Murder of a Pink Elephant (16 page)

“Why do I think you still haven’t told me your main fear?” Simon finished the massage and slipped her shoes back on her feet.

“Mom’s
convinced that Vince is on the top of Wally’s suspect list.” Skye’s face took on a pinched, worried look. “And I’m afraid she might be right. Even before Tuesday, when Vince told him about Heather’s involvement, it felt like Wally was concentrating on Vince.”

The bell rang and Simon got up. “Then we better provide him with a better suspect.”

Skye stood too, and moved around the desk. She put her hands on Simon’s shoulders and pressed a soft kiss on his cheek. “Thank you.” She gestured around the room. “For lunch and the foot massage, but mostly for not laughing at my worries and thinking I’m silly.” Simon really had changed. Not only was he okay with Skye looking into the murder, he was offering to help. Previously he had been angry when she had become involved in this type of investigation.

“You’re welcome.” Simon moved toward the door and Skye followed. “Tonight I have a funeral, and tomorrow is the bowling alley’s grand opening, so we won’t have much private time together this weekend. Let’s each make a list of people who might want to kill Logan Wolfe and then Monday we can start to look into them.”

Skye felt the weight on her chest ease a little. It was so good to have someone with whom to share her anxieties. Skye and Simon parted at the school’s front door.

After watching him get into his Lexus, she walked back to the main office and said to the secretary, “Opal, please call Nathan Turner out of science, and ask him to come to my office.” It was time to find out why he had decided to take a shower in his clothes during a school dance.

Unfortunately Nathan was absent, and Bitsy was taking a test, so Skye’s afternoon plans were thwarted, and she ended up writing psychological reports and answering phone calls instead.

The last period of the day was nearly over when Trixie
dashed into Skye’s office. She plopped into a chair and blew her bangs out of her eyes. “What a day! Cramer was scheduled to bring his six classes into the library to do research—that’s how they decided to handle giving a P.E. grade with the gym out of commission. But instead of staying with them, he kept disappearing. I ended up trying to supervise thirty kids and help find the materials they needed, all by myself.”

Before Skye could commiserate, Trixie asked, “Do I look like I know a lacrosse stick from a cricket bat?” Skye tried once more to respond, but Trixie continued, “If Cramer is too busy for his classes now, what will he be like if he wins the mayoral race?”

This time Skye was able to slip in a question. “Will he still teach if he’s elected? I sort of assumed he’d take a leave of absence.”

Trixie took a Jolly Rancher from the jar on Skye’s desk. “All the other mayors have kept their day jobs.”

“That’s true. Mayor Clapp had the used car lot, and the guy who was in office when I was in high school worked at Com Ed.” Skye got up and went to her filing cabinet. “Could Wally keep on as police chief and be mayor at the same time?”

“Good question. Wasn’t Andy Taylor the mayor and the sheriff of Mayberry?”

“You do realize that was a fictional town, right?” Skye was worried that Trixie had gone off the deep end. “Anyway, Andy was the justice of the peace and the sheriff. Someone else was mayor.”

“Whatever.” Trixie shrugged. “It never dawned on me that Wally might have to quit being police chief if he wins. Who would take over?”

“Roy Quirk is next in rank.” Skye flicked through the folders, found the one marked
Scumble River High School
Scoop
, and extracted it from the row. “He’s a good officer but a little young to be chief.”

“Then they’d have to bring in someone new.”

“Oh, my gosh.” Skye sank back into her chair. “Otto McCabe has been trying to get on the force for ages. Mom says he’s always picking up odd shifts.” She shook her head. McCabe was a dead ringer for Barney Fife—both physically and mentally. “If he were hired, we really would be living in Mayberry, just like the Pig-In-A-Poke guy wants us to.” As soon as the words left her mouth, Skye realized what she had said and looked to see Trixie’s reaction.

“Speaking of that Gibson guy’s plan, what do you think?” Trixie asked. She suddenly seemed to find the charms on her bracelet fascinating and didn’t look up.

Skye bit her tongue. She couldn’t tell Trixie the truth, but she didn’t want to lie either. She answered cautiously, “I’m not thrilled with the idea of our town being turned into a tourist attraction where all the ‘city folk’ come to laugh and point at the local yokels.”

“But the town needs money, and he’s offering a lot of it.” Trixie’s voice lacked conviction.

Skye opened her mouth, then closed it. What could she say? “That’s true. I just wish there was another way of getting it.”

“Me, too.”

“Why weren’t you and Owen at the brunch?”

“We had no idea who Moss Gibson was until he came to see us Monday night. I had thrown away the invitation to Sunday’s party, figuring it was some sort of scam.”

Skye bit her tongue to stop herself from saying,
It is. He’s trying to con all of us into being unpaid actors in his amusement park
. Instead she said in an offhanded tone, “Well, everyone has to make up their own mind about Pig-In-A-Poke.”

“Yeah, well. Some people have no other choice.”

The bitterness in Trixie’s voice shocked Skye, and she resolved never to say anything negative about the amusement park in front of her friend again. She immediately changed the subject. “Are you still worried about the kids acting strange?”

Trixie straightened and appeared to shake off the other topic. “Well, the water tower incident in Brooklyn certainly qualified as outlandish. Did you hear what happened in Clay Center last night?”

“No. I turned off my radio this morning after the weather.”

“Some kids broke into the grain elevator and pumped the grain out. The DJ said it looked as if it had snowed soybeans. They think they’ll be able to recover some of it, but a lot will have to be trashed.”

“What in God’s green earth has gotten into these kids?” Skye slapped the folder she’d been holding down onto the desk. Now, to go with Scumble River’s fire and Brooklyn’s flood, Clay Center had gotten famine. Why were the plagues of Egypt being visited upon central Illinois?

“I don’t know. But I think we’d better find out.” Trixie pulled a clipboard from her tote bag and made a note. “I’ll call the other school librarians and see if they’ve heard anything. Do you know the school psychologist at Brooklyn or Clay Center?”

“Sort of, but it’s someone they share from the special ed co-op, so I’m guessing he wouldn’t be around enough to be in the loop.” Many of the smaller school districts obtained specialist services from a special education cooperative. These included psychologists, social workers, speech pathologists, and occupational therapists, as well as teachers for low-incident disabilities like hearing- and vision-impaired students.

Trixie looked at her watch. “Classes will be out in another
minute. Maybe Frannie and Justin and their friends will have some ideas about the recent bizarre events.”

The school newspaper staff was meeting in Skye’s office to plan the March issue. Luckily, unlike her tiny offices at the elementary school and junior high, her high school office was roomy enough to hold ten people comfortably.

The bell rang, and seconds later kids stared pouring through Skye’s door. They all grabbed a folding chair from the stack behind the file cabinets and seated themselves in a semicircle around her desk. Within a few minutes, the teens had their notebooks open and pencils ready.

Skye noticed that Justin wasn’t sitting beside either Bitsy or Frannie, and both girls were seated as far from each other as possible. Too bad the road to teen romance was so full of potholes.

Currently they had three boys and five girls on staff. A lot of students had come to one meeting, found out they actually had to write, not just give ideas for others to turn into words, and never returned. Frannie and Justin were co-editors. Skye and Trixie were the faculty sponsors.

Frannie looked over at Justin, then said, “We have a question for you guys.”

The “guys”—Skye and Trixie—nodded.

Frannie’s smile was mischievous. “Well, if the saying ‘quitters never win and winners never quit’ is true, which is what Mr. Cramer always tells us, then why does Ms. Cormorant say quit while you’re ahead?”

Trixie snickered and started laughing, but Skye sought a serious answer. Finally she offered, “I think it has to do with how you view the world. An optimist would agree with Mr. Cramer’s view and a pessimist with Ms. Cormorant’s. You can choose which type of person you want to be.”

Frannie nodded, clearly surprised by Skye’s thoughtful response.

Justin frowned and said, “But isn’t your personality something you’re born with? Can you really change it?”

“You can change your behavior, which is a big part of your personality. I won’t try to con you and tell you it’s easy to make that change, but everyone is capable of great good and great evil. Each of us has to decide which path we want to take in life.”

Skye looked to see who had understood what she was trying to tell them and who thought she was full of beans. Most heads were nodding, but Justin still appeared skeptical. Now was a good time to segue into the topic she and Trixie had been discussing before the kids arrived. “Speaking of good and bad, Mrs. Frayne and I were wondering if any of you can explain what has been going on around here lately.”

A circle of innocent faces looked back at Skye.

“I’m talking about all the trouble the teenagers in the area seem to be getting into recently.” She raised an eyebrow and scanned the group, finally saying, “How about you, Bitsy? Anything you can think of that might be behind the recent rash of odd events?” Skye didn’t want to be more specific, knowing that sometimes if the questions were vague enough, the person responding would fill in the blanks, and more information would be revealed.

“No, Ms. Denison.” Bitsy ducked her head.

After asking a few others, Skye decided to let it go. The kids would probably be more willing to talk alone than in a group.

For the rest of the meeting, Trixie and Skye approved story ideas, helped with the newspaper’s layout, and answered questions about how to word sentences. At five o’clock, Trixie announced she had to leave. Everyone gathered up his or her belongings, and Trixie and the teens filed out.

Justin brought up the rear and lingered after the others had left. “Ms. D.?”

“Yes?”

“Uh, if I tell you something, can you keep it between you and me?”

“Yes, unless you tell me something that I think will harm you or someone else,” Skye answered carefully, feeling slightly alarmed.

His dark, serious eyes studied her for a long moment before he said, “I’m not sure, but I think some of the stuff that’s happening is because all of a sudden there’s a lot of crank floating around school.”

Skye fought to keep her face expressionless. “Crank, as in methamphetamine?”

“Uh-huh.” Justin nodded. “There’s always been some around and a few kids using, but now there’s a whole shitload.”

“Do you know who’s selling it?”

“Nah. Everyone knows how I feel about drugs. No one’s going to tell me anything.” Justin swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing like a fishing lure. “But if you want, I’ll try and ask around. You need to stop it. It’s getting pretty bad out there.”

“No. Don’t ask around.” Skye felt sweat start to form on her upper lip. She did not want the boy poking into something that could be extremely dangerous. “I’ll look into it. Is it okay if I ask Chief Boyd if he’s heard anything?”

Justin paused, considering, then said with reluctance in his voice, “Okay, but don’t tell him you got the 411 from me.”

“Sounds fair. I’ll say I heard the information from a reliable source.”

After Justin left, Skye sat for a while and mulled over what she had been told. A sudden rise in teenagers taking meth would certainly explain the recent weird behavior. For instance, if Bitsy had taken the drug before she came to decorate the gym, the exacerbated thought patterns that
methamphetamine was known to produce might explain why a dummy lying underneath the stage might make the girl think she was seeing a dead body.

And if Nathan Turner had taken meth while at the dance, his sudden need for a shower could be explained by an increased heartbeat that would make him feel extremely overheated.

Skye shrugged into her coat and locked up. As she walked down the hallway toward the front door, it occurred to her that even the fire might be a result of the drug. Long-term users often became paranoid and had hallucinations. A person like that could easily think he
had
to burn down the school.

Skye drove home, wondering who was selling meth to the students and how she could stop them.

  
CHAPTER 16
  

W
here in the heck was everyone? It was Friday afternoon, and during the twenty minutes Skye’d had free for lunch, she’d tried to phone both Wally and Rod again but ended up leaving them each yet another message to call her. Neither of them had returned her phone call from the night before.

Rod she understood. He probably knew she wanted to talk to him about why he’d sicced the police on Vince. But Wally’s silence worried her. He needed to be told about the methamphetamine problem ASAP. Was his mayoral campaign or his ex-wife taking up all of his attention these days?

Speaking of Wally’s ex, it was time to shut her up. At this moment they were attending an annual review, and Darleen had already repeated herself four times. The parents of the special ed student under discussion were starting to look annoyed.

Skye cleared her throat and said, “It sounds to me like your son has made good progress this year, but he still needs support and modification with organizational issues.”

Darleen shot back, “That’s not what I’m recommending. He’s not disorganized. He’s just lazy. If he would focus and do his homework, he’d be fine.”