Death at a Talent Show (Book 6 Molly Masters Mysteries)

by Leslie O'Kane

  “Wait till next year.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Karen and Rachel will be in high school. That’s when the dating starts.”

  “No way. They’re way too young. They’ll still only be fourteen.”

  “Don’t you remember ninth-grade couples back when we were at Carlton High School?”

  “Yeah, but that’s …different.”

  “How? Because now you’re a mother, talking about your daughter?”

  “Exactly. And I’m old enough now to know how young fourteen really is.”

  “Sure, but try pointing that out to a fourteen-year-old.”

  My stomach was doing flip-flops, and my tea had suddenly lost its flavor. I couldn’t face the thought of my one and only little girl riding in the car of some boy who’d just gotten his license and felt immortal. There had to be some way to delay this. Maybe I could start feeding her chocolate and greasy foods and hope for an outbreak of acne. Ninth grade was still six months away, at least, and this murder case had better be solved long before then.

  Tommy’s sons were in high school, now that I thought about it. They might know exactly what was going on between Corinne and Danielle Underwood’s son. “Are Joey and Jasper here?”

  Lauren scoffed. “With school out? Of course not. They’re hanging out at the mall.”

  Which was probably where most of the high-schoolers were. I knew Tiffany Saunders well, and she’d be easy to broach the subject with. Getting to my feet, I asked, “Want to come shopping with me?”

  “Shopping? You’re asking me to go shopping?” She narrowed her eyes and studied me. “Okay, who are you really, and what have you done with my friend Molly?”

  “I want to locate Tiffany Saunders and see what I can find out about some of these messy relationships that have been affecting our clown suspects.”

  I easily found Tiffany at a table in the food court at the mall. Feature-wise, Tiffany and her mother were dead ringers, but Tiffany always did interesting things to her hair. Currently she was going for the wet look, wearing her raven-dyed hair slicked back against her scalp. Surrounded by four other teenagers, she looked less than thrilled to see me. I greeted her by name, and she said, “Hey.” When I didn’t move on, she said to her companions, “This is Molly Masters, guys. I used to babysit for her kids.”

  “Hey,” a couple of them mumbled, or at least gave a grunt that sounded close enough.

  “Nice to meet you.” I looked at the pretty girl next to Tiffany. Her hair had the same strawberry-blond hue as Olivia Garrett’s, along with similar attractive features and a slim, dancer’s body. “You must be Jenny Garrett, right? You look a little like your mom.”

  “Please. I look like my dad. Everyone knows that.”

  “I stand corrected,” I replied, though I was thinking that her late father had to have been her mother’s lookalike for this to be true.

  A solidly built young man with bleached-blond hair had his arm around her, and I suspected that he must be Danielle Underwood’s son. His overall bearing was tense and unhappy, and he wore a deep frown. Such could often be said of teenagers in general, however. Returning my gaze to Tiffany, I asked, “Can I talk to you for just a minute, please?”

  She looked around at her friends as if this were a horrid imposition and said, “Sheesh. We were, like, just in the middle of an important conversation. But I guess if you guys don’t mind…”

  No one objected, no doubt to Tiffany’s chagrin. She scooted out of her chair and walked away from the table with me, which was no easy feat, for she was wearing clogs and a floor-length black skirt with slits up the side that reached almost to her panty line. Why not just pin a pair of black towels to a belt?

  When she decided we were at a suitable distance so as not to be overheard, she mumbled, “So what’s up?”

  “I’m sure your mother told you about the shooting last night.”

  “Well, duh.”

  “I feel…partly responsible, and I’d like to see if there’s anything I can do to help get this person behind bars.” She was already looking over her shoulder at her friends’ table, so I got right to the point. “Would you and your friends be willing to discuss what you know about Corinne Buldock with me?”

  She shrugged and fidgeted with a plastered-down lock of black hair. “What’s in it for us?”

  A small table emptied beside us, so I sat down and gestured for Tiffany to do the same. Once she did so, I said, “I could take you and your four friends out to lunch, anyplace you’d like.”

  She studied my face for a moment, then let out a guffaw. “You’re serious, aren’t you? I meant something that doesn’t suck. I mean, no offense, but like, jeez, you’re older than my mom.”

  “Actually, she’s almost a full year older than I am.”

  “Really? She told me you had two years on her.”

  “Not to contradict your mother, but we were in the same graduating class, Tiffany.”

  “Yeah, but…didn’t you get held back a couple times? That’s what my mom said.”

  In spite of myself, I found myself having to resist a smile. I’d been a good student, which Stephanie knew. “No. A lot of women have trouble being honest about their age, once they hit forty.” My own fortieth birthday had only recently come and gone, and Jim had failed to pick up on my frequent hints that I wouldn’t be depressed, so long as I was in Bermuda at the time. The experience had taught me to dispense with subtlety in the future. For my fiftieth, I was booking the trip myself.

  Tiffany managed to nod her youthful and greasy-looking head sagely. “Yeah, come to think of it, the big four-oh is prob’ly a killer for Mom to face up to.”

  “So what can I offer that would be appealing? I could give you tips to use when interviewing with college admissions officers.”

  Tiffany not only grimaced but looked as though she might be physically ill. An obvious no.

  “I could draw a caricature of the five of you.”

  “Hmm. I can toss that out to the others, but like, somebody else might see the drawing, and we’d die. What else you got? Could we, like, borrow your Jeep and take it off-road?”

  “No. Whatever it is has to be something I wouldn’t be ashamed or embarrassed to admit to your parents.”

  She scoffed. “I’ll see what I can do. I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.”

  “I’ll just sit here and breathe normally, in that case. But remember, my entire agenda here is to help catch the person who killed your teacher.”

  She hesitated. “Yeah,” she said quietly. “Ms. Buldock deserved better than what she got.” Tiffany went back to her group. They had a small powwow, glancing over at me from time to time to make sure I wasn’t listening, but from my vantage point their conversation entailed a lot of shrugging and general indifference. Finally, the boy who’d had his arm slung around Jenny Garrett’s shoulder came over to my table.

  “Molly, right?” He turned his chair around and straddled its back as he sat down across from me at my small chrome-topped table.

  “Yes. Are you Brian Underwood?”

  “Yeah. Uh, I already, like, talked to the police first thing this morning. Tiff says you once helped get her dad’s killer put away, and I’d sure like Corrie’s killer to get what’s coming to him.”

  “Corrie?”

  “Corinne Buldock.”

  “Can I get you a cup of coffee or anything?”

  “Nah. To tell you the truth, we’re really too old to hang here at the mall. It’s just for the kids without wheels. We were all set to Audi five-thousand when you showed up. I’ve only got a minute. What did you want to know?”

  “I was concerned because I heard a rumor about you and Corinne—”

  “That Corrie and I were doin’ the big nasty?”

  “I guess that’s one way of putting it.” Though certainly not my way. “I’ve got an eighth-grader who’s just about to start high school next fall. I’d kind of like to know how…common this fraternizing
between students and teachers is at the high school.”

  He couldn’t help but give me a cocky smile. “Not at all common.” He was obviously well aware of how handsome he was, though his bleached-blond hair was a bit distracting overall.

  “That’s nice to hear.”

  He crossed his arms on top of his backward-facing seat and leaned closer to me. “Look, Molly. Corrie was the one who went after me. You know? I had my eye on Jenny and, you know, she’s more fun. I had to cool it with Corrie. That’s why I was there at the inn when we got busted. I was trying to let her down easy, you know?”

  “I see. And you and Jenny Garrett have been going out for a while now, right?”

  “Yeah. So that’s why I called it off with Corrie. ‘Sides, I had to do something to get Dave off my case.”

  “Dave?”

  “Paxton. An art teacher at the high school. He ‘n’Corrie were hot ‘n’ heavy for quite a while. And he was, like, threatening to flunk me in art history.”

  “You’re certain that was because of your relationship with Corinne?” I kept the cynicism from my voice, but my thought was that, because of his physical maturity, I might have assigned too high an intellectual and emotional maturity to him; it was typical behavior to blame the teachers and external causes for poor grades.

  He spread his hands. “What else? I mean, I go to class every day, and it’s just, you know, an art class. Who flunks art? Give me a break! I’m working on a four point six, and—”

  “Four point six?” I repeated, wondering if he’d misspoken. “Isn’t a straight A average equal to a four point oh?”

  “Nah. They got everything weighted. And double-honors’ classes like Corrie’s were worth another half point each.”

  The cynical side of me couldn’t help but wonder what Brian was doing to earn his extra half point. Corinne had always struck me as competent and sensible. But maybe she hadn’t been with regard to her love life.

  “She was a nice lady, you know?” He paused, fisting his hands. “My mom hated her, though.”

  “How did she find out about you and Ms. Buldock?” He shrugged. “The buzz got around pretty fast this week. Tamara Young must have blabbed.”

  Or her mother did, I thought, remembering how eager Elsbeth had been to discuss it in the dressing room last night. “Huh,” I murmured noncommittally. He was certainly turning Danielle Underwood into a viable suspect.

  He seemed to realize this, for he scowled. “Mom didn’t kill her, though. That’s for sure. She freaks at loud noises. Couldn’t possibly fire a gun.” He rose, flipped the chair back around, and waggled his thumb in the direction of his friends’ table. “Listen, we gotta jam. I’m sorry that I can’t be more help, but like, none of us saw this coming. Far as we know, everyone liked her. Thing is, though, I think it was Dave, ‘cause Corrie left him. It’s not like anybody’s mom would be gunning people down, you know?”

  If only it were true that being a mother prevented one from committing murder, we would have fewer suspects.

  “Thanks for talking with me, Brian. It was nice meeting you.”

  “Yeah. Likewise. I really hope they nail whoever did this.”

  “So do I.”

  He nodded, then returned to his table. I left the food court and called home to check my machine, in case one of the kids left a message instead of calling my cell. Which, of course, only happened if they wanted to do something that I would have told them not to.

  There was a message from Jim, mentioning in accusatory tones that he “couldn’t help but notice you’re not home, despite what you said this morning about not leaving the house.” Great. The man almost never listens to me and yet had committed every word to memory this morning, now that I’d gone back on those particular words.

  A second message was from Jack Vance, principal at Carlton High. He said he’d “like to talk” as soon as possible and asked if I could stop by that afternoon. Now was as good a time as any, and I made the short drive to Carlton Central School.

  The front door to the high school was unlocked. The instant I entered, Nadine called, “Can I help you?” She was sitting sentry in the office. The big sliding-glass windows of the office gave her an unimpeded view of the door.

  Even with school not in session, she was wearing a dress, a simple blue-nylon shift. The only time I’d ever seen her in anything other than a dress was when she was in her clown costume. She had close-cropped curly hair, was plump, and wore reading glasses halfway down her little nose. The glasses, I believed, were only a prop, so that she could officiously peer over them..

  “Hello, Nadine. I didn’t think there’d be anybody here today.”

  “Just me. I’m the security guard for the front entrance.” Neither her tones nor her face bore even a hint of a smile. “What can I help you with?”

  “I’m here to speak to Jack. He called me a few—”

  Just then Jack Vance emerged from his office behind Nadine. He had once been considered the hunk of our graduating class, but he hadn’t aged well. His once-muscular frame was now pudgy, and his former glorious hair was mostly gone, though he wore the vestiges in a silly-looking ponytail. “Molly, good to see you.” He gave me a wan smile. “How are you handling things? I know we’re all reeling from what happened last night.”

  “Yes.”

  He ushered me into his office, closed the door behind us, and had me take a seat in front of his desk. Then he sat down, laced his fingers, and said, “From what I understand, you had the best chance to identify the killer. You were closest to him, or her, at the time.”

  “That’s true, but I don’t know who it was, even so. I just couldn’t identify anything to set that one clown apart from all the others.”

  “For all I know, then, it could be one of my employees, Dave Paxton, or my secretary.”

  “I know. It’s awful.” The thought of an employee at my children’s school being a murderer was harrowing, but not much worse than its being one of the more active parents of the PTA.

  Jack’s eyes were bloodshot, his face pale. “I wish I could suspend them with pay till this thing gets solved, but that makes it look bad for them, and at least one of them is innocent. I’d like to think they both are.”

  “I wish I could have seen something, some telling detail that differentiated the killer’s costume from the others, but I just didn’t.” I paused, and decided I had to ask about the rumor Stephanie had passed to me. “When we were in the dressing room last night, someone said they’d overheard you and Corinne in an argument.”

  “It’s true. She was a good teacher, but her personal judgment wasn’t always as solid as her classroom skills.”

  “So I gather. I heard about her and Brian Underwood.”

  He nodded, grim-faced. “What a mess. This is something the district trains us principals to handle. You have to expect the occasional teacher dating another teacher. You dread the teachers dating students.” He dragged his hand across his thinning hair. “I keep thinking I should have stayed in the building last night till everyone was gone. The school’s such a powder keg these days, what with who’s dating whom and a student suing for divorce from her parents.”

  “Don’t blame yourself for going home. It must have been ten p. m. by then. If either of us can feel bad for not preventing the murder, it’s me. I never even screamed in warning or did anything when the killer brushed right past me.”

  “If you had, the killer might have shot you first.” He forced a smile. He placed his palms on the surface of his desk. “Tell you what, you don’t blame yourself for not taking out an armed gunman single-handedly, and I won’t blame myself for not personally supervising after hours, despite knowing I had a ticking time bomb on my hands. Deal?”

  “Deal,” I replied, but I felt no better and could tell that Jack didn’t either. For just a moment the thought crossed my mind that maybe Jack had done it, that he could have gotten a clown costume someplace, despite Tommy’s assurances last night. “When did you hea
r about the shooting?”

  “Almost immediately afterward. An officer came to my house. Even made me feel like a suspect, for a while there. If I hadn’t happened to stop at an ATM on my way home and then bumped into a neighbor, I wouldn’t have had an alibi and might still be under suspicion.”

  I blushed a little. “Tommy told me there was no way it could have been anyone other than the seven of us in clown suits. And I was cleared only because the killer swiped my gloves.” I studied his features, once again barely able to see the handsome boy I’d known when we were students at Carlton.

  “Like most high schools, we’ve tightened security, and the guards put the place in lockdown the instant they heard the gunshots. Everything was bolted shut. Nobody left the building till after the police checked every inch of the place.”

  “I guess that’s reassuring,” I muttered.

  He smiled sadly. “Remember when we held that boycott because they were serving us banana-and-peanut-butter sandwiches for lunch?”

  I nodded. “We called the local television stations, and they came and did a segment on us.”

  “The world’s changed. I listened to the national news this morning. They’re reporting this as ‘another school shooting,’ saying we were lucky that only one teacher was killed.” He met my eyes. “Molly, please think hard about everything you saw last night. I can’t have a killer walking the same halls as me and these kids.”

  “I couldn’t agree with you more, Jack. I’ll do whatever I can.” I added sadly, “I just don’t see how I can make much of a difference.” I left his office.

  Nadine had deserted her sentry post. The front door was now propped open. From the doorway, I heard someone whispering around the corner. This had to be some lookie-loos, titillated by surveying the scene of the crime. Irritated, I decided to embarrass them, and tiptoed around the corner.

  I had to stifle a gasp. It was Chester Walker, my erstwhile sunroom contractor, in some sort of clandestine meeting with Nadine Dahl. Nadine was accepting cash from him. He straightened in surprise at my sudden appearance. “Molly. What are you…I was just—”