"Melanie's father is a pig," Heidi told her husband later that night while they were putting the dinner dishes in the dishwasher.
"Oh?" Tim said, smiling. He rinsed off the meat platter and found a place for it on the dishwasher's lower rack.
"You should have heard the way he talked to her in school today," his wife continued. "Luckily Ben Sanders took over. He told me later he'd gotten things straightened out."
Tim was suddenly very alert. "Ben Sanders?" he asked. "I was going to ask you about him."
Heidi looked at him. "You were, why?" she asked.
"What does he do at the high school?" her husband inquired.
"Don't you remember him?" Heidi asked. "I think I introduced him to you at this year's faculty reception," she said. "He's director of guidance." She put the last glass in the dishwasher. "Why do you want to know about Ben?"
"I talked to Juan Perez today," Tim said. He got the dishwashing detergent out of the cupboard and poured some into the dispenser in the dishwasher.
"You did?" Heidi asked. She dried her hands on a dish towel and stood at the counter, waiting for her husband to finish.
Tim shut the dishwasher door and turned the machine on. "Lex and I picked him up first thing this morning," he told his wife. "He's up in the detention section of the county jail as we speak."
Heidi couldn't keep the smile off her face. "I thought you weren't going to be able to arrest him for what he did to Melanie," she said.
"We didn't arrest him for that," Tim said. "I planned to have Lex stop him for speeding, then search his car incident to the stop. From what Melanie told us last night, I was sure we'd find drugs. Then I'd have had something to lean on him with."
"Did it work?" Heidi asked. She started for the living room.
Tim followed. "It did, but not exactly the way I planned it," he said. "Juan ran on us and we wound up in a high-speed pursuit. He crashed over on Pulver. We found a lot more drugs than I figured, which gave us a whole lot of serious charges to use against him."
"Good, I hope they lock him up and throw away the key," Heidi said. "What did he tell you about Melanie?"
"He said the reason he did what he did was to get revenge on her for screwing around on him," her husband replied.
"What?" Heidi asked. "How did he know that she was screwing around on him?"
"Juan claims he followed her from the mall to some guy's apartment the other night," Tim said. "He she went in and didn't come out for several hours."
"Juan didn't actually see Melanie doing anything, did he?" Heidi asked. "He could be wrong."
"Honey," Tim said, "if you saw me go into some woman's apartment and I didn't come out for four or five hours, what would you think?"
Heidi felt her face reddening. "All right," she said. "I guess you do have a point. It's just that I hate to have to agree with Juan Perez."
"I know," Tim said. "Anyhow, that brings me back to Mr. Benjamin Sanders."
