Foul Play (A Moose River Mystery Book 4)

by Jeff Shelby

  “It’s complicated. And I didn’t hit her,” she said. “I just let her smell the flowers.”

  “The flowers covered in chloroform?”

  She shuffled her feet against the wood floor. “My uncle was a chemist.”

  “But you went there with the intention of taking her,” I said. “And then you did. And then you paid her six hundred dollars to stay here.”

  “Like I just said. It’s complicated.” She looked at Amanda, her eyes narrowing. “And part of the deal was not telling anyone.”

  “Whatever,” Amanda said. She made a face. “You kidnapped me. You have to pay me or I’ll tell everyone.”

  Joanne frowned.

  “Why?” I asked. “Why on earth did you do this?”

  She stubbed the toe of her boot against the floor. “I told you. I was desperate.”

  “So you took Snow White?”

  “No, I did something to generate publicity for the play,” she said. “Which actually worked. We are sold out.”

  “You took Amanda so that everyone would talk about the play?” I said, not sure I understood her correctly. “That was the best way you could thing to drum up publicity?”

  “There isn’t a single ticket left for tomorrow,” she said.

  I blinked. “You do realize that kidnapping is against the law, correct?”

  “I don’t think it’s kidnapping if she can leave against her will,” Joanne argued.

  “You knocked her out. You brought her here. You kept her here and told everyone that you didn’t know where she was. No matter what you offered to pay her, you took her,” I said, shaking my head. “You took her and that’s not okay.”

  For the first time, her steely facade faltered. She looked at Amanda, then me, then Amanda, then me. She chewed on her bottom lip.

  “I didn’t know what else to do,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “I told you, Daisy. Eleanor’s company is in trouble. She needs money. I need another job. I need money. The only way to make sure both of those things happened was to make sure we sold out the play and brought in as large of an audience as possible. And I did. This did it. Everyone in Moose River knows about the play. Everyone. Because of what I did.” She grimaced. “And I will get the job. It’s guaranteed.”

  I thought about what Eleanor had told me: that not even sold out shows were going to be enough to save the theater. Maybe Joanne didn’t know the true extent of Eleanor’s financial situation. Even still, it didn’t excuse drugging and kidnapping the lead actress in the play.

  “But what you did was wrong,” I said. “It was wrong. It doesn’t make it okay.”

  “I didn’t have another choice!” she cried. “I really didn’t! I had second thoughts. I knew it was a dumb thing to do. But then...it got more complicated.”

  I wasn’t sure when kidnapping was ever a viable choice for anyone or for any reason. It was like saying you had to rob a store because you needed money. You may have needed the money, but that didn’t make it okay to steal or put anyone else in danger. Joanne may have been desperate and the end result may have been what she’d hoped for, but that didn’t make what she’d done right.

  “You can’t tell anyone,” she said again. “You just can’t.”

  “Joanne, I’m sorry,” I said, shaking my head. “But I have to tell someone. I’m sorry.”

  “But she’s fine!” she said, pointing at Amanda, who was now braiding her ponytail.

  “I don’t care,” I said. “It’s not right. I have to let the authorities know.”

  “I can’t go to jail!” she said. “And it’s not all my fault!”

  “Who else’s fault would it be then?” I asked. “You did this. You brought her here. You bribed her to stay here.”

  She chewed on her fingernail. “But I was going to back out. I wasn’t going to go through with it. Then...it got complicated.”

  “You keep saying that. What exactly does complicated mean?”

  “It means when things get hard, I think,” Amanda offered.

  I waited for Joanne to give me her version of what it meant.

  “It means that it wasn’t just me,” Joanne said. “That’s what makes it complicated.”

  “It wasn’t just you?” I asked. “So someone else helped you do this?”

  “I knew you wouldn’t keep your big mouth shut,” a familiar voice said behind her.

  I leaned over and peered around Joanne.

  Madison Bandersand, in her full Snow White costume, was standing there, brandishing a pitchfork.

  FORTY THREE

  “I just knew it,” Madison said, a sour frown on her face. “I knew you were too much of a wimp to keep this quiet.”

  “Oh great,” Amanda mumbled. “The wicked witch is here.”

  “I’m Snow White!” Madison yelled. She motioned at her blue and yellow dress. “How can you not know the difference?”

  “I don’t think that’s what she meant,” Joanne said.

  “Oh my God. Both of you just shut your dumb faces, alright?” Madison said.

  I stood there, blinking, just trying to wrap my head around everything. Joanne was a kidnapper? And she’d been in cahoots with Madison? I couldn’t get a clear picture.

  “Wait.” I looked at Amanda. “You knew Madison was a part of this, too?”

  Amanda nodded. “Yeah. At first, I was like, no way. I’m not doing anything with Madison. But then, you know, I decided I really wanted the money. So I’ve been willing to put up with her. She’s only been here once, though, so it hasn’t been that bad.”

  I turned to Madison. “And why aren’t you at the dress rehearsal?”

  “We finished,” Madison said. “Mostly.”

  “Mostly?”

  She ignored me and looked at Joanne. “Did you tell her everything?”

  “No, I didn’t--”

  “I’ll bet you did,” Madison said. She adjusted the wig on her head. “You’re so...so...soft.”

  Joanne’s shoulders slumped.

  “She didn’t tell me anything,” I said. “I put most of it together.”

  “Now that I believe, because you’re so nosy,” she said, frowning at me. “I mean, really. You need to learn to mind your own business.” She glanced at Joanne. “I’m totally gonna tell my mom about you now.”

  Panic flared in Joanne’s eyes. “You told me you wouldn’t!”

  Madison waved her pitchfork in the air and her wig slid to the right, revealing a patch of her blond hair. “Well, that was before all this.”

  “You can’t tell her! I’ll go to jail!”

  “Not my problem,” Madison said. “The deal was you keep her here and I’d keep my mouth shut.”

  “I could’ve left,” Amanda said. “I just didn’t. I need the money.”

  “Well, you aren’t getting that, either,” Madison said to her. “Because I’m pretty sure if she’s having to steal from my mom, she doesn’t have any money to pay you, either.”

  “You stole?” I asked. “From Eleanor?”

  Joanne’s face reddened, but she didn’t say anything.

  “From the theater account,” Madison said, smirking at Joanne. “To pay her electric bill.”

  “They were going to shut it off,” Joanne said, her eyes on the ground. “I’d held them off for as long as I could.”

  I remembered the day Madison had snapped at her about her wig. There’d been something off about the conversation, but I hadn’t been able to put my finger on it. Now, the undercurrent of tension that I’d sensed between them made a little more sense.

  “Don’t try to make this all her fault,” Amanda said, rolling her eyes.

  “It was,” Madison spat. “It was her plan.”

  “It was my plan that I wanted to back out of,” Joanne said. “But then you talked me back into it. And extended it.”

  Madison’s face colored.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  Joanne sighed and wiped at her eyes. “I went to Amanda’s home, with
the flowers and ready to do it. To kidnap her. But not to keep her. Just to create a story.” She paused. “But I got halfway up the walk and then turned around. I couldn’t do it. I knew it was wrong. I knew it was a bad idea.” She paused again. “But then Madison came out of the house and saw me.”

  The pitchfork twitched in Madison’s hands.

  “She saw the opportunity,” Joanne said. “She realized why I was there. And then she suggested we work together. When I said no, she said she’d tell her mother about my taking the money. I didn’t have a choice. So that’s when I went back up to the door.”

  “That was the day you came over,” Amanda said. “To drop off the music. And when you told me I wasn’t a very good singer.”

  “You’re not,” Madison said. “I was trying to do you a favor. You should’ve just quit and none of this would’ve ever happened.”

  “Yeah,” Amanda said, rolling her eyes. “Because it’s all my fault.”

  “That role was mine!” Madison yelled. “It’s always been mine!”

  Amanda smirked. “Apparently, your mom didn’t think so.”

  Madison took a couple of more steps into the room and pointed the pitchfork at her. The tongs glinted in the light. “You need to shut up!”

  “You’re an idiot,” Amanda said, shaking her head. “A pathetic idiot. If I don’t get my six hundred bucks, I’m telling everyone you’re an idiot. And that Billy Marler broke up with you because he said you’re a terrible kisser.”

  “He did not!” Madison said. “And I broke up with him!”

  Amanda dropped her braid and examined her fingernails. “Not what he told me. He said it was like kissing a St. Bernard. All slobbery and stuff.”

  Anger flared in Madison’s eyes and she made a sound that was half-gasp, half-squeal. “He did not say that!”

  “Oh yes, he did,” Amanda replied. “He said he just couldn’t take it any more.” She smiled at Madison. “And he said I was way better.”

  A garbled scream escaped from Madison’s mouth. Her hands tightened on the pitchfork. Her face and neck flushed red with anger.

  I knew she was about to run at Amanda and all I could envision was her stabbing Amanda with that pitchfork.

  I had to do something.

  As Madison shuffled her feet, almost like a bull getting ready to charge, I reached out and yanked hard on the garden tool. It came right out of her hands and I stumbled backward.

  Madison looked at me, surprised, almost as if she’d forgotten Joanne and I were there. Her eyes darted from me to Joanne to Amanda, unsure of what to do. Then she hitched up her dress, spun and ran for the doors.

  “You won’t catch me!” she yelled.

  And she was right.

  We probably wouldn’t have.

  Except that as she crossed the doorway, a giant red shoe swung across the opening and smacked her right in the face. She tumbled backward and fell on her backside, her hands cradling her nose.

  Olga stepped into the doorway and stared down at Madison.

  Then she looked at us and held up her shoe. “I knew these would come in handy one day.”

  FORTY FOUR

  “She stayed another night?” I said to Jake as we stood in the hallway outside the high school theater. “Wow. Or did her flight get canceled?”

  Jake shook his head. “No clue. Didn’t even know she was gonna be here. Again.”

  It was the following night and the play had just finished. Stella Gardner was off to the side, her phone pressed to her ear, deep in conversation.

  “She didn’t tell you last night that she was staying longer?” I asked.

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “The only thing we talked about after it was over was your disappearance. You know. Like the rest of the audience.”

  After Olga conked Madison in the face, Amanda offered up her cell phone, which did, in fact, have service. I called the Moose River PD and Officer Ted showed up twenty minutes later with several other officers. As I explained to him what I’d learned and why I was there, he kept looking around the room like he’d entered some sort of fun house that didn’t make a whole lot of sense. When Olga finally offered to drive me home, Joanne Claussen and Madison Bandersand were in handcuffs, sitting on the bed, and Amanda Pendleton was pacing back and forth, anxiously awaiting the arrival of her family. I didn’t know what was going to happen to any of them and I didn’t feel the need to stick around to find out.

  “I’m sorry,” I told him for what felt like the tenth time. “I didn’t know what was going on. And you were too paralyzed by clown fear to be any help at all.”

  “I was not paralyzed.”

  I stared at him.

  “Okay, maybe I was a little paralyzed,” he admitted. “But still.”

  “We heard you saved the day,” a shrill voice said behind us.

  We both turned. Thornton and Babette were both standing there, Thornton scrolling away on his phone and Babette trying to keep an enormous pink bag from slipping off her shoulder.

  “We heard you’re a real live hero,” she said, pushing a smile onto her face, as if it were the most excruciating thing she’d ever done.

  “I’m not a hero,” I said. “At all.”

  “Right,” she said. “Well, I’m just glad that the danger is over. Our poor children.”

  “Yes,” I said, trying hard to keep my eyes from rolling on their own accord. “The danger.”

  “The real hero was Grace,” Jake said. “Thank goodness she’d memorized Snow White’s role.”

  With Madison in police custody, there’d been some discussion about Amanda Pendleton jumping back into the role. But the parent board for the theater – because, apparently, there was one – held an emergency meeting and decided that that wasn’t feasible or fair.

  So they’d held an emergency rehearsal earlier in the morning and they’d turned to the one kid who knew all of Snow White’s lines.

  Grace.

  They’d found a costume and a wig and the show went on with a much shorter Snow White.

  Thornton looked up from his phone and glanced at Babette. “The guy from the feed store just emailed. Says he needs to talk to us about rescheduling the gig.”

  Babette frowned. “Oh my God! Did you tell him that’s impossible? That we’ve already sent out the invites? That I’ve scheduled an extra voice lesson?”

  “Uh. No.”

  She punched him in the arm. “Call him right now, Thornton! Right this instant!”

  They shuffled away so Thornton could call the feed store.

  “They are truly...one of a kind,” Jake said.

  I started to say something, but stopped when I saw Eleanor Bandersand headed our way. A spike of fear stabbed me in the stomach, wondering if she was going to try and ban me even though the production was now over. Or yell at me for what had happened with Madison. Her black pants were nearly up to her neck, a long sleeve purple blouse with silver sparkles tucked into the waistband. Her chin was lifted in the air and her makeup appeared to have been applied with a roller and a spray gun.

  “Daisy,” she said. “Good evening.”

  “Hello, Eleanor,” I said, my entire body tense. “I’m not sure if you’ve met my husband. This is Jake.”

  “Ah, yes,” she said, nodding. “I believe I’ve seen you around. A pleasure, I’m sure.”

  “Yeah,” Jake said. “I’m sure.”

  “Daisy, I hear you played a large part in locating Amanda Pendleton,” she said, moving her imperious gaze toward me. “I think we all owe you a debt of gratitude.”

  “Oh,” I said, surprised. “Well, I don’t know. I’m just glad she’s okay.”

  “Yes, yes,” she said. “I’m not sure what this nonsense is with Madison, but I feel confident we’ll get it straightened out soon. And as for Joanne, I hope she’s prepared to deal with the consequences.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe the nerve of that woman trying to steal from me!”

  Before Officer Ted arrived at the fa
rm, Joanne explained to me that Madison had witnessed her using a computer at the school to pay her electric bill. Madison recognized the theater credit card and put together what she was doing. Joanne knew it was going to come back to haunt her and it did the day they’d run into each other at Amanda’s home. So Joanne wasn’t denying her role in the whole thing. I wasn’t sure what the consequences were going to be, but I was fairly certain Joanne wasn’t prepared to deal with anything.

  Madison, though, was apparently sticking to her denial. Eleanor may have been confident, but I wasn’t sure the “nonsense” with Madison would get straightened out anytime soon.

  “Your daughter did...a nice job tonight,” she said. She sounded about as excited as praising a dentist for a root canal. “Given the short notice.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “She was excited and happy she could step in.”

  Eleanor pursed her lips, then gave a begrudging nod. “Yes, I suppose she was. It was the right decision to let her play the role this evening.”

  I had no doubt that Eleanor hadn’t exactly pushed for Grace to take over the Snow White role, but I also didn’t doubt that there were many other options for her to consider.

  “Anyway, I have other people I must greet,” she said. “But I did just want to pass along our thanks. Our theater family comes first, and your daughter proved to be a valuable member tonight.”

  She smiled at each of us and continued on our way.

  “Well, that was unexpected,” I whispered.

  “Yeah,” Jake said. “I fully expected her pants to be pulled all the way over her head.”

  I stifled a giggle and elbowed him in the stomach.

  “And I’m about ready to pull that kid’s pants over his head,” he muttered, nodding down the hallway.

  I looked in that direction and saw Emily and Andy leaning against the wall, talking. Andy was half-turned, his dark hair obscuring his face. He wore dark jeans and a gray thermal. His jacket, a plaid hoodie, was draped over Emily’s shoulders. And Emily was laughing. She was clearly in like with Andy.

  “Hey,” I said. “He came to her sisters’ play. That was nice of him.”

  “I should offer him a ride home,” Jake said. “He can ride on top of the van.”