GG02 - Accidentally on Purpose

by Jack Parker

  "So when she found out Jake had agreed to marry Meaghan, she couldn't let that happen," Ken said. "But what's that got to do with this string of accidents you've been yammering about?"

  "How'd she find out?" Shawna asked.

  "How'd you figure it out? I still don't know what put you on to it," Kelly said.

  "And why did she have to kill Meaghan?" Cheryl asked.

  Gracie held up her hands in a gesture of 'stop'. "It'll be easier if I start from the beginning. Kelly, play Secretary for us once more and read off each accident. Only the non-fatal ones, please."

  Kelly pulled a wad of folded papers from his jeans pocket and smoothed them out on the table's surface. "One last time," he said. "Ahem. The first one was Travis' fall, meant for Brittney," Kelly read off.

  "I can't prove some of these, Ken," Gracie said. "But in light of what we do know they make sense. This was supposed to be the first in the string, but it didn't work out like she expected. Amy was a few seconds late to 2nd hour that morning; she'd waited until the halls were mostly clear to spill water at the foot of the south stairs. Brittney's a library aide that hour so she'd be out and about and hopefully slip. But Travis is an office aide that hour and he got there first!"

  "That's a little thin, Gracie," Ken remarked.

  "The nerd's a klutz, he's always bumping into things and falling down. That doesn't mean I had anything to do with it," Amy muttered.

  Ken raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. He still wasn't sure about these accidents, but he'd keep his mouth shut until Gracie was done. Even if Amy had committed murder it didn't mean she was behind the accidents.

  "Emily's case of winter-time poison ivy," Kelly intoned.

  "The evening before she came down with it a bunch of us were decorating for the next game," Gracie set the scene. "On Saturday Emily had told us she was terribly allergic to poison ivy, and Amy heard her say it. Anyway, Amy volunteered to get some more poster board, saying she'd get some from backstage because it was closer than the office. She wore latex gloves to smear the poison ivy on some prop that she knew Emily used, then threw the gloves in the ladies' room trash and washed her hands. I saw the gloves there before I left that night, but didn't think anything about it at the time."

  "I think she wanted everyone to think Emily had gotten it making out in the boonies with Jake," Cheryl said.

  "Except that Emily hadn't been out with Jake in awhile," Kelly said. "She'd been too busy rehearsing that play. Next is Madison's Heelie wipe-out and the apparently-manufactured dents in her and Emily's cars. Jake had a baseball bat in the bed of his pickup, and Amy probably knew that since she'd been trying to get close to him."

  "Did you intend for Madison to fall?" Gracie asked Amy.

  Amy looked up at her and shrugged. "There's a reason you're not supposed to wear Heelies in school - they're dangerous. She's the poster-girl for what happens when you break the rules." She was beginning to feel a false bravado, thinking there was so little to these accusations that they proved nothing. She returned her attention to the table, as if she were bored and none of this were of any concern to her.

  "She was keeping track of all of Jake's girlfriends, and happened to notice that the two cars were parked across the aisle from each other," Gracie said. "She couldn't resist grabbing the bat from Jake's truck and smashing the cars to make it look like one had run into the other. Madison rolled over the broken bits of taillight and fell."

  "Gracie was smart enough to measure the dents," Shawna said loyally. "They were different heights, so we knew that wasn't what happened.

  "But you couldn't have known that Amy did it," Ken couldn't help but say.

  "No, not at the time. But after everything else it just had to be her," Gracie said.

  "The bolts were loosened on Serene's desktop so when she dropped her books on it it fell off and hit her ankle," Kelly said.

  "Oh, now I can prove this one!" Gracie said. "Amy sits in that very same chair the hour before; you can ask the teacher. She'd have had plenty of time to work the nuts loose and she'd be sure that Serene would be the next person sitting there."

  Ken looked over at Amy who continued to stare at the table. Her coffee was untouched and she was shaking, but not from the cold. Tears were sliding down her cheeks as she began to understand the magnitude of her betrayal. "Jake," she whispered in an agonized voice. Ken nodded for Kelly to continue.

  "Tony Fletcher tripped over a rock in front of the door at the boutique where Gracie's step-mother works."

  Gracie made a wry face. "Okay, granted this one's mostly a hunch. Tony is Tanya's little brother and they were both in the store with their mother. Meaghan came in with Amy; Amy got bored and went outside."

  "Tony is a little brat," Cheryl threw in. "He runs all over the place and gets into everything he's not supposed to, and his mother won't even try to control him."

  "There's a bench outside the store, with a painted rock beside it. Amy picked up the rock and left it in front of the door. Tony ran outside and tripped on it – but it could just as easily have been Tanya."

  "Or Meaghan," Kelly suggested.

  "Well, actually, yes," Gracie admitted. "Except that Amy had something far worse planned for Meaghan."

  Ken raised an eyebrow in silent inquiry, but Gracie shook her head. "All right, I'll let you tell it in order," he said.

  "Next we have someone giving cyanide to Andrea," Kelly said.

  "We think it was apple seeds," Cheryl said. "You have to eat a lot of 'em to be fatal, but I think she just wanted to make Andrea sick. It was in Home Ec. Class; we made lasagna that day so Amy could've easily dumped a bunch of ground-up apple seeds into the sauce."

  "Andrea has a bit of a weight problem, so she ate more than the other girls," Shawna joined the conversation. "Cheryl said Amy only picked at hers, and, who was it? Oh yeah, Bonnie didn't feel good that afternoon either."

  "That was when Cheryl saw that bottle of pain pills," Gracie added. "At first we thought Amy was taking them, but later we realized that was probably how she brought in a lot of apple seeds."

  Ken looked at the three of them, putting the various pieces in order in his mind. "As a matter of fact the hospital lab did verify that the cyanide came from apple seeds," he said. "I got the report late this afternoon." He didn't add that this was merely circumstantial evidence; there was no way to actually prove Amy had put them in the food.

  "I don't like lasagna, that's why I didn't eat much," Amy said. But her protest lacked emotion, like she was just going through the expected motions.

  Kelly waited a minute in case Amy had something to say about the bottle of pills. When it was clear she didn't he continued. "Brittney's bike slid off the path in the park because Amy poured antifreeze on it."

  "Hey! My bike slid off that same path!" Gracie protested. "And I gave Amy the idea." She sighed at her own culpability. "I told her the story about how my Aunt Jeanine slipped in some spilled antifreeze that hadn't been cleaned up good."

  "That morning Amy asked Bobby if he'd put antifreeze in her car after school, and said she'd stop and get some on her way to his house," Cheryl said. "She'd apparently overheard Brittney saying she was going to visit her grandmother that afternoon and that she'd be riding through the park."

  "But Bobby says she nearly beat him home, so she must've bought the antifreeze at lunch – and poured a bottle on the bike path," Gracie continued.

  "You know, I think I remember seeing Amy come back alone from lunch that day," Kelly said.

  "You're right!" Shawna said. "She was saying how Maggie was drunk and had fallen by accident. We'd been talking about Maggie, but I remember now that I thought it was odd Amy hadn't gone to lunch with some of the other girls."

  "Okay, on the next item," Kelly said. "That would be the busted jar of nails on the road by the school."

  "It should've been Allison that got caught in that trap, but that was the day Meaghan died and Allison decided to stay after school to start a memorial to her," Gr
acie said.

  "So this time it was me that ran over the nails," Shawna said. "Although that could've happened even if Allison had gotten a flat, too."

  "If you'll go check Bobby's garage you'll find there's a Mason jar full of nails missing from the workbench," Cheryl said. "Amy swiped it when he was putting the antifreeze in her car."

  "And Bobby told us that Amy said she had to leave school a little early that day," Gracie added. "That gave her means and opportunity, though of course we can't prove she did it."

  "How do you know there's a jar of nails missing?" Ken asked.

  "Because there's a whole row of jars on the workbench in his garage," Cheryl explained. "They're arranged in order by size.

  "Yeah, and she scooted out of the parking lot just a couple of minutes early so she could throw the jar on the street as she drove off," Shawna said in a disgusted tone.

  Ken looked over at Amy. She paid no attention, still not looking at anyone, still ignoring these allegations in favor of trying to figure out why Jake had rebuffed her.

  "The next thing was that Jennifer put her hand in some acid on the counter in the chem. lab in first hour, and got an acid-burn," Kelly continued with the list.

  "I suppose you're going to tell me that Amy was at school early that day, and there's also a bottle of acid missing from Bobby's garage," Ken said, only half facetiously.

  "Bobby told me he'd found Amy sitting on the school steps that morning," Kelly confirmed. "She told him some story about having a fight with her parents and not knowing where else to go."

  "Oh wow, we'd wondered how she'd get her hands on some acid," Gracie said. "If she'd take nails she could take acid too, but why would Bobby even have any?"

  "You told me Bobby's a budding mechanic; it could be used to clean parts," Ken supplied. "I'll certainly have a word with the boy about that."

  "Then there was Tanya's wreck yesterday after school," Kelly said. "From the way Shawna and Cheryl described what happened, it sounded to me like someone had put sugar in her gas tank. It might have only been meant as an inconvenience, but another car hit hers when it stalled."

  Ken was beginning to think maybe Gracie had drawn the wrong conclusions from these events. "I would assume the car's still at a garage somewhere. It would be easy enough to check for sugar, but that doesn't prove who put it there." He chuckled softly. "I didn't know kids still did that."

  "Well then, what about the antibiotic in the water bottle?" Gracie asked, the look in her eyes daring him to refute that evidence. "You told me you had it tested and it was the eree-whatever, just like I said."

  "Yes, you were right about that," Ken said calmly to keep her from exploding. "There's plenty of anecdotal evidence that Allison did indeed bring Vodka to class in her bottle, and her parents confirmed that she's allergic to erythromycin. There are more of Allison's prints on the Vodka bottle and more of Amy's on the water; but that doesn't prove it was done deliberately."

  "But I saw her switch them!" Gracie cried. "So did several other kids; they all snickered when Amy took a big gulp of the Vodka because they knew what to expect."

  "Damned alky," Amy muttered.

  Ken drummed his fingers on the table for a minute, looking around at each of the young people seated there. "I will admit you've put together a lot of circumstantial evidence that Amy was responsible for these so-called accidents. And you've put forward a reasonable motive as well. But none of it is proof. From what I told you earlier today you know I found fingerprints on Meaghan's car – Amy's prints. At the moment I'm convinced she tampered with the fuses, but I'd like to hear your assessment of how she did it."

  "It all started with Mrs. Lane's death," Gracie said.

  CHAPTER 29

  "Are you saying she killed the teacher, too?" Ken asked in some shock.

  "No," Gracie replied. "I think that was a real accident. Amy saw Mrs. Lane flirting with the team at her party, and Jake in particular. I don't know if she knew they'd been carrying on an affair, but it was pretty plain that Maggie would have liked to and that Jake seemed willing. That made Amy mad. It wasn't bad enough that Jake dated a dozen girls but now there was an older woman after him. Amy went home with one of her friends, then drove her own car back to Maggie's house early in the morning."

  "I bet she thought she'd catch them together in bed," Cheryl put in.

  "She drives a white Chevy, that would be the 'light-colored car' the neighbor lady saw," Shawna added.

  "I can't be sure exactly what happened," Gracie continued. "My guess is that Amy confronted Maggie and in an attempt to get away from her Maggie fell down the stairs." She looked at Amy, who refused to meet her eyes. "Did you know she was dead, or just decide it was time to leave?"

  "I didn't kill her," Amy said, though without any emotion. "You're right, I was yelling at her to keep her paws off Jake and she said she was gonna call the cops. But she was drunk. She whirled around to go down those stairs to the telephone and she just fell. I didn't know she was dead until the next day when you showed up." She raised her head to glare briefly at Ken.

  "I believe you, Amy," Ken said calmly. "If you'd left it at that I'd have said it was her own fault, even though you aggravated her. But as it is, I'm adding a count of manslaughter. She wouldn't have died if you hadn't confronted her."

  "But she couldn't leave it at that," Gracie said. "Because it gave her an idea. She'd create a string of accidents thinking that no one would get suspicious if one of 'em happened to be fatal. And if anyone realized that bad things seemed to happen to Jake's girlfriends it might scare them away and narrow the competition."

  Ken looked thoughtful for a moment. "When you put it that way, it makes sense in a twisted sort of way," he said. "She'd caused the death of the teacher, even if it was inadvertent, and gotten away with it; so now she planned to kill Meaghan, too. How'd she do it?"

  "It all started with that lost earring," Gracie said. "The one you found in Mrs. Lane's backyard, Ken."

  "You did say something about that being a big clue," Shawna commented. "But I still don't understand how."

  Gracie smiled mirthlessly. "Amy must've seen Jake and Meaghan go outside on the patio and she followed them. She hid in the bushes so she could eavesdrop, and didn't realize she'd snagged her earring on one of the branches. I saw the two of them out there talking, and told Kelly that it looked serious."

  "I saw 'em talking, too," Kelly confirmed. "We thought maybe they were breaking up."

  "What Amy overheard was that Meaghan was pregnant, and Jake was the father of the baby. Meaghan knew her parents would freak out when she told them, so she wanted to tell Jake first. To see if he would help. I think Jake agreed to marry her, take care of her and the baby."

  "Jake?" Cheryl's voice squeaked in surprise. "Love 'em and leave 'em Jake who had his pick of any girl in school?"

  "Don't forget Jake's a devout Catholic," Gracie reminded them. "You'll have to ask him to confirm it, but I think that's exactly what happened. He felt strongly that he had to do the right thing, and he offered to marry her. Remember when Meaghan was talking about selling the Miata the afternoon before her wreck? She said she was afraid to drive it fast; that was because of the baby. She also said she wanted something with a little more room."

  "I do remember her saying that," Shawna said. "That would be for the baby, too. She wouldn't have had room in that little sports car for a baby-seat and diaper bag and all that stuff."

  "Amy must've been very upset," Gracie continued. "She loved Jake and here he was going to marry Meaghan. And, um, now I forget with happened first. There was that scene Maggie and Jake made where he sucked the queso off her finger. Amy saw that, too. Between those two things, she was really angry and didn't know what to do about it. She probably made up her mind to confront both Maggie and Meaghan and plead with them to leave Jake alone."

  "So she came back to confront the teacher, and Mrs. Lane ended up dead," Ken summed it up. "And that gave her the idea to set up a string of accidents?
"

  "That didn't happen until the next morning," Gracie said. "On her way to the recycling event someone sideswiped her car and she came running in saying something was wrong with it. Bobby went out to see, and it turned out the airbag fuse hadn't been working; she'd seen the warning light flashing but hadn't paid any attention to it until the fender-bender. Anyway, Bobby explained to her how airbags and ABS brakes are on separate fuses and showed her how to replace them."

  Shawna spoke up. "Gracie found history on Amy's phone where she'd looked up a website on how the brakes work, so she knew the car would slide without them. She also found phone numbers where Amy'd called the Miata dealer and a locksmith."

  "You're getting a little ahead of me," Gracie said, grinning to take the sting out. "Just a few minutes after Bobby fixed her car you came in, Ken, telling us about Maggie's death."

  Ken's face lit up with understanding. "Ah, yes. One major competitor is dead and now she sees a way to get rid of the other one." He cocked his head to the side as he considered Gracie's theory. "If she can cause some small harm to every girl Jake goes out with the boy might start looking like bad luck followed him; possibly they will begin thinking he's the one doing these things. And yes, if one of his girlfriends happened to die then it would look like just a particularly nasty accident in the string."

  "Thank you," Gracie said simply. "Now Amy had to figure out how to get to the fuses. She knew that road conditions would have to be bad to make it work, but she'd have wanted to set things up in advance so she could put the plan into motion when the weather cooperated."

  "So she stole the key from Mrs. Pruitt's ring," Shawna said brightly.