Ms. Owens hear it.”
She began to step away, and I decided to try something.
“I’m curious,” I said. “How’d you get the thieves to bring back the Gronitz?”
She stopped and frowned. “What makes you think I’d have anything to do with that?”
“You’re the only tubist in the band,” I said. “So if I’d swiped a tuba, you’re who I’d hit up for ransom.”
Marisa took two steps toward the exit. “That wouldn’t work. I’m broke.”
I tried something else. “So who do you think took the horns?”
Marisa looked back at me, and she didn’t blink. “There’s no telling. You never know who might be a thief.”
She pivoted, looking more like a ballerina than a tuba player, and was gone.
8. Teeney-Purple-Bikini Good
I went to the doorway and watched until Marisa vanished around the corner toward the cafeteria. Now there was no one else in the annex hallway. I stepped back into the band room and pulled the double doors closed.
Then I tried the door to the band director’s office and found that it was indeed locked. So I pulled two paper clips from my pocket and was inside in twenty seconds, closing the door behind me and relocking it. A switch set into the cinder-block wall turned on a pair of fluorescent bulbs, and they illuminated a jam-packed space that was barely ten by ten. That would have been without the filing cabinets, stacked boxes, desk, and industrial-strength office chair.
I sat in the chair and tried the center desk drawer. It was locked too, which made me happy.
It took about a minute. Pretty slow for a desk drawer, but I had time. I also wasn’t searching for anything in particular. But if I happened to run across something that would make Garrett look bad, I wouldn’t mind. I had a fantasy that involved anonymously sending Elizabeth proof that she was making a terrible mistake.
At first, I didn’t see anything in the drawer worth locking up. Pens, dimes and pennies, clarinet and saxophone reeds. A pink eraser, a broken conductor’s baton. A few brass-instrument mouthpieces.
But underneath all of that was a spiral notebook. I pulled it out, opened it, and found a jumble of scribbled comments about ranking the woodwind section. It was as thrilling as a driver’s-license test.
Then two business-size envelopes fell from the notebook’s back pages
. They weren’t sealed, so I opened them.
Okay, I would have opened them anyway.
The first envelope contained a stack of five photographs that had been produced on a home printer from digital pictures. They were of Elizabeth, and they were naughty.
Well, not really. But they weren’t safe for school, either. Even Baptists had their limits when it came to how kids saw the principal. Or how much of her. The pictures had been taken on a summer day at the beach in Galveston, and Elizabeth had looked good. Teeny-purple-bikini good. Teenage-boys-would-scan-and-post-these-on-the-Internet good.
I was annoyed. Did Garrett really have to print these out and bring them to work? Couldn’t he last eight hours without glimpsing Elizabeth’s belly button? Hell, I’d been holding out for six years, and I was doing all right. More or less.
I tucked the purple-bikini photos back into their envelope, having decided against scanning them myself. I knew where to find them again.
Then I opened the second envelope. It contained just one photograph, but this one was much older. It had been taken with an actual film camera and developed and printed at an actual photo lab. That was how old it was.
It was of David Garrett at high-school age, standing in front of a large ranch-style house with another dude who was a few years younger. Teenage David was grinning for the camera and holding—or more accurately, wearing—a gleaming brass sousaphone. He’d been handsome then, too, and probably talented and popular despite being a band geek. So I still wanted to reach back in time and slap him.
Except for that urge, though, I was more interested in the other guy.
He was white. He and David were both wearing blue jeans and Jimi Hendrix T-shirts. The T-shirts were different colors, but the boys still looked as if their clothes had been purchased for them by the same person at the same store.
It took me a minute although it shouldn’t have. Maybe the other guy’s dark blond hair threw me since I hadn’t seen it before. But then I recognized him, too. He wasn’t wearing a red jacket or a cowboy hat, but his gray eyes and grim expression hadn’t changed much.
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