Murder of the Cat's Meow: A Scumble River Mystery

by Denise Swanson

Skye feared the students’ attitudes would be ugly, and the faculty’s dispositions might be worse. What could she do to lighten everyone’s mood?

  As she parked and walked into the high school, Skye was pleased that the weather had improved and the temperatures were even warmer than yesterday. She wondered if she could persuade Homer Knapik, the principal, to allow her to do something special for everyone during the lunch period.

  Maybe she could decorate the cafeteria with some of the props left over from the school’s performance of South Pacific, have the lunch ladies make nonalcoholic piña coladas for everyone, and hold a hula contest.

  Unfortunately, as soon as Skye walked in the door, she saw Homer in his attack position by the teachers’ mailboxes, and an alarm went off in her head. Clearly, palm trees and leis were not in her future. Maybe erupting volcanoes, but not a luau.

  Classes started at seven fifty, and teachers were required to be in the building half an hour earlier, but Homer hardly ever arrived before eight. The fact that he was not only present but also out of his office did not bode well for anyone, especially Skye.

  Before she could figure out a way to sneak past the hovering principal, he saw her and yelled across the lobby, “Get your butt over here.” He turned, not bothering to see if Skye heard him. “You won’t believe what our little darlings did over the weekend.”

  Skye followed him down the narrow hall that led from the front counter to his office. Part of her was relieved that the principal’s fury wasn’t caused by her discovery of yet another murder victim. He hated her involvement in criminal investigations, and loved to remind her that she seemed to be a magnet for dead bodies.

  She hid a smile as she entered Homer’s lair. Good thing he didn’t know about Mrs. Griggs’s ghost—a truly dead body that actually did seem to be drawn to Skye—or he’d really be upset. She had barely cleared the threshold when Homer slammed the door. Ignoring her, he marched over to the coffee machine on the credenza beneath the window and poured himself a cup. The big leather swivel chair behind his desk groaned in protest when he flopped into its seat.

  Skye studied the principal as he cradled his mug in one large hand, blowing on the dark liquid before taking a cautious sip. He looked like a manatee wearing a fur coat. Hair protruded from his ears, nose, and above his loosened tie. She grimaced when he idly stroked the tuft of fur sticking out between the gaping buttons of his shirt. For as long as she’d known him, Homer had needed a wax job in the worst way.

  After taking several gulps of coffee, he acknowledged Skye and grunted, “Are you waiting for a royal invitation? Have a seat, for crying out loud, before I get a crick in my neck.”

  Skye complied, then dug out a pen and legal pad from her tote. She sat at attention, waiting for further instructions. Homer hated to be rushed, and he didn’t encourage initiative in his employees.

  “Care to take a guess what a dozen or so of our senior girls decided to do for fun?” Homer tapped a folder on his desk. “You know, those dumbasses you keep insisting are America’s future.”

  Skye was silent. She refused to answer him when he belittled the students. And even though Homer was one of the rare individuals who responded neither to positive nor to negative reinforcement, she hadn’t given up trying to get him to be more respectful.

  Her lack of response seemed to irritate him and he barked, “Are you deaf?”

  She raised an eyebrow, but still didn’t speak. Minutes ticked by and she bit her tongue, resisting the urge to fill the empty air.

  “Fine.” Homer’s face had turned a mottled red and he blew out a raspberry. “I suppose I’ll have to tell you, since you obviously have no idea what your precious students are up to. What’s the matter? Aren’t they talking to you anymore? Have you lost your coolness?”

  Skye squirmed. Homer had homed in on her weakness like Winnie the Pooh on a honeycomb. For some reason she hadn’t been able to get as close to this year’s group of kids. Even the ones on the school newspaper didn’t confide in her as they had in the past.

  “While you were busy playing Nancy Drew—” Homer pointed a hairy finger at her, and when she flinched, he nodded. “Yes, I heard you discovered yet another stiff, but I’m not even going there.”

  “Thank goodness,” Skye muttered under her breath, then asked aloud, “So, what happened?” She supposed someone had gotten drunk and stupid.

  “Bitsy Kessler had a slumber party, or whatever in the hell they call them nowadays.” Homer pushed the file he’d been toying with across his desktop to Skye, then leaned back and stared at her.

  “And?” she asked, flipping the folder open and seeing a single sheet of paper containing a list of names, most of which she recognized as belonging to the popular crowd or to girls who were on the fringes.

  “And sometime during the night,” Homer’s two oversize front teeth gnawed on his bottom lip, “they decide to play a game.”

  “Strip Poker? Truth or Dare?” Skye had a sinking feel that none of the pastimes she could name had been the one the girls had chosen.

  “I wish.” Homer shook his head from side to side like a mournful bull.

  “Just tell me, for heaven’s sake,” Skye pleaded, unable to stand the suspense.

  “Some tomfool thing called Pass Out. I thought it was a drinking game, but Mrs. Kessler explained to me, in detail, that it isn’t.”

  “That’s a self-strangulation game!” Skye’s voice rose in alarm. “I remember reading about it in one of the psych journals. Kids have died from playing it.”

  Homer folded his hands across his paunch. “Who thinks up this crazy shit?”

  Skye didn’t have an answer, but she had a question of her own. “Are the girls all right?”

  “Yeah.” Homer glowered. “Mrs. Kessler caught them before it went too far.”

  “Thank God.” Skye sank back against her chair, her heart still racing. “That poor woman. Bitsy is her oldest child.”

  “Yeah.” Homer twitched his shoulders. “A lot of times the first pancake turns out the worst.”

  “Seriously?” Skye rolled her eyes. Where did Homer come up with sayings like that?

  “What I want to know,” Homer said, gazing at the ceiling as if seeking an answer from the cracked plaster, “is why in blue blazes would anyone want to strangle themselves? Are they suicidal?”

  “Hmm.” Skye paused to gather her thoughts.

  “Come on,” Homer prodded. “You’re the expert. Are they trying to off themselves or what?”

  “According to what I’ve read, depriving yourself of oxygen induces a kind of euphoric sensation.” Skye might have been flattered that Homer thought of her as an authority, but she knew that his definition of an expert was the person who was the least ignorant about the subject. “This game is nothing new, but cell phones and online videos are spreading it.”

  “Parents need to keep those kids off the Internet.” Homer’s tone was exasperated. “Don’t those girls realize they could die?”

  “That’s part of the thrill.” Skye took a deep breath, then clarified. “For one thing, adolescents don’t have a firm grasp of their own mortality. Then there’s the whole peer pressure factor.”

  Homer grunted, clearly not understanding.

  “And topping it all off, today’s teenagers have seen so much outrageous behavior from actors and singers and athletes, they think they need to push the envelope themselves in order to be ‘with it.’”

  “I’ve been getting calls since yesterday morning wanting to know what the school is going to do about this matter.” Homer lumbered to his feet. “Once again, the parents expect us to do their job.”

  “That’s not fair,” Skye objected. “Parenting is difficult.”

  “Parenting is easy.” Homer shook his head. “It’s the freaking kids that make it hard.”

  Skye rolled her eyes. Homer’s lack of compassion was astounding, but she tried to explain. “Frequently moms and dads have no idea how to handle an issue like this.” She
added, “I’m glad they’re letting us know it’s a problem and asking for our help.”

  “Since you’re so thrilled to be included, you can contact all the parents on this list, tell them you’ll be taking charge of this matter, and present the results of your intervention to the school board.”

  Great! Skye knew she was the logical person to deal with the situation, and in fact she wanted to, but she was also the logical person to handle hundreds of other issues. Where would she find the time for everything?

  CHAPTER 9

  Look What the Cat Dragged In

  Skye eighty-sixed her plans to begin Zach Van Stee’s reevaluation and instead spent the rest of the morning on the phone contacting parents. Their reactions were mixed. Most were happy to have Skye talk to their daughters about the dangers of games such as Pass Out, but a couple of them took quite a bit of persuasion. And Ashley Yates’s folks refused even to consider the matter.

  Troy Yates Sr. was president of the First National Bank and thus accustomed to being the one in charge. Furthermore, he was still angry with the school, and with Skye in particular, for an unflattering article about Ashley that had run in the school newspaper a few semesters ago. All that, along with the fact that Ashley was a fifth-year senior, having failed several courses when she was a junior, and there was no changing Mr. Yates’s mind.

  It was nearly noon by the time Skye finished the last call, and she was due at the grade school at twelve thirty. With the clock ticking, she hurriedly filled out the counseling permission slips for the eleven girls whose parents had agreed to let her see their daughters, rushed out of her office and down the hall.

  Since Skye didn’t have time to hand out the documents herself, she was asking Opal Hill, the school secretary, to make sure the girls received the consent forms before they went home that afternoon when Trixie approached the front counter.

  “Where have you been?” Trixie asked Skye. She had recently decided to write a mystery novel in hopes of becoming the twenty-first-century Agatha Christie, so her next question made sense to Skye: “And why didn’t you call me after you found that body yesterday? It sounds like a great plot for my book.”

  “I’m sorry.” Skye crossed her fingers. “After I got done at the police station, I was just too exhausted to talk about it all again.” In truth, she hadn’t even thought to phone Trixie. She’d been too worried about Elijah, and too upset about the whole situation to discuss it—even with her BFF.

  “Come, tell me now.” Trixie grabbed Skye’s hand and tried to tug her down the hall. Which, considering that Trixie was five inches shorter and quite a bit lighter, wasn’t very effective.

  “I can’t.” Skye refused to budge, freeing her hand and heading toward the front door. “I’m due at the elementary school in fifteen minutes.”

  “Can’t you be a tiny bit late?” Trixie called after her. “I made chocolate cupcakes over the weekend, and I brought you one,” she coaxed. “It has lots of your favorite buttercream vanilla icing on top.”

  “Well…” Skye hesitated. She was starving, and had forgotten to pack a lunch. “Maybe a couple of minutes. I really should fill you in on an issue that concerns your cheerleaders.”

  “Is there a problem?” Trixie immediately sobered. As cheerleading coach, she usually knew any mischief her girls were up to. “I haven’t heard anything.” She ran her hands through her short faun-colored hair, making it stick up like peaks of meringue. “Are they okay?”

  Skye filled her in as they walked toward the library, then added, “So I’m talking to all the girls tomorrow, with the exception of Ashley, whose parents refused to give their consent. Maybe you can get her to bring up the subject, and since you’re not a psychologist you don’t need permission, which means it wouldn’t be a problem if you two had a chat.”

  “Sure.” The two women entered the library’s storeroom and climbed on stools pulled up to the worktable. “She’s my student aide second hour.”

  Trixie pulled a square Tupperware container toward her, pried off the lid, and offered it to Skye. “So, tell me everything about the murder.”

  Skye summarized the weekend’s events around bites of cupcake, ending with, “Then I went into the basement’s utility closet to clean Bingo up, and there was Alexis lying dead on the floor.”

  “From what you’ve said”—Trixie swallowed the last crumb of her cupcake, and reached for another—“she was nearly universally disliked.”

  “So it seems.” Skye licked icing off her fingers, grabbed her tote, and stood up.

  “Do you think the murderer is that peculiar ex-doctor?” Trixie asked.

  “I hope not.” Skye edged toward the door, checking her watch. If she hurried, there was a chance that Caroline Greer, the grade school principal, wouldn’t notice that she was late. “At least five others had good reasons that I know about to dislike Alexis.”

  “The guy from speed dating, the jewelry maker, the twins, and the cat breeder,” Trixie ticked off, following Skye through the library.

  “Uh-huh.” Skye hurried down the hall toward the lobby. “And there’s a good chance there are others I’m not aware of.”

  “True.” Trixie trotted after Skye. “She sure sounds like a mean girl who never changed, so it could even be someone from her past.”

  “Probably not.” Skye pushed through the front door. “Bunny had bouncers at the entrance so no one but cat show and speed-dating participants could attend the bowler disco party.”

  “This is almost like a locked-room mystery,” Trixie called after Skye. “They’re the best kind.”

  Skye had been able to sneak into the elementary school without running into the principal. And Caroline didn’t mention her tardiness when they met for the special education intake conference later that afternoon, so it appeared Skye was in the clear.

  Classes ended at three thirty, but the staff was required to stay an additional twenty minutes. Typically Skye was among the last to leave, but today she beat everyone out the door—even the teacher who was retiring in two months and was usually the first to pull out of the parking lot.

  As Skye stepped across the PD’s threshold into the lobby, she noticed a young woman sitting on the bench, and stopped in midstride. “Spike Yamaguchi! When did you get into town?”

  “About an hour ago.” Spike stood and smoothed her trouser-cut jeans.

  Spike was Simon’s half sister—a sibling he hadn’t known existed until she was sixteen and contacted him after her adoptive parents were killed in a car crash. Simon had been shocked to discover that Bunny, who had left him and his father in order to pursue her dream of becoming a dancer, had had a secret baby.

  Spike gave Skye a hug. “Sorry I didn’t e-mail you that I was coming.”

  “That’s okay,” Skye assured her. “It’s great to see you.”

  Their friendship had had a shaky start. When they first met, Skye was convinced that Spike and Simon were having an affair. It hadn’t helped matters that that mistaken belief had exposed other problems in Skye and Simon’s relationship, which had in turn ended it. Still, despite everything, once Spike’s true relationship with Simon was fully explained, Skye and Spike had become good friends.

  “Are you here to visit your mom?” Skye asked.

  “Yes and no. Remember I told you about the gig at the TV station in Chicago?” Spike was an investigative reporter for a newspaper in California, but she had been actively pursuing a television career.

  “Of course.” Skye had respected Spike’s request to keep the possibility of her relocation to Illinois from Bunny and Simon. “I’ve had my fingers crossed for you.”

  “Thanks.” Spike’s delicate features, a blend of Asian and European, relaxed into a smile. “Anyway, I found out Thursday afternoon that I got the job! But the catch was they wanted me on the air by the weekend. So I threw a few things in a suitcase and flew into O’Hare the next day. Grandfather will follow once I get settled.”

  “Wow!” Skye shook her head i
n awe. “You really travel fast and light.”

  “Yep.” Spike sat back down, then continued, “On Saturday when I was going through my predecessors’ desk, I found a tip about government corruption in an Illinois small town. He’d scribbled a note that said no one was interested in a downstate scandal and shoved it in a drawer.” Spike made a face. “I disagreed, and when I showed it to my new boss, she concurred. Which is why I’m here.”

  “What town are you investigating?” Skye asked as she sat next to Spike on the bench.

  Spike didn’t answer right away, and Skye held her breath. If it was Scumble River, her family was in for a hard time. Skye’s uncle was the mayor, which pretty much put her whole family smack-dab in the middle of every new controversy in town.

  “Not here, but that’s all I can say.” Spike’s voice had sharpened. “I can’t risk being scooped. This could be a big story for me.”

  “No problem. As long as it isn’t my hometown, I’m happy.” Skye gave her a thumbs-up. “Are you at the PD to ask questions for your story?”

  “No.” Spike shook her head and her straight black hair swung back and forth. “I’m waiting for Bunny to get done. The chief is interviewing her about Saturday’s murder.”

  Skye frowned. “I thought he was going to talk to her last night.”

  “I gather he couldn’t find her.” Spike raised a feathery brow.

  “Oh?”

  “Bunny pulled into her garage just as I got out of my rental car this afternoon,” Spike explained. “Apparently, since the bowling alley was closed yesterday and she didn’t have to work, she didn’t spend the night at home. From what I overheard when the chief arrived a few minutes later, Bunny had her cell phone turned off as well.”

  “Ah.” Skye tilted her head, thinking. Was Bunny with the man Skye had seen her join after the speed-dating event? She had forgotten to mention him to Wally. “When did you and she get to the station?”

  “About forty-five minutes ago.” Spike crossed her legs, swinging her foot impatiently.