A/N: Okay, Es1 i never knew that my grammer/ words were as bad as a kindergardener. {wow} that's terrible. I swear that I'll do better!! Although it might be difficult because of Hurrican Fransis heading for us.......:(
Chapter 19
"Wild Goose Chase?"
This cheerleading uniform had turned out to be a very efficient clue. It might mean that Penny had committed the crime after all. However they still didn't have absolute proof she was the criminal. They needed more evidence before they could do anything else.
"This was the kind of evidence we've been waiting on. Now we can bust her," Roberts said as he headed for the door. It seemed like he was ready and willing to go apprehend Penny and bring her back to HQ for the crime.
Fillmore stopped him by putting his hand on Robert's shoulder. Roberts literally jumped out of his skin when Fillmore did this.
Roberts turned back around to Fillmore with a very confused expression on his face. Why had Fillmore prevented him from leaving?
"What is it?" Roberts asked.
"Look Roberts, just because we have this sort of evidence, doesn't necessarily mean that we have our criminal," Tehama said.
"Yeah, just because the label says "Stacey" doesn't mean it's the cheerleaders. It doesn't have a last name on there and there are a lot of Stacey's here," Anza replied.
Roberts looked a little like he was growing impatient at the moment. I mean, he really wanted to take Penny down.
"I checked the names of the members in the Drama Club and there are three Stacey's," Tehama finished.
Fillmore stepped forward. "Tehama, can you look up if any of them are in any other clubs, another place to find them and question them," Fillmore told her.
Tehama held up three folders and smiled. "I already looked it up. Everything you need to know about them are right in these folders! Help yourselves" She said handing them to Roberts and Fillmore.
Fillmore started looking through them. They needed to make sure to speak with all of the Stacey's and see what their views about this situation were.
"So... What now?" Roberts asked, sounding as if he was getting very impatient about all this waiting and watching.
"We continue our investigation and if she's guilty, then something useful should appear soon," Fillmore said.
Fillmore turned towards Tehama and Anza. "We're going to need to use the uniform," Fillmore says taking it out of Tehama's hands. Tehama and Anza nod.
The four of them walked into the main room of the Safety Patrol HQ. This case was actually proving to be quite interesting.
"Fillmore"? Roberts asked again.
"Hmm" Fillmore asked.
"What are you planning to do with that uniform?" He asked as they disappeared out the door.
"You'll see," Fillmore answered, closing the door behind him.
Anza turned back towards Tehama and took a deep breath. Alone again, Anza thinks.
"Come on Anza, we'd better get back to work," Tehama said heading back to her desk. She sat down and started examining some other sort of evidence on her desk.
Anza pulls at his collar and heads for his desk right next to hers. He sits down and pulls open his backpack. His heart was racing at that moment and he started sweating again. He clutched the two tickets tightly in his hands.
For a moment he just stared at the tickets. He imagined himself and Tehama sitting at the next play together. He would have his arm around her while they sat in the dark together. They would obviously be in the autotorium.
Maybe Tehama would have her head on his shoulder while they watched the play, now that would be romantic. He wondered if he could get Tehama to share a milkshake with him. That would also be considered romantic.
He looked around the room to see who else was here. If he did this, he didn't want to make a complete fool of himself in front of everyone. I mean, would everyone find it humorous that he was asking Tehama out? Would they make fun of him?
Or would everyone think it was romantic and assist him? He hadn't told anyone about any of this because he had absolutely no idea what their reaction would be.
He wondered if his performance around Tehama was obvious to anyone. Had someone realized his behavior but was just standing back? Anza would take all the advice he could get. Wouldn't anyone help him out here?
He'd never had the confidence to ask a girl out before. He'd watched as other men had asked a thousand people out and normally never got rejected. That's precisely what Anza was frightened about, getting rejected by Tehama.
I mean, what if he wasn't good enough for her, or she didn't have those kinds of feelings for him? They'd been friends ever since middle school and they were pretty tight. However, would she say yes to a date?
He watched Tehama as she worked for a minute. She was a real professional at examining evidence that was brought in. Every time there was evidence, everyone would bring it to Tehama, because she knew how to handle it.
"Anza?" Tehama asked breaking Anza's thoughts.
Anza's eyes jumped from watching her hands, up to her beautiful face. He absolutely loved it when she called his name. Tehama rarely called his name.
"Yes?" he asks in a lovey-dovey voice. When he realizes the tone he'd just used, he cleared his throat and asked again in his normal voice.
"What are you doing?" She asked giving him a half-freaked out expression.
Anza realized that for the last few minutes he'd been leaning over her desk and drooling on her papers. His face suddenly turned bright red. He couldn't believe that he'd been doing this. He wondered if anyone else in the room had noticed.
Now he held the tickets down in his lap and hoped that Tehama didn't see them. Now he wasn't sure if he could even ask her.
"Anza you're frightening me and I'm really concerned about you," Tehama said as she washed her hands and put gloves back on.
She went back to her desk and continued on with the examination. From the corner of her eye, she could see Anza staring at her. She knew that he'd been doing this a whole lot lately and was starting to wonder if he had some sort of problem.
"Anza! Do you have a problem?" Tehama asked sounding agitated.
Anza jumped at that question. How could she even ask a question like that? No he didn't have a problem with her.
"Of course not!" He answered.
Tehama raised her eyebrow, not sure if she should believe him. "Uh-huh" She said going back to her work. He'd never acted this way and it was kind of frightening.
"Anza. I really need your assistance!" The guy with short blond hair and big black sunglasses said interrupting their conversation.
Anza glared at the guy. He wanted to continue talking with Tehama. "Can't this wait? I'm a little busy right now," Anza replied.
"No! It extremely important! I need you to help me before Vallejo sees it and starts chewing me out about the mess," He replied.
Anza sighed. How come everyone always came to him when they wanted to be bailed out of a situation where they were going to get into trouble?
"Please Anza?" he begged.
Anza rolls his eyes. "Well . . .. Okay" He finally answers.
The guy grabs Anza's hand and leads him off. As they left, Anza took one last glance at Tehama as she worked.
He couldn't believe this, he'd blown his chance big time! Now she probably thought he was the biggest idiot in all the Safety Patrol. However this wouldn't prevent him from attempting this whole thing again.
He thought it would be best to wait a little before he tried again. It was going to be even more difficult to ask her next time, however. Could he do it? Or would he fail once again? Would he ever have enough courage to ask her out?
Meanwhile Roberts and Fillmore had returned to the newsroom. The lights were all out out and the boss was locking the door when they walked up.
Roberts wanted to walk up to Kelly but Fillmore wouldn't allow him. He knew Kelly wasn't too fond of them or the rest of the Safety Patrol. It wasn't a good idea to medal with her again. At least Fillmore didn't want to mess with her.
"Wha-"Roberts asked.
"Uh-uh" Fillmore told him. "We'd better not," Fillmore replied.
She hadn't seemed to be in a very good mood today and they definitely didn't want to worse her mood. They watched as Kelly locked the door, put the key away and started rummaging through her purse.
Now what the heck was she searching for? After a few minutes she pulled out some sunglasses. They were big and brown. If you asked Fillmore, they were pretty ugly.
Kelly put them on and strolled down the hall like she was a celebrity and she was better than everyone else. People with that kind of attitude got on Fillmore's nerves really fast.
Finally when Kelly disappeared, Fillmore and Roberts came out and started going down the opposite hall that she'd gone down.
Kelly had been blocking their way to the auditorium. If they would have walked out and Kelly saw them, they'd probably got chewed out.
Kelly might have thought they'd come back to question her and Penny again. She would've gotten agitated at them.
"So Fillmore. Where are we going first," Roberts asked.
"We're going to question Stacey Peterson in the Cooking Club," Fillmore replied. They needed to question all of the Stacey's before they did anything else.
"The Cooking Club remain here this late? I always thought all the clubs left around 5:30." Roberts said.
Fillmore shook his head. "There are some clubs that stay as late as 6:00 or 7:00." He answered. He knew that the Cooking Club and the Booking Club stayed until at least 6:30 at night.
Usually Fillmore really didn't care for Science. However the Science club somehow made things interesting enough that he wanted to join them.
Science was his big weak spot. Being a Safety Patroller took up the majority of his spare time. He had discovered that there were indeed drawbacks to being a Safety Patroller.
He wondered how late those kids stayed up after the club let out. Did they have a lot of homework? If they did, did they stay up all night doing it? Fillmore had many questions about the gifted teenagers at this school.
They finally stopped in front of the Cooking Clubs door. In the hall the sweet smell of pizza filled the air. This smell literally made their mouths water. It was fresh and had only come out of the oven. That's the way they preferred it!
They opened the door to find three large groups of people cooking. They were all wearing chef hats, aprons and oven mitts. Some people stood around conversing while their food was cooking. Others were putting their pizza's out and letting them cool.
The entire room was filled with delicious smells of a variety of pizzas. Fillmore and Roberts wondered if the club would save a few pieces of pizza for them. Of course they were on duty so they couldn't try anything right now.
Maybe they could ask the class to save them the rest of the pizza for later.
It was very eerie to walk into a classroom and discover all of the desks to be empty. Although this was an after school program, they were use to walking in and seeing all of the desks full.
Fillmore and Roberts also found the chairs all over the room and in the walking path. If you weren't careful, you could easily trip over one. It was a maze trying to get through them and to get to the teacher's desk.
Didn't these chairs bother the teacher? The two of them were also astonished to find that some of the desks were over turned. Books and papers were all over the floor. What a mess! This classroom sure was disorganized.
People could break their neck if they accidentally tripped over a chair or anything else that was lying on the floor.
"Hello" The teacher said standing behind her desk and smiling at them. She sounded as if she was in a joyful mood today. "Is there something you need?" She asked. She was dressed exactly like her students. Except she had a clipboard with her, and a hairnet.
The teacher looked as though she was in her mid 20's. She was one of the youngest looking teachers in the entire school.
"Yes, we need to borrow Stacey Peterson for a few minutes," Roberts told her as he stepped forward. He tried to keep his voice joyful, so that he wouldn't concern anyone.
A young girl with long reddish hair and blue sapphire eyes turned around instantly. She took off her hairnet and oven mitts. She made her way to the teacher's desk, around all the chairs, paper and books. She stared at them.
She was dressed in black from her neck down to her toes. She had a thousand earrings in her ears. The earrings had different sizes in her ears too. Roberts sort of thought she looked cool with all the varieties of earrings.
Her skin was white as snow, which meant that must have been some make-up she was using. All of the rest of her make-up was black. Right down to her lipstick. This was a little intimidating for Roberts and Fillmore.
They'd seen an abundant amount of teenagers at school, but hadn't noticed anyone dressed up like this before. Her T-shirt and pants were definitely darker than a raven's feathers. In their opinions it was black as night!
Chains hung from the blacker-than-night- jeans. This girl almost was dressed like a gangster or something similar.
"Yes?" She asked in a very soft tone. Although she intimidated them, they had to accomplish their mission, no matter what.
"We need to speak with you in private for a few minutes," Roberts explained.
Stacey looked stunned and confused. She looked frightened that she might be in some kind of trouble. The teacher's expression told that she was troubled about this situation also.
By this time the whole class had become eerily silent. They also seemed surprised that Stacey was being taken out of class to be talked to. Fillmore, Roberts and Stacey could feel the entire classes eyes watching while they walked out the door.
This feeling was nerve wrecking. Roberts and Fillmore detested being the center of attention. I mean if they screwed up, they both would be laughed at.
The thing that Fillmore despised most was when teachers made them get up in front of the class to do a report. All eyes were on them and everyone was required to be silent. He'd attempted to follow his friend's instructions.
However none of them worked. He'd tried imagining them all in their underwear, looking at the back of the room but nothing assisted him in ending his fear. In fact, everything just seemed to make the circumstances even worse.
Outside the door, they stopped Stacey and found that she almost looked as if she was going to star weeping.
"Stacey, all we want to do is question you," Roberts said. He was attempting to calm her down. He knew when a suspect was crying and upset, they wouldn't cooperate with them at all.
"I swear I didn't do anything and I have absolutely no idea why I'm here," She said in a very upset tone.
"Listen, you're not in trouble. You're just a suspect in a case we're investigating," Roberts explained to her.
Stacey whipped the tears from her eyes. It seemed she was relieved to hear that news. She nodded seeming to understand.
Fillmore held up the cheerleading uniform hoping to get useful information from her. They hoped to get something at least.
"Have you ever seen this before? Or is it yours?" Fillmore asked.
Stacey stared at the uniform for a long time, finally her expression turned a bit humorous. This expression sort of confused Fillmore and Roberts. How on earth could she think that this was amusing? Unless, she had some sort of part in the crime.
"Why would you believe it was mine?" She asked.
Fillmore puled out the collar and showed her the name inside. Then he and Roberts just stared at her until she finally reacted to this evidence. She hesitated for a few minutes. It seemed as though she was trying to decide how to answer their question.
Was she going to turn out to be their criminal? Was this where the case was going to end? Had they finally located the main criminal? If she was the criminal, did that mean that Penny was out of the picture? Or was Penny some how involved in this case too?
TO BE CONTINUED