When Good Bras Go Bad (Myrtle Crumb Series) (8 page)

             
“I don’t know
.
She tries to act like she’s more important than she really is, so she’s ticked a lot of people off.”

             
“I don’t doubt that.”  I got up to refill my coffee cup.

             
“I might as well tell you this, too,” Sunny said, “because you’d probably find it out anyway.”

             
I sat back down at the table
.
“All right.”

             
“Claire was in the office that morning
.
She said she heard Al tell Mrs. Anderson what goes around comes around and that one day she’d get what she deserves.”

             
“I’m inclined to agree with Al on that one.”

             
Sunny’s little eyes bugged out at me
.
“What?”

             
“Well, baby, the Bible plainly says you’ll reap what you sow.”

             
“So you don’t think Al took the bracelet?”

             
“I don’t know whether she did or not, but I’d certainly need more to go on than the fact that she got aggravated with Mrs. Anderson and told her where to get off.”

             
“So you’re not automatically blaming Al?”

             
“No
.
When have you ever known me to not be fair?”

             
“Well, never, but…but it was clear you didn’t like Al.”

             
“You mean that day when you two came through the lunch line?”

             
Sunny nodded.

             
“It wasn’t that I didn’t like her
.
I
don’t
know her
.
What I didn’t like was how you were acting
.
And since you’d never acted like that around me before, I figured it was because of her.”

             
Sunny shredded her napkin
.
“I guess it was kinda
.
Al is so cool, and….”

             
“And what?  You didn’t want me to embarrass you?”

             
“Well, it wasn’t that exactly.”

             
“Then what was it?
  Does Al not have a grandmother?  Or was it because your grandmother had on a hairnet and was workin’ in the lunchroom?”

             
“I don’t know.”

             
“I don’t know, either, but here’s somethin’ I do know
.
If your friends are really your friends, they’ll like you no matter what
.
If they ain’t really your friends, they won’t like you no matter what.”

             
“I guess.”

             
“I
know
.”  I took a sip of my coffee
.
“Speakin’ of friends, did you and Claire have some sorta fallin’ out?”

             
“Not really.”

             
“Then how come you don’t hang around her much anymore? Is it because of Al?”

             
She got up and put the tiny scraps of napkin into the trash can
.
“That’s part of it, but Claire is still such a kid.”

             
“She’s the same age as you,” I said, as Sunny put her coffee cup in the sink.

             
“In a way.”  She sat back down at the table
.
“But she wants to do a lot of kid stuff…stuff I’ve outgrown.”

             
I took her hand
.
“I know Al is hip and runs with an older crowd and stuff, but don’t be in too big a hurry to grow up
.
That’s a one-way street, angel.”

Chapter
Five

             
Sunny was dyin’ to go to play practice that afternoon, but since she was suspended I reckoned that meant she couldn’t go to school at all
.
What kind of punishment would that be if they allowed young ‘uns to miss classes but come back to enjoy the good stuff?  No punishment
at all
in my book!

             
Still, Faye got off early and swung by to pick up Sunny around four o’clock, so that gave me plenty of time to get to the school and catch the end of play practice
.
I planned on gettin’ a glimpse of that Al in action.

             
Now before you go thinkin’ I lied to Sunny about not likin’ Al, the Bible says we’re to love others as ourselves
.
So it ain’t Al
personally
I don’t like, it’s her ways.
Kinda like a loophole.

             
I slipped in at the back of the auditorium
.
They were rehearsin’ a scene where Macbeth had killed the king and that Al (Lady Macbeth) was tellin’ Macbeth to frame the grooms
.
It was kindly weird to be sittin’ there listenin’ to Al tellin’ how to frame somebody when Sunny was in a whole heap of trouble
because
she’d been framed herself.

             
Poor ol’ Macbeth feels bad because he’s
killed the king, and his wife pretty much calls him a sissy
.
She decides to go frame the grooms herself
.
I wonder if it’ll have anything to do with Mrs. Anderson’s bracelet, but I figure no, that’s already been done
.
Of course, I
know
Al ain’t Lady Macbeth
,
but I have to wonder just how
good an actress she is
.
She’s the only one of the young ‘uns the drama teacher didn’t jump all over about their accents, but that ain’t all that’s botherin’ me
.
If she’s this convincing playin’ a part
in a play, is she just pretendin’
to be Sunny’s friend?  Is she usin’ Sunny for a scapegoat?

             
The teacher wound everything up and said she’d see ‘em all after school the next day
.
As Al started down off the stage, a boy got up out of the front row to meet her
.
They went right into each other’s arms and started kissin’.

             
“Alicia,” the drama teacher hollered, “you know that’s not allowed in school!”

             
“Whatever
.
” Al br
oke
away from
lover boy
long enough to grab her backpack off the floor in front of the stage
.
She handed it to him and they walked up the aisle toward me.

             
“You’re doin’ a good job with the play,” I said when they got within hearing distance
.

             
“Thanks.”  Al smiled.

             
I looked at the boy
.
“Do you go here, too?”

             
“Naw, I’m a
sen
ior.”

             
“See ya,” Al said.

             
As they walked past, the boy asked, “Who’s she?”

             
“One of the lunch ladies
.
”

             
I wondered if she even knew I was Sunny’s grandmother
.
Probably not
.
It still stung that Sunny had been embarrassed by me, and it worried me that Sunny thought Al was so cool
.
I thought about Al’s mother
.
What was she like?  Did she know her daughter wore such sexy clothes to school and smooched high school boys right smack dab in the auditorium?  Did she care?  I decided to find out.

             
I got up and went to the library
.
I sat down at an unoccupied computer and went onto the Internet, glad Sunny’d taught me how to use a search engine
.
I did a search for “Granger” in our town and then narrowed it down by school districts
.
There was only one “Granger” listed in Sunny’s school district
.
I printed out the directions to the house and put ‘em in my pocketbook
.
Then I left the school and went to get Matlock
.
It’s always good to have a partner
along
—especially a partner with some muscle—when you’re doin’ surveillance.

DIVIDER HERE

             
Al’s house was certainly not what I
’d
expected
.
I’m not sure exactly what I had expected, but I am sure this tiny dump of a place wasn’t it
.
The house looked like it had maybe four rooms
.
Figurin’ one room was the bathroom and another was the kitchen, that didn’t leave Al’s family a whole lotta livin’ space.

             
It could’ve been a nice cottage, though, if it was fixed up
.
It could use a coat or two of paint, and one shutter looked like it was hanging on by its last screw
.
A couple trash bags took up almost the whole porch, although there was room for
one
rusty metal chair
.
It wasn’t a very welcome place to come home to.

             
I remembered Claire sayin’ Al hadn’t lived here long
.
Maybe her family hadn’t had time to renovate the house yet.

             
I parked on the
side of the
road in front of the house and put Matlock on his leash
.
We went up to the house and I knocked on the door.

             
A woman wearing jeans and an oversized green sweatshirt opened the door
.
She didn’t hardly look old enough to be Alicia’s mother, but I didn’t think she was her sister
.

             
“Who’re you?” she asked, and her eyes had a hard look to ‘em.

             
“Hi,” I said, tryin’ to smile but feelin’ more than a little awkward
.
“I’m Myrtle Crumb, and I’ve been workin’ at the middle school.”

             
She sighed and her breath smelled like
stale
cigarettes
.
“What’s Al done now?”

             
“Nothin’ that I know of
.
There was a friend of hers suspended the other day
.
They believe she stole a bracelet.”

             
“Don’t surprise me none.”

             
“Really?” I asked.

             
“Sure
.
That’s the way kids are.”

             
“Are you Alicia’s sister?”

             
She laughed. “Not hardly
.
I’m her mother.”

             
“You don’t really think all kids are thieves, do you?”

             
She flipped her palms
.
“Kids’ll do whatever they can get away with
.
That’s how it was in my day, and I figure that’s how it
still
is.”

             
“You’ve got a point.”  I
thought
the apple
probably didn’t
fall far from the tree.

             
“What’s with the dog?”

             
“He’s just my buddy,” I said
.
“I take him everywhere.”

             
“He ain’t no drug dog or nothin’, is he?”

             
“No, I don’t hardly think so!”  I chuckled
.
She didn’t
.
“Is Alicia here?  I’d like to
talk with y
ou a
ll
a minute if—”

             
“No, she ain’t here, and I don’t know when she will be.”

             
“Oh, I’ll…uh…I’ll let you get back to what you were doin’ then
.
Thank you for your time.”  I started off the porch but turned back around
.
“By the way, Alicia’s doin’ a great job in the play.”