Foul Play (A Moose River Mystery Book 4)

by Jeff Shelby

  I handed him the bottle. “What?”

  “You won’t do it,” he repeated, then pointed the top of the bottle at me. “You won’t bail on it.”

  “Oh, I will, too.”

  He took a long drink and handed the beer back to me. “If you do, it will be the first time in the history of Daisy that it’s ever happened.”

  “Why wouldn’t I?” I asked, clutching the bottle. “She banned me! Why would I do anything for her?”

  “Because you’re going to sleep on it,” he said. “And in the morning, you’re going to have convinced yourself that not doing the program would harm the kids in the play – who have nothing to do with any of this. Just like you convinced yourself not to storm back in there and grab Sophie and Grace and leave in a huff.” He smiled. “You’ll take one for the team because you always do, Daisy.”

  I drank from the beer and looked at the owl print on my pajama pants and didn’t say anything.

  “And I’m not saying that’s the wrong decision at all,” he said. “Sometimes, we have to be the bigger person when it comes to idiots. If it’s better for the kids. And I think the guilt of just abandoning the program would drive you nuts, especially if we get to performance night and the program looks like some fourth grader put it together. I don’t think you would feel very good about that at all.”

  I grunted. “Maybe. But I would not feel bad about sticking it to Eleanor.”

  “Nope, you wouldn’t. But you also don’t live with Eleanor.”

  I finished the beer and set the empty bottle on the nightstand. I knew he was right, but I was still too mad to admit it. I knew I’d feel different in the morning and that I would begrudgingly finish the work on the play program. But right then, I was still so mad I would’ve liked to shove the beer bottle right up Eleanor’s pointy nose.

  I leaned back against the headboard. “It just stinks.”

  Jake nodded sympathetically. He slipped under the covers and reached for my hand. “Yep, it does. I’m sorry. And if you do want to pull the girls out and jettison the program and slander Eleanor all over town, I am totally with you. I’ll help, even. Bet I’d be good at slander.”

  I squeezed his hand. “Thank you. But I don’t want to do that, either.” I sighed. “I’m just frustrated. I thought I was helping Madison out by keeping her secret. And all I got for being a nice person was banishment. By Eleanor Oompa Loompa Bandersand.”

  He bit back a smile. “No good deed goes unpunished. Just remember that,” he said. “That is the right saying for this, right? It works?”

  “Sure,” I told him. “What I don’t get is why she’d lie to her mother about it? Madison created this – she had to go to her mother and tell her I found the bag and then turn it into something it wasn’t. She had to make the effort to do that. Because otherwise Eleanor wouldn’t have known.”

  He thought for a moment, then shrugged. “Maybe she didn’t think you’d keep the secret. Maybe she thought you’d rat her out. So maybe she lied to her mother as a preemptive strike.”

  “Maybe,” I said. I could absolutely see Madison doing something like that. “But I also wonder if they just didn’t like me asking about Amanda so much.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I fell back onto the pillow. It was a dramatic move but I didn’t care – I was channeling Madison and Eleanor and the entire theater at that moment. “I mean that I think I’ve asked everyone I know of about Amanda. And when I brought it up to Eleanor, she pretty much cut me off.”

  “Is this your imagination running wild?” he asked. “Are you positing that they didn’t like you asking because you had something to hide?”

  “Positing?” I wrinkled my nose. “Why are you using such big words?”

  “It’s not a big word. You’ve just had too many beers and aren’t thinking straight.” He glanced at me, his expression amused. “Positing means hypothesizing. Proposing.”

  “Proposing? I’m already married. To you.” He opened his mouth to say something but I cut him off. Sort of,” I said, continuing my previous train of thought. “But maybe they just got tired of me asking about a girl who wasn’t there.” I shook my head. “I don’t know. I’m tired. And a little buzzed,” I admitted. “And a lot tired.”

  “You should sleep.”

  I looked at him. “You should hug me.”

  He scooted closer to me, got one arm under me and put the other around me. I pressed in tight to him and closed my eyes. His lips brushed against my cheek and my eyelids and I sighed. I needed the day to end, and the best way to end the day was the best way to end all of my days.

  Falling asleep in my husband’s arms.

  TWENTY NINE

  Emily walked out into the living room and turned in a slow circle. “Does this look alright?”

  I’d spent the next day paying attention to the house and not plotting revenge on Eleanor Bandersand. I’d swept and mopped the floors, done three loads of laundry, worked on a geography project with Will, a painting with Sophie and cursive practice with Grace. I’d run both girls to guitar practice and taken Will to the computer store to buy more memory for his computer. I’d pulled out the winter hats and mittens and gone through the stacks of mail sitting on the kitchen counter.

  Call it domestic immersion therapy.

  I finished stacking LEGOs in their container. Grace and I had just finished building a bank for criminal min figs to rob. Maybe the detective of LEGOville would be wanting my investigative services.

  I glanced at Emily. She had on tight jeans with silver beads around the pockets, a long-sleeved black top and boots that came up to her knees. Her long hair was straightened and her makeup a fraction heavier than usual.

  “Does it?” she asked, casting me a worried look. “Look alright?” She glanced down at her outfit.

  “Yes, as a matter a fact it does,” I said. “Why are you dressed up?”

  She stared at me for a moment, her mouth hung open. “Uh, duh? I’m going to the game. With Andy.”

  I ran through my thoroughly flawed mental calendar. “That’s tonight?”

  “I told you it was.”

  “You did?”

  “She did,” Will said, stretched out on the sofa, tapping away at his phone. He’d downloaded some football game app two days earlier and was already on the top ten board. “I heard her.”

  Jake came down the stairs and frowned. “Oh, that’s right. It’s date night.”

  “You knew, too?” I asked, pushing myself up off the floor. A tiny LEGO pushed into my palm and I winced.

  “Yeah, she told us,” he said.

  I looked at Em. “Sorry. I’ve been preoccupied.”

  “It’s fine,” Emily said dismissively. “But seriously. Do I look okay?” She did a half-turn so I could see.

  “You look beautiful,” I said, smiling at her. And then I gasped. “Oh my God. This is your first date!”

  “Mom,” she warned, shaking her head. “Don’t make this a big deal.”

  “It is a big deal,” I said. “It’s your first date!”

  “We’ve done stuff before.”

  “What kind of stuff?” Jake asked. His eyes narrowed. “You’ve done stuff? Where? When?”

  “Not like that,” she said, rolling her eyes.

  “Like what?” He was like a bloodhound. “What has Randy tried to do?”

  “Andy,” she corrected. Her cheeks had blush on them but they flamed even redder with embarrassment. “And I just mean we’ve gone places together. We’ve hung out. It’s no big deal.”

  “If it’s no big deal, then why are you so worried about how you look?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “Why does your hair look like you just spent an hour on it?”

  She didn’t have a quick response to that so she did what she always did when she was flustered: she reached for her phone.

  “She bought new lip gloss, too,” Will said, his fingers flying over the touchscreen. “Like three of them.”

  Emily’s eyes nar
rowed to slits. “You are such a stalker.”

  “Which means she’s probably gonna kiss him,” Will said, ignoring her. “I heard her talking to Bailey about it.”

  “Liar.”

  He shrugged. “Just saying what I heard.”

  “You’re such a loser.”

  “Because I don’t have three kinds of lip gloss?”

  She groaned and stomped back into her room.

  I followed her. “Hey.”

  She sat down at her desk-makeup table-area-that-made-her-look-like-a-hoarder. “What?” she barked.

  “He’s your brother,” I said. “He’s supposed to tease you. And he’s probably a little jealous that you are older and that you’re going on a date and the only girls he ever talks to are his sisters.”

  She almost smiled. “Maybe. But he’s still annoying.”

  I sat down on the edge of her bed. Her room was packed floor to ceiling with books and clothes and makeup and charging cables and other things I couldn’t identify. Her room had slowly morphed from a little girl’s to a teenager’s, with most of the stuffed animals disappearing, replaced by the clothes and the books and the make-up and the electronics.

  “I’m sorry I forgot about your date,” I told her. “Or wasn’t listening or whatever happened.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not,” I said. “It’s really not. But you look terrific and I’m glad you’re going and Andy seems like a nice kid.”

  “He’s cool,” she said, trying to maintain her teen aloofness without giving too much away.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’ll bet he is. Do you need money?”

  She shook her head. “No, I’m fine.”

  “Do you need birth control?”

  “Mom!”

  “Look, at some point, we’re going to have to have that conversation.”

  “Well, it doesn’t have to be tonight,” she said, still fussing with her makeup. “We’re going to a basketball game, not a hotel room.”

  “You’re going to a hotel room?” Jake yelled from the living room. “What?”

  “Ignore him,” I said, shaking my head. “He’s more nervous than you are.”

  “I’m not nervous.”

  “No? Then why is your shirt on backwards?”

  Her hands flew to her chest, frantically searching for the exposed tag.

  “Gotcha,” I said, smiling.

  She sighed. “Ha ha. Funny.”

  I stood from her bed and put my hands on her shoulders, careful not to muss her hair. “Anyway. I hope you have fun tonight. And I hope you’ll tell me a little about it when you get home.”

  “There won’t be much to tell,” she said, setting her lipgloss down. “It’s a Prism basketball game. We’ll lose by fifty.”

  “Still,” I said. “I’ll want to hear about it.”

  “Okay,” she said. “But not when Will’s around.”

  I patted her shoulder. “Don’t worry about him. I’ll tie him up and throw him down in the basement while you’re gone. I’ll be all ready to go when you get home.”

  “He’ll still manage to hear us,” she said.

  “Carrots,” I said. “I’ll shove carrots in his ears after I tie him up.”

  We both smiled. Then I heard Jake in the kitchen talking, along with an unfamiliar voice. “I think your date is here.”

  Her shoulders rose and she sat up straight. “He’s early. Oh my God. I’m not ready.”

  I patted her shoulder. “Good to see you aren’t nervous.”

  THIRTY

  “Andy, what are your plans?” Jake said, cornering poor Andy on the sofa in the living room.

  “Well, I thought we were going to go to the basketball game.” He was perched on the sofa like a deer might sit; ready to take flight at the earliest opportunity.

  “And then?”

  “Uh, come home?”

  Jake waved a hand in the air. “No, no. I mean in life.”

  I put a hand on Jake’s shoulder and smiled at Andy. He was dressed in jeans and a flannel button-down shirt and his dark hair was mussed just enough to tell me he’d purposely styled it that way. The smell of Axe body spray clung to him and I was pretty sure he’d shaved for the first time ever that day, considering the number of nicks lining his neck.

  “Hi, Andy,” I said. “Please excuse Jake. He hit his head on a pipe earlier and he’s not quite himself.”

  “I did not,” Jake said, frowning at me.

  Andy looked confused. “Uh, okay.” Then he looked at Jake. “If you mean what do I want to do, I think I want to be an engineer.”

  Jake folded his arms across his chest. I couldn’t tell if he was irritated or impressed by Andy’s career choice. “What kind?”

  “Civil,” Andy said. Jake’s impression didn’t change so he added, “Kind of like city planning and stuff.”

  “You know what they make?” Jake asked. Andy stared at him and he continued. “Not nearly enough. Barely enough to live on. And if—”

  “Could you go down to the basement and find the St. Patrick’s Day decorations?” I asked him, gently nudging him toward the kitchen.

  “The what? Andy and I are having a conversation.”

  “They’re in a big, green tub. In the very back of the workroom. I need to go through them for something.” I smiled sweetly at him. “Thank you.”

  He started to say something, then frowned again. He gave Andy a dirty look and then reluctantly trudged off for the basement.

  “Don’t mind him,” I told Andy after I heard the basement door close. “Em is almost ready.”

  “Okay.”

  I waited for him to relax but he sat there, statue-like. “So. Are you a basketball fan?”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” he said. “But our team is pretty bad.”

  “That’s what Em said.”

  “Are you gonna kiss her?” a voice called down from the top of the stairs.

  “Grace!” I yelled. “Get in your room and close your door.”

  Giggles echoed down the stairs, followed by footsteps above us and then the sound of a door closing.

  I smiled at Andy. “You told me you have a sibling, right?”

  He nodded. “Yes. A younger sister.”

  “Then you know how...interesting...they can be.”

  He laughed. “Yeah. Interesting.”

  Emily walked out of her room and smiled nervously. “Hi.”

  Andy jumped to attention, nearly leaping off of the sofa. “Hi.”

  All we needed was a blinking neon sign that said AWKWARD above them and the scene would’ve been complete.

  “Do you have your I.D.?” she asked him. “Bailey just texted me and said you have to have an I.D. to get in or they will totally hassle you.”

  “I have mine, yeah,” he said.

  “Why are they hassling people?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Emily said. “Bailey said it’s because of Amanda Pendleton.”

  “Amanda?” I said, not understanding. “She doesn’t even go to Prism.”

  “Yeah, but everyone is all freaked out about her,” she said. “So I guess Prism hired a security guard or something? To check I.D.s? I don’t know.”

  It sounded like something Prism would do.

  “Yeah, I heard that,” Andy said. “I think they’re doing it at Moose River, too. Like they think by checking I.D.s, they’ll figure out what happened to her.”

  “Exactly,” Em said. “Everyone thinks she was kidnapped and like the kidnapper will bring an I.D. that says ‘kidnapper’ on it.”

  Andy laughed and Emily beamed and visions of white wedding dresses and enormous floral arrangements and tacky wedding cakes flashed through my head. I quickly erased them. First date, I reminded myself. First date.

  “People really think she was kidnapped?” I asked, trying to get back to the topic at hand. “I thought most people were saying she ran away.”

  Emily shrugged. “I don’t know. People are all just weirded out ove
r it.”

  “But she ran away before, right?”

  They both nodded.

  I shook my head. Extra vigilance wasn’t a bad idea, especially if someone knew more about her disappearance than I did. But after my conversation with Detective Hanborn, it seemed as if everyone had settled on the idea that she had taken off on her own. Not a hint of foul play, at least according to Hanborn. And even Amanda’s family seemed certain that it was nothing to be worried over.

  “I can’t find the St. Patrick’s box, Daisy!” Jake yelled up from the basement, his voice traveling through the heating ducts. “Does it say decorations on it?”

  “I don’t remember!” I called back. “Just keep looking.”

  “We should probably go,” Andy said.

  “Yeah,” Emily said, then she looked at me. “Why is he looking for St. Patrick’s Day decorations?”

  “Because I told him to,” I answered as I followed them to the kitchen.

  “But that’s months away,” Emily said. “And we don’t have St. Patrick’s Day decorations.”

  “I know.” I smiled at both of them and opened the door. “You two have a great time.”

  THIRTY ONE

  Emily made it home around ten and was in a great mood. I took that as a sign that the date went well and resisted the urge to ask for a second-by-second recap. I just asked if she had a good time and she smiled and said yes and disappeared into her room. It was enough for me. For now.

  After a half hour of searching, Jake came back upstairs, dirty, sweaty, and frustrated that he couldn’t find the box. I told him it was okay, it could wait and we’d look for it the next day.

  We’d gone to bed and I woke up early the next morning. I got Emily and Jake off to school and work, respectively, then after feeding the other three waffles and smoothies, got them out the door when Brenda pulled up. Her kids were in need of some play time, so Brenda had offered to take them for the day and I accepted the offer.

  I was just getting used to the quiet in the house when there was a knock on the door.

  Joanne Claussen waved at me through the window.