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  NAUGHTY OR MICE

  Livia J. Washburn

  Naughty or Mice by Livia J. Washburn

  Copyright© 2015 Livia J. Washburn

  Cover Design Livia Reasoner

  Fire Star Press

  www.firestarpress.com

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  The holiday party in Miss Logan’s fourth grade classroom was winding down. The kids had exchanged presents, played games, eaten cupcakes and guzzled cups of punch, and now thoughts were turning to early dismissal and a vacation from school that stretched out endlessly…or a couple of weeks, anyway.

  Dan Callahan looked around for his daughter Roxie, not seeing her for a second in the crowd of kids and parents in the room. Then, before he even had time to get worried, he spotted her on the other side of the room, standing next to the cage that had the class’s two pet mice, Brewster and Chuck, in it. Her blond head was leaned close to the cage, and she seemed to be talking to the mice, although with all the hubbub in the room, Dan had no chance of hearing what she was saying.

  “It was a good party, don’t you think?”

  Dan looked over. Melissa Logan, Roxie’s teacher, was the one who had spoken to him. She smiled, and he couldn’t help but smile back at her. Most men would, since she was cute, 5′6″, nicely curvy, green-eyed, chestnut-haired, smart, great with the kids in her room—all kids, really—and single.

  She and Dan had met when school started, and the attraction between them was obvious right away. He wasn’t sure about asking her out, and she had been reluctant to accept when he finally did, since Roxie was in her class, but there was no rule against it and in the end, Melissa had said yes.

  They had dated pretty seriously for a couple of months, but then things cooled off between them. Dan knew why, too. It was his fault, entirely. But there didn’t seem to be a blasted thing he could do about it.

  Still, they got along well and things were pleasant between them, so Dan didn’t hesitate to return her smile and say, “Yeah, you did a great job.”

  “Not me,” Melissa said. “I have a couple of great room parents, and plenty of other parents pitched in to help, too.”

  “Yeah, well, I feel a little bad that I’m not a great room dad.”

  She shook her head and said, “That’s all right. I know how busy you are.”

  “No guy should ever be too busy for his kid.”

  “And you’re not, if that’s what you’re worried about. Roxie is one of the least deprived children I know.”

  Other than being deprived of a mother, Dan thought. He tried to push that out of his head, along with the sudden mental image of his late wife’s smiling face, but it wasn’t easy.

  He took a deep breath and said, “I don’t know. She’s kind of a loner.”

  “Not really. She has two or three good friends.” Melissa lowered her voice and moved closer to him, close enough that their hips brushed for a second. “Some of these kids are social butterflies, you know. They keep score with each other by how many friends they have. I think it’s more healthy to be like Roxie is.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Dan said. The brief physical contact with Melissa had felt good, and to keep his mind off it, he went on, “Look at the way she’s talking to those mice, though, instead of to the other kids.”

  “That’s all right. She loves Brewster and Chuck. She’s helped me take care of them more than anyone else in the class. She’s probably just going to miss them over the holiday.”

  Dan nodded, but he wasn’t really paying attention now. His thoughts had drifted back to Erica. Two years she had been gone now, and all too often it still seemed like yesterday that he and Roxie had lost her. The memories came on him, usually without warning, and when they did, they hit him hard.

  Thank God the illness had been swift in its merciless course. Erica hadn’t suffered long. Dan would have given anything for one more day, even one more hour, with her, but that would have meant she would have suffered that much more, and he wouldn’t have wished that on her, no matter how much it hurt all of them to say goodbye…

  Melissa touched his forearm with her fingertips and said, “Dan? Are you all right? You looked a million miles away…and it wasn’t a good place.”

  He managed to summon up a smile again and said, “Yeah, I’m fine. I guess I’m just one of those folks who gets a little melancholy around holidays. I won’t let it ruin things for Roxie, though.”

  “Of course you won’t. I can’t imagine you ever allowing anything to ruin things for her, if you could help it.” She paused. “There’s a lot about life that we can’t help, though.”

  “Not at this time of year. It’s Christmas, right? Season of miracles and all that?”

  Before Melissa could answer, the bell rang, and chaos erupted. She gasped and said, “Oh, my! I should have been having the children get ready—”

  Too late for that. Kids were already grabbing their presents and everything else they wanted to take home over the holidays.

  School was over until after the new year.

  o0o

  Roxie was the last one out of the classroom. Nothing unusual in that, Melissa thought. She had seen it happen almost every day since the beginning of school. She had been teaching long enough to know that there was always one kid who lingered behind the others. The reasons varied. Some liked school so much they just hated to leave. Others had nothing waiting at home to make them want to be there; those were the sad cases. And some were the kids who just never got in a hurry about anything because that was their personality.

  Roxie Callahan was a mixture of the first and third reasons. Melissa knew the little girl’s home life was good, or as good as it could be for an only child of a single dad, a girl whose mom had passed away a couple of years earlier from a sudden, unexpected illness. Dan did the best he could to give Melissa everything she needed, but…well, he was a guy, Melissa mused as she watched the two of them standing on the other side of the room while Roxie gathered up her stuff. Little girls had problems that dads just weren’t equipped to handle. Dan deserved credit for trying, though.

  Yeah, he was a good dad…but not a very good boyfriend, as Melissa had discovered.

  “You’re going to date the father of one of your students?” That was the question her friend Kathy had asked. “That’s not allowed, is it?”

  “There’s no rule against it,” Melissa had said.

  “Rule or no rule, is it a good idea? Isn’t it like…conflict of interest or something?”

  “Or something,” Melissa had acknowledged. “But his daughter is wonderful, and he seems like a really sweet guy. Jerks generally don’t raise good kids, although I’ve known it to happen.”

  “Annnd he’s cute, right?”

  “Well…”

  Yeah, Dan was cute. Six feet, well-built, brown hair that never quite seemed to be tamed, the sort of rawboned good looks that made a person think about Navy SEALS or firefighters or cops. Dan wasn’t any of those things. He was an architect, but he had started out in construction work as a young man. He had a lot going for him.

  Other than the fact that he was the father of one of her students…and he was a widower. Everybody got over losses like that differently. Two years might be plenty for some people to be ready to move on. For others, twenty years might not be enough time.

  The only way to find out had been to give in and accept one of Dan’s invitatio
ns to go out. He’d been persistent, which was good, but not annoyingly so, which was also good.

  The chemistry had been there between them right away. He didn’t even kiss her on their first date. When he’d pressed his lips to hers at the end of their second date, her insides did flip-flops and the thought of inviting him into her apartment, to spend the night or not, had at least crossed her mind before she steeled herself against the idea. Things had progressed from that, to the point that Melissa was thinking not just about a long-term relationship, but a forever relationship.

  Then Dan had told her it seemed to him like they ought to slow down for a while, and what could Melissa do but try to salve her wounded feelings by saying that she had been thinking the same thing?

  “Any day now will be fine,” Dan told his daughter, bringing Melissa out of that painful reverie.

  Although his tone was stern, the way Roxie responded, “I know, Dad, I know,” showed that she didn’t take him all that seriously. She knew he wasn’t all that bothered by the wait.

  “I need to go on down to the gym and help out with bus duty,” Melissa said. “I’m not officially assigned to it, but the last day of school before a holiday is always hectic.”

  “See, you’re keeping Miss Logan from what she needs to do,” Dan said to Roxie.

  “Oh, no, it’s all right—” Melissa began, then stopped as Dan grinned at her.

  “C’mon, help a guy out here,” he said.

  I wish I could, Melissa thought.

  Roxie closed the last fastener on her backpack and held it out to her father. “I think I have everything,” she said. When Dan took the backpack, Roxie ran over to Melissa and gave her a hug. “I can’t believe it’s going to be two whole weeks before I see you again.”

  “You’ll be having such a great time, the break will be over before you know it.”

  Dan came over, still smiling but looking a little uncomfortable now. He said, “Have a good Christmas and happy new year, Melissa.”

  “You, too,” she told him. He reached out, put a hand on her shoulder for a second, then let it fall away, took her hand, and gave it a squeeze. That was certainly awkward, Melissa thought.

  “‘Bye!” Roxie called to her as they left the room.

  “‘Bye, sweetie,” Melissa responded. She went to the door and watched them as they walked down the hall and out of the school, silhouetted by the bright December sunlight.

  Then she turned the other way and headed for the gym.

  o0o

  “Oh!” Roxie exclaimed as soon as she had put her backpack in the car. “I forgot something!”

  Before Dan could ask her what she had forgotten this time—Roxie leaving something at school was a pretty common occurrence—she had turned and started back toward the building, moving at a fast trot. Dan sighed and started after her.

  He hoped Melissa had already gone to the gym to help out with bus duty. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see her again. Lord knew, it had been hard enough leaving the first time without even a hug. That would have just made things worse, though. The thought of not seeing Melissa for a couple of weeks bothered him, too. He was used to seeing her every day either before or after school, sometimes both.

  And that was a bad habit, he told himself as he hurried after Roxie, like picking at a scab so that a sore place never had a chance to heal. If things with Melissa weren’t going anywhere—and he had realized that they couldn’t—it would be better if he saw her as little as possible, rather than constantly being reminded of the time they had spent together and all the good moments they had shared.

  His footsteps echoed hollowly in the corridor as he walked along it toward Melissa’s room. When he reached the open door, he was relieved to see that she was gone. Roxie was on the other side of the room by the windows, and when she turned around, she had the cage with the two mice in it in her hands.

  “I almost forgot about Brewster and Chuck!” she said. “I’m supposed to take them home and take care of them over the Christmas break.”

  “Wait a minute.” Dan frowned. “What? I haven’t heard anything about you taking care of some…rodents…over the holidays.”

  “Well, somebody has to,” she said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, sounding like she was the grown-up and he was the kid. “They’d starve to death. Thank goodness I remembered them!”

  “Oh, I’m sure if they’d still been here when Miss Logan came back, she would’ve just taken them with her for the break. In fact, are you sure that’s not what’s supposed to—”

  “No, she picked me special to do this, Dad,” Roxie said with a note of desperation in her voice. “I’m sorry I forgot to tell you about it, I really am. But look, there’s the bag of the food they eat, right there on the shelf, and a bag of the shavings we put in the cage when we clean it—”

  Dan held up a hand to stop her. “You mean when you clean it. I didn’t sign up to deal with, uh, mouse droppings…”

  “I’ll clean the cage,” Roxie said quickly, “and I’ll feed them and make sure they have plenty of water and do everything else that needs to be done. Please, Dad.” Her bottom lip came out a little. “It’s bad enough I won’t see Miss Logan for all that time. Having Brewster and Chuck around will help.”

  “All right, I suppose it won’t be that big a deal.”

  “Thanks, Dad!”

  He went to the shelves to get the food and bedding. “They can stay on that little table in the utility room, okay? And you’ll take care of them.”

  “I promise!”

  “Good. Because I intend to hold you to it.”

  They walked out of the school again, this time with a couple of furry little companions.

  o0o

  Melissa came back into the room forty-five minutes later. She had helped out not only with bus duty but with parent pickup as well, and finally all the kids were gone except for the handful who rode the late bus. She was ready to pack up everything she would be taking home for the holidays.

  Almost right away she had the nagging sense that something was wrong, but it took her several minutes to realize what it was.

  Brewster and Chuck were gone.

  Melissa stood there for a moment, staring at the spot on the table where the cage with the two mice was supposed to be. It was empty, no doubt about that. The bags of food and bedding were gone, too, so whoever had taken the mice had known what they were doing.

  She turned and hurried out of the room. The door of the next room was open, so she went to it and looked in to see her friend Shelby Winstead getting ready to leave.

  “Shelby, did you see anybody messing around in my room?”

  “When?”

  “It would have had to be in the past forty-five minutes or an hour,” Melissa said.

  Frowning, Shelby walked toward her and asked, “Is something wrong?”

  “Brewster and Chuck are missing.”

  “Brew…Wait a minute. Those are your rats, right?”

  “They’re mice,” Melissa said, “but yes, they’re the class pets. I have a schedule set up so the kids take turns feeding them, giving them water, and cleaning out the cage. You know, to teach responsibility.”

  “Well, there you go,” Shelby said. “One of the kids was taking them home for the holidays, right?”

  Melissa shook her head. “No, I intended to take them myself.”

  “Maybe a kid took them anyway.”

  “They were still there when I went down to the gym, and all the kids had already left.”

  “One of them could have come back,” Shelby suggested. “Your door wasn’t locked, was it?”

  “No, not yet.”

  What her friend was saying made sense, Melissa decided. It was almost impossible to predict what nine-and ten-year-olds would do. Some of the time they were fairly reasonable, and some of the time their actions made so little sense—at least to an adult—that you never knew what to expect.

  “But you didn’t see anybody over t
here, or going in or out?” she asked again.

  “No, ‘fraid not,” Shelby replied.

  Melissa nodded, thanked her, and went out into the hall again. Donny Caldwell, the head custodian, was at the far end of the fourth-grade hall, already cleaning so the custodial crew could get out of here like everybody else.

  Melissa walked down to where he was and asked, “Donny, have you been working in this hall for very long?”

  “I dunno, fifteen or twenty minutes, I guess,” the grizzled, middle-aged man said.

  “Did you see anybody going in or out of my room?”

  Donny pursed his lips, frowned in thought, and then shook his head. “Nope. Not sayin’ there wasn’t anybody, but if there was I didn’t notice ‘em. You’re not missin’ anything, are you?”

  “As a matter of fact, I am. Brewster and Chuck, the class mice. It appears that someone’s taken them.”

  “Oh, is that…I mean, I’m sure sorry, Miss Logan.”

  Melissa knew perfectly well what he meant. He wasn’t worried about Brewster and Chuck being missing. To Donny they were just rodents. Varmints. Potential pests, if they ever got loose in the school. She supposed she couldn’t blame him for feeling that way.

  “You sure they didn’t just get outta their cage somehow?”

  She shook her head and said, “No, the cage is gone, too, along with their food and bedding.”

  “Oh. Sounds to me like one o’ the kids must’a took ‘em. Probably didn’t want to be separated from them over the break.”

  Melissa nodded and thanked him. She went along the fourth-grade hall, talking to all the other teachers who were still there. No one had noticed anything out of the ordinary during the past hour, but they had been busy with their own preparations to leave. They all advanced the same theory as Shelby and Donny: one of the kids from Melissa’s class had taken Brewster and Chuck.

  They hadn’t gotten on the bus with the cage, the food, and the bedding, however. Melissa would have spotted that. Which meant that it had to be one of the kids who left with a parent. She could imagine a harried mom or dad being told that their child was supposed to take care of the mice over the holidays. It was a reasonable scenario, and a parent would be more likely to accept it without a lot of questions if the student waited until after they had left the school, then suddenly “remembered” about the mice. Melissa nodded slowly to herself as she thought over that theory.