by Libby Klein
“Yeah, Joel was here. He was in gym B with some of the guys shooting hoops.”
“Was he there all night?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t watching him. Why? Do you think he had something to do with what happened?”
“I don’t know. What do you think? What kind of relationship did Joel have with Barbie?”
“It used to be pretty chummy from what I could see. They were always flirting. It’s not my place to judge but it was courting disaster, what with his wife being the school nurse and all. I tried to warn him to stay away from Mrs. Clark but he told me to mind my own business.”
“Did they have any kind of falling-out recently? Any arguments?”
“Something happened but I don’t know what. About the time Mrs. Miller announced that she was pregnant things cooled off between Coach Miller and Coach Clark. You could feel the tension all the way across the gym.”
“Do you think Mrs. Miller suspected something was going on?”
“All I know is there was electricity in the air when the two women were together. Like two cats before an alley fight.”
“How about you? You worked with Coach Clark. How was your relationship?”
“Fine. We didn’t talk much.”
“Doesn’t the head coach work pretty closely with the cheerleading coach?”
“She wasn’t technically part of my department, but she ran a couple of ideas by me from time to time about things she wanted to do with the cheerleaders when it included my boys. Running through banners and nonsense like that. Otherwise she was on her own.”
“Did she run any special plans by you recently?”
He hesitated. “No. Nothing for this school year.” He pushed past me and grabbed the door handle on his car. “Look, I gotta go. I got a meeting to get to.”
I hope it’s an AA meeting. “Sure. Hey, one more thing, how’s your wife, Mrs. Wilcott? We all thought you two were such a cute couple.”
His face flushed and he looked away as he got in the car and started the engine like he hadn’t heard me, so I turned to go.
“Joy. Joy. Joy.”
Oh, that’s me. “Yes?”
“Tell Joanne I said to take care of herself, okay?”
“I will. Thank you, Coach.”
He gunned the Trans Am with the vanity plate that said GLRYDAZ and tore out of the parking lot. As he left, I saw his eyes watching me in the rearview mirror.
Chapter 23
Talking to the coach creeped me out enough to need some coffee, so I drove over to the Washington Street Mall for no other reason than because I needed an espresso. It’s not my fault the owner is so hot. Sometimes people just be needing coffee. Don’t be so judgy.
“Buongiorno, bella.”
I giggled. Get it together, Poppy.
“You look frazzled. What’s going on?”
I sat down at the bar and sighed. “I just tried to interview a couple of suspects and they both lied to me.”
“That makes them look more guilty, no?”
“Oh, definitely. But I only need one person to be guilty as long as it isn’t me.”
“You want a cappuccino?”
“No. I can’t have the milk anymore. It’s kind of like a food allergy. Can I just have a doppio, please.”
“You got it.” He readied the shot. “No more dairy, huh?”
“No. Among other things.”
He raised his eyebrows at that and I felt myself blush.
“F-food things.”
“Ah.” He placed a small glass of sparkling water in front of me.
“What is this for?”
“To cleanse your palate for the espresso.”
Oh. How fancy. I took a drink of the water and waited. He nodded his approval.
He poured two shots and placed one in front of me. I picked it up and went to gulp it, as per usual.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m drinking my espresso.”
“No.” His eyes twinkled with merriment and I put my cup back down.
“First, stir.” He stirred his cup, and I followed suit.
“Then, smell.” We both breathed in the rich aroma.
“Next, toast.” He tapped my cup with his. His eyes never left mine. “Chin-chin. Now, sip.”
We both took sips of our coffees. There was something seductive and intimate about the ritual. That must have been some high-octane caffeine, because my heart was racing.
“Was it good?” He was watching me with intensity.
My voice caught and I squeaked out, “Uh-huh.”
He must’ve been very pleased with my sad little answer because he grinned from ear to ear. “Good.”
He turned away, and I realized there was another lady who had come into the shop while I was preoccupied with my espresso. She was standing at the counter, staring at me with wide eyes. Then she turned to Gia and said, “I want that too.”
Chapter 24
“Which one do we want to try first?” Sawyer had the list of yoga studios Dr. Melinda had given me. We were trying to pick one that had a class for beginners. Was there such a thing as a class for pre-beginners, where you lay on a yoga mat and just watched and snarfed Cheetos?
“How about this one called ‘The Golden Lotus.’ That sounds authentic.”
We were waiting for Aunt Ginny to finish getting ready so we could leave. Sawyer and I were each dressed in traditional yoga pants, or as I called them, pants. Hers were gray, mine were black. And we each had on a ribbed tank top. Hers was pink, mine was black. Sawyer looked adorable. I looked pale and puffy and my upper arms were the consistency of cold oatmeal.
“I’m ready.” Aunt Ginny breezed into the sunroom wearing flowing white cotton pants and a matching white short-sleeved cotton T-shirt. She had a psychedelic scarf wrapped around her head like a turban. She was either going to yoga or a Grateful Dead concert.
Sawyer stared at the bold, tie-dyed rag on Aunt Ginny’s head. I recovered a little faster.
“So whatcha got there?” I asked.
“This is my yogini head wrap. We used to wear them a lot in the sixties.”
“Uh-huh. You planning on wearing that out tonight?”
“You better believe it.”
Sawyer and I looked at each other. “Okay then,” Sawyer said. And I could hear every word she wasn’t saying. “Let’s go.”
The Golden Lotus was in a little strip mall that didn’t have much going for it besides a bicycle rental shop and an Italian water ice stand. I pushed open the industrial glass door covered in faded blackout paper to an eruption of thick white smoke, heavy with sandalwood and body odor. Through the dimly lit studio we saw an Indian statue with six arms in one corner and a brass gong the size of a washing machine drum in the other. Overhead played a series of low metallic hums and I saw Aunt Ginny reach up and adjust her hearing aid.
“Whoo-whee, it’s hot in here.” Sawyer fanned herself with the studio list. “It must be over a hundred degrees.”
“It is precisely one hundred and five degrees.”
An anorexic-looking Indian man dressed in an orange diaper had appeared out of nowhere. At least I think it was out of nowhere. The incense smoke and the sweat was stinging my eyes. “You are here for the class? Come. Come.”
His bony hand grabbed my wrist and was pulling me inside where a handful of people were writhing around on thin mats on a parquet wood floor.
Aunt Ginny clutched her right arm with her hand and rolled her eyes back in her head. “Um. Oh, no. My right arm. I think I’m having a heart attack,” she intoned flatly.
“It’s the left arm,” I hissed through gritted teeth.
“I mean the left arm. Oh, it’s both arms,” Aunt Ginny said. “It must be a double heart attack.”
Sawyer put her arm around Aunt Ginny’s shoulders. “Why, this isn’t the emergency room. I think we made a wrong turn. Come, Granny, let’s get you to the hospital.”
“Ooohh,” Aunt Ginny moaned. “I just hope w
e’re not too late.”
I released myself from the man’s bony grasp and felt for the door. “Sorry, can’t stay. Granny’s sick.”
We got back to the parking lot and deeply breathed in the cool night air. Aunt Ginny, miraculously recovered from her near-death experience, fast walked to the car and called, “Shotgun.”
“What’s next on the list?” I asked Sawyer.
Sawyer consulted the printout and announced, “Zen Mania has a beginner class starting in thirty minutes.”
“This better not be another hinky setup like that last one.” Aunt Ginny gave me a warning look, and I prayed that the next studio would be a little less . . . transcendental.
Zen Mania was a pleasant contrast to the Golden Lotus. Brightly lit with a calm interior and birchwood floors, it was located down at the Point and had a huge picture window overlooking the ocean and beach. Soft music accompanied by the sound of ocean waves created an atmosphere of tranquility. There was a row of brightly colored rubber mats rolled up on one side of the room next to a bowl of lavender mat-cleansing towelettes. A low shelf housed a collection of colored foam blocks and straps.
I looked around warily for signs of anything that would set Aunt Ginny awhirl again, but saw no gongs or diapered men in sight.
Wasn’t yoga supposed to relax you? I felt edgy.
“This one looks good,” Sawyer said. “What do you think, Aunt Ginny?
But Aunt Ginny wasn’t there. She was pulling out an aqua-colored mat and wiping it down.
“Oh, I guess she approves,” Sawyer chuckled.
A lithe woman with white hair cropped very short and spiky like a hedgehog approached us carrying a clipboard. Judging from her baby blue unitard I’d say she had about minus-two percent body fat.
“Hi, I’m Skye. Is this your first time at Zen Mania?”
I told her it was and she gave us some forms to fill out. I filled Aunt Ginny’s out for her since she was sitting cross-legged on her mat with her eyes closed and her hands up in the air making okay signs.
“My aunt’s a little eccentric,” I warned Skye when I caught her watching Aunt Ginny with curiosity. “I hope that won’t be a problem.”
Skye gave me a big smile. “I think it’s wonderful. You’re all going to have a great time tonight. Just go at your own pace and modify the moves to your personal level.” She excused herself to go help someone pick out yoga blocks and a strap.
Sawyer grabbed a handful of lavender towelettes. “Come on, let’s go grab our stuff.”
We got our gear and rolled our mats out at the back of the room. Skye called the class to order and instructed everyone to take their “easy seat.”
Sawyer and I looked around to see what an easy seat was so we could copy it.
“Now I want everyone to practice your pranayama. Breathe in and out, with your hand on your belly.” Skye whispered out the commands in a hypnotic tone and the class began some kind of deep-breathing exercise.
I tried to copy them, when Sawyer nuked my attempts at bliss by jabbing me sharply in the side.
“Ow.”
The lady on the Day-Glo pink mat next to me gave us a cautioning look. “Shhh.”
I mouthed, Sorry, to Ms. Pink Mat and hissed, “What?” to Sawyer.
She jerked her head toward the doorway. “Look who just walked in!”
“Who?” I turned to look and Sawyer hissed at me again.
“No! Don’t look right at them.”
“How am I supposed to see who it is if I don’t look at them?”
Skye softly cleared her throat. “That’s good. Now everyone stretch your legs out in front of you and touch your toes. Use your strap if you need it.”
Sawyer grabbed her strap and looped it around the balls of her feet. “Okay, look, but don’t look like you’re looking.”
I reached around for my strap, but discovered Ms. Pink Mat had taken it. How could that be a good-karma thing to do? I was met with another angry look. I casually glanced to the front of the class. “Ohmygosh! It’s Kelly.”
“I know!” Sawyer gave me a new strap and reached for her toes with her hands. “What’s she doing here?”
Kelly had brought her own mat and was rolling it out in the front of the room. She sat on her mat and bent over until her forehead touched her knees . . . then went through her knees right to the floor.
“I don’t know but it looks like she comes here a lot.” One end of the strap escaped my hand and snapped the man in front of me on the butt. He turned to glare at me, and I mouthed another apology.
Skye cocked her head to the side to peer at me and Sawyer. Her voice was somewhere between the divine bliss of Krishna and the growing wrath of Shiva the Destroyer. “Everyone doing okay in the back?” she said through gritted teeth.
Sawyer and I both nodded a vigorous yes and tried to disappear into the birchwood floor. Aunt Ginny saw us lurking in the shadows and loudly dragged her mat over to join us.
“What are you doing back here?” she whispered loud enough to be heard next door.
“Shhh. Sit down,” I hissed. “The girl that just came in was one of Barbie’s best friends.”
“Okay, let’s move into cat-and-cow position.”
We moved to our hands and knees while Aunt Ginny looked around to see who we were talking about and in another “whisper” said, “The little blonde in the peach top or the chunky lady in the yellow spandex that’s screaming for help?”
The lady in yellow spandex gasped and frowned at Aunt Ginny.
Sawyer tried, without much success, to stifle a snort.
Skye looked up from her cat-and-cow position and gave us another aggravated look. “Let’s all move into downward dog. Remember to relax and just be one with the ocean waves. Let all your stress melt away.” Her terse commands hinted that her aura of calm was now on shaky ground. I suspected she wanted to shove something in our asanas.
“Aunt Ginny!” I whispered lower. “The little blond one.”
Kelly was a few spaces in front and to the right of us. I was relieved that she hadn’t noticed us yet.
Skye cleared her throat more loudly this time. “I want to welcome Poppy McAllister, Sawyer Montgomery, and Virginia Frankowski. They are just visiting us tonight.”
“Well, she knows we’re here now,” Aunt Ginny said dryly.
Sawyer sucked in some air and started choking. I raised my hand in a halfhearted wave to the rest of the class, most of whom seemed pretty irritated for people who were supposed to be Zen. Kelly swung her head through her knees to gape at us so fast she pulled a hamstring and had to sit out for the next few minutes and stretch.
The next hour was full of grunting and sweating in contortionist positions. It was impossible to hang upside down and still see what the instructor was doing.
“I think my spine is fused into a straight line. I have no bend.” Aunt Ginny was looking at me from a ninety-degree angle where we were supposed to be touching our toes in a forward bend.
“I thought this was a beginner class,” I grumbled to Sawyer.
She gasped, “I didn’t know breathing could be so hard.”
Sawyer got a side cramp during triangle pose and fell over, causing me to lose my balance and knock Aunt Ginny down. Skye was looking more and more frazzled as the class went on. She had sweated through her unitard, and her once serene expression was now tight and blotchy. A woman with a pinched face and a nose like a hawk on the other side of Aunt Ginny moved her mat a few inches farther away with a humph and a haughty eye roll. Finally we reached what Skye called corpse pose. It was a lot like just lying there but with someone commanding you to relax.
I tried to let all my tension go as Skye directed, but I felt painfully awkward about doing a corpse pose a few feet away from a woman whose friend had recently done a final corpse pose of her own, what with me being the prime suspect and all.
“How am I supposed to soften my eyeballs?” Sawyer whispered to me.
Aunt Ginny quietly snored and I
snapped my fingers next to her ear. Her eyes popped open and she said, “Squirrels.”
“We’re in yoga,” I whispered.
“Still?” she answered back.
Skye folded her hands in a prayer position and bowed to the class. “Thank you everyone. Namaste.”
I would have bowed, but I couldn’t move. When she came back up, she looked at us with an expression that was anything but tranquil.
“I think I sprained something, but I don’t know what it is.” Sawyer groaned as we wiped off our mats and began rolling them up.
Skye handed me a schedule for the rest of the month. “I hope you enjoyed your first session. Why don’t you come back next week and try out the silent yoga class.”
We thanked her but before we could get out the door we were accosted.
Kelly trapped us by the bulletin board. “Poppy, Sawyer, hi. I can’t believe I ran into you here.”
“Hi,” I answered her while trying to plot an escape route. “We’re just as surprised as you are.”
“How is Robert holding up?” Sawyer asked, making conversation.
Kelly put a hand over her heart. “He’s devastated, of course. But he’s making it through. He’s keeping busy with the campaign.”
“He’s still running for office?” I tried to sound nonchalant.
“Oh, yes. It’s what Barbie would have wanted. She cared very deeply about the issues as much as Robert did. They were really going to make a difference together. Now Robert has dedicated the rest of his campaign to Barbie’s memory. He truly has a servant’s heart.”
Aunt Ginny cocked an eyebrow and looked at Kelly skeptically, then rolled her eyes and looked away while muttering, “Told ya.”
“Isn’t he concerned about the scandal?” Sawyer asked. “I thought the husband was always a suspect.”
“He’s not a suspect.” A look of indignation crossed Kelly’s face and was quickly replaced with her familiar saccharine smile. “The police cleared him right away. Along with being an upstanding member of higher society, Robert was generously answering questions from his constituents, in the cafeteria. In fact”—she looked at me—“I think you are their main suspect.”