Free Lorraine Bartlett - Tori Cannon-Kathy Grant 00.5 - Panty Raid by Lorraine Bartlett Page A

attention.
    Kathy opened an email, addressing it to two of her subordinates, and began to type. She just hoped she was a better negotiator than her fellow employees.
    #
    Tori—short for Victoria—Cannon looked at herself in the antique oak mirror that hung on the wall between her bedroom and the apartment’s bathroom. She’d bought it at a yard sale the summer before. It had been covered with six layers of different colored paint and had taken her the better part of a week to strip and refinish it. Now the golden oak had been restored to its former glory, and though the reflective coating on the back of the glass wasn’t in tip-top shape, it pleased her. She needed another such project to work on, something to keep her mind off her current situation, which was being alone after she and Billy had had yet another fight and he’d decided to take a few days off of the relationship, heading down to Florida to visit a buddy with a big boat and lots of spare cash. It didn’t bode well for their future, but then Billy had pulled this stunt before and had always come back to her. Only, with each departure, and arrival the welcome home was less enthusiastic, and sometimes Tori wondered what the heck she’d ever seen in the guy.
    But in the meantime she had other things with which to concern herself. Her students’ end-of-term tests were just two weeks away. Those tests were the bane of this high school English teacher’s existence. She’d been instructing sophomores and juniors for seven years, but the satisfaction she’d once felt at being part of the profession had begun to wane. She loved the kids who had a thirst to learn, but with each passing year she saw fewer of them. The brats who passed through her classes came armed with cell phones, sneers, and seemed to be on a quest to disrupt each carefully planned lesson.
    Kathy had changed jobs way too often these past few years. She might not be making as much money, but the last few times Tori had spoken to her she’d seemed happier. She was stressed, but happy with her decision not to climb up the various motel chains’ corporate ladders. She preferred a hands-on approach rather than become a paper pusher. Tori admired her for that, feeling like a coward that she didn’t possess the same kind of courage to give up her safe but unhappy life for the chance of something better—or maybe just something different. Her contract came due in August of the following year. She’d probably sign it because…what else besides teaching was she good at?
    Tori glanced at her watch and realized the dryer in the laundry room downstairs had sto pped some five minutes before. Damn! Grabbing her keys, she snatched up the empty laundry basket she’d left by the door to the hall. She pulled the door closed behind her and locked it before heading down the stairs.
    The communal laundry room was warm and humid. The washer was grumbling and the dryer was tumbling, but no longer were her clothes inside it. Her lingerie and nightgowns now sat in a crumpled heap on top of the dryer. She had counted each and every item before putting them in the washer and did the same when returning them to the basket. Four, five, six. Damn! Another pair of her panties had gone missing.
    Fists clenched, she had a mind to stay in the laundry room and confront the person whose clothes now tumbled in the dryer and shout, “ J’accuse! ”
    And so she sat there for what seemed like forever, fuming. The dryer stopped at the 45-minute mark, but no one appeared. It was at minute 51 when the grumpy older woman from Apartment 3 showed up with an empty plastic laundry basket in hand.
    “Hi, Marie,” Tori said, trying to sound cheerful. Somehow she doubted Marie was the panties thief. They had to be way too many sizes too small for her.
    The woman grunted a hello and headed for the dryer.
    “ By any chance did you take my clothes out of the machine before you put your own clothes in?”
    “No.”
    “Because I seem