Текст книги "Thread of Hope"
Автор книги: Jeff Shelby
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FIFTEEN
“They’re gonna do closeouts from the block to the wing,” Kelly said as we walked quickly. “Shooter on the wing. You rebound and pass hard to the player on the block. They’ll do the rest.”
I tried to process that through my head, reverting back to my high school days, trying to remember the vocabulary and what it all should look like. It didn’t come as fast as I would’ve liked.
“Okay,” Kelly said at mid-court. “This is Coach Tyler. He’s got the guards at the far end. I’ve got the bigs. Five minutes of closeouts to the wing. Shooter catches on the fly, from the ready. Defender chops her steps hard all the way out. Defense to offense, offense rotates down. Go.”
The group of girls split on the run and hustled to opposite ends of the court. Kelly went to one end, so I jogged to the other.
There were six girls with me. They immediately formed two lines, one at the wing on the right and one at the baseline. The first girl on the baseline jumped with the ball to the square block and fired at the first girl on the wing.
The passer shuffled hard out to the wing, her hands up, calling “Ball! Ball!” the whole way, her screams echoing in the gym. The shooter caught the ball, set and released her shot just as the passer reached her, pivoted into her and stuck her butt into the shooter’s thighs.
The ball bounced high off the rim and to the far side of the court.
The shooter looked at me, her mouth twisted into annoyance. “Uh, aren’t you rebounding?”
Shit.
I scrambled to the corner, grabbed the ball and fired it back out to the new shooter. She giggled, shook her head like I’d thrown her an apple instead of a basketball and bounced a pass to the new girl on the block.
Which is where I should’ve thrown the ball to begin with.
I felt my face flush as I jogged back to the basket, wondering why in the hell teenagers had such a powerful ability to make adults feel so foolish.
The next two ran the drill and the shooter nailed the shot. I ripped the ball out of the net and fired it at the next girl popping to the block, a little harder than needed, but I was pissed at myself for screwing up.
If the girl noticed my use of my super-human male strength, she didn’t react, just caught the ball, pivoted and passed to the next shooter.
We went like that for two minutes. The girls worked hard, yelling encouragement to one another, slapping high fives. They were efficient and smooth.
The tallest girl, the one I’d now targeted as the best player on my end, yelled for them to switch sides and they sprinted to the other side of the key, dashing around me, maintaining their lines. I shifted to the other side of the basket.
The first shooter, who I’d identified as the weakest player in the group, caught her pass with her feet in the wrong position, putting her off balance. She hoisted up an ugly looking shot and stumbled backward as her defender boxed her out.
I grabbed the ball as it careened off the rim, started to pass it to the next girl, then stopped.
“Wait,” I said, not sure why I was talking. “Girl that just shot. What’s your name?”
She tugged at her shorts. “Uh, Kristin.”
“Kristin. Your feet are all screwed up.”
Several of the girls in line snickered and Kristin’s cheeks reddened. I couldn’t tell if it was my use of the word “screwed” or because I had embarrassed the girl.
Nice work, Tyler.
“What I mean is this,” I said, walking to where she’d shot. “You’re catching the ball with your feet in the wrong spots. They need to be reversed.” I looked at her. “You’re right-handed, correct?”
Kristin looked at several of her teammates, then back at me and nodded.
“Then your left foot is your drive foot, which means it should be back,” I said, showing her what I meant. “Your left foot was out front and it puts you off balance. Left foot back, right foot just in front of it, catch and shoot.” I spun the ball back into my hands, exaggerated my feet hitting the floor the way I wanted hers to look and arched a jumper. It dropped softly through the net.
Several whispers went through the two lines. The jumper impressed. I had their attention.
“Do it again,” I said, backpedaling to my spot under the rim. “Left foot back, right foot out front.” I bounced the ball to the girl on the block. “Go.”
The passer snapped the ball to Kristin. She caught it like I’d shown her, got the shot off and watched it drop through the rim.
“There you go,” I said.
She nodded quickly, a brief hint of a smile shadowing across her face as she cut down to the defender line.
My heart pounded hard against the inside of my chest, part anxiety and part pride in showing her something and being right about it. I didn’t know what Chuck’s reasons were for coaching high school basketball, but the little high I’d just experienced-teaching someone to do something and then watching them execute it successfully-made me want to stick around awhile longer.
SIXTEEN
The practice lasted another hour. Kelly ran them through a series of drills, exhorting them to continue working. I played a dummy defender in one drill and rebounded again in another.
They were serious, intense, tight as a group. I didn’t see any divisions. They were supportive of one another, critical when it was called for and there was no bitching about any of it. They moved precisely, found the spots they were supposed to and more often than not, did what they were needed to do and did it well.
I thought back to my high school days and couldn’t recall a single day where I went after it with the same intensity these girls did. I thought at the time that I was lucky, that I was pretty good without having to practice too much at it. Give me the ball and let me go. If some coach had stopped me mid-drill and corrected me, like I had done with Kristin, I probably would’ve smirked with the arrogance of a teenage boy and continued doing it my way, rather than the right way.
These girls, the way they listened to their coach, the way they sprinted their butts off, were only interested in doing it the right way.
After running them through a short five-on-five scrimmage, Kelly Rundles clapped her hands and brought the team to center court. The girls, breathing hard, sweat pouring down their red faces, watched her like she was going to give them the answers to every important question in life.
Kelly offered them some criticism of what she’d seen, then backed it up with a little bit of praise. The girls nodded at both.
Then she looked at me. “And let’s thank Coach Tyler for filling in today. Maybe we can get him back here again soon.”
The girls clapped and whooped and I felt like I’d just won an ESPY. I nodded, held up a hand in thanks and tried-unsuccessfully, I’m sure-to look cool about it all.
Kelly held her hands up high and the girls collapsed to her like buzzards to a carcass. The girl I’d pegged as the best in my group, who I’d learned was named Meg, turned and looked at me. “Get in here, coach.”
I took a couple of steps forward and awkwardly put my hand in with the rest of theirs.
From the middle of the pack, Meg said “Play hard on three. One, two, three.”
The gym walls echoed with the entire team’s scream of “Play Hard!” My voice chimed in loudly with theirs.
The girls scattered toward the outside hallway and Kelly came over to me.
“You’ve coached before?” she asked.
“I haven’t.”
“Really? Well, you did a nice job. Getting on Kristin about her feet was sharp.”
I was surprised she’d noticed from the far end of the gym, but realized she didn’t seem like the type to miss much of anything. “Thanks. It was fun. They’re a good group.”
Kelly nodded. “They are. And I was serious about getting you to come back. You’re welcome anytime. I always have such a hard time finding coaches to work with the guards.”
“If you’ve got time to talk about Chuck, I’ll come back here tomorrow,” I said.
“I was going to talk to you anyway,” she said, backpedaling slowly. “But I’ll take that offer. Meet you outside in ten minutes.”
I walked outside, letting the cool, ocean-tinged breeze wash away the warm gymnasium air that clung to me. A group of players huddled together, laughing and talking. They stopped as soon as they saw me
Meg stepped outside the small circle. “Are you coming back tomorrow?”
She was maybe five-ten, most of it arms and legs. Her long blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail that had swayed wildly from side to side when she’d run up and down the court. She had a gray sweatshirt on over her practice jersey, red mesh shorts and rubber sandals on her feet. She was confident, not cocky. She knew she could play but didn’t wave it in the other girls faces.
She was their leader.
“Think so,” I said, sitting down on a concrete wall that lined the walk. “We’ll see what your coach says.”
“Do you know Coach Winslow?” she asked.
The other girls-three of them whose names I couldn’t recall-watched me intently.
“I do,” I said. “He’s a friend.”
Meg nodded, like that was alright. “I liked him. We all did.”
The girls behind her nodded.
“Where’s Meredith?” I asked, wondering what kind of reaction I’d get. “Why wasn’t she at practice?”
The girls behind Meg flinched as a group, almost taking a step back, like they needed to get away.
Meg just shrugged. “She’s taking a couple of days off. Until she feels better.”
“Friends with her?”
“We all are.”
“She pretty good?” I pointed a thumb back over my shoulder. “Can she play?”
“Best player we have,” Meg answered. “We need her.”
“Think she’ll be back soon? To play?”
Meg adjusted the canvas bag on her shoulder. “Are you just trying to get answers out of me? Because you’re an investigator or whatever?”
In real life, word travels fast. In a high school, word traveled at Internet speed. Still, I was surprised she knew about me.
“Someone saw you at school today,” she said, shrugging, reading my expression. “Heard you at the desk, talking.”
Internet speed.
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess I am trying to get answers out of you. Only because I want to help my friend and Meredith, though. If you know something, or anybody knows something, I’d like to know about it.”
A cobalt-blue Ford Mustang roared up to the curb behind the girls. Meg glanced over her shoulder, then back at me. “Gotta cruise. I don’t know anything, Coach. If I did, I’d tell you and so would any of the other girls on the team.” She held up a hand. “Later.”
She slapped hands with her teammates. They followed her to the curb and scattered around the Mustang to their own cars. Meg opened the car door and slid into the passenger seat, then leaned across and kissed the boy driving it before she shut the door. They tore out of the lot.
The boy hadn’t seen me.
But I’d seen him.
My buddy Matt, the one who had been tailing me in Seaport Village.
SEVENTEEN
Kelly Rundles emerged from the gym in a hooded sweatshirt, a huge duffel bag on her shoulder. She convinced me that I was as hungry as she was and I followed her to a coffee shop over on Orange.
After we ordered, she looked at me over her Diet Coke. “So. I’m probably not supposed to be talking to you.”
I dropped a straw in my soda. “Don’t see why not. Your A.D. didn’t ban me from campus.”
“Yeah, but the man who matters probably wouldn’t be very happy.”
“Jon Jordan?”
Her mouth twisted up with irritation. “And probably most of the other parents, too.”
“I don’t want you to lose your job,” I said.
“Oh, I won’t,” she said. “The team is winning. Trust me. That supersedes just about everything around Coronado. They might tell me they aren’t happy about it, but they won’t do a damn thing as long as we’re winning games.”
“Wasn’t like that when I went there,” I told her. “People barely cared. May have had something to do with us not being very good.”
She smiled in a way that told me she’d experienced that, too. “That’ll make people not care in a hurry.
I felt like, maybe, I’d finally made a solid connection with someone who might be able to help. “The girls said Meredith’s taking a couple of days off?”
Kelly sat back in the booth, concern and anxiety filtering into her features. “Yeah. She’s been through a lot. She needs to get herself right before she comes back. But I’d expect that to be just another day or two.”
“Tough kid?”
“The toughest,” she said, stirring the straw in her soda. “Plays her ass off.”
“Meg told me she’s the best player on your team.”
Kelly nodded. “She is. Easily. She’s carried us the last two years. Being recruited by a lot of West Coast schools. Not that she needs a scholarship with her family’s money, but she’s that good.”
Our food came and as the waitress slipped the plates in front of us, I asked “Outside of basketball, what kind of kid is she?”
Kelly pulled her napkin down into her lap. “Smart, sharp, solid. One of the ones I don’t have to worry about.” She held her fork above her salad. “That’s why it all seemed so odd.”
“It all?”
She shoved a forkful of lettuce into her mouth, chewed and nodded. “When she filed the complaint against Winslow.”
“You didn’t buy it?” I asked.
“Wasn’t about buying it,” she said. “I was stunned that she’d be the kid in the middle of something like this.” She laid her fork down. “I don’t know what it was like when you went here, but I’ll bet it was different. These kids? They don’t act fifteen. They act like yuppies. A lot of the girls date college guys. Seems like they all drive cars that are worth what most people would like to put down on a home. Dress like they’re always going clubbing and that’s because, half the time, they are going clubbing.” She picked up the fork again. “So I’m not surprised that a girl at Coronado might get mixed up in something. I was just surprised that it was Meredith.”
“Did you believe her?” I picked up my sandwich but didn't take a bite.
She hesitated, pursed her lips, then nodded. “At first, yeah. Like I said, she’s a sharp kid. No bullshit in her, you know? I know her better than Winslow, so I immediately believed her.”
“Chuck wouldn’t hurt a kid,” I said, feeling the need to get it out there as to where I stood.
“After I talked to him, I believed that, too,” she said. “They both seemed like they were telling the truth. So I don’t have a clue as to what happened.”
“Were they close? Chuck and Meredith?”
She picked at the lettuce with her fork. “Yeah. But he was good with all of the girls. He’s this giant, good-looking guy who can play. He’s like a god to them. They immediately gravitated toward him.” She set her elbows on the table and jabbed at the air with the fork. “And he could coach. Didn’t matter the position. He knew how to teach.”
It again surprised me to hear that about him. I never saw him as a mentor. It made me want to see him doing that in action. And somewhere in those thoughts, I felt a twinge of guilt because maybe I had missed some change in Chuck’s life.
“And Meredith’s one of those kids who never wants to quit playing,” Kelly continued. “Always wants to shoot after practice, always wants to work out a little more. From day one, Winslow was willing to stick around and work with her. I stuck around, too, at first, to make sure things were cool.”
“What do you mean?”
“An older male in a gym with teenage girls,” she said, as if it was a no-brainer. “A guy I didn’t really know. I needed to be comfortable with that. After I watched him for a week or so, I was. No problem at all with it.” She chewed on her bottom lip for a moment, thinking. “But they were spending a lot of time together.
My conversation with Jon Jordan flashed back through my head. “Stricker told me that he OK'd Chuck’s hiring after Jordan recommended him. Did Jordan know him?
“No. He did that as a favor,” she explained. “It kind of went roundabout. A friend of mine recommended Winslow to me. After I met him, I wanted him, but it’s hard to get someone who doesn’t teach here on the coaching staff. They like everyone to be on campus full-time. I knew I needed an extra push. So I went back to my friend and asked her to get Jordan to make a phone call.”
“Your friend knew both Chuck and Jordan?
“Yeah. She actually works for Jordan. Not sure how she and Chuck met.”
“Can I ask her name?”
Kelly took a drink and set the glass on the table. “She’s Jon Jordan’s bodyguard. Gina Coleman.”
EIGHTEEN
Gina intimated knowing Chuck when she’d laid me out in Jon Jordan’s driveway, but she hadn’t explained. I was officially confused.
“Gina and I have been friends for a long time,” Kelly explained. “She said she knew this guy, that he knew basketball and that he might be able to help. She knew I was looking for a volunteer assistant.”
“Any idea how they knew each other?” I said, thoroughly mystified at what I was hearing.
“Isn’t Winslow your buddy?”A confused grin spread across her face.
“Yes.” I didn't offer anything else.
She waited, then shrugged. “Gina said they went to school together. A long time ago.”
It would have been before high school, I thought. I’d met him freshman year.
None of that was making sense so I switched gears.
“How long have you known Gina?” I asked.
“Since high school, up in Orange County,” she said. “We played ball together. We both came down here for college and stuck around.”
“What did she do before she worked for Jordan?”
Kelly pressed her lips together and shook her head. “I’ll talk about Winslow. I’m not going to talk about Gina. She’s a friend and you can ask her yourself.”
I nodded. “Okay. Bottom line. You’ve spent time with both Chuck and Meredith. Who do you believe?”
“I told you. I don’t know.”
“Make a choice. Go with your gut. Who’s telling the truth?”
Kelly shifted in the booth, like she was trying to get comfortable and couldn’t find the right spot. “If I have to choose, I choose Meredith.”
My stomach sank. “Why?”
She thought about that for a long moment before she answered. “I’m not sure. Chuck looked me in the eye and denied it. Didn’t get outraged, didn’t throw a tantrum, no dramatics. Just looked me in the eye and said he didn’t do anything to Meredith. It seemed genuine.” She looked away for a moment, her eyes searching the diner. She brought them back to me. “But there was something in Meredith. Hurt, pain, I don’t know. I don’t think she was lying.”
It wasn’t what I wanted to hear, but it forced me to start thinking about everything from a different perspective. I could keep saying that Chuck wasn’t capable of doing the things he was being accused of, but if I was going to figure out what happened, I was going to have to admit to at least one thing. These people had been around Chuck a lot more than I had in the previous few years. And I needed to start listening to what they were saying.
“I know why Chuck would lie,” I said, the words feeling funny as they came off my tongue. “No one would want to admit doing that. But why would Meredith lie?”
“I don’t have an answer for that,” she said, looking genuinely confused. “Like I said before, it’s not like her.”
Which put us right back where we started. Right smack in the middle of nowhere.
She saw my frustration. “Sorry. It’s all I’ve got.” She looked at her watch. “I need to get going.”
I looked at the check, threw some cash on the table and we walked outside. Fog shrouded the bridge, the muted lights casting an eery glow over the water.
“Have you talked to him?” Kelly asked. “How’s he doing?”
“Someone beat the shit out of him,” I said. “He’s in the hospital, unconscious. He’s a mess.”
She stopped. “You’re serious?”
“Unfortunately, yeah. So I haven’t gotten to talk to him yet.”
She shook her head, clearly shaken. “Jesus.”
“She have a boyfriend?” I asked as we started walking again. “Meredith?”
Kelly nodded. “Yeah. A kid I don’t care for all that much. Remember I said how Chuck looked me in the eye? This kid never looks me in the eye.” She grimaced. “I hate when kids are like that.”
“Know his name?”
She pulled her keys from her bag and opened her car door. “Sure. Derek Weathers.”
NINETEEN
It wasn’t a coincidence that Meredith’s boyfriend shared the same name with the kid that had been tailing me in Seaport Village. I was sure of that. Not when I’d already spotted Meg, her teammate, with Matt, who’d been Derek’s sidekick in following me.
The next morning, I stopped by the hospital. Chuck’s eyes were still closed, he wasn’t moving and the doctor told me there’d been no change. I pulled a chair up next to the bed and sat, holding his hand, feeling awkward and unsure of what else I was supposed to do.
Doubts were creeping into my head, like feathers brushing my skin. Why had he been spending so much time with Meredith Jordan? It was one thing to work with her on her game, but both Stricker and Kelly Rundles indicated they had at least considered the thought that something else was going on between them. I didn’t want to believe that Chuck put himself in that kind of situation. I felt guilty for considering it, but it was getting harder to ignore the possibility.
I squeezed his hand, willing him to wake up and tell me the truth, tell me what he’d gotten himself into.
But he didn’t, and after awhile, I left.
***
I left a message for Jane Wiley, letting her know that I was still plugging away and asking her to call me if she knew anything more about either Chuck’s assault or the charges the Jordans had made. I didn’t tell her that the plugging hadn’t gotten me anywhere yet.
I decided to head back to Jon Jordan’s home. I wanted to know how Gina Coleman knew Chuck and why she’d recommended him for the coaching job.
The huge gates were in place and I pressed the button on the intercom.
“I promise not to hurt you this time,” Gina Coleman said over the speaker. I could tell she was smiling.
“Thanks.”
I waited at the gates for a couple of minutes until she arrived in her BMW. The gates opened like a bird’s wings and she got out of the car. She was in workout clothes and covered in sweat. I might’ve found her attractive if she hadn’t dropped me to the pavement the first time we met.
“Wanna shake my hand?” she asked, smiling.
“Not really.”
“Then why are you back?”
“You gonna call Jordan and tell him I’m here?” I asked. “He threatened me with much bodily harm.”
“He does that. A lot.” She shook her head, disapproving. “But he’s not here right now, so you’re alright.”
“But if he drove up here in the next ten seconds…”
“I’d do what he told me,” she said. “I work for him. Bottom line.”
“Great guy.”
“No. Great salary.”
Figured I couldn’t argue with that.
“Why didn’t you tell me you knew Chuck?” I asked.
She leaned against the hood of her car, the sweat on her forehead and arms sparkling in the sun. “Didn’t know I was supposed to.”
I didn’t say anything, letting my silence tell her that answer was worthless.
She stared at me for a moment, then looked down at her shoes, pretending to inspect the laces. Finally, she caved. “I work for Jon. It wasn’t my place to start telling you things.”
“You do know Chuck, though?” I asked.
She thought about it, then nodded.
“How?”
She looked away from me, then looked back and said, “Park your car on the street.”
When I hesitated, she said, “Don’t worry. He’s out of town today. It’ll be fine.”
I did as she said. She swung up next to me in the BMW and I got in the passenger side. The car smelled like brand new leather and clean carpeting, as if it had just arrived from Germany. Gina smelled like a mixture of salt and soap.
She hadn’t answered my question, though.
“How?” I repeated.
She made a U-turn and we headed thru the gates and onto the Jordan property. “We went to elementary school together,” she said. “Then junior high.”
I never thought of Chuck having had a life before I’d met him and it was odd to hear someone say they knew him when I hadn’t.
“His dad was at the air station at El Toro. Then he was moved to Coronado.”
“El Toro? In Orange County?”
She drove us down a winding, hilly road lined with thick shrubbery. “Yeah. We lived in San Clemente. He lived across the street from me.”
“I didn’t know he lived up there,” I said, as much to myself as to Gina. “He never mentioned it. I knew his dad was transferred to Coronado, but I just assumed they’d always been in San Diego.”
The road forked amidst a grove of massive eucalyptus trees and she veered to the left. “We used to play together at the park across the street from our houses. Every afternoon, we’d come home from school and head over. I’d go down the slide and he’d jump off of it.”
Now that sounded like Chuck.
We pulled up to a single-story ranch house with a terracotta roof and walls of expansive windows. She shut off the engine and we got out.
Chuck took me to our seventh grade dance,” she said, smiling, walking toward the front door. “It was a big deal. First junior high dance and all.” She paused, put her hand on the door. “And he was my first kiss.”
I was trying to picture Chuck as a gawky seventh grader, figuring out how to put the moves on the girl he liked. If the situation had been different, I would’ve burst out laughing.
Gina pushed opened the door and we stepped inside. It wasn’t Jon Jordan's house. It was a gym and the only thing it was missing was a membership desk. Lots of gleaming dumbbells and high-end machines, mirrors on the walls. Cool air-conditioning washed over me as I shut the door.
“I was in the middle of lifting when you showed up,” she said. “You mind if I finish?”
I shook my head.
She slid onto a bench and lowered herself beneath a bar that held a large plate and a small plate on each end. A hundred-and-ten pounds by my count. She wrapped her fingers carefully around the bar. “When he told me they were moving, it was like the end of the world. You know, everything is bigger and exaggerated at that point in your life and it was awful. He was my best friend, my first boyfriend and it broke my heart.”
She lifted the bar out of the rack and went up and down with it eight times, the muscles in her arms and shoulders expanding and contracting with each movement, quiet grunts of exertion echoing in the room. She wasn’t doing it for show, but I was impressed.
“So you stayed in touch over the years?” I asked.
She set the bar back in the rack, but kept her hands on it and exhaled several times, staring upward. “Not really. When he first moved, we called each other and stuff the first couple of weeks. But then it was just…different. High school and everything. There was no email or IMs back then. Neither of us could drive and it felt like he was a million miles away.” Her hands tightened around the bar. “Then about three months ago, he called me. Don’t know how he found me, how he got the number and I didn’t care. It was like we picked up right where we’d left off.” She lifted the bar out of the rack and held it high. “And that’s silly, because it was junior freaking high. But still, I heard his voice and he didn’t even have to say his name. I knew it was him.”
It was strange to hear about Chuck’s life from someone else. We’d been best friends for twenty years, but hearing her story made me feel like I’d only known a fraction of him.
She knocked out eight more reps, set the bar back in the rack and sat up, her face pink. “It was really good to see him.” She nodded again, reaffirming her words, and took a deep breath, staring at her hands. “Really good. We started hanging out, dinner, things like that.” She glanced in my direction. “He told me about you. About Lauren and Elizabeth.” She paused. “I’m sorry.”
The familiar awkwardness and hurt hit me square in the stomach. “Thanks.”
She stood and pulled the plates off the bar, re-stacking them on the pegs on the side of the rack. “He really missed you,” she said. “He understood, but he missed you. And he looked for Elizabeth, too.”
Something jabbed in my gut. Lauren had said the same thing.
She placed smaller plates on the bar. She adjusted the back of the bench upward, so instead of flat, it was on an incline. “Every morning. Checked websites, message boards, things like that. I think he really wanted to be the one to call you and say he’d found her.”
My mouth went dry. I couldn’t think of anything to say.
“Anyway, he was working construction, but he was bored,” Gina said, sliding onto the inclined bench. “He wanted to do something else, but he wasn’t sure what. I had just talked with Kelly and knew she needed a coach. I thought he’d be perfect.”
“And he liked it?” I asked, happy to steer the conversation away from me.
“No,” she said, grabbing the bar and lifting it out of the rack. “He loved it.”
