Tutu Deadly

  “You sound just like a cop.”

  Alissa blushed a little, and I tilted my head at her, studying her face. “Okay, spill it girlfriend. What’s going on?”

  “Well, why should I be content to send the guys out to solve the crime when I’m just as capable as they are? I just turned in my paperwork to Weber to attend the police academy.”

  “Wow.” I was stunned, but I shouldn’t have been. Mr. Smith and Wesson was the first clue that Alissa had gone beyond dispatcher. “Look out, Ogden. It’s all good, I guess. Stupid criminals are even easier to catch when their tongues are hanging out and their eyes all googly.”

  “Jenny, this is not about how I look and you know it.”

  “You’re right. I do know it, but you look hot, and you know that, too.”

  “Well, in this case, how I look is probably going to work against me.”

  I had a hard time comprehending that. In fact, it seemed patently unfair that she would even say that, given the fact that how I looked was never that good, and she always looked like a goddess. If you wanted to talk about things working against you . . .

  “Anyway, let’s look at the facts here. You were attacked by a woman, trying to pretend to be a man. Or at least that is what it sounds like to me. Right?” I nodded. “Who else in Ogden, Utah, would have wanted Sandra Epstein dead, except for another dance mom? Unless she was involved in some sort of intrigue or espionage or dirty dealings. At least that is how it looks on the surface, and perhaps it’s even what the killer wants us to think. But maybe there’s more. There is obviously a lot more that we don’t know about her, and somehow, we have to figure it out. Maybe she stole some money from someone, or witnessed a crime.”

  I didn’t know about that. But I didn’t know much else, either. In fact, I knew next to nothing about Sandra, and so any of the things Alissa mentioned were entirely possible. But I was fixated on the one connection I had with her; she was a nasty psycho dance mom who regularly gave me grief but paid her tuition bill on time.

  Thank goodness Alissa was a broader thinker than I was. She made me boot up the computer my parents had bought me on my last birthday, and pulled chairs over for both of us. I couldn’t type, and didn’t really understand how this Internet thing could possibly work, so there was quite a layer of dust on the computer, but Alissa dusted it off with a rag and then sat down.

  She selected the triangle AOL login that was on the desktop, and clicked the connect button. My parents were paying good money for my monthly AOL hookup, “so we can stay connected,” as my father said, but I rarely looked at it or even turned the computer on. It gave me a headache, and I had enough of those in my life.

  “You’ve got mail,” the deep male voice intoned. The little mailbox said I had 127 messages.

  “Do you ever read this?”

  “Um, once in a while?”

  “Jenny.”

  “Okay, once. There was an e-mail from my cousin Kim inviting me to her singles ward dance, and fifteen e-mails from people who think I have an erectile dysfunction and need medication for it. I figured that was a bad sign, so I didn’t come back.”

  Alissa sighed heavily. My refusal to move technologically into the twentieth-first century drove her nuts. It was also another reason I was not a fit at the sheriff ’s office.

  She quickly scanned through the e-mails, deleting those that were clearly spam, and when she was done, there were just five. Two were from my mother—how was it she was more computer literate than I?—another from my cousin Kim that I told Alissa to delete quickly before it infected my computer with some sort of religious virus, and the other two from an e-mail address I could not identify.

  “Who is this?” Alissa asked.

  The address was “[email protected].”

  “I guess one of my students,” I said, giving her a “duh” look. I didn’t get to do that very often, so I was taking advantage of it when I could.

  She clicked to open it, and inside we saw just three words: “SHE DID IT.”

  There was no signature, and no identifying name on the e-mail.

  “Well. Who did you give your e-mail out to?”

  “Um, just about everybody, at first. Because I was a little excited about a new way to reach me. Then of course I realized that these people never leave me alone as it is. Like they need one more way to contact me.” As if to emphasize my point, my cell phone rang in my purse at the same time as my house phone rang. I ignored both, and let them go to voice mail. “Marlys sent out a flier with the e-mail on it, and then I got a few and then I sort of forgot I had e-mail, and so I never checked it again.”

  “Hmm,” Alissa said, clicking open the second e-mail. It also had three words, all uppercase. Again, there were no identifying names or signatures in the header or the body copy, and no way to tell who had written it. This time, the words read, “SHE’S A KILLER.”

  “Great, cryptic messages from a medium I do not understand, sent by someone anonymous, about someone named She.”

  “Jenny, you need some sleep. Or sex. One or the other.”

  Maybe both, but I wasn’t owning up to it.

  Alissa messed around with the messages some more, then printed them out and clicked on the Save to Hard Drive function.

  “Looks like they were both sent yesterday, one at 5 p.m. and the next one at 7 p.m. I’ll give these to Tate tomorrow, along with the headers, to see if they can trace them, or at least track down the ISP location. In the meantime, I have an idea.”

  “Ice cream?” I asked hopefully. In my world, that was a damn good idea. Even though I was still mostly full from my dinner, I could make room for ice cream.

  “No, not ice cream.” Alissa laughed. “Here’s the thing. I’ve been perplexed as to why the U.S. Marshals Office is involved in this investigation. If it were about Taylee and her being a missing minor, if they brought someone else in, it would be the FBI. And I keep running into shut doors at work, which is unusual, and which means whatever is happening is being highly guarded. And so, it occurred to me. Maybe Sandra Epstein was in the Witness Protection Program, because that is handled by the Marshals Office. And they don’t let out any information at all about the people in it. None.”

  “Witness protection? Alissa, this is not television. And you are always getting mad at me for having an overactive imagination.”

  “Jenny, I’m serious. I mean, think about it. Why the secrets? Why the very attractive Marshal Fallon standing guard over her house? And watching you so closely? It makes sense. You have to admit it.”

  I supposed it did in my world, but usually, things like that did not click in Alissa’s world. That meant either she was right, or she’d been hanging around me too much.

  “I thought I’d do some searches, although where it will get us I don’t know, because obviously, she would have changed her name to Sandra Epstein before she came here.”

  Just to check, Alissa typed in “www.google.com,” then typed “Sandra Epstein” into a box, and hit Enter. A bunch of information about horse shows and a couple of sites that were in a foreign language came up, but there was nothing that linked to the woman I knew as Sandra Epstein.

  “What about Taylee? Would they change her name, too?”

  “Yes, they would have to. It’s standard op. They have to leave everything behind. The only way to protect them is to hide them from the people who want them dead.”

  “Well, if Sandra Epstein was in witness protection, she did not turn over a new leaf in this new life, because obviously people wanted her dead here, too!”

  “Was she Jewish?”

  “Uh, how would I know that?”

  “Epstein is a Jewish name. Did they go to a synagogue, or anything like that?”

  “Not as far as I knew.”

  Alissa sighed. “Okay, did you ever hear them talk about anything of religious significance, or see anything that might have indicated . . .”

  Something clicked in my memory, an event that happened the
year before just as we were ready to go on to perform at a team competition in Bountiful.

  Taylee stood before the mirror in the dressing room, her face tight and solemn, her eyes dark and cloudy, and watched as I tugged at the wrinkled costume she had pulled out of her bag.

  “Tay, you have got to take better care of this stuff. It looks awful,” I lectured. “You’re the strongest dancer I have and now you are going to go out there in a wrinkled costume and all eyes will be on you, front-row fifty, and all they are going to see is this costume that looks like road-kill.” I continued to fuss at the costume, pulling it this way and that, and Taylee held perfectly still, head straight ahead, watching the entire thing in the mirror with no comment and without moving. Until I caught a glimpse of a small gold chain around her neck.

  I reached for it and pulled, but her hand snapped up and held mine, firmly, stronger than I ever could have imagined for a child her age. Our combined movements brought out a small gold cross that she had tucked into her costume, sure I wouldn’t see it.

  “No jewelry, Tay.”

  “I’m not taking it off. I never take it off.”

  “Taylee, you know the team rule is no jewelry . . .”

  “I don’t take it off.” Her voice was even quieter than it had been a moment before. And I could tell she wasn’t messing around. I saw something in her eyes I couldn’t define, and decided to let it go. Besides, no one would notice the cross with the state her costume was in . . .

  “She wore a cross,” I said to Alissa, who had been watching me closely, as though aware a memory had been triggered. “I only saw it once, but it obviously meant a lot to her, and she was not about to take it off.”

  “I wonder why you only saw it once.”

  “She kept it pretty well hidden, under high-necked shirts and shrugs at dance, and . . . well, I really never saw her anywhere else but dance, and sometimes here after dance, but she was still in dance clothes.”

  “Hidden. This just adds to the pile of clues we are coming up with. We should go talk to her teachers. We should . . .”

  “Alissa, we are not detectives. You are a bit closer than I am, but we need to leave this to the police.”

  “The same police who are camping on your doorstep waiting for you to slip up and make a mistake so they can send you to prison?” Yikes. This really was serious. Alissa was kind of in the know, and so maybe they really did suspect me and only me of Sandra Epstein’s murder. Either that or she was bored—and she was between boyfriends—and was looking for a little excitement to spice up her life, and was going to drag me along with her.

  “They really do think it’s me, don’t they?” My voice trembled a little.

  “Jenn, they don’t know anything. That’s the problem. They have a tub of cookie dough that killed a woman, and it had your fingerprints on it, and a witness who says that you were the last person to touch the dough before it was delivered to Epstein. Do I think they really suspect you? Not unless they are total idiots. But people have been tripped up by lesser things.”

  “There’s that other tub of dough, too, the one that almost killed the missionaries.”

  “Actually, that one came back clean of any poison. The Church was not thrilled they had to pay the medical bills of two missionaries, who both had to drink charcoal and have their stomachs pumped, and all that good stuff . . .”

  “Great. I don’t know how to feel. Relieved they weren’t poisoned, or stupid because they weren’t poisoned and I caused such a ruckus.”

  “You did the right thing. Someone put the cookie dough in your freezer, and you don’t know how it got there. Or how they got in. How did they get in? Who has a key?”

  I thought hard. “My mom and dad. Marlys, of course, because I keep locking myself out, and she is always there to let me in. And I think that’s it.”

  “You think?”

  “Well, I can’t remember for sure.”

  “Jenny, someone came in here, through a locked door, and put cookie dough in your fridge. I would think you would try to remember.”

  “I am remembering!” I thought harder, even though my head was already pounding. “No, no one else has a key. I’ve never had a roommate. Certainly never had a husband or a live-in boyfriend. Oh, no, that’s never happened. I’ve certainly not ever handed out a key to anyone like that.” My voice had taken on a desperate edge I wasn’t really thrilled to hear.

  Alissa sighed. “Let’s get some ice cream.” I guess Alissa heard that desperate edge, too.

  ALISSA and I fell asleep in front of the television—she in the beanbag chair, and me on the couch—watching old moves like Pretty in Pink and Mystic Pizza, me dreaming of life as a glamorous redhead like Molly Ringwald or Julia Roberts, instead of the pom-pom head I actually was. The next morning she treated me to breakfast at Village Inn—still three more days until tuition was due—and then asked me where I was going to stay that afternoon, as she had to work swing shift at the sheriff ’s office.

  “I’ll be fine at my apartment,” I assured her. She wasn’t listening. Lucky for me—was it luck?—when we pulled up in front of my apartment building, Detective Tate Wilson was waiting there, arms crossed in front of him, leaning back against his car. He was casual today—Doc Martens, worn Levi’s, leather jacket. Half a sexy smile on his face, causing anticipation to rise up in my stomach. Being a murder suspect would do that to you. Really. I couldn’t possibly be this easily turned on by a man who wanted to see me in handcuffs. Could I?

  “Well, I guess he wasn’t kidding about working this case every day,” I said to a glowering Alissa.

  “That’s not all he’s working,” Alissa said.

  I wasn’t in the mood for a lecture, so I hopped out of the car and waved good-bye to her. She drove off with a scowl on her face, obviously displeased by my unwillingness to take her advice and steer clear of Tate Wilson, although how the heck I was supposed to do that when he was the detective investigating a murder of which I was somewhat of a suspect, I don’t know.

  As I walked toward Tate, I remembered his absence the night before, and my stomach began to churn. I didn’t know what to think about this whole thing anymore. I was terribly attracted to this man—there, I admitted it!—but very insecure about him and his interest in me.

  When I reached his car, he stood up and grabbed my shoulders, pulling me toward him until we were about one inch apart, and I was forced to tilt my head to look up at him. Electric shocks coursed through my body as the smile disappeared from his face. I wanted to be aloof and distant, to keep myself protected from the feelings he stirred in me.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, and I melted like roomtemperature ice cream.

  “No,” I said, hearing the catch in my voice, and wanting to choke down the tears, but unable to do so. “No, I’m not.”

  The tears coursed down my face, and he just held me, tight up against him, while I prayed that his leather jacket was waterproof and that I wasn’t ruining it. I could hardly afford to buy him a new one.

  Finally, the tears stopped coming. I pulled away from him and he smiled that half smile again. “We’re giving the neighbors a show. Maybe we should go inside.”

  “Danger, danger, Jenny T. Partridge!” screamed my internal alert system. Good thing I had no common sense and never listened.

  He followed me to my front door and I pulled my key out of my purse, preparing to insert it into the lock when the gentle pressure on the door made it swing open wide.

  Tate immediately went into cop mode, pulling his gun from the holster located under his jacket and aiming it into the room.

  “Jenny,” screamed a familiar voice, and then I heard a thunk as Auntie Vi fainted dead away on the floor.

  “Jennifer Tamara Partridge,” came my father’s scolding voice. “Just what in the dickens have you gotten yourself into now?”

  THIRTEEN

  APPARENTLY, word had leaked back to Auntie Vi, via her many sources, about my assault the night before. So, of cou
rse, she shared with my parents and convinced them they needed to stage some sort of intervention before I ended up dead. I always thought interventions were for drug addicts or alcoholics, not potato addicts, but I guess one never knew.

  I could see by the look on my father’s face that he was genuinely worried about me. I could see by Auntie Vi’s face that she was genuinely pissed off that she had fainted and missed even an ounce of the action, although having a gun pointed at her gave her a great story to tell to all her cronies. Ogden would be abuzz the moment she left my house. Maybe before.

  At any rate, both Auntie Vi and my father were now urging me to stay with my parents until the murderer was found. A rapid knock on my door meant reinforcements. Unfortunately, it was for their side, not mine. My cousins Kim and Terri had arrived. The only one missing was my mother, who was undoubtedly home in bed, with a migraine, wondering what horrible thing she had done in her life to be cursed with such a daughter.

  “Gotta run,” mouthed Detective Wilson, tapping at his watch, as soon as Terri and Kim turned to him, a gleam lighting up their very-single eyes. He scooted out the door before I could protest. Or ask him where he had been the night I had been attacked.

  “Who’s that?’ Kim asked.

  “The policeman who is investigating Jennifer’s murder case,” announced Auntie Vi, even as she fanned at her face from the kitchen chair my father had pulled over for her. Obviously, a beanbag chair was not a suitable place for a sixty-five-year-old queen-bee gossip maven, and the living room couch was too far from the action for her liking—plus it was old and soft and ate people for a living.

  “Is he single?” Terri asked.

  “Is he Mormon?” Kim asked.

  “Is he a returned missionary?” they asked in unison. God, give me strength Ack. No praying! Both Kim and Terri were well past marrying age, with good reason. Terri resembled a horse, or maybe a small donkey, and Uncle Jim had spent thousands of dollars on braces trying to fix the problem. It hadn’t worked. She still looked like a donkey with a very good orthodontic and dental insurance plan. Kim was a little round—okay, a lot round, and she tended to speak really, really fast in a high, breathy voice. She was one of those women about whom comments like “She has such a pretty face” were always made. Like me, Kim had a serious carb addiction. Unlike me, she did not dance off all those extra calories.