True Fires Read Online Free PDF Page B

troublemaker, that one,” May agrees.
    “Did you hear me tell him he could snatch those two kids right outta class? Stir up this hornet’s nest with every hothead in town? Hand out my home phone number like it was goddamn Halloween candy?”
    “Of course not!”
    Cantrell closes his right eye and he rubs his right temple. Squinting with his left eye at the message stack, he asks, “Any school-board members?”
    “Only three,” she tells him, pursing lips again.
    “Goddamnit, May!” he explodes.
    May White opens her mouth to reply, then snaps it shut at the sound of the front door opening onto the office lobby. Cantrell waves a weary hand at her. May turns and hurries out of his office, into her area behind the counter.
    “Why, Lila Hightower, as I live and breathe!”
    Damnit,
Cantrell thinks, hoping the Bufferin kicks in soon.
    “Hey, Miss May, how you doin’?” he hears Lila reply.
    “Fair to middlin’, rain this time of year kicks up my arthritis pretty bad. How’s your mamma?”
    “Took to her bed right after the funeral. Got Sissy waitin’ on her hand and foot.”
    “Poor dear. What’s the doctor say?”
    “Oh, you know Mamma and her nerves. She’ll get up when she’s good and ready.”
    “I’ve been meanin’ to give her a call, catch her up on all the news.”
    “Gossip, y’mean? She might like that. Mornings are better than afternoons. Now, Miss May . . .”—Cantrell hears the fat pause, knows what’s coming—“I’m here to see Ed and
he
should know
”—these words are spoken loudly for Cantrell’s benefit—“I won’t take no for an answer.”
    “Why, Lila, of course Ed’s door’s open to you. And to, uh, Mr. Dare, isn’t it?”
    “Yes, ma’am,” a man’s voice says.
    Damnit to hell,
Cantrell thinks, rising, using a flat palm to push against the pain exploding like a land mine behind his eyeballs.
    Suddenly, the phone on May White’s desk rings. “ ’Scuse me, Lila. Lake Esther Elementary, one moment please.” As Cantrell reaches his doorway to invite them in, May covers the bottom part of the receiver with a gnarled, blue-veined hand and smiles at the two big-eyed children trailing their father, who’s trailing Lila Hightower, through the half door into her area. “You two like peppermint candy? Have a seat, and I’ll get you some while the adults talk.”
    Lila Hightower lets Cantrell close the door and take his seat before she lights into him.
She’s a striking woman still,
Cantrell thinks, as the fifteen-years-ago memory of her—the queen of their Homecoming Court dressed in fire-engine red with lipstick to match, looking for all the world like Scarlett O’Hara arriving at Miz Melly’s birthday party—flashes through his mind.
She’s thinner now,
he notes, dressed in a crisp white shirt, open at the neck and tucked into man-tailored black pants.
More Katharine Hepburn than Vivien Leigh.
    “Ed, since when does Kyle DeLuth get to think he runs the school system on top of everything else around here?”
    Cantrell feels himself take the bait. “He doesn’t run it, the school board does!”
    “And what, might I ask, do you do?”
    Hooked, goddamnit.
“Lila, Mr. Dare, I apologize. Yesterday, the Sheriff just strolled in here, grinning like a Cheshire cat, and made off with two of our students, without my knowledge or permission. Apparently, after he spoke with you two, he made the rounds—V.F.W., the Elks Club, the Masonic Temple—informing everyone in town that I’ve been somehow derelict in my duty.”
    “But, Ed, Franklin’s got the kids’ birth certificates right here, same ones he showed Miss May when he enrolled them. Says plain as day they’re white.”
    “And here, right here”—Franklin Dare holds up another document—“is my marriage certificate. Says here both me and my wife are white, too!”
    Cantrell shakes his pain-racked head. “I know it. But, as I’ve been informed by the four school-board members who called my home last