Murder of a Sleeping Beauty srm-3 Read online

  Murder of a Sleeping Beauty

  ( Scumble River Mystery - 3 )

  Denise Swanson

  When school psychologist Skye Denison investigates the death of a popular teenager who was cast as Sleeping Beauty in the school play, she uncovers some shocking revelations about prominent Scumble River citizens. And even ever-optimistic Skye knows that in this case, finding the killer won't end this tale happily-end-after...

  Praise for Denise Swanson’s Scumble River mystery series

  “It’s no mystery why the first Scumble River novel was nominated for the prestigious Agatha Award. Denise Swanson knows small-town America, its secrets, and its self-delusions, and she writes as if she might have been hiding behind a tree when some of the bodies were being buried. A delightful new series.”

  —Margaret Maron

  Murder of a Sweet Old Lady

  “Skye is a quixotic blend of vulnerability and strength. . . . Denise Swanson is on her way to the top of the genre. . . . A magnificent tale written by a wonderful author.”

  —Harriet Klausner

  “Superbly written with emotion and everything a good mystery needs. . . . Shame on you if you miss anything by Denise Swanson.”

  —The Bookshelf

  “Swanson’s writing itself is fresh and snappy. The dialogue and descriptions pop like a July firecracker. . . . Skye Denison [is] one of the most likable protagonists in softer-boiled mystery fiction today. Murder of a Sweet Old Lady is more fun than the Whirl-A-Gig at the county fair and tastier than a corn dog. The price of admission is well worth the trip.”

  —Susan McBride, The Charlotte Austin Review

  Murder of a Small-Town Honey

  “A charming, insightful debut mystery.”

  —Carolyn Hart

  “A delightful mystery that bounces along with gently wry humor and jaunty twists and turns.”

  —Earlene Fowler, Edgar Award-winning author

  “Murder of a Small-Town Honey is the start of a bright new series. Swanson captures the essence of small-town life in Scumble River, and Skye is a likable heroine.”

  —Romantic Times

  “Denise Swanson has created a likable new heroine reminiscent of some of our favorite childhood detectives—with a little bit of an edge. . . . A fresh, delightful, and enjoyable first mystery.”

  —The Charlotte Austin Review

  “Skye is smart, feisty, quick to action, and altogether lovable.”

  —I Love a Mystery

  “A charming debut novel that rings with humor, buzzes with suspense, and engages with each page turned. . . . An impressive first novel worthy of praise.”

  —Kankakee Daily Journal (IL)

  “With a light touch, [Swanson’s] crafted a likable heroine in a wackily realistic small-town community with wonderful series potential. I suspect we’ll be seeing a lot more of Denise Swanson and Scumble River.”

  —Mystery Morgue

  “A lighthearted, entertaining mystery.”

  —The Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

  SIGNET

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  First Printing, April 2002

  Copyright © Denise Swanson Stybr, 2002

  All rights reserved

  To my dad,

  Ernest W. Swanson (1927-2000),

  whose quiet goodness was

  taken away from us much too soon.

  Scumble River is not a real town. The characters and events portrayed in these pages are entirely fictional, and any resemblance to living persons is pure coincidence.

  Acknowledgments

  My sincere thanks to:

  My aunt and uncle, Wilma and Al Votta, my cousins Darla and Ron Hutton, and the rest of my relatives and friends, who sustained my mother through her time of grief and helped ease her into widowhood.

  My Windy City Chapter of RWA, a great group of writers.

  My fellow Deadly Divas, especially Susan McBride, for all the companionship and advice. I could never have written this book while promoting my first one without you.

  My Buds, for their unending support.

  Luci Zahray, for her help with the pharmaceutical information.

  My mother, Marie Swanson, who helped me continue despite our mutual grief.

  And with love to my husband, Dave Stybr, whose devotion protects me from the slings and arrows.

  CHAPTER 1

  From Bad to Hearse

  As a school psychologist Skye Denison had dealt with many recalcitrant teens, but Justin Boward would be the death of her yet. He refused to talk. She was beginning to think his entire vocabulary consisted of yes, no, and the occasional grunt. Although she knew that adolescents tended to be like cats—neither react when you talk to them—his lack of response to her attempts to draw him out was starting to make her feel like a failure. A feeling she was way too familiar with already.

  Two years ago, Skye had been forced to crawl back to Scumble River, Illinois, after finding herself fired, jilted, and broke. It had been hard enough to return to the rural Midwestern town she had escaped as a teenager, but the citizens’ long memories had made it worse. Hardly a week went by without someone reminding Skye of what she had declared twelve years ago in her valedictorian speech. Back then, the moment the words had left her mouth, she’d regretted saying that Scumble River was full of small-minded people with even smaller intellects. She had regretted it even more since she’d moved back home.

  She snuck a peek at her watch as she pushed a stray chestnut curl under her headband. Twenty-five minutes before the Scumble River High School dismissal bell would ring. Once again, she attempted to make eye contact with the teen seated kitty-corner from her at the small table. He ducked his head and studied his chewed fingernails. Justin had not spoken three words in the previous fifteen minutes. Skye searched for some pithy comment.

  Before she could come up with one, a student she vaguely recognized flung the door open and stumbled inside. The girl bent over, trying to catch her breath, and spoke between gasps. “Sleeping Beauty is dead.”

  “What?” Was this teen-speak for: Run, the cops are here? Was Skye supposed to answer: The gray wolf howls at midnight?

  Skye’s gaze raked the adolescent, who was still hunched over, hands on her knees, standing just past the office threshold. She was dressed in low-riding wide-legged denims and a hooded belly top. Her bleached two-tone hair fell to the middle of her back, and her navel was pierced.

  After a quick appraisal, Skye decided that the girl probably hung with either the Rebels or the Skanks. Of Scumble River High’s five or six cliques, these were the two roughest. And unlike the teacher-pleasing Cheerleaders, Jocks, and Nerds, they did not volunteer information to adults. What was this girl up to?

  The adolescent finally straightened and grabbed Skye by the wrist. “Something abhorrent has happened. You have to come right now.” She tugged at Skye’s arm. “Hurry!”

  Skye found herself half-running, half-dragged down the long hall. Orange lockers went by in a blur, and the smell of that day’s lunch caught in her throat.

  The teen skidded to a halt before the closed gym doors and pointed. “In there.”

  “Who are you, and what are you talking about?”

  “This is just FYI. I’m out of here.” The girl tried to push past Skye and head back down the corridor.

  Skye grabbed the hood of her top. “Oh no, you don’t. Explain.”

  “Hey, Cujo, back in your cage.” The teen twisted violently, trying to free herself, then turned an anger-filled stare on Skye, who met her gaze without blinking.
Finally, the girl shrugged. “So, okay, I cut my eighth-period study hall, and I was hanging around here and there, waiting until my buds got out of school. I wanted a cigarette, and knew there was no PE last hour, so I went in the gym. It was dark, but I thought I saw someone on the stage, so I went closer. That’s when I saw her. The cheerleader playing Sleeping Beauty. She was laying there, dead.”

  The teen tried again to free herself. Skye refused to let go. “Oh no, you don’t, you’re staying with me. Let’s check this out. Sleeping Beauty was probably just rehearsing, or taking a nap.” Under her breath she muttered, “Or maybe she was afraid of you.”

  Side by side they entered the unlit gym. As her eyes adjusted, Skye could just make out the stage at the opposite end of the room, cluttered with partially completed sets for the spring musical Sleeping Beauty. She moved forward, a firm grip on her prisoner’s hood. Half walls and skeletal trees loomed in the darkness. While they climbed the steps to the stage, Skye wondered if she were doing the right thing. She didn’t think the faculty handbook covered this situation.

  To their right, a mock castle bedroom had been set up. Lying on the twin bed was one of the most beautiful young women Skye had ever seen. Her straight blond hair brushed the floor, and her face was a flawless oval. She had passed from the awkwardness of adolescence, and was yet to be touched by the hand of time. She was perfect.

  Skye took a closer look. Her skin had a waxy appearance and was almost blue-gray in color. Her lips and nails were pale. Skye rushed to the bed and checked for a pulse. She could feel nothing over the thud of her own heartbeat. She put her ear to the girl’s chest. Again nothing. Finally, she placed the back of her hand to the teen’s mouth. She wasn’t breathing.

  Skye forced herself to remain calm and remember what she had learned in her first-aid course. Nothing applied here. Sleeping Beauty was dead.

  “Run to the office and call 911.” Skye looked up to find the other girl gone. “Shit, I shouldn’t have let go of her.”

  “You shouldn’t say ‘shit’ either.”

  Skye’s heart thudded, and her head jerked up. She caught her breath when she recognized Justin, standing near the stairs. It was so rare to hear him speak that she hadn’t recognized his voice. She hadn’t noticed, but he must have followed when the girl dragged her away.

  He was the type that blended into the background. Medium height, medium build, and medium brown hair that hung straight from a center part to the middle of his ears.

  “Justin, am I glad to see you. Run to the office and call 911. We need an ambulance.”

  “Looks more like you need a hearse.” His words were cocky, but his face was pale and sweaty.

  “Justin, please, just call 911. Tell them no lights or siren, and no radio.” Skye wondered if there were anything else she should do. “And get the principal. Oh, and tell him to shut off the dismissal bell.”

  He shrugged. “He’s not going to listen to me.”

  She searched the pocket of her gray wool skirt and found a pad of passes. “Give me a pen.”

  The boy handed her the Bic from his shirt pocket.

  She scribbled a note and signed it, then handed it to Justin. “Hurry!”

  When the boy left, Skye pulled down the sleeves of her pink cardigan and shivered. It was the beginning of April, and it was still cold in Illinois. Of course, it didn’t help that the school board turned off the furnace on March 31, no matter what the weather.

  Skye felt a deep sadness settle over her. Why was this young woman dead? She had barely begun to live. This was one Sleeping Beauty who would never awake to her prince’s kiss. Skye’s gaze was drawn back to the girl. What had caused her death? There was no visible wound, no blood, no mark of any kind.

  She glanced around. The scene looked ready for a rehearsal. Except—what was that, not quite under the bed? She got down on her hands and knees, and peered at the object. The label had been peeled off, but the bottle’s odd shape teased Skye’s memory.

  She sat back on her heels and gnawed at her thumb. I wonder where it came from? The school doesn’t sell anything in bottles.

  Suddenly doors flew open and lights snapped on. “Miss Denison, what’s the meaning of all this?” Homer Knapik, the high-school principal, scurried across the gym floor.

  As he approached her, a detached part of Skye’s mind noted that between his squat build and the hair emanating from nearly every orifice and covering every limb, the principal looked like a sheepdog—one ready to bite the next lamb that veered from the flock.

  Justin followed at a prudent distance, his face still chalky but his brown eyes alight with interest.

  Skye met Homer at the bottom of the stairs. “Did you call 911? Did you shut off the dismissal bell?”

  “Yes, and you’d better have a damn good reason for your note.” He peered peevishly up at her through the fuzz hanging over his eyes.

  “I do.” She pointed to the body on the bed. “Maybe you’d better have the teachers escort the kids out the front door. We don’t want any of them wandering back here.”

  Homer took a step closer and squinted upward. “Oh, my God! That’s Lorelei Ingels. She isn’t . . . dead?” When Skye nodded, he scribbled a note on the pad from his pocket. “Boy, take this to the front office immediately and give it to Mrs. Hill.”

  “Justin, after you do that, wait for the ambulance crew, and show them the side entrance.” Skye lowered her voice and kept an eye on the teen, who was walking away ever so slowly. “We’d better call the police, too.”

  “What?” Homer jumped from foot to foot, as if he were about to pee his pants. “Do you have any idea who Lorelei Ingels is? Her family is one of the wealthiest and most influential in town. She’s won nearly every beauty pageant in the state. We’ve got to be extremely careful.” He stopped hopping around, and his shoulders slumped. “What am I saying? No matter how we handle this or how she died, we’re screwed.”

  “A young woman is dead, and that’s your first reaction?” Skye shook her head. She hoped that thirty years in the school system wouldn’t turn her into a bureaucratic zombie like they had poor Homer.

  The PA blared into life, making them both flinch. “All teachers are to personally escort their eighth-period students out the front door. Teachers without eighth-period students are to report to the locker area and help supervise. No students are allowed anywhere in the school unescorted.”

  When the announcement ended, Homer tried to climb the steps, but Skye stepped in front of him. “What are you doing? Get out of my way,” he demanded.

  Skye didn’t budge. “I think we’d better leave things on the stage alone. We don’t want to disturb any evidence.”

  Homer gave her a withering look. “Are you saying the girl was murdered? All we need is for a rumor like that to get started.”

  “The police will want to know why an apparently healthy eighteen-year-old suddenly dropped dead.”

  As if in response to her words, they heard the sound of running feet. Moments later, paramedics rushed through the door. Skye pointed to the bed. They pushed past her and went up the stairs.

  Homer grabbed her arm. “I’d better call the superintendent. I’ll be right back.”

  Skye watched the principal scurry out of the gym and Justin step just inside the doorway, turning back to the stage only when the EMTs began to fire questions at her. “How long has she been like this?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “When did you find her?”

  “About fifteen minutes ago.”

  “Was she conscious?”

  “No, just like she is now. No pulse, no heartbeat, no breathing.”

  One of the paramedics turned to his partner. “Better call the police.”

  The chief of police, Walter Boyd, was the first to arrive. He was tall and powerful-looking, with a muscular chest. Skye watched him swiftly assess the situation, then radio for backup from the county sheriff’s department and the state police. He also called in all four of
the off-duty Scumble River cops.

  Wally’s expressive brown eyes became shuttered when he spotted Skye. “I should have known you’d be involved.”

  She bit her lip. It wasn’t fair. She had never even dated the guy, and still her relationship with him had always been complicated: from her first crush on him when she was fifteen and he twenty-three, to their latest fight over what he considered to be a betrayal of his trust. “I’m sorry you’re still mad at me,” she said.

  “Mad? I’m not mad at you. I just don’t trust you anymore,” Wally said without inflection. “I specifically told you not to go off investigating on your own.”

  “I explained why I had to go alone to talk to those survivalists when my grandmother died last summer.” Skye moved closer. “They never would’ve said anything if you’d been with me.”

  He stepped back from her and ran a hand through his curly black hair, pain etched in the lines bracketing his mouth. “Yeah, Darleen explained why she had to leave me for another man, too. Let’s stick to business.” He flipped open his pad and clicked his pen. “Tell me what happened, from the beginning.”

  Skye noted the weariness in Wally’s face, and realized once again just how much she had hurt him. She wanted to repeat her apology but knew it would never be enough, so instead she replayed the last hour for him, step by step.

  “Where’s the girl who originally found the body?” Wally asked.

  “I haven’t seen her since she got away from me, and I don’t know her name.”

  Wally walked over to where Justin stood a few feet away from the adults. “Do you know who the girl is?”

  He shrugged. “Could be Elvira Doozier.”

  Skye looked heavenward. She should have guessed. Anytime there was a problem, a Doozier was usually involved somehow. She had first encountered the family when she initially returned to Scumble River. In fact, Junior Doozier had helped her when her car was totaled. Then the boy’s uncle had tried to kill her, and Junior had again come to her aid. She wondered where Elvira fit into that twisted family tree.