“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” T.J. mutters for the thirteenth time as he watches me try to work the lock to Coach’s office. “We are so getting out of here after this.”
“Fine. I want to leave as much as you do.”
“I doubt it.”
I don’t have a bobby pin or a credit card, like people use to open locks in movies, but I have a horseshoe nail I found on the stable floor. It’s flat and thin enough to poke into the lock and twist. Finally, the lock clicks. “I did it!” The knob turns, and I’m in.
“Great,” T.J. says. “Now what?”
“Now we search.”
“Search for what?”
“Clues,” I answer, stepping inside. “A divorce letter or a journal would be great. Maybe some hate notes from his wife. I don’t know.” The police must have searched Coach’s office, but it doesn’t look ransacked. I’m guessing Sheriff Wells didn’t waste his time looking into anything or anybody, except Jeremy. The only two pieces of furniture in the room, besides several chairs, are a big desk and a tall metal filing cabinet. “You take the files, and I’ll take the desk. Deal?”
“Are you sure we shouldn’t be wearing gloves?” T.J. asks, stepping over a pile of trash on the floor. “What about our fingerprints?”
“Nobody cares about our fingerprints. They’re done with this office.”
T.J. mumbles something, but I can’t make it out.
Coach’s desk looks like it hasn’t been touched in months. Even the papers on it are dusty. Mouse droppings form a trail across the glass-slab surface of the desk. There’s a framed photograph of Coach and his wife on their wedding day. I pick it up and dust it off. “They don’t look that happy to me,” I observe. “And it’s their wedding day.”
“I’ll bet she was hard to live with,” T.J. mutters.
“How come?”
“You didn’t have her for English. Trust me. She was hard to take for fifty minutes a day. I can’t imagine having her twenty-four/seven.”
I shine the light on the faces in the wedding picture. Their expressions are relaxed rather than excited. “Comfortable. That’s what I’d call them. Not in love, but comfortable.”
I set down the photograph. Just above the desk are two pieces of paper pinned to the wall. Color wheels. Right away, I know they’re Jeremy’s. I would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that nobody except Rita and me ever got one of Jer’s drawings. He must have liked Coach a lot. This extra loss for Jeremy makes my throat burn-as if my brother hadn’t already lost enough.
The file cabinet rattles. “Man, look at this!” T.J. calls.
“What?” I start to go over and see.
“This whole drawer is filled with baseball trophies.”
I return to the desk. In the middle drawer, I find a photograph of Jeremy sitting on Sugar and another one of Jer grinning in his Panther uniform. It might have been taken the first day Coach let him suit up. Coach must have taken it himself. Looking at it makes me sad. I put it back.
“Find something?” T.J. asks.
“Nothing.”
Under the photos, there’s a pile of long, skinny strips of paper, like you’d use to write a grocery list. I pick them up and see they’re all printed with numbers from one to ten, with a blank after each number. I know they’re team rosters because Jeremy brought some home. I hold one of the rosters and imagine how excited Jer would have been to see his name written on there. Guys and their sports.
I open the bigger drawer on the right. There’s only one thing in it, a framed letter. I take it out and shine the flashlight on it. “T.J., you’ve got to see this.” It’s typed on New York Yankees stationery, and it’s addressed to John S. Johnson. “Is this what I think it is?”
T.J.’s already reading over my shoulder. “Wow! That’s the real deal, Hope. They were asking him to play for the Yankees. Coach never said a word about this, not to me anyway-not that that’s saying much. He might have told Chase and the others.”
“I can’t believe he didn’t talk about it all the time.” I put the letter back and close the drawer.
“Some of the guys used to ask him about when he played ball, but he’d say, ‘The past is in the past. And any man who has to live in his isn’t doing what he ought to in the present.’ ” He does a lousy imitation of Coach’s voice.
“I don’t know,” I say, thinking out loud. “It might be kind of nice to have a past you’d want to live in again.”
In the bottom desk drawer, I find a stack of old high school yearbooks. I bring them out and stick the flashlight between my teeth so I can thumb through. I flip pages and pages of kids who look too old to be in high school.
I’m leafing through the last yearbook when I see a picture of Rita in a cheerleading uniform. She’s trim, at least thirty pounds thinner than now, with the same giant boobs. No wonder every guy in the tricounty area had a thing for her. There’s some writing on the bottom of the picture. I take the flashlight and get a better look. It says: “To my Jay Jay-Hugs and kisses… and so much more! Love, Rita.”
I close the book and put it back where I found it. Rita was a tease. A flirt-that’s what Bob said. She probably wrote that in every panting guy’s yearbook.
I know we have to leave. T.J.’s on the last drawer of the file cabinet. But I haven’t checked the piles on top of the desk. I shine the flashlight around. Coach had sticky notes to remind him to do everything: “Turn off lights.” “Buy feed.” “Call Max.” But none of the notes sound threatening or suspicious.
There’s a small pile of rosters to one side of the desk. I shine the flashlight in that direction. These rosters are filled in, held together by a rubber band. I fan through them. They’re dated, and they seem to be in order too. The top one is for June eleventh, the day Coach was murdered. My stomach knots, and I take a few short breaths. It almost feels like I shouldn’t be holding this-was it one of the last things Coach touched?-but I can’t help myself.
I move the light down the row of names. They’re all familiar now, part of my suspect list. Only the top name is crossed out. I hold the roster closer, shining my flashlight directly on it. “Chase Wells” is crossed out, and “T. J. Bowers” is penned in. I check the date again. It’s definitely the right day, the right game, Wooster versus Grain at home.
“T.J.?”
“Hmmm?”
“Didn’t you say Chase was going to be the starting pitcher for that Wooster game?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Look at this.” I show him the roster with his name written in as starter. “What does it mean?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Coach came to his senses?” He laughs a little, but it’s a fake laugh. “It’s weird, though. I wonder when he did it.” He stares at the roster, at his scribbled name, as if it’s a code he’s trying to decipher. “I admit I was pretty surprised when Coach said he was going to start Chase. He’s good-I don’t mean that. He may even be a better pitcher than I am. But he can’t bat worth a hoot. Dad said he thought Chase’s dad had something to do with Chase getting to start that game.”
“Really? I thought Sheriff Wells and Coach didn’t like each other.” I remember what Chase said about Coach not appreciating the sheriff’s after-game criticism.
“You got that right. Manny-you know him, center fielder for the Panthers-he said he heard Coach and the sheriff really getting into it after practice. Maybe Sheriff Wells won the argument, but Coach changed his mind later? Who knows?” He turns away. “It doesn’t matter anymore anyway. Can we get out of here now?”
“Not yet, T.J.” I start to take the roster with me so I can show Chase. But I change my mind. What good would it do for him to know that Coach didn’t choose him after all? It sure wouldn’t help for Chase’s dad to know. At least now his dad gets to think Chase was going to pitch.
“Hope, maybe there’s something here.” T.J. is still at the files.
I tuck the roster at the bottom of the stack. Then I join T.J. at the file cabinet. “What did you find?”
“Loan applications. Some went through. Some got denied. There are a bunch of unpaid medical bills here too. Maybe Coach really did have money troubles.”
“Maybe his wife did.”
I stare at the papers in T.J.’s hands. He pulls out another file full of forms.
“T.J., we have to take these with us. I want Raymond to see them.”
“You can’t just take them,” T.J. protests. “That’s theft. Besides, they can’t be evidence unless the police find them. Tell Raymond they’re here and let him worry about it.” He shines his flashlight on his watch. “ Now can we go?”
“All right. Just let me finish with the desk. One drawer left.”
“Hope,” he whines.
I pull at the tiny drawer on the left side of the desk, but it’s stuck.
“Hope?”
“One minute.” I yank hard, and it comes out. The whole drawer is filled with canceled checks. I look through them. Everything seems pretty normal-electric, gas, groceries, feed store-until I see four checks, dated December, January, February, and March, each for a thousand dollars… and all made out to Rita Long.