Hostile Witness (Sanctuary, Inc. #1)

Chapter 8

8

T ia perused the school office, enjoying the funny and sometimes bizarre Pajama Day outfits. While she’d kept it low-key with her slippers, pigtails, and cartoon pajamas, the principal, Yolanda Decker, had gone all out with huge curlers that made her look like an antennae for space aliens.

Their friendship went way back. Yolanda had been Tia’s fiercest supporter through her life-altering fiasco the past couple of years. Some teachers barely tolerated their principals, but Tia loved hers. It had been Yolanda who’d hired a substitute and promised she’d save Tia’s job for her no matter how long it took. It had been Yolanda who’d handled the press with a firm hand and replied “no comment” to the invasive questions dozens of times. Yolanda had been principal at Sandy Beach Elementary for some twenty plus years, having been Tia’s principal in fifth grade. Yolanda was good people.

Tia was playing catch-up after taking Friday off for the disastrous ride along. The butterfly shipment she’d been waiting for was somewhere in the school but not in or near her mail slot. Usually she’d email the office and wait for a reply, but she needed those butterflies for her second class of the day. Sighing, she got in line to wait. Tempting as it was, she couldn’t take advantage of her personal relationship with the administration and cut the line. Her foot tapped impatiently.

Someone bumped her left side. “Oh, good morning, Miss O’Rourke. I see you’re wearing the same clothes as when I left you.” He gave her an ornery smile. “Did you happen to call the precinct and schedule my visit to your class yet?”

Tia almost dropped her coffee cup. Ethan Kelley. The reverberation of his velvet voice trickling down her neck and spine was delicious and downright unnerving. She rolled her shoulders to shake it off.

“Good morning, Detective Kelley. For your information, it’s Pajama Day. That’s why I’m wearing this otherwise-inappropriate outfit, and no, I haven’t called the precinct yet. What brings you to our humble school today?”

“I just finished handling a truant situation with one of the older kids.” He fastened a devious half smile on his face and winked. “I see you have coffee. Something you lacked Saturday morning, if I remember correctly.”

“Ah, yes, you have seen me at my worst recently, haven’t you?” She glanced into his eyes. They danced with humor.

He leaned slightly closer. “Is this your first cup or second?”

She inspected a hangnail on her pinkie. “Second. Why?”

“So you’re in the proceed-with-caution stage of your day?”

“Yes, I suppose I am.” Why was he doing this? The last time she’d seen him, he’d been frustrated as hell with her and had said he’d never bother her again. Why did she suddenly feel like they were sharing a cozy corner booth in a late-night diner?

Doris, the school secretary, who wore a pink Tinker Bell nightshirt and a velvet shower cap, pointed at her. “What can I do for you, Tia?”

She thought for a couple of seconds. Why was she here? Ooh. Ooh. “Butterflies—a package was delivered on Friday, and I can’t locate it.”

Doris rummaged behind the counter and handed her a small parcel. Yolanda, the curler-wearing principal, had perched herself next to Doris and watched Ethan as she tapped her pencil on a pad.

Tia clutched the box to her chest. “Thanks, Doris, I appreciate your help.”

“You two have a good day,” Yolanda called out. Tia glanced at them as she and Detective Kelley left the office. Both women wore Cheshire-cat grins.

Tia huffed. “They heard our conversation just now.”

He halted mid-stride. “So what? We had a friendly exchange.”

She wheeled around and poked him in the chest with a finger. “Friendly exchange? They think you left my house this morning while I was in these pajamas.”

He shook his head. “Impossible. I spoke very softly.”

“Yeah, you did. So did I. But the principal wears one of those new miracle hearing aid things. I know she heard everything we said. People can hear the grass grow with those devices.”

Ethan shoved his hands into his pockets. “Eh, I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“We’ve just been dumped into the Sandy Beach Elementary rumor mill, and I shouldn’t worry about it?”

Ethan chuckled. “I don’t mind. I haven’t been part of a school rumor mill since middle school when I changed schools midyear and the kids thought I was a narc.”

“Pfftt! You probably were a narc. And you should mind. This isn’t the precinct, Detective, and I’m not your buddy. This is my place of employment.”

“Now wait a minute. It was an honest mistake. How was I to know that Principal Decker wore a bionic hearing aid?”

She inhaled a deep breath. “My point is that you should’ve kept your mouth shut.” Her head pounded. Honest to goodness. This was exactly the kind of unintended consequences she’d been trying to avoid for eighteen months, and no good-looking clueless detective was going to mess up the order she’d established in her life. “If you are done handling the truant situation, then please leave.”

He gave her an I’m watching you sign with two fingers.

She responded with an unladylike Slit your throat sign with hers.

Storming down the hallway, Tia just knew this wasn’t the end of the matter. It would take about a half hour for news of the office conversation with the drop-dead gorgeous detective to make its way around the school.

She had stopped at the restroom because she was still spooked about the possibility of having a full bladder with no bathroom available, when one of the first-grade teachers leaned out the door of her classroom and whispered, “You go, girl! I hear he’s a real hottie!”

What? It’d only been three minutes. Tia walked fast to her classroom, clicked on her email, and opened one from her principal. It read:

My dear friend, if I were a younger woman, I’d have to mud wrestle you for him. I’ll send an email and let you know when he’s in the building again.

Yolanda had signed it with several variations of naughty smiley faces.

Tia’s cheeks heated when a couple of teachers gave her a standing ovation as she entered the teacher’s lounge during second lunch. She started to explain the events culminating with the conversation in the office with Detective Kelley, but soon discovered her possible involvement with him enthralled her coworkers. Several of them had tried to fix her up with their grown sons or nephews last year.

Even Mr. Russo, the gentlemanly middle-aged music teacher, ribbed her. “Be careful, Tia. I hear he has quite a sidearm.” Everyone chuckled. Mr. Russo didn’t look half as deranged as the rest of the teachers. His version of Pajama Day was a pair of gray flannel pants and a long-sleeve Superman T-shirt. But Mrs. Spencer was the most authentic in her pajamas. She was seven months pregnant and wore Winnie-the-Pooh footed pajamas complete with the bulging tummy.

Tia laughed along with them. They weren’t interested in the fact that there was nothing between her and Detective Kelley. There would never be anything between them. She’d make sure of it. The time for that had been fifteen years ago, and she hadn’t seen him again until the ill-fated ride along. He could take his big muscles and his helping hands somewhere else. And from now on? He’d better keep his comments to himself.