Deadly Notions (2 page)

“Just now . . . when I went to the potty.” Placing his hands on his hips, Jackson turned to face the little girl who’d questioned his integrity, his voice taking on an injured quality. “She didn’t tell me what to draw. She didn’t even talk to me.”

“Then how did she help you?”

He looked back at Tori, his eyes wide. “You said to close our eyes and try to think how someone looks when they’re happy or sad or worried . . .”

“Or
mad
, don’t forget mad,” Bobby reminded.

“Yep, mad, too. And well, I closed my eyes and I did what you said and that’s why the eyebrows are upside down like that.” Jackson pointed at the squiggly caterpillar-like marks on the top half of his drawing. “But when I went to the bathroom, Mrs. Morgan helped me think of the lines and the finger.”

The little girl in the back stamped her foot, dislodging a golden blonde tendril from her perfectly coiffed little head in the process. “No fair! I’m going to tell my mother!”

Jackson’s hands found his hips once again. “She didn’t
tell
me, Penelope. She
showed
me . . . like this.” Scrunching up his face, he stuck the index finger of his right hand in front of his mouth.

“Did you
ask
her to demonstrate?” Tori asked as she looked from Jackson to his teacher and back again, her mind warring with itself over the urge to laugh at the child’s demonstration.

“No. She didn’t even see me. She was just standing there behind the desk like this.” Again he made his worried face and again she tried not to laugh, only this time she wasn’t any more successful than his teacher.

Forcing her attention onto the task at hand, she painstakingly went through the rest of the pile giving each kindergartener a chance to point out the expressions they opted to use to illustrate their chosen emotion. When they were done, she handed the pictures out to their rightful owners. “Bobby, how did you know what a mad face looked like?”

“I just do.” Bobby shrugged. “Everybody gets mad.”

She looked at Jackson. “And you knew how to draw worry because of Mrs. Morgan’s face?”

The little boy nodded.

Shaking off the questions that followed in her thoughts, Tori stood and gestured toward the various shelves in the center of the children’s room, her time with Mrs. Tierney’s class drawing to a close. “As you get older, some of the stories you read won’t have pictures. But that’s okay. Because if you use your imagination and your own personal experiences—as you just did with your drawings—you can still picture the characters and the places in your mind based on what’s being said in the story. And you want to know something?”

Fourteen heads nodded as fourteen sets of eyes fairly glued themselves to her face, waiting.

“Sometimes books are even more fun
without
pictures. Because then you can imagine a character the way
you
want to imagine them.”

“Wow!”

“That’s cool!”

“I still like pictures best.”

Mrs. Tierney clapped her hands softly, bringing instant calm to the room. “Class? What do we say to Miss Sinclair for spending time with us this morning?”

“Thank you, Miss Sinclair,” chorused fourteen voices as Sweet Briar Elementary School’s morning kindergarten class lined up at the door, the promise of snack time under the hundred-year-old moss trees more than enough to keep them quiet.

One by one the students filed out of the room like baby ducks waddling after their mamma. And, true to form, the last of the bunch strayed from the pack. “Miss Sinclair?”

She looked down, a smile tugging her lips upward at the sight of her friend’s son. “Yes, Jackson?”

“Will you make sure she’s okay?”

“Who?”

“Mrs. Morgan.”

Smoothing back a strand of soft brown hair from the little boy’s forehead, she nodded. “Of course I will. But I’m sure she’s okay. She was probably just trying to answer someone’s question. We get a lot of those at the library.”

Jackson shook his head, displacing the same strand of hair once again. “She was all by herself. There wasn’t anybody else in the li-berry ’cept Sally’s mom.”

Melissa.

She squatted down to the child’s eye level and gave him a quick hug. “I’ll check on her, okay? But I don’t want you to worry. I’m sure Mrs. Morgan is fine.”

For a moment he looked as if he was about to protest but, in the end, he was lured back to the line by the promise of a snack with his friends. “Mommy said she packed me a chocolate cupcake.”

Her stomach growled at the thought of Debbie’s chocolate cupcakes . . . and her black-and-white cookies . . . and her pies . . . and her—

Shaking off the mental inventory of her friend’s bakery, she tapped the tip of Jackson’s nose. “Then you better hurry along before I take a taste and end up eating the whole thing.”

“Okay.” He took three steps toward the door and then stopped once again. “But you’ll really check, right?”

“I’ll really check. Now run along before Mrs. Tierney gets worried.”

And with that Jackson was gone, his little white and blue sneakers smacking softly against the tiled floor that led from the children’s room to the main library, Tori’s own heels making a pitter-patter sound just a few steps behind. When he turned left toward the door, she continued on, her gaze riveted on her assistant’s face.

Her
worried
face.

Tori hurried across the room and over to the information desk, her eyes making a quick sweep of her surroundings. “Nina? Is everything okay?”

The woman shook her head, her finger pointing in the direction of a solitary figure hunched over a stack of books. “I tried to help but it was no use. She kept saying she had to come up with something special. Something better than last year’s.”

Tori bobbed her head to the left, the long dirty blonde ponytail registering in some dusty corner of her brain alongside Jackson’s sweet voice . . .

“She didn’t even seem to notice that Sally’s class just walked out the door,” Nina continued, her eyebrows furrowed. “And she’s not the kind of mamma that doesn’t notice her own babies.”

“I’ll take care of this, Nina. Why don’t you go ahead and take your lunch break.”

Nina pulled her attention from Melissa’s weary form and fixed it on Tori. “Are you sure, Miss Sinclair? Because I can wait if you need a moment to relax after the class visit.”

She touched her assistant’s shoulder with a reassuring hand. “I’m sure. The kids were great, they really were.”

“Okay. But if you need anything I’ll be right outside.” Reaching down, the woman pulled a brown paper sack from the bottom shelf of the information desk and held it into the air. “I’m hoping a little fresh air will help chase away this sluggish feeling I’ve been having lately. Though the thought of food doesn’t sound terribly appealing at the moment, either.”

“Are you feeling sick?”

Nina shrugged. “A little under the weather, maybe, but nothing to worry about.” Flashing the shy smile that was as much a part of her as the thick hair that hung to her shoulders, Nina made her way across the room and out the door, her lunch sack clutched tightly in her petite hands.

Turning back to the object of both Jackson’s and Nina’s worry, she made a beeline over to Melissa’s table. “Melissa? Is everything okay?”

Slowly, the thirty-something mother of seven lifted her head from the eight-book-high stack and shook her head. “I’m done.”

“Done?” Tori echoed as she plopped into a chair on the opposite side of the table, her eyes skimming the various titles in front of her friend.

Melissa gestured toward the books. “Sally’s birthday is next week and I can’t find a birthday that will impress without having to take out a double mortgage on the house.”

She stared at her friend. “I don’t understand. You threw a great birthday for Lulu a few months ago. Why can’t you just do one like that again?”

Raking her hands across her makeup-free face, Melissa shook her head. “Because Lulu doesn’t have to invite Penelope Lawson. Sally does.”

“Penelope Lawson?”

Melissa nodded. “Penelope’s last party was a circus. Literally.”

“They hired a clown?”

“And a lion tamer . . . and a master of ceremonies . . . and someone to run the cotton candy stand . . . et cetera, et cetera. Of course there was also the mother elephant with her baby, the pair of snow-white horses, and a lion for the tamer to tame. Oh, and let’s not forget the firework display that evening. The kids all liked the ones that looked like smiley faces the best.”

Tori’s laugh died on her lips as Melissa stared back.

“You’re
serious
?”

“Completely.” Melissa sat back in her seat, her hands running down the spines of the books she’d considered and apparently discarded. “And the year before that? Her mother had a truckload of beach sand shipped in, along with an internationally known sand artist who shared some of his tips with the bucket and shovel crowd.”

“A sand artist?”

Again, Melissa nodded. “And the year before that? Well, that was the year the kids went through stations complete with a professional storyteller, the country’s top balloon artist, and none other than Barney the dinosaur. Flown in from Texas, no less.”

“Um . . . how?” It was all she could think to ask.

Pushing the rejected books to the side, Melissa shrugged. “I have no idea. But nothing is ever too good for Penelope.”

Tori racked her brain for a name to go with the face. “Is she the one with the heart-shaped face and blonde curls?”

“That’s the one. She always threatens to tell her mom if someone so much as looks at her crooked.”

“Okay, I know who she is. She accused Jackson of cheating today in story time. And, just as you said, she claimed she’d tell her mom.”

Melissa rolled her eyes. “That’s not a surprise. She’s not the kind of little girl most kids want to befriend. Not by choice, anyway.”

“So why do you have to invite this little girl?”

“Because Sally would be blackballed if we didn’t.”

Tori felt her mouth gape open. “Blackballed?”

“Blackballed,” Melissa repeated. “Not that she won’t be anyway if I have a party consisting of homemade birthday cake and pin the tail on the donkey.”

“But that’s what a kid’s party is supposed to be. That’s what you did for Lulu and her classmates loved it.”

“I repeat . . . Lulu doesn’t have to invite Penelope Lawson. Sally does. Which means I need to come up with something. Something creative and different that won’t result in Jake and me splitting the blanket over the expense.”

“Splitting the blanket?”

“Getting divorced.”

“Like that would happen.” She reached across the table and gave her friend’s hand a squeeze. “Jake adores you. You know that.”

“But to throw Sally the kind of party I need to throw is going to cost money. Money we don’t have.”

“What does Margaret Louise say?” she asked, surprised that Melissa’s mother-in-law hadn’t stepped in already. “She usually has great ideas.”

“Oh, she has a great one all right. Only strangling Penelope’s mother and stuffing her in a closet isn’t the most viable option.” Melissa brought her hand to the base of her neck and widened her eyes in theatrical fashion. “ ‘My daughter’s dress touched
what
? Take it away . . . I can’t have
that
touching
her
skin. It might be bad for her complexion and overall scores.’ ”

Tori couldn’t help it, she laughed, the sound bursting from her lips before her surroundings registered her faux pas. Leaning across the table, she lowered her voice to a more acceptable level despite the momentary lapse in patrons. “What are you talking about?”

“Beyond the fact that precious Penelope is a pageant kid, her mother, Ashley Lawson, is Regina Murphy’s head designer and she’s apparently very good at what she does.”

“Regina Murphy? I’m not sure I know who that is.”

“Tall leggy blonde, wears tailored pantsuits to go jogging”—Melissa met her gaze for any sign of understanding—“lives on the eastern side of town . . .”

“I’m not sure I’ve ever met her.”

Melissa waved away her confusion. “Anyway, Regina owns Pageant Creations—a company that makes and sells little girls’ dresses specifically designed for pageants.”

“Oh, okay. That’s what Beth does, too. Only I think her company’s name is Spotlight something or other.”

“Who’s Beth?” Melissa mumbled as she flipped open yet another party book.

“Milo’s college sweetheart. She’s coming into town later this week for some sort of business meeting and wants to get together with him.”

Melissa glanced up at the slight shake in Tori’s voice. “Are you worried?”

“Beth was years ago. If he felt that strongly for her, he wouldn’t have married Celia, right?” It was the same mantra she’d been telling herself all week. A mantra she hadn’t questioned until he’d pulled out a few old photographs after dinner one night.

One look had told her everything she didn’t want to know. Beth Samuelson was drop-dead gorgeous. And, based on the stories he’d shared while flipping through the photographs, she’d been Milo Wentworth’s first true love. The one who’d broken his heart and drove him into the arms of his late wife.

“Makes sense. Besides, Milo is crazy about you. Everyone knows that.” Melissa flipped through another page or two before closing the book with a resounding thud. “You know something? Margaret Louise’s idea looks better all the time. It would certainly make pin the tail on the donkey an acceptable party game once again.”

Shaking her thoughts free of Beth Samuelson, Tori willed herself to focus on the change in conversation. “Margaret Louise’s idea?”

“The one about strangling Ashley Lawson and stuffing her body in a closet.”

The corners of her mouth tugged upward. “Did Margaret Louise really say that?”