Murder of a Pink Elephant

by Denise Swanson

  As it swung inward, they all lurched into the room. Skye regained her balance and looked around. There was no sign of Nathan Turner, but she could hear water running.

  Ace said, “Let me look around first. Mr. Patukas, you take care of the ladies.”

  “I’ll go.” Charlie glared. “You stay with the girls.”

  Skye let the testosterone battle it out. It sounded to her like the kid was taking a shower, and she really had no desire to see the teen naked. Trixie obviously felt the same way, since she didn’t protest the men’s macho attitude either.

  Both men stomped off, and a few moments later Ace and Charlie emerged from the back area gripping the arms of a sopping wet Nathan Turner between them.

  Skye stared for a second, then asked the first question that popped into her mind. “Why did you take a shower with your clothes on?”

  “I was hot.”

  The adults exchanged looks. Was this a prank, or was something wrong with the kid?

  They all looked to Charlie for guidance. He sat Nathan on the wooden bench and said, “Wait here while I call your folks.”

  “Not home.” The teen giggled as if Charlie had suddenly started performing stand-up comedy. Nathan made kissing sounds and said, “They went away for a romantic weekend.”

  Ew! Skye’s mind flashed to an orgy she had accidentally witnessed that past November involving Nathan’s father, mother, and several other prominent Scumble River citizens, but she pushed that picture firmly away, and said, “Who are you staying with?”

  “You mean like a babysitter?” He let out another high-pitched giggle. “I’m seventeen, man.”

  “Does anyone know if he has an uncle or aunt or grandparent in town?” Skye asked the group.

  Everyone shook their heads. She squatted down in front of the teen, trying to get him to focus. “Do you have any relatives around here?”

  Nathan gave an exaggerated sigh. “My grandma lives in Laurel.”

  Laurel was the county seat and about forty-five minutes from Scumble River. The boy had begun to shiver. It was clear he couldn’t sit around dripping wet for three quarters of an hour.

  Ace Cramer stepped forward. “Mr. Patukas, why don’t you help him change into his P.E. clothes, and I’ll go call his grandmother from my office.”

  Charlie nodded and hauled the teen upright. “What’s your grandmother’s phone number?” After Nathan answered, Charlie demanded, “Which one’s your locker?”

  Skye, Trixie, and Ace left the locker room. Trixie and Ace hurried away, but Skye paused.

  Frannie was lingering near the door and asked, “What happened?” as Skye stepped out.

  “It’s being taken care of.” Skye was sorry she couldn’t satisfy the girl’s curiosity, but Nathan had a right to his privacy. “How’s everything out here?”

  “Fine. They’re so lame. No one’s noticed anything.” Frannie brushed back a strand of long, wavy brown hair.

  Skye fingered the sheer sleeve of Frannie’s patchwork lace top and, hoping to change the subject, said, “I like this.” Frannie had a more rounded shape than the current style allowed, and took a lot of teasing from the size twos and fours. Having a similar curvaceous figure herself, Skye had been making gentle wardrobe suggestions to the girl for several months.

  “Thanks.” Frannie preened. “Dad let me order some stuff from the Avenue, and today at school one of the Ultras said I looked nice.”

  Skye grinned. “That’s awesome.” She had given the teen several catalogs that featured fun and fashionable plus-size clothing and was glad to hear Frannie was getting some positive feedback from the more popular girls.

  “Not that it matters what they think.”

  “Of course not.” Skye looked around. “Where’s Justin?”

  “How should I know?” Frannie snapped. “Was it my day to keep tabs on him?” She rolled her eyes, then finally answered the question. “He’s dancing with Bitsy. Didn’t you know they were an item?”

  “An item item or … ?” Skye didn’t know how to end her question so changed tactics. “A single dance doesn’t mean anything.”

  Frannie’s brown eyes shimmered with unshed tears but she swallowed and said in a steady voice, “Who knows? It’s not like I care.”

  Skye and Frannie had been talking in loud voices to be heard over the music. When it suddenly stopped, it caught them both by surprise. Skye looked at her watch. It was eight o’clock, time for the band’s first break.

  She watched the musicians leave the stage. A sexy twenty-something female dressed in a red micro mini and halter top intercepted Vince as he headed toward the refreshment table, but he shook his head and eased past her. Skye frowned. That girl was not a high school student. How had she gotten into the dance?

  Next the girl approached the keyboard player, Finn O’Malley, who glared and plucked her hand from his chest. Rod Yager had already maneuvered around her, but she caught Logan as he came off the last step.

  Skye was too far away to hear what was said, but after several minutes of heated conversation, the vocalist took the girl by the arm and pulled her up the stairs, across the stage, and behind the curtain. What was up with that?

  “I need to check on how the refreshments are doing,” Skye said to Frannie.

  “Okay.” Frannie waved. “See you later.”

  Skye walked over to where her brother was waiting in line for a glass of punch. From behind him, she put her arms around his waist and whispered in his ear, “Buy a girl a drink?”

  He whirled around, scowling. “For crying out loud, Heather, I already told you to f …” His words trailed off as he recognized Skye.

  “Who’s Heather?”

  “No one.”

  “So you’re telling no one to f … ?”

  Vince didn’t answer; instead he grabbed two glasses of punch. When he handed Skye hers she said, “Is Heather the girl Logan left with?”

  Vince’s face turned red, he swore, shoved his cup at Skye, and dashed away.

  Shoot! What had she said? Skye plunked the glasses down on a nearby table and hurried after him. She could only remember seeing Vince this angry one other time, and in that instance he had busted the other guy’s nose. Vince rarely lost his temper, but when he did, all hell broke loose. She had to stop him from doing something he’d regret later.

  Vince had disappeared via the same route Logan and the girl had taken. When Skye pushed through the stage curtains in pursuit of him, she paused. The passageway created by the curtains was narrow and dark and smelled of sweat. She knew they were using one of the rooms backstage as their dressing room, but which one?

  The first room she came to was full of sets, costumes, and props. As she backed out, she heard hollering and headed in the direction the shouts were coming from. Shoving open the door, she burst in just in time to see Vince punch Logan in the face.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw the girl she assumed was Heather huddled on an old sofa clutching a ratty blanket to her bare breasts. A strange half-smile played around her lips.

  The girl caught Skye’s disapproving stare and said, “I know what you’re thinking, and I’m not cheap.” She giggled. “But I am on special this week.”

  Skye didn’t have time to respond. Logan had staggered backward from the force of Vince’s punch, but he righted himself before falling and snatched a folding chair that he smashed over Vince’s head. Vince crumpled to the floor, but Logan kept bashing at him, holding the legs of the chair and using the rigid metal back as a club.

  Skye screamed and grabbed the vocalist around the chest, trying to pull him away from her brother. Her heart was thumping in her ears. Logan was too strong for her to stop him completely, but at least she had momentarily drawn his attention from Vince. She shouted to the girl, “Go get some help.”

  Heather looked at her impassively and didn’t move.

  Skye kept yelling—first at Logan to stop, then at the girl to get help, and finally at her brother to run away. Not one o
f them followed her directions, although Vince struggled to his feet and stood swaying. His eyes were unfocused and he appeared dazed.

  Just as she was losing her hold on the singer, the other two band members charged through the door. Finn grabbed the chair from Logan, threw it out of reach, and then wrapped his arms around the enraged vocalist. As soon as Finn had Logan restrained, Skye backed away. Finn wrestled the smaller man out of the dressing room, hollering at him to calm down. Skye closed the door behind them, wishing it had a lock.

  Rod had moved Vince to a chair and she ran to her brother’s side and squatted next to him. “Are you all right? Do you need a doctor?”

  Vince leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. She could barely hear his muffled answer, “I’m fine.”

  Skye gently probed his scalp. He wasn’t bleeding, but lumps and bruises were already forming. “Let me call Doc Zello.”

  Vince grabbed her wrist. “No. Don’t.”

  She looked at Rod, who stood behind Vince. The guitar player shrugged. “His choice, man.”

  “Fine.” Skye crossed her arms and glared at her brother. “Then tell me what that was all about.”

  Vince started to shake his head but obviously thought better of the movement, answering instead, “Her.” He jerked his thumb toward the girl, who had finally moved off the couch and begun to get dressed.

  Rod looked at Vince and Skye, then walked over to Heather, took a firm grip on her arm, and escorted her from the room. The girl’s protests could be heard even after they were in the hallway.

  Once she and Vince were alone, Skye said with a note of skepticism in her voice, “You were fighting over a groupie?” Her brother never fought over women. He always said there were too many flowers in the garden to care that much about any particular blossom.

  “It’s a long story.”

  Why do people always say that? “Tell me anyway.” Skye’s lips tightened. “Or I’m going to go call Dr. Zello or better yet, Mom.”

  He flinched, clearly deciding on the lesser of several evils. “It’s not what you think.”

  “I don’t know what I think, except that you’ve lost your mind,” Skye snapped. “Your taste in women has always been iffy, but this is ridiculous.”

  “I am not involved with her that way.”

  “So, you haven’t slept with her?”

  “I didn’t say that.” Vince sagged back in the chair and stared at the ceiling. “Okay, here’s the whole story. You’re right. Heather is a groupie. She’s been following us since we first started playing. She made it clear she wanted to do the whole band, and none of us was saying no.” Vince snuck a quick peek at Skye.

  Skye’s disgust was written clearly all over her face. “So you all took a turn with her.”

  Vince nodded. “But then she wanted more.”

  “What a surprise.”

  “Yeah. Well.” He had the grace to look sheepish. “Anyway, it turns out what she really wanted was to sing with the band.”

  “And?”

  “We didn’t think that would be a good idea, considering everything.”

  Skye shook her head, astounded at his logic. “So, what were you and Logan fighting about?”

  “We all agreed to stop … uh, you know … paying attention to her, and the rest of us have, but Logan keeps giving in and uh … you know … uh …”

  “Boinking her?”

  “Yeah.” Vince scratched his chin. “She’s sort of like a stray cat. If you keep feeding it, it will never go away.”

  “It’s probably because Logan’s married.”

  Vince looked confused at the non sequitur. “Huh?”

  “Heather is probably threatening to tell Logan’s wife if he doesn’t keep on with the relationship.”

  “Maybe. But I think his wife knows he fools around.” Vince shrugged. “Anyway that’s not the band’s problem. Our problem is getting rid of Heather.”

  “Is she any good?” Skye saw the flabbergasted look on Vince’s face and hurried to clarify her question. “I mean as a singer. Does she have a good voice?”

  “Yeah. As a matter of fact, at one time Rod, Finn, and I thought maybe we should let her sing with us, but Logan had a fit when we suggested it.”

  “Why?”

  “Said he was the star of this band, and no girl singer was going to take his place.”

  “What a lovely man.”

  Vince slowly got up from the chair and tested his head by moving it from side to side. “He’s a little self-centered, but you gotta be, in this business.”

  “I suppose.” It was Skye’s turn to shrug. “You’d think that if that were the case, he’d have more at stake in getting her to quit following the band and thus would stop having sex with her.”

  “That’s what I was trying to explain to him when you walked in.”

  “Really? Does he speak sign language? Because all I saw was your fist moving, not your lips.” Skye turned her back on her brother and walked away. She had spent enough time on the groupie problem; she had a Valentine’s Dance to chaperone.

  Once she reached the front of the stage, she took a moment to look around the gym before climbing down the steps. The kids were sitting and standing in groups talking, drinking punch, and eating cookies. No one seemed to have noticed anything wrong.

  Skye joined Trixie at a table in the rear and explained what had just happened. She concluded with, “Can you believe how stupid four grown men can be? You would think in this day and age, with all the diseases and everything, they’d be more careful about sex.”

  Trixie smirked. “But that’s just it. When they get excited, they can’t think. There’s only so much blood in the human body, and when it all surges below their waist, there isn’t enough left to run their brains.”

  Skye laughed until she noticed the band mounting the stage. “Phew. I was afraid they weren’t going to come back and play.”

  “What would we have done?”

  “I guess we’d have had to lip sync to South Pacific,” Skye deadpanned. “It’s the only musical I know all the words to, and I have a tape in my office.”

  Trixie snorted.

  Skye studied the musicians. Except for Logan’s swollen lip and a bruise on Vince’s cheek, no one would ever guess they’d been fighting. She sagged in her seat. At least the dance was half over. Surely nothing else could go wrong.

  CHAPTER 6

  Great Balls of Fire

  Ten after nine. The band was playing some long instrumental piece with a lot of drum solos, and Skye’s head was throbbing in time with the beat. She wondered if her eardrums had been punctured. Now she understood why the speech therapist refused to chaperone dances. She didn’t want to risk damaging her hearing.

  Nathan Turner’s grandmother had picked him up fifteen minutes ago. The woman had seemed upset over his being sent home but never questioned why he was wearing gym shorts and a T-shirt in the middle of February. As Skye’s mother would say, Grandma Turner was clearly a cucumber slice short of a salad.

  After Nathan’s departure, Charlie had dragged a chair out into the hallway, stating that he would chaperone the rest of the dance from there because he couldn’t stand any more of the loud music.

  Ace Cramer and a female chaperone were doing a sweep of the bathrooms, looking for kids who were smoking, sick, or using one of the stalls as a private bar.

  Trixie had volunteered for make-out patrol—inspecting the gym’s darker nooks and crannies. All they needed was one of the girls to have a baby nine months after the dance and claim the conception site was somewhere in the high school.

  Skye checked her watch. Wasn’t it time for the band to take a break? She looked longingly at the door. Could she step outside for a second, just until her head stopped vibrating? As she contemplated her escape, a commotion near the stage drew her attention.

  What now? Skye was halfway across the dance floor when she heard a shriek. A quarter second later her brain had translated the s
hriek into a single word—FIRE! Simultaneously the fire alarm sounded.

  There was a stunned moment, as if someone had hit the pause button on a VCR, then the crowd started to scream and run toward the front exit. Skye stood her ground, trying to direct the teens toward the side emergency exits—there were two along the left wall and one on the right. There was no need for the kids to go all the way to the front to get out.

  Skye was able to grab Bitsy Kessler and a couple of other girls and thrust them out the side exits, but as she tried to herd others out that way, it became more and more difficult for her to remain upright against the surging mob. It took her less than a heartbeat to decide what to do. She had to get to the rear of the gym and make sure no one back in that area was injured and unable to escape.

  Skye pushed and shoved her way forward. As she got closer, her eyes began to tear, and the acrid odor of smoke made her cough. It seemed to be billowing in huge clouds from the storage area under the stage.

  The stage was set into the center of the back gym wall and was accessible by center stairs. The door to the storage area under the stage was a little to the left of those steps and that was where the smoke was coming from.

  As Skye watched, a line of fire materialized from beneath the storage area door, raced to the side, and cut off the area to the right. She rushed forward only to be driven back by the heat. She didn’t see anyone on the dance floor, but when the smoke cleared for a moment she spotted Vince and Finn up on the stage. Vince was gathering his drums and Finn had his keyboard under one arm and was holding a bass guitar in the other. Rod and Logan were nowhere to be seen.

  Skye hurried over to the left of the stage and yelled, “Leave your instruments. You have to get out now.”

  Neither musician paid her any attention.

  How could she get to them? Flames blocked the center steps. She looked around wildly and spotted a side door that opened into a concrete stairwell leading to the backstage area. Skye raced over, flew up the inner steps, and onto the stage. Grabbing Finn by one arm and Vince by the other, she tried to drag them toward the stairs, shouting, “The fire’s spreading; you have to get out now!”