Murder of a Royal Pain (5 page)

“Gee. I’m so sorry.” Jackie reached into her pants pocket. “Here’s the key. I meant to give it to you yesterday at the grade school’s PPS meeting. Guess I forgot.”

Skye plucked the key from Jackie’s fingers. “It’s not only this. You had the locks changed without telling me.”

“I’m really putting my foot in it, aren’t I?” Jackie’s voice was husky. “I’ll rearrange the room back like it was and exchange the table.”

“Thank you.” Skye felt herself weakening. Maybe she was being too rigid. “I don’t mind change. I just want to have some input.”

“No, you’re right. I guess it’s because I’ve never shared an office before, and I didn’t think.”

“I understand.” Skye offered a smile. “Sharing isn’t one of my stronger traits either.”

Jackie hugged Skye. “I really want us to be friends.”

There was an awkward silence; then Skye said reluctantly, “Me, too.”

“Great.” Jackie hugged her again. “I knew the minute I met you that we’d be BFFs.”

“Oh.” Skye wasn’t sure she wanted to be Jackie’s best friend forever. In fact, she wasn’t even sure she wanted to be her best friend temporarily. Uncomfortable, she looked away, spotting the files piled on and around her desk. Should she mention the clutter? No. Just this once she’d take care of it. Next time Jackie could clean up her own mess.

Skye was moving the last pile of folders from her desktop onto the floor when Justin Boward stepped through the open door. Justin was one of Skye’s favorite students and the editor of the school newspaper, which Skye cosponsored with her best friend, Trixie Frayne, the high school librarian. He’d been a little down for the last few weeks since his girlfriend, Frannie Ryan, had gone off to college.

“Hi, Justin.” Skye took a tissue from her desk and blotted the perspiration from her face—the repairperson had fixed the furnace so well that the temperature was now hovering in the mid-nineties—and smiled at the young man. “What’s up?”

“Uh, well, nothing. I actually came to talk to Ms. Jennings.”

“Oh.” Skye had seen Justin for counseling from eighth grade until the end of his sophomore year, when she had decided he no longer required the service. If he needed to talk to someone, why was he seeking out the new social worker instead of her?

“What can I do for you?” Jackie gestured for Justin to sit down.

“Well, I’ll step out so you two can have some privacy.” It pained Skye to say those words, but she got them out without showing her distress.

“That’s okay, Ms. D.” Justin looked puzzled. “I just want to talk about the computer class. You can stay.”

“The one the school newspaper staff is funding with their prize money?”

“Yeah. Ms. Jennings is going to teach it.” Justin grinned. “Remember how we couldn’t find anyone for what we could pay?”

Skye nodded.

“Well, Ms. Jennings is doing it for free.”

“Wow. That’s terrific.” Skye smiled at Jackie. “That’s really nice of you.”

“It’s no big deal.” Jackie shrugged. “Everyone talks about how much extra you do for the school. I wanted to do my share.”

“I probably should take the class,” Skye mused. “When will it be?”

“After school on Wednesdays next quarter.”

“Darn. I’m signed up for water aerobics then.” Skye pursed her lips. “Maybe I can get my money back.”

“No. Don’t.” Jackie shook her head. “I mean, the class is full. All the computers are taken.”

Skye was silent while she swallowed her disappointment, then said, “Okay, water aerobics it is.” If the class was full, the class was full. So why did she feel left out?

Jackie finished her conversation with Justin, and as she was leaving for the junior high, she said, “I wanted to mention that you forgot to lock the office door. It was open when I arrived.”

“I don’t usually lock it if I’m not leaving the building.”

“Oh, well.” Jackie wrinkled her brow. “I really would like it locked anytime you’re not in the room. Confidentiality and all.”

“Usually I just make sure all the files are locked in my drawer or the cabinet,” Skye explained. “But I’ll try to remember.” It would be a hard habit to break.

Once Jackie was gone, although she was still agitated, Skye finished testing a student and wrote up the report on another. Her office was no longer a haven. Jackie hadn’t rearranged the room the way it had been, or gotten the old table back, and Skye hadn’t wanted to nag her about it. But now she wished she had insisted. Everything felt wrong.

Maybe she was still upset by the scene with Mrs. Idell. Being attacked by a parent was always unsettling, and the woman’s final words had almost been a threat. Skye tried to shrug off her sense of dejection, but it prevailed, and the minutes ticked by as she stared into space.

An hour had passed the next time she checked her watch. Skye sighed and slid open her bottom drawer. The contents glistened like crystal in the fluorescent lights. She reached for the treasure, but drew her hand back empty. She shouldn’t. She kept it strictly for emergencies. She ran her finger over the smooth wrapper. Well, depression was an emergency.

She lifted the package of Double Stuf Oreo cookies onto her desktop. Yep, she really should eat them. The chocolate would raise her serotonin levels, and, besides, the freshness date indicated they would expire soon. She’d only eat one—okay, one row.

Several minutes later, as she licked the crumbs from her fingers, she eyed the remaining cookies. No. She had to stop. Resolutely she taped the packet shut and put it back in the drawer. Pushing herself away from the desk, she got up, grabbed her purse, and headed toward the parking lot.

Being alone would only worsen her blue funk, and since Wally was working the three-to-eleven shift at the police department, Trixie was going to a Farm Bureau dinner with her husband, and Vince was on a date, Skye was forced to take drastic action: visit her parents.

A
s Skye approached her aqua 1957 Bel Air convertible, she saw that the front passenger-side tire was flatter than a glass of day-old soda pop.
Great!
The perfect ending to a perfectly awful day.

When Skye threw her tote bag inside the car, she noticed a piece of paper under her wipers. Snatching it off the windshield, she read:
Karma’s a bitch, just like you.

Shit!
Was this from Mrs. Idell? Was she responsible for the flat tire? She had said something very similar at the end of their meeting. Just what Skye needed, a crazy parent with a grudge against her. She’d show the note to Wally, but there was probably nothing he could do about it.

She walked around to the back. Her spare was full-size, since her father would never permit her to ride around on a doughnut, and heavier than it looked. She had her head inside the trunk and was struggling to lift the tire out when she was startled by a sexy male voice near her ear.

“Need some help?”

Jerking upright, Skye dropped the wheel, conked her head on the trunk lid, and stumbled backward.

A warm masculine hand steadied her. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Skye yanked her arm free and spun around. Standing within kissing distance was the new reporter for the
Scumble River Star
, Kurt Michaels. She scowled, rubbing her head, and he backed away, holding his hands up.

“Where did you come from?” She gestured to the parking lot, which was empty except for her car. “I thought I was alone.”

“I live in the apartments on the next street over. I use the high school’s track to jog.”

It showed. He wore nylon running shorts that revealed his thigh and calf muscles, and a tank top that exhibited his well-developed shoulders and arms. Skye almost drooled, then remembered she had a hunky boyfriend of her own, and forced herself to look away.

Kurt pointed to her flat. “Would you like me to fix that for you?”

“Thank you, but I can do it myself,” Skye reluctantly admitted. “My dad wouldn’t let me get my license until I could change a tire.”

“But you’ll get your pretty shirt all dirty, not to mention ruin your manicure.”

“True.” Skye smiled to herself, thinking that not many men would be aware of stuff like that.

He seemed to read her mind. “I have five sisters. You learn to notice or you don’t survive. Besides, I’m a reporter, a trained observer.”

“I hate playing the helpless female, but this
is
a new blouse. . . . ”

“And I’m already dirty.”

“Right. But I don’t like being in anyone’s debt.”

“Well, I hate jogging alone; maybe you could run with me tomorrow afternoon.”

“Sorry.” A vision of looking pathetic as she tried to keep up with him popped into her mind, and she shook her head. “I have to exercise in the morning, before my brain figures out what I’m doing.”

“Very funny.” He moved her gently away from the trunk. “Then tell me something I can use in my column.”

As she pondered what little she could share, since most of her work at school was confidential, he lifted the spare onto the asphalt and fished out the jack.

She couldn’t tell him about Mrs. Idell’s threat, or Jackie having her locked out of her own office, or bingeing on Oreos, which pretty much covered her whole day.
Hmm.
She couldn’t think of a thing.

He had finished changing her tire when he commented, “This is a cool car.”

“Thanks. My father and godfather restored it for me.”

“Sounds like your family really takes care of you.”

Skye nodded.

He put the flat in the Bel Air’s trunk. “All done.”

“Thanks. But I still haven’t thought of any gossip for you.”

“That’s okay.” He shut the lid, turned toward her, and leaned back on his elbows, the muscles in his arms glistening with sweat. “My column for this week is already done, so how about we say you owe me a piece of news?”

Skye stuck out her hand. “Deal.”

Instead of shaking, he leaned forward, planted a soft kiss on her cheek, then walked away, saying over his shoulder, “I’ll look forward to collecting the rest of my payment.”

A fluttery feeling danced in the pit of her stomach, and Skye realized she was smiling. By no means blind to his attractiveness, she recognized that he aroused both her curiosity and her vanity.

Her expression thoughtful, Skye got into the car and headed toward her parents’ house. In the past six months she had decreased her twice-weekly visits to twice monthly. Due to her parents’ insistence that she should move into her old room and live with them until she got married—an event that couldn’t come soon enough, according to Skye’s mother, May. That was, as long as the groom wasn’t Wally. May had made her feelings about the police chief clear—he was too old, too divorced, and too not-Catholic.

Tonight Skye was lonely, and it had been close to three weeks since her last visit, so she steered the newly repaired Chevy out of town.

This time of year, the usually quiet countryside surrounding Scumble River was alive with combines in the fields and grain trucks lumbering along the blacktop, hauling golden hills of corn and soybeans to the silver silos that dotted the landscape.

Skye slowed as a tractor emerged from a dirt lane, then waved to the driver as she passed. She knew it was one of her parents’ westerly neighbors, but wasn’t sure which of the Pickett men was at the wheel. All four of the brothers were tall, thin, and prematurely wrinkled from the sun.

A few minutes later Skye slowed again to make the turn into her parents’ driveway. As her tires crunched over the white pea gravel, she spotted her father, Jed, on his riding mower, almost finished cutting the acre of grass surrounding the redbrick ranch-style house. When he noticed Skye he took off his blue-and-white polka-dotted cap and waved it in the air, revealing a steel-gray crew cut, faded brown eyes, and a leathery face.

Returning her father’s wave, she parked behind his old blue pickup and strolled over to the patio. A concrete goose wearing a black dress, a conical hat, and with a miniature broom fastened to its wing guarded the back door. Skye sighed in relief. The goose was a good barometer for her mother’s moods. With Halloween five weeks away, a witch’s costume meant all was well. . . .

Skye pushed open the screen door, entered the utility room, and paused to take off her shoes. May had replaced her old rust-colored carpeting with cream last month, and woe to anyone who left a footprint.

After tossing her tote bag on the dryer, Skye pushed open the swinging doors and strode into the large kitchen. Her stocking feet made no sound on the new beige-tiled floor. May had been on a redecorating tear during the summer. The far wall was now painted in grass green-and-white stripes, marble countertops adorned the peninsula, and a new glass and rattan table and chairs graced the dinette.

Skye’s mother stood at the sink, scrubbing potatoes with a vegetable brush. Despite her fifty-nine years and short stature, May’s athletic build reminded Skye of the cheerleader her mother once was. Today she wore denim capris and a pink long-sleeved Cubs T-shirt.

Without looking up from her task, she said, “Supper’s almost ready.” In May’s house no one was invited to eat; it was assumed that if you were around at mealtime you’d pull up a chair and dig in.

Skye noted the time on the square white wall clock—also a new addition. It was five thirty. “Isn’t it a little late for you guys to be eating dinner?” They usually ate at five on the dot.

“We had a lot to do today. Dad’s been in the fields since six. I walked my three miles with Aunt Kitty, Hester, and Maggie, then worked the seven-to-three shift at the station.” May was a dispatcher for the Scumble River police, fire, and emergency departments, which made her disapproval of Wally even more awkward, since as the police chief he was one of her bosses. “When I got home from the PD, I had to clean up the house and do the trim on the lawn.” May frowned. “Besides, you knew we were eating at six tonight.”