“You heard me.”
“What’s your deal, mister?” the shorter one said, his face screwing up with agitation.
“My deal is your pal was following me.”
“Get out of our way,” the shorter one said.
I stood there. They stood there.
“Here’s the way it’s gonna go, guys.” I stepped in closer, looking at the taller one because he seemed less sure of their position. “All three of us know you were following me. I have no problem with that. As long as you tell me why. If you wanna act like nothing happened, that’s fine too. We can keep walking until we find a nice quiet spot and then I’ll make you tell me.
“We weren’t following you,” the tall one said, unconvincingly.
“I saw you with a beer in your hand in the bar,” I said. “That’s illegal.”
The tall one’s face pinched together, looking at me like I was crazy.
“Bullshit,” the short one said. “He didn’t drink anything.”
“See? I can lie too.”
Their faces reddened and I tried to seize the moment. “Right now. One of you starts talking or I’m gonna kick both your asses. Right now.”
The taller one took a step back, clearly the weaker of the two. “Okay, okay.”
“Jesus, Matt,” the other one said.
“Hey, this was your idea, Derek,” Matt fired back at his friend.
“Now I got names,” I said. “Derek and Matt. We’re off to a good start.” I looked at Matt. “You were following me. Why?”
“We saw you outside the gates at Meredith’s house,” Matt said.
Derek winced, shaking his head.
I knew my way around San Diego. It wasn’t like going to a city I was unfamiliar with. I didn’t have to think about where I was going. Apparently, I’d been too comfortable navigating the streets of the city to pay attention to the rearview mirror.
“We wanted to see where you were going,” Matt said, then pointed at Derek. “
Derek scowled again, then looked at me. “You’re friends with him, right?”
“With who?”
“With that asshole that fucked Meredith,” he spat. “He fucked her and then he fucked her up so she wouldn’t tell.”
His words were like a kick to my shins. Chuck slept with Meredith? No way in hell did I believe that. Derek’s anger was real, though, and his statement bothered me.
“Yeah, he’s my friend,” I said. “I’m an investigator.”
“Yeah, I know,” Derek said. “We heard that when you were talking with Mr. Jordan’s security chick. And you’re working for Coach Winslow.”
I blinked my eyes a couple of times, clearing my head, making sure I’d heard him right. “Coach Winslow?”
His face tightened again, irritated. “Yeah. He never should’ve come to our school.”
I pointed at Derek’s T-shirt. “He coaches at Coronado?”
Matt nodded, just wanting the interrogation to end. But Derek cocked his head at me, unsure of me now. “I thought you were friends with him?”
“I am.”
He nodded, a sly grin creeping onto his face. “Well, for a friend, you don’t seem to know shit.”
Couldn’t argue with that.
Derek lifted his chin at Matt. “Come on.”
Matt stood still, not sure what to do.
“He’s not gonna do anything,” Derek said, turning back to me. “You’re not gonna do a thing.”
“Sure about that?”
He nodded, confident. “Yeah, I am. Go ahead. Start kicking our asses, like you said. Let’s see what happens.” His eyes swept the area. “Lotta people around here right now.”
He was right. I wasn’t going to start smacking around a couple of high school kids in the middle of a crowd, particularly when they hadn’t done anything really wrong.
“Why were you following me?” I asked again, bringing the conversation full circle.
Derek grabbed Matt by the arm and pulled him past me. Matt looked down at the ground, refusing to meet my eyes. Derek, on the other hand, was happy to sneer at me as they went past me. I did nothing.
NINE
I went back to my hotel room for an uneasy night of sleep, my mind bouncing from Chuck lying in a hospital bed, to two punk kids tailing me, to the phrase “Coach Winslow,” to knowing I was going to have cross back over to the island the next morning.
Chuck always did his own thing and had ever since I’d known him in high school. We were as close as friends could be, but not in a dependent way. And while there was now a fracture in our relationship, I still felt like I had a good handle on who he was. Hearing that he was a coach struck me as odd, but hearing that he slept with a teenage girl struck me as flat out fiction.
I had zero doubt the charges against him were crap. He did a lot of stupid things but he wouldn’t sleep with an underage kid. Not in a million years. But the fact that he now seemed to be doing other things that I wouldn’t have expected had my mind spinning.
I got up the following morning and, after a light breakfast, headed back over the bridge to the island.
There is nothing spectacular looking about Coronado High School. Originally built in 1912, it still occupies the same location off of D Avenue where it was initially established. It had slowly grown to a four-block campus extending west toward H Avenue, a neat rectangle of small two-story Spanish style stucco buildings dotted with palm trees and striped with long medians of green grass. I knew that the school had undergone some capital improvements-refurbished classrooms, a new library, an entirely separate arts center-but from the exterior, it was the same school I’d attended nearly twenty-five years earlier.
There was no school parking lot and cars ringed the streets around the campus. It was like a convention of expensive cars. BMWs, Land Rovers, Saabs and a few Porsches lined the curbs. Even though most of the students lived within walking distance, the kids at Coronado knew how to get to school.
Students were hanging around aimlessly on the shallow steps in front of the administrative building. They didn’t seem to notice that I was there, that I was older than they were and that I wasn’t dressed as well. It was Abercrombie and Fitch everywhere, like the catalog had come to life, complete with the models. Tan skin, shiny hair, expensive jewelry, boys and girls who looked twenty-five rather than seventeen.
As old as the school was, Lana McCauley seemed nearly as old. She’d been there when I was a student and she was still there when I walked in that morning.
“Joseph Tyler,” she said, smiling. “Class of ’88.”
Despite my conflicted feelings about why I was back on campus, I smiled. It was what Lana was famous for. Within one month of your freshman year, she knew your name and never forgot it. Ever.
“Hello, Mrs. McCauley,” I said. “How are you?”
She spread her arms across the desk in front of her. “Just making sure things stay on track, as always.”
“As always.”
Her phone beeped and she held up a finger. She answered the phone, transferred the call and focused on me again. “I’m surprised to see you here, Joseph.”
“Why’s that?”
She tented her fingers. “I didn’t know you were back on Coronado.”
“Just got back yesterday.”
