Winning the Cowboy's Heart

Regan caught sight of Tanya’s distinctive blond hair through a crowd of students moving down the hall to their class. With some careful maneuvering, she managed to catch up with her friend.

“Do you think eight missing squid are a problem?”

Tanya stopped dead, forcing the current of students to flow around them. “Here at school?” Her blue eyes widened. “No, Regan. No problem at all.”

But the morning passed without any strange incidents and Regan was able to convince herself that the custodian had indeed cleaned out the freezer. Kylie had initially aroused her suspicions by being uncharacteristically subdued, but as the class wore on, Regan decided that the girl was merely distracted.

“Are you all right?” Regan asked after the bell.

“I’m fine.” Kylie’s expression was not friendly. “Did you know that my dad is trying to find you a horse?”

“He is?” If Kylie had thrown out the statement to sidetrack Regan from thinking about squid, the strategy had worked beautifully.

“Yeah. But I don’t think you should read anything into it.”

Regan cocked her head at the kid. “What could I possibly read into it?”

“Maybe that he was doing it because he likes you. That isn’t why he’s doing it.”

Regan managed not to laugh and say, I’lltry not to get my hopes up.

“I expect he’s doing it because he knows the horses around here,” she suggested instead.

“Yeah. And he doesn’t like it when people get horses they can’t handle. That’s how horses get hurt and ruined, you know.”

Regan gritted her teeth. Thank you for thevote of confidence, Mr. Bishop.

She drew in a sharp breath. “You can tell your father that I’m buying a horse from Madison White and that I’ll do my very best not to ruin him.”

Kylie nodded gravely, missing Regan’s irony. She picked up her books and left the room.

Regan gathered her materials for the next class. She wasn’t going to think about Will right now. No sense taking her frustrations out on an innocent social studies class.

At the end of that class Regan discovered her overhead projector was no longer working. A quick investigation revealed that the bulb was missing.

A strange day was getting stranger. Someone had stolen it, and quite recently, too, since she’d used the machine just before lunch.

Who would want to steal an overhead projectionbulb?

Regan rushed to the office between classes to get the key to the supply room. The student aid looked at her with surprise. “Mr. Domingo doesn’t give out the key. He opens the supply room himself.”

Regan let out an exasperated breath and set off to find Mr. Domingo, the supply Nazi. He was in the gym, counting uniforms.

“There’s only one more period,” he said when she explained that she needed a projector bulb. “Can’t you make it?”

“No. I need my overhead to teach the lesson.” She stared at the uniforms. “Are you putting those in numerical order?”

“It’s easier to keep track of them that way,” he muttered. “Come on.” Pete marched out of the gym and down the long, dark hall that led to the supply closet. He turned the final corner ahead of her and then let out a sharp cry and swatted wildly at something that appeared to be attacking his head.

Regan gasped as Pete reeled backward, cursing and thrashing, until he finally tripped over his own feet and ended up flat on his butt in front of her.

Several of the…things…seemed to fly off him as he landed, and then a familiar smell hit Regan’s nostrils. Squid. Quite possibly freshly thawed.

Domingo glared up at her. A limp tentacle was stuck to his shoulder. Another was attached to his back. Several other squid parts were suspended from the doorframe above him.

He flicked the tentacle off his shoulder, radiating fury. Regan tried to think of serious things—SATs, mortgage payments, the nightly news. It wasn’t working.

“Who had access to these squid?” he demanded, wiping a smear of slime from his face.

“I don’t know. I was keeping them in the staff freezer and planned to throw them out on trash day, but…they were missing this morning.”

“Why didn’t you report this?” His face was dangerously red.

“You want me to report missing squid?”

“This wouldn’t have happened if you had. You are responsible for this.”

The bell rang. Regan pulled in a deep breath. “No, Pete. I’d say you’re responsible. Maybe if you weren’t so over-the-top with your discipline policy, you wouldn’t be covered with squid parts right now.”

“You can’t talk to me like that.”

Regan flicked a piece of slippery cephalopod off the wall. “I need to get to class. Are you all right?”

She was rewarded with a furious look, which she took as a yes.

“There will be no more seafood in this school!” Domingo shouted as she rounded the corner without her lightbulb. She decided then and there she’d bring shrimp salad for lunch every day for the rest of the month.

The next day, the Wesley staff and students discovered that hell had no fury like a principal who’d been punked.

Pete Domingo had no evidence, no suspects. All he had was a head full of possibilities, a school packed with smirking students and staff who’d heard about what had happened and had thought it funny, too.

Student after student was called down to the office to be grilled. All had returned to class looking shaken, but also vaguely satisfied. Kylie and Sadie were subjected to a longer inquisition than the other kids called from Regan’s class, but they came back unscathed. No one confessed and, at the end of the day, Pete was no closer to solving his crime than he’d been when he was sitting on the floor in front of the supply-closet door, flicking tentacles off his clothing.

The staff avoided being seen gossiping in groups. No one wanted to be accused of conspiracy and no one wanted to relight Pete’s very short fuse.

“You’ve been a good sport about this,” the librarian whispered, late in the afternoon, as she scanned Regan’s reference book. “I hope you didn’t get into too much trouble.”

“I’m fine,” Regan whispered back. “But I wish I knew who did it. I’d kind of like to shake their hands.”

The woman winked and then nodded toward a table of three geeky eighth-graders who had been thoroughly reamed out by Domingo a few days before for some petty infraction.

“You’re kidding,” Regan mouthed.

The librarian gave her an arch look and disappeared into the stacks.

A few long hours later Regan was in her kitchen making tea, peppermint tea, to help combat the stress headache she’d acquired.

A windstorm had started brewing late that afternoon and was now in full force, bending the trees and rattling the windows, and at first Regan thought the noise at the front door was a blast of wind. When she heard it again, during a lull, she realized someone was knocking.