Murder of a Barbie and Ken

by Denise Swanson

  A few minutes later Simon and Polly returned to the table. Polly looked at her husband like a dog who has been kicked in the past looks at its master, like she knows she’ll be kicked again. “Did you have a nice talk with Skye?” she asked.

  “We came to a mutually satisfactory conclusion,” her husband answered, and clomped away. Polly followed.

  “What was that all about?” Simon asked.

  Skye explained, then said, “That man has made me realize why people get divorced even though it’s so expensive.”

  “Why?” Simon seemed puzzled by the swerve in the conversation.

  “Because if you were married to someone like him, it’d be worth it.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Be to her virtues very kind;

  Be to her faults a little blind.

  —Prior

  Who would have guessed that Bunny would want to go to church? Skye scrutinized the redhead sitting next to her on the wooden pew. What was Bunny up to now? For Sunday morning services she had chosen a fairly modest pantsuit. Granted, it was made out of cranberry stretch velour with metallic threads, but at least the neckline’s V was not plunging, and the top and pants met in the middle so her belly button didn’t show.

  They had made it through Mass without incident, but Skye couldn’t relax. She still had to get Bunny out of the building without any close encounters of the embarrassing kind. Could she slip her past Father Burns’s watchful eye? Who knew what totally inappropriate comment Bunny might make to the priest.

  The choir started the closing hymn and Bunny joined in, her confident alto surprisingly sweet. Skye exited the pew, stepping back so Bunny would be in front of her. They were shuffling down the aisle with the crowd, and the door was in sight, when Bunny veered to the left, stopped dead in front of the priest, and stuck out her hand.

  Father Burns took it and asked, “Are you new to our parish?”

  He was a tall, ascetic-looking man who had been the priest at St. Francis for as long as Skye could remember.

  “I’m here visiting my son. He’s Simon Reid. He owns the funeral home.”

  “Yes. I know Simon well. A fine young man. He was at the eight o’clock mass.” The priest smiled. “You don’t look old enough to be his mother. But then, they say life starts at fifty.”

  “Too bad it starts to show then, too.”

  Father Burns patted her hand. “In the end, looks won’t matter. We’ll be judged on how we lived our lives.”

  Bunny frowned at his comment, and hurriedly changed the subject. “I’m staying with Simon’s fiancée, Skye Denison.”

  The priest looked at Skye. “I didn’t know you two were engaged.”

  Skye had stood silently, hoping the priest wouldn’t notice her, but now she felt herself flush. “We’re not. Wishful thinking on our parents’ parts.”

  His dark, serious eyes studied her for a long moment, but he didn’t pursue the matter. Instead he said, “I understand you and your father were the ones to discover those unfortunate people’s bodies on Wednesday.”

  “Yes, it was awful.”

  “Does Chief Boyd have any idea who committed the crime?”

  “I don’t think so.” Skye wondered why the priest was so interested. The Addisons were Episcopalians, not members of his congregation. “Have you heard anything?”

  “Dr. Addison had many enemies. Several people blamed him for their loved ones’ deaths. They say his treatment plans were not always in the best interest of the patient.”

  “Did they have any grounds for their accusations?” Skye asked. She remembered what Yolanda had said yesterday about the poor medical treatment Ken Addison provided to his patients and was curious to know how many people in town knew what he had been up to.

  The priest shrugged. “The first few people who complained, I chalked up to grief, but there have been several in the past year—more than you’d expect about one doctor.”

  Skye nodded. So his patients, or at least their families, were beginning to figure things out.

  Bunny danced from one foot to the other and sighed loudly, clearly bored with the conversation. When there was a pause, she jumped in, steering the attention back to herself. “Hey, Father, I just thought of something I’ve always wanted to ask a priest.”

  Skye flinched, and prayed that Bunny’s question had nothing to do with sex.

  “Yes?” Father Burns turned to the older woman.

  “How come no one sat on the other side of the table at the Last Supper?” When he didn’t answer right away, Bunny added, “You know, in all the pictures everybody’s facing the camera.”

  He blinked, then said with a straight face, “I’ll need to look into that.”

  “Okay, but you let me know when you figure it out.”

  Skye breathed a sigh of relief as Bunny moved away from the priest. That hadn’t been too bad.

  Father Burns patted Skye’s arm with a cool dry hand. “This too shall pass.”

  “I know God won’t give me more than I can handle,” Skye said over her shoulder as she followed Bunny. “I just wish he didn’t trust me so much.”

  A smile played around the corners of the priest’s mouth, but he didn’t comment.

  Bunny had walked down the stairs and was nearing the door when suddenly she stopped, and started back up.

  Skye made a grab for her and missed, then hurried after her, demanding, “Where are you going?”

  “I want a bulletin.”

  “Why?”

  Bunny shrugged. “It’s like a receipt for attending Mass. If anyone asks, you can prove you were there.”

  Skye wondered how many times proof of church attendance was required.

  As soon as Bunny grabbed a newsletter from a pile on a side table, Skye took her arm and steered her outside, breathing a sigh of relief as they reached the parking lot. It was snowing again as they got into the Bel Air. Skye started the engine and was grateful when warm air came rushing out of the vents. With such an old car, it was always possible that the heater wouldn’t work or the convertible top would fall down.

  An aqua 1957 Chevy Bel Air was not exactly the vehicle of Skye’s dreams, but her dad and Charlie had restored it for her, and there was no way she could turn down their gift. Besides, for some reason the cars she drove tended not to have long lives—which was not her fault—and she figured there was a fifty-fifty chance this one would be totaled before spring.

  Skye turned on the radio and the announcer said, “Now for the weather and road reports. Snow is predicted on and off the rest of today, and the highways remain impassible due to the high winds and ice.”

  So far the local road crew had been able to keep the streets clear in Scumble River, and Jed had kept their families’ driveways plowed, but they were pretty much cut off from the next town. Skye was stuck with Bunny for at least one more day.

  When they got home, Skye surveyed her refrigerator. Normally she would have had dinner with her parents and Vince, but May had not asked her this Sunday. Skye suspected her houseguest’s presence might have something to do with her mother’s lack of hospitality.

  “What’s for lunch?” Bunny leaned against the kitchen door while she filed her nails.

  “We have our choice between cereal, tomato soup, and peanut butter. There’s no milk or bread, but I did manage to snag a box of crackers from one of the stores we stopped at, and I have some hamburger buns in the freezer.”

  Bunny had polished off most of what Skye had been able pick up on Thursday. Skye had stopped before church at both of Scumble River’s groceries, but hadn’t been able to buy much. Due to the weather, the supply trucks weren’t making it through with any regularity.

  “Do you think Sonny would bring us something?”

  Skye shook her head. “No, probably not.” The woman was clueless. Simon was more likely to bring her rat poison than a hot meal.

  “Why don’t you call and ask him?”

  Skye thought briefly of telling Bunny that Simon wanted h
er gone, but instead settled for a partial truth, realizing that the older woman wasn’t ready to hear the rest. “Simon has some work to do this morning, and a town council meeting to attend this afternoon. Although we haven’t received a check yet, Scumble River is supposed to be getting a donation of a hundred thousand dollars soon. The council is meeting to talk about what the money should be spent on.”

  “How about after the meeting?” Bunny pressed.

  Skye gave up. “Sorry. He’s not coming over today at all.”

  “Did you two have a fight?” Bunny put her hands on her hips. “I hope you didn’t get him mad at you and ruin my chances to talk to him.”

  Skye bit her tongue. Lord, this would be a long Sunday.

  CHAPTER 13

  A sadder and a wiser man,

  He rose the morrow morn.

  —S. T. Coleridge

  Monday morning, Skye arrived at the elementary school, relieved to be back at work and vowing that, no matter what, Bunny would move out that afternoon. Sunday in the cottage with her had been endless.

  Skye signed in at the main office, and grabbed a stack of messages from her box. Flipping through them, she edged past the counter and into the back room to use the telephone. She punched in the nonemergency number for the police department, and the dispatcher answered on the first ring.

  Skye identified herself and asked to speak to Wally. When he came on the line she said, “Can we get together for lunch to talk about the murders?”

  “Sure. What time?”

  “How about twelve-thirty at McDonald’s?” Skye had only a thirty-minute lunch hour, but since she’d be going between schools, she wouldn’t have to count her travel time.

  “Okay. Have you heard something interesting?”

  “I had a few fascinating conversations at bowling Friday night, with the Dooziers Saturday morning, and at the dance on Saturday. Even my priest had something to say after Mass.” Skye twisted the cord on the phone. “Gossip really is the lifeblood of this town.”

  “Men don’t gossip.”

  “Then how do they keep track of who’s ‘easy’?” she asked, and hung up before he could answer.

  Skye greeted several teachers as she made her way out of the main office and down the hall toward her room. There was a pleasant buzz in the air that she attributed to the short week and the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday.

  Her office at this school was even tinier than the one at the junior high. It was hardly bigger than a Porta Potti, and outside the door was the milk cooler that had occupied the space before it had been assigned to Skye. The refrigerator made strange gasping and squawking noises that often scared the kids she was working with.

  Still, it was her own private room—except on Tuesday and Thursday mornings when the speech therapist used it. Skye hung her coat behind the door, placed her WISC-III kit on the floor by the desk, and tucked her purse in the drawer. This morning she planned to write a psychological report and evaluate a student suspected of having a learning disability.

  It was close to ten o’clock by the time Skye finished her report, set up the material for the first test, and went to fetch the fifth-grader. The girl’s class was just returning from recess—a perfect time to take a child for testing.

  The teacher introduced Skye by saying, “Audrey, this is Ms. Denison. You’re going to go work with her this morning, but she’ll have you back in time for lunch with your friends.”

  Skye walked the girl down the hall, making small talk until they were in her office. After settling the child on a chair opposite her own seat with a folding tray table containing the test material between them, Skye said, “Audrey, do you know why you’re here?”

  She nodded. “My parents told me you were going to see why learning is so hard for me.”

  “That’s exactly right.” Skye smiled at the girl, glad her parents had explained things so well. “The tests I’m going to give you are nothing like the tests you take in school. There’s no grade. I want you to do the best you can, but it’s all right to say, ‘I don’t know.’ These tests are given to kids who are as old as sixteen, so I don’t expect you to know all the answers.”

  Audrey looked interested.

  The black canvas case holding the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Third Edition sat next to Skye’s chair. She took a spiral-bound booklet from the case, and opened it to a few pages from the front. “What’s missing from this picture?”

  Audrey breezed through the first subtest, getting all but five of the answers correct. She did well on the first few questions of the second subtest, too.

  Then Skye asked, “How is dew formed?”

  Audrey hesitated before answering, “The sun shines down on the leaves and makes them sweat.”

  Skye’s expression remained neutral, but she had to fight a smile as she asked the next question. “What is a planet?”

  Audrey was more confident this time. “A body of earth surrounded by sky.”

  “What is a fibula?” Skye was curious what the girl would come up with. So far she had shown a lot of creativity.

  Audrey wrinkled her brow. “A small lie.”

  A knock interrupted them. Fern Otte, the school secretary, poked her head in the door. “Sorry to bother you, but there’s a problem, and Mrs. Greer would like you to come to the office immediately.”

  “Sure.” Skye stood up, curious. Caroline Greer, the elementary school principal, rarely asked for help. “Could you escort Audrey back to her classroom?”

  Fern nodded and left with the girl. Caroline and Theresa Dugan were sitting silently in the principal’s office when Skye arrived.

  Caroline waved Skye to a chair. “We had an incident in our first grade this morning that I’m not quite sure how to handle, and I’d like your opinion.”

  “Okay.”

  “Theresa, tell Skye what happened.”

  “About a half hour into class, I noticed that Mack Craughwell was squirming around, scratching his crotch, and not paying attention to the lesson. I went over to see what was going on. He whispered to me that he’d had stitches ‘down there’ over the weekend and they were itchy.” Theresa looked at Skye. “I was afraid to ask him why he would need stitches in that area, so I sent him to the health room.”

  Skye nodded and glanced at Caroline. The principal’s expression gave nothing away.

  Theresa continued, “The nurse wasn’t here, so Fern had Mack call his mom and ask what he should do.”

  “That sounds like a good decision.” Skye studied Theresa, who looked flushed.

  “Right. So he called her and returned to class. I didn’t want to embarrass him any further, so I didn’t ask what his mother had said.”

  Skye nodded again, agreeing that was appropriate.

  Theresa’s face went from dusky rose to ruby red as she finished the story. “I had just started a new lesson when suddenly there was a ruckus in Mack’s part of the room. I went over to investigate, and found him sitting at his desk with his you-know-what hanging out.”

  Skye’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, my. What did you do?”

  “I had him zip up and marched him down to the office.”

  Which should have been the end of it, but obviously wasn’t. “Then what?”

  “When we got here, I asked him why he’d done that.”

  “What was his answer?”

  “He said that his mom told him that if he could stick it out until noon, she’d come pick him up from school.”

  There was a moment of silence, then Skye snickered. “So, what do you want my opinion about?”

  Caroline leaned forward. “Do we believe him? Was it a misunderstanding, or is he playing us all for fools?”

  Skye considered what she knew about child development and asked, “Did his mom really say that?”

  Caroline nodded.

  “Then I’d believe he was telling the truth and let him off the hook.” Skye blew out a long breath. “Let’s face it, this is not a matter we really want to have to
investigate, right?”

  Caroline and Theresa both nodded.

  As Theresa and Skye left the office, Theresa gave Skye a sly glance and said, “Gee, I wonder if this is how Ken Addison got murdered.”

  Skye looked puzzled.

  An amused twinkle lit her eyes. “You know, maybe Ken stuck his weenie out when he should have kept it zipped in his pants.”

  Skye laughed, then sobered quickly. “Speaking of that, how did Barbie take his fooling around on her?”

  “She never gave the slightest indication that she was aware of his affairs.” Theresa shrugged. “But she should have expected it. Hilary told me he was engaged to someone else when he met Barbie.”

  The comforting thing about McDonald’s was that it never changed. Sure, they occasionally added or deleted menu items, and sometimes even redecorated, but the essential experience of eating there remained the same.

  Skye turned into the restaurant’s parking area at exactly twelve-twenty-five. The absence of Wally’s cruiser indicated that he hadn’t arrived yet.

  The asphalt was currently clear of snow, but an eight-foot mountain of the white stuff was heaped in the center of the lot around a light pole. At the rate they were going, the pile would still be there in April.

  She maneuvered the Bel Air between two yellow lines. The huge car made parking a challenge, especially if another car took up more than its allotted space. And backing out could be a nightmare if the vehicles behind her were sticking out too far.

  Skye turned off the engine and flipped the rearview mirror toward her. Her hair still looked good. She had taken the time that morning to use hot rollers, and with the low humidity, her normal curls had been tamed into hanging in a long curve over her shoulders. A couple of quick strokes of blush, a coat of lip gloss, and she was good to go.

  The temperature was dropping, and Skye tightened her green paisley scarf as she carefully picked her way across the slick blacktop. She did not want to perform a pratfall for the lunch crowd.