Death Dangles a Participle (Miss Prentice Cozy Mystery Series) by E. E. Kennedy Page A

experiences at the police station, he was close-mouthed the entire trip home, answering my forays into conversation with terse, single-syllable words: “Yes.” “Nope.” “Maybe.”
    Once inside the house, without a word, he hung up his coat and ambled into the cluttered den that was his headquarters, closing the door firmly.
    I knocked. “You okay in there?”
    A pause. “Fine.”
    For the next hour, I occupied myself correcting papers and tried to ignore the strangeness that had settled over the house.
    It wasn’t fair, I fretted. He must know that I was dying to find out what happened to him at the police station. Maybe he thought I was being nosy.
    I immediately rejected the thought out of hand.
    Nonsense! I just care about the boy, I thought, circling a stray misplaced comma with unnecessary vehemence. The point of my red pencil snapped, leaving a jagged line.
    If the circumstances had been reversed, I told myself as I dug in a desk drawer for a pencil sharpener, he would have long since wormed the information out of me. There was no way he would have tolerated such a petulant silence. I rose abruptly from my chair and walked to his door.
    “Vern—” I began.
    The front door opened and Gil ushered in a cold breeze. “What’s this I hear about the kid at the police station?” he asked without so much as a perfunctory peck in my direction. “Where is he?”
    I pointed.
    Abruptly, Gil handed me his coat and leather computer case and knocked on Vern’s door. “Hey, pal,” he said, turning the knob and barging right on in, “what gives with you and the cops?”
    I heard a low-pitched mumble from the depths of the room.
    “Talk,” Gil said before closing the door, virtually in my face.
    With a frown, I returned to my students’ papers, hardly seeing the words before me.
    Is this how it’s going to be around here from now on, I asked myself and circled a superfluous comma, the Boys against the Girl? Every time a crisis arose, would the family members of the male persuasion circle the wagons and leave me outside—literally?
    I scrawled a C- at the top of the page and moved on to the next essay.
    I thus immersed myself in adolescent interpretations of Great Expectations until a rattling gurgle in my middle interrupted. “Maybe Butch and Sundance are ready for dinner too,” I murmured petulantly as I unearthed and nuked three Hungry Man frozen dinners.
    A vigorous tattoo on Vern’s door yielded no response. “Dinner!” I called with what I hoped was a cheerful, unresentful lilt in my voice. “Yoo hoo! Soup’s on!”
    No answer.
    I had consumed the little plastic triangle of turkey and dressing, along with the mashed potatoes and was starting on the much-touted Apple Crumble Dessert when Gil and Vern ambled up to the kitchen bar and took a seat in front of tepid plates of Home-style Meat Loaf and Old Fashioned Pot Roast, respectively.
    If I had expected an explanation, I was again disappointed. Gil was stolid and silent as he ate, while Vern had a furtive, guilty air. He wolfed his food and retired to the apparent safety of his room in record time, while Gil continued to scowl into his segment of succotash.
    Miraculously, I was able to keep my own counsel during this interlude and was rewarded at last by a confidential murmur.
    “Say again?”
    “He’s hiding something.” Gil glanced over his shoulder, though we both knew that the walls of Vern’s room were as thick as his head. “He didn’t tell me everything, I know it.”
    “Are you sure? You two were in there long enough to recite The Iliad in its entirety.”
    Gil picked up his now-empty plate and carried it to the trash pail. “I know. I tried everything short of horsewhipping that idiot to get him to tell me what it was, or to at least tell the police. But no go. Stupid kid!” he said with a snort as he deposited his burden forcefully. He looked at me straight for the first time since he arrived home. “You want coffee? I want coffee.