“Scandalous?” Mrs. Graham chirped, happy to be on the receiving end of gossip she wasn’t part of. “Well, do tell.”

  “Some farmer out there committed murders, or so I remember—buried the bodies out on his farm. I think they sent him to prison for it.”

  “Do you remember his name?” Abby asked. Mrs. O’Rourke sipped tea and frowned.

  “Grady, I think. He was carrying on with some farm woman out there, I can’t remember her name. All but killed her, too. An ugly business, all the way around.” She shuddered delicately. “What some women will do in the name of love.”

  She speared Abby with a cold, knowing glance. Abby looked down at her spinach salad.

  In the silence, Mr. Harris said casually, “Considering how well you did with the Mozart, I told Sheryl Patterson over in Odessa that you’d probably be willing to do a concert there, too. Different program you want. She said to call her.”

  Her stomach was not prepared for the thought, another performance, not so soon; she gave him felt like a pale smile and nodded. An all-new audience. Joy.

  As he got up from the table to dispose of his lunch trash, he added, “Nice roses you got. I saw them your dressing room.”

  She looked up to find Mrs. O’Rourke and Mrs Graham both spearing her with laser eyes. With one stroke, he’d implied a secret lover and his own visit to her dressing room. Good God.

  She mumbled a hasty apology and left so quickly she was out the door ahead of him. She turned to face him as he walked by, grinning.

  “You did that on purpose,” she accused, keeping her voice to a whisper. Their footsteps echoed flatly over the wide linoleum hall; early afternoon spilled warm liquid gold over her scuffed black shoes.

  “Guy’s gotta have a little fun every now and then. Heckyl and Jeckyl in there need something new to talk about, might as well be you.” He gave her a toothy grin. “Better you than me, anyway.”

  “Oh, thanks a lot, Harris, you’re tons of help. How do I get them off my back?”

  “You don’t,” he said, and stuck his hands in his coat pockets. They walked down the empty lockerlined hallway toward the music hall. From the classrooms on either side came the muted buzz of voices and laughter. The hallway had a lifeless feeling to it, as if the kids took all the excitement with them when entered the classrooms. “Better not be doing hing naughty, Abby, or you’ll find it nailed on announcement board in there.”

  She blushed hotly, feeling the imprint of John Lee’s dy on hers like a sunburn. Harris shot her a side-ways look.

  “I have a one-thirty with Carla Jane,” she said, and engthened her strides to leave him behind.

  Carla Jane was waiting in the practice room, fidgeting her lace-tied lemon-yellow tennis shoes in impatient circles on the floor. She hadn’t even gotten her clarinet out Before Abby could even sit down, Carla had excuses ready.

  “Miz Rhodes, I have a sore throat.” She tried hard to make her voice raspy, even gave a pitiful cough at the end. Abby opened her own instrument case and let her hands go to work assembling the clarinet.

  “Do you? Did you see the nurse?”

  “No.” Carla’s woeful face perked up. “Should I? Now?”

  “If you don’t feel better in a little while, we’ll see. Let’s go through some of the Rubank exercises first.”

  Carla sighed and kicked the floor and, finally, opened her case. She had a beautiful instrument—her parents had paid a mint for it—but the wood hardly saw the light of day. It took all of Carla’s concentration to remember how to put it together. Abby waited patiently. Carla sucked on her reed as enthusiastically as if it were a cough drop. It was the one part of the setup process that seemed to appeal to her, and she dawdled over it until Abby pointed to he open book and the exercise she’d marked in red.

  “I assume you practiced it,” she said. Carla nodded, eyes fixed somewhere around her lemon-yellow sneakers. “Then we can get it right out of the way. Go ahead.”

  Carla fumbled her way through it, honking like a goose with a cold. It was miserable. Worse than miserable. Abby sighed and played the exercise with her, slowly, over and over, fingers automatically finding the easiest path to the music while Carla’s searched the air blindly.

  Harris had told her at the start that Carla was hopeless. She was starting to believe it.

  Someone knocked on the practice room door, and Abby looked up to see Harris’s unsmiling face framed in the window. She motioned to Carla to continue—which Carla didn’t, of course—and got up to answer him.

  “Somebody here to see you,” he said. His face was carefully blank. “In my office. Hey, Carla Jane, keep going. I’ll take over until Miz Rhodes is back.”

  Carla Jane looked devastated. Abby hesitated in the doorway, a question forming on her lips, but Harris closed the door on her. She took a deep breath and crossed the huge green-carpeted band hall to the closed door that said DIRECTOR, Harris had stuck NO DIVING sign on the door. She turned the knob an looked inside.

  Vice Principal Orwin Prather stood in the center the room, hands clasped behind his back, should slumped. He was a short, dumpy man but his round-shouldered body language always reminded her Richard Nixon, and so did his eyes—narrow, dark, calculating eyes. He looked her up and down without comment and indicated the battered visitor chair in front of Harris’s littered desk.

  She sat, legs gone suddenly nerveless. He had a smile on his face. He never smiled unless someone was in trouble.

  “I got a call this morning,” he said. His voice had the disconcerting habit of rising at the end of his sentences, as if he were asking a question. She gave him a hesitant nod. “Miss Rhodes, this kind of behavior is clearly unacceptable. It reflects badly upon the faculty and the school, and it can’t continue.”

  “I beg your—” She took a deep breath and started over. “Who called?”

  “The Fall Creek Police Department,” he said, and picked lint from his suit lapel. He needed to keep doing it, she thought; the suit looked like it might be shedding. “An officer there clocked your car speeding out of town this morning. He said he’d let the whole incident go with this warning, but I, Miss Rhodes, am hardly as forgiving. If you want to make a practice of—”

  “Excuse me?” she blurted. Terry. Somehow he’d found out her name—found her concert program in John Lee’s car, maybe. “I didn’t.”

  “Didn’t what?”

  “Didn’t speed through Fall Creek this morning,” she said, and breathed a deep sigh of relief. “My car’s in the shop—Hernandez Transmission, if you want to check. It’s been there for three days. I’m not scheduled to pick it up until tomorrow.”

  The Principal of Vice did not like being thwarted. He gave her a beady-eyed frown and said, “So you were not in Fall Creek this morning.”

  “Would you like to call Mr. Hernandez? I’ll be happy to give you the number. In fact, I was planning to call him myself to find out if—”

  “No, I’m sure I’ve kept you long enough,” Prather interrupted. “Shouldn’t you be getting back to your lesson? I have a two o’clock appointment with Mr. Henderson.”

  He didn’t wait for her reply. She sat staring at the open door, listening to the distant squeaking anguish of Carla Jane’s latest finger exercise, and felt a deep stab of fear.

  Officer Terry had put out a lot of effort to cause trouble.

  She caught a ride home with Harris, which was probably a mistake, considering the presence of gossip twins Graham and O’Rourke, who lingered near the parking lot, the better to watch you, my dear. She imagined she saw O’Rourke’s lips moving even before she’d closed the pickup truck door.

  “Well?” Harris asked. She balanced her instruments more carefully on her lap “Don’t keep me in suspense. What was the beef? Prather find out you posed nude for Penthouse?”

  “Playboy,” she said. “Better clientele.”

  “Not around here. Don’t worry, he gets everybody, sooner or later. We all get the ‘reflects badly on the faculty’ speech. Or the ‘high moral character’ speed Which one did you get?”

  “Option A. It was all a mistake, anyway. He apologized.”

  Harris, in the process of turning onto Main Street, almost lost control of the truck. “Apologized? Did you see his lips move?”

  “Come to think of it, it wasn’t so much an apology as a retreat. Did he get Henderson?”

  “Mr. Heineken Man? Oh, yeah. Smoke detectors went off. Could have been worse. We once had an assistant director who took a bunch of seventeen-year-olds to a bar in Dallas on a band trip. Almost lost the whole music program over that one. Before my time, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “You’re damn lucky to get off with Prather, mistake or not. Once he smells blood, it’s all over.” Harris fished a package of Camel cigarettes out of the glove compartment and lit one, savoring the smoke. “My one vice per day. Verboten at the concentration camp.”

  “Could do it at home,” she suggested, and waved away gray tendrils that undulated toward her.

  “I think they’ve got the place bugged. Hell, they paid for the house to get me here. How do I know they don’t have video cameras in the walls?”

  She couldn’t tell if he was joking. He flicked the half-smoked cigarette out the window into the snow-slushed street and made the turn into her apartment complex.

  John Lee was sitting in his car by her door, reading a book. She took too long staring at him; when she looked over at Harris to thank him for the ride he had a demonic light in his eyes.

  “Friend of yours?” he asked blandly. “Never mind. I don’t want to know you’re having more fun than I am. Have one for me.”

  “One what?” she asked as she stepped down from the truck. “He’s here to fix my broken window.”

  “Oh, yeah, sure. Tell me another one, Rhodes. Wait’ll I tell—”

  She slammed the door on the threat and watched him drive away. She felt John Lee’s approach, shivered when he trailed warm fingers across the back of her neck.

  “Afternoon, ma’am,” he said. She closed her eyes and leaned back into him, fitting perfectly. His arms went around her waist. “Have a nice day at school?”

  “Very …” She turned to face him, close enough that their lips brushed. Not quite a kiss. Not quite. “Very educational. So, you’re here to fix my window, right?”

  Amusement ironed creases at the corners of his dark eyes. “Damn straight. Among other things.”

  “You in the mood to be dog taxi later?” A cold, sly breeze teased his hair back and combed it into waves. She let her fingers follow and the soft, feathery brush of his hair made her smile. “The vet’s approved Carlton to come home. That would be after I pay you for the window, of course.”

  He leaned into her touch like a cat, watching her eyes. “I might be willing to do a little extra work on the side. Ma’am.”

  “Mmmm.” She had a deep, hungry need to kiss him, but the temptation was almost as satisfying. “Better hurry, mister, I’m not paying you by the hour.”

  He laughed and let her go. The wind crowded in between them like a jealous stepchild. She ran to the door and unlocked it, missing Carlton’s welcoming bark but obscurely glad to have John Lee all to herself, then turned to watch him unload tools and plywood from the trunk of his car. He’d have an orderly trunk, she was almost sure. Nothing there but clean space and a spare.

  He carried the stuff inside and set it carefully on the floor next to the couch.

  “The window’s in the bedroom,” she said helpfully. He froze in the act of straightening.

  “That sounds like an invitation.”

  “It’s information.” She grinned. “What you do with it is your business, mister. Straight down the hall—”

  “Oh, I remember where it is, don’t you worry. I stood there in your bathroom and listened to you get dressed.”

  “What? You rat! And I thought you were looking at Playgirl.”

  “Couldn’t keep my mind on the damn thing,” he said, and picked up the tools again. “Maybe you’d better come with me, make sure I don’t get lost.”

  He measured the window while she sat on the end of the bed and watched him. He made careful notes on a pad that went back in his toolbox. The whole process took about a minute.

  “Want me to nail some plywood over this for tonight? Keep out the wind and prowlers?” he asked.

  “Is that it? All the maintenance I get?”

  “I’m a craftsman, lady, I don’t just slap glass in a frame. Besides“—he raised his eyebrows—“don’t you want me to keep coming back?”

  She reached out and grabbed his belt buckle, reeled him closer.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  And the phone rang. She jerked as if it had stabbed her in the back—which it had—and gave him an exasperated look before rolling over the rumpled covers to grab the receiver.

  “So,” Benny said brightly on the other end of the line before she could even say hello. “There I was, driving back to a dull evening of Grieg and Dvorak when—wham!—all of a sudden it hits me.”

  “Hello, Benny,” she said, and threw an arm over her eyes. The bed creaked as John Lee took a seat at the end of it. “I hope it wasn’t a truck.”

  “A narrow escape, but no, it wasn’t. I’m thinking about old Professor Courier—you remember—he’s got a retirement party this weekend down at the Meyerson, and I was thinking since you were his prize student you’d better just hop a puddle jumper and stay with me for the weekend.”

  She refused to answer while she wrenched her mind—violently—away from John Lee and followe Benny’s convoluted logic.

  “I don’t know if I can make it,” she said cautious when she thought she had it. “I’m kind of in middle of something right now. Can I call you back?”

  “Is the something live and breathing?”

  “None of your business, Benny. When’s the party?”

  “Saturday night. The hot, hip crowd’ll go out to scope out the night life later. You, me, Duncan—well, scratch Duncan. What about it?” When the hesitation grew too long, Benny’s voice took on a sharper, more interested note. “You weren’t really in the middle of somebody, were you? Like, some cowboy or something?”

  “Ben—”

  “Oh, man, I knew it. Listen, too much passion messes with your head. Get on the plane and get your butt up here on Saturday, or else.” She hung up before Abby could answer. Abby strangled the receiver with both hands, violently, before putting it back in the cradle.

  John Lee got up off the bed and positioned plywood over the window. He was one of those guys who took two blows of the hammer to put a nail in—one tap, one solid hit. A professional. Abby watched him work with a lazy appreciation. The bed seemed to have acquired extra gravity since she’d laid down on it.

  “Done,” he announced, tossed his hammer like a twirling baton, and caught it behind his back. “Have if new window for you tomorrow, ma’am. Anything else I can do for you?”

  “Take me to pick up Carlton from the vet,” she said. He leaned over her, so close that a deep breath would have made their chests touch.

  “You mean right this minute?”

  “Well … not right now.”

  “Anything else you can think of you need?” His lips brushed over the smooth skin of her collarbone, breath blowtorch hot.

  She said, “I could think of one or two.”

  “Do tell.”

  She did.

  Largo: December 10, 1994

  “Pearl Harbor Day,” said Benny’s mother from the backseat as Benny floored the car and pulled out into Love Field traffic. “Pearl Harbor Day’s always been very special around our house, hasn’t it, Benina?”

  “Yeah. So how was the flight? Skinny flight attendants and salted peanuts?”

  Benny’s question dragged Abby away from a sweet, tactile memory of John Lee’s mouth on her skin and made her blink. The conversation, which had been an ongoing sniping match between the two Wright women, had just fired a shot in her direction. “Oh. Fine, thanks. One of my seatmates talked about his business meeting the whole time except when he was complaining about airsickness. The other one might have been dead.” She turned in her seat to offer Mrs. Wright a smile. The sweet little elderly woman had dressed up in honor of Abby’s arrival in a cherry-pink flowered dress. She’d had her hair done, too. The gray curls and creases looked razorsharp. “Special how, Mrs. Wright?”

  “Well, Henry—that’s Benny’s father, dear, you never met him—Henry was very patriotic. He always used to hang our American flag outside every Sunday, remember, honey? He was just beside himself when the Japs bombed us. Went right down and enlisted.” Mrs. Wright nodded twice for emphasis, cupid’s-bow mouth drawn up tight. “Pearl Harbor Day has always been remembered at our house.”

  “He only tried to enlist, Mom,” Benny said in a quick, bored monotone. “They didn’t take him.”

  “That doesn’t make him any less patriotic, now, does it? Abby, dear, how is your father these days?”

  “Fine,” she said, and made a guilty mental note to find out. “Benny, aren’t we going to stop for lunch?”

  Benny gave her a look of pure betrayal.

  “Oh, I’m sure Mom wants to go home in time to see Days of Our Lives, right, Mom?”

  “No, that’s just fine, I’d love to hear Abby talk about all her little students. You know, Benny’s father was a teacher, and he never seemed to have good students. I just couldn’t understand it. Do you think children are more intelligent today?”

  All Abby’s thoughts just now seemed to have to do with John Lee or the barbed-wire gossip circle at the school. And she didn’t think the kind of things that she was thinking about John Lee would make suitable lunchtime gossip, at least not with Benny’s mother. God, she missed him with a physical intensity that surprised and distressed her. What was he’d told her that first day? We don’t get but three perfect minutes in our lives. She had the awful feel that by leaving him, she was missing out or least two.