Ms. Miller and the Midas Man (3 page)

Later, she had to deal with, “Jeez, Ms. Miller. It sounds like they’re having a party next door, doesn’t it?”

She refused to turn to the window Andrew was leaning sideways to look through. The female shrieks and laughter coming from the next house were not only highly provocative and indicative of an orgy taking place, they were...well, embarrassing. He had no shame. And the women, clearly, had no pride. Such a ruckus.

“Will you two knock it off,” she heard Scott Hammond’s distinctively low male voice saying. “If you two think you’re getting away from me this quickly, think again. We haven’t finished in the bedroom yet.”

She cringed, her eyes darting to Andrew to check on his level of awareness as her skin flushed hot and pink with chagrin.

“You know, Andrew,” she said, striving to keep her voice calm and detached. “When I played with the Philharmonic in New York there were all sorts of people around me playing lots of different instruments, making lots of different sounds, doing different things. Sometimes it could be very distracting so I had to learn to concentrate. I had to learn to block out other noises and other people and focus on my instrument, the sounds I was making, what I was doing. Let’s you and I practice that this afternoon, shall we?”

Then there was Molly Bennett’s giggling...

“What’s so funny, Molly? Do the vibrations in the strings tickle your fingers? That’s common in the beginning, later those vibrations will tell you—”

She stopped when Molly giggled again, this time without playing the violin. She also noticed that Molly was looking over her shoulder, through the window. She turned her head quickly to find Scott Hammond in a window directly across from hers, playing an invisible violin, his movements large and elaborate like a mime in a park. When he finally caught her watching him, he stopped, put a hand in the air as if he were going to swear an oath, and waved at her with a huge smile, dimples flashing mischievously.

She turned back to Molly.

“You know, Molly, when I played with the Philharmonic in New York there were all sorts of people around me playing lots of different instruments, making lots of different sounds...”

The worst of it came with Mrs. Mutrux, the minister’s wife, when she arrived to pick up their son Stephen.

“That’s it for today, Stevie,” she said, closing his music books and handing them to him. “Try to remember to keep your head up, use good posture, and get plenty of extension on your bow. That way the music will be smooth and not choppy, and each note will sing out long and pretty for you.”

“I think a trumpet would be easier to play than this old thing,” Stevie told her unabashedly.

“Maybe. But every instrument takes practice. Even the trumpet.” She looked at his mother, who was half in and half out the front door, her attention directed at the house next door. Naturally, there was more shrieking and screaming and laughing going on, but she had long since closed up all her windows, and it was muffled until now. “Six months was our deal, remember? If you still don’t like the violin by then, I’ll speak with your mother about a trumpet, okay?”

“Okay,” he said.

“Stevie’s doing very well,” she said, getting to her feet with a sinking feeling that she might have to apologize for whatever Mrs. Mutrux was watching.

“He needs to set aside a special time each day for practice and work on his form...a little...and...”

Her voice trailed off when she joined the preacher’s wife in the doorway and saw what she was seeing—Scott Hammond and the two beautiful women in a water fight on the front lawn.

“Oh dear,” she muttered.

“You, too, huh?” Carrie Mutrux asked, glancing at her briefly. “I’ve known him nearly all my life and he never changes.” She smiled wistfully. “I had a crush on him in kindergarten, and as much as I love my husband, I can’t really say my feelings for him have changed much since then.”

Gus frowned and took a closer look at the minister’s wife. A pretty lady with average features, better known for her practical thinking and dedication and hard work toward her husband’s church than for her own piety. She looked sensible and sane.

“When he got married and moved away...” She shook her head. “I’m so glad he’s back,” she went on. “It just feels right, you know?”

“Not exactly,” she said, taking another look at the melee next door, then pulling back out of sight. She refused to give him any more attention than he deserved—which was none at all.

Mrs. Mutrux smiled at her. “Small towns,” she said. “They’re chock-full of traditions, and usually for a good reason. When something works, it works. And the Hammonds work here in Tylerville. Always have. Before Mr. Kingsley was principal at the high school, Joe Hammond was. When he retired...well, Mr. Kingsley wasn’t Joe Hammond. He wasn’t as involved. Didn’t have the energy or drive or enthusiasm Joe had, and some of the life went out of it...Not just the high school. The whole community. Tylerville isn’t much good for anything but raising families and retiring. Joe had everyone involved in the school system—with the kids, you know? They were number one in his book, and unless Scotty has changed a great deal, he’ll make them number one again.”

“You think so?”

“Oh, yes. When Scotty agreed to be principal at the high school, you could just,” she wiggled head to toe,
“feel
everyone’s excitement.”

Gus took another quick peek out the door, then looked at the woman as if she’d lost her mind completely.

“That
Scott Hammond?”

“Yes. Isn’t he wonderful? I assume the two of you have met?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Stephen, honey? Are you ready?” she asked her son, not taking her gaze off her childhood crush. “Really, Augusta, you won’t believe the difference he’ll make around here. There’s just something about the Hammonds that makes you want to follow their lead. They’re all that way. Born leaders. Very civic-minded.”

This time, when she passed her skeptical expression beyond the doorway to make sure they were talking about the same person, he was waiting for her.

Hose running in an arch to the ground, he lifted his free hand in the air and started waving.

“Carrie Mutrux, that you?” he shouted, loud enough for the entire neighborhood to hear. “Get yourself over here and let me take a look at you. You sick of being married to that dull old preacher yet?”

“Not yet,” she said, heading down the steps with Stevie in tow. “But when I am, you’ll be the first to know. You heathen.”

She held the screen door open and watched as Scott Hammond and the minister’s wife hugged and kissed and hugged again. When they were
finally
finished, he stooped and said something to Stevie, then he and the boy both turned to look at Gus.

“Afternoon, Ms. Miller,” he said, smiling that smile. “Hope we weren’t making too much noise.”

Go to hell
sprang to her lips, but there was the minister’s wife and child to consider.

“Not at all.” She hesitated. “Looks like a fine day for a water fight.”

“Care to join us?”

“Not today, thanks. See you next week, Stevie,” she said, stepping back inside and closing the door.

“What is the matter with this town?
That
man? Principal of the high school?”

“Gus, you’re overreacting,” her sister told her over the phone a few minutes later. “Alan says Scotty Hammond is as good as they come. And I’ve read his résumé. He’s a little overqualified if you ask me, for such a small town.”

“Lydia, the man is perverted,” she said, flat out. “He’s been cavorting with two half-naked women all afternoon.”

“Two?” A brief pause. “Well, who could blame them. Isn’t he cute?”

“Lydia!” Was she the only person getting a clear image of this terrible picture?

“Well, he is. And if you’d come to dinner with Howard two weeks ago when I begged you to, you could have met him properly. In an official capacity, instead of over the back fence.”

“You invited me to have dinner with Howard Munce and the school board, to meet the new high school principal. You made it sound almost as exciting as constipation. Why didn’t you tell me he was going to be my next-door neighbor?”

“I didn’t know he was planning to be. He was staying with one of his sisters at the time and didn’t mention where he planned to live, or I would have told you.”

“One of his sisters? How many are there?” She stretched to look out a window, noting a sudden silence in the neighborhood. Nothing.

“Um,” her sister hummed distractedly, always busy doing two things at once, even on the telephone. “He has seven or eight of them here in town. All with different last names because they’re all married, but I understand the family was quite large and very close. The father was the high school principal years ago, even before Alan and I moved here.”

“You know,” Gus said thoughtfully. “Of the two of us, you’re definitely the more talkative. In fact, I don’t know anyone who talks
more
than you, except Mother. And yet, you’ve been remarkably secretive about this man.”

Lydia giggled. “Have I? Maybe that’s because I was thinking that if things didn’t work out between you and Howard, I might hook you up with Scotty Hammond.”

She groaned. “Oh, God.” Now she was getting a headache. “Lydia, if you don’t stop trying to attach me to every unattached man in this town, I’m going back to New York. I’ll get a counter job at Macy’s and play backup in the first coffeehouse that’ll take me.
And
I’ll tell Mother it was your idea.”

“That’s rich. She still thinks your move to Tylerville was my fault.”

“You’re the one with the husband on the school board, and you’re the one who recommended me for the job of music director at the elementary school, and you’re the one who said you’d smooth things over with her if I came.”

“And wasn’t I right? Tell me you didn’t have fun last year, teaching all those little kids to sing and play recorders and shake tambourines.”

“All right. I did. It was fun.”

Truth to tell, the best thing to date about coming to Tylerville was the discovery of children. She’d had little to no exposure to them before that time. Now she couldn’t seem to get enough of them. She found them open, creative, contagiously happy, and, in general, extremely easy to please.

“And hasn’t Mother come around?”

“She’s accepted the fact that I’m not good enough to play professionally anymore, yes. But I think she wants me to teach at Yale or Juilliard...or even MacPhail. Elementary school chorus and private violin lessons aren’t really what she’d define as preserving the arts.”

“Of course it is. Who better to preserve it in than children? And how better to serve the community than by instilling an appreciation for music in its young? Answer me that? Your problem—and Mother’s problem—is that you take things too literally. You think too big. Little towns, little people, little things are just as important as big towns, big people, and big things. Maybe more.”

“And your problem,” Gus said, after a few seconds of silent agreement and self-affirmation, “is the same as it’s always been. You’re too down-to-earth, and you’re too often right.”

“That’s two problems.”

“You see, you’re right again.”

If you pinned her to the mat, Gus would eventually admit that she viewed her attendance at church services more as a tolerable social obligation than anything involving her religious attitudes.

Fact of the matter was she enjoyed being...well, recognized was probably the proper word for it. It was a throwback to her days of being first violinist with the New York Philharmonic and soloist with the Chambers, a rather well-known and elite group of musicians who hired out for private gatherings and exhibitions.

Granted, she was now
Ms. Miller
to the loud church whispers of children, and Augusta to the smiles and friendly greetings of their parents, who knew her as nothing more than a music teacher. But she could remember a time when people she considered to be colleagues and friends couldn’t bring themselves to look her in the eye, much less offer her a cheery good-morning.

When she first arrived in Tylerville, she’d sat with Lydia and Alan and their three children as a family in church. It wasn’t long after that that Lydia had invited Howard Munce to a family picnic to meet her unmarried sister, or long after
that
that he started feeling obliged to take up the empty space in the pew beside her.

She hadn’t lied to Scott Hammond when she’d told him she had an overabundance of friends. There was Howard, of course, a balding forty-something pharmacist who sat on the school board with her brother-in-law and had a tendency to monologue on the pros and cons of allergy therapy versus the frequent use of modern antihistamines, or some equally enthralling controversy. And there was Bill Wexell, the third-grade teacher who lived with his mother and enjoyed the fact that Tylerville was actually a state-designated bird sanctuary. And Louis Green, manager of the local Safeway, who frequently boasted of having the
greenest
produce in town.

All fine men. All eager to please her. All as boring as watching grass grow.

And so it was that she’d taken to eating her lunches in the music room at school and avoiding the third-grade classroom whenever possible, grocery shopping at the A & P, and coming in late to church on Sundays to take the last available seat among strangers—or the second to last available seat as it happened that particular Sunday. The
very
last space was taken by Scott Hammond, who wedged himself in beside her seconds before the service began.

“This couldn’t have worked out better,” he said, breathless and grinning. Her insides were flipping and spinning. His Sunday best was more than enough to send her pulse racing—but under it was the bare wet chest from the day before, a thin and incredibly sexy line of dark hair straight down the middle of it, disappearing into the waistband of his pants...I’m usually too lazy to get all dressed up for church, but I saw you out the window, looking as pretty as spring’s first rose, and thought I’d give it a try. What do you think?” he asked, since he already had her ogle-eyed attention. “Is this tie okay? All my others are still packed in boxes.”