4 Four Play (2 page)

“It sounds pretty nice to me,” Karen said.

“Shack,” I repeated. “You should see the supposed décor. And don’t even get me started on the plumbing.”

“Come on, Jess. You don’t have to pee in the woods, do you?”

I whimpered slightly and admitted there was an actual toilet. And upon further inquiries, also had to agree the hot water worked. “Nearly half the time!”

“There now, you see?” Candy said.

***

My friends were busy discussing Wilson Rye’s plumbing when my cell phone rang. I glanced down at the number. Speaking of the devil.

“Where are you?” he greeted me, and I told him.

“You know where your car is?” he asked.

“An old friend borrowed it. Well actually, Frankie Smythe isn’t old at all,” I corrected myself. “I’ve just known him his entire lif—”

“Where’s this Smythe character right now?” he asked.

I blinked twice. Why was my beau the cop—make that, my fiancé the cop—questioning me about Frankie? Or my car?

“Where are you?” I said. “And where’s the Porsche? Don’t tell me he’s totaled it? Is Frankie okay? What about Lizzie? Oh, my Lord, Wilson! What’s happened?”

“I have no idea what happened to Frankie, but your car looks fine.”

I breathed a sigh of relief as he continued, “It’s the dead lady on top of it I’m a little concerned about.”

Chapter 2

“What is it with you Hewitts and dead bodies?” Karen asked as she drove us out to the high school. “You guys are like corpse magnets.”

“It’s weird,” Candy said from the back seat.

Unfortunately, I had to agree. The previous summer Stanley Sweetzer, one of Candy’s many fiancés, had seen fit to die on my couch. And then at Christmas a bartender named Davy Atwell dropped dead in my mother’s vacation bungalow. In Hawaii of all places. And now this—a corpse on my car.

I mumbled something about yet another murder as Karen downshifted for a red light.

“We don’t know it was murder,” she said.

“Excuse me? Wilson is there.”

She cringed. “Oh that.”

“Wilson Rye, the homicide guy,” Candy said.

The light turned green, and as Karen took off, I warned my friends the homicide guy would not be pleased to see us.

“In fact.” I cleared my throat. “He might have ordered me to stay away.”

Karen gave me a sideways glance. “Might have?”

***

As Wilson would say, everyone and his brother was at the high school when we arrived.

Karen tried to nonchalantly maneuver her van around the police barricade and into the parking lot, but a uniformed cop jumped in front of her and she was forced to stop.

Luckily I recognized Officer Leary.

I rolled down the window and re-introduced myself. “Jessie Hewitt—Captain Rye’s fiancée?” I stuck my hand out the window for a nice friendly shake. “Remember me, Jenna?”

She frowned at my extended hand. “Captain Rye said you’d pull something like this.”

“Pull somethi—?” I recoiled my hand and regrouped. “Well, that is excellent!” I lied. “Then you already know the car in question is mine.” I gestured toward the flashing lights at the far end of the parking lot. “I’m needed out there.”

If possible, Officer Leary’s frown got frownier. She held her ground and told me she was not about to let me anywhere near the place. “Captain’s orders.”

I remained calm and pointed to the hundreds of vehicles, and people, already in the lot. The place was swarming with an unlikely combination of cops, emergency personnel, and teenagers dressed to the nines.

“Everyone and his brother is in that parking lot,” I said, but Officer Leary wouldn’t budge.

I was gearing up for further argument when Karen started backing away.

I waved a few fingers at the cop. “Nice seeing you again, Jenna,” I chirped and closed the window. I lost the fake smile. “Okay, now what?”

“You’re forgetting, girlfriend.” Karen shifted into drive. “Both Kiddo and I went to this school.”

“Faculty parking,” Candy suggested.

“On it.” Karen rounded the corner and found a spot in the empty lot out back. Another car pulled in behind us, and we all climbed out of our vehicles about the same time.

“There’s strength in numbers,” I said, and would have led the way, but the middle-aged woman from the other car beat me to it. She stormed off at something akin to a gallop as the guy who had driven her struggled to catch up.

My friends and I did the same, but unfortunately we ran into another barricade. And another cop—a rather large specimen I was not familiar with.

Before I even had time to think of a strategy, the woman leading our pack commenced scolding the cop. “I am in charge here,” she announced. “I am Superintendent Gabriella Yates.”

Ah, yes. I knew she looked familiar. Dr. Yates was more of a local celebrity than Wilson and I combined. Our school superintendent made headlines in the newspaper at least once a week as she endeavored to resolve the many and varied controversies the school board managed to get into. The most memorable of those controversies, at least for me, was when Dr. Yates had gotten her nose broken in the line of duty. The Clarence School Board meetings are, shall we say, rather heated gatherings?

I recollected the elementary school desk debacle and studied the superintendent’s nose. It looked as good as new.

“I am responsible for this campus,” Dr. Yates continued scolding the cop. She pointed to the barricade. “Kindly remove this obstacle.”

“But the Captain said.”

“Captain-Schmaptain! I am not accustomed to waiting.” She turned on her heel and gestured toward the portly guy who had driven her. “Gordon!” she commanded, and the man hopped to attention.

He heaved the barricade aside, and Superintendent Gabriella Yates took off. “Gordon!” she called back, and said Gordon jogged into position beside her.

Candy Poppe was on it. “We’re the superintendent’s secretaries,” she told the stupefied cop. “We’re here to take notes.” She grabbed Karen and me by the elbows, and we slipped around the barricade, close on the heels of Superintendent Yates.

“I will burn in hell before I let that asinine Jimmy Beak get to the scene before me,” the superintendent told Gordon, and I stopped dead in my tracks.

“Beak?” I squeaked.

***

“The car!” Jimmy Beak screamed. Oh yes. Channel 15’s finest was smack dab in the thick of things. “Get footage of her car!” he ordered his cameraman.

The good news? The vast majority of the car Jimmy was so keen on was covered by a tarp, and the body was nowhere in sight.

The bad news? My rear license plate was clearly visible. Especially since one of Jimmy’s minions was pointing a high-wattage spotlight at it while the cameraman filmed.

Jimmy pointed at my vanity plate. “Adelé!” he screamed. “That’s Add-a-lay!” He emphasized the pronunciation. “This is Jessica Hewitt’s car.” Some flapping of unnaturally long arms. “The borderline pornographer is involved in yet another murder!”

I squeaked again, and Wilson, who swears he doesn’t believe in intuition, caught my eye. He offered me a quick cop-like look and turned away to deal with Superintendent Yates. While she barked questions at him from one angle, Jimmy Beak stood at his other side, microphone in hand.

“We’re out of here,” Karen said.

Candy yanked my arm, and we beat a hasty retreat. We sprinted past the cop from earlier, cleared that pesky barricade in what must have looked like a choreographed leap, and made a beeline for Karen’s van.

***

“Do you think he saw us?” Candy asked.

I strained my neck to look, but was propelled backward as Karen stepped on the gas.

She checked the rear view mirror. “He’s not following,” she said. “No Channel 15 vans.”

“Thank God,” the three of us said in unison.

Trust me, my friends and I are seldom so easily intimidated. But this was Jimmy Beak. The man who had delighted in accusing me, and then Candy, of cold-blooded murder during the Stanley Sweetzer murder investigation. He’d given poor Karen a hard time, too. She was guilty simply for associating with me.

“Did you guys hear him?” Candy was asking. “Add-a-lay! Add-a-lay!”

“I’m beginning to rue the day I thought of that pen name.”

Karen stopped at a red light. “It does describe your books, Jess.”

“But Jimmy doesn’t have to harp on it. And I am not a borderline pornographer. No matter how often he claims otherwise.”

This, too, went back to the Stanley Sweetzer fiasco. Borderline pornographer this, borderline pornographer that. Jimmy loved insulting me. And he had resurrected his borderline pornographer routine when I was asked to judge a writing contest for local teenagers.

“He got me fired from the Focus on Fiction contest last month,” I reminded my friends. “He claimed I was morally unfit to judge teenagers. Morally unfit,” I sputtered. “I’ve been boycotting Channel 15 ever since.”

Karen glanced in her rear view mirror. “Should we tell her?”

“Tell me what?”

“Umm, Jimmy has kind of been talking about you again,” Candy said. “He’s been calling the Romance Writers Hall of Fame, the Hall of Shame. Do you get it?”

I looked at Karen.

“Every night for a week now,” she said.

“Why have I not been informed of this?”

Karen told me not to blame the messengers, and Candy reminded me I was boycotting Channel 15. “We figured you didn’t want to know.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But now he’s found some brand new fodder to torment me with.” I stared out the window. “Let’s hope Superintendent Yates will distract him this time.”

“Yikes,” Karen said.

“She does seem rather scary.”

“No, Jess. Yikes is her nickname.”

“Jimmy calls her Superintendent Yikes,” Candy said. “You get it? Yates-Yikes?”

I squinted at the street lamps as Karen turned onto Sullivan Street and headed for home. “The
Clarence Courier
doesn’t call her Yikes.”

“The newspaper has some class,” Candy said.

We were assessing Jimmy Beak’s complete lack of class when my cell phone rang.

“Wilson’s gonna kill you,” Karen said.

And yes, she did know who it was. It’s uncanny, but I swear my cell phone takes on a particularly angry ring tone whenever Wilson has something to kill me over. Let’s just say, it’s happened before.

***

“What the hell were you doing?” he asked me. “Didn’t I tell you to stay away?”

“It’s my car,” I said. “And you know I don’t follow orders very well.”

He sputtered something I didn’t quite catch and commenced scolding me for butting in where I wasn’t needed.

Yadda, yadda, yadda. I let him get it out of his system and interrupted only when he insisted I shouldn’t have brought my friends along. “Earth to Captain Rye,” I said. “I don’t have my car. Karen had to drive.”

He went back to sputtering incoherently.

“We’re home now anyway,” I told him as Karen turned into our parking lot. “We left the school the second we saw Jimmy. Why didn’t you tell me he’s been defaming my character again? Hall of Shame, my foot.”

“Believe it or not, I don’t give a damn about Beak’s opinion of you.” Wilson paused. “Neither do you, right?”

“Right.” I climbed out on the van. “Was it really murder, Wilson? How? Why? Who was she?”

“Name’s Miriam Jilton. She was an English teacher—one of the chaperones for the Junior Prom. Strangled. Keep that to yourself, please.”

“On the top of my car?” I asked as my friends and I entered our lobby.

Wilson told me the victim had likely been killed closer to the school itself, but was carried to my car.

“Why?” I asked.

“That’s the million-dollar question.”

We dropped Karen off at her door. She whispered goodnight, and Candy and I started climbing the stairs.

“Another million-dollar question,” Wilson continued. “Concerns your friend Mr. Smythe. What was his role in this?”

“I’m sure Frankie had nothing to do with it.”

“How do you know that? How do you even know this kid?”

I waved Candy goodbye at the second floor. She blew me a kiss, and I headed back to the stairs. “He was my neighbor on Maple Street. Back when I was married to Ian.”

Wilson harrumphed.

“I assume you’ve talked to Frankie?” I asked. “And Lizzie? She’s his date.”

“No. And no. I’ve got three hundred kids swarming around out here, and none of them is Frankie. Or his girlfriend. What possessed you to give him your car?”

“I didn’t give him my car. I merely loaned it to him for a special occasion.”

Another harrumph.

“I’ve known Frankie since the day he was born, Wilson. He’s a responsible person.”

“Well then, where is he?”

Okay, good question.

“I can go look for him,” I said as I reached the top floor. “I could borrow Karen’s van.”

Needless to say, Wilson told me to stay put. “Call me if this Smythe character shows up on your doorstep.”

I said goodbye to a dial tone and opened my door.

To my credit I blinked only twice before returning to my cell phone.

Wilson answered after half a ring. “Let me guess.”

Chapter 3

“He’s not on my doorstep,” I said. “He’s on my couch.”

But not for long. Frankie sprang up and was hovering over me before Wilson could utter even one four-letter word.

Hindered by her strapless gown and four-inch heels, the girl on my couch took a little longer to get to her feet. Lizzie, I assumed. I watched her totter over, and was trying to remember where I had seen her before, when Wilson started asking questions.

At least I could answer the first one. “No, they did not break into my condo. Frankie had a set of my keys. They must have let themselves in?”

I glanced at the teenagers for verification, and they nodded a few hundred times.

With Wilson bombarding me with questions from his end of the phone, and Frankie and Lizzie bombarding me with more questions and even a few answers, it got a bit confusing. At some point I grew tired of being the middleman and suggested I hand the phone over to the teenagers.

“No!” Wilson said in no uncertain terms. “I want their parents present and a court-appointed social worker. Detain them while I round up the troops.”