Class Reunion of Murder

by Vanessa Gray Bartal

  “I can’t find the light. Where is it?” Jason said.

  “How should I know?”

  “It’s your hotel,” Jason accused.

  “I haven’t had time to sit down and memorize the light switches yet,” she replied. They fumbled in the dark until they found the string and pulled it. Anemic light filtered through the stuffy enclosure.

  “Is there anything else you’ve bought since we started dating? An airport or Laundromat, perhaps.”

  “I’m not keeping it,” she said. “I bought it, fixed it up, and now I intend to sell it.”

  “Oh, see, that makes it better. I thought maybe you bought it because you needed a place to live. Knowing that you bought it because you had a giant pile of cash sitting around and plans to flip it makes me feel loads better.”

  “You get upset when I tell you money things,” Lacy said.

  “I get upset when you don’t,” Jason said.

  “I can’t win. The money means nothing to me; it’s a means to an end. But you’re so touchy about it. I never know what I’m supposed to tell you and not supposed to tell you. I don’t want it to make you feel uncomfortable, so I pretend it doesn’t exist.”

  He swallowed down a retort and let out a sigh of frustration. “You’re right. The money thing is hard for me. I’ll work on it. In the meantime, you can’t not tell me things of this caliber. You bought a hotel, Lacy; that’s a big deal.”

  “It’s a very small hotel,” she said. She risked touching him. When he didn’t move away, she slid her hands from his chest to circle his neck.

  “It’s bigger than any hotel I own,” he said, but he was smiling. His fingers skimmed her waist. “How come you ignored me in there?”

  “I don’t think we should tell anyone about us yet,” she said.

  “Why not?” He regarded her through narrowed, suspicious eyes.

  Because you’re beautiful and I’ve regressed to full-blown ugly duckling. “Well, there’s the murder. I was thinking about motive. Who wanted Summer dead the most? That would be my group of friends. I can be your mole. I’m not sure they would accept me if they knew you and I were together; you’re one of them.”

  “Your thought processes are starting to make sense to me; that’s worrisome.”

  “Yes, and yours are becoming clear to me. I know you don’t want me to get involved in your case, and I know you don’t want me in danger. I’ll just keep my ear to the ground and see if anyone held an especially large grudge against Summer. I’ll liaise.”

  “Is that why you’re dressed like a sexy librarian?” he asked, motioning to her disarray.

  “Sure,” she said. She touched her palm to his forehead. No fever.

  “Why don’t you ever wear your glasses for me?”

  “Because they’re glasses,” she said. Why was it that the only people who found glasses attractive were those with perfect vision? She had spent most of her life trying to escape having four eyes. Now that she had contacts, she had no plans to ever go back.

  “This is how your hair looks after I’ve had my fingers in it for a long time. Are you trying to drive me crazy?”

  “I think you’re already there,” Lacy said. He advanced on her, but she leaned away. “Wait. Close your eyes.”

  He closed his eyes. She popped out her retainers and clasped them out of sight behind his back. “Okay,” she said.

  “What was that about?” he asked.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” she said.

  “So mysterious, Miss Steele.”

  “So delusional, Mr. Cantor,” she replied.

  Sometime later, they emerged from the closet together. Maybe if people knew she’d been having a tête-à-tête in the supply room, they would think that was why she was so disheveled. No such luck, though. There was no one around. Jason followed her toward her office to retrieve the electronic key information for the pool room.

  “Maybe I’ll get lucky and whoever killed Summer was stupid enough to use his own key,” he said.

  “Or her. Summer had a lot of female enemies, too,” Lacy pointed out.

  “Why did Summer have enemies?” Jason said. “She was just Summer.”

  Lacy rolled her eyes, but she was in front of him so he didn’t see. His high school experience had been very different from hers. Before she could answer, Coach Wilson rounded the corner and called to him.

  “Jason Cantor, as I ding diddly live and breathe.”

  “Coach Wilson,” Jason said, his tone a combination of delight and wonder. Obviously the non-swearing was new for him, too.

  They hugged in the manly way that athletes do, more of a chest bump than an actual embrace. “Now tell me this, boy,” the coach demanded. “Why aren’t you playing in the flapjacking alumni game?”

  “I had no idea there was a game until Lacy told me. Then I rifled through my mail, found the form, and realized I had passed the RSVP date.”

  “Boy, you were one of the best quarterbacks I ever coached. You don’t need a blast dagged form. You don’t even need to practice. Just show up on Saturday ready to throw. Look at you.” He stood back to admire Jason’s buff physique. “I bet you work out every flapdoodle day.”

  “Almost,” Jason confessed.

  “Thatta boy,” the coach said. Then he punched Jason in the stomach, hard. “I’ll see you in the game, son.” He left without ever acknowledging Lacy’s presence.

  Jason let out a rush of air and rubbed his stomach. “Geez,” he breathed.

  “Are you bleeding internally?” Lacy asked. She rushed forward and laid her hand gently over his.

  “There’s a high probability. I need a nurse and some TLC, stat.” He reached for her, but before he could connect, Riley and Kimber exploded out of the hallway, laughing and giggling together. They caught sight of Lacy and bustled forward.

  “Guess who’s here,” Kimber whispered.

  From their tone, Lacy had a pretty good idea. “I don’t want to know,” she said with a pointed glance at Jason.

  “It’s him,” Riley said. Her pointed glance at Jason was filled with mischief.

  “Him who?” Jason asked.

  There was no need to answer because as they watched, Chester Campbell rounded the corner and made a beeline for Lacy. “Someone told me you’re the owner of this hotel,” he said.

  Kimber nudged her. Until then, she didn’t realize she had been staring, mouth agape. “Yes.” They were eye to eye. Didn’t he used to be taller? Because she was short, height had never been important to her in a man, but she could have sworn that Chester was taller. And broader. They probably wore the same shirt size. Had he always been so diminutive?

  “My room smells like paint,” he said.

  Kimber nudged her again. This time she had been caught up listening to his voice. Her memory insisted that his tone was mellow and low, a Barry White wanna be. The man before her had a nasally whine that grated her nerves. “We just painted, but we used a low VOC paint. The contractor promised me there would be no fumes.”

  “Well, the contractor was wrong, wasn’t he? My room definitely smells like paint, and I want another one.”

  Did he have a receding hairline in high school? Were his eyes always so beady? What had happened to him? Maybe this wasn’t him. “You’re Chester Campbell, right?”

  “Yes,” he said. “And I want another room.”

  Lacy resisted the urge to reach out and poke him, to make sure he was real. He was nothing like she remembered. “There are no more rooms. The hotel is filled because of the reunion.”

  “Then I want a refund.”

  “What?” She was still staring, perplexed.

  “A refund,” he enunciated.

  “Did you know we were in band together all four years?” she said.

  “If I say yes, will you give me my money back?” he asked.

  “I’m going to have to think about it,” she said, mostly because she had no idea what he had just said. She had been too busy staring at the bald spot o
n the top of his head. How had this guy maneuvered a tuba all over the football field for an entire halftime? Specialized suspenders? That must be the only plausible explanation.

  Chester sighed and wandered away.

  “Well, there were some definite sparks,” Riley said. Kimber laughed. Lacy ignored them.

  “What?” Jason said.

  “Don’t tell me you don’t know,” Riley said, although she knew perfectly well that Jason didn’t know about Lacy’s multi-year crush on Chester. “That was Chester Campbell, Jason. The ChesterCampbell.”

  “Should I know what that means?” Jason said. “He looked vaguely familiar.”

  “He looked vaguely familiar to me, too,” Lacy muttered. He looked nothing like the boy of her dreams, though.

  “Oh, come on. How can you expect me to believe you two are dating if you haven’t told him about Chester?” Kimber said. “I was fed such a steady diet of Chester indoctrination during college that I began to believe I had a crush on him.”

  Jason glanced at the spot Chester had been. “You had a crush on that kid?”

  “You catch on quick, detective,” Riley said.

  “Did you guys go out?” he asked.

  “No,” Lacy said. Chester hadn’t known she was alive. Her ill-fated crush had been unrequited. Now, seeing him in person, she realized how sad that was for her high school self. She had set her sights low, but they had still been too high.

  Jason stalked away.

  “Where are you going?” Lacy called.

  “I’m going to see where he was last night during the murder,” Jason called without turning around.

  Kimber and Riley looked at each other and burst out laughing.

  “You guys, it’s not funny,” Lacy insisted.

  “Jason Cantor is jealous of Chester Campbell,” Riley said when she could breathe. “It’s hilarious.”

  Lacy sputtered a laugh and clapped her hand over her mouth. She didn’t want to make Jason jealous, and she shouldn’t laugh at it when he was. Then her brain gave her a mental image of them side by side, Jason, as beautiful as any of Michelangelo’s sculptures, and Chester, the ill-tempered bantam rooster. Her resolve broke, and she joined Kimber and Riley who were now bent over the checkin counter for support. When Tosh found them a while later, they were still laughing too hard to tell him why.

  Band practice was the perfect opportunity to question people about Summer. While the field marshals from a few generations duked it out to see who would lead, Lacy sat in the stands with Tosh. He reached for her clarinet and played a perfect scale.

  “Pretty good,” she said.

  “Trumpet is my first love. I wanted to be field marshal so bad when I was a kid, I could taste it. But I wasn’t cool enough even for that. Now my wife is a cheerleader.” He gave Lacy her clarinet and waved at Riley who was assembled with the other cheerleading alumni. She waved a pom-pom at him.

  “Which part is the most surprising: wife or cheerleader?” Lacy asked.

  “It’s a tossup,” Tosh said.

  “I didn’t try out to be field marshal because I didn’t want to compete with Chester. That’s the kind of clear thinking that goes on when you think you’re in love.”

  “I can’t believe you had a crush on that guy,” Tosh said.

  “He’s not so bad,” Lacy said.

  “I’m pretty sure I saw him under the bleachers scratching for worms not more than ten minutes ago,” Tosh said.

  “Yeah, well, at least I didn’t marry him,” Lacy blurted, then squeezed her eyes closed. “Sorry.”

  “It’s not what you think,” Tosh said.

  “Then what is it?” Lacy asked. She pressed her palms over her ears. “Never mind. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to be involved.”

  “Bad news: you’re my best friend and her sister. You’re already involved.”

  “I don’t want to be involved more than I have to be,” she clarified.

  “How’s it going with him?” he asked.

  “I think there’s something wrong with him,” Lacy said.

  “Like what?” Tosh asked, frowning.

  “He didn’t say anything about this.” She swept her hand up and down the length of her body.

  “Why should he?”

  “Because I look like this.”

  “A bad hair day and a pair of glasses don’t change who you are. It’s not high school anymore,” Tosh said.

  “Isn’t it? Then why are you sitting here with me instead of mingling with Riley’s friends?”

  “Because they’re mean and they scare me,” he said. “But it’s not the same as being in a committed relationship with someone who cares about you. He and I have had our differences, but he’s not in this for the surface stuff. Give him some credit.”

  Lacy’s eyes filled with tears. She turned her head so he wouldn’t see. “I don’t want him to be embarrassed by me, and right now I’m not at my best. I worked so hard to shed the baby fat and overcome this image. I don’t want to go back.”

  “But it’s all a part of who you are. That chubby weird girl is still hiding in there somewhere, and until you make peace with her, you’re never going to be able to let go and move on.”

  She dashed at her eyes and sniffed. She was crying not only because of his words but because she missed him. For the last year, Tosh had been her closest confidant and friend. Now he was gone, taken by Riley. Maybe that was Riley’s master plan because Lacy couldn’t imagine anything that could hurt more, except perhaps losing Jason.

  “Lacy,” Tosh started. She stood. She didn’t want to talk to him about the impossible gulf named Riley between them.

  “I should go. We’re warming up,” Lacy said. She dashed down the bleachers, being careful to hold on to the railing. If she tumbled down the stairs and broke her arm, it really would be like high school all over again. She had marched her entire junior season with her arm in a sling.

  Band practice was so much fun that Lacy forgot to ask questions. She had missed marching and playing her clarinet but, more than that, she had missed being a part of something. Not until they sat in the bleachers sipping water and trying to cool off did she remember Summer’s death. The somber mood of the cheerleaders jogged her memory. One of theirs had been killed. Was it by one of hers?

  Jody, Carter’s former girlfriend, had finally shown up last night and was sitting nearby. “Hey,” Lacy said.

  “Hey, Lacy,” Jody said.

  “Did you hear about Summer Ridgefield?”

  “Yeah, gross. I hope they drain the pool. Can you imagine what oozed out of that body and into the water?”

  Lacy pressed her hand over her mouth and fought her gag reflex. She was pretty sure she had inadvertently swallowed some of that water.

  “Sorry,” Jody said with a sheepish smile. “I’m a forensic pathologist. I get a little caught up in the gory details.”

  “No problem,” Lacy lied. She would definitely be taking another shower or five when she got back to the hotel. “Did you talk to her last night?”

  Jody laughed. “Me? Why would I talk to Summer? I think the most I ever said to her was, ‘Excuse me, you’re standing on my foot.’”

  “She could be kind of mean,” Lacy said.

  “She was a waste of humanity. I know that’s harsh and I should probably pretend to say something nice, but that’s not who I am. She was a horrible, horrible person. I’m not glad she’s dead, but neither am I sorry.”

  “Yeah, she was pretty horrible. She made my life a nightmare a lot of the time. Did she ever do anything to you?”

  Jody shrugged. “Probably. She hated me and Carter, but we had each other, so we didn’t care.” Her tone faded, her mouth drooped. She glanced helplessly at Carter in the percussion section.

  “Why did you guys break up?” Lacy probed.

  “He got rejected for the forensic pathology program. It was our dream together. He couldn’t stand it that I made it and he didn’t. Fragile male egos, and all that,” J
ody said. She tried to smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

  Lacy thought of Jason and his difficulty with her money. “What is that about, anyway? You would think they would be happy their women are doing well.”

  “I suppose it’s better than the alternative,” Jody said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Being with a mooch who wants to sponge off your largess,” Jody said.

  “That’s true,” Lacy laughed. “We should hang out sometime before you go.”

  “I would like that,” Jody said. “I always wanted to hang out with you more when we were in school, but I had Carter, and you had…” she broke off, wondering what Lacy’d had.

  “Books,” Lacy supplied.

  “Right,” Jody said. “I had those, too. They just came second after Carter.” The sadness and longing flitted over her face before being quickly replaced by a smile. “I guess that explains why I’ve been reading so much since college.”

  Lacy, on the other hand, couldn’t remember the last time she read a book. Definitely not since before she and Jason started dating. “Great, I’m going to get stupider,” she muttered.

  “And I’m going to be a genius,” Jody said. They laughed together and several heads turned in their direction, Carter’s included. Lacy couldn’t help but notice the sadness in his eyes, too. Maybe if she had time, she could work a little matchmaking magic before the weekend was over. “You’re being watched.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Under the bleachers. Tony Rico is watching you.”

  Lacy turned and locked eyes with Tony Rico who was indeed watching her through the slats of the bleachers and wearing the same smile from earlier. She smiled and waved and he eased away. “That’s a little bit creepy,” she said.

  “That’s a little bit Tony. I feel bad for saying this, but we liked having him around to make ourselves feel good. At least there was someone lower on the totem pole than us, right?” Jody said. “If you want to talk to someone who had good reason to hate Summer, you should talk to him. I don’t know what she did to him, but whatever it was, it was epic.”