Murder Is Our Mascot (20 page)

"Is that what you think I'm upset about? That Gabby interrupted our Mathletes' meeting?"

Emily cringed. So they
had
interrupted the meeting. "I know you're getting ready for a big meet. I'm really sorry. If—"

Tad cut her off with a shout, "Quit saying you're sorry!"

Emily was too stunned by Tad's outburst to even move. Tad was on a roll now and didn't even notice her silence. "I'm mad because you can't keep your nose out of things. I'm mad because I keep getting these phone calls about you that scare me half to death. I'm mad that you're messing around in a murder investigation like you actually know what you're doing!"

Emily's vision went red. Now, she too was irritated. "Don't know what I'm doing? Messing around? Who appointed you my guardian? I'm sorry for the calls, but I do
not
answer to you. I make my own decisions, and I take my own actions."

"You sure do," Tad steamed. "And a great job you're doing of it, too."

Emily stepped forward until she and Tad were practically nose to nose. Her voice was eerily quiet. "You're out of line, Tad."

If Tad hadn't been huffing and snorting like a bull about to charge, the change in her voice would have clued him in to just how angry Emily was at that moment. Instead, he said, "I'm not out of line. You are. You have to butt out of this whole mess."

"Listen here," she began, drilling a finger into his chest.

"No, you listen," he interrupted, grabbing her by the shoulders. Then he did the one thing Emily could never have seen coming. With one rough jerk, he knocked her off balance so that she stumbled into his chest, her cast catching him in the stomach. He didn't notice, though, because he was too busy taking her mouth in a kiss so full of heat she was sure the fire detectors would go off. When the initial shock wore off, she grabbed a fistful of his shirt and kissed him back. She had known that kissing Tad would be amazing, but she hadn't expected to feel a zing all the way down to her toes. And then she was left teetering as he let go of her shoulders as abruptly as he had grabbed them.

They stood a few feet apart, eyes locked, breath coming fast. For the first time that she could ever recall, Emily was speechless. Her mind was a complete blank for a span of several seconds, but when her brain engaged again, the voice in her head was talking so fast it sounded like a chipmunk on speed.
What did that kiss mean? Was it just a reaction to all the emotional upheaval surrounding them? Was Tad truly interested in her as more than a friend? What was he thinking now? Did he regret his impulsive move? Would he kiss her again?

She worked up the nerve to ask him one of the million questions hammering at her, but before she could form the words, Tad turned and moved to the refrigerator. He grabbed a soda for himself and shoved another across the counter to her. The moment was lost. Emily drank deep of the sweet, icy soda to mask her disappointment. As the fizzy bubbles danced on her tongue, washing away the taste of Tad's kiss, she decided it was for the best. She was too emotionally fragile to deal with such an explosive issue tonight. She gave the air a sniff for any signs of smoke, but it would appear they had not actually set anything on fire. She slumped onto a barstool and uttered the first thing, unrelated to their steaming kiss, that popped into her head. "Could Jim's girlfriend, Stephanie, have a son?"

Tad took her non sequitur in stride. "Stephanie from the gym?" he clarified. She nodded and Tad came around to sit on a barstool next to her. "I assume you're asking because you think that child could be Jim's long-lost nephew." Again, she nodded. "But," he continued, "I don't think that scenario is plausible. Stephanie can't be more than thirty. That would make her only thirteen when Jim's nephew was born."

"I don't think she's involved anyway," Emily conceded. "My money's still on Barnes. Even if Gabby and I didn't find any—" She cut herself off before she let news of her and Gabby's nocturnal visit slip.

Her words were not lost on Tad. He gave her an arch look. "I'm not even going to ask where you and Gabby were sticking your noses tonight. But if you're that set on Barnes as a murderer, you need to exercise even more caution. He has access to you every day."

"Don't remind me," she muttered.

Tad ran a hand down her arm and her fingers tingled. She held her breath, waiting to see what Tad would do next. But his next words dashed any hope of a repeat performance of that smoldering kiss. "Speaking of seeing Barnes, tomorrow will be here before we know it. We'd better try to get some shut-eye." Tad retrieved her suitcase from where he'd tossed it earlier and carried it down the hall to the guest room.

"Thank you," she said, feeling suddenly shy around him.

"My pleasure." His tone was husky, and with a small smile, which she hoped was a little regretful, he turned and left, shutting the door behind him. Emily stood stock still, half hoping he'd come back. Then her rational side kicked in, and she fell back on the bed, fully clothed. Now was definitely not the time to explore the meaning behind that kiss. There was a murderer on the loose, Helen was still missing, and someone was targeting her. First things first. Still, as she tossed and turned throughout the night, despite the comfortable bed, Emily could hear Tad doing the same across the hall. She couldn't help but wonder if his mind was on Jim's murder and the ensuing trouble, or on that kiss and what it meant for their future relationship. It was one of the longest nights of Emily's life.

Emily breathed a sigh of relief as she slid out of Tad's car at school the next morning. They had tiptoed around each other all morning, never making eye contact, studiously avoiding any conversation that didn't revolve around the weather. Emily half expected to find her normally stick-straight hair either standing on end or as curly as Gabby's, with all the electricity crackling between them on the car ride to school. Glancing at her reflection in the door as she breezed through, she could see no visible signs of agitation, in her hair or otherwise. It looked like she was going to have to confront the situation with Tad at one point or another. They couldn't go on like this. She held a conversation with Tad in her head as she swung around the corner in the main office to check her mailbox. Even the make-believe conversation was awkward, so she wasn't paying attention to where she was going. She walked straight into Mr. Barnes, who was going the opposite direction. Emily leaped back like she'd been bitten by a snake. Barnes dropped his eyes and stormed past her, the hand clutching his mail white-knuckled, with either embarrassment or rage. Either way, Emily had no doubt that Barnes had definitely seen and/or heard her outside his house last night.

She contemplated this dilemma on the way up the stairs to her classroom. She hated to admit it, but she was frightened of Barnes. She truly believed he could be Jim's murderer. If only Helen would turn up! She hadn't seen any signs of a hostage while skulking around Barnes's house. But still…

There was no getting around it—she was going to have to tell Tad about her and Gabby's visit to Barnes's last night. She considered and discarded several different ways to break the information without Tad blowing up, which kept her mind occupied during morning classes. Thankfully, a large part of each hour was filled with a showing of some clips from the 1997
Odyssey
miniseries with Armand Assante as Odysseus. She was prepping the students not only for a reading of Homer's
Odyssey
, but also for a writing assignment that would detail their own personal odysseys. All of the students seemed excited as they discussed the various clips shown, and Emily felt the success of seeing true interest glowing in her students' eyes.

As soon as her conference hour rolled around, however, she steeled her spine and headed over to Tad's classroom. She took the precaution of shutting the door behind her in case he reacted as she highly suspected he would. Tad stopped grading papers and listened closely as she detailed the what, when, and why of her and Gabby's spying expedition. Emily could hear Tad grinding his teeth, but he remained calm. When she had finished, she chewed on the edge of an already-ravaged fingernail, waiting for his pronouncement on her stupidity. Instead, he cleared his throat and asked quietly, like a man trying not to shout, "Are you scared, Emily? Is this something we should take to the police?"

Emily's pride flew out the window, and she confessed to feeling truly terrified of Barnes now. "Still, we can't go to the police because we have nothing but suspicious feelings. Trust me, I've considered it, but I don't think the police have taken up the practice of arresting people for being despicable."

Tad tapped his red grading pen as he considered. Emily hated that pen. She had never graded in red because no student was ever encouraged by finding his or her paper bleeding with critiques. Now the color also reminded her of that terrifying moment when she had discovered Jim. Tad interrupted her morbid thoughts. "Okay, then, we need to find some concrete facts. You said you did some research into Barnes's past, but all you found was the allegation from the girl of inappropriate conduct, right?" When Emily nodded, he continued. "So we dig some more."

They hunkered down behind his desk, but the list of sites that filled Tad's screen were the same ones Emily had read and discarded as unimportant the other day. "We have to narrow the search further," Tad said as he confined the search to Richard Barneses in Missouri. Still, their search was unproductive. Tad got up to pace, and Emily watched him, at a loss for ideas. Suddenly, Tad whirled back to the computer and started a new search. His eyes were full of excitement as he turned to her. "His car!" he exclaimed.

"What about it?" Emily asked. "I mean, we could look up the VIN number or the dealer he purchased it from, but what would that tell us about his past?"

"No. His car itself," Tad corrected. At her blank look, he prodded, "His license plate?"

"I give up. I know nothing about cars, and I have no idea what you're talking about."

Tad shoved at his hair. He really needed a haircut, but Emily found the lock of hair that fell over his forehead oddly endearing. "He has one of those vanity plates. Didn't you notice?"

"No," Emily admitted. "I didn't pay that close of attention. But how will that help us narrow our search?"

"We can use his middle initial." Tad looked like an eager puppy, and Emily found her heart melting a bit more. She ignored the feeling and tried to picture Barnes's license plate instead. Nothing came to mind.

"I think it says something like R-Man. I can't remember the first part," Tad said.

"I'll look through the teachers' lounge window. You can see the parking lot from there."

"Perfect," Tad beamed.

Emily checked the hallway. It was clear, so she made a mad dash across the hall to the lounge. The
Mission Impossible
theme song played in her head as she flattened herself against the wall next to the window and peered around. The window was foggy. Laughing at her own James Bond-like behavior, Emily swiped at the window and squinted, trying to make out the letters on the Cobra's license plate. She could clearly see the
R
, and the third letter was
B
, but the middle letter could be an
L
or an
F
or an
E
.

Straining her eyes, she was distracted by a movement between two of the other cars in the lot. A man in a black trench coat and a navy baseball cap was moving slowly. Something about him seemed familiar, and when he looked up to scan the row of windows at the back of the building, Emily had a clear view of his face. She gasped. It was the same man she had seen sneaking away from Jim's funeral!

 Emily spun toward the door. Glancing at Tad's classroom, she debated stopping to tell him what she was doing, but there was no time. She careened down the back staircase, bursting out the back doors. She sprinted to the spot where the man had been standing moments ago, but he was nowhere to be seen. The man moved like a bat. Frustrated, she headed back toward the school doors. As she passed Barnes's car, however, she stopped to get a clear look at his license plate. Now she could see that it read "REB-MAN." She snorted. "Man," her foot. The "man" was a toad all the way.

Halfway back up the stairs, she ran into Tad. "Where did you go?" He looked bewildered. For the second time in the space of an hour, Emily admitted to her reckless behavior. "He disappeared into thin air, just like before," she huffed.

"Do
not
do that again," Tad told her firmly and headed back to his classroom. Emily bit her tongue to keep from sticking it out at his retreating back. Mature, she knew, but as much as she wanted to see where this thing, if there even was a thing, was going between her and Tad, she didn't need a keeper. She could take care of herself just fine, thank you very much. Except for her broken arm. And her broken window. Oh, and her lack of wheels…whatever.

Trailing behind Tad, Emily remembered she had seen Barnes's license plate. She relayed the information to Tad, and he scooted behind his desk to narrow his search further. They spent the rest of their shared conference hour skimming through several pages of uninformative articles. Tad pushed away from the computer with frustration. Emily continued to stare at the screen, desperately trying to come up with another way to get some proof that Barnes was a dangerous criminal. The last hit on the results screen caught her eye, and she laughed. It was a picture of a Harlequin Romance. She pointed it out to Tad, joking that she highly doubted he was the lead character in a woman's romance novel.

"Why did that come up in our search?" Tad wondered aloud, clicking the link. The page that came up was an article on best-selling Harlequin Romance writer Carrie Brannon. Emily shrugged and turned away.

"Doesn't seem to have anything to do with Barnes. I guess I'd better go get ready for my afternoon classes." She was almost to the door when Tad let out a hoot of laughter.

"You have to see this, Em." Tad's laughter shook his shoulders. He pointed to the last line of the article.