Small Town Spin (24 page)

22.

Questions and answers

I pulled into the parking lot at the high school early, judging by the fact that there were only two other cars present, and neither of them belonged to the sheriff. No TV trucks, either. I smiled, thinking there was no way in hell Lyle had called Charlie. More brownie points for me, and not a one to spare with Spence hanging out with Les and Shelby for the day. Somehow the three of them conspiring to get me in trouble with Andrews seemed so much worse than Les and Shelby alone, even if I couldn’t explain why.

I walked up the steps and found the front door unlocked. The sheriff must’ve had someone come open the school for the press conference. Stepping into the foyer, my heels clicked on the tile floor eerily loud in the silence. I shook off the slasher-movie memories, the spring sunshine pouring through the doors helping.

I went to the auditorium, but it was locked, so I rounded the corner and peeked into the office. Norma sat in front of her computer, studying something on the screen through a pair of reading glasses perched on the end of her nose.

She looked up when I opened the door.

“Hey there! What brings you by here on a Saturday? I think I’m the only person in the building.”

“Lyle called me,” I said, furrowing my brow. “There’s a press conference here today, right?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “Not for a while yet, though. They’re still cleaning up at the Bosley place. I just don’t know what’s gotten into these children.”

I shook my head. “You and me both.”

“So sad. You’re welcome to have a seat. I just have some data entry to catch up on. Everything’s been so topsy-turvy here I haven’t had time to do my job lately.”

“Thanks.” I sat down and pulled out my Blackberry. I had a text from Kyle.

“Sorry I missed you. On with the lab. Your dead football player didn’t take any Vicodin.”

That’s it? I stared at my screen.

“You’re killing me! What happened?” I typed.

“Liver failure caused by massive Glucotrol overdose. There was a shit ton of it in his bloodstream.”

Glucotrol. Luke was diabetic.

But Luke was also dead. And I didn’t know how yet. What if someone had figured this out and killed him? But wait. Coach Morris said the lockers downstairs had shiny new locks because some of Luke’s medicine was stolen. To poison TJ and make Luke look like the killer? Or did Luke say it was stolen because he lacked a better explanation for missing pills? Crap. More questions.

“You’re sure?” I tapped back, my brain forging ahead a thousand miles a minute. If Kyle had the results, the sheriff would have them soon. Which meant so would everyone on their way in for the press conference, if he happened to run by his office first. And I still didn’t know what the
Post
had or where their guy was getting his information.

Kyle’s answer flashed on my screen. “They ran it twice. Elevated BAC and Glucotrol.”

Ho. Ly. Crap. Somebody spiked the moonshine. With drugs, but not Vicodin. And if I hadn’t asked Kyle to beg for a full screen, nobody would have known it, either. I tried to recall that conversation with Coach Morris word for word. Did he say what kind of medicine Luke took? Or anything else?

That Luke’s diabetes was genetic. Did that mean his mother had it, too? But if it was her, why was her kid dead? I dismissed her from my list, focusing on who could have taken Luke’s pills.

“Thank you! I’m in Mathews,” I typed to Kyle. “Call you soon.”

I took a deep breath and fixed a neutral expression on my face, looking up at Norma.

“I can’t get over this thing with Luke Bosley. I was just talking to his momma last night.”

She shook her head, a sad look in her blue eyes. “Such a nice boy. He had problems, but you couldn’t tell it. He was diabetic, you know.”

“I heard that. Were there any other students here who had the same condition?”

She shook her head. “It’s a small school.”

I looked past her at the nurse’s office, desperate to know what kind of medication Luke took. “Did Luke have to keep medicine here at school?”

“Sure he did. There’s a bottle locked in the nurse’s cabinet and probably some in his locker, too. Poor boy. He had to take pills, but then carry sugar in his pockets on the baseball field so if he got too low, he could get to it quickly.”

Hot damn.

So the pills that had probably killed TJ were floating all over the school? But they belonged to Luke. I thought about Evelyn and Eli. It was a clever way to throw suspicion if the sheriff didn’t go with the suicide story. But why hurt Luke? If the killer was setting him up, why kill him? To keep him from talking, maybe. What if Luke figured out they were taking his pills and confronted the killer? Or, what if he ran out of pills to take because they stole them?

I tapped “Glucotrol overdose” into my Google app and scanned the symptoms, trying not to picture TJ going through all the phases leading to death. Fatigue, dizziness, unsteadiness, clammy skin, fainting—I paused, reading them again.

All the things that had happened to me the night before.

Because my blood sugar had crashed.

I raced back through the events of the evening. I hadn’t eaten or drunk anything that tasted off.

But I took a pill. Without really looking at it, I swallowed my last antibiotic.

About five hours before I passed out.

I scrolled down and checked the effective time.

“Someone poisoned me,” I murmured.

“What was that, honey?” Norma asked.

“I—nothing, I’m sorry.” I smiled. “Thinking out loud.”

Who had I seen at the dance? Luke. His mother. Evelyn. Coach Morris. Most of the rest of the town. Even Dorothy had been there with her friends from the ladies’ Bible group.

“I’m going to run to the little girls’ room,” Norma said, standing. “I’ll be right back.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She disappeared and I pulled a notebook from my bag, rummaging for a pen and coming up empty handed. Shit. I must have left it at home.

I got up and walked to Norma’s desk to borrow one. Plucking a purple one from her Mathews Bait and Tackle coffee cup, I started to turn when my eyes fell on the corner of a paper sticking out of a manila folder.

No way.

I flipped the folder open.

The ticket paper.

She printed the tickets for the dance. Of course. She’d been sitting there selling them. I glanced at the nurse’s dark doorway. She also worked in the school and had easy access to Luke’s pills. And she’d told me her oldest daughter was a student at RAU. Puzzle pieces rained into horrifying order.

I glanced at the door, skirting the desk and wiggling the mouse. I sent the spreadsheet on the screen to the printer and held my breath.

It was slightly faded, right through the center of the page. My heart pounding in my ears, I jumped to my feet and looked around for another exit, but didn’t see one. I had a million questions about how and why, but right then the only thing I gave a damn about was getting out of that building.

I started for the door, but she came back in before I could go out.

“You need something, honey?” she asked, raising her eyebrows.

“Pen.” I waved the purple one and smiled. “I borrowed one from you because I left mine at home.”

“Help yourself,” she said, resuming her seat. I watched her sit down and start typing again, at once terrified and fascinated. How could you murder a child—or maybe three—in a week’s time, and just sit there and do spreadsheets?

I backed slowly toward the door, thinking if I could just get through it, I could run. I never took my eyes off Norma.

She stopped typing, her fingers hovering above the keys, but kept her eyes on the screen. Then she sighed.

“How long have you known?” she asked.

“Known what?” My voice broke between the words.

She turned slowly in her chair, a sweet smile on her face.

“Known it was me, honey.” She opened a drawer and pulled out a black-handled revolver. 

I dashed out the door before she squeezed the trigger, the explosion behind me making me run harder for the front door. The heel of one lavender Manolo sandal skidded on the tile as I rounded the corner into the main hallway. I caught my balance, sprinting over the inlay of the eagle just inside the foyer.

I fell against the front doors, but they didn’t move. I jiggled the crash bar.

Locked.

“You don’t think I’m that stupid, do you?” Norma called from the other end of the hallway.

I heard the gun cock. Figuring that was a rhetorical question, I dove for the nearest hallway, the shot zinging off the metal of the doors behind me.

My legs burned as I fled, not the first damned clue where I was going. Dark classrooms lined both sides of the hall, and it split into a T at the end, with lockers and more classrooms going one way, and a single door the other. Glancing behind me, I took door number two, saying a fast prayer and promising to give up chocolate for a year if the door opened. It did. I shut it softly behind me, looking for a lock, but not seeing one. A bank of high windows let in just enough sunlight to show me I was in the band hall.

I scanned the room for a hiding place, settling on a row of cubbyholes in the far corner that housed large drum sets and tubas. I pulled the tuba on the far end free, climbed in, and pulled the instrument in behind me.

Curled into a ball with my knees up my nose, I listened for Norma and hoped my breathing wasn’t actually as loud as it sounded to me. How the bloody hell was I going to get out of this?

My phone! I wriggled an arm down my side into my pocket and got it free. It had full bars, but everyone I knew was two hours away.

Shit.

Wait. I’d called Tony on his cell phone to ask for a comment after the sheriff’s press conference.

When was that? Wednesday. I scrolled back through my recent calls until I found the one to a Mathews area code on Wednesday afternoon.

“Thank you,” I whispered. I punched talk as the door to the band hall opened. I dropped the phone into the curve of my lap, resting my forehead on my knees and trying to imitate a statue.

“Olly olly oxenfree.” Norma’s voice had taken on a manic edge. “Everyone out of hiding, now.”

It sounded like she was walking through the room flipping over chairs and music stands. “I know you’re in here, Nichelle,” she called. “You can’t hide forever. I managed to get TJ Okerson out of the way, for God’s sake. I didn’t spend a year planning all this so you could wreck it. Now just put on your big girl panties and come on out and face your fate.”

A drum set crashed to the floor a few feet away and I flinched. Turning as far to the side as I could, I watched Norma’s feet. When she got directly in front of my hiding place, I shoved the tuba with my right hand and foot, catching her off guard and knocking her over. She screamed—more indignation than pain, from the sound—and I heard the gun clatter against the cabinet across from us and fire. My Blackberry bounced to the coffee-brown carpet as I scrambled to my feet.

Norma lay sprawled across the floor, but still had her grip on the gun. She swung it upward, and I dodged behind the end of the cabinet, snatching a trumpet off a shelf. She grunted, getting to her feet, and I called my biggest question.

“Why?”

“Why? You didn’t get that with all the questions you asked me the other day?”

I replayed that conversation on fast forward.

“Eli.”

“My Eli. He’s such a good boy. So talented. He and Luke Bosley would have led the baseball team. But TJ came here and took everything he worked so hard for. Including his girlfriend. He’s been so sad. Poor Terry couldn’t figure out how to pull Eli out of his funk. A worried daddy is no good for romance.”

“You killed TJ because you wanted to score with your ex-brother-in-law?” I couldn’t stop the scorn pouring through my lips. “Jesus, lady. Have you talked to Jerry Springer’s producers? You could have your own week.”

“Keep talking. It just helps me aim better,” she said. The gun hammer clicked back again and I tried to mentally count shots. One in the office. One in the hall, maybe two. And one into the cabinet. That left two or three bullets if she’d started with a fully-loaded gun.

She only needed one. She was six feet away.

I peeked out and she leveled the revolver and smiled. I reacted without thinking, hurling the trumpet at her head as hard as I could. It made a satisfying clang when it hit and she staggered backward and screamed, blood trickling over her left eye. Two points for the crime reporter.

The gun went flying, clattering into the dark reaches of the room behind her. She pressed a hand to her forehead and glared at me, turning for the gun. I stepped out and swung one foot up and around in a hooked side kick that caught her arm.

She lurched away and squealed, a welp of blood appearing on her skin from my heel.

“Why Sydney?”

“She dumped my Eli for that boy,” Norma spat. “She and that mother of hers. Always thinking they’re too good for everyone else.”

“I thought you said you were friends?”

“I said we were friends once. She married money. She’s too good for me, now.” The bitterness in her voice would’ve soured Eunice’s creme brulee.

“And Luke was in Eli’s way, too?” I guessed. “He was the easiest for you to get to with the Glucotrol, right?”

Norma shook her head, her glare softening. “I’ve known Luke since he was born. I would never hurt him. Annalynn over at the sheriff’s office told her momma this morning that Luke shot himself in the head with one of his daddy’s hunting rifles. God rest him. They put so much pressure on him. Word is, he left a note saying TJ and Sydney didn’t have any worries anymore, and that sounded nice. Poor boy.”

I didn’t have time to fully process that before she stepped forward. I raised my hands, widening my feet into a punching stance. She paused by the desk, her fingers closing on the handle of a pair of scissors lying on the blotter. Damn.

“You can’t make this look like a suicide,” I said.

“Probably not, but I can make it look like someone else was responsible. Assuming anyone finds you. My cousin Sherman was none too happy about you asking questions about his moonshine, you know.” She smiled. Just before she lunged.

I dodged to one side, but she swung fast and winged my upper arm, hacking a jagged gash in my skin with the scissors. I yelped and grabbed for the wound. “People will be here any minute,” I panted, kicking a chair into her knees and smiling when she tripped over it.

“Why? It’s Saturday.” She jumped back to her feet.

“The press conference.” I backed up another step.

“Is at the sheriff’s office. I called Lyle and told him it was here. Right before I mentioned how sweet you were, and what a nice guy he is. I knew he’d call and tell you. If the Glucotrol I slipped into your purse last night worked, he wouldn’t get you. If it didn’t, you’d come running. I was right. I texted him that I was mistaken, and I’d sent you on your way. With Sherman to escort you.” She grinned a too-wide-eyed grin that belonged in a horror movie. “You’ve been far too nosy. All the other reporters left town when Zeke closed the Okerson file. Not you. So many questions. I figure it’s about time to make sure you never get this story to print.”

She lunged forward again, swinging the scissors wildly, and I stepped back, stumbling over one of the music stands she’d knocked over. Hitting the floor, I shrank away from the crazed glassiness in her eyes as she hunched down in preparation to tackle me.

Every movement seemed to be through Jell-O, my eyes registered the action so slowly.

I bent one knee and whipped my lavender Manolo off, flipping it around so the heel pointed toward her and locking my elbows.

She couldn’t stop herself.

I squinched my eyes shut.

She screamed, and something warm and wet trickled over my hand for an instant before she fell to the floor beside me, howling. I peeked through my lashes to find my stiletto buried up to the sole in the flesh between her chest and right shoulder. Ouch.

I scrambled to my feet, snatching the other shoe up as a weapon and kicking the scissors away from her hand. She stared at her wound, shock plain on her face.

“You stabbed me with a shoe.”

“Technically, you impaled yourself on it trying to kill me.”

Her eyes widened. “You bitch!” she screeched, pushing herself up with her left elbow. “I’ll kill you!”

I backed toward my hiding cubby, spotting my phone on the floor and scooping it up just as I heard footfalls in the hallway.

“Nichelle!” Tony.

I cleared my throat, which didn’t want to work. “In the band hall.”

Turning my eyes back to Norma, who was frozen with terror, I smiled. “Fitting, I think. You go ahead and tell Mr. Okerson why his son deserved to die for being a good athlete. I’ll wait.”

Her face twisted into a mask of fury that didn’t resemble anything human, and she grabbed a music stand and slung it in my direction just as the door opened, framing Tony and Coach Morris. I jumped backward, the stand thwacking into my ankle and sending a wave of pain up to my hip that I ignored.

“Are you all right?” Tony crossed the room in a half-dozen long strides, worry creasing his forehead as his eyes locked on my arm. I looked down to see that my sweater sleeve was a bloody mess, the gash deeper than I thought.

“Maybe I should sit,” I said, slumping into a chair. “Somebody ought to tie Nutty McCrazy there up before she finds another weapon.”

Tony stood over Norma, rage, sorrow, and pity warring over the planes of his famous face as she howled incoherently.

He pulled one foot back, held it for a ten count, and then returned it to the floor. “I’ve never hit a woman in my life.”

“Start,” the harsh word came from Morris, who was backing away from his new girlfriend with disgust plain in his eyes and tone.

Her eyes flew to him, her scream cutting off. “No. Terry, this was all for you. You and Eli. So we’d be together. Haven’t I been good to you? Taken care of you? Helped you feel better? And Eli is so much happier.”

“You,” Morris floundered, his inability to process that flashing across his brow like a neon sign. “You murdered my favorite student so you could console your way into my bed? That’s...There’s not a word for what you are.” He looked at Tony. “I. I can’t. I’m so sorry, Mr. Okerson.”