Murder of a Pink Elephant (21 page)

“Good.” He gave her a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Nice crowd and no one got rowdy.”

“How’s your mom managing?”

“Like she was born to run a bowling alley.” Simon rubbed his hand across his eyes. “Which is a good thing, because the hours are too much for me. After today, she’s on her own.”

“Did you find someone to work security?” Skye didn’t like the idea of Bunny not having any backup.

“He starts Tuesday.” The bowling alley was closed on Mondays.

The beginning of the processional stopped their conversation, and it wasn’t until after the service when they were walking out to the parking lot that Simon asked, “What are your plans for today?”

Skye filled him in on her strange encounters of the weird kind the day before, then explained, “So, I want to tell Wally about the increased drug use and make sure he got my message that Ivy is accusing Heather of killing Logan. Then I’ll probably talk to Vince, and maybe Heather, if I can find her.”

“You’re hoping to substitute Heather for Vince as Wally’s prime suspect?”

She couldn’t fault the guy’s observational skills. “Yes, I am.”

“I wish I could go with you when you talk to Wally and Heather, but I really want to stay with my mother one more day.”
Simon rested his hip against his Lexus. “But I did make a list of the business people in town, and Monday I’ll start calling around to find out who is pro and who is con on the amusement park issue.”

“Great.” Skye leaned next to him and put her arm around his waist. “Bunny needs you today and I’ll be fine. After all, I’ll either be with the chief of police or my own brother.”

“How about Heather?”

“If push comes to shove, I think I could take her two falls out of three.”

Simon straightened, bringing her more fully into his embrace. “Stop by the alley afterwards, and tell me all about your adventures.” Then to her surprise, since he usually wasn’t demonstrative in public, he kissed her deeply, his tongue hard and sweet and promising.

Skye adjusted her sunglasses and pulled the knit hat covering her hair farther down. She felt like a stalker. After borrowing Vince’s Jeep, with the promise of a full explanation when she returned it, Skye had spent the last two hours sitting across from Wally’s house waiting for Darleen to leave.

A call to the police station had confirmed that the chief was off duty all of Sunday. Unfortunately, Darleen had answered when Skye phoned Wally at home and hung up on her when she heard Skye’s voice. So now she was forced to spy on him as if they were a part of some preposterous James Bond movie.

Skye took a sip of her Diet Coke and slouched back in her seat. Her reasoning was that unless Darleen had moved back in, and surely Skye would have heard that gossip, she would have to leave at some point, if only to get a change of clothes. Skye just prayed that Wally wouldn’t go with her.

Finally at eleven o’clock, the door to Wally’s house
opened, and he and his ex-wife emerged. They stood on the porch arguing until Wally turned on his heel and went back inside, slamming the door behind him.

Darleen hesitated, then trudged down the steps, got into her BMW, and squealed out of the driveway.

As soon as the red car disappeared around the corner, Skye was out of the Jeep, across the road, and ringing Wally’s bell. She waited several minutes, but no one came. Why wasn’t he answering?

Just as she pushed the button again, the door was flung open, and Wally bellowed, “Give it a rest, Darleen.”

“It’s Skye.” She jumped back. “But I can see this is a bad time. I’ll talk to you later.”

The look on his face could have melted wax, but after a moment his features smoothed out, and he said, “Sorry. No. Now’s fine. Come on in.”

Skye eased past him and stood in the entryway. “I’m the one who’s sorry to be bothering you on a Sunday, but I haven’t been able to get a hold of you. Have you gotten my messages?”

“No.” Wally gestured for Skye to go into the living room and take a seat. “I haven’t had any messages from you.”

She had never been in Wally’s house before and wasn’t sure where to sit. She chose the sofa, not wanting to take whichever he considered
his
chair, but Wally sat next to her and said, “How many times did you call?”

Skye counted out loud, “Thursday night, Friday during school, and Saturday morning.”

He frowned. “I didn’t get any of them. I’ll have to have a talk with the dispatchers about the importance of giving me my messages.”

“Uh, I hate to accuse someone without proof,” Skye began—she couldn’t let Wally yell at the dispatchers when she was fairly sure it wasn’t their fault, “but from what
Darleen said yesterday afternoon when I tried to see you at the station, I think she may be intercepting your messages.”

“That’s ridiculous.” His expression was critical. “I know you don’t get along—Darleen’s told me about some of the problems you two have had at school—but suggesting she’s interfering with official police business is serious. Do you really want to make that accusation?”

His words hit Skye like an ax blow, but she refused to let him see how he had hurt her. In an offhanded tone she said, “Darleen and I do have issues at school, but that has nothing to do with this. I’ll let you handle the missing messages. I suggest we move on to the information I was trying to give you.”

“Fine.” His voice was flat. “Go on.”

Skye took a moment to collect her thoughts. She wanted to present a concise list of what she knew and get out of there before she either smacked him or started crying or both. “Thursday after school, a student mentioned to me that he or she had observed an increase in the availability and use of methamphetamine in the Scumble River area. This observation is consistent with some of the unusual teenage behavior that has been recently reported.”

“Explain.”

Skye matched his clipped tone. “Exacerbated thought patterns, increased heartbeat causing one to feel overheated, and paranoia and hallucinations in long-term users.”

“What are exacerbated thought patterns?” Wally asked.

“All your thoughts are exaggerated.” Skye struggled to put the psychological concept into simple terms. “It’s sort of like you see a pretty flower, but you think it’s not just a pretty flower, to you it’s the most beautiful flower that ever bloomed. The flower is so gorgeous it makes you cry.”

Wally’s expression was still puzzled, but he shrugged and asked another question. “You mentioned hallucinations.
Would that be like a voice telling them to burn down the school?”

“Exactly.”

He got up, went into another room, and returned with a legal pad. He jotted something down, then asked, “Who told you about the increased availability?”

“I can’t say—confidentiality.”

“That didn’t stop you with Grady Nelson.”

His comment, light as the flick of a whip, had hit its target. Guilt was a sharp knife plunging into her stomach. Wally knew how difficult it had been for her to break confidentiality. Even when doing so seemed justified, it was always a judgment call and one she continued to question.

What had gotten into Wally? Why was he being so awful to her? Instead of asking, she defended herself. “As I explained at the time, I told you about Grady because there was an immediate potential that he might hurt himself or someone else. In this case, there is no such impending danger. The student has told me all he or she knows and is not a possible instrument of harm.”

“Fine.” Wally blew out an exasperated breath. “Is there anything else you
can
tell me?”

“In a separate, but perhaps related issue, Ivy Wolfe accused Heather Hunt of killing her husband.”

“When did this happen?”

“At the bowling alley Friday night. Ivy didn’t know that Heather had started singing with the band, and when she found out, she screamed that Heather had murdered Logan.”

Wally made another note. “Any idea why Ivy thinks Heather is the killer?”

“Maybe …” Skye trailed off. She had planned to tell Wally about yesterday’s visit to the Wolfe farm, but he had been so mean and so unreasonable she was afraid of his reaction.
Still, she’d better tell him everything now. He’d just be more upset if he found out later.

“Maybe what?”

Defiantly she looked him in the eye and said, “When I talked to Ivy yesterday, her explanation was that Heather wanted to be a part of the band so badly, she was willing to kill to take Logan’s place as the singer.”

“You talked to Ivy Wolfe yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you do a stupid thing like that?” His voice rose in anger.

Skye had had enough. “Because when Darleen refused to let me talk to you at the police station yesterday afternoon, she said Vince was one of your main suspects in the Logan Wolfe murder case, which is something I had already figured out.” She’d come to Wally in good faith to share information with him and he was treating her like dirt. She didn’t know what line of bull Darleen had been feeding him about her, but if he was fool enough to believe his ex-wife, so be it. The gloves were coming off.

“And that gave you the right to tamper with a possible witness?”

“Yes.” Skye leaped to her feet. “You tried to railroad Vince once before. I’m not letting you do it again.”

“If you think I would do something like that, I don’t know why you even bothered to come over today to share your information with me.”

“And if you think I would accuse anyone, even Darleen, of something without a mighty good reason, you obviously don’t know me very well.” Skye stalked into the entryway and flung open the door. As she marched out, she said over her shoulder, “And you obviously don’t trust me like you claim to.”

Skye ran across the road to the Jeep and jumped inside. She jammed the gearshift into drive and roared away. A few
miles down the road she pulled to the side and let the tears flow. What in the world had just happened? What had gotten into Wally? And what had gotten into her?

After a few minutes, she fumbled in her pocket for a tissue, wiped her eyes, and blew her nose. She needed to talk to someone about this—not Simon or May, and Trixie had enough troubles of her own right now. Uncle Charlie would probably punch Wally in the nose for upsetting her, so Vince would have to do. Anyway, she had to return his Jeep, and she wanted to hear what he had to say about the big break Logan had promised the band.

Vince was watching an old Three Stooges movie on TV when Skye entered his apartment. She collapsed on the sofa beside him and put her head on his shoulder.

When the commercial came on, he switched off the set, and asked, “What’s wrong?”

“I just had the strangest encounter with Wally.” She briefly described what had happened. “So, has he gone crazy or have I?”

“Well …” Vince teased.

Skye straightened and hit his arm with the back of her hand. “Well?”

“Well, look at it this way. The man is being besieged by his ex-wife, is in the middle of a mayoral campaign he may or may not want to win, and has just had a murder case land in his lap.” Vince grabbed Skye’s hands and held them so she couldn’t hit him again. “And then the newspaper runs an article on the Scumble River Nancy Drew. Do you really think he can be held responsible for anything he says right now?”

Skye gave her brother a speculative look. “You’re pretty generous toward a guy who has your name high up on his list of prime suspects.”

“I didn’t do it, and it’ll all work out in the end.” Vince
let go of her hands and reached for the remote. “You worry too much, Sis. You’re getting as bad as Mom.”

“Thanks a lot.” Was she really as much of a worry wart as May? Nah. It was just in comparison to Vince that she looked like a fussbudget. Her brother wouldn’t be concerned even if the IRS called him for a surprise audit. “Before you return to your movie, I have a couple of questions.”

“Shoot.”

“Did Logan tell the band that they were about to get their big break? That he had letters asking Pink Elephant to audition for a record producer and
American Star
?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you say anything about it to me?”

“Logan always thought everything was going to be our big break. We just went along with him. No one else thought it would amount to anything.”

“If you felt that way, why did you agree to all the extra rehearsals and start to write new songs?”

Vince shrugged. “The band needed all the rehearsals it could get, and I’m always writing new songs.”

Skye found her brother’s explanation hard to believe. Maybe Vince felt that way, but did the other two musicians? “Did Logan ever show you or the other guys the letters?”

“I didn’t see them, and I don’t think the others did either. Why?”

“Ivy let me read them today.”

“So?”

“The auditions were for Logan as a solo act. They didn’t include Pink Elephant.”

Vince frowned. “Are you sure?”

She nodded.

“So Logan was just using us?”

“Seems that way.”

Vince threw the remote he had been holding across the room,
where it crashed into the wall and exploded in little plastic pieces. “That son of a b—”

Skye cut him off. “Do you think maybe either Rod or Finn found out what Logan was up to and killed him because of it?”

“If Finn found out, he would have told me and Rod. He likes to stir things up.”

“And if Rod was the one to find out?”

“He’s usually pretty quiet, likes to let things go with the flow, but I have seen him blow up once before. And when he does, he loses all control.”

“Interesting.” Skye contemplated that piece of information for a moment, then asked, “So if you guys weren’t mad at Logan about him going solo, why were you all so ticked off the night I attended your rehearsal?”

“Well, part of it was the whole Heather issue.

“But there was more?”

“Logan had turned into a real pain in the ass. Everything had to be his way. We could only do songs he approved of and only take gigs he thought were worthy.” Vince wrinkled his forehead, thinking. “He was always late, so we had to wait for him. Then he’d hang out with the teenyboppers, which made Finn uncomfortable. He and Rod wanted to replace him with another vocalist.”