The clown’s head had been tilted at an angle, its painted smile aimed directly at me.
Chapter 17
It Was Just a Joke!
My sense of terror and repulsion over the doll in my driver’s seat eased slightly. Someone might have been playing an innocent anonymous prank. Perhaps some high school students walking by had seen the doll in my backseat. My doors were unlocked, and they might have gotten a laugh from propping the doll in the driver’s seat.
Nevertheless, I got the willies at the mere thought of having to touch it. I put the knife in my glove box and locked it, but the doll needed to go to the police station to be dusted for fingerprints.
This was just the sort of thing that Tommy loved to tease me about, as he tried to beat me to the punch line. Odds were overwhelming that when I walked in with the doll to tell him it needed to be fingerprinted, he would say, in apparent seriousness, “Well, Molly, a doll doesn’t have fingerprints.”
Something was terrifying about that happy, motionless face. I felt a strong urge to throw the doll away, an urge immediately followed by a nightmarish vision of myself being chased by it. That quickly gave way to the thought of this tiny little clown doll running down the highway, waving its arms and yelling in a squeaky little voice, “Stop, Molly! I’m a clown! It was just a joke!”
This was what was simultaneously good and bad about my sense of humor. My ability to find a comedic side to almost any situation gave me the strength to survive. And yet that same humor hinted at a certain and undeniable shortage of sanity.
Being careful not to touch the porcelain, which could smudge a telltale fingerprint, I snatched up the doll and listened for a bomb-like ticking. Nothing. The doll’s body was soft-stuffed cloth, with no telltale hard lumps. Just to be cautious, though, I stashed the doll in the far back compartment of my Jeep. At least if the thing exploded, the upholstery was already damaged. Meanwhile, the wounds in my back were throbbing in remembered pain.
I drove to the police station and carried the doll inside; a waste of time, I knew. It was either a child’s prank or the work of a killer who knew enough about gunpowder residue to cover his or her clothing with a garbage bag and to steal my gloves. No way would this person now leave incriminating fingerprints behind.
Tommy was poring over some files in his office, his door open. I leaned in. “Sorry to interrupt, Tommy,” I held up the doll. “I need you to get this doll tested for fingerprints.”
He furrowed his brow and took the doll from me. “I dunno, Moll. This doll has awful tiny hands. You sure we’re going to be able to make out its fingerprints?”
He laughed at his own joke with so much glee that I wasn’t about to spoil it by admitting that I’d deliberately fed him the straight line. “Nadine Dahl made the doll and gave it to me yesterday, and it’s been in my backseat. My car was parked at the school, by Farmer’s Make-out Grove, and when I returned to my car, the doll was propped up in the driver’s seat.”
“What were you doin’ there?”
“Reminiscing over things that never actually occurred.”
“Boys in the lab should be able to get to it soon.”
“Would you please tell me what they find out?”
He shrugged. “Maybe. Depends on what the results are.”
I made no comment, reasoning that I was about to dispose of a knife, which I had no intention of telling him about.
The next morning, the doorbell rang. At this rate Betty Cocker was going to wear her tonsils out by barking at our unexpected guests. Provided dogs had tonsils. The visitor this time was Chester Walker, who again had on his baseball hat, covering his bald spot.
“Did you get your blinds fixed?” he asked by way of a greeting.
“Yes. Danielle fixed them yesterday.”
“Good.” Ignoring BC’s barking, he walked through my house and stopped in front of the sunroom, glancing inside. “Satisfied with the job she did?”
“Overall, her work has been the smoothest part of the installation.”
“Huh. I already called Danielle. I’m having her meet us over here.”
“Over here? In my house, you mean?”
“Yes. Even if you’re not, I’m very dissatisfied with the work she’s done here.”
“You didn’t seem particularly dissatisfied when I told you about the problem. How can you be concerned now that she’s fixed it?”
“It’s a matter of principle.”
“Well, not to be dense, but I’m not following your principles at all. How is it that they apply to my functional blinds and not to the door that doesn’t quite close? Or to my nonexistent deck?”
The doorbell rang, and I left Chester to open and shut my blinds while Betty and I headed toward the front. “I keep telling you we’ll handle the deck,” Chester called after me.
“And I keep hearing you tell me that, with no results,” I retorted. I opened the door to find Danielle Underwood. She had that grouchy look about her again, her brow furrowed and her lips set in a frown.
“Good morning, Molly. Chester said you had some sort of an emergency problem with your blinds and needed to see me right away.”
“He’s speaking for himself.”
She rolled her eyes. “Is he here?”
“In the sunroom.”
She marched ahead of me and entered the room, then stood with hands on hips, looking at Chester. “Something wrong with the blinds, Chester?”
“As a matter of fact,” he fired back, hands on his own hips, “I don’t think they’ll do. You cut the valance wrong. They should have wrapped around. And the vanes are a bit too short. As you can see, they can get hung up on the runners for the doors.”
“They look fine to me,” I said.
“It’s not the kind of quality product I want associated with a room that my company built.”
“Is that so,” Danielle said, more of a dare than a question.
“Yes.”
“And this has nothing to do with your learning last night that my son, Brian, is valedictorian, hey?”
Chester pointed at her. “Your son should be run out of town on the next rail! He bags his own teacher, then he has the nerve to break up with Jenny Garrett, days after her mother dies!”
“You have no right to speak about my child like that! How dare you!”
“He’s eighteen. He’s not a child.”
“And Jenny Garrett is an orphan at age eighteen, thanks to you! I’ve thought long and hard about this, and I’m sure you’re the killer. You would stop at nothing to manipulate things so your son would finish on top!”
“Is this a joke?”
“You thought killing Corinne would upset my son badly enough that his grades would fall off.” She was poking him in the chest as she shouted, she was so angry. She looked like a madwoman. “Then, when they didn’t, you killed his girlfriend’s mother!”
“That’s nuts, and you know it!”
“Do I? You were the only clown ruthless enough to commit murder, Chester. And you don’t have to fire me over these perfectly good blinds. Because I quit! I won’t have my work associated with your shoddy work!”
“My work isn’t shoddy!”
“How can you say that when you’re looking at the mess you’ve left poor Molly with?” She tossed her hair and nearly pushed me aside as she headed toward the door, as if she was too angry to see me.
In the doorway, she whirled around and pointed at Chester. “If you have an ounce of concern for your business, build Molly her damned deck!” She resumed her angry march through my house and slammed the door behind her.
Chester’s cheeks were bright red, and I could feel my own cheeks warm at having witnessed this scene. I forced a smile and cleared my throat. When Chester remained silent and made no move to leave, I said quietly, “A deck would be nice.”
“I’ll have someone out here this afternoon.” He made his way to the front door, and it dawned on me then that he was dallying so as to avoid another confrontation
with Danielle in the driveway. “By the way, Molly, she’s wrong, of course. I didn’t kill anybody. But it’s a good thing that your blinds are finished. That woman is dangerous. You’re well off without her.”
Karen and Nathan arrived home after school that afternoon, along with Rachel, whose mom was neck deep in office work these days. There were still no signs of this mythical deck builder Chester had promised. When Karen was settled into practicing piano and Nathan into complaining about homework, I heard a knock on my back door.
Because there was a three-foot drop next to my sliding glass doors, having someone stand there waiting for the door to be answered was comical-looking. I smiled at the sight of the young man standing there, primarily because his head was unfettered by a baseball cap. I slid open the door and said hello.
“Hi, Mrs. Masters. I’m Paul Walker.”
Putting the last name and certain facial similarities together, I asked, “You’re Chester’s son?”
He nodded. “My father sent me to install your deck.”
“By yourself?”
“I can do it. This is pretty much a one-person job anyway. ‘Cept for carrying the boards, that is, but I can manage.”
“Okay, great. How about I give you a hand with the boards?”
He shrugged. “If you want.”
I climbed down on the slide steps, still unwilling to use the slide itself, and we rounded the house together. “I didn’t realize you worked for your father.”
“I don’t. He said he didn’t want to waste his men’s time on such a simple task. And he, uh, says I better start earning some wages toward my tuition.”
“I heard you missed out on being valedictorian. I’m sorry. That must have been a major disappointment for you.”
“Not for me. I didn’t want to make a speech in the first place. It was my dad, really, who was pushing for it. He kept saying it would show all those Carlton snobs when the son of a carpenter without a diploma got to finish on top.”
“I see.”
“No offense. I’m sure he doesn’t mean you when he talks about the Carlton snobs.”
“Hey, Paul,” someone called. “Need some help?”
It was Jasper Newton. He must have been walking home from school past my cul-de-sac, as he sometimes did on nice days such as this one.
“Yeah, Jas. If you could just grab one end, Mrs. Masters won’t have to do it.”
Jasper said, “Hey, there, Mrs. Molly.”
“Hi, Mr. Jasper.” I returned my attention to Paul. “I’ll just unload some of the smaller boards for you then.”
“If you want,” he said for the second time. As a gentleman, he clearly didn’t want to deprive me of my desire to carry boards.
“Hope you’re not bummed about the election results today,” Jasper said to Paul.
“You kidding? I was just telling Mrs. Masters that I didn’t want to make a speech in the first place.”
“What election was this?” I asked.
“This morning, Jack Vance—that’s our principal, asked the three students with the next-to-highest GPAs to be co-valedictorians. Turns out Brian Underwood had the highest score, but turned down being valedictorian, for some reason. The rest of our scores were, like, neck and neck. Anyways, none of us felt good about accepting the honor either, since we’d be getting it by default. So we decided to have a vote among the student body and let them decide.”
“Who won?” I asked.
“Jenny Garrett.”
“I’m so glad to hear that.”
“She deserved it,” Paul said.
“You gonna build this deck by yourself?” Jasper asked.
“Yeah, my old man’s corked at me for getting a C in Paxton’s art history class. Says I would’ve beat Brian out otherwise.”
“How’d you manage to do that, anyway? I heard his class was a breeze.”
“The guy hates me. He’s been raggin’ on me big-time, ever since I…” He let his voice fade and gave me a sheepish smile.
It was very typical behavior of a teenager to blame the teacher for assigning a bad grade. Nothing had indicated that this was anything other than an immature person looking for a scapegoat. Still, Brian had said the same thing, and I decided maybe I should drop in on Dave’s class one more time. At this point Dave was probably going to conclude that I was either after his job, or after him.
Just as the boys were carrying a large load of lumber around the side of the house, I heard the squeal of brakes from the head of the cul-de-sac. I paused in my work of collecting smaller boards from Paul’s truck bed to see what the commotion was. Tiffany Saunders, driving her mother’s BMW, did a creative turn to get into my little street and, hitting her brakes again, pulled to a dramatic stop in front of the house. She was still rubbernecking in the direction of the boys. as she got out of her car.
“Hello, Tiffany.”
She was so focused on getting a better glimpse of Jasper that she acted startled by my voice. “Molly, hi. I was just…in the neighborhood and thought I’d see how Karen and Nathan are doing.”
“Just fine. That’s Paul Walker and Jasper Newton carrying the boards for my deck.”
“Oh. Jasper’s here?”
“You didn’t recognize him when you were pulling a wheelie just now?”
She sighed. In conspiratorial tones she said, “It’s…getting really close to the prom, and like, he still hasn’t asked me.”
“Maybe you should drop some hints.”
“I already have. He doesn’t seem to pick up on ‘em, though. Could you help me?”
“Oh, Tiffany. This isn’t really something I should get involved in.”
“You don’t need to do much. Just ask him if he’s thinking of going. Please? If you do this for me I’ll never ask another thing of you as long as I live.”
“That really hasn’t been a major problem anyway, Tiffany. But, we’ll see.”
“Oh, thank you!” She raced back toward her car and opened the door.
“You’re leaving?”
“I have to go home so he can call me. I’m sure not going to wait around here and have him think I put you up to anything.”
“You’d better hurry then, because they’ll be back out front any minute.”
She jumped back into her car and drove off, leaving a trail of car exhaust.
The boys reappeared. “Nice weather today,” I said. “I guess spring is finally arriving. Which reminds me. Who are you guys taking to the senior prom?”
Paul immediately said, “Jenny Garrett.” He smiled broadly. “She asked me, today. You believe that?” he said to Jasper, shaking his head with disbelief at his good fortune. “Brian Underwood found out Karina likes him, so he went and dumped Jenny yesterday, after she’d already bought her dress…and her mom just died and everything. What a total lame-o.”
Jasper said nothing, but colored deeply. “Aren’t you going, Jas?” Paul asked.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Those things are kind of lame.”
I needed to talk to Jasper alone for a minute. “Would you guys like some lemonade or iced tea?”
“Sure. Lemonade.”
“Me, too.”
“Jasper, would you mind giving me a hand with something in the kitchen?”
“Sure, Mrs. Molly.”
We entered through the front door. “I really hate that. It’s going to have to be Molly or Mrs. Masters, but not a combination.”
“Okay. What did you want help with?”
“Nothing. I just wanted to ask you something privately. But you can help get the frozen concentrate out of the can.”
“Okay.”
I got out a Tupperware pitcher and a can of concentrate, and handed them over to Jasper, along with a wooden spoon. “Tiffany used to babysit for my children. I know her pretty well. It’s none of my business, of course, but if you ask her to the prom, I’d bet she’ll say yes.”
His face lit up. “You sure?”
“Positive.”
H
e couldn’t stop smiling the entire time he mixed the lemonade, then he did a leap complete with a war whoop out my back door, leaving me to serve them their drinks.
In an impressively short period of time the boys had set about reframing the deck. By the time Lauren arrived to get her daughter, the two of them even had the first several boards in place, and the kids were disappointed that this meant their slide would be passé.
Lauren looked and sounded tired. I told her about her stepson being out back, and she went out to chat with the two boys for a couple of minutes.
She came back inside. “Thanks for letting Rach come over. This supposed part-time job at the school office is turning into a major ordeal ever since Nadine left.”
“Did you hear that Jasper is about to ask Tiffany to the prom?”
She looked at me blankly for a moment. “Well, Tommy’s going to be less than thrilled. But it’s nice that he’s dating. This will be fine. Just so long as we don’t have to actually see Stephanie. I mean, it’s not like they’re in love or anything.”
“You should see their faces, though, when you even mention the other’s name.”
“Probably the same expression I get these days when someone mentions the word ‘hot bath’ to me.”
“Of all of the low, miserable things to do to me!” Stephanie snarled to me on the phone that evening. “You had to get at me through my daughter, didn’t you, Molly!”
“Are you referring to her date for the prom?”
“She told me all about how you brought the two of them together. My daughter! With the son of a cop! For her senior prom! She’ll be lucky if he knows to rent a tux. He’ll show up in some used, twenty-dollar plaid suit from the Salvation Army.”
“He’ll rent a tuxedo, and the two of them will make a perfectly handsome-looking couple.”
“Easy for you to say. Why do you meddle so much? Tiffany tells me that none of this would have happened if you hadn’t chatted with the two of them during art class. Must you always be so damned friendly?”
“I don’t even know how to respond to that.”
“Don’t expect me to be warm and fuzzy toward you tomorrow.”
Death at a Talent Show (Book 6 Molly Masters Mysteries) Page 20