An Unlikely Family

Billy smiled. “That would be venomous, Mrs. Blake. Snakes have venom in their bites, not poison. And this guy doesn’t have any venom at all.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” she said. “And I do thank you for coming to my rescue.”

Billy refrained from telling her that he more likely came to the rat snake’s rescue. Mrs. Blake hadn’t dropped her shovel since he’d arrived. When he got off work, he’d take the harmless creature out to the Indian burial grounds on the other side of the bridge and release it. He couldn’t see any justification in killing something that just happened to wander out of its element. “You’re welcome,” he said. “You call me anytime.”

He set the cage on the back seat. “Here you go, buddy. Unfortunately this is where most snakes in Heron Point end up eventually, usually the human kind.” After rechecking the box latch, Billy got behind the wheel. One more pass around town and he’d head back to city hall to write up a mostly uneventful report. He dreaded that job. Jack was a great boss and certainly a qualified chief of police, but he was a stickler for paperwork.

As Billy backed out of Mrs. Blake’s driveway, his cell phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and checked the caller. “Heron Point Elementary,” he said. “Well, I’ll be.” A smile broke across his face. He could only think of one person at the school who might be trying to reach him—Evie.

He pressed the connect button. “Muldoone here.”

“Billy, it’s Evie Gaynor at the elementary school.”

His smile widened at the sound of her voice. Brisk, official-sounding even, but music to his ears. “Hey, Evie, I was just thinking about—”

“Billy, we have a problem.”

“We do?” His smile began to fade.

“I have Gemma in my office.”

Oh, boy. “What’s she doing there? School doesn’t start for two days yet.”

“Maybe so, but your daughter made her presence known a little early. Can you come by?”

Billy sighed. “I’ll be right there…. What did she do?”

“I think you should see this for yourself. A description doesn’t do this particular situation justice.”

The line went dead. And unless he could smooth this over, so would his hopes for developing any kind of relationship with Evie.

EVIE HEARD HIS VOICE the moment he entered the outer office. Billy Muldoone had a way of making his presence known.

“I’m here to see Miss Gaynor,” he said to Mary Alice.

Mary Alice’s answer crooned with sympathy, as if she were used to this scenario. “Oh, hi, Billy. Yeah, I know. She and Gemma are in there.”

He stood on the threshold and looked into the office. Evie stood and came around the desk, her hands clenched at her waist. Meetings with parents under these circumstances was never pleasant, and this particular meeting was already topping the tension meter. Billy had been popping into Evie’s head with alarming regularity all day. But any relationship she’d envisioned had just moved to the principal’s office. It was a shame, really. Billy looked so crisp and competent… and, with his face shadowed with a day’s end beard, even sexy. But when the little creases at his mouth deepened, Evie realized he also looked uncharacteristically vulnerable.

He closed the door and removed his ball cap. His gaze held Evie’s for a moment before he looked to his left and saw Gemma. She stared up at him through wispy bangs that needed a trim. She struggled to pull a bug from a shirt and finally dropped it into a pile on the floor beside her chair. “Hi, Daddy.”

His mouth twisted into a frown. “Hi, yourself. What’d you do?” He stared at the plastic items by her feet. “What are those?”

“Bugs. They’re not real.”

“How’d they get on that shirt?”

“They got glued there.”

He took a few steps closer and wiggled a stuck bug. “They sure did.”

Evie motioned to a chair. “Why don’t you sit down, Officer Muldoone?”

He sat stiffly, as if he were the one in trouble, and ran long fingers through his hair. “What happened?”

Evie briefed him, ending with the clean-up necessary to the playground. “Naturally we want all plastic insect infestation gone before Wednesday.”

“I saw Malcolm working out there when I drove up,” Billy said. “I couldn’t figure out what he was doing picking at the monkey bars like he was.”

“Well, now you know. He says he has a solvent that will loosen the glue, but it will take time.”

“Time the taxpayers of Heron Point will have to pay for,” he said, staring at his daughter. “Where did you get the bugs, Gemma?”

“At the Dollar Mart in Micopee. Nana had to go there for something and she gave me five dollars to spend. Somebody was putting out the Halloween stuff, and I saw these.” She held up a rubbery spider. “There were fifty in a bag. I bought five bags.” She paused before anticipating his next question. “I got the glue from Nana’s kitchen drawer.”

“One bag of bugs didn’t do it for you?”

“Not once I got started. It was fun putting them places.”

Billy pointed to the shirt on her lap. “Like that.”

“Specially here.”

“Whose shirt is it?”

She mumbled the answer.

Billy’s face blanched. “Whose did you say?”

“Bernard Hutchinson’s.”

He looked at the ceiling. “That’s just great. Why did you pick Bernard’s shirt?”

“He was saying stuff I didn’t like and that wasn’t true.” She blinked at Evie. “Isn’t that so, Miss Gaynor? He can’t say whether I go on field trips.”

Evie leaned against the desk. “You know that’s not the point, Gemma. There are more appropriate ways of handling problems. We don’t damage anyone else’s property. In this school we will respect one another’s belongings.”

Gemma raised a supplicating gaze to her father. “You would have done the same thing, Daddy.”

“Me? I don’t think I would have put bugs on Bernard’s shirt.”

“Maybe not Bernard’s, but you would his mother’s. You don’t like Missy Hutchinson. Didn’t you say she was stuck-up and con-de…” She pulled her lower lip between her teeth. “What’s that word?”

“Never mind. And that’s not the point, either. No matter how I feel about Missy— and quit listening in to adult conversations, by the way—I wouldn’t glue bugs to one of her hundred-dollar blouses!”

Gemma wiggled a centipede loose. “Oh. Well, we owe Bernard another shirt if this one is ruined.”

“That ought to set you back about a dozen weeks of allowances.”