Murder of a Sweet Old Lady Read online

  “So any one of them could have done it.”

  “Afraid so.”

  Skye looked around the Scumble River High School gym. The bleachers were extended to their fullest length and folding chairs filled the floor. All the lights were blazing from protective cages in the ceiling. The scents of flowers and perfume competed with the long-entrenched effluvium of sweat and the unique hormonal odor of teenagers.

  A scattering of people had already claimed seats in the front rows. They chatted with each other, read the program, and otherwise amused themselves while waiting for the ceremony to begin. Three or four small children raced up and down the aisles, looking sweaty and uncomfortable in their dress clothes.

  Leaning against the entrance, Skye remembered her own graduation thirteen years ago. She had stood on that very stage as the valedictorian of her class. Back then she thought she knew everything. She was sure Scumble River had nothing to offer her, and life would be perfect if she could just get away from her hometown. She had yearned for bright lights and sophistication without understanding the cost involved in acquiring those wishes.

  She had thought everyone else was dumb, but she had been the stupid one. The chance to make a speech to the whole town had gone to her head like cheap wine. And as with too much cheap wine, when she finally woke up, years later, she had a terrible hangover and faced the consequences of her actions.

  Skye stared at the podium and saw herself giving the infamous valedictory speech in which she had told the whole town how little she thought of it and its residents. Now she had been back for ten months and people had stopped reminding her of that shameful oration, but she was sure someone would mention it again tonight.

  Suddenly the PA cut into her thoughts. “Ms. Denison, please report to the band room.”

  Hurrying down the corridor, Skye wondered what was up. They were using the band room as a staging area for the senior girls. Long before she walked through the door, she heard high-pitched shrieks and screams.

  From the hall she could just make out two figures rolling on the floor. Both wore pastel nylon frocks that looked more like slips than dresses. As Skye skidded into the room, a crimson-tipped hand snaked out of the melee, grabbed its opponent’s fragile shoulder strap, and tore downward.

  Homer Knapik, the principal, stood on one side of the writhing mass and his secretary, Opal Hill, on the other. Neither seemed to have a clue about how to stop the fight.

  Skye scanned the area, looking for a way to separate the girls without resorting to physical force. She dropped her purse and grabbed a pair of cymbals lying next to a music stand. Wading through the onlookers, she got as close to the combatants as possible and banged the brass discs together with all the strength she could muster.

  The brawlers stopped to cover their ears. Skye ignored the pain in her own ears, replaced the cymbals, grabbed the nearest girl by the upper arms, and dragged her out the door.

  Homer nabbed the other warrior. He shouted instructions to Opal as he hurried down the hall after Skye. “Keep everyone else here.”

  After shoving her captive into the health room, with an order to stay put, Skye closed the door and leaned against the wall. She was just in time to see Homer put the other prisoner into his office.

  Homer and Skye met at the counter. “What was that all about?” Skye asked.

  “The girl in the pink is Gus Yoder’s girlfriend. She was shooting her mouth off about how unfair it was that he wasn’t graduating tonight with his class. The one in the yellow is the girl he attacked in the rest room.” Homer took out a handkerchief and wiped his face.

  “Did Miss Pink go after the other one or was it mutual?” Skye tried to get her breathing back to normal.

  “From what the onlookers were saying, it sounds as if the girlfriend threw the first punch, but the one in yellow hit back.” Homer wrung his hands.

  “So neither can graduate?” Skye drummed her fingers on the Formica.

  Homer looked at his watch. “We’ve got less than half an hour to decide. What do you think?”

  “If Opal can get me three of the most sensible witnesses, I’ll talk to them individually and see what the story is. In the meantime, I suggest you locate Miss Pink’s and Miss Yellow’s parents.”

  Skye slipped into a seat in the back of the gym. She had retrieved her purse, and taking out her compact and lipstick, she tried to fix her face, glad she had worn her chestnut curls in a French braid.

  It was too bad she and Homer had been forced to remove Gus’s girlfriend from participating in the graduation ceremony, but the girl had clearly been in the wrong and they couldn’t afford to let her get away with breaking the rules. What kind of message would that send to the other students?

  As the music started, the audience stood and faced the entrance, all eyes straining for a glimpse of the graduates. Skye noted that this was Scumble River at its most interesting. Many of the assembly were dressed in their finest T-shirts and jeans. The man in front of her wore his black-and-gray hair straggling down his back, with a grapefruit-sized bald spot in the middle of his crown.

  But the real show was the graduates themselves. This class had voted against the traditional caps and gowns, so the entire fashion spectrum was visible. The first girl in line wore a long black skirt with a matching crop top. A gold hoop adorned her exposed navel. Crew socks and heavy oxfords completed the look.

  Colonel Sanders came next. This boy wore a red string tie, white suit, and a full beard. One of the last in line was a girl who had mistaken graduation for the prom. She had on a floor-length satin evening gown.

  When the graduating class was seated, Homer stepped up to begin his welcoming speech.

  Tuning him out, Skye looked over the seniors and mused, Well, no one can say there aren’t individual thinkers in this group. At least they didn’t all march out dressed exactly the same like my class did. We looked liked Barbie and Ken goes to graduation.

  She studied them more closely. Looking past the strange hair, body piercing, and odd clothing, she saw the future farmers, scientists, and teachers that these kids would eventually become, and felt an unexpected lump in her throat. Suddenly, her attention was caught by a young man who sat directly behind the graduation candidates. He slipped to the floor and then popped up in an empty chair in the seniors’ row. Obviously he had crawled between the legs of the chairs.

  Skye half rose from her seat. I wonder what that’s all about? Should I do something about it? Her thoughts were detoured when the superintendent stood to pass out the diplomas and she sank back down in her chair.

  The majority of names were met with polite applause, but there were a few whose families seemed so surprised that their progeny had actually completed high school that the announcement of their names was met with uncontrollable screams of joy. Most of these latter students wore the embarrassed expression teens acquire whenever their relatives show too much enthusiasm for anything.

  Skye consulted her program to see how many more students still had to come up to the stage. She needed to duck out a few minutes before the end and help the kids start to form a receiving line. The last of the W’s were being called, only four Z’s left.

  Her head jerked up as the superintendent’s voice rang out, “Gustave Yoder.”

  The young man whom Skye had earlier observed surreptitiously changing seats rose and sauntered forward. From the stage, Homer caught her eye. She shrugged. They had been outmaneuvered.

  Her composure was tested when abruptly Gus moved to center stage and opened his mouth. Only the valedictorian was supposed to speak. Blessedly, a train chose that instant to blow its whistle and they were not forced to listen to whatever comment Gus was making. Skye could see his lips moving, but she couldn’t hear a word he said.

  An hour later, after everyone had finally cleared out of the gym and foyer, Homer found Skye. They walked together toward his office.

  Once they were behind closed doors he asked, “What in the hell happened?”
/>   “No doubt Yoder’s girlfriend deliberately started the fight so the office would be left empty and a diploma for Gus could be snuck into the pile on the counter,” Skye explained.

  “But how did he get a diploma in the first place?”

  “Who knows? Maybe he bribed someone at the printers, or a friend stole one from the secretary’s drawer while she was in the process of typing in the names. It doesn’t really matter; his transcript will still state he didn’t really graduate. The diploma is just a piece of paper.”

  “Well, I don’t like it.”

  “Neither do I. As usual, the woman ended up sacrificing herself for her man. What a lesson for these girls to learn. Gus got to go through the graduation ceremony, but his girlfriend certainly did not.” Skye frowned. “I’m just glad we let the other girl graduate. At least we made the right decision in that case.”

  Homer nodded.

  “On a brighter note, maybe this will get Gus’s father off our backs.” Skye squared her shoulders. “And if Mr. Yoder is behind all the vandalism I’ve been experiencing, it better stop now. No more Ms. Nice Psychologist.”

  Saturday morning started much earlier than Skye wanted it to. The phone at her parents’ house began ringing at six and the doorbell at eight. She and Bingo finally gave up trying to sleep and emerged from her bedroom just as her Uncle Dante was leaving.

  Skye caught his parting words. “Be there at one, before the police change their minds again.”

  May turned the fire up under the kettle, put a cup in front of Skye, and pointed to a spot near Skye’s feet. “I told you that cat stays in your room.”

  “But, Mom.”

  “Don’t ‘but Mom’ me. Put it back now.” May held the bowl of Sweet ’N Low just out of Skye’s reach.

  “Sorry, baby. I’ll take you with me when I run my errands today,” Skye apologized to the feline as she thrust Bingo into the bedroom and hurriedly closed the door.

  Her tea and toast were ready when she got back to the table. “Why was Uncle Dante here?”

  May sat down with her coffee mug. “Since they’ve finally released Grandma’s body and taken the tape off her house, he wants to get together this afternoon and have a family meeting to decide things.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Uncle Dante. He doesn’t usually ask for anyone else’s opinion.”

  “He doesn’t have any choice. Grandma’s intentions are pretty clear on that point.” May smiled slightly.

  Skye took her things to the sink and spoke over her shoulder. “I didn’t think Grandma had a will, since she had the trust and everything.”

  “The trust takes care of the major part of the estate, so she wrote a letter for the odds and ends. She gave it to me about six months ago, after we insisted she have Mrs. Jankowski live with her.” A look of sadness crossed May’s features.

  “You never mentioned it.”

  “Grandma asked me not to.” May joined Skye at the sink and turned on the water.

  Skye frowned. It seemed that Grandma had kept a lot of things secret. “Do I have to be at this meeting?”

  “Yes, all the children and grandchildren.” May wiped a plate and set it in the drainer.

  Skye dried a glass and sighed. “Won’t that be jolly, now that everyone hates me?”

  “Well, honey, you stirred up the stew, now you’re going to have to eat it.”

  Vince’s hair salon, Great Expectations, was located in a stand-alone building on one of Scumble River’s busier corners. At twelve-thirty in the afternoon both the streets and the parking lot were empty. Skye grabbed the sack and paper cups from the passenger seat of the Buick, wiggled out of the car, and kicked the door closed with her foot.

  As she approached the screen door at the front of the shop she yelled, “Vince, let me in. My hands are full.”

  Her brother appeared, clad only in a swimming suit. He held the door open for her and took the drinks from her hands.

  “Thanks.” Skye held out the sack to Vince. “Hope you haven’t eaten yet. I brought subs.”

  “Nope, I was taking advantage of a lull in the action and doing some tanning.”

  “That explains the trunks.” Skye headed toward the back room and Vince followed. “I was afraid they were the new uniform for your salon.”

  Vince snorted. “Yeah? Well, how come your hair’s like that?”

  The sun had dried her hair into a mass of curls. “I just came from swimming at the recreation club.”

  “Oh. I’ll fix it for you before you leave.”

  “Thanks.”

  They each took a chair next to the shampoo bowls and spread napkins in their laps before opening the sandwiches. They chewed companionably for a while.

  “So, who were you with the night before Grandma died?” Skye asked.

  Vince choked and gasped for air. After taking a drink from his cup, he finally said, “Damn it, Skye. Isn’t a psychologist supposed to be a little more subtle than that?”

  She shrugged. “Probably, but this is the first day of vacation and I’m officially off duty.”

  “You might want to go back on duty if you expect to get anything out of our relatives about Grandma’s murder.”

  Skye thought for a moment. “You’re right, but that still doesn’t answer my question. Who was she? And does Abby know?”

  Vince finished his sub and got up to throw away the debris. He answered with his back to Skye. “Abby and I aren’t seeing each other anymore. She wanted to get married and I wasn’t ready.”

  Skye could certainly sympathize with that. “So who’s your alibi?”

  “Just someone I met at the gym. It was a one-night thing. I have no plans to see her again.” He looked at Skye and added before she could open her mouth, “And yes, I did use protection.”

  Skye stood looking out the window at the vehicles filling Grandma Leofanti’s driveway. She wondered how true it was that you could tell a lot about people by what they drove.

  She and her parents had come together in their white Oldsmobile, a middle-of-the-road type of car. Her brother Vince’s Jeep was parked next to Aunt Mona’s Lincoln. Those automobiles were so obvious they needed no interpretation.

  The twins drove matching TranSport minivans. Again, that selection didn’t take a psychologist to figure out. Their parents, Minnie and Emmett, had come by truck, as had Uncle Dante. But while the Overbys’ pickup was old and showed years of hard work, Dante’s looked as if it had been driven off the showroom floor that morning. Skye wondered how he managed that on the income from a working farm.

  Last, just pulling in, was Dante’s son, Hugo. His pearl-colored Infiniti gleamed as he parked it carefully away from the other vehicles and in the shade of the house. Skye felt lust in her heart, knowing she could never afford the thirty-five thousand dollar car her cousin drove so proudly.

  The living room was crowded, and being the last to arrive, Hugo squeezed in beside his parents on the sofa. Minnie and Emmett had chosen the matching armchairs, a twin sitting on the floor at each of their feet. Mona and her husband, Neal, were on the love seat, looking too elegant for the surroundings.

  Skye managed to avoid speaking to Mona and kept her distance from the couple. She was still too angry about the essay contest to be civil.

  Jed, Skye, and Vince sat on chairs they had brought in from the dining room. May was ensconced in Grandma Leofanti’s La-Z-Boy.

  Everyone stared at one another. No one seemed to know how to start.

  Finally Skye said, “How about if we each take a moment and tell how Grandma was special to us?”

  A murmur went through the crowd, but no one responded.

  “I’d be glad to go first,” Skye continued.

  Ginger leaned forward. “Yes, you always are, glad to be first, I mean.”

  Gillian snickered.

  “Fine, feel free to go ahead then.” Skye sat back and crossed her arms.

  Before Ginger could respond, Dante interjected, “Don’t be asinine, Skye. Let’s j
ust get this over with.” He turned to May. “So, what did Ma want us to do?”

  May put on her glasses and leafed through a sheaf of papers. “Well, I’m not even sure if it’s legal or not, but since most of the estate is tied up in the trust, she just wrote me a letter about the other stuff.”

  Hugo looked at his father. “Maybe we should talk to our lawyer and see what he says.”

  “I thought of that,” May said quickly, “but he costs so much and this is really just about her burial and the disposal of the knickknacks. I guess it depends if we can agree.”

  Dante narrowed his eyes. “Go ahead then and tell us what she wanted.”

  “First, it seems that she already picked out her casket and prepaid for the funeral at Reid’s. Here’s the contract.” May passed a document to Dante. “She also talked to Father Burns and picked out the readings and such.”

  “Well, I wonder why he’s never discussed that with me or Neal?” Mona said. “I am head of the Altar and Rosary Society and Neal is the Grand Knight of the KC.”

  “So, it seems the arrangements are already made,” May said. “Unless someone has an objection.” She looked around the room.

  Dante glared at Skye. “I should have known you’d manage to get the business for Reid’s.”

  “Uncle Dante, Simon doesn’t need our business.” Skye paused and then smiled wickedly. “After all, people are just dying to get in.”

  Vince snickered and the twins tsked.

  Dante turned red and sputtered. “You . . . you have no respect—”

  “As to the car,” May interrupted, “Mom wanted Skye to use it as long as she needed, but when it’s sold the money is to be divided among the great-grandchildren.”

  The twins buzzed.

  “Okay,” May continued, “now for the personal stuff. Mom wants us to each take what we want and then sell whatever no one claims.”

  “What if more than one of us wants something?” Ginger asked.