Jeff Shelby - Thread of Hope

“It’s like they don’t even give a shit tonight,” she spat. “Sixteen turnovers. In the first half. Jesus Christ.”

“Yeah.”

She walked past me, still talking. “I’m thinking we just go straight man, full-court, press the rest of the way. See if that shakes them awake.” She bounded up the steps that took us from the gym floor to the hallway that led to the locker room, her feet stomping against each stair. “They wanna lose, fine, but they’re gonna run their asses off doing it.” We stopped at the door to the locker room and she turned to me, sweat on her forehead and the skin around her eyes pinched tight. “What do you think?”

I massaged the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger. A trace of a headache was forming in my skull, as if my brain hurt from everything I was putting it through.

“Joe?” Kelly asked. “Are you alright?”

“You were talking to her,” I finally said. “To Meredith. A lot.”

Her face screwed up with confusion. “What?”

“Phone calls. I looked at Meredith’s phone records for the last couple of months and there were hundreds of calls between you and Meredith.”

The confusion wound tighter on her face. “What are you talking about?”

“Why was she calling you so much Kelly?” I asked. “Daytime, night time. You two were on the phone together a lot.”

Her eyes were narrow slits now and her hands were balled into fists. “We’re in the middle of a game, Joe. It’s halftime and I’m trying to figure out how to stop the ass kicking we’re on the wrong end of. You wanna talk about Meredith, we’ll talk about her after the game.”

“Ever since she disappeared,” I said, pushing on. “It’s like you’ve forgotten about her. You haven’t been worried about her, you’ve barely mentioned her. It’s been about basketball all the time.” I paused. “You know where she is, Kelly?”

The confusion folded itself into anger and for a moment, her right elbow cocked and I thought she was going to hit me. Instead, she stepped in closer to me, our noses no more than a couple inches apart.

“I am in the middle of a game,” she growled. “And I am not interested in discussing anything else right now. But fuck you for the insinuation. Get the fuck out of my gym.”

That was fine. I wasn’t doing her or the girls any good on the bench. I didn’t belong there anymore.

“I’ll find you after the game then,” I said.

She held up a finger like she had one more thing to say, her teeth bared, her cheeks sucked in, anger plastered on her face. But then she abruptly turned and her fist slammed against the door as she disappeared into the locker room.

I watched the rest of the game from the stands.

The second half of the game went much like the first half. The Coronado girls made a bit of a run to start the third quarter, but it was nothing more than a token show of effort. They quickly reverted to the poor play they’d shown in the first two quarters and when Kelly benched Megan near the end of the third, it was as if she was waving the white flag. The girls appeared listless, tired and uninterested and they were rewarded with a thirty-one point spanking. They looked the part of a defeated team as they left the floor-heads down, shoulders slumped, embarrassment sitting heavily on their backs.

The exiting crowd made getting back to the locker room a slow process and my phone vibrated in my pocket as a I trudged along in the herd.

“Joe, it’s me,” Mike Lorenzo said.

“You get my message?”

“Yeah. Sorry I’ve been hung up on something else.”

“That’s okay. Find anything on the number?”

“Not yet. Just got back to the station and I’m trying to run it down now. What exactly am I looking for?”

I explained to him the discrepancies in the phone records and the little bit of information that Jordan and I had cobbled together.

He stayed quiet for a long moment before he responded. “I’ve never heard anything that went the wrong way against Rundles, Joe. Everyone seems to like her pretty well.”

“I understand that,” I said, stepping out of the slow crawl to the exit. “And I’m not saying she’s done anything wrong. But I need her to spell it out for me. Just because everyone likes her doesn’t mean I can’t ask her a few questions.”

“Settle down, Joe,” Mike said. “I wasn’t saying you couldn’t ask her questions. I can’t tell you what to do anyway. I’m just telling you what I know. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t follow up.”

I watched the crowd trickle out the door of the gym. “Sorry. I know. I’m just…I think I’m close. Getting a read on that other number might help, too.”

“I’ll call you as soon as I have something,” he said. “Hey, you free for breakfast tomorrow?”

“Yeah why?”

“Just something I wanna show you.”

“Alright,” I said.

He named a diner near the high school and we settled on eight o’clock.

“Call me if you get a hit on the number,” I said.

“Will do,” he replied.

I shoved the phone back in my pocket and left the empty gym.

The girls were slowly emerging from the locker room, most with the hoods of their sweatshirts pulled over their heads. They brushed past me without saying a word. I didn’t see Megan or Kelly and I waited for a couple of minutes, assuming Kelly was talking to her about her poor performance. Kelly wasn’t one to let things go or to let things ride. She addressed them immediately with the intent that always clearing the air made it easier to move forward.

But after ten minutes, I was tired of waiting and stuck my head into the locker room.

A locker room that was already empty.

I drove over to the opposite side of campus to my rendezvous point with Megan, cursing under my breath that I had taken so long to get back to the locker area. It didn’t bother me as much that Megan was gone. If she was really going to meet me, it made sense that she would’ve made a fast exit.

Kelly’s absence, though, felt wrong to me. She was always the last one out of the locker room after a game and several girls stepped out after I’d gotten there. I’d taken awhile, but it hadn’t been empty by the time I’d arrived. I expected her to be there if for no other reason than to tell me I was officially relieved of any and all coaching duties.

But she was already gone and I wondered why.

I pulled my rental into the small square lot near the admin building. It was dark except for a single street lamp in the middle of the parking slots. The buildings were shadows and there were no other cars.

I parked beneath the light and waited.

After a five minute wait that seemed like thirty, headlights split the darkness near the entrance and a car pulled up next to me.

Megan.

Her window was down and she motioned for me to lower mine.

“I’ll drive,” she said.

I was just relieved to see her, so I didn’t argue.

The interior of her car was warm and music drifted softly from the speakers.

“You didn’t tell anyone, right?” she asked. “That we were meeting?”

“No.”

She chewed on her bottom lip for a moment.

“Megan, I didn’t say a word, even to a cop who’s helping me out,” I assured her.

“Why weren’t you on the bench for the second half?” she asked.

“Long story,” I said.

“Coach was pretty pissed when she came in at halftime,” she said.

“She should’ve been. You guys were terrible.”

“Yeah, but it was a different kind of pissed.” She watched me. “It was more than the game.”

“Where are we going, Megan?” I asked, not having any intention of telling her about my conversation with her coach.