“Okay, MC. I can see that.” Talking so slowly. Was he on something? “You do care for me, don’t you? I can tell. And I would be very, very good to you.”
“I know you would, Wayne.” MC was amazed at how convincing she sounded. Thinking of movie stars had helped; she’d cast herself in a woman-in-jeopardy role and now she was playing it out. “Where can I reach you?”
“Don’t worry about that. I’ll find you.”
His grin sent a chill through her. Be Ashley Judd, she thought. Jodie Foster. Julia Roberts. MC reached out with her free hand, ran it over Wayne’s stubbly cheeks, her brush with his mustache grossing her out.
Wayne leaned into her, kissed her hard, but then abruptly released his hold. He let out a long sigh, left her car, and disappeared into the trees.
MC could hardly move. She looked for a vehicle but couldn’t see or hear one. Where had he gone? Then, why does it matter? She quickly flipped herself over into the driver’s seat, not wanting to step out of her car, even now that she wasn’t being held captive.
As soon as she hit the street, she grabbed her bottle of water from the cup holder. She rinsed out her mouth, lowered her window, and spit the taste of Wayne Gallen into the gutter.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It wasn’t like me to miss deadlines, even self-imposed ones, but my concern for Matt and for MC had pushed my to-call list out of my mind. At seven o’clock on Tuesday evening, it was time to get back on track, I decided.
I looked up the home phone number for Daniel Endicott, the young science teacher and Science Club leader at Revere High, and punched it in. Thanks to Daniel and his enthusiasm, the science curriculum had greatly expanded since my day, giving students electives in astronomy, meteorology, and environmental sciences, besides the core subjects and several AP courses.
“We’re conducting a study of coyote populations in urban areas,” Daniel told me over the phone, prompting me to wonder if there was any end to the Texas influence in Revere. “We’re trapping the animals, with humane boxes, of course. We put radio transmitter collars on them so we can track them for up to three years. We’re working with a vet—Dr. Timothy Schofield. He’s local, so maybe you know him. In fact, he might come to your talk. He’s going to do a session for us later on, and he wants to get an idea of how to do it.”
I smiled at the idea of a humane trap, and also at the notion that I might know a veterinarian. I’d studiously avoided pets all my life, not wanting any more maintenance chores than those already required for clean clothes and dishes. That I might be a model high school lecturer also added to my amusement.
“Sounds like you have the wildlife topic covered. I’m leaning toward buckyballs at the moment,” I told him.
“Cool,” he said, sounding like his predecessor and peer, Erin Wong, who was on maternity leave. “I’m a huge fan of Bucky Fuller. Very cool.” I decided cool was the designated enthusiastic response of people under thirty. I tried to remember what Rose and I would have said at their age; it seemed it would have been a long sentence, correctly constructed. But then, we weren’t very cool in those days.
“And, for the second talk, I thought I’d do Maria Telkes.”
“Sure.”
Not cool. I figured he didn’t know her. “Hungarian-American, physical chemist. You might have heard of her as the Sun Queen. She designed the first solar-powered house, long before it was fashionable. It went up in 1948 and is still in use, in Dover.”
“Dover, Mass.?”
“That’s right. I thought your students might relate to her. Telkes started her research when she was in high school, then went to MIT. She has many other solar-power patents; we ought to have your class try to reproduce some of the simpler ones, like her solar oven.”
“Cool. I’m all into solar stuff, so I’m surprised I haven’t heard of her. By the way, Gloria, did you hear about the dead body in the marsh last week?”
“I certainly did.”
“Well, the weird thing is I got my general science students involved in the restoration project. You know, some dumb land debates held up that construction project, so it became, like, one large junkyard. So I got my kids interested in the cleanup. Environmental consciousness and all that. We hauled more than three tons of trash out of there last year. Well, the point is we were there the day before the dead woman turned up. It would have been awful if one of them had stumbled onto a dead body.”
Daniel uttered a shuddering noise.
“Awful,” I agreed.
“The reason I’m telling you is, maybe you could mention to the class—the parents, really, but the kids will take the info home—that it’s not dangerous to be out there. You know, the chances of getting murdered out there are …”