Chapter Ten

ALL I COULD THINK ABOUT for the rest of the morning was Joe’s admonitions and how he’d acted. My creativity was gone and I couldn’t concentrate. I made it through my first appointment on pure instinct. My eleven o’clock was an on-site conference with the younger sister of a girl I dated back in high school. Pulling into the parking lot of the Deagan Dance Center a few minutes early, I parked next to a black Mazda van lettered with the school’s logo. I’d driven by this place thousands of times, but had never paid much attention to it. The grounds were well-kept and framed with gigantic oak trees budding with new life and dripping with long strands of Spanish moss.

I entered a spacious lobby plastered with dance-related posters, informational signs, photographs, and three large TV monitors high on one wall each showing a different empty classroom. Long wooden benches lined three sides of the lobby, and there was a receptionist center