by Libby Klein
Chapter 32
Tonight was my chance to relax and de-stress. Just a quiet night with the girls. No investigating. No humiliation. No accusations. Just sitting around, talking about old times. Sawyer had set the whole thing up.
Connie lived off the island in North Cape May. It was an old neighborhood, where the houses were aluminum siding, backyards were surrounded by chain-link fence, and keeping up with the Joneses meant having a carport and an above-ground pool.
Connie’s house was a typical East Coast Colonial, with baby-blue siding and white shutters. Pots of bright orange mums were placed on either side of the front door and the girls’ bikes were sitting in the front yard.
Sawyer met me at the door decked out in tight, acid-washed jeans, neon orange leg warmers, and a hot pink sweatshirt cut off at one shoulder. She had big white plastic triangles dangling from her ears and a giant bow in her teased-up hair.
“Is there something you want to tell me?”
Sawyer flashed her million-dollar smile. “We have a surprise for you.”
“I can see that.”
Kim called from the back room, “Get her in here!”
Sawyer grabbed my arm and dragged me through the living room where Mike and Emmilee were watching college football.
“Hi, Mike.”
“Good luck in there.”
Emmilee giggled in an ominous, conspiratorial kind of way.
The girls were in Connie’s kitchen surrounded by every hair and makeup product on the market, and they were dressed like an ’80s cover band. Connie had spiked up her hair Billy Idol–style. She was wearing white pants, a light blue T-shirt, and a white blazer with the sleeves pushed back. Her daughter, Sabrina, was applying a thick layer of bright blue eyeshadow in long streaks across Connie’s eyelids.
“It’s eighties night at the karaoke club.”
“No.”
“We’re all going.”
“No.”
“Oh, come on,” Sawyer pleaded.
“You know I have nothing to wear to this.”
Kim was wearing a sleeveless, gold foil minidress, a red Members Only leather jacket, with matching red heels and red lipstick. She handed me a stack of clothes. “We got you covered.”
My heart sank. What happened to relaxing? Don’t people just sit around and talk anymore? This day just keeps getting better and better. I did the forced march up to Connie’s bathroom like a condemned prisoner. Prison might be a step up from the week I’d had.
The girls had gotten me a hot-pink push-up bra, Like that was really necessary. A sleeveless pink minidress with a black mesh belly shirt. A pair of black half-calf fishnet capris and black ankle boots. I wiggled into the outfit and stared at myself in Connie’s mirror in shock. I looked like a giant box of Good & Plenty.
Returning to the kitchen, I was greeted by the girls’ squeals of delight. Even Sabrina was in on it.
“You look great, Aunt Poppy.”
Connie pulled out a chair for me. “Sit down and Kim will do your hair. Sabrina will do your makeup.”
I flopped on the chair. “I feel I need to curb your expectations that I’m planning on singing at this club.”
Sawyer sat across from me. “Don’t be ridiculous. We’re all going to sing. And I happen to know that you have a beautiful voice. We were in choir together.”
“That was a lifetime ago.” I have to find a way to get out of this.
Kim was teasing my hair to within an inch of its life. “Just wait till we get there and you hear the rest of us. You have nothing to worry about.”
“Sawyer, did you find anything out about Billy Sommers’s science fair project?”
“Not yet. I’m still waiting to hear back from one source.”
I reached for the hand mirror and Sawyer snatched it away. “Not yet. Hey, how was the big date?”
“It was okay. The date itself was uneventful but the kiss at the end was amazing.”
The girls all made “ooooh” noises, and Sabrina giggled. “How are you enjoying cheerleading, Sabrina?”
“I love it. At least I did before what happened to Coach Clark.”
The room grew very quiet.
“The cheerleaders must really miss her.”
“She just got us all new uniforms and equipment from one of her secret donors. And she was preparing some of us for her all-star team that competes nationally.”
“Just some of you?”
“Coach Clark owns Destiny Cheer Academy, and she handpicks the best girls from the public schools to represent her. She said if I kept working on my extension that I’d be a definite.”
“Very exciting. Did she have a partner who can take her place?”
“We haven’t heard yet, but I think it will be announced this weekend at our All-State Competition. Do you want to come watch me cheer?”
“I’d love to.”
Sabrina grinned and went back to applying blush to my cheeks.
Connie was applying another layer of mascara to her already tarantula lashes. “Whatever came from Amber’s searching the house? Did you find out what she was looking for?”
“I’m pretty sure she was looking for a poisonous plant.”
“What makes you think that?”
“She took all the yard clippings with her. She was also bent out of shape because we didn’t have any chemicals.”
Sawyer was killing brain cells with a toxic amount of hairspray. “What kind of chemicals?”
“Household cleaner kind of stuff.”
Connie started packing up the hot rollers. “Does this mean Barbie died from a poisonous cocktail of Windex and petunias?”
“I don’t know. I went to Kristen’s office to follow up on a lead about the plants.”
Kim was finished ripping my hair out, so it was Sabrina’s turn to do my makeup. Lord, help me.
“Did she say anything helpful when you questioned her?”
“Well, I did the ‘Wabbit Season’ on her.”
Sawyer smacked the table. “Get out! And it worked?”
“Just like it used to.”
“What’d you find out?” Connie asked. Connie turned to Sabrina. “Bean, you are sworn to secrecy. Anything you hear can’t be repeated outside of this room, okay?” Connie held up her pinkie.
Sabrina hooked pinkies with her mom and said, “I promise.”
A pang of envy shot through me. How wonderful would it be to have a daughter to make pinkie promises with?
“She said that you would have to sanitize needles in strong bleach if you planned on using them again, and, that Coach Wilcott had a lot of secret meetings with Barbie and she thought he had needles in his med kit.”
Sabrina was putting blush on me with a giant puffy brush and stopped mid-swipe. She had a strange look in her eyes.
“So I snuck into the coach’s office and searched the med kit.”
The room went silent.
Sawyer was the first to speak. “You did what?” “What choice did I have? He’s been ducking me. I questioned the coach the other day and he lied about even eating at the reunion and we all saw him there.”
Kim sat down and pulled her chair closer. “Did you find anything?”
“I took some pictures on my phone. I only found an EpiPen, but he had a lot of alcohol wipes like you would have to prep for injections. What do you suppose those were for?”
Sabrina had been watching us very closely. She was growing paler by the minute.
Connie asked her, “Bean? What’s going on? Do you know something?”
“Well. I don’t want to get anyone in trouble.”
“If you know something that could help Aunt Poppy, we need to hear it.”
We all waited expectantly.
“Last year, Coach Wilcott was arrested during fourth period.”
Sawyer gasped. “Oh my God! For what?”
“Nobody knows. But he was back the next morning and it kind of gave him some street cred, so nobody cared.”
�
�And nothing ever came of it?” Kim asked.
“Not that I know of. He’s still the gym teacher and basketball coach, so I guess not. But then a couple months later, my boyfriend, Mark, started getting sick.”
“Your boyfriend?”
“Mo-om.”
“We’ll talk about that later.”
“Go on, hun,” Kim encouraged her.
“Mark said he was working toward taking over the starting point guard position since Chad Nickels was graduating soon. The coach was giving him something to give him an edge, only it was making his face break out really bad and he was having trouble concentrating in his classes.”
“Giving him something like what?” I asked.
“He said he wasn’t allowed to talk about it. He wanted to stop taking it, but he was afraid he would lose his place on the lineup. The coach was really pushing the team to improve.”
We were all stunned.
Connie was the first to speak. “It has to be steroids.”
“Aren’t they illegal?” Sawyer asked.
“Oh, you bet they are,” Connie said.
“Mom, you can’t say anything. I promised,” Sabrina pleaded with Connie.
“Maybe that was what all the secret meetings with Barbie were about,” I said. “Maybe she found out about the steroids, and was threatening to tell on the coach so he killed her.”
“But how do we prove it?” Sawyer asked.
“I’ll call Amber in the morning and tell her what we found.” I looked at Sabrina. “I won’t say how we discovered it. At the very least it might cause her to consider other suspects.”
I picked up the hand mirror that Sawyer forgot she was keeping from me and looked at myself. Rainbow eyeshadow, thick black eyeliner, and fuchsia cheekbones. “I want this to be my prison headshot if I’m booked.”
Chapter 33
Hotlipz was the hottest karaoke bar in Cape May. The club was set up lounge-style. White leatherette armchairs set around glass mosaic coffee tables facing a wide stage bathed in purple light. The giant screen on either side of the stage displayed song lyrics so the audience could sing along. A bar stretched along the back wall where only losers and drunks worked on tomorrow’s hangovers.
The night was just picking up and the room was all spandex and hair gel as far as the eye could see. Two middle-aged guys with beer bellies, dressed head to toe in yellow leather, were on stage destroying Tears for Fears’s song “Shout.”
Sawyer was bouncing with excitement. “I’m going to go sign us up for a couple songs.”
Kim led the way to a reserved table for four. “Sign me up for ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun.’”
The girls ordered drinks, club soda with lemon for me, and Sawyer returned. “I wanted to do ‘Eternal Flame,’ but there were already four people ahead of me signed up for it.”
“So what did you take?” I asked.
“‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’, and I signed you up to sing something, Poppy.”
“What?”
“I knew you wouldn’t do it yourself and you need to relax.”
“Relax. By singing in front of all these people?”
“Don’t worry, you get to pick the song when you get up there.”
“Oh, that makes me feel much better.”
The DJ motioned to Sawyer. “I slipped the DJ a twenty to jump the line. Come on, we’re up.”
I started to panic. “All of us.”
Connie was pulling my arm. “Yeah, come on. It’ll be like old times.”
Before I could fake an alien abduction or pull the fire alarm, I was onstage knee-deep into the Go-Go’s “Our Lips are Sealed.”
Okay, so I had more fun than a fat girl at Hershey Park. The crowd was generous and the applause was heady. Except for one lone voice from the bar with their back to us, booing.
“Who is that?” Kim looked like she was going to go postal on the boo-er and Connie held her back. “That is not proper karaoke etiquette, dude!”
The person at the bar responded, “Neither was that sucky song.”
“That’s it.” Kim got away from us and marched over to encourage the rude guest to be more polite by way of going all “Jersey girl” on him.
Then the guy spun around on his barstool.
“Joanne?”
I stopped short and Sawyer crashed into the back of me. There she was, Joanne Junk. Dressed in David Bowie glam and three sheets to the wind.
“Why are you losers here anyway? Ssshouldn’t you be out hiding evidence or copping a plea?”
“Oh, boy.” Connie motioned to the bartender. “Can we get some coffee over here, please?”
Joanne started crying into her shots. “She was the only friend I had. No one else liked me until Barbie. Then you took her away.”
“Joanne, please believe me. I didn’t kill Barbie.” I sat on the stool next to Joanne and spoke to her softly. “I know you’re hurting, and I’m so sorry for what you’re going through. I would feel the same way if something happened to these girls.”
“I saw them, you know.”
The girls and I made eye contact with one another to see if any of us understood what Joanne was talking about. None of us did. “Saw who?”
“He didn’t deserve her either.”
“Who, Joanne?”
“Robert. He was cheating on her. She told me she knew.”
“What did she say?”
“That it served her right for all the terrible things she’d done.”
Kim muttered, “Well, that’s probably true.”
Connie jabbed Kim in the side. “What else did she say, Joanne?”
Joanne didn’t answer directly. She was in a drunken fog. “She should have left him like I told her to.”
The bartender brought Joanne’s coffee, and I encouraged her to drink it. “Did she know who he was cheating with?”
“It was Kelly, you idiot. I saw them the night of the reunion.”
“Saw them where?” I asked.
“After Barbie was hurt by Sasquatch over there”—Joanne glared over at Sawyer—“she lashed out like she does when she’s embarrassed.”
“Uh-huh.” Just when she’s embarrassed. Okay, let’s go with that. “That’s when you and Barbie had the fight Kristen mentioned?”
“It wasn’t a fight. Barbie said some mean things she didn’t mean and I had to go out for some air. I went out the front door and saw Kelly and Robert making out by the gymnasium emergency exit.”
“Are you sure it was them?” I remembered Tim saying he saw them in the cafeteria getting cozy.
“I’m not an idiot you . . . idiot.”
Kim pushed the cup and saucer closer to Joanne. “Here, have some more coffee. Your retorts are getting weak.”
“Joanne, I’ve been trying to find out who killed Barbie that night. Anything you know could help bring the true killer down.” I put my hand on Joanne’s shoulder. “I know you want that more than anyone. Now, are you sure it was Robert and Kelly?”
Joanne started to sniffle again. “It was definitely Robert. But I didn’t see the blonde’s face. I might have thought it was Barbie if I hadn’t just left her with Kristen, but I’m sure it was Kelly.”
“Where was Amber?”
“In the main office on her phone.”
Sawyer asked, “What did you do after you saw them together?”
“I was so upset I ran. I had nowhere to go so I just circled the building. Until I heard idiot number one here scream.” Joanne tilted her head in my direction.
I guess I’m idiot number one.
The DJ called up “Jo-Jo Smooth” to do a number, and the crowd started chanting, “Jo-Jo. Jo-Jo.”
“That’s me. I’ll be right back.” Joanne slipped off the barstool and took the stage.
We couldn’t wait to see what Buffalo Gal was about to perform. Especially since she was in no condition to do much of anything right now.
But Joanne sang the heck out of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” When
she hit the final note, the crowd erupted and stood to their feet.
Joanne politely bowed and left the stage like this was nothing new for her. She sat back down on her barstool. “So what have you idiots found out with all your nosing around?”
“Joanne. That was amazing,” Sawyer said.
“Whatever,” Joanne grunted in reply.
“No, really, Joanne,” I said. “You are really good.”
Joanne narrowed her eyes at us. “Are you making fun of me?”
“We are not making fun of you. We had no idea you could sing like that.”
Joanne shrugged it off, but we could tell she was pleased with the compliment. We invited her to join us at our table. Then we were shocked when she agreed. We talked a little about the investigation but gave nothing away. Who knew what Joanne would be like when she sobered up?
“Poppy McAllister, you’re on!”
I thought I’d faint dead away when the DJ called my name. I had totally forgotten about Sawyer signing me up to sing when we arrived.
Who knows. I could be in prison this time next month. My list of regrets is long enough without adding “failure to let go at karaoke.” The old Poppy wouldn’t even have been here in the first place. The new Poppy decided to suck it up and sing.
It’s hard to find a song that represents the rebellious, wild days of our youth that isn’t currently being used to sell fiber bars, razor blades, or sexual aid drugs, but I picked a song that truly epitomized my current place in life. The anthem of the ’80s generation, “Livin’ on a Prayer.”
The secret to good karaoke is that the more the audience drinks, the better you sound. I gave it my all, and thank God and Jon Bon Jovi, the entire bar sang along with me.
Sawyer had me ready to try out for American Idol, but my favorite compliment came from Joanne.
“You didn’t suck. In fact, you sounded pretty good—in every key you were in.”
* * *
When I got home, high on adrenaline, I could feel that something was off. I found Aunt Ginny sitting by herself in the kitchen in the dark.