“Okay.” Skye leaned forward, placing her elbows on the desktop and folding her hands. “First of all, Jackie has been in Scumble River before—twice. She was here about a year ago during the spa murder. She called herself Veronica Vail, and claimed to be a state police officer. Then, in the spring, she pretended to be Imogene Ingersoll, a contestant in the cooking contest.”
“Why, Ms. D?” Justin edged his way into the room and settled cross-legged on top of the testing table—the one Skye had retrieved after Jackie had thrown it out.
“She was studying me and my life. Those previous times she was just an observer, trying to figure out the best way to get rid of me and take my place. Once she decided on a plan, it took her a while to steal her social worker identity. She had to get the real Jacqueline Jennings’s birth certificate, then use it to get her graduate school diploma, which she then parlayed into the school social worker certificate.”
Before anyone could respond, Homer pushed his way in. “What in the hell is going on around here?”
“I have no idea.” Skye wondered how many more people would try to crowd into her tiny office.
Homer claimed one of Jackie’s visitors’ chairs and turned it to face Skye. “Boyd called me at midnight and gave me some half-assed story about Jackie’s not being a real social worker and trying to kill you. I thought he was drunk, but I guess it must be true, because the superintendent is running around like a chicken with its head cut off, trying to find someone else to blame for hiring her.”
“Yeah.” A baritone voice boomed from the doorway. “And guess who he’s got his beady little eyes on?” Charlie stomped in and took the last chair.
Skye looked around the room. “It’s really no one’s fault, or maybe it’s everyone’s fault.” Her office was beginning to look like the inside of a subway car during rush hour. She half expected people to start popping out of the desk drawers. “Dr. Wraige should have checked Jackie’s references and credentials. Homer and the other principals should have been more suspicious that she was always Johnny-on-the-spot, and I should have trusted my instincts that there was something off about her.”
“I didn’t hear everything you said to Boyd after we went back to the police station yesterday,” Simon said. “But I gather Jackie was responsible for all of the unfortunate events that have happened to you and the schools during the past couple of months?”
“Yes. She confessed everything to Wally before she went into surgery last night at the hospital. He said she thought she was dying.”
“What did she own up to?” May finished filling one carton with things from Jackie’s desk and started on another.
“Let’s see.” Skye closed her eyes and tried to put Jackie’s actions in order. “The first thing was slashing my tire and leaving me that note to make me think Mrs. Idell had done it. Maybe she was retaliating because I yelled at her for changing the locks on our office and taking my chair.”
“How about what happened to you at the haunted house?” Justin asked.
“Yes. She tried to scare me into quitting A Ghoul’s Night Out by leaving the bloody ax for me to find and blocking the bathroom door so I couldn’t escape. She also strung up the rope, hoping I’d injure myself and have to drop out, maybe even leave town.”
“She used me to try to scare you, too. Didn’t she?” Justin said, his expression guilty. “By having me tell you the story about the American Legion hall being haunted.”
“Yes, but there was no way for you to know that,” Skye reassured him. “The weird thing is, she said she wasn’t the one I heard crying. No one else was in the bathroom, so maybe I just imagined that part.”
“Or it was the ghost.” Justin grinned.
Everyone ignored him.
May said, “So Annette’s death was an accident.”
“Yes.” Skye’s expression was grim. “A series of unfortunate coincidences.” She sighed heavily. “Jackie was also the one who tried to run me over using Dr. Paine’s car—she claimed she was only trying to scare me into leaving town. But when those attempts didn’t work, she started poisoning my cookies, trying to make me so sick that I’d have to go on disability and be stuck at home.” Skye’s voice quavered, and she blinked back tears. “Gloria’s death was another accident.”
“I bet she planted the chemical bombs here at the high school, too,” Trixie exclaimed.
“Right you are. She wanted the principals to love her. She needed to be seen as the hero,” Skye clarified. “She was the one who steered the girls at the junior high to the Internet site that said getting pregnant would be cool, as well. My guess is she’s the one who changed the meeting time in order to get me into trouble. And I doubt she speaks Russian. We’ll have to reevaluate that poor boy.”
“What I don’t understand is why.” Simon wrinkled his brow. “Why did she do all that? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“I’m sorry to say, in a twisted way, her actions do make sense.” Skye gave an uncomfortable laugh. “She thought she was entitled to my life, that it had been stolen from her.” After explaining what Jackie had told her about her background and her thought processes, Skye concluded with, “She is a classic case of narcissistic personality disorder.”
“You mean someone who is charming, but has no conscience?” Charlie asked.
“No. That’s a sociopath. A narcissist can win people over only in the short term. He or she can’t maintain the illusion of friendliness and caring for very long.” Skye struggled to explain, finally quoting the definition of narcissistic personality disorder from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: “‘Someone with grandiose fantasies, a total lack of empathy, and a hypersensitivity to the evaluation of others.’ ”
“In other words”—Homer snorted—“she can’t take criticism, takes advantage of the people around her, and thinks her shit doesn’t stink.”
“In a nutshell, yes,” Skye agreed. Trust Homer to cut to the chase. Then she muttered under her breath, “And since you usually believe only what you want to believe, you ate it right up.”
“But why?” Justin drew his brows together. “What caused her to be that way?”
Skye felt a twinge of concern. Maybe she shouldn’t have allowed the teenager to stay and hear all this. But since she had, she needed to try to help him understand.
“The closest I can figure is that all her life, Jackie felt like a nonentity—a blank slate—which is why she was so good at assuming other people’s identities. Then when the county clerk made the error with our birth certificates, she saw it as a sign. There had been a mistake. She wasn’t a nobody. She was Skye Denison. Which meant I had to disappear, so she could become the person she was meant to be.”
After what seemed like a thousand questions later, everyone left, and Skye breathed a sigh of relief. She was returning to her desk, hoping to get some work done, when Kurt slipped back into her office.
She turned toward him with a questioning look. “Forget something?”
He closed the door. “I need to tell you something before you hear it from Chief Boyd.”
“What?” Skye mentally raced through the possibilities.
“I’m not who you think I am.”
“You don’t say.” She was taken aback for a second, but recovered quickly and added, “You didn’t fool me for a minute with that small-town-reporter bit.” Okay, he had fooled her for way more than a minute, but he didn’t need to know that.
Kurt raised an eyebrow. “What gave me away?”
“For someone who supposedly wrote for a weekly newspaper, you were much too interested in hard news. Small-town reporters are more interested in the high school football team or who was drunk Saturday night than real crime.” Skye summed up her suspicions: “And then, there’s that honking big gun you were aiming at Jackie at the motor court yesterday afternoon.”
“Guess I’m not as good at being undercover as I thought I was.” Kurt’s smile was tentative.
Skye wasn’t distr
acted by his charisma. “So you were using me.”
“I’m sorry about that, but I had no choice.” All humor was gone from his handsome face, lines etching themselves around his mouth and eyes.
“I knew all that flirting was only an act.” Skye told herself she had no right to be upset about that. She was in love with Wally and didn’t want Kurt’s attentions. Still, she couldn’t help but add, “It’s not a big surprise that you weren’t really attracted to me.”
“That isn’t true.” Kurt cupped her chin in his palm. “I think you’re smart and fun and incredibly sexy.”
“Right. Playboy is always calling me up to model for them.”
“Just because most men like stick women who wouldn’t jiggle if you tied them to a paint mixer”—Kurt caressed her cheek with his thumb—“doesn’t mean that I do. I’m not most men.”
His blue eyes were mesmerizing, sending a ripple of awareness through her, but Skye forced herself to step away from him. “Yeah, well, we know who you aren’t. The question is, who are you?”
“I’m a private detective.” His fingers threaded through hers and stopped her from backing any farther away from him. “I was hired six months ago by the family of Veronica Vail to look into her death.”
“The woman Jackie impersonated last fall.” Skye jerked her hand from his. “You knew Jackie was a fake all along, and you didn’t warn me.”
“I didn’t know. That was the problem.” He scratched his chin. “I found a story about the spa murder that mentioned State Special Agent Veronica Vail. And considering that the real Veronica was already dead by that time, I came to Scumble River to investigate. It wasn’t much of a lead, but it was all I had.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. I was here during the cooking contest, and when I checked out all the contestants, I found out that the real Imogene Ingersoll was dead, too. Unfortunately, the fake Imogene disappeared before I could talk to her.” Frustration deepened Kurt’s voice. “Which made me think that there must be something about this town that was attracting Veronica’s killer.”
“But how did you get a job at the Star?” Skye asked.
“Pure luck. When I was here during the contest I grabbed a newspaper, saw the ad for a reporter, and since my undergrad degree is in journalism, I applied for the position.”
“I’m surprised you were hired so easily.”
“I did work as a reporter for several years after college, so I had references and a portfolio.” Red crept up his neck. “I may have flirted with the owner a little, too.”
Skye didn’t comment on his admission. Instead she asked, “What made you suspect Jackie?”
“I narrowed my search to anyone who was new in town since April, but it took me until a couple of days ago to nail down everyone’s background information.”
“And when you did, you didn’t think to warn me?” Skye’s stare bore into him.
“Well, I had no proof of anything, and at first it seemed as if the impostor was after Annette’s identity. But that didn’t make sense, since she hadn’t left town once Annette had been killed. Everything suggested you were her intended target, but I couldn’t be sure.”
“Right.” Skye stepped around him and opened the door. “What you really mean is that you didn’t want to tip your hand and let her get away.”
“I was watching to make sure nothing happened to you.” Kurt followed her and took her by the shoulders. “I thought I could protect you and solve my case.”
“But your case came first.”
He struggled to respond, then shrugged, bent his head, and kissed her.
The touch of his mouth on hers produced a delicious sensation, and for a long moment Skye responded. Finally she pushed him away. “No. I can’t do this. I can’t betray Wally.”
“That’s good to hear.”
They both turned toward the door, where Wally stood with his hands in his pockets.
Kurt looked from Skye to the chief. “I had to try.”
Wally dipped his head in silent acknowledgment.
After stroking Skye’s cheek with one finger, Kurt saluted Wally and walked away.
Skye hesitated for a heartbeat, then threw herself into Wally’s arms. “You’re not jealous?”
“Should I be?”
She shook her head. “Never.”
Crushing her to him, he whispered against her lips, “Will you marry me?”
Before Skye could respond, Wally pressed his mouth to hers, kissing her until she could no longer think. Which was a good thing, because she had no idea what her answer would be.
Here’s a sneak peek at
Skye Denison’s next exciting adventure
in the Scumble River Mystery series,
coming from Obsidian in April 2010.
November
Skye Denison twisted her left hand from side to side, admiring the glitter of the diamond engagement ring on her finger. The sunshine streaming through the windshield of her aqua 1957 Bel Air made the two-karat gemstone blaze like a Fourth of July sparkler. Reluctantly she slid the ring off her finger, tucked it into its blue Tiffany box, and zipped it into the inner pocket of her purse. The last thing she wanted was her mother getting the wrong idea.
Wally Boyd, Scumble River Police Chief and secret heir to a Texas oil fortune, had asked Skye to marry him a couple of months ago. Although she hadn’t said yes, he’d insisted that she hold on to the ring until she decided. It wasn’t that she didn’t love him; it was more that she didn’t trust her judgment where men were concerned. Her history included a series of bad choices, making her leery of commitment.
Skye knew she had to decide about marrying Wally soon, but not today. Today was all about Skye’s cousin Bailey Erickson. Skye was in the peace corps when Bailey left their hometown of Scumble River ten years ago to attend college in California, and she had later decided to stay there. Now Bailey was finally back, and Skye didn’t want to be late for her party.
After checking her lipstick in the rearview mirror, Skye picked up the strawberry pretzel salad she’d made and got out of the Chevy. The Denisons didn’t have get-togethers as often as her mother’s extended Italian clan, the Leofantis, so Skye looked forward to catching up with her dad’s side of the family.
As she put her hand on the knob of the kitchen’s screen door, the excited chatter echoing through the aluminum mesh brought her up short. For a nanosecond she wasn’t sure she was at the right house. The Denisons came from stoic Swedish farm stock. They never got worked up. Heck, they seldom raised their voices, and certainly they didn’t squeal like a gaggle of schoolgirls.
What in the world could cause her unflappable relatives to make sounds like a whooping crane on crack? There was only one way to find out.
Skye pushed open the door and walked into pandemonium. Her great-aunt Dora was crying. Yikes! Had someone died? No. The focus of the uproar was a silver-blond beauty in the center of a flock of women who were all fluttering around her like birds at a feeder, talking a mile a minute, and patting her as if she were a prize parrot.
Although it had been nearly seventeen years since Skye had seen her cousin and she wouldn’t even have recognized her in a crowd, she figured the blonde must be Bailey.
No doubt the men were in the living room, probably watching a football game or whatever sporting event was on TV in late November, but Skye was surprised that there was no food on the table, and no one at the stove cooking. One thing the Denison and Leofanti females had in common was their prowess in the kitchen.
Skye spotted her mother on the fringe of the group, and joined her. Come August, May would be turning sixty, but she looked at least fifteen years younger. With a petite build and short salt-and-pepper hair, she had the liveliness of the high school cheerleader she’d once been.
Before Skye could speak, her mother grabbed her arm. “Isn’t it thrilling?”
“What?” Skye set the salad bowl she’d been carrying on the kitchen counter before May accidentally knocked it ou
t of her hands.
“Bailey’s getting married right here in Scumble River on June twenty-fifth!” May trilled. “And she wants you to be her maid of honor.”
“Why me?” The question slipped out before Skye could stop it.
“Shh! Do you want Bailey to hear you?” May dragged Skye through the dining room into the nearest bedroom and whispered, “She’ll think you aren’t tickled pink that she asked you.”
“Well, technically, she hasn’t asked me.” Skye stalled for time, knowing that her mother would not be happy with Skye’s decision to refuse her cousin’s request.
But sometime after Skye had hit thirty, being in weddings had lost its appeal. She’d stood up for several of her sorority sisters right after college, a couple of friends while she’d been in the peace corps, and her graduate school roommate the year before she’d moved back home. Being a bridesmaid was a lot of work, not to mention a huge expense, and seven hideous dresses she could never wear again were her limit.
May narrowed her emerald eyes and stared into her daughter’s matching ones. “But once she asks you, you are going to say yes, right?”
“My question stands. Why would Bailey want me to be her maid of honor?” Skye held firm. “She was only twelve when I left for college, by the time I moved back to Scumble River she’d left, and we haven’t seen each other in all those years.”
“Blood is blood no matter how long it is between visits,” May countered. “She idolized you. She followed you around at family gatherings and begged her mother to hire you as her babysitter.”
Skye refused to be swayed. “But we haven’t kept in touch. Not to mention, I’m not even entirely sure how we’re related.”
“Your grandma Denison, and Bailey’s grandmother Dora, are sisters. That makes your father, and Bailey’s mother Rose, first cousins,” May explained to Skye. “And since both Rose and Bailey are only children, close or not, you are Bailey’s only female relative young enough to be in her wedding.”
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