Chapter Nineteen
Three hours later, Sam entered a deserted Turbos front office. Phones rang unanswered. Desks sat empty. Fax machines buzzed.
Down the hallway, a television was on full volume. Sam marched toward the break room, ready to remind his staff that work came before The Housewives of Atlanta.
“What the hell is going on?” he asked from the doorway.
A dozen people shot past him, alarm on their faces. The rest of the room cleared a path as he moved to get a better view of whatever world event was making his staff look like they might need a raft and a life vest.
On the screen, Fuzzy sat at his desk, his face grim, arms crossed tightly in front of him. He spoke in a clipped tone. “These are ballplayers. They do what they have to do to win a game.”
“But Fuzzy, don’t you think this pushes the limit?” someone asked off-camera.
“I’ve seen worse.” Fuzzy slowly removed his cap and smoothed his hair off his forehead. The set of his jaw told Sam this was bad.
Sam shifted into damage-control mode. He ran through the list of the latest measures other managers were using to combat the substance abuse problems in the league. He ticked off the names on his legal counsel he’d have to notify. They would help him navigate the messy process of suspending a player or getting him into counseling and rehab.
If any of his players were harassing or abusing a woman, no counseling. They were out.
Another reporter pushed his microphone in Fuzzy’s face. “But this isn’t just one or two players, Fuzzy. Rumor is it involves the whole team.”
Sam ran a hand through his hair. He needed to get down to the clubhouse before the team issued any public statements. Fuzzy knew better than to keep talking.
“We don’t know how many are involved,” Fuzzy said.
In their last conversation, Fuzzy had said there was something odd going around the clubhouse. Had Sam really told Fuzzy he didn’t want to know?
Sam spied Tristan cowering by the coffeemaker. He had been spending a lot of time in the field house lately, talking to Blake Alokar and watching the batting practice. He had to know what was going on.
“Staub!” Sam yelled.
Tristan jumped to attention. “Honestly, Sam, I didn’t think it was a big deal.”
The remaining employees slipped out of the room.
“What the hell does that mean?” Sam grabbed Tristan’s collar and pulled him close. “I am not protecting you, do you hear? The police are going to be given full consent to investigate this. No cover-ups.”
Tristan’s eyes grew wide. “Police, Sam! It’s not illegal.”
“In which state? You’re coming down to the clubhouse with me right now.”
Joanie was suddenly between them. “Sam, please. Just give him a chance to explain.”
“Okay. Explain.” Sam pointed Tristan toward the elevator and Joanie followed close behind.
“This isn’t that bad, really, Sam.” Tristan was as pale as a ghost.
“Tell me. Is it drugs or domestic abuse?” Sam asked as the elevators descended to the clubhouse level.
Tristan did a double take. For the first time, his eyes met Sam’s. “You think—”
“It’s not what I think that matters in the end. It’s what the law thinks.”
The elevator opened, and Sam ushered him toward Fuzzy’s office. A security guard stood by the entrance to the clubhouse, looking unsure of his role in the circus side show that had erupted.
Sam waved to the exit behind him and said, “I want you and the other security guards to clear these guys out of here.”
Without waiting for a response, Sam pushed through the overflow of reporters that spilled out of Fuzzy’s office.
Cameras turned his way and someone shouted, “Mr. Hunter, care to tell us what you think?”
Sam put his hand out. “We’ll get back to you after we’ve done a full review of the situation.”
Luther McLean was at the front of the crowd, leaning over Fuzzy’s desk with a microphone.
“Even you, Luther, out!” Sam said when he reached him.
“But—”
He shook his head. “No comment.”
“What about Miss Gray?” Luther asked.
That stopped Sam in his tracks. “Don’t you dare link her to this.” Sam raised a fist and would have punched Luther if Tristan hadn’t grabbed his arm from behind.
The veteran reporter spoke into his microphone. “As their good-luck charm, she’s been at the center of this from the very beginning.”
Sam pulled against Tristan, who was doing his best to separate him from Luther. He covered Luther’s microphone with his free hand. “Miss Gray is innocent. She has nothing to do with the Turbos.”
Luther wasn’t backing down. “I think Maisy Gray is the whole reason this is happening. Don’t you? We should discuss her impact on the team this season.”
Before Sam could respond, Joanie let loose an earsplitting whistle. “Everyone out,” she said. “Now!”
Together, Joanie, Tristan, and two guards were finally able to corral the entire throng of reporters, including Luther, out of Fuzzy’s office.
Sam was shaking so hard he thought he was going to explode.
Fuzzy came around the desk. “Come on, son.”
He pushed Sam in a chair while Tristan closed the door in Luther’s face. The ruckus outside the room faded as the security team cleared the clubhouse.
Sam tried to catch his breath, wishing he had decked Luther when he had the chance. It pissed him off that anyone would link Maisy to any of the shit that was happening.
Someone handed him a bottle of water.
“I don’t know whether you should drink that or pour it on your head. Jesus, Sam, you need to cool off,” Fuzzy said.
Tristan sat down next to Sam and sent Fuzzy a crooked smile. “Sam thinks this is about drugs.”
Fuzzy looked alarmed. “Who’s doing drugs?”
“That’s what I want to know, dammit!” Sam growled.
He slammed the bottle on the arm of the chair and started to stand. Fuzzy pushed him back down with surprising strength. “Get a grip, Hunter. This isn’t about drugs.”
“What the hell are you talking to the reporters about then?”
Fuzzy moved aside and waved to his desk. A pile of fabric, jewelry, and a familiar-looking shoe were scattered across the top.
Sam blinked. It took him a moment to make the connection. “Are those the clothes Maisy had on…” His voice trailed off.
Both men nodded.
“What are they doing here?” His sluggish brain refused to work. The reporters, the questions, the fear on the faces of the staff in the break room — none of this made sense.
Tristan took a deep breath. “I’ll tell you what happened, Sam. But you have to hear me out. Okay? Just don’t get mad.”
Sam sent him a blank look.
Tristan seemed to take it as a go-ahead play. “All right. So…remember how you handed me Maisy’s clothes the day after the gala?”
“Vaguely. I told you to get rid of them or give them away.”
“Yes, and I was going to. I was going to donate all of them.” He nodded to the crumpled pile on the desk. “I had this stuff in my arms when I stopped by the clubhouse to pull some stats from the pitching coaches. Then Romeo Lopez and Remy Anderson saw me. Remy recognized the dress from Maisy’s picture in the paper that day. He practically begged me for the necklace. He said it might be as lucky as she was.”
A strange prickly feeling ran down Sam’s neck. Suddenly he was parched. He opened the bottle of water and took a long drink. “Go on.”
“Then Lopez grabbed the rest. They both said if it didn’t work, he’d give it back. He made a bracelet out of the fringe from Maisy’s shawl, and Anderson wore the necklace for the game against the Pirates.”
Fuzzy spoke up. “In the seventh inning, he hit his second homerun of the night. It was a bases-loaded homerun that won the game for us.”
Tristan patted the mound of clothes. “After that, Maisy’s stuff made the rounds. Blake Alokar wears her earring as a pendant on a necklace. A few of the guys took a piece of, well, a slip. The guys decided all of her stuff was as lucky as Maisy.”
Sam took another long sip of water and closed his eyes to blot out the pain in the back of his head. When he finally opened them, he couldn’t help himself. “Did anyone actually wear the dress or the shoes?”
Tristan was mildly offended by Sam’s question. “Who cares? You know, data shows that if you have high expectations, you succeed.”
Fuzzy harrumphed. “Let’s not argue about the details, boys. The players made a shrine, Sam. You might have seen it if you visited the locker room before a game.”
“Locker thirty-eight. It was empty,” Tristan added. “The dress and the shoes. They touch it before they go out to the field and cover it up when reporters are around.
Sam squeezed the water bottle. Maybe he would pour the water over his head after all. “How did the media find out?” he asked hoarsely.
“Freemont. When you traded him last week, he was really bitter. He got even by leaking it to the press this afternoon.”
Sam’s reaction just now had undoubtedly made things worse. Luther’s pen was probably already hot with tomorrow’s story.
“Does Charlie know?”
Fuzzy ran a hand over his mouth. “He will now.”
Tristan was still slightly offended by Sam’s comment about men in dresses. “It isn’t that unusual to wear women’s clothing, you know. And despite what you think, I had nothing to do with this.”
Sam cut off Tristan’s next comment with a sharp, “I don’t give a crap who’s wearing dresses. I just need to figure out how to keep this from making us look like we’ve all lost our minds.”
Tristan was distracted by an incoming text.
Fuzzy looked contrite all of a sudden. “I gotta tell you, Sam, I never thought this crap was going to get out. I thought it would die down and we’d all laugh about it in October. I wish—”
He was interrupted by Tristan holding up his phone. “I just got a message from Joanie. She says you need to get upstairs to the press box right now.”
Crap. What else could possible happen? An explosion in the bathroom plumbing would be a welcome relief from the kind of chaos that was going on down here.
Sam could hear Zoom’s booming voice before he reached the press box. “…an enlightening moment in Turbo history,” Zoom was saying. “I discovered that my general manager not only didn’t want to see our good-luck charm come out to the ballpark in person, but he seemed to think dressing up my players in the girl’s clothing was a good option instead.”
Sam leaned against the wall outside the press box as Zoom tore him apart. A bitter taste filled his mouth and he reached for his gum, but he was all out. He wouldn’t need it anymore anyway. His career was over.
It didn’t take much time for Zoom to confirm it. “Hell yes. I am suspending Mr. Hunter from his duties as general manager of the Turbos.”
The acid in Sam’s throat burned its way to his stomach.
“Mr. Zumaeta, isn’t it kind of unusual to fire your GM after the team has made such a turnaround? They almost have the pennant,” Mercer Fazio pointed out.
Zoom’s response was swift and cruel. “Our players got us where we are. Despite a GM who seems to have lost control of the club, they have managed to pull up the season. I’ll be looking for Sam to turn in his resignation by next week. Until then he is out of the clubhouse.”
“What about Maisy Gray? This morning, Mr. Hunter made it sound like she wasn’t coming back to the ballpark.”
“I just saw the little lady today. She’ll be back, I assure you.”
Sam needed to tell Maisy to contact a lawyer and stop this harassment. But one more question from Luther McLean stopped him.
“What about rumors that Sam Hunter and Maisy Gray are involved?”
Zoom made a grumbling sound. “Is that what you heard, Luther? You sure do seem to be the one with the scoops these days.” Zoom laughed scornfully. “Anyone who has seen Miss Gray and Kevin Halderman on the dance floor knows that is false. They’re pretty much back together.”
Five minutes later, the staff gave Sam a wide berth as he returned to the front office, followed by Tristan and Fuzzy. Joanie grabbed him by the shoulders and gave him a hug. She smothered a tiny sob.
Inside Sam’s office, Tristan braced himself against the wall and slid down to a crouch as if he was going to be sick on the spot.
Fuzzy shoved his hands in his pockets and scowled. “I should resign, too. This was more my fault than yours.”
Sam finally found his voice. “Don’t be ridiculous. They need you now more than ever.”
A strange calm was setting in. He should leave before he was escorted out like a convict. Sam looked around his office. No. No longer his office. With a strange feeling of disorientation, he searched the room for what he should take. The computer was the team’s. The files with sponsor information were the team’s. The contracts and numbers and budget documents…the team’s. There was no paperwork or briefcase or even a coffee mug for him to take on his way out of the building.
A text came in on his Fitbit. The money he’d transferred to Joy Elementary from his personal account had gone through. Before Sam turned off the message, he glimpsed his mileage. He’d have plenty of time to get his steps in now. More time to work with kids again, too. He almost told himself he’d have more time for Maisy, but that wasn’t true. Maisy would be mortified when she found out what had happened.
“Good luck, gentlemen,” he said before grabbing the only thing he could take on his way out the door. A bottle of Whammo.
***
It was easy to hide in an elementary school. All you had to do was hang out with the kids.
Instead of staying in her classroom for lunch, Maisy assisted in the lunchroom and later on the playground, where the students always ran off their energy after lunch. Except for Heather, who gave her a quick hug after the assembly, no other teachers approached her. She made herself busy reffing a kickball game and shared tales of female bravery with the fifth-grade girls who loved to hear stories about her brother and her horse.
Being with the kids also helped her hide from what had happened this morning and from the worrying text she’d received form Sam before lunch. Don’t let Zoom pressure you. Don’t come to the stadium. I can recommend a lawyer if you get any more harassment.
Sam’s face had been angry and determined as he tried to keep her from Zoom and the press. She trusted him.
The school had a check for school supplies. If she put on a pair of blinders, she could avoid looking to the right or the left and thinking about Zoom’s offer of a playground or anything else. She wasn’t going to consider going back to the ballpark. Even for blackmail.
Tonight, she would go home and bury herself in her sheets that still smelled of Sam. She would pretend that he was still sleeping next to her, his hair mussed, the extra growth of hair on his face that made him look slightly dangerous and thoroughly sexy.
At the end of the day, she locked up her classroom and made her way out the back door. A group of kids played ball on the field. She heard them calling out reminders of how to play the game like Sam had taught them. It made her smile.
“Maisy.” Dr. Harding waved from across the parking lot.
She looked at her watch and lied. “I’m running late. What’s up?”
Dr. Harding was excited. “I thought you would like to hear that we received an anonymous donation to rebuild our playground and field.”
“What?”
“I know Mr. Hunter said the Turbos couldn’t do it because of a tight budget. But it doesn’t matter. Some nice donor heard about us and decided to help. We’re going to get the playground anyway.” She patted Maisy’s shoulder. “No strings attached. None at all. Isn’t that great?”
“Yeah.” Dumbstruck, Maisy watched Dr. Harding awkwardly skip away in her high heels and almost did the same thing. What a relief. Zoom and the Turbos couldn’t guilt her into going back to the ballpark. As for the rest, she had no reason to feel any pressure. The Turbos had been playing fine without her. People were already starting to forget her lucky appeal. The news tomorrow would show her holding a giant check, a happy crowd of kids, and nothing more.
She rolled down the windows and listened to her favorite playlist as she drove home. She’d call Sam later tonight. They’d joke about today. And October was coming soon. The season wouldn’t last forever. What did Sam do on the off-season? There were so many pieces of his life she still didn’t know. She hadn’t felt this happy in a long time.
Pulling up the driveway, she was surprised to see Chad’s pickup truck parked beside her mother’s Taurus.
“Hey, everyone,” she called as the screen door slammed behind her.
Mom looked up from the kitchen table. The radio played loudly in the background. A commercial for auto insurance was almost over.
Chad came toward her. “There you are! I’ve been trying to reach you. Why don’t you have your cell phone on?”
“I don’t use it when I teach.” He knew that. Why was he so agitated?
“Chad, calm down,” Mom said. She patted the chair next to her. “Maisy, honey, come on over and sit down.”
It was weird the way they were sending each other nervous glances. Chad looked ready to burst and her mom was frowning at him as if he were a little boy acting up in church.
Not sure if she wanted to know what was going on, Maisy took the farthest seat from Chad and slowly sat down. Her knee automatically started bobbing. “What happened?”
Before they could explain, the screen door burst open. “I just heard. Have you—”
“Dad?” Now Maisy really was worried. Dad never came home so early.
Andrea turned to Bobby. “Maisy hasn’t heard. “
Maisy slapped the table. “What? Why are you all—”
“Shhh.” Chad interrupted her. He turned up the radio.
“This is 97.1 the Ticket, coming to you from Turbos stadium and the home of Indianapolis baseball. We’ve been talking all afternoon about the crazy news coming out of the ballpark today. We’ve got callers on the phone and reports from several players that we’re going to get to in a moment. But first a recap. What started as an unlikely dispute this morning between Turbos owner Charlie Zumaeta and General Manager Sam Hunter, over Indianapolis’s good-luck mascot, Maisy Gray, coming back to the ballpark, has turned even crazier.”
Maisy closed her eyes. Was that how the press was reporting the events of this morning? She had hoped the press hadn’t heard the exchange between Zoom and Sam.
“This afternoon all hell broke loose at the stadium. Maisy Gray’s clothes, some sort of evening gown and high-heeled shoes, were discovered in the Turbos locker room. Fuzzy Waslaske tried to laugh it off as player superstition.”
“Oh, my God.” Maisy covered her face with her hands and slouched over the table. This could not be happening.
“On the heels of that news, Charlie Zumaeta held a press conference announcing that General Manager Sam Hunter is suspended. He implied that, in all probability, Hunter will be out permanently by the end of the weekend.”
A soundbite of Zoom’s voice played. “ ‘My players are not perverts who wear dresses. I just want the public to know.’ ”
“The owner’s comments have caused a backlash in the LGQBT community.”
“They should. What an idiot,” Mom said of Zoom’s comment.
The report continued. “Finally, some sources, including Luther McLean from the Star, are reporting that the real story of the day is that Sam Hunter wants Maisy Gray for himself. All this as the Turbos are supposed to be getting ready for their first real shot at a major-league pennant.”
Little patches of black swam in front of Maisy’s eyes. Someone rubbed the back of her clammy neck.
“Is she okay?”
No, she wanted to shout. Everything was wrong. She blocked out the image of her beautiful dress being stretched out by some hairy six-foot man’s body and her name once again being mentioned around town as some sort of voodoo doll for the Turbos.
Baseball was everything to Sam. If he didn’t have baseball in his life, it would devastate him. It was unbearable to think she might have caused it.
“Did Zoom fire Sam?”
“Oh, honey, Sam will have other opportunities,” her mother said.
“No. This will ruin him.”
On the radio, a caller had phoned in. He and the DJ were debating Sam’s ability to manage the team after today.
Chad turned down the radio.
Her father patted her shoulder. “We’ll get through this, honey. Don’t you worry.”
Just then, someone knocked on the screen door. “Good afternoon, folks. We’re here from the Chicago Tribune, and we wonder if we could have a word with Maisy.”
Chad was at the door before they could ask another question. “This is private property. Get off.”
“But we just want to talk to Maisy and find out how she feels about the latest development.”
“She never wants to have anything to do with the Turbos again—”
“Chad! Enough…” Mom cut him off.
The tone of her voice cleared Maisy’s head and sent the blood flowing through Maisy’s body again. Humiliation and anger faded as Maisy looked around at her family. Her parents were watching her with concern. Her brother paced the room as if he was ready to beat someone up. Heather was probably halfway here already.
She was not alone.
But Sam was.
She pushed back her chair and stood up. “I’ve got to go.”
Chad blocked her exit. “You can’t go out there. Two more cars just pulled up in the drive.”
She swatted him away. “I’ll go around them.”
Her father joined Chad. “Honey, you need to stay low until all this hullabaloo dies down.”
Her mother shuffled over. “By this time next week, it will all be forgotten. Believe me, honey.”
Maisy beamed at her sweet parents and her annoyingly protective brother, all three of them trying to defend her from the bad guys.
“I’m so lucky.”
Dad frowned. “No, honey. You aren’t lucky. That superstitious stuff isn’t real. The Turbos are using you.”
Luck. It didn’t really have anything to do with results, did it? It was all about the people who graced your life with their love. Her heart swelled.
“Thank you for caring so much.” She hugged each of them. Then slid between them to the door.
“Where are you going?” her mother said, grabbing her hand.
“To Sam.”
“Hunter?” Chad raked his hands through his hair. Poor Chad. He was such a great brother.
“I don’t want Sam to be alone right now.”
It took a moment for them to digest what she said. Mom was the first to let go of her hand. “All right, honey.”
Dad’s eyes grew suspiciously moist. “Sam Hunter? Another baseball man? Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” she said, giving her father a kiss on the cheek.
“Maisy,” Mom said. “You might want to pack a bag.”
“And hang on to your clothes this time,” Chad called after her as she ran for the stairs.