Baker's Deadly Dozen Read online

  “No. I’m just saying you need to think about what you’re doing and maybe make some better choices.”

  Ronnie crossed her arms and frowned down at the floorboard again. “Sounds like blackmail to me.”

  “Think whatever you want,” Phyllis said as she reached for the ignition key. “It’s time we were getting home.”

  Ronnie didn’t say anything else during the drive, and neither did Phyllis. When Phyllis stopped the Lincoln in the garage, Ronnie got out and closed the door maybe just a tad harder than was absolutely necessary and went into the house through the door into the kitchen. Phyllis followed her in and found Carolyn and Eve sitting at the kitchen table. Both women had cups of coffee in front of them.

  “Well, that was certainly a thunderstorm that just blew through here,” Eve commented. Raven was curled up her lap. She rubbed the cat’s ears as she spoke. “Ronnie was mad about something, wasn’t she?”

  “I’m surprised she hasn’t blown up before now,” Carolyn said. “She hasn’t really caused any trouble since she’s been here, and for a teenage girl to be even halfway rational for that long is unnatural.”

  “There was . . . an incident after school today,” Phyllis said.

  “Did it involve a boy?” Eve asked. “I’ll bet it had something to do with a boy.”

  Carolyn scoffed. “Not everything has to do with hormones, Eve. Some people think about other things.”

  Phyllis said, “Well, in this case . . .”

  “See, I knew it had to be about a boy,” Eve said. “What happened?”

  Phyllis had heard Ronnie stomping up the stairs, so she knew the girl was out of earshot. Quickly, she gave Carolyn and Eve the details, leaving out only what Ray Brooks had said about Chase being involved with drug dealers. She didn’t completely trust the man’s opinion, and while she might wind up deciding to share that with Sam, she didn’t see anything wrong with a little discretion at this point.

  The part about Ronnie’s crush on the boy, and the way she had kissed him, Phyllis knew to be true, even though she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes. Ronnie had admitted what she’d done.

  “I think I agree with Ronnie,” Eve said. “A little making out is no big deal. That security guard overreacted.”

  “Of course you’d think that,” Carolyn said.

  “Well, they’re teenagers, dear. What else do you expect them to do? They might as well be rabbits.”

  “Not all teenagers are like that.”

  “Some weren’t, I suppose,” Eve said with a sweet smile that didn’t quite conceal the sting in the words.

  Before Carolyn could respond, Phyllis said, “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t say anything to Sam about this.”

  Carolyn looked surprised. “You’re going to tell him, aren’t you? He has a right to know the girl got in trouble.”

  “It wasn’t that much trouble, and like Ronnie said, Brooks probably won’t write it up. I mean, the worst he could accuse them of is a little PDA. They probably wouldn’t even get detention for it.”

  Carolyn shook her head and said, “I think you should tell him, but it’s your decision, I suppose.”

  “I promised Ronnie I would wait and think about it before I said anything to Sam.”

  “But you told us.”

  “I didn’t promise not to do that. There’s something else I want to do before I bring it up with Sam. If I bring it up with Sam.”

  Eve smiled. “You’re going to investigate this boy Chase, aren’t you? Like he was a suspect in a murder!”

  “Now hold on—” Phyllis began.

  “Of course. It’s a puzzle, and your detective instincts have kicked in. I can’t say I’m a bit surprised.”

  Honestly, neither could Phyllis. Trying to uncover the truth about things seemed to be second nature for her now, and she didn’t see where it would hurt anything.

  She left her friends drinking their coffee and headed for the living room and the computer that sat on a desk tucked into a corner.

  Chapter 6

  In this day and age, not many people could live for seventeen or eighteen years and not leave some sort of digital record. Of course, “Chase Hamilton” wasn’t an unusual name. Phyllis suspected that a search for it would yield page after page of hits that were totally unrelated to the young man attending Weatherford Courtland High School.

  But there were things she could do to narrow down the results, like including the name of the town in the search. That didn’t turn up anything, so she broadened out the parameters and looked for a Chase Hamilton anywhere in Texas. There were several, just as she expected, in different parts of the state. She found several social media and business networking pages for Chase Hamilton, but none of them matched the boy who had been with Ronnie in the alcove.

  That was a little strange. She thought she should have found something. No one was a cipher. Not anymore. Why, if she searched her own name, she would find a lot more about her on the Internet than she liked the idea of!

  She searched public records and online newspaper archives. Jimmy D’Angelo subscribed to a number of databases, and as a consultant to his law firm, Phyllis had access to them. She poured through those as well, her puzzlement growing as she failed to find any mention of Chase Hamilton.

  She knew he existed. She had seen him with her own eyes.

  But increasingly, it appeared that this particular Chase Hamilton had left no digital footprint, and that just didn’t seem possible to Phyllis.

  She heard the door between the kitchen and the garage open and close, and then Sam greeted Carolyn and Eve. Thankfully, they honored Phyllis’s request not to say anything to him about the incident at school just yet, and a moment later he came on into the living room and dropped the old-fashioned briefcase he carried onto the sofa.

  Phyllis turned off the monitor as Sam came over and stood behind her. He rested his hands on her shoulders and said, “Ronnie catch a ride home with you all right?”

  “She did,” Phyllis said.

  “I gave ’em a hand with football practice this afternoon, worked with the defensive backs some.” Sam had coached both boys’ and girls’ basketball at Poolville, but during football season he had been an assistant coach for that sport, as well.

  “How’s the team looking?” Phyllis asked, glad for the opportunity to keep the subject from getting around to what she had been looking for on the computer. So far the football team had won two games and lost four, which according to Sam was a respectable record for a first-year school.

  “They’re startin’ to come together, I think,” he said. “They won’t make the playoffs this year and probably not next year, either, but the year after that the players who are sophomores now will be seniors and will have some time together in the same system. They could be pretty good.”

  “I hope so.” Phyllis pushed back the chair and stood up.

  “I guess you talked to Frances Macmillan some more about the dance.”

  “Yes, we talked about what sort of snacks I’m going to make. She’s very grateful that we’re both going to be chaperones.”

  “I’m lookin’ forward to it. It’s always nice to see a bunch of kids havin’ a good time. I hope Ronnie changes her mind about goin’. It’d be good for her to socialize a little more, I think.”

  Phyllis didn’t say anything. She hadn’t made any promises to Ronnie except that she wouldn’t tell Sam right away. Well, she hadn’t said anything to him about the incident when he came in, so technically she had lived up to that pledge and was free to bring up the subject now.

  But that wouldn’t be honoring the spirit of what she had told Ronnie, she thought, and besides, she was curious. She still had a hard time believing she hadn’t come up with any more information about Chase.

  “Maybe she’ll come around,” Phyllis said. “Right now I need to start thinking about supper, unless Carolyn already has something in mind.”

  “And I’ve got papers to grade. When we taught before, we d
idn’t have to do so much gradin’, did we? Seems like there’s a lot more of it now.”

  “Paperwork always expands,” Phyllis said. “It’s a law of the universe.”

  ◄♦►

  After supper, she and Sam both graded papers while watching TV. Carolyn and Eve were in the room as well, and Eve commented, “I certainly don’t miss that. There were a lot of TV shows I thought I watched, but then I realized I didn’t know a thing that had happened because I was also grading papers at the time.”

  “We didn’t have as much of that to do in elementary school,” Carolyn said. “From what I hear, they do more of it now. I’m not sure how necessary it all is, though. Times have certainly changed.”

  “They’ve got a way of doin’ that,” Sam said. “Not to change the subject, but Ronnie sure was quiet durin’ supper. She still didn’t seem to care about goin’ to the dance, even with you and me bein’ there, Phyllis.”

  “Well . . . you wouldn’t think that having her grandfather, and her grandfather’s friend, there, would make a teenage girl more likely to want to attend a dance,” Phyllis pointed out.

  Sam frowned and said, “Dang it, I never thought about it like that. Did we make a mistake tellin’ Frances we’d help out? Would it maybe be better in the long run if we backed out?”

  Phyllis shook her head. “I don’t want to back out. Carolyn and I have already been talking about recipes for the snacks. And like you said earlier, I enjoy watching the kids have a good time. If Ronnie doesn’t want to be part of that, it’s her own decision.”

  “Yeah, I know. You’re right. I just worry about her, that’s all.”

  Phyllis smiled and nodded as she said, “I think we all do.”

  Later, when Sam was out of the room, Carolyn said, “You’re not going to tell him what happened, are you?”

  “Not yet.” Phyllis’s curiosity about Chase Hamilton left her with an itch to scratch.

  “When he finds out anyway, he’s liable to be upset with you for keeping it from him.”

  Phyllis had considered that. She knew Carolyn was right. Sam might be angry . . . but that wouldn’t last long, especially after Phyllis explained the promise she had made to Ronnie. To Phyllis’s way of thinking, trying to find out more about Chase really was looking out for the girl’s best interests.

  Carolyn started to say something else, but Eve touched her on the arm and said, “Quiet, now.” Sam came back into the room a moment later.

  “What’d I miss?” he asked.

  “Great hilarity and frolicking,” Eve said.

  Carolyn snorted.

  ◄♦►

  Later, after she had gotten ready for bed, Phyllis went out into the hall and looked along it at Ronnie’s room. A line of light showed under the door. Phyllis gave in to an impulse, went down there, and knocked softly.

  “What?” Ronnie answered.

  “May I come in for a minute?”

  At first Phyllis thought Ronnie was going to ignore the request, but then she said, “I guess so.”

  Phyllis opened the door and stepped into the room. Vanessa had shipped some of Ronnie’s things down here to Texas, so she had been able to make the spare bedroom look at least a little like it was hers. There were photos of the family, including one of Ronnie with her older brother Vincent that was recently taken at his college. A quilt covered the bed that her grandmother made for her, and on the quilt were two stuffed animals, a bear and a ragged long eared dog.

  She was sitting on the bed with her iPad leaning against her propped-up knees. Looking over the top of the tablet, she asked, “Am I in trouble?”

  Phyllis shook her head. “No.”

  “No more than I already was, right? I could tell by the way Gramps was acting when he stopped to say good night a little while ago that you haven’t said anything to him.”

  “I told you I wouldn’t until I’d had a chance to think about it. I’m still thinking about it.” Phyllis paused. “How much do you know about Chase Hamilton?”

  “What? What do you mean, how much do I know about him? He’s really nice, what else do I need to know?”

  Phyllis shrugged and said, “Did he grow up around here? Do you know anything about his family?”

  “It’s not like we’ve really talked that much . . .”

  “You don’t know anything about him, do you? You have a crush on him, and that’s all you needed to know.”

  Ronnie set the iPad aside and swung her legs off the bed. “You were a teenager once, weren’t you, Mrs. Newsom?”

  “Of course I was.”

  “I guess it was so long ago you don’t remember what it was like.”

  “I wouldn’t go so far as to say that,” Phyllis said as she shook her head. “If you mean, do I remember what it felt like to fall madly in love with someone . . . or at least think that I had fallen madly in love with someone . . . of course I remember that, too. I know how it can fill your mind and make everything else seem unimportant. But a lot of things are still important. You have to try to be clear-headed about the other person, Ronnie.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t understand. Go ahead and tell Gramps whatever you want. I can’t stop you.”

  Phyllis could feel the hostility and resentment coming from Ronnie and knew it wouldn’t do any good right now to talk about this. She just said, “I really am on your side, whether you believe it or not.”

  Ronnie just turned away. Phyllis stepped back out into the hall and eased the door closed.

  That didn’t accomplish a thing, she thought as she went back to her room. Like it or not, in the morning she would get it over with and tell Sam what had happened. Because she was convinced now that Ronnie wasn’t going to keep her distance from Chase Hamilton, and Phyllis had an undeniable hunch that more trouble was waiting in the future for the girl because of that.

  Before going to bed, she opened her laptop to search just a bit more for information. On a whim, she entered Chase’s name as well as the name of the Pittsburgh suburb where Ronnie lived with her parents.

  For the first time, one of the results she got made Phyllis draw in a sharp breath and lean toward the screen. It was a police report from a local newspaper up there, with several mug shots and descriptions of people who had been arrested in the past week.

  There he was, clean-cut but still guilty looking, listed as Chase Hamilton, 18, a senior at the same high school Ronnie had attended.

  And he had been arrested for possession of illegal drugs with intent to sell.

  Chapter 7

  After making that discovery, there was no possibility of falling asleep any time soon, so Phyllis continued searching. She was able to access criminal court records for the Pennsylvania county in which Chase had been arrested. She looked for a record of him standing trial or reaching some sort of plea deal, but she didn’t find anything.

  Did that mean the charges against the boy had been dismissed? Could he have been arrested by mistake and actually was innocent?

  That might be true, but not necessarily. Plenty of charges were dropped for lack of evidence or unwillingness of witnesses to testify, and the person arrested was guilty as sin anyway. The lack of criminal proceedings didn’t absolve Chase of wrongdoing at all.

  But there was such a thing as innocent until proven guilty, Phyllis reminded herself. She didn’t want to be unfair.

  Still, there was one undeniable fact: Chase Hamilton was from the same town where Ronnie had lived until recently. Phyllis quickly double-checked something. Just as she’d suspected, the school district there had only one high school. That meant Ronnie and Chase both would have attended it. And yet Ronnie had acted as if she had never met Chase before coming to Weatherford.

  Had they been a couple in Pennsylvania? Was Chase the real reason Ronnie had left home and come to Texas? She could have followed him down here. Would having a crush on him have driven Ronnie to such extreme measures?

  Where teenage passion was concerned, who was to say what was possible? Aft
er all, there was a good reason why Shakespeare had written about Romeo and Juliet and found such dramatic possibilities in their doomed love affair, Phyllis reminded herself.

  “The more things change . . .” she murmured, remembering what she had said to Sam that very morning.

  She resumed searching, this time looking for anything involving that Pennsylvania high school and drug dealing.

  A few more links to newspaper stories came up. Phyllis checked them out and saw that the previous spring, two 18-year-olds, Jonathan McKimmey and Richard Fleischman, had been convicted of possession of controlled substances with intent to sell and had been sentenced to prison terms. Both of them had been seniors at the same high school Ronnie and Chase had attended.

  Chase was 18 at the time of his arrest, Phyllis recalled. Since he’d been a senior in Pennsylvania, clearly he hadn’t graduated, or else he wouldn’t be going to Courtland High School here in Texas. Being in jail probably would have a pretty bad effect on someone’s academic career, she mused.

  She laid out the scenario in her mind: Chase is arrested, isn’t prosecuted for some reason, leaves Pennsylvania, and comes to Texas. Ronnie, convinced that she’s in love with him, follows him. That Chase would wind up in the same town where Ronnie’s grandfather lived seemed like quite a coincidence, Phyllis thought, but it certainly wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility. If Chase had moved somewhere else, Dallas or Houston, say, Ronnie might not have pursued him. But if she’d found out that he was in Weatherford, that might have seemed like an omen to her, a clear indication that she should go there, too, and proclaim her love for him.

  The biggest question remained: Had Chase come down here and resumed his drug dealing ways at his new school?

  Phyllis had no idea . . . but she knew someone who might be able to tell her.

  ◄♦►

  “Mornin’, Mom,” Phyllis’s son Mike greeted her when she called him early the next morning, before she started getting ready to go to school. She knew that he would be up, since his household would be on school time now as well. Her grandson Bobby had started kindergarten this year.