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“Right now?”
“Yeah, right now.” In the driver’s seat, he loosened his tie, started the car and waited for the factory-installed phone system to pick up the call.
“Right now I’m in the john.”
“What john? Where?”
“I’m at the beach, Mike. But I didn’t cut school to come here.”
“No? You just thought you had a vacation day today?”
“No.” The succinct answer, the change of tone, was a signal of its own. Turning the BMW toward the freeway heading north to Santa Raquel, Mike focused his thoughts. First things first.
“You were suspended again.”
“Yeah.”
“What for this time?”
“I told my teacher to go fuck himself.” Willie knew better than to lie to Mike. He’d give whoppers to everyone else—including their parents and school officials—but he never lied to Mike.
He always called him, too. Just not soon enough.
“Why did you do that?”
“I aced a test. He said I cheated and gave me a zero. I fail the class, I don’t graduate.”
“Did you cheat?” It wouldn’t be the first time.
“No. It was biology. I like that class.”
Though the Valentines didn’t raise any stupid kids, Willie was by far the one with the highest IQ.
“So why’d he think you cheated?” Pedal to the metal, Mike kept an eye out for cops. He did not need the time waste that would occur if he got a speeding ticket.
“Because someone else cheated off me.”
“Did you know it at the time?”
“I suspected.”
“So you made your answers accessible?”
“No. I just saw her looking over and thought she might be trying to cheat. I didn’t move to make it easier, or harder. I just kept doing what I was doing.”
Good. This one wouldn’t be too bad.
“Stay put until I get there,” he said into the phone. “And I mean put. You sit on the bench that backs up to the men’s restroom and you do not move.”
“I got it already. I wasn’t planning to go surfing, dude.”
Hanging up with Willie, he called his mother at work. After Charlie got married and then Dennis left for college, leaving only Willie at home, Darlene had gone to work full-time. She had a law degree and had worked part-time, doing research for other lawyers, but now she had her own office and a paralegal, still doing case law research for a host of firms.
He could call his father first. Matt, an architect who designed kitchens, he could be reached pretty much anytime. But when it came to Willie, Mike needed his mother to work on his father.
Besides, the school would have called her already.
“I assume you’re with him?” Darlene asked as she picked up the phone.
