by Parker, Jack
"There'd be a good chance that she would roll over those pieces of taillight, but she might well keep her balance and not fall," Kelly said. "I think this one was a spur-of-the-moment thing, whoever's doing this is probably keeping tabs on all the girls Jake goes out with and noticed the two cars parked across the row from each other. They couldn't resist the chance to create a scene and if Madison happened to trip so much the better."
"Okay, what's next?" Gracie asked.
"Serene's desk failure," Kelly read off. "Hey! Guess who sits at that very same desk the period before? Amy!"
"Well now, isn't that interesting," Cheryl remarked.
"She'd have plenty of time to work at the bolts, oiling them if necessary, until they were loose. Then just before she left she could take them off and be pret-ty darn sure the top would come off when Serene was there," Kelly said.
"She couldn't have known Serene would get hurt," Shawna objected.
"No, but it would still be scary," Gracie said. "And it's unlikely that anyone else might get caught in this particular trap."
"Next up is Tony Fletcher's trip over a rock at your step-mother's boutique," Kelly said.
"Amy has long brown hair, and she's pretty quiet," Shawna said.
"Anybody got a picture of Amy?" Gracie asked.
"I think I've got a group pic that she's in, why?" Cheryl asked.
"'Cause I want to e-mail it to Jennifer to see if she was in the boutique that day with Tanya and Meaghan."
"Doesn't mean it was her," Cheryl said. "I know I've said it before, but I still think that brat moved that rock himself.
"O-kay, on to Andrea's brush with cyanide," Kelly said before the girls got into an argument.
"Amy is in Andrea's cooking group!" Cheryl crowed.
"That would give her the perfect opportunity to put the poison in the food, but surely she wouldn't eat it herself," Shawna said.
"Ken said it would depend on how much they got, and maybe what form it was in," Gracie put in.
"I remember thinking Amy must not have liked the lasagna, she didn't eat much of it," Cheryl said.
"Which she wouldn't do if she knew it was poisoned!" Shawna said.
"Or maybe somehow she just put the stuff on Andrea's plate," Kelly suggested.
"How would you carry cyanide around without risking contaminating anything else, like yourself?" Gracie asked.
"A small container of some kind, with a tight lid," Kelly ventured.
"Like maybe a pill bottle?" Shawna asked.
"Cheryl, think back carefully," Gracie said. "What do you remember about that pill bottle you saw in Amy's backpack. That was the same day, wasn't it?"
"Um, yeah, I think. Last Friday, before Meaghan's wreck," Cheryl said. "Let's see. It was big, I remember that. But it was light, like there weren't many pills left."
"Did it rattle?" Kelly asked.
"I don't remember; I didn't actually pick it up, just saw it roll across the floor," Cheryl said. "And I couldn't see inside it, it was all dusty."
"Like it was coated with cyanide powder," Shawna insinuated.
"But that stuff's dangerous," Cheryl protested. "I bet you wouldn't need very much, especially if you weren't really trying to kill someone. Certainly not as much as that bottle would've held."
"Form," Gracie stated. "What form of cyanide would take up a lot of space?"
"Here, let me look it up again," Cheryl said, getting up and going to the computer.
"Wait a minute," Kelly said. "We did that before, and now I'm trying to remember something about that. Something that Gracie didn't like." He put his chin in his hand to think. "I know! Didn't the site say there was cyanide in apple seeds? Because Gracie said she wished she hadn't known that; she likes apples."
Cheryl had found the website again and was scrolling through the text, muttering as she read. "Yes," she said simply.
"Now that I think about it, I do remember my dad telling me that years ago," Kelly said. "We were camping and I'd found a wild apple tree and he told me not to eat the seeds."
"It says here that just eating a few seeds won't hurt you," Cheryl reported. "Though chewing them up makes them more hazardous. Um, oh here it is! It says it would take half a cup to be lethal."
"Would that pill bottle hold half a cup of apple seeds, do you think?" Gracie asked.
"Maybe," Cheryl allowed.
"You said chewing makes 'em more hazardous," Shawna began. "What about chopping them up? Wouldn't that do the same thing?"
"I'd think so," Kelly said. "But wouldn't you notice even chopped up seeds in your food?"
"It was lasagna," Cheryl reminded him. "The meat sauce is between layers of noodles, and it's chock full of onions and garlic so you probably wouldn't notice."
"And I bet all that stuff would hide any odd taste, too," Shawna speculated.
"If she only meant to make Andrea sick she wouldn't have had to use a whole half-cup," Gracie pointed out.
"If she'd chopped the seeds up the juice would get all over the inside of the bottle, maybe that's what made you think it was dusty-looking," Kelly said.
"Well, what are we going to do, dig through Amy's trashcan looking for apple cores? Call her mom and ask if Amy's been baking pies?" Cheryl wanted to know.
"That was nearly a week ago," Kelly said. "The trash would be gone by now. I wonder if the hospital still has that sample and can test it?"
"I'll ask Ken about it," Gracie said. "Next?"
"Shaun's locker door," he replied.
"After what Clay told us last night it sounds like it was just a real accident," Shawna stated her opinion.
"Agreed," the other three said. Kelly crossed it off his list.
"All right then, next is Meaghan's wreck," Kelly said.
"If we go with the apple-seed theory then that knocks out the possibility that Amy was high when she ran into Meaghan," Cheryl pointed out.
"There's the call-log on Amy's phone, to a Mazda dealer – and the website about ABS brakes," Gracie said.
"Either of which could've been made after the wreck," Kelly said with conviction.
"It seems odd, though," Shawna insisted.
"And Amy was really upset when she got to the hospital," Gracie reminded them. "Though I suppose she might be if she hadn't really meant to hurt Meaghan."
"Maybe she's a good actress and it was all part of her plan," Shawna said.
"She could've thought that if she admitted that she caused the wreck then nobody would think she might've tampered with the brakes," Cheryl said.
"Or the airbag," Kelly put in. "But we don't even know if it could be done, much less how."
"I definitely need to call Ken," Gracie said. "The police mechanics would know more about that than we do, know what kinds of things to look for."
"Good idea," Kelly said. "All right, how about the antifreeze in the park?"
"We don't know for sure that's what it was," Cheryl reminded them. "Could the cops test that, too?"
"How would Amy know about antifreeze being slick?" Kelly asked. "She doesn't strike me as the type to do more than put gas in her car!"
"Well, how would Gracie's aunt know?" Shawna asked. "Because she fell on her keister in some, that's how! Amy could have too, if her dad had spilled some on their driveway."
"Or Bobby mentioned it to her," Kelly said.
"Or I told her the story about Aunt Jeanine," Gracie said in a flat voice. "I remember telling Amy all about it in school the next day." She sighed loudly.
"Don't beat yourself up, Gracie," Kelly pleaded. "You couldn't have known she'd use it against you."
"Against Brittney," Gracie insisted. "I just happened to get in the way, but I gave her the idea."
"It's still just circumstantial," Kelly reminded them. "We don't have a dripping bottle of antifreeze covered with Amy's fingerprints."
"Dripping bottle?" Cheryl inquired. "Is that supposed to be like a smoking gun?"
"There aren't any guns in this case!" Shawna said.
"Okay, okay, it was a bad pun," Kelly admitted. "Nails on the road that caused Shawna's flat and Allison just happened to stay late at school that afternoon."
"Did you see Amy's car anywhere around?" Gracie asked.
"Huh-uh, but she'd be long gone if she deliberately spilled the nails," Shawna said. Then she hung her head in embarrassment. "Okay, yeah, I get it. Duh. If she'd gotten a flat too she'd look innocent."
"But she didn't and we don't know where she was," Cheryl said. "Next!"
"Jennifer's acid-burn," Kelly read off. "Yesterday morning, 1st hour chemistry lab. I know this one, too! Bobby said he'd found Amy sitting on the steps at school yesterday morning. No telling how long she'd been there, it could've given her time to get to the lab and spill the acid."
"Then her prints would be on the bottle," Shawna said.
"Maybe," Gracie said. "Depends on how often they use that kind of acid and how many people might have handled the bottle. If she wasn't smart enough to wipe them off."
"If she's watching Jake's girlfriends she'd know their schedules, but we don't know who else might have had access to the lab," Cheryl said.
"And then there's Tanya's wreck this afternoon," Kelly said. "Last one. It sounds like her car was tampered with, but we don't know how or by whom. You know, a lot of these 'accidents' involve cars and mechanical things – could Bobby Summers be involved?"
"I can't imagine Bobby as a killer!" Shawna said. "He's not the type. Besides, why would he do it?"
"Amy hangs out with him a lot, she could be getting ideas and info from him," Cheryl said.
"Bobby talks about Amy a lot," Kelly mused. "I think he likes her. He'd probably answer any questions she had because he wanted to impress her, but I can't see him doing something he knew would hurt anyone."
"Should we talk to Bobby?" Cheryl asked.
"We'd have to be careful what we said. If he's got a crush on her he'd clam up if he thought it might get her in trouble," Gracie counseled.
Chapter 50
"Hi, Ken. Hope you're having a better day today," Gracie said when he answered the phone.
"Hey, Gracie. Yeah, a little better anyway. Finally got a good lead in the case I told you about yesterday."
"That's great!" she replied. "Um, Ken…have you had a chance to check out Meaghan's car yet?"
"I thought that might be why you called," he said with a chuckle. "Yes, the boys at the police garage went over it thoroughly and didn't find a thing wrong."
"Oh," Gracie said, clearly unhappy to hear that result. "Are you sure they looked at the brakes?"
"Yes, Gracie, they looked at the brakes. The lines weren't cut and the reservoir had plenty of fluid in it; there was nothing wrong with the brakes on that car."
"Did they figure out why the airbag didn't go off?" she asked.
"They didn't find anything wrong with that, either. Although just between you and me I think it's got 'em a little puzzled; they gave me a lot of double-talk about its maybe being a faulty sensor. When I tried to pin 'em down they told me it'd take more time to find than it was worth. The airbag might have saved that girl's life, but it darn sure didn't cause the wreck so it didn't matter why it didn't deploy."
"Well, I guess that's that," Gracie said unhappily.
"I do have some good news about your friend Amy," Ken told her.
"You're not going to charge her with manslaughter after all?" Gracie guessed.
"There is a case to be made for that," he said. "Inattention to driving, driving too fast for road conditions, following too close, that sort of thing. The bottom line is she did cause Meaghan's death, even if it was an unfortunate accident."
"Then why aren't you charging her?" she asked.
"Because Meaghan's parents asked me not to. It's as simple as that."
"I'll bet they told you that putting Amy in jail wouldn't bring Meaghan back," Gracie predicted.
"You got it, Kiddo," Ken said. "Like they pointed out, Ms. Jones will have to live with that knowledge for the rest of her life and that ought to be punishment enough. Oh, and I asked the girl if she'd been taking any medications and she swore she hadn't. She showed me a bottle she carried in her backpack. It was a prescription bottle for sure, but all it had in it were over-the-counter pills; Tylenol, Ibuprofen, Midol, that sort of thing. She said it was easier to use one of her mother's empty bottles than to carry a bunch of smaller pill bottles."
Gracie frowned at the phone. She knew she didn't have any real proof of Amy's complicity in any of these accidents so she didn't want to make any accusations. She'd really been hoping Ken would've found something wrong with Meaghan's car, and then she could feel justified in telling him what she knew. I'm sure Amy would've thrown that bottle away, probably off-campus somewhere during lunch on Friday, she thought. After Cheryl saw it I bet Amy ran home and fixed up another empty bottle that would look quite innocent, just in case. To Ken she said, "Could I ask you something else?"
"Shoot," he said.
"There was a wreck by the school today, could you find out if someone put sugar in the gas tank?"
"Are you still going on about those mysterious accidents to your friends?" Ken asked with some exasperation. "Gracie, I'm a homicide cop, not a traffic cop. As ugly as it sounds, if someone wasn't killed then I can't investigate."
"Then you don't want me to ask you to check for fingerprints on an acid bottle in the chem. lab, or if antifreeze was spilled on the path in the park, or if the cyanide came from apples," she said petulantly.
"No, I…whoa! What'd you say about the cyanide?" Ken asked.
"Well, it's just a theory, but we read that apple seeds have cyanide in them and we thought maybe someone slipped some into her lasagna in Home Ec." There was a hint of vindication in her voice.
"Who?"
"I'd rather not say right now," Gracie hedged. "This person had the opportunity to cause all of these 'accidents', including Mrs. Lane's fall and Meaghan's wreck. But I don't know why they would've done any of them. And, uh, I don't have any proof," she finished rather lamely.
"I'm inclined to put Mrs. Lane's fall down to drunkenness; I just can't find any evidence that it happened any other way," he told her. "And Amy made a mistake and hit Meaghan's car. All the rest are just dumb shit – ah, pardon me, stuff – that happens to kids. But I will ask the hospital if they can determine whether the cyanide came from apple seeds. If, and I repeat if, that's true then I'll listen to your theory."
Gracie perked up a bit at that. "Okay, thanks. Call me as soon as you know!"
"I promise," Ken said. "In the meantime you be careful while you're looking for your proof. Bye."
Gracie tossed the phone on her desk and began pacing around her room, talking to herself out loud. Somehow it made it easier to think as she listened to her own ramblings.
"Ken told me to be careful. I bet he was thinking about how I confronted Bill about my Dad's death and that was Ken's idea. But it was the only way to prove what he'd done, I had to get him to admit it so Ken could get it on tape. I had all the pieces and they fit together perfectly; I even had a darn good motive."
She thought about how that confrontation could have ended and shivered. "But for a minute there I really thought Bill would throw that bottle of acid on me and Ken couldn't have stopped him. No wonder Ken wants me to be careful! And there's acid involved in this case, too."
She continued her pacing, walking randomly around her room without seeing anything there, letting her imagination call up the images that went with her words.
"There are some more similarities. Amy could well have thrown that pill bottle in the drive-in trash at lunch like Bill did with the gun; but this time the cops aren't going to dig through nasty trash to find it. Like Bill she's been pretty clever, hiding her tracks so that there's no proof she did all these things. It's all circumstantial; she could have done them all, but so could someone else we haven't thought of yet."
She paused in the middle of the room to heave a g
reat sigh. "And there's big differences in the two cases, too. Dad was the only victim, though at first it sure looked like someone had tried to kill him three times but it turned out the first two shots weren't even aimed at him. This time we've got a bunch of victims; does that mean it's the opposite and there's only one killer? Or is it really multiple killers this time? Or are Ken and Mom right and every last one of 'em are really just accidents?"
"We've got 13 accidents. No, wait! We're all agreed that Shaun's locker was a real accident so it's only 12. Twelve! And two people dead. We think Amy could have set them all up, but the only two that we have even a shred of proof for are Serene's desk and Andrea's cyanide. And that proof is pretty slim, really just that it would've been very easy for her to do them."
"Three of them depend on what we've been calling the 'pattern', that someone's after Jake's girlfriends so the accidents should have happened to one of them: Brittney should've slipped and fallen instead of Travis, Tanya or Meaghan should've tripped over that rock instead of little Tony, and Allison should've run over the nails instead of Shawna and half the rest of the school."
"But three of them did have an accident later! Brittney fell when her bike slid off the path, and it was just dumb luck that mine did too. Amy caused Meaghan's wreck, but I can't believe Amy would try to kill her; that one must've just gotten out of control. And Tanya broke her wrist when someone did something to her car. Which leaves Allison still unscathed."
She shook her head back and forth rapidly, as if that might settle her thoughts into some order. She sat down at her desk and pulled her backpack onto her lap to begin digging for homework assignments. "Maybe if I concentrate on something else for awhile the answer will come to me. And considering I have a math test tomorrow I'd better make sure I know how to solve those problems!"
Friday dawned bright and sunny, one of those gorgeous autumn days that promise winter will be held off for awhile yet. Gracie's Gang all found they had trouble concentrating on schoolwork and even the mystery of the 'accidents' of the past two weeks seemed like it must've been only their feverish imaginations due to the previous dark and gloomy weather. This day seemed to hold so much promise of a wonderful weekend that they could think of nothing else.
