Making It Right (Most Likely To #3)

Richard encouraged them both to sit. “Looks like Mr. Emery here thought it would be entertaining to make Mrs. Walters think there was a ghost in her classroom.”


Mrs. Walters had to be close to retirement by now. The woman taught there when Jo was ditching English instead of showing up for class.

“And how did you manage that?” Jo asked Drew directly.

He exchanged glances with the principal. “I downloaded an app.”

Jo considered his words, thought he was talking about some kind of ghost sounds or something that might come from a Halloween store.

“An app.”

Drew nodded. “Yeah. For the TV.”

Now she was confused. Her face must have shown it.

“Every time Mrs. Walters walked by the TV in the room, I’d turn it on with my remote app on my phone. When she’d move to turn it off, I’d turn it off before her fingers touched the set.” The image of the old woman freaking out every time the TV went on had Jo laughing hard on the inside.

Gill cleared his throat and placed a hand over his lips.

Jo was fairly certain it was hiding a grin.

“And how long has this been going on?” Jo kept her voice even.

“Three weeks!” Mason exclaimed. “Betty asked maintenance to check out her TV last month. We switched it out, then she started suggesting that something wasn’t normal. She even called out sick three days last week, right around the time of your midterms, I believe. Said her room was haunted and she didn’t feel safe coming to work.”

Jo felt her nose flare, a training technique to keep the emotion from showing on her face. It was a good thing Drew wasn’t smiling or she’d probably lose it. The image of Betty Walters running scared from her classroom because of TV-possessing ghosts gave Jo a strange case of pride for the kid in trouble.

To drive his point home, Richard pointed two fingers at Drew. “Mrs. Walters isn’t a young woman. This kind of stress can have serious health consequences.”

“I didn’t think of that.” Drew looked down, and that’s when Jo noticed the edges of his lips pull into a slight grin.

“Okay.” Jo ground her back teeth together to keep from laughing. “Drew, I need you to step outside so Mr. Mason and I can figure out how this is going to affect your track season.”

The moment Drew closed the door behind him, Jo’s hand flew to her mouth to keep the noise inside. One look at Gill, who sat there silently laughing, and Jo’s eyes started to water.

“Don’t you dare let him hear you!” Richard said, his own eyes dancing with mirth.

“That’s freakin’ funny,” Jo said.

Mr. Mason’s chest shuddered. “Betty was hysterical. I thought the woman was going to have a stroke.”

“The prank wouldn’t have worked with a younger teacher,” Gill said from the sideline.

“Good point.”

Jo leaned forward, kept her voice low. “All right. No one was hurt, no property damage.”

“The kid shows tech skills that he needs to funnel into something productive,” Richard added.

“You can’t suspend him from his track season for this. Not only is he good, but he needs the discipline. Imagine what he’ll come up with when coupled with idle time.”

“I know. Still can’t let him go off without some punishment.”

“Mowing Betty’s lawn every Sunday for the next two months? Pulling some community service for the upcoming reunion?” Jo tossed ideas out there.

“I’ll come up with something, Jo. But make sure he knows he skated through this one so he won’t try anything else.”

She stood, shook his hand. “I will.”

Mason looked at Gill. “So you’re with the FBI?”

Gill shook Mason’s hand with a nod. “I am. Currently working on a case in Eugene where the high schools are getting inundated with heroin use.”

Mason’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding.”

“I wish I was.”

“Phew . . . doesn’t that put this in perspective?”

Gill grinned. “Sure does. I take it you don’t have that going on here.”

Mason exchanged glances with Jo. “We always have the occasional cannabis running around. Liquor. Nothing close to heroin.”

“Then your problems all have solutions,” Gill said. “I wouldn’t mind looking around when I’m in town, seeing the teenage dynamics. It might help with my investigation closer to where I live.”

Mason nodded like an animated toy. “Of course. Anything to help keep kids off that kind of crap.”

With that figured out, the three of them walked to the door, put on straight faces, and made a united front when faced with Drew.

Ten minutes later, in her squad car with only Gill as her witness, Jo let loose the laughter bubbling inside until Gill caught on and they were both grabbing their stomachs.





Chapter Seventeen




Jo had two very different personalities, three if he was counting properly. She let her guard down around her friends, but even then she wasn’t the exact person he’d met on the East Coast.

The whole person slowly came into focus.

They’d returned from the high school after giving poor Drew the riot act on what he should and shouldn’t do. Gill was convinced that the kid knew their number. He knew they were all secretly laughing along with him and it was only a matter of years before they’d laugh about the whole thing over drinks.

There were a couple more hours at the station, along with a drive through town and the city limits. When the clock was officially off, he and Jo returned to Miss Gina’s, where Gill had a culinary experience he’d never matched before.

He had no idea who Zoe Brown was, but he had every intention of looking her up when he was back home.

The woman could cook.

Miss Gina managed to bring out a few photographs of all three of the girls when they were tweens in lanky bodies and identical haircuts.

He liked them. The whole lot.

They were a strange kind of family that didn’t share blood. For some reason that made it even sweeter.

He followed Jo into her home and watched her routine as she walked through the house, shedding her uniform, and with it the personality she’d adopted because of it.

Gill watched her from the doorway of her bedroom. Her bed was made, but without a lot of fluff. No massive stack of pillows for Jo to have to deal with every day. There was a book on her bedside table, one he couldn’t see the title of from where he was sitting. He’d have to check it out before he left. There was a lot to be learned about a person by their reading material.

“You’ve seen every end of River Bend twice,” Jo said from the adjoining bathroom. “What did you think?”

What did he think? “I’m actually kinda surprised it’s survived the last decade’s failing economy.”

Jo pulled the band from her hair, letting it fall on her shoulders. “We’ve actually grown. And with the new homes going in between here and Waterville, we’ve had a larger demand on commerce and traffic. The business owners love it.” She looked at him through the mirror as she pulled a brush through her hair.

“If the town grows, won’t your budget afford another full-time deputy?”

“There is already talk of another part-timer.”