He frowned at me. “Hell, yeah. Undermines the teamwork. Makes players doubt your commitment. Hard to win unless all the guys on the field trust each other.”
Ye gods. I let that one pass without comment because Coach Peet was pushing through the gym door and a straggly line of high schoolers in gym clothes quieted as he came in. From the smell, I was betting some of these kids hadn’t run their tee shirts through the wash in at least a couple of weeks.
The coach turned to face me, putting his back to the students, and spoke in an undertone. “You want my opinion, it was suicide. He threw himself down the stairs at Rothmere. That bit about a werewolf smothering him at the hospital”—he shook his head sharply—“that reeks of cover-up. Maybe he managed to smother himself and the hospital’s afraid of being sued. Or maybe one of his folks did it if the docs told ’em he was going to be a vegetable. I think he did himself in. Ever since he got into that study—the one testing the new antidepressant—he’s been real unpredictable with his moods.”
The coach’s words left me with my mouth agape. Was it even possible to smother yourself? I didn’t know.
“Where were you Sunday night?”
His eyebrows crinkled his brow. “None of your—Oh, what the hell. Home. Reviewing film from last week’s game. Happy?”
He was half turned away from me when I got in my final question. “Who gets Braden’s spot on the roster?” I asked.
“Farber.” And the coach blew his whistle, either to signal the end of our conversation or the start of gym class.
I left to the sound of basketballs dribbling on the slick floor. Walking back toward Mom’s, I thought about what I’d learned. Braden was a good student and, apparently, an honorable kid. Too honorable for the coach’s taste, and probably for his teammates’ taste. He was participating in a study for an antidepressant drug. How could I find out more about that? I thought I’d read somewhere that antidepressant meds could, paradoxically, increase the chance of suicide, especially in teens. Was it possible that Coach Peet’s speculations were right? No way. A hospital wouldn’t make up a story like that to avoid a lawsuit . . . would they? I wished I could talk to Braden’s parents again, but they’d gone out of town.
Mark Crenshaw was supposedly Braden’s best buddy. Maybe he’d know something. Maybe he’d even know what was bothering Braden the week before he died, what Braden was talking about when he told Rachel he might need to “intervene” in something. And Lonnie Farber would probably be worth talking to as well. How badly did he want to be a starter? He’d certainly done everything he could to confuse things at Rothmere. Had there been more intent behind his pranks than just stirring the pot?
Arriving back at the salon, I took a moment to look at the line of clouds bearing down from the east. The puffy harbingers from earlier had clearly invited their friends and relatives to join the party. The sky was a hazier blue and the sounds of a weather forecast greeted me as I entered Violetta’s. Mom had brought down the twelve-inch television from her bedroom and balanced it atop a stack of fashion magazines on the counter. A weatherman with a grim face was pointing to a swirling mass in the Atlantic north of the Bahamas. Rachel, Mom, and Althea gathered around the TV.
“Where’s Stella?” I asked.
“Darryl came by and picked her up,” Mom said. “I guess he’s decided that they’re going inland for a couple of days. He said something about having a reservation at a Red Roof Inn outside Macon.”
“Oh. Well, it doesn’t look like her customers will miss her,” I said, looking around at the customer-free salon. “Maybe we should think about evacuating,” I added as the weatherman started talking about Horatio becoming a category three storm and about winds and storm surges.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Grace,” Mom said shortly. “This house has withstood a century and a half of storms. It’s not about to collapse on us now.”
“What about you, Althea?” She lived much closer to the beach than we did in a cottage she and William had bought for a pittance when they wed and which was worth a quarter million or more now.
“Vi’s offered to put me up for a couple of days, and I’m going to bring my stuff over early tomorrow, if it still looks like Horatio is headed toward us. Personally, I think it’s just playing chicken with us and it’ll make landfall way north of here.”
I didn’t ask Althea when she’d had time to pick up her meteorology degree, knowing I’d only get blasted for sassing her.