Murder of a Royal Pain (21 page)

“I told you this morning we couldn’t possibly see them all today, and since Jackie stayed at the junior high after PPS to deal with the situation there, I could only see eight kids this afternoon.”

“Are you blaming Jackie? She called me and said that you insisted she stay there, that you could handle the interviews here.” A scowl twisted Homer’s heavy features. “I expect you to be finished and to have found the culprit by noon tomorrow.” He spoke sharply. “Am I making myself perfectly clear?”

“If Jackie’s back to help, that shouldn’t be a problem.”

Homer’s response was an animal-like grunt. He picked up the phone and started dialing, dismissing her with a wave of his stubby fingers.

Skye headed back to her office to work on a report that was due the next day, but she was happy to see Trixie leaning against the wall near her door when she arrived. Reports could be written at home, and her friend was always good for a laugh.

Trixie handed Skye a Diet Coke and said, “Wait until you hear what I saw at the grocery store yesterday.”

“What?” Skye felt a spark of anticipation. Trixie was a great storyteller.

“I was in the produce aisle getting some fruit for this week’s lunches, and I saw Dr. Paine over by the deli counter.”

“His wife dies on Friday and he’s buying salami on Monday?” Skye
tsk
ed.

“If you think that’s bad, wait until you hear the rest of it.” Trixie plopped into the chair facing Skye’s desk. “So, I start to walk over to him to tell him how sorry I am about Annette, but another woman gets to him first.”

Skye settled into her seat. “Who was it?”

“I thought she looked familiar, but couldn’t remember why. Anyway, she said hello to him, and he said, ‘Do I know you?’ ”

Skye popped the top of her soda can and nodded for Trixie to continue.

“The woman said to him, ‘You’re the father of one of my kids.’ ”

“Holy smokes!” Skye’s eyes widened.

“You haven’t heard the half of it.” Trixie’s brown eyes twinkled with amusement. “He stared at the woman for a second or two, then said, ‘Oh, my God! Are you the stripper from that club near O’Hare? The one that I banged on the couch during my buddy’s stag party?’ ”

Skye had just taken a drink of soda and it spewed across her desktop as she whooped. After catching her breath and mopping up the mess, she asked, “What did the woman say?”

“She said, ‘No. I’m your daughter Mallory’s fifth-grade teacher.’ ”

They both laughed until tears ran down their cheeks; then Skye’s face sobered, and she said, “I forgot all about Annette’s other daughter. I wonder if I should go over to the grade school tomorrow. Homer wouldn’t let me see if any of Linnea’s friends wanted to talk about Annette’s death, but maybe Caroline would want me to talk to Mallory’s classmates.”

“Wouldn’t she have called you if she thought she needed you?” Trixie asked. When Skye nodded, Trixie added, “Besides, I heard you already have your hands full with the chemical bombs here and the wannabe mommies at the junior high. What’s up with that?”

Skye filled her in, concluding with, “Then Neva said I had phoned and left a message requesting that the meeting be moved from eleven thirty to eleven.”

“How weird.” Trixie took a sip of her Dr Pepper. “Maybe the secretary misunderstood whoever called.”

“That must be it.” Skye opened the bottom drawer of her desk and grabbed the package of cookies. Her stomach was growling. Jackie had failed to bring the promised sandwiches to the PPS meeting, and Skye hadn’t had anything to eat since seven a.m.

“Do you think Neva believed you?”

“She said she did, but she’s a hard one to read.” Skye offered the Oreos to Trixie.

“No, thanks.” Trixie reached into the jar on Skye’s desk and pulled out a piece of Halloween candy. “Sounds like Jackie is really diving right into things around here. She must be a big help to you.”

“Yeah, she’s Johnny-on-the-spot.” Skye muttered, twisting the Oreo apart. “Too much so. Let’s talk about something else.” Skye took a lick of the cream center. “Ick. I think these cookies have gone bad.”

“Throw them away.” Trixie peeled the wrapper from a tiny Milky Way. “What did Vince want to talk to you about?”

“Right. We haven’t spoken since Saturday.” Skye tried another Oreo, this time taking a bite of the intact cookie. They seemed okay as long as she ate them whole. “As I feared, Vince’s news was bad.”

“He dumped Loretta?”

“Other way around.”

“No!” Trixie’s eyes widened. “That’s got to be a first. Why?”

“She gave him the old ‘we’re too different’ speech, but I suspect there’s more to it. I need to call her and find out.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t.” Trixie’s expression was doubtful. “You don’t want to ruin your friendship.”

“You could be right.”

After a long pause, Trixie said, “What’s happening with the murder?”

“I overheard some info at church I’ll follow up on. Your story about what Dr. Paine said in the grocery store pretty much confirms what they were saying about him.” Skye filled Trixie in on the gossip about the dentist and about Evie Harrison, ending with, “And I was nearly run over by a car after Mass.”

“Oh, my God. Were you all right?” Trixie gasped.

“Just a scraped knee and palm,” Skye reassured her friend. “Kurt Michaels pushed me out of the way. Quirk blew the whole incident off.”

“What a jerk.” Trixie looked worried. “We need to find out if Annette was really the intended victim. Any ideas on how we can do that?”

“Kurt and I discussed it, and he’s going to help.” Skye gave Trixie a summary of her conversation with the reporter, finishing with, “So, he’s going to check Nina Miles out—see if she tells him anything she didn’t share with us—and I’ll talk to Evie. We’ll both look into Annette.” Hope had made Skye promise not to tell anyone about her history or Quirk’s threat, so she couldn’t share that info with Trixie.

“Don’t you think it’s odd that Kurt’s around whenever something happens?”

“Not really. He’s just doing his job.” Skye hadn’t mentioned his flirting. She pushed aside the memory of his almost kissing her, and told herself the reason for keeping it from Trixie was that he was only teasing. “Besides, with the police department not giving me any information, I need his help.”

Trixie raised an eyebrow, but didn’t pursue the matter. “What do you want me to do?”

“Evie and Nina have daughters at the high school, and Hope has a son. Maybe you could chat with them. Kids usually know more than their parents think they do, and you could run into them more casually than I can.”

“Okay.” Trixie stood. “I’ll let you know if the kids have anything interesting to say.”

After Trixie left, Skye ate the last cookie in the package and threw the cellophane away. Happily, she had purchased Oreos at the grocery store Sunday after church, and thus there was a new package in the bottom of her drawer for the next day. It had gotten so that she couldn’t get through the afternoon without her cookie fix.

As Skye carefully wiped the crumbs from the top of her desk, and made sure none had fallen to the floor—Homer would kill her if she attracted ants—she thought about how she could approach Dylan Paine. She needed to find out if the dental Don Juan had murdered his wife.

How do you get to see a dentist? By developing a toothache. A few seconds later, Skye had Dr. Paine’s receptionist on the phone, and was reassuring the woman that although her tooth was throbbing, and Dr. Paine wasn’t reopening his office until the day after tomorrow, she didn’t want a referral to another dentist. The woman reluctantly said that Dr. Paine could see Skye at four p.m. on Thursday.

Skye wrote the appointment on her calendar, picked up her purse, and stood. As she got to her feet, she felt dizzy and a little nauseated. The half dozen cookies she had eaten on an empty stomach must not have agreed with her.

Skye resolved to go straight home and rest—as soon as she made two stops. First she’d go to Evie’s house to ask her what Annette was holding over her head, then to Aunt Minnie’s to make sure the correct version of Wally’s absence was circulating on the grapevine. When they’d talked Sunday night, she’d gotten Wally’s okay to reveal the info about his reason for being out of town, but Skye hadn’t had a chance to visit her aunt until now.

Evie lived in a beautiful old Victorian next to her husband’s church. A fifty-something man in a clerical collar answered Skye’s knock. “Yes?”

“Hello, Reverend.” Skye smiled at the handsome minister. “May I speak to Evie, please?”

“I’m sorry—she’s not receiving visitors today.” He tried to shut the door.

Skye put her foot in his way.“Could you tell her it’s Skye Denison, about Promfest?”

“I’ll tell her you stopped by.” His icy blue eyes dared her to cause a scene. “But she’s resting now, and I won’t disturb her.”

Skye refused to be intimidated. “Will you give her a note from me?”

He inclined his head, and Skye noticed that his thick white hair didn’t move. She hurriedly grabbed a legal pad from her tote, then searched its depths for a pen. Reverend Harrison sighed and handed her the one from his shirt pocket.

Skye admired the sleek Mont Blanc as she wrote:

As soon as she handed Reverend Harrison the folded page, he shut the door in her face. It sure seemed as if Evie was avoiding Skye. What did the woman have to hide?

A
ringing phone woke Skye from a disturbed sleep. She still hadn’t felt well when she got home from her aunt’s, and had stretched out on the love seat in the sunroom trying to get her head to stop spinning. She must have dozed off, because according to the clock on the VCR it was now eight p.m.

She struggled to get up, her neck and back aching from sleeping on the too-short surface. Stumbling to the kitchen, she snatched the receiver off the hook.

A male voice said, “Hello. Uh, this is Xavier Ryan.”

“Oh, hi, Xavier.” Skye tried to clear her mind. “Is Frannie okay?”

“Depends on your definition of
okay.
”

Uh-oh.
“What’s up?” Skye wedged the receiver between her ear and shoulder and moved over to the sink.

“She absolutely refuses to go back to Loyola.”

“That’s a shame.” Skye turned on the cold water and splashed her face, trying to focus. “Does she have an alternative plan?”

“Yeah.” Xavier’s tone was sarcastic. “She’s going to get her old job at the bowling alley back.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s as far as she’s thought it through.”

Skye sank into a kitchen chair. “Maybe she needs a little time to figure out what she wants.”

“No.” Xavier’s voice was firm. “She needs to get her rear end back in college.”

“Well, uh, good luck with that.”

“Can you talk to her?”

“I doubt I could change her mind,” Skye stalled. “And I’m really not feeling well tonight.”

“Oh.” There was a silence; then Xavier said, “Well, the thing is, she’s already on her way to your house.”

“I see.”

“She thinks you’ll take her side.” Xavier cleared his throat. “I wanted to make sure you and I were on the same page.”

“And you want her in school?”

“Right.”

“If it doesn’t have to be Loyola, I could suggest Joliet Junior College.” Skye got up and put a filter in the coffee machine’s basket. Her head still felt fuzzy, and she needed to be able to think straight if she was going to convince Frannie to do something she didn’t want to do. “Maybe if she can commute, she’d be willing to give college another try.”

“Yeah, that might work.” Xavier sounded relieved. “Call me when she leaves and let me know how it went. Okay?”

“Sorry, no.” Skye was not getting caught in the middle. “You two can talk about it when she gets home.”

While she waited for the coffee to brew and Frannie to arrive, Skye checked her messages. There was one from her mother demanding to know if she had broken up with Wally and was now dating Kurt. Skye deleted that one with no intention of returning May’s call.

The second one was from Loretta. All it said was, “Meningitis, menopause, mental illness—ever notice all problems begin with
men
?”

Skye hit the DELETE button again. No way was she returning that call either.

The last message was from Simon. He said he had some info about the murder and he’d get in touch with her the next day.
Hmm.
That sounded promising.

It took several hours to convince Frannie to give JJC a chance, but when Skye pointed out to her that she’d need transportation from Scumble River to Joliet in order to attend, the girl gave in. Frannie had been bugging her father to buy her car since she’d turned sixteen. Once Frannie left, Skye went to bed and fell immediately asleep.

 

When she woke up Wednesday morning, Skye felt as if she had a hangover, but she forced herself to get up and go to work. Jackie and Skye interviewed students all morning, but none of the kids seemed to know anything about the bombs. Homer was not happy with their lack of results. And when the principal wasn’t happy, no one in the school was happy.

Trixie hadn’t had any better luck when she talked to Bree Miles, Cheyenne Harrison, and Ross Kennedy. None of the three had revealed any useful information. Linnea Paine was still out of school, so Trixie hadn’t been able to speak to her.

To top it off, at noon Skye had found a note in her box from Evie Harrison, which read: