Swift Justice by Jan Dunlap

Author:Jan Dunlap
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: North Star Press of St. Cloud
Published: 2014-09-10T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

By the time I got to the turn into the high school, the flashing lights on a whole fleet of emergency vehicles had all been turned off, and their crews were getting ready to leave. I parked in the nearest empty slot and walked over to the closest fire truck.

“No bombs, I take it,” I said to the fireman who was about to climb up into his engine’s driver’s seat.

“False alarm, thankfully,” he said. “I hope I never see a real one.”

“You and me both,” I agreed.

Cai and I passed by two police cruisers pulled up near the school’s front doors. Rick Cook, our school police officer and my close personal friend, was standing with three other officers on the far side of the car.

“You missed the excitement, Bob,” he called to me. “We had the canine patrol here, but the only suspicious thing they found was a pile of green coconut on your desk.”

“What about the duck?” I asked.

“What duck?”

I had the undeniable feeling that Rick was feigning ignorance, along with innocence.

“When I left this morning, there was a chocolate duck on the coconut nest,” I said.

I noticed that Rick’s fellow officers were all trying to hide smiles.

“Did you guys eat my duck?”

Rick burst out laughing. “If only!” he said. “Unfortunately, one of the German Shepherds—Wanda, the Wonder Dog—got to it first and practically inhaled it.”

The other officers were laughing out loud.

“And since chocolate is toxic for dogs, she threw it back up again,” one of Rick’s buddies informed me. “Right outside your office.”

“Euwww,” Cai said.

“Crap,” I said.

“Not crap,” Rick pointed out. “Vomit.”

“Thank you for the clarification,” I told him. “I feel so much better now.”

“But you must have the nicest receptionist in the whole world,” the buddy continued. “She cleaned it up as soon as we gave the all-clear on the bomb threat.”

Oh, man. I was going to owe Patty big-time for that. A year’s supply of chocolate might be a good place to start, which, I had to admit, would be a small price to pay in exchange for this particular gesture of hers that went above and beyond her job description. I’d already thought she was a gem for rearranging my calendar this morning, but this put her up in the crown jewel department.

Definitely chocolate, and lots of it.

“See you jokers later,” I said, waving goodbye to the still-chortling policemen.

Cai peeled off in the direction of the cafeteria to wait for Bridget to finish classes for the day. I stepped into the counseling suite, only to be met with the strong smell of a pine-scented cleaner.

“I heard, and am forever in your debt,” I said to Patty, who was sitting behind her desk, trying to hide the fact that she was touching up her nail polish. “I’m going to shower you with chocolate for the next year.”

Patty grimaced. “You know, I think I’m off chocolate for a while.” She pointed to the newly-mopped space in front of my office door. “It just doesn’t have that usual appeal to me right now, if you get my drift.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.