Murder of An Open Book: A Scumble River Mystery (Scumble River Mysteries Book 18)

by Denise Swanson

  Blair’s expression hardened. “More to the point, what are you doing here?” She crossed her arms. “I booked the whole pool area for my team.”

  “I don’t see anyone.” Skye looked around. She and Blair appeared to be alone. “Anyway, I’m going to get dressed right now, so I’ll be out of the way by the time they show up.” She smiled, sure Blair didn’t mean to be as nasty as she sounded.

  “You can’t use the girls’ locker room.” Blair narrowed her jade green eyes. “As I just said, I’ve reserved it and the pool from six thirty until seven thirty.”

  “Well, I don’t think the school board would approve of me using the boys’ side,” Skye joked. “Just let me take a quick shower, and I’ll finish getting ready in the teachers’ restroom.”

  “No.” Blair tossed her coppery red curls and said, “The space is rightfully mine. You’ll just have to figure out something else.” She turned and marched away.

  “Wait!” Skye ran after her. “This is silly. I just need five minutes.” The thought of trying to wash the chlorine off her skin without the benefit of a shower made her willing to beg. “I—”

  “Not even one minute.” Blair stopped Skye. “You should have read the schedule. Your oversight is not my problem.” She put her hands on her slim hips. “The rules state that once a teacher signs up for a space, that faculty member has sole possession for the allotted time.”

  “But . . .” Skye stuttered. Why was Blair being so mean? “Look, I—”

  “It’s really rude of you to talk while I’m interrupting.”

  “It’s a mistake on my part to be here. You’re absolutely right about that.” Skye gritted her teeth and forced herself to sound conciliatory. She really needed to use that darn shower. “And I’m sorry.”

  “Of course you are.” Blair let out an exaggerated sigh. “But sustaining ignorance is hard work, and I’m not that industrious.”

  “Are you always this sarcastic?” Skye was tired of apologizing.

  “No,” Blair sneered. “Sometimes I’m asleep.”

  “Seriously?” Skye crossed her arms. “You need to get over yourself.”

  “I tried once, but no luck.” Blair smirked. “I’m just too awesome.” She turned her back, then said over her shoulder, “And you still have to leave right now.”

  Skye put her hand on the younger woman’s shoulder. Trying one last time to make Blair see reason, she said, “Please. Two minutes in the shower. I promise to be out of the locker room before your girls get here.”

  “Too late.” Blair moved out of reach, scooped up Skye’s duffel bag, put the strap over Skye’s shoulder, and thrust her discarded sweat suit at her. Grabbing both of Skye’s arms, Blair said, “I just heard the team arrive.”

  “Take your paws off of me.” Skye tried to wiggle free of the fingers clamped around her biceps. For a skinny little thing, Blair was surprisingly strong.

  Ignoring Skye’s outraged cries, Blair frog-marched her out of the room. As she shoved Skye into the hallway, she said, “Guess you’ll have to make do with a sponge bath in the faculty restroom. Maybe next time you won’t think that you’re above the rules.”

  Skye stared at her, speechless at the teacher’s utter rudeness.

  Blair smiled meanly and said, “I just adore the sound you make when you finally shut the hell up.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Sup—What’s Up?

  Skye absentmindedly reached down and scratched her calf. White flakes fell on the dingy gray carpet and she frowned. It had been impossible to wash off all the chlorine without a shower. She wished she could have driven home and gotten dressed there. Unfortunately, that hadn’t been an option. The trip would have made her late for work, and then she would have had to face the wrath of Homer.

  Homer Knapik, the high school principal, didn’t tolerate tardiness from his staff. He could be late for everything from parent conferences to faculty meetings. But if any of his faculty checked in even a second past seven twenty, the public haranguing was enough to make them reconsider their choice of careers.

  And Homer had a special way of intimidating Skye for any infractions—either real or imagined. He threatened to give her office to one of the other itinerant personnel. Since there literally was no other space in the school, she was always fearful of losing such valuable real estate. She had only wrested it away from the boys’ PE teacher/guidance counselor a few years ago, after pointing out that he already had an office in the gym complex. Up until then, she’d had to beg, borrow, or steal space to evaluate or counsel students.

  Glancing around, Skye silently tsked. Who would have thought that she’d have to do battle for a ten-by-ten room with no windows? It was painted an ugly shade of greenish yellow that was made worse by the overhead light fixture. The fluorescent bulbs cast a sickly tinge over the beat-up desk, battered trapezoidal table, two folding chairs, and wooden file cabinet. All the furniture occupying the meager space were castoffs. Her old leather chair and the metal bookshelves that held her test kits had been discarded by someone with a budget to upgrade to nicer things, but Skye was grateful to have them. Even secondhand, the stuff was better than anything she had at either the grade school or the junior high.

  After another bout of itching, Skye hurriedly checked her appointment book. She was scheduled to stay at the high school until noon, then go to the elementary school for the rest of the day. Maybe she could drive home during her half-hour lunch. If she didn’t hit any traffic—and with only one stoplight in town, that was a pretty safe bet—it would take her only five minutes each way. As long as she didn’t get her face or hair wet, twenty minutes was plenty of time for a quick shower and to make herself a sandwich.

  Of course, that plan hinged on a smooth morning. If there were any student, staff, or parent crises, all bets were off. In that case, her lunch would consist of another round of crackers, which would be a shame since her nausea usually passed by ten or eleven, and having eaten little or no breakfast, she was usually ravenous by noon.

  Then again, there was that bag of cookies hidden in her desk drawer. She’d been saving the Archway Cashew Nougats for an emergency, and starvation certainly qualified.

  Pushing aside her food and hygiene issues, Skye took out the stack of folders from her tote bag. She selected a bright blue one from the pile and flipped it open. In her quest to organize the humongous amount of paperwork her job entailed, she’d instituted a new system. Red for priority, green for new referrals, yellow for counseling cases, and blue for reevaluations.

  Before Skye could do more than glance inside the file at the previous test protocols, there was a perfunctory knock; then her door slammed open and Trixie Frayne rushed inside. Trixie was the high school librarian and Skye’s best friend. She also cosponsored the school newspaper with Skye, coached the cheerleading squad, and had recently started a community service club to promote volunteerism among the teenagers. Anyone else would be exhausted by all the extracurricular duties, but Trixie thrived on the constant whirlwind of activity.

  “I found the perfect fund-raiser for GIVE.” Trixie darted across the room and plopped onto one of the visitors’ chairs.

  “Give?”

  “Get Involved, Value Everyone.” Trixie bounced on her seat. “It’s the service club’s new name. Paige Vitale thought of it at Friday’s meeting.”

  “She’s a smart girl.” Skye smiled, thinking of the dynamic junior. Like her idol, Trixie, Paige seemed to be involved in everything and she appeared to enjoy the hectic pace. “She’s doing a great job with the newspaper.” When Frannie Ryan and her boyfriend, Justin Boward, had gone off to college, Skye had wondered if they’d ever find an editor as good as they had been. “Paige is a great writer and extremely helpful in improving the other students’ skills.”

  “Definitely.” Trixie nodded, her pixielike face alight with pleasure. “She’s really been kind to some
of the kids from our special education program. I was pleased that several of the students with more challenging issues joined GIVE.”

  “That’s great to hear.” Skye had recommended that the special ed teacher encourage her students to join Trixie’s club, thinking it would be a good place for them to make friends. “I hope Ashley Northrup is one of them.”

  “She is.” Trixie beamed. “And her mom has been really helpful.”

  “You mentioned a fund-raiser.” Skye peeked at her watch. She’d been planning to spend the half hour before school writing a report, but her friend looked as if she was settled in for a good long visit. Closing the folder and resolving to finish the work at home, she gave Trixie her full attention. “What is it?”

  “A rubber duck race down the Scumble River.” Trixie’s brown eyes sparkled. “The kids sell the ducks—well, actually, they’ll sell the numbers on the ducks—for ten bucks a piece. We’ll release them at the boat-launch area in the park, and the first fowl into the channel that we’ll build under the railroad bridge west of town is the overall winner.”

  “Channel?”

  “We’ll string several swimming pool noodles together between poles, using water-ski ropes, to create a V-shaped passage.” Trixie used her hands to demonstrate. “It will narrow down to a small opening that only allows one duck through at a time.”

  “Clever.” Skye smiled at her friend’s ingenuity. “Which charity gets the money?”

  “The county’s no-kill animal shelter.”

  “What does the owner of the winning duck get?”

  “There will be several prizes.” Trixie’s voice was a little less confident. “At least, I hope there will be. The kids are going to have to persuade area businesses to contribute merchandise and gift cards for us to give away.”

  “That could be tough.” Skye furrowed her brow. “Those folks are always being hit up for donations. You’d better see how that goes before the club members start selling the ducks. Otherwise, you might end up using all the money you collect on the sales to buy prizes.”

  “I’m not worried about that. I’m sure the business owners will be generous, especially since we’ll be listing the contributors on the Scumble River High website and in the school paper. And since that particular issue will go out to all the parents, it will be glaringly apparent who was stingy.” Trixie ran her fingers through her short brown hair and made a face. “But there are just a couple of tricky parts. That’s why I wanted to talk to you before we both got busy this morning.”

  “Oh.” Visions of the various potential problems conga danced through Skye’s head. Possibilities included everything from kids going over the dam in the river to counterfeit duckies. “What do you need me to do?”

  “It turns out we have to get a permit from the city council to have the race, and their monthly meeting was last week.” Trixie peered at Skye from between her lashes. “I thought maybe you could ask your uncle Dante to grant us a mayoral waiver.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “As you know, Uncle Dante isn’t one of my biggest fans.” Skye crossed her arms. “Believe me—I’m the last person in town he’d do a favor for. No. Wait. Wally is the last person. I’m the second to the last.”

  Dante Leofanti, Scumble River’s mayor and Skye’s maternal uncle, resembled a cantankerous bowling pin. He was always in a bad mood, but even more so when one of his schemes was thwarted. He had recently hatched a conspiracy to outsource the town’s law-enforcement services to the county sheriff’s department. He’d planned to use the police-department budget for a harebrained idea that involved building a mega incinerator on the edge of town.

  When Skye had found out about Dante’s shady arrangement, she’d exposed his plot to the community, and he blamed her for his recent approval-rating drop. The polls showed him lagging behind both of his future opponents—and one of them was a sock puppet named Napoleon.

  “He’s still mad at you two for pulling the plug on his get-rich-quick scheme?” Trixie’s eyebrows rose. “When he came to your wedding, I figured he must have forgiven you.”

  “He arrived straight from his hospital bed.” Skye’s voice dropped. “And even though he passed all the tests and the doctor told him that all he’d had was a panic attack, Dante claims we gave him a coronary.” She shook her head. “Just when I think things can’t get any worse in city hall, there’s an election.”

  Trixie snickered. “Okay. Maybe you aren’t the best one for that job.” She scratched her chin. “I’ll find someone else to sweet-talk the mayor.”

  “Good luck with that.” Skye screwed up her face, trying to picture her uncle being charmed into granting someone a favor. “You’d be better off looking for someone who has some dirt on His Honor. Or if you don’t want to resort to blackmail, just wait for the next city council meeting.”

  “Well, that brings me to the second problem.” Trixie studied the toes of her high-tops. “We can’t wait because we want to have the race this Sunday. Sort of a spring break kickoff.”

  Skye’s mouth dropped open, and she stared at her friend. “You intend to put this together in less than a week? Have you lost your marbles?”

  “Not all of them.” Trixie grinned. “But there’s probably a rip in the bag.”

  “More like a hole the size of a meteor crater.” Skye pressed her lips together. “Six days isn’t long enough to pull off something as complicated as this event.”

  “That’s where you come in.” Trixie transferred her scrutiny to the KushandWizdom poster behind Skye’s desk that read, MILLIONS OF PEOPLE CAN BELIEVE IN YOU, AND YET NONE OF IT MATTERS IF YOU DON’T BELIEVE IN YOURSELF.

  “How’s that?” Skye pushed her chair back, prepared to run if need be.

  “We only have twenty-five kids in the community service club. I’m going to get my cheerleaders to help—one of the squad requirements is thirty hours of volunteering.” Trixie examined the blue polish on her fingernails. “But we need more worker bees if we’re going to get the race organized in time.” She finally met Skye’s gaze. “I need you to supervise the school newspaper kids we get to volunteer.”

  “No.” Skye spoke rapidly before Trixie could continue. “You are welcome to recruit the paper’s staff, but leave me out of it.” As well as getting back to a regular swimming routine, another of Skye’s post-marriage vows had been to learn to say no when friends and family tried to manipulate her.

  “But—”

  “I’ll do what I can,” Skye interrupted Trixie. “But I’m not going to be in charge of anything. I just can’t take on too much right now.”

  “It won’t be that much work.” Trixie leaned forward and pasted a piteous expression on her face. “Nothing can stop Skyxie.”

  “Skyxie?”

  “Skye plus Trixie.” Trixie grinned. “Like Brangelina.” Trixie wrinkled her brow. “Speaking of those two . . . I think they’re trying to collect one kid in every color.”

  “Maybe so.” Skye hid a grin. “But I bet they don’t have a blue one yet.”

  “Yeah. An available Smurf has got to be hard to find.” Trixie giggled hysterically, then sobered and said, “Anyway, Skyxie is a super team.”

  “Is it too late to change sides?”

  “Please. I can’t do this without you.”

  “Then maybe you shouldn’t do it.” Skye looked away from her friend’s pleading eyes and hardened her heart. “Or at least not do it in less than a week. The weather will be better in May.”

  “The no-kill shelter needs the money by April second or they’re going to lose their lease.” Trixie grabbed Skye’s hand. “If that happens, all the doggies and kitties will have to go to the county animal control, and it’s a good bet most of them will be put down.”

  “Crap!” Skye yanked her fingers out of Trixie’s grasp and admitted defeat. There was no way she could loo
k Bingo in the eye if she allowed that to happen. Her cat might never be aware that she’d let his comrades-in-fur down, but she would know. “What do you want me to do?”

  CHAPTER 3

  Kk—Okay

  Skye shuddered as she watched her friend fish a list from her pocket and unfold it, then unfold it again and again. Where had Trixie gotten a piece of paper that long? And more important, how many of the items on the page had Skye’s name next to them?

  “I need you to find a thousand cheap ducks.” Trixie took a pen from behind her ear and made a check mark. “Once you get them, have the newspaper kids number each of them in indelible marker.”

  “Where in heaven’s name do I get a thousand rubber duckies?”

  “Look online.”

  “All right.” Much to her credit card’s detriment and despite her best efforts to remain a technophobe, Skye had become somewhat adept at ordering from the computer. “How do I pay for these critters?”

  “Uh.” Trixie scrunched her face. “I was sort of hoping you could charge them to your Visa and we could reimburse you after the event.” She arched a brow. “Or that could be your contribution . . .”

  “Fine.” Skye rubbed her temples. She had just finished paying off the mind-boggling balance from her wedding, and she had hoped to keep the amount owed at zero for a few months. So much for that dream.

  “Find a vendor that sells in bulk.” Trixie smoothed her black-and-white-striped circle skirt. “You should be able to get them for around three hundred and fifty dollars, including expedited shipping.”