Welcome to Amateur Theatricals, book twelve in the Operation Quickline series. The stage is set for a major operation as Lisa, Sid, and Nick go undercover at a university to find who’s killing KGB moles in training. You can read the first episode here, and catch up on the series here.
The good part of our current cover was that there was a lot of room for culture shock. We were a nice little family from California. Of course, it would take some time to really fit in with even a university town like Collins, Kansas.
The downside, at least from Sid’s and Nick’s perspective, was that instead of our usual affluent lifestyle, we were living like more normal people. Okay, from my perspective, too. Compared to Sid, I am rather tight with money. But not having had to worry about how much money I had for a few years had left me a little on the spendthrift side. The problem was, I fell into my more fiscally conservative habits [Try miserly. – SEH] a lot faster than either Sid or Nick did.
It was still dark when we got up the next morning. The house was cold because I’d turned the thermostat down to save on heating bills. We’d gotten up extra early because Nick had to be at his new school at eight and Sid wanted to be sure we got a workout in. Little did he know what kind of workout awaited us. We’d kept an eye on the snow falling and it looked like it had stopped a little after ten, when Sid and I went to bed. There were a good several inches of it on the sidewalk and driveway when we opened the front door. Thank God, there were two snow shovels in the garage. I pulled them outside to see Sid walking through the snow to the side of the house.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“The snow stopped at, what, ten?” he asked me softly.
“I think so.”
He nodded to the side of the house. “Get a look at this.”
There were the indentations of several footprints right under the window to Sid’s and my bedroom. I noticed something else as we came around to the front of the house and the bedroom window on that side.
“Two different sets here.” I pointed. “One that matches that other set and a second, really heavy boot, it looks like.”
A police car pulled up on the street in front of the house and a lone officer got out.
“Good morning,” he told us as he walked up the snowy driveway. “Sorry to come by so early, but we got a call last night about some screaming in your house.”
Nick guffawed and his father and I glared at him.
“It wasn’t like that,” I said.
The officer chuckled. “The report says that there was some noise, but not indicative of anyone in trouble.”
Sid shrugged. “We like sex. I’m just surprised that the noise carried outside. The house is pretty well insulated, and the windows are double-paned.”
“According to the watch command, it wasn’t that loud.”
“Officer,” I pointed to the two sets of tracks in front of the window. “Could one of these sets of footprints belong to one of your colleagues?”
The officer came over and squatted down over the tracks. “Yeah, that’s one of our regulation boots.”
“Do you know who the second set belongs to?” I asked.
“Can’t say, but…” The officer glanced at the house next door.
Sid looked at him thoughtfully. “If the noise wasn’t that bad and there’s nothing going on that shouldn’t be, why are you here?”
The officer laughed again and glanced again at the house next to ours. “Just letting your nosy neighbor see that we’re following up on the call. You guys are new here, right?”
“We moved in just yesterday,” said Sid.
“Okay. Well, not that it’s a big deal, but there are a lot of really bored housewives on this street, so don’t be surprised when you see us.”
The officer sauntered back to his squad car and drove away.
“That will not be helpful,” Sid grumbled.
“Nothing we can do about it.” I shrugged.
I started in on the sidewalk, only to have my lower back explode in pain when I’d barely gotten three feet in.
Sid cursed. “You didn’t.”
“It’s okay.” I blinked back tears and tried to get the shovel under the next bit of snow.
“No, it’s not.” Sid waved at Nick. “Come on, son. This will be our workout this morning.”
Nick took my shovel with the sigh of the truly beleaguered. I went inside the house and did several stretches, none of which helped much, then took a shower. The guys came in as I was blow-drying my hair and I warned them against going around with wet hair in freezing weather.
Sid put together breakfast while Nick was in our one shower. I ate, then listened to Sid curse as the hot water in the shower ran out. I had packed my super-sized Motrin tablets. The problem, as I looked at the boxes littering the kitchen and living room floors, was that I had no idea where the tablets were.
“You’re lucky,” Nick grumbled as he staggered into the kitchen.
“What do you mean?”
“Dad said you can’t do any more shoveling.”
I clenched my teeth. “Son, do you have any idea how much my back hurts right now?”
Nick’s eyebrows rose, and he backed off. “Okay. Sorry.”
Sid’s mood was not great, but not nearly as bad as it could have been. He kissed me quickly as he came into the dining area, then piled fruit on his plate. Sid’s preferred breakfast is fresh fruit salad, whole wheat toast, and prune juice. We’d been able to find whole wheat bread and prune juice. There hadn’t been much fresh fruit at the supermarket besides apples, oranges, and bananas, and the bananas hadn’t looked that good.
We got the Toyota sedan out of the garage and on the road in plenty of time to get Nick to the university school, officially known as the Evelyn Casey Education Center, by eight. Sid dropped both me and Nick off, then went to go to the provost’s office to get himself signed in as a new faculty member and all the attendant paperwork done.
Dr. Schilling, the school principal, came out of her office just long enough to say hello to me and Nick, then passed us off to Ms. Westmore, a young woman with a filled-out build, brown hair, and hazel eyes that peered at us through very thick glasses.
She looked through the file folder in her hands. “We’re going to have Ryan do the full battery of assessments with the teachers today.” She looked up at me and smiled. “It’s the usual protocol for new students. Mr. Clark has his open period now, as does Ms. Stillwell.”
Ms. Westmore went through the list of all the teachers who would talk to Nick over the course of that school day, then sent Nick off with Mr. Clark.
“Now, we need to get your perspective,” Ms. Westmore said. “Given Ryan’s scores on his entrance exams, he is gifted, but his past grades don’t seem to support that.”
I sighed. “That’s probably the ADHD.”
Nick had been officially diagnosed that previous fall, thanks to his current teacher back home. The diagnosis had come as no surprise to anyone who knew Nick. The problem was that because Nick had come into Sid’s and my lives so late – he was eleven at the time – and because his first mother had been rather difficult about sharing information with us before she died, we didn’t know if Nick had been diagnosed earlier in his life. Nick said he didn’t remember any tests, nor had he taken any medications.
“Ryan also gets bored a lot,” I continued.
To my enormous relief, Ms. Westmore chuckled. “Just looking at his paperwork, that doesn’t surprise me. Are you medicating?”
“No. Adaptive behaviors. My mother taught Ryan to knit, and that seems to soothe him.”
Ms. Westmore grinned. “That’s terrific. Knitting is great for kids.”
“The other problem we’ve had is that while he’s behind in history, geography, and English, he’s way ahead of his classmates in math and science.”
“That’s interesting. Any discipline problems?”
That one really made me sigh. “Mostly impulsive behavior.”
There was also Nick’s problem with bullies. He hated them. He’d been bullied as a younger child. When he’d come to live with Sid and me, we’d started training him in self-defense right away because he’d need those skills to stay alive. But the training had also given him enough confidence to stand up to the bullies at his school, not only for himself, but for the younger children, too. He didn’t start fights, by any stretch, but if a bully came after him or another, weaker kid, Nick could and would hit back.
I did not encourage this. However, the two times Nick had punched another kid, he’d been standing up against the bullies in question. The second time, the bully had been about to hurt a seventh-grade girl when Nick stepped in. Nick even let the bully hit him first before taking him out with punches to the belly and head. The bully’s mom was not happy, given that her son had gotten the worst of the fracas, but she couldn’t say much since her son had started the incident and had started plenty of others at the school.
I looked at Ms. Westmore, wondering if she’d understand that, and decided not to take the chance.
“Impulsive behavior,” Ms. Westmore wrote down. “Well, that’s no surprise with the ADHD.” She smiled at me. “I’m sure Ryan will do well here. As I’m sure you know, the Evelyn Casey Education Center runs from pre-school through twelfth grade. Its mission is to educate children in a positive learning environment that helps each child develop his or her full potential and individuality. The reason we do such extensive assessments on each child is that students are not assigned to specific grade levels. Instead, they are assigned to pods of similarly skilled students in each subject area. So, based on what you just told me, your son may work with high school age students in math, but perhaps sixth grade age in geography. It’s also not unusual, especially with new students, for the child to be reassigned to a different pod as he or she adjusts to the new environment. We’ll go over Ryan’s assessments and discuss his education plan this afternoon. Can you be here at one-thirty?”
“Sure. Thanks.”
I left and slid back into my parka, a dark green one that went down to my knees, and given the bite in the air that morning, I was glad I had it. I wasn’t supposed to meet Sid until two-thirty over at Randall’s lab office. I could have walked back to the house, it wasn’t that far away, but I thought getting to know the campus a little better would be a good idea. Like many such schools, most of the buildings faced onto a quad, currently filled with snow and a couple students having a snowball fight. Four large buildings sat apart from the main complex. The first was the education building, which sat next to the Evelyn Casey Education Center, what most people referred to as the Test School. The buildings were connected through the basements by a tunnel. Both of those buildings were behind the Humanities Building and the student Commons and Bookstore.
The Physical Education building was across a snowy field from the Education Building. I wandered over there, picking my way slowly along the cleared walkway. My back was still hurting quite a lot. I hadn’t found my pills, either, and I’d checked my monster of a purse. It was black leather, filled with pockets on the inside, but it was also pretty deep, and I carried a lot with me. I found the exercise center, and there were plenty of stationary bikes and treadmills, and the weight machines were nice and modern. The free weights section was huge, too. Lockers were available with a student ID, and I suddenly remembered that I needed to go back to the administration building and get mine.
I ate lunch in the Commons, and both regretted it and was grateful. The regret was because the food was pretty bad, and I was grateful that it would be little temptation. Eating lunch out was going to be a bit of a luxury, even at the Commons, given how tight our budget was.
I took a quick look around the Humanities building, where Sid would be teaching, but didn’t see him. There was a covered bridge on the second floor to the Performing Arts building and I went there to look around, as well. It looked like the second floor was mostly given over to the Music Department. All the offices were there. A sign on the wall pointed up a staircase to the practice rooms and the Costume Warehouse. Downstairs was the Theater Department. The faculty and department offices were on the outside edge of the floor closest to the Humanities building. I found Kaspar’s office, but it was dark, as were several of the others.
The back edge of the building was filled with two large dance studios, and across from the studios were two huge dressing and restrooms, one for the women and one for the men. The two main stages, the scene shop, and the costume shop were on the opposite side of the floor from the offices.
Across from the costume shop was a room that had been painted green and featured some of the ugliest, most broken down furniture I had ever seen. Two couches and three easy chairs were grouped facing each other in front of some gray cabinets with a counter and a sink that had probably not been washed in… I’m not sure I wanted to know. A small white fridge sat under the counter. I did not open it. There was also a small microwave oven on the counter, but again, I shuddered at the thought of using it. Closer to the door, in the back corner, a round table sat in the middle of four unmatching rickety chairs with plastic seats and backs and one with the seat but no back. I later learned that anything in that room was a leftover that even the scavengers in the scene shop had decreed unusable.
Just outside the door, several sheets of paper had been taped to the wall. Most were the usual announcements about classes and such. One announced auditions for Top Girls on January 14 and 15 in the Studio Theatre. Sid and I had seen the play in New York in 1983. A tall man with thinning gray hair and wire-rimmed glasses was busy taping a second notice to the wall. As I smiled at the Top Girls announcement, he looked over at me and smiled.
“Hello,” he said in a soft, but cultured voice. “You look like you’re new here.”
“I am,” I said. “I’m just checking things out before school starts next week.”
“Ah. I’m Doctor Edgar Dorfmann. And you are…?”
“Linda Devereaux. Dorfmann? I think I have you for Voice and Diction this quarter.”
He thought for a moment, then smiled. “I believe you do. Well, welcome to Collins.” He pointed at the notice he’d just taped to the wall. “You will be required to audition, you know.”
“Oh.” I looked at the notice and couldn’t help laughing. The auditions were the same nights as for Top Girls, but the play was Shakespeare’s Richard III. “Ah-hah. The hatchet job on Grandpa’s enemy.”
Dorfmann laughed. “I haven’t heard it put quite that way. But you are familiar with it?”
“So-so. I did my undergrad degree in English and managed to get through almost all of the plays.”
“You’re not a grad student.” He looked at me, curious.
“Not yet. My husband is a visiting professor in history here, so until we know whether he’ll be able to stay on, I’m taking undergrad pre-requisites before tackling the master’s.”
“I see.” He lifted an eyebrow. “Well, I would recommend you find a good monologue by next Wednesday. Anything but ‘Set down, set down.’ You know every girl in the department will want to do that one.”
The character of Anne was considered the female lead in Richard III, and her big monologue began “Set down, set down.”
“I think I can find something.” I nodded.
“Excellent.” Dorfmann chuckled, then rolled his r’s. “Brush up your Shakespeare!”
“And they’ll all kowtow.” I grinned, quoting the tune from Kiss Me, Kate.
He laughed outright, and I moved on. From there, I went on to the Administration Building and got my student ID, and then it was time to get back to the test school.
The assessments were pretty much what I expected. Nick would be in a pod with mostly fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds for math and science. He would be encouraged to join Dr. Garrett’s Lab Rats (never mind that we’d already knew he would). For English, history, and geography, he’d be in a pod with thirteen-year-olds. He wasn’t as far behind as I’d thought. He was also in his age group for phys ed, although, apparently, that pod was mostly made up of male athletes. Nick had chosen a music pod focusing on guitar for his arts pod, and the kids were of all ages in that one. There was one final pod for social consciousness, and that would include sex ed, health, and social graces, whatever that meant, and again, Nick was in his age group.
When Nick came running up to me at two-thirty, he was ecstatic.
“Mom! They’re gonna let me knit in class!” He tackled me with one of his more exuberant hugs. “And I won’t be the only boy knitting.”
I squeezed him back, laughed. “Really? That’s terrific.”
“I really like this place,” he told me as we walked across campus to the science building. It was on the other side of the performing arts building from humanities and next to the administration building. With eight floors, it was the tallest building on campus because it also housed the Engineering department. Randall’s lab and office were on the fifth floor.
There were four other Lab Rats: Kristie, Tina, Nathan, and Monroe. Kristie was fourteen, soon to be fifteen. Tina and Nathan were both sixteen. Monroe was the oldest, at seventeen. He was blond, a little pudgy, and looked at Nick with a sigh, as if he expected to be stuck babysitting. Neither Tina nor Nathan paid much attention to Nick. They seemed more than a little absorbed in each other. Both had brown hair and were about the same average size. Tina wore glasses. If Monroe was less than thrilled about a younger kid, Kristie, who had short brown hair and a tall, slender figure, was filled with utter disdain.
“Have you guys thought about what experiments you want to do for this quarter?” Randall asked the other four.
Tina said that she and Nathan wanted to do something with peptides, I think. Monroe and Kristie each had projects that made even less sense to me. Randall had them start drafting their plans, then took Nick around the lab, explaining the equipment and the safety rules. Sid showed up around then and gave me a quick kiss. Randall gave Nick a folder full of potential projects to look through, then took Sid into the glassed-walled enclosure that was Randall’s office.
I followed and hung in the doorway. “Randall, is there a health center nearby? I wrenched my back this morning and can’t find my pain pills.”
“Oh, yeah. It’s on the outer ring of buildings between here and Performing Arts. Faculty and family have full access.” Randall shut the door and sat down at the desk, which was on a raised platform so that Randall could see everything going on in the lab.
I made my way there. The health center building was huge, and I realized it also contained all the classrooms for the pre-med, nursing, and pharmacy programs on campus. The center itself was mostly empty, but then, school hadn’t started yet. A student aide got my name, well, the one I was using, and found me on the computer as a faculty wife. There were still forms to fill out, as there always are.
Another student, this one from the nursing program, took me back into the exam area, which was laid out a lot like an emergency department, with a row of curtained cubicles. I could hear harsh coughing coming from one and another student nurse, leaving the cubicle, slid back the curtain far enough for me to get a glimpse of a brown-haired young man, about medium build, wearing a hospital gown that had fallen down his left arm. I started when I realized that the thin drawing on his bare shoulder was a swastika tattoo. He coughed again and pulled the gown up.
I was shown to another curtained room and was examined in no time. The x-ray took a little longer, but I was soon given a prescription for Motrin, an ice pack, and a list of instructions on how to care for my back.
The pharmacy was down the hall from the health center, and again, was relatively empty except for the kid I’d already seen, still coughing. It felt like it took forever, but it only took a few minutes, and I had my drugs and a heating pad, and was on my way back to the science building.
“You know, the first thing we’ll do is find those other pills,” I grumbled as Sid drove us home.
“I’m glad you bought the heating pad, though.”
“Yeah, but twenty-five bucks? Not in the budget.”
“We’ll be fine.”
At dinner, Nick waxed enthusiastic about the lab and the different projects he was debating working on.
“It’s real research, too,” he said. “Not just the kind of setup experiment where you know what you’re supposed to get. Dr. Randall said that nobody is going to write a doctoral thesis on this stuff. They’re just fun projects. Still, it’s totally awesome that we’re supposed to work like real scientists.”
Sid and I both smiled at him, then after we cleaned up after dinner, sent him to his room to do some of his homework from his school back home.
Thank you for reading. For more information about the Operation Quickline series, click here.
Please check out the Fiction page for the latest on all my novels. Or look me up at your favorite independent bookstore. Mine is Vroman’s, in Pasadena, California.