End Me a Tenor (20 page)

“Come now . . . trouble . . . Megan . . . dead.”

I took several deep breaths and asked, “Did you say Megan was dead?” No response. I looked down at my phone. Crap. No bars.

I walked toward the front doors, hoping to regain my phone signal. “Hello? Larry?” My phone display told me I now had a signal. Larry, however, was long gone.

Punching in Larry’s number, I waved my thanks to Gayle, told my aunt we had to go, and hurried out the door knowing Millie would be right behind. The phone rang five times and went to voice mail. Larry must be in a reception dead zone or he was too busy to answer. I left a quick message telling him I was on my way, hung up, and dialed Devlyn. Maybe he’d know what was going on. Straight to voice mail. Damn.

I considered calling the school’s office and decided against it. If something terrible
had
happened, the office staff would be swamped with calls from panicked parents. While I was freaked, parents would be even more upset. Their needs came first. And on the off chance Larry was overreacting, clueing the office staff in on the problem wasn’t going to help anyone.

Saying a quick prayer that Megan was okay, I hopped into Millie’s car and gave her the rundown on Larry’s phone call. I asked my aunt to drive to Prospect Glen High School—fast—and turned on the radio. Something bad happening at a high school would be a lead story. At least it would be after the station was done hawking HoneyBaked ham.

It took an array of colorful language and a couple of bumper collisions before Millie extricated the car from its parallel parking spot. She pulled into traffic and hit the gas. My stomach lurched into my throat, and I reached for the safety bar. Horns honked. Aunt Millie gave the middle-finger salute, and I reminded myself to breathe as the guy on the radio began reciting the news. Fire in the city . . . blah, blah, blah. Armed robbery . . . yadda, yadda, yadda. Kids throwing snowballs from an overpass onto the road, causing several accidents.

Nothing about Megan Posey or Prospect Glen High School. I took that and the lack of emergency vehicles in front of the school as a good sign. Millie let me off at the front entrance and I raced inside. The hallways were quiet as I strode across the scarred linoleum toward the performing arts wing. The clock told me the quiet wouldn’t last long. The bell signaling the end of fourth period was about to ring.

My hand was reaching for the choir room doorknob as the bell jangled. I jumped out of the way as the door flew open and a herd of kids stormed out. When the coast was clear, I peeked into the room, braced for the worst. Larry was seated at the grand piano, gazing off into the distance, his cell phone clutched in his hands. For some reason, the quiet pose disturbed me more than if he’d been yelling at the top of his lungs. Larry wasn’t exactly a sit-still kind of guy.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

Larry yelped and spun around. The fast motion combined with Larry’s lack of coordination caused him to slip off the edge of the piano bench, smack onto the tile floor.

I raced over, grabbed Larry’s hand, and hauled him upright. “Are you okay? Is Megan? I only caught a couple of words before the phone connection cut us off.” Just enough to scare the hell out of me.

Larry’s eyebrows knitted together. His mouth trembled. Oh my God. Megan really was dead. Did the killer come looking for me and find one of my students? My throat closed up and a flood of tears churned behind my eyes as I waited for the news that would make them fall.

“Me . . . Me . . . Megan caught her hand in the shower door and pulled off one of her nails. Her hand st . . . st . . . started to bleed and she fainted and hi . . . hi . . . hit her hea . . . hea . . . head. Her sister came by last hour to tell me Megan’s doctor won’t allow her to perform in the concert t . . . t . . . tonight.”

I grabbed the piano as a wave of relief hit. Megan being injured was bad, but dead would be worse. Way worse.

“Okay,” I said, trying to pull my thoughts together. “We have to get a message to the Music in Motion kids. We need an extra rehearsal before tonight.” The bell rang again, signaling the beginning of lunch. Since the school was so large, the lunch period was divided into three separate sections. Kids attended class during two of those sections and lunch during the other. Since most of the choir kids didn’t have a study hall, Larry allowed them to come to the choir room instead of the cafeteria during their lunch breaks. I’d been around during enough lunch periods to know that my choir kids rarely opted for the lunchroom. They also rarely used the extra study time to study. Which gave me an idea.

“Can we get a message to the choir to come here during lunch?” I wouldn’t be able to practice with everyone at once, but I’d at least be able to start figuring out how to work around Megan’s absence. Between lunch rehearsals and a quick run-through with the entire group during seventh-hour choir, we might be able to save the show.

Larry agreed. Lunch rehearsal was a good idea. He hurried to the office to make an announcement over the PA system, and I called my aunt to tell her the students were safe and she could go home. I would be here for a while longer and didn’t want her to wait. If Larry or Devlyn couldn’t give me a lift home, I’d call a cab.

As Larry’s voice echoed over the loud speaker, I closed my eyes and envisioned the dance numbers that were supposed to be performed tonight. Because Megan was a strong singer but not a strong dancer, I’d positioned her and her partner in the back for most of the numbers. There was only one number where she and her partner were front and center. I would have to move another couple forward to fill the gap. I’d also have to recast the solo that she’d just been assigned. Chessie would think she was the obvious choice, and if rehearsal didn’t go well today, giving her the feature might be the only way to save my job. Oy.

I’d deal with that later. The real question I needed to focus on was whether or not to ask another student to fill in for Megan tonight. The Music in Motion choir had two female and two male understudies. Those understudies were both part of Larry’s Singsations group, but attended the Music in Motion rehearsals to practice with the squad in case of emergencies. Well, this was an emergency. I just hoped one of the female understudies had been practicing her moves.

Since it would be at least another twenty minutes before the first students would arrive, I used the time to call for backup. Devlyn’s phone went to voice mail—again. I gave him the update on Megan, told him about my emergency lunch rehearsals, and asked if he could come by the theater early tonight to help boost the kids’ morale before they went on with the show. Devlyn had a way of building students up so they thought they could leap tall buildings in a single bound. If I was going to save tonight’s performance, I’d need all the superpowers I could get.

I hung up and dialed a second number. The recorded music we typically used for rehearsal was okay, but what I really needed was an accompanist who could start and stop and pound out the understudy’s part if necessary. As luck would have it, my aunt was shacking up with a guy who fit the bill.

Aldo agreed be at the school in time for seventh period, so I walked down to the office, gave the rent-a-security guy Aldo’s name, and asked if someone could show Aldo to the choir room. The last thing I needed was a still slightly turquoise Italian man wandering aimlessly up and down the halls. He’d get pegged upside his head by a spitball for sure.

Out of the fourteen members of Music in Motion, eight had “B” lunch, which gave me something to work with. One of the female understudies also arrived wide-eyed and pale as a ghost. Not a good sign.

Nope. Not a good sign at all. The girl knew the notes and the steps, but the minute she had to dance with Megan’s dark-haired, blue-eyed partner, Jacob, everything fell apart. Her pale skin turned beet red when Jacob put his hand on her waist. She stepped on his feet, forgot the words, and looked like she was going to hurl through it all.

I couldn’t decide if the hurling was due to stage fright or the proximity to the handsome boy next to her. Probably a combination of both. Had I not been desperate to keep my job, I might have found the girl endearing. Instead, I was telling her “thanks, but no thanks” and sending up a prayer to the show choir gods that the next understudy was immune to Jacob’s charms.

The girl in question arrived with the “C” lunch crowd. As luck would have it, the understudy was Megan’s younger sister, Claire. The two girls weren’t exactly the best of friends. Both were blonde and average height. That’s where the similarities stopped. Where Megan was shy and sweet and struggled academically, sophomore Claire was outspoken, abrasive, and highly intellectual. More than once, Claire had thought about dropping show choir because it interfered with her study time. Luckily, I’d managed to talk her out of it because, while Claire didn’t have the sensational voice of her older sister, Claire could dance. I just hoped the idea of taking her sister’s place, albeit temporarily, didn’t make Claire wig out.

Jacob was gone, so I asked Eric to act as Claire’s partner. The concerned, almost embarrassed look on his face as he took Claire’s hand made me wonder whether he and Chessie had had a fight. The last thing we needed in this choir was romantic teenage drama. Oy! Cueing up the music, I shelved my worry about Eric’s love life and waited for Claire to show her stuff.

Claire looked nervous, but her feet flawlessly executed every step of the first number. I cued up the second one. Once again, Claire’s dancing was perfection. Too bad her face looked as though someone was stabbing her with a red-hot poker. Something to work on.

By the time lunch was over, I’d dodged Chessie’s pointed questions about the now-vacant solo position and was confident Claire could perform all but the newest musical number. The lifts were too complicated to risk it. I’d just have to figure something else out by the time seventh period rolled around.

The next group of kids filed in, and Larry began running through their music for tonight’s concert. Since I wasn’t needed, I headed down to the cafeteria vending machines to score something that resembled lunch.

My nerves craved deep-fried chips and lots of salt. Unfortunately, the school board had passed a ban on anything tasty in the vending machines. Instead of cheese puffs and salty chips, I was faced with crispy edamame, pomegranate-spiked nut clusters, sunflower seeds, or a dozen other items deemed healthy enough for today’s youth. Had these been the snack choices when I was growing up, I would have flunked out of high school for sure. Stress required Snickers. Unless the stress quotient for high school students had reduced drastically since my days of pimples and puberty, these kids were screwed. And at the moment so was I.

After several tries, I convinced the machine to take my dollar, made my selections, and retrieved them from the bin. Pretending the granola bar was slathered in chocolate fudge, I scarfed it down and shoved the wrapper in my jeans pocket. As I headed back toward the choir room, I struggled to open a bag of baked potato chips that advertised being just as good as deep-fried chips. Whoever said there was truth in advertising was just plain wrong.

I spotted Aldo shuffling down the hall in a bright orange coat. He was squinting at room numbers while clutching a hall pass in his purple-gloved hand. A smile lit his face when he spotted me hurrying toward him. “I hope you don’t mind. I get here early to look over the music before rehearsal.”

“Early is good,” I said. Early was way better than being late, although I doubted Aldo needed to look at the music. Not only was he a gifted cook, the man sight-read almost any piece of music without a mistake. I envied his skill. Between grammar school, high school, and college, I’d taken seven years of piano. Those lessons taught me how to play passably well, but I still needed long hours of practice before playing a piece in front of an audience. The taxidermied quintet in Millie’s living room didn’t count.

Grabbing the music from Larry’s office, I led Aldo to one of the practice rooms and listened to him play. I made a couple of minor tempo adjustments and smiled as he played through the songs again without a single flaw. Yep—the man was a genius. Since we had time to kill before seventh period, Aldo began playing his favorite holiday tunes. I didn’t wait to be asked. I just started singing.