Chemistry Lessons (16 page)

The man waded through the mud toward them. “I sure was. We found
something that might interest you, Ms. Curtis.”

Rosie hoped that they’d found her car and that the new beakers and graduated
cylinders were still unbroken in the trunk, but maybe that was too much to hope
for. She followed Joe to the fire engine, which sat idling at the side of the
road.

Joe climbed up to the door behind the driver’s seat. The minute he
opened it, high pitched barking rang in her ears. She should have known. This
had nothing to do with her car, and everything to do with her reputation as an
animal rescuer.

Out jumped the ugliest mutt Rosie had ever seen. His long brown fur
looked more like a badly worn, shag carpet, than the coat of someone’s pet. She
guessed his parents might have been a sheepdog and some sort of hound. Part of
his ear was missing, and his red, swollen eye stared at her like something out
of a zombie movie. He also had a gaping wound on his ear that oozed a
mysterious liquid. That wasn’t the worst of it, though. The way he jumped up on
Tanner and then on Rosie made it clear he’d never been trained. When he stood
like that on his hind legs, he could reach all the way to Rosie’s shoulders.
Even if she cleaned him up, very few people would want a dog that large.

“We found him over at the trailer park this morning,” Joe said. “From
what I understand, he’s a stray, probably one from the city, dropped off on the
side of the highway. I’d take him myself, but we already have two dogs.”

Tanner leaned on the side of the fire engine with his arms folded. “This
guy might be a little more than Rosie can handle right now.” He was right.
Taking on an injured animal would almost guarantee a big vet bill. She couldn’t
pay a bill like that when she was supposed to be saving her money.

On the other hand, she couldn’t let the poor animal suffer. She stroked
his fur, trying to imagine what he’d look like after a good grooming. “I can
take him.”

“Rosie,” Tanner said, using his teacher voice again.

Joe looked from Tanner to her. “I’ll let you two discuss this on your
own.” He picked up his shovel and hurried back to where Destry was slinging mud
with the teenagers.

She caught Destry’s eye for a split second before he shifted his gaze.
He’d been watching her—a fact that should not have pleased her as much as it
did. She knelt next to the dog, forcing her focus back to the conversation. “He
needs me, Tanner. He needs
us
.” No one else would take such an ugly dog.

Tanner looked down at his boots, pinching the bridge of his nose
between his thumb and forefinger. “We can’t save all the animals in the world,
Rosie.”

She looped a finger through the make-shift collar the firemen had
fashioned from a piece of rope. “We can save this one.”

Even from twenty feet away, Destry could see the crease in Rosie’s
forehead. The dog wagged its tail and tried to jump up on Tanner, who stood
with his arms folded. Rosie pulled back on the make-shift collar and pushed
down on the dog’s hind end, but it refused to sit.

Wondering why Rosie seemed so stressed, he sloshed through the mud and
walked to her side. “Is there something I can do to help?”

She didn’t look at him. “No.” She clipped the word off short.

Tanner took a few steps back and leaned against the side of the fire
engine. “You can take this dog off our hands.” He said it as if he were only
half serious.

Destry held his hand out to the dog. Its tongue lolled off the side of
its mouth and its tail wagged, despite its obvious need for medical care. He
hadn’t given much thought to getting a dog, but now that Tanner mentioned it,
it seemed a natural choice to have a dog out here in the country. Besides that,
it might please Rosie.

Destry scratched under its chin, and the dog gazed up with its infected
eyes. “I’d be happy to take him. I like his attitude.”

Rosie grinned. “Seriously?”

Tanner stepped forward, placing his hand on Rosie’s shoulder. “I was
only kidding about you taking him, Destry. He’s going to need a lot of special
care.”

Rosie took Tanner’s hand. “I think it’s a great idea,” she said. “The
vet can teach him how to care for the dog’s problems, and if he needs any extra
help, I’ll be right down the road.”

Trying to ignore the grisly wound on the dog’s ear, Destry patted its
side. “I’d appreciate that.” Having never owned a dog, he was sure he would
need extra help from Rosie—an even better reason to take him. He knelt to look
for a tag. “Does he have a name?”

Rosie shook her head. The crease marks in her forehead had disappeared.
“He’s a stray. People from the city sometimes drop dogs off around here when
they get tired of them. They must think they’ll be happier where they can run
free.”

Rosie leaned back to get a better look at the dog’s head. She scratched
him under the neck. “You know what he looks like to me?”

“What?” Destry asked, wishing he could move closer to her. There’d been
a few times that morning when he’d completely forgotten she was engaged. Now,
with Tanner looming over them, it was hard to forget.

Rosie ruffled the fur on the dog’s side. “An old shag carpet.”

Destry combed his fingers through the matted fur. It did look like a
filthy old carpet. He laughed. “Now there’s an idea for a name—Shaggy.”

Rosie laughed too. “Please, no. It’s too Scooby Doo”

Tanner chewed his gum with vengeance. “With that eye, he looks more
like Dracula.”

Dracula was a clever name, but there was no way Destry could accept
Tanner’s suggestion, not when Rosie’s approval hung on the line.

“How about a carpet brand,” Destry said, “something like StainMaster?”

Rosie clasped her hands. “StainMaster! That’s perfect. I bet he’s a
master at making stains.” Rosie called out to Joe, who was scraping mud off the
road nearby. “We’ve found the dog a new human. Destry says he wants him.”

“Great!” Joe propped himself on his shovel. “I’ll get the first-aid kit
and help you clean him up. I haven’t had time to do it yet.”

“If we can get a few supplies, Tanner and I can fix him up,” Rosie
said. “Or maybe Destry would like to help since it’s his dog.”

Tanner hooked his thumbs through his belt loops and tilted his head in
the direction of the teenagers who now stood leaning on their shovels. “Those
boys haven’t done a thing since Destry came over here.”

Destry looked over at the boys. “I better get them back on the job.” He
rubbed StainMaster’s fur. “See you later, buddy.”

 Joe passed a hand over his bloodshot eyes. “I’ll help doctor the dog
if you don’t mind shoveling, Tanner. I’m running out of steam.” He handed the
shovel to Tanner, who dug some work gloves out of his pockets before taking it.

Tanner and Destry walked back to the mud together. “You’re not fooling
me,” Tanner muttered, squinting at him.

“Fooling you about what?”

“Your whole good-guy act,” Tanner responded, spitting out the words.

Destry chuckled. “I wasn’t trying to fool you.” They were standing
within hearing range of the teens now. This didn’t seem like the kind of
conversation two teachers should have with each other, especially if it had
anything to do with their feelings toward Rosie. “But I’d be happy to discuss
your concerns in private later on.”

Tanner waded over to the boys and slung his shovel into the mud. He
threw a few shovels of sludge into the wheelbarrow before he spoke again. “As
far as I can tell, my concerns are already public knowledge. At least most
people who follow the news in Philadelphia know about them.”

Destry gulped, resisting the urge to look away. So he’d read the news
articles? Destry had begun to hope his neighbors had read them long ago and
decided not to believe them. Instead, it seemed Tanner might have been the
first to find them. Talk about a worst-case scenario.

Once again he wished he could escape to a cave for the rest of his
life. It was a feeling that hadn’t entirely left him since the day sixteen
months earlier when he’d opened the paper. The financial pages should have been
safe enough to read on the day after his brother’s death, but there it was—the
top article on F1:
Zelcom Shares Plummet
. He knew at once that it was
his fault. He had tipped the first domino when he sold his shares.

That was the terrible thing about business—in solving one problem, he often
created another. It had all begun the month before when the head accountant
tipped him off that money was missing from employee retirement accounts. By the
time they traced the problem to Cody, he had used up over a million dollars—more
than Destry had ever kept in a bank. He fired Cody immediately. Then Destry
sold his Zelcom holdings and transferred the money back into the employees’
retirement accounts.

Plenty of reporters had asked Destry why he’d sold the stock. Not
wanting to ruin his dead brother’s reputation, he refused to answer them, but it
only fueled their desire to know more. They ended up interviewing anyone who
would talk. As usual, the head accountant maintained the strictest
confidentiality.

Now here was Tanner, calling him a liar in front of his future
students.

“You can’t believe everything you read,” he told Tanner, measuring his
words to mimic a casual conversation. Then he turned to the high school boys. “Why
don’t we see how fast we can fill up this wheelbarrow?” He whipped out his
phone and set the timer. “On your mark, get set, go!”

The boys ripped into the mud, scraping against the asphalt and flinging
muck into the wheelbarrow. Drops of silt splashed onto their jeans. Destry
slipped his phone into his pocket and heaved his shovel into the mud. Work was
better than fighting with Rosie’s fiancé.

It was an unwelcome thought—that she had a fiancé.

Beside them, Tanner shoveled methodically, his expression stiff, as if
he were about to serve as prosecuting attorney. Was this how Tanner would treat
Rosie during a disagreement? Perhaps he would use the same angry tone and
refuse to let her defend her viewpoint. The thought sent a dull pain up from
Destry’s jaw to the top of his head.

The wheelbarrow reached its limit and Alan wheeled it off to dump it. Destry
challenged the boys to fill the other two just as quickly. Muscles flexing and
foreheads sweating, the boys scooped the wet clay as fast as they could. He
could tell they were used to hard labor, but their eyes gleamed with excitement
at this unique and noble mission.

Tanner stopped to catch his breath. He watched Destry for a minute
before speaking. “There’s more evidence against you than there is mud on this
road. Care to explain how that could be?” He obviously wasn’t going to let this
go. A few of the boys stared at Destry, curious, confused, and waiting for his
answer.

If Destry didn’t say something, they might think he was guilty. He
couldn’t let that happen. “When you run a business with five thousand
employees, their mistakes become your mistakes. You fix the mistakes as if they
were your own, but that doesn’t make you guilty.”

Tanner stared him down as the boys stopped shoveling. “That’s what they
all say up at the state pen. It’s always someone else’s fault. I guess it was
someone else who found out Zelcom was in trouble and sold all your stock.
Someone else stole the money from your employees, and someone else drugged your
brother.” He was shouting now.

Everyone stilled, and Destry gritted his teeth. Tanner had crossed the
line and it took every ounce of willpower not to lash out and deck him, but he
kept his fists on the shovel handle, refusing to hand over fuel for Tanner’s
fire. Nothing Destry could say would change the way Tanner felt about his past.
His only concern now was Rosie’s future. He couldn’t let her marry such a jerk.

One of the boys spoke up. “Someone stole from you, Mr. Steadman? And
drugged your brother?”

Destry was still thinking about how Tanner didn’t deserve Rosie, but
the boy’s words gradually seeped into his brain. Destry met his gaze. “My
brother got addicted to prescription drugs after he had surgery. He wanted the
drugs so badly that he went into debt to get them. When the collection agencies
came after him, he started stealing and gambling to pay his bills.” He glanced
toward Tanner. “I failed to recognize what was going on until it was too late.”

 The boy’s mouth formed an O. His eyes creased at the corners. “I have
a cousin like that.”

“Why don’t you boys go dump the wheelbarrows?” Tanner said. “They’re
both full.”

They looked at Destry until he nodded. “Go ahead.”

They raced off with the wheelbarrows, leaving Tanner and Destry alone
in the mud.

Tanner wiped his brow without looking at Destry. “I’m not going to
stand by and let you deceive those boys into thinking you’re a role model.”

This had gone on long enough. Destry turned to Tanner and stared him
down. “I don’t think this has anything to do with the boys, and you have no
idea what you’re talking about. I sold the stock, which I personally owned, to
replace the money my brother stole from our employees.”

Tanner shot Destry a look of irritation. “You expect me to believe that
your brother spent over a million dollars on drugs? The way I figure it, it’d
take an addict over ten years to spend that much.”

Destry had wondered the same things himself. He wasn’t sure how his
brother had spent so much, or how he didn’t notice the missing money sooner,
but the main thing right now was that Destry was telling the truth. “You’re
right. He was also into gambling and lost a lot of it that way. If he was still
alive, maybe I could ask him how he managed to spend so much.”

Tanner squinted at him, and a sly smile spread across his face. “It’s
pretty convenient he died when he did.” Of course he would come to this
conclusion.

Destry tightened his grip on the shovel. “Don’t even go there, Smith. I
didn’t kill my brother.”

Tanner’s nostrils flared. “Seems to me that there’s plenty of evidence
against you.”

Destry turned back to shoveling the mud, trying to work off his anger,
so he didn’t haul off and hit this guy. “I would have thought anyone Rosie
picked for a boyfriend would think more intelligently about the gossip he read
in the newspaper.”

“I’m not her boyfriend. I’m her fiancé.” Tanner flung his shovel off to
the side of the road, where the boys had cleared the mud.

Destry watched the shovel clatter over the pavement. “Not if I—” He
turned back just in time to see Tanner’s fist coming toward him. Hot pain shot
through his nose and rage filled the rest of him. What kind of coward hits a
man when he’s not even looking? Destry took a step back to steady himself and
then took a swing at Tanner, but his feet were stuck in the mud and he fell
backwards in a splash.

Destry rolled to his side and spat out blood. The mud sucked at his
arms and legs, almost as if he’d fallen into a tar bath. Sticky slime oozed up
his sleeves and inside his ears. He could feel it sliding past his collar.
Guarding his face with his arm, he looked around for Tanner, but he couldn’t
see him anywhere.

As Destry struggled to sit up, he could hear Rosie yelling. “Are you
okay, Destry?”

That’s when he noticed Tanner had walked back to the fire engine and
now stood with his back to him. “Yes.” The word slurred through his aching lips.

Rosie faced Tanner with her hands on her hips. “What is wrong with you?”
she yelled.

The weight of his brother’s mistakes had rested on Destry’s shoulders
for so long. He was done being the nice guy, done being walked on, done being accused
of things he didn’t do. Tanner was the last straw.

Hoping to regain his dignity, Destry rolled to his hands and knees,
preparing to give Tanner exactly what he deserved. That was when he saw them—a
pair of cowboy boots stuck upright in the mud. A glance toward the fire engine
proved his suspicion—Tanner was standing in muddy socks. He’d been in such a
hurry to get away that he’d left his boots stuck in the mud.