Heat Wave by Judith Arnold Page A

Valenti
is invoking the whistle-blower law. Do you need to look into
that?”
    “She isn’t a whistle-blower if she’s the
perpetrator,” Caleb noted. “If she thinks she’s entitled to a
percentage of the money she’s already embezzled—”
    The phone on his desk rang. Annie smoothly
reached across the desk and lifted the receiver. “Caleb Solomon’s
office,” she recited pleasantly. “Can I help you?” She listened for
a moment, her eyes narrowing on Caleb, then said, “If you’d like to
make an appointment to see him… Let me see if he’s available.” She
pressed the hold button on the phone, then addressed Caleb. “A
woman named Meredith Benoit wants to talk to you.”
    He smiled, then frowned. Smiled because the
woman dancing to that earworm song wanted to talk to him, and
frowned because she’d called on his office line. She had his
personal cell phone number, since he’d texted her on that phone two
days ago, when he’d gotten Sulkowski to void her citation. She
wasn’t calling him for a personal reason. This was business.
    Still, talking to her was better than not
talking to her. He plucked the receiver from Annie’s hand, pressed
the hold button to release it and spoke into the phone. “Hey,
Meredith. What’s up?”
    “I’ve got a problem,” she said. Her voice
sounded calm, underlined with that velvety southern drawl, but he
heard something more than just her words in it. A faint tremor,
maybe. An edge of tension.
    “Something to do with the citation?”
    “Yes. No. The citation isn’t the problem.”
She sighed, then said, “There’s a video.”
     
     

Chapter Eight
     
    Henry had alerted her. He’d
wandered into her classroom after the last students trickled out
the door, clutching their essays on The
Things They Carried , which she’d evaluated
and returned . “How
are you doing?” he asked.
    She shrugged. “Some kids love me. Some kids
hate me. It depends on the grade they got on their papers.”
    “Is that what it depends on?” He glanced
around the room, as if checking to make sure no students were
lurking in a corner or beneath a desk. Then he closed the door.
    That was odd. As with her one-on-one
meetings with students, she liked to keep her door open when she
met with a colleague so anyone passing by in the corridor could see
that nothing untoward was going on in the room.
    Henry’s skittish gaze was also odd. He
always met her gaze—except for now. “What’s wrong?”
    “You haven’t seen it, then? No one’s
mentioned it to you?”
    A tiny flame of alarm ignited inside her.
“Mentioned what?”
    “There’s a video.”
    “What video?”
    “Of you. At the beach. I reckon there were
some other kids at the beach on Sunday—not just the jackass who
dumped ice on you, but some others. Someone with a cell phone
pressed the ‘record’ button.”
    “Oh, lord.” Meredith sank against her desk
and groaned. “Is it making the rounds?”
    “Apparently.” Henry gave her a gentle hug,
then stepped back and studied her face. Now that he’d broken the
bad news to her, he had no trouble giving her a direct look. “Did
any of your students act differently toward you?”
    “Not that I noticed.” Maybe
she hadn’t been paying close enough attention. There had been a few
groans when she’d returned her students’ essays, and at least one
whispered Yes! Gina Costellano had asked how much the paper would count
toward final grades. A couple of kids had seemed fidgety, but
Meredith had attributed that to end-of-the-school-year
restlessness.
    And in all honesty, she’d been a bit
distracted. She’d been distracted ever since her dinner with Caleb,
and their stroll along the wharf afterward. She’d been distracted
by her memory of his nearness, and her inexplicable yearning. But
she chalked that up to her own end-of-the-school-year
restlessness.
    “Maybe my students didn’t see the video,”
she said hopefully.
    Henry gave her a pitying look.
    “Everyone saw