No Time for Goodbye - Linwood Barclay [44]
“An hour sounds about right.”
“You had lunch?”
“No.”
“Let’s go over to the Stonebridge. You drive. I may decide to get smashed.” He slipped on his sport jacket, told his secretary he’d be out of the school for a while but she could reach him on his cell if the building caught fire. “So I’ll know that I don’t need to come back,” he said.
His secretary insisted he speak to one of the superintendents, who was holding, so he signaled to me that he would be just a couple of minutes. I stepped outside the office, right in the path of Jane Scavullo, who was bearing down the hall at high speed, no doubt for a date to beat the shit out of some other girl in the schoolyard.
The handful of books she was carrying scattered across the hallway. “Fucking hell,” she said.
“Sorry,” I said, and knelt down to help her pick them up.
“It’s okay,” she said, scrambling to get to the books before I did. But she wasn’t quick enough. I already had Foxfire, the Joyce Carol Oates book I’d recommended to her, in my hand.
She snatched it away from me, tucked it in with the rest of her stuff. I said, without a trace of I-told-you-so in my voice, “How are you liking it?”
“It’s good,” Jane said. “Those girls are seriously messed up. Why’d you suggest I read it? You think I’m as bad as the girls in this story?”
“Those girls aren’t all bad,” I said. “And no, I don’t think you’re like them. But I thought you’d appreciate the writing.”
She snapped her gum. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“What do you care?”
“What do you mean?”
“What do you care? About what I read, about my writing, that shit.”
“You think I’m a teacher just to get rich?”
She looked as though she was almost going to smile, and then caught herself. “I gotta go,” she said, and did.
The lunch crowd had thinned by the time Rolly and I got to the Stonebridge. He ordered some coconut shrimp and a beer to start, and I settled on a large bowl of New England clam chowder with extra crackers, and coffee.
Rolly was talking about putting their house on the market soon, that they’d have a lot of money left over after they paid for the mobile home in Bradenton. There’d be money to put in the bank, they could invest it, take the odd trip. And Rolly was going to buy a boat so he could fish along the Manatee River. It’s like he was already finished being a principal. He was someplace else.
“I got stuff on my mind,” I said.
Rolly took a sip of Sam Adams. “This about Lauren Wells?”
“No,” I said, surprised. “What made you think I wanted to talk about Wells?”
He shrugged. “I noticed you talking to her in the hall.”
“She’s a wingnut,” I said.
Rolly smiled. “A well-packaged wingnut.”
“I don’t know what it is. I think, in her world, Cynthia and I have achieved some sort of celebrity status. Lauren rarely spoke to me until we appeared on that show.”
“Can I have your autograph?” Rolly asked.
“Bite me,” I said. I waited a moment, as if to signal that I was changing gears here, and said, “Cynthia’s always thought of you like an uncle, you know? I know you looked out for her, after what happened. So I feel I can come to you, talk to you about her, when there’s a problem.”
“Go on.”
“I’m starting to wonder whether Cynthia’s losing it.”
Rolly put his glass of beer down on the table, licked his lips. “Aren’t the two of you already seeing some shrink, what’s-her-name, Krinkle or something?”
“Kinzler. Yeah. Every couple of weeks or so.”
“Have you talked to her about this?”
“No. It’s tricky. I mean, there are times when she talks to us separately. I could bring it up. But, it’s not like it’s any one thing. It’s all these little things put together.”
“Like what?”
I filled him in. The anxiety over the brown car. The anonymous phone call from someone saying her family had forgiven her, how she’d accidentally erased the call. Chasing the guy in the mall, thinking he was her brother. The hat in the middle of the table.
“What?” Rolly said. “Clayton’s hat?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Evidently. I mean, I suppose she could have had it tucked away in a box all these years. But it did have this