“Who’s dead this time?”
After Skye explained, Loretta said, “Okay, if the roads are clear I’ll see you in ninety minutes, and if they aren’t, who knows?” Illinois had only two seasons—winter and construction. Winter was officially over. The first orange traffic cone had been spotted.
Before Skye could hang up, Loretta asked, “Do you think he killed her?”
“No, but I don’t have a good reason for thinking that, except I don’t want to have an ex-boyfriend who’s a killer. It’s bad enough that he slept with a married woman and her daughter while we were dating.”
“Did you take precautions?” Loretta demanded.
“No.”
Loretta drew in a sharp breath.
“Because I didn’t sleep with him,” Skye finished.
“Oh . . . ah . . . that’s good. Great.” Loretta fumbled for a comment. “See you soon.”
A tiny smile played on Skye’s lips as she hung up the phone. She had never heard her friend at such a loss for words.
Then she frowned.
Skye sat on the vinyl couch in the police-station entry-way as she waited for Loretta. She had written Kent a note, telling him a lawyer was on her way, but she doubted Wally had given it to him.
She shifted in her seat and grabbed her tote bag, hoping that she had put her current mystery into it before leaving that morning. Her questing hand didn’t feel the hard edge of a book, but did come across the sheaf of papers she had taken from her mailbox on both Thursday and Friday. She had sorted out the phone messages at school and returned most of the calls, but she hadn’t looked at the rest of the documents.
Her eyes automatically scanned the memos before tossing them into the wastebasket. Most had nothing to do with her, but one stopped her automatic crumple reflex. It was from Homer, calling a meeting to discuss their school’s low grade on the state report card. Their achievement scores did not stack up well against those of other, wealthier school districts. The last paragraph read:
We’re going to keep having these meetings until I find out why no work is getting done around here.
Skye smoothed the wrinkled sheet and put it back in her purse. It would go in her scrapbook of silly administrator memos.
The last thing in her pile was an envelope that had already been ripped open. She turned it over to see if she could figure out why the seal had been broken, and froze. She stared at the piece of mail in her hand. It was addressed to Mr. Simon Reid, Coroner. The top left corner bore the name of the forensics lab. It was the missing toxicology report. How had it gotten into her mailbox at school? More importantly, what should she do with it?
She glanced around. She was alone in the waiting area, but anyone could come through one of several doors at any moment. What to do? Hand it over to Wally, was the obvious answer, but someone had gone to a lot of trouble to get this to her. And Wally already had a copy, so she wasn’t withholding vital information.
Okay, she’d take a quick peek and then give it to the chief. But she needed to preserve any fingerprints. Skye reached into her purse and retrieved her cosmetic case. Inside were tweezers, which she used to pull the report from the envelope.
A quick scan told her nothing. Most of the narrative did not use words Skye understood. The summary was a little easier to grasp. Lorelei had been given a fatal dose of dextroamphetamine. That sounded familiar. Skye made a note of the drug and the amounts found in the young woman’s blood.
She was using the tweezers to return the report to its envelope when she saw a Post-it stuck on the back. Scrawled on the yellow square was:
Thought you should see this. Watson.
Skye was hoping Watson wasn’t who she thought he was when Loretta arrived. Six feet tall and well muscled, with smooth mahogany skin and black hair that she wore in a coronet of braids, Loretta turned heads whenever she entered a room.
The two women hugged.
“Same police chief?” Loretta asked.
“Same everything.”
“Okay, here’s the plan. I’ll demand to see my client. If your friend is swift enough, he’ll confirm I’m his lawyer and everything will be fine.”
“And if he’s not too quick on the uptake?”
“We’ll play it by ear.” Loretta turned and rang the visitor’s bell.
Thea answered, listened to Loretta, and went to get the chief.
He appeared a few minutes later, scowling. “Ms. Steiner, what brings you to our neck of the woods?” He glanced over her shoulder at Skye. “As if I couldn’t guess.”
“Chief Boyd, nice to see you again. I’m here on behalf of Kent Walker. I understand you’ve been questioning my client without benefit of attorney.”
“He’s not under arrest.”
“So he’s free to go?”
“We’ve asked him to cooperate in our investigation.”
“I understand that cooperation was coerced with a blow to the head.”
Wally’s face reddened. “He hit his head getting into the police car.”
“Right.” Loretta narrowed her eyes. “I’d like to see my client now.”
After Loretta was ushered into the interrogation room to confer with Kent, who had readily agreed that she was his attorney, Skye returned to school.
Her first act was to put the tox report into a Ziploc bag and stash it in her trunk with the photocopy of Lorelei’s letter. Skye had a bad feeling that Watson was none other than Justin Boward, and that the girl who’d been seen right after the original report was stolen was Frannie Ryan. She wondered when those two had joined forces.
Skye was trying to figure out how much of what she knew was confidential when Opal knocked on her door. Homer wanted to see her.
Skye had barely settled into a chair in the principal’s office when he demanded, “What in the hell is going on? Did Kent murder Lorelei?”
“The police got a tip and searched Kent’s house. They found dirty pictures of, and letters from, both Lorna and Lorelei. It appears he was sleeping with both mother and daughter. It looked to me like they were going to charge him with Lorelei’s murder, so I got him an attorney.”
“He understands the school isn’t paying lawyer fees, right?”
“Why would he think they would?” Skye countered.
A shifty look settled on the principal’s features. “I’m not sure, but we may’ve promised him that when we hired him.”
Light was dawning. “You mean, you gave Kent an under-the-table deal—outside the teachers’ contract?”
Homer half nodded, then seemed to catch himself. “I can’t talk about that.”
“You know, I always wondered how someone like Kent Walker, who hated being in Scumble River—let alone in the Midwest—ended up in our school. Any ideas?”
“What do you mean by that?” The hair in Homer’s ears bristled. “I’ll have you know we pass over a lot of good people to get to the ones we hire.”
Skye bit her lip to keep from laughing. The sad thing was that Homer was probably right. “Okay, but it’s still odd that someone who thinks he’s so much better than the rest of us ended up teaching in Scumble River.” After the words left her mouth she realized the description sounded strangely like her own situation. She reddened
