Polished Off (16 page)

Although it was summer vacation and the school was deserted, I heard the ghostly echoes of lockers clanging shut. I hadn’t set foot in these halls since graduation and it was eerie how the intervening twelve years seemed to melt away. Vonda and I had recoiled from dissecting a fetal pig together, made fun of students making out in the halls (while secretly envying them), and dared each other to speak to boys we were crushing on. A rousing rock beat leaked out of a door halfway down the hall and pulled me out of my nostalgia.

“No, Morgan. Left-shimmy, right-shimmy,
then
kick,” Jodi called as I pushed open the door of the auditorium, home of pep rallies where cheerleaders stumbled over the awkward syllables of “St. Elizabeth Sabertooths” as they shook their pom-poms. The contestants all wore electric blue shorts with halter tops and had their eyes glued to Jodi as she demonstrated a dance sequence, clipboard held high in one hand while she shimmied. Sam Barnes was filming from the orchestra pit, an angle guaranteed to net him flashes of undies as the girls high-kicked above him. Pervert. Another man stood in the middle of the aisle, watching the rehearsal, and I recognized the set of his shoulders and the way his head cocked a bit to one side as he concentrated.

I snuck up behind him. “Done flogging Darryl Michaelson with a rubber hose already?”

Showing no surprise, Agent Dillon looked at me over his shoulder. He’d shucked his coat and rolled up the sleeves of his pale yellow shirt, showing tanned forearms. “Wore out my whipping arm.” He flexed an impressive bicep. “His lawyer showed up and shut us down.”

“So you decided to come watch beauty contestants practice dance moves?”

“So I decided to interview possible murder witnesses,” he corrected. “Why’d you call?”

His question startled me and it was a moment before I remembered I still hadn’t told him about the note Jodi found. I pulled the scrap out of my pocket and filled him in. His gaze fixed on Jodi when I got to the part where she tore up the note. “I guess I’ll have to chat with Ms. Keen about destroying evidence,” he said.

“She’ll say I’m lying,” I warned him.

“But I know you’re not.”

I felt a surprising tingle of happiness at his faith in me. “How?”

He gave me an amused smile that set my blood thrumming. “You’re not a liar, Grace. You may be the most straightforward person I know.” His smile broadened at my confusion.

I tried to cover it with a question. “I don’t suppose you know where Kevin Faye was last night?”

“Not cutting up bikinis and leaving threatening notes. He was with me or one of my agents either at the morgue or at headquarters until almost nine this morning.”

After the swimsuit competition had started. Scratch Kevin as a suspect. Alibis didn’t get much better than that. And obviously the murderer left the note because it referred to “someone else” dying. Only the murderer and a handful of cops knew about the murder this morning, which was when Jodi said she found the note. It was pretty ballsy of the murderer to sneak back into the crime scene and leave the note right under the cops’ noses, as it were. I wondered how he got into the theater.

“Did you go to high school here?” Dillon interrupted my thoughts.

“Yep. I’m a proud St. Elizabeth Sabertooth.” I growled our pep rally growl.

“Seems you enjoyed it.”

“High school?”

He nodded. The girls on stage formed two lines and began marching to a Sousa-like number.

“It was okay. I wasn’t the most popular girl, but I had friends. I made decent grades and was the photo editor for the yearbook my senior year. And, of course, there was Hank.”

“True love.” His smile was twisted and I got the feeling he was thinking about something in his own past and not my high school romance that outlived its sell-by date.

“For a while. What about you? Did you like high school?”

“Hated it,” he said. He didn’t seem inclined to expand his answer.

“Because . . . ?”

“My best friend committed suicide when we were juniors,” he said. He faced the stage, not looking at me, his profile inscrutable.

I put a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry,” I said, feeling incredibly awkward at having forced such a confidence.

“It was a long time ago.”

No doubt. But that didn’t mean the pain and the aftereffects were gone. The music stopped before I could say anything else—probably just as well—and Jodi dismissed the girls, reminding them of rehearsal the next morning. Barnes sidled through a row of chairs and disappeared through a side entrance.

“The police say we can use the Oglethorpe again,” Jodi said. “Nine o’clock. We have to be out of there by eleven so the
Phantom
group can rehearse, so don’t be late.”

“Just a minute, please,” Agent Dillon said, starting forward. He took the stairs beside the stage two at a time and joined a startled Jodi and the contestants on stage. He introduced himself and asked anyone who had noticed anything out of place or unusual yesterday, no matter how minor it had seemed at the time, to talk to him. He paused, making sure he had their attention, and then said, “I also have to tell you that we’re doing background checks on each of you.”

Gasps and widened eyes greeted his announcement. “That’s unconstitutional,” someone muttered.

“Given that Ms. Faye was contemplating expelling one of you from this competition for some infraction, I have to check it out, in case it has any bearing on her death.”

“My girls would never—” Jodi began.

“It was me!” The girl’s voice cracked and I couldn’t tell who it was.

THE CONTESTANTS PULLED AWAY FROM THE GIRL who had spoken as if afraid they’d catch swine flu from her. They formed a deep semicircle around her, as perfect as if it had been choreographed. Left alone in the center of the stage, Hayley of flaming-baton fame stood with her head bowed. Flax-colored hair curtained her face. From the way her shoulders shook, I thought she was crying.

Murmurs of “murder” and “Miss Faye” swirled up from the girls surrounding her. Their mood reeked of mingled fear, excitement, and relief.

“She killed Miss Faye,” someone muttered.

My money was on Tabitha.

“And cut my swimsuit strap,” the same someone said louder.

Yep, Tabitha.

A new voice said, “She ruined my evening gown with that sprinkler ‘accident.’ And it was only on loan from Filomena’s Fashion Cove.”

“She sabotaged Kiley’s mats.”

The accusations kept coming as the gaggle of young women morphed disturbingly quickly into a mob. If Hayley had been a witch tied to a stake, one of them would have tossed a match.

“I didn’t!” Hayley jerked her head up, eyes wide with astonishment. “Of course I didn’t kill Miss Faye. Or any of the rest of it.”

Agent Dillon started to say something, but Rachel broke out of the pack and threw her arms around Hayley. “It’s okay,” she said. She glared at the other girls. “I’m sure you didn’t do anything very bad.”

Dillon stepped forward then. “I need to speak with Miss . . . ?”

“Hayley Greenfield,” she said, talking to the floor. “I didn’t kill her. But when she said she’d found out about the photos—”

“Told you it was photos,” a girl said in a satisfied tone.

“Let’s talk in private, Miss Greenfield,” Dillon said as the girls pelted her with questions.

“It’s none of your beeswax,” Rachel told the other contestants. “Leave her alone.”

“But she—”

“That’s enough,” Agent Dillon said. His voice was no louder than usual, but the contempt and anger in it silenced the contestants. His gaze traveled around the semicircle but most of the girls refused to meet his eyes. “Right, then.” He gave Rachel a small smile and then guided Hayley toward the stairs at stage right.

The other girls broke into clumps of two and three and straggled toward the stairs at stage left, muttering.

“Remember, tomorrow at nine,” Jodi called, shooting a look at Agent Dillon as if daring him to contradict her.

“Rachel,” I called, waving a hand.

Catching sight of me, she skipped the stairs and jumped down from the middle of the stage, landing with knees bent. As she straightened, her mouth formed an O and she pointed. I whirled around to see Sam Barnes stumbling toward me, one hand clutching the back of his head. Blood dripped from between his fingers and stained his collar.

“Attacked . . . camera,” he croaked. He crumpled to his knees four feet in front of me and I sprang forward to catch his shoulders before he could plant his face in the carpet.

 

 

AGENT DILLON WAS ALREADY CALLING FOR AN ambulance and backup by the time I lowered Barnes as gently as I could to the floor. He groaned. Rachel darted away and returned in a minute with a purple bathing suit soaked in cold water.

“Where’d you get this?” I asked, pressing it gently against the bloody knot on the back of Barnes’s head.

“My gym bag. It was still there from this morning’s competition. I sweated in it, though. You don’t, like, think that will give him an infection or anything, do you?” She looked down at me anxiously where I squatted beside the injured man.

“The crud in this carpet poses more of a threat than your suit.” From my low vantage point I could see years’ worth of chewing gum bumps sprouting from the undersides of the seats. Ick. Barnes’s eyes fluttered open. “What—” he asked. He seemed to have trouble focusing for a minute, then recognition sparked in his eyes. “The hair lady.”

“What happened, Barnes?” Agent Dillon’s voice came from above me. Uniformed officers had arrived and corralled the contestants and Jodi. Rachel joined them at a nod from Dillon.

“My head.” Barnes reached around and fingered the lump. “Ow.”

“I think it’s stopped bleeding,” I said, pulling the swimsuit away.

“Doesn’t look too serious,” Dillon said, “but it’s best to have the EMTs examine you. They’re on their way. Can you tell me what happened?”

“I damn well can.” Barnes’s voice grew stronger and a healthier color flushed his face. With my help, he pushed to a sitting position, resting his back against the side of a chair. “I was attacked in the men’s room.”

“Attacked? By whom?” Dillon had his notebook out, but he hadn’t written anything yet.

“How the hell should I know? Someone who wanted my camera. He stole it.” His eyebrows slammed together.

“You saw him?”

“No, the coward snuck up on me. I was at the urinal. I heard the door open—didn’t think anything of it—and the next thing I know . . . wham! He clocked me with something. He must have snatched my camera while I was out. I came around and found my way back here. That’s all I know. What kinda creep takes advantage of a man with his johnson in his hand? That’s low.”

Penciling a couple of notes, Dillon looked back at Barnes, not reacting to his vulgarity. “If you didn’t see the attacker, you don’t know for sure it was a man, right?”

“I was in the men’s room!”

He said it like the room had a force field that kept anyone with two X chromosomes out.

“It didn’t surprise you to hear the door open when you and I are the only men in the building?” He gestured toward the contestants being interviewed by the uniformed officers near the stage.

“I didn’t think about it,” Barnes said. “I wasn’t thinking about anything except an editing problem I’m having with the film. Next thing I know, I’m on the floor with my head split open. Hey, you got an aspirin?”

“The EMTs will be here in a minute. You have any enemies who might have done this?”

“Everyone’s got enemies, right?” Barnes shrugged.

I gave him a thoughtful glance. What a sad statement. I didn’t have any enemies as far as I knew, nor did Mom. At least, not since Constance died. And even Constance wasn’t an enemy. Not the kind who plotted to do you harm. She was more a pain in the butt, a thorn in the side, a cross to bear . . .

“But I’ve figured out who did it!” Barnes said, surprising me and, to judge from the expression on his face, Agent Dillon.

Dillon raised his brows, inviting Barnes to continue.

Barnes paused dramatically. “It had to be the killer. The one who offed Audrey. He was afraid I had something incriminating on my camera, so he stole it.” He looked from me to Dillon, eager to have us praise his reasoning.

“That’s a possibility,” Agent Dillon said. “Did you?”

“If it’s true, that means Darryl didn’t kill Audrey,” I said.

“Who’s this Darryl?” Barnes asked. “If he took my camera, I want him arrested. The camera is worth thousands, but the intellectual property on it—my film—is worth hundreds of thousands. Maybe more.”

“I’m sure you have insurance,” Dillon said unsympathetically. “If you’d turned the camera over to me when I asked, you wouldn’t have a broken head and you’d still have your blockbuster.”

I detected the sneer in the last word and bit back a grin.