Small Kingdoms and Other Stories Read online

  “So, after school. But on school property.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why wasn’t she on her bus?” Hazel was supposed to catch the vehicle derisively called “the short bus” to her home.

  “Her mom was here for teacher conferences. She’d parked Hazel on the bench outside to wait. Clay saw her when he was walking to his car after practice. I guess he was in a bad mood. Or maybe a good one.”

  “Does he know you know?” she asked.

  “Not for sure. I called him on his cell phone, asked him if he’d seen Hazel in the parking lot, her mom was looking for her.”

  Anne checked the list of phone calls she’d gotten that morning, and Mrs. Reid wasn’t on it. “Hazel didn’t tell,” Anne said.

  “I don’t think she minded,” the coach said. “But she’s not mentally capable to consent or refuse.”

  “Noted,” Anne said. She thought for a moment, and Coach Halsey let her.

  Her previous job had been far tougher than this one, and when she’d left it so abruptly, she’d sworn to herself she wouldn’t ever get so invested again. But here she was, thinking of Travis High and its reputation.

  Did Anne care about each individual student? No. But this was her turf, and she would protect it. She would make it as perfect as she could. When she looked up at the rugged, impenetrable face of her baseball coach, she surprised a look almost of . . . sympathy. And for a second . . .

  “Do I know you?” she asked, with no premeditation.

  He smiled. It was like watching rock move. “It’s time for the Meachams to get here. I’ll hear from you later.” It wasn’t quite a question.

  “You will,” she said, and stood up. They eyed each other for a moment. It was as though Holt Halsey was willing her to realize something. But then he turned to go, and she had to change gears to deal with Clay’s parents.

  The Meachams weren’t anything special, in Anne’s expert estimation. Brandon, handsome like his son but not as mean, might look at other women but he never touched. His wife, Elaine, a former pageant queen, made a creditable effort to conceal the fact that she didn’t give a shit about anyone else’s child but her own. She would clap for another child’s achievement, she would tell the other moms how much she admired their progeny, but in truth she believed the sun shone out of Clay’s ass.

  All in all, Anne couldn’t feel surprised that Clay had no sense of guilt in taking advantage of a handicapped girl. He was sure that everything he did was fine, simply because he, Clay, wanted to do it.

  “Ms. DeWitt,” Elaine Meacham said, flashing her broad white smile. “Thanks for making the time to see us today.”

  “Of course. What do we need to talk about this morning?” Anne asked, trying to cut through the pleasantries. She gestured them to the chairs in front of her desk, took her own seat again.

  “I saw you at the last game,” Brandon said, to make sure she knew he appreciated her. “I know the kids think it’s really cool that you go to all the sporting events.”

  “Of course I do,” Anne said. This is my school, she thought. I’m going to go to everything I physically can. She adopted her fallback face: pleasant, but not encouraging. Not only did she have to think about Coach Halsey’s tale, the pile of paperwork in the in-basket wasn’t going to take care of itself. She had two other meetings scheduled during the day too, one with a prospective temporary replacement for the enormously pregnant Spanish teacher, and one with a vendor who wanted the school to switch to his software system in the chemistry lab. The vendor would ask her out for a drink after work: she would refuse him. She was going to have to be more forceful in her refusal this time.

  Barely able to restrain some manifestation of her boredom and her itching desire to get to the work on her desk, Anne had to sit through a few more platitudes before Brandon got down to brass tacks.

  “Principal DeWitt – Anne—we hope the school will help Clay achieve his goal,” Brandon said very seriously.

  “Which goal is that?” Anne worked to keep her voice neutral. She was thinking of how much she’d like to kick Clay Meacham’s ass. The enormity of the boy’s offense was sinking into her psyche. She didn’t even want to imagine the headlines, the disgrace of the school, the navel-gazing that would inevitably follow the exposure of Clay’s little after-hours adventure with the hapless Hazel Reid. Anne found herself thinking wistfully of some of the more inventive punishments she’d employed at her previous job.

  Instead of getting to the point, the Meachams began the litany of what Clay had meant to the school: class president, star athlete, honor roll, captain of the debate team. “And what goal would that be?” Anne prompted again, when she felt her impatience building to a dangerous level.

  Cut off in mid-flow, Elaine looked comically surprised. “I’m sorry?” she said.

  “I’m very well aware of Clay’s position at Travis,” Anne said evenly. “Can you tell me what you think Clay needs from this school?”

  “Sure,” Brandon said. “Sure. I’m sorry, we got kind of carried away, like parents tend to do.” He smiled at Anne in what he surely felt was an ingratiating manner, though he couldn’t suppress the snap of irritation in his voice.

  She tried not to let her shoulders heave in a sigh of exasperation, but maybe the lines of her face conveyed her strong desire to extract some specifics.

  “It’s his senior film.” Elaine again bathed Anne in the radiance of her brilliant smile.

  “Clay isn’t in the drama department’s film class,” Anne said. “I’m afraid I don’t follow you.”

  “He needs a film to send to recruiters. Clay’s such an outstanding pitcher, we want to be sure he’s placed at the right college, with a good scholarship. So he needs a film to send out to athletic departments early next school year. We’ve got some examples.” Elaine extracted some DVD cases from her purse and set them on the edge of Anne’s desk.

  “So you’ll hire someone to film Clay’s games?” Anne said, not reaching for the DVD cases.

  “We were kind of hoping that we could use clips from the school’s game films,” Elaine explained. She kept the smile in place. “It seems like a shame to duplicate effort.”

  She meant it was a shame for the Meachams to spend their own money. Anne had wondered how Meacham Motors was doing in this recession. She thought she’d just learned the answer.

  It was true that the school lined up an employee or some astute volunteer parent to film every baseball game – and all the other sports events too, of course. This was invaluable as a teaching tool, the coaches assured her.

  The politically correct response would be that of course Clay’s recruiting film could be composed of clips from the game recordings, and Coach Halsey would be happy to help with such an effort. But what if Clay’s recent misdeed came to light? Wouldn’t the school suffer, especially if it had offered this extra support to an athlete who’d proved to be a rotten, degraded, egg? While Anne allowed herself a lot of moral leeway – she had no problem killing people who attacked her – she did deplore Clay’s self-indulgence and poor judgment in attempting to seduce a girl who would never be an adult mentally or emotionally.

  “I’ll discuss it with Coach Halsey,” Anne said briskly. “Who would you expect to do the work involved in editing the film, excerpting Clay’s pitches? I’m assuming you’d also want the times he comes up to bat included in the recruiting film. I don’t know what would be involved, but I’m assuming you two do?”

  “Well,” Brandon said, doing his best to look as if he weren’t being pushy, “I think we were hoping that since Clay is the best pitcher Travis High’s ever had, and him going to a good school to pitch would be a great feather for Coach Halsey’s cap . . .”

  “So you think Coach Halsey should do this work.”

  Elaine spread her hands. “Well, we were just hoping! Since he’s fairly new here, still making his name . . .”

  Anne knew how many hours Halsey put in on his job, for slim money. “It’s baseball sea
son now,” she said, as if they needed to be reminded. “I don’t know how much time the coach could devote to doing this for one player, no matter how gifted. Of course we all want to see Clay succeed, and we want him to play for the college of his choice. Has he told you where he’d like to go?” She put on a somewhat brighter smile and got up, signaling the end of the interview.

  Somewhat bewildered, the Meachams rose too. “He was thinking of the University of Arkansas—they’re in the top five. Or Louisiana. Maybe UCLA, though we don’t want him that far from home.”

  Three top baseball programs. The Meachams were aiming very high. Was Clay really that good? She would ask Coach Halsey.

  Anne finally got the Meachams out of the office with promises to “get back with them” after talking to Coach Halsey. Then she returned the calls on Christy’s list. Then she dove into the paperwork. Before she knew it, the bell rang for first lunch, the sophomore seating.

  Normally, Anne would have brought a salad to eat at her desk, or even shared the students’ meal choices in the cafeteria, though that was strictly an exercise in morale boosting. But today, she went home for lunch, as she was careful to do at least once a week, though never on the same day. Her house, tidy and spruce with its fresh paint and neat yard, had an interior air of slight dishevelment, like a bed made crookedly. Her breakfast cereal bowl still sat by the sink, unrinsed. Upstairs, the bathroom looked curiously incomplete since the bathmat was missing. Her makeup was not aligned on its tray. Her pajamas were still lying across the bench at the foot of her bed. But Anne left these little signals of disruption. She’d take care of them after more pressing matters.

  She took her gun with her when she let down the attic stairs and ascended them.

  She didn’t seriously believe there was another assailant in her attic. But then, she hadn’t expected the first one either. That failure was bitter to Anne, whose job in the past had been to teach others to be masters of close fighting. Quicker, smarter, faster, tougher, able to take more stress and dodge more punishment than other human beings. And many people who’d passed through Anne’s hands had become wonderful killers.

  Standing in her own attic, seeing the evidence of last night’s intrusion, Anne was bitterly aware she had failed. She’d been lulled by her artificial life into an equally artificial sense of security. In her own home, her lack of readiness had come very close to getting her killed.

  There were three dormer windows in the attic, which was painted and floored. Its walls were lined with everything that belonged in a storage space. There was a modest box of Christmas decorations underneath a wreath hung on a wall hook. There was a box of old pictures in aged frames, which any casual visitor would assume were ancestors of Anne’s.

  Well, the long-dead faces belonged to someone’s ancestors, but not hers, as far as she knew. She was proud of a trunk of fake memorabilia that had belonged to her fake dead husband. There was an antique quilt inside, among the report cards and trophies, a quilt that must have been stitched by someone’s grandmother; it might as well have been “Brad’s.” There was an old rickety rocking chair by the trunk, just the kind of chair such a grandmother might have rocked in as she quilted. There was a crate packed with a very old set of china, and one full of the sort of scholarly books Anne DeWitt might have collected over the course of her academic progress: Jacobean poets, theories of education, the psychology of leadership. The attic was as carefully staged as the rest of the house.

  Bert Sawyer had come in through the west dormer. The dormers faced the road, but in the wee hours of the morning there was not likely to be anyone up or about on this quiet residential cul-de-sac, one carved out of the woods. The house between Anne’s and Sawyer’s belonged to the Westhovens, and they had left for Florida the previous week. Maybe that was why Sawyer had chosen the previous night for his move on Anne.

  The pane on the window had been cut out and removed, and cool spring air flooded the attic, carrying the pleasant scent of budding plants.

  Obviously, Bert had ascertained that the dormers weren’t hooked up to the alarm system. He must have made a preliminary trip to her roof on some previous night. She’d have to figure out how he’d scaled it, because she didn’t see a rope and there was no ladder leaning against the eaves, for godsake. She thought about all these things as she noted the tiny signs of his presence in her attic; the dust on the trunk had been smudged, probably by his butt as he sat on it to wait for the sound of her shower running. There was a small ring in the dust too. Anne decided he’d had a tiny flashlight, and he’d used it to check out the story her attic was supposed to tell. It must have been in his pocket when she dumped him.

  The woman she’d formerly been would have learned how to replace her own glass, but Anne DeWitt would not do such a thing. She decided to tell the repairman that a bird must have flown into the window, and she’d found it broken. Of course, Anne DeWitt would have cleaned the mess up immediately. Anne found the pane of glass, leaning carefully against a wall. She put it on the floor and stomped on it. Then she fetched a broom and dustpan from the kitchen and swept up the fragments. She called the handyman that helped her out with things Anne DeWitt couldn’t do. He agreed to come the next afternoon at five.

  Anne would wait a couple of days to call the alarm system people.

  After another, more thorough, cleaning of the bathroom, Anne had only time to grab a granola bar to eat on the way back to school. Her stomach growled in protest, and she promised herself she’d have a good dinner.

  On her way back to Travis High, she saw a pickup truck emerging from the gravel road to the electric tower, the spot where she’d dumped Bert Sawyer’s body. Every nerve in her body went on the alert as she passed the road, and the truck pulled out behind her.

  She recognized it. It was Holt Halsey’s.

  He drove behind her all the way back to the school. She went to the administrative parking lot, and he went left to park by the gym complex.

  There was nothing Anne could do about the coach that afternoon. He was a riddle, for sure, and one she’d better solve sooner rather than later. It was no coincidence that he’d gone down that obscure track; and she didn’t believe it was a coincidence that he’d emerged from it just when she was approaching.

  He’d found the body.

  He hadn’t told anyone.

  After an hour had passed, she knew he wasn’t going to.

  The meeting with the salesman, her last of the day, was over by five o’clock. Christy was itching to leave, opening and closing drawers on her desk with annoying frequency, as Anne could see (and hear) through her open office door. When this salesman (she mentally called him The Jerk) visited, she always left her door open. She didn’t want to have to break his arm, which she had been sorely tempted to do more than once.

  The second she stood up to conduct The Jerk out, Christy was out of the door like a shot. The Jerk took the opportunity to put his hand on her arm. “Please reconsider. I’d love to take you to dinner at the lake,” he said, smiling his most sincere smile.

  Anne looked at him, thinking about pulling out his teeth one by one.

  “Sorry,” said Holt’s deep voice from the doorway. “The principal and I have things to discuss this evening.”

  The Jerk covered his chagrin well – after all, he was a salesman – and Holt and Anne regarded each other. There was so much texture and complexity to that look she could have worn it like a sweater. When The Jerk was gone, and the school was quiet and empty around them, Holt said, “Well, you had a busy morning. No wonder you were late.”

  And Anne heard herself saying, “Who are you?”

  This was a talk that had to be private, but Anne was not about to go to Holt’s house, and she didn’t want him in hers, not yet. They drove separately to a restaurant that was nearly empty at this time of day. They asked to be seated on the patio, which had just opened for the season. It was almost too cool to sit in the open air in the late afternoon, but Anne was willing to be a little
chilly if it meant no one would be close to them.

  After they’d ordered drinks and plate of nachos, he said, “Holt isn’t the name I was born with, but I expect to use it for some time. I know you’re Twyla Burnside. My little brother was in your tenth class.”

  Anne considered all this while their drinks came. “So you know all about the event.”

  “The one that got you fired? Yes.”

  “Why are you here, at Travis?”

  “I did the same training, but in a different location,” he said. “The guy in charge was as tough as you can imagine. He was coming up a couple of years before you got your job. David Angola.”

  She nodded. David Angola had saved her ass at the secret hearing. “I lost one person in almost every class,” she said. “Until the tenth class, they always considered it the price of doing business. It was my job to make sure the grads were the best my school could produce. They had to pass the tests I set. Of course, the tests were rigorous. I would fail in my mandate if they weren’t as challenging as I could possibly devise . . . to ensure the grads were completely prepared for extreme duress and with extraordinary survival skills. Until my tenth year as an instructor, one loss a year was acceptable.” She shook her head. “And that year, the lost student was the one with connections.”

  Holt smiled, very slightly. “You have a huge reputation, even now. David himself said he was a pussy, compared to you.”

  She smiled, a wry twist of the lips. “That’s a huge compliment, coming from David. That woman’s brain aneurysm could have gone at any time. You can’t tell me it gave because of ‘undue rigor’ or ‘borderline cruelty.’ Her bad luck, and mine. Her mom had a lot of pull.”

  Holt’s face held no judgment. “They give you the new identity when they fired you?”

  “Complete with references.”

  “Me too.”

  She raised an interrogative eyebrow.

  “Shot the wrong person,” he said. “But it was a righteous mistake.”

  She absorbed that. “Okay,” she said. “And you’re here because?”