Murder of a Barbie and Ken (12 page)

“What a waste.”

“It’s a good thing I was able to get a few things yesterday.” Skye retied her shoe. “I don’t mind cooking if I have the ingredients, but I’m no Martha Stewart. I can’t whip up a three-course meal from refrigerator mold and leftover Halloween candy.”

“Cooking isn’t my thing either,” Theresa said. “I read recipes the same way I read romances. I get to the end and think, Well that’s not going to happen.”

Skye laughed and Tony Zello leaned across the aisle, frowning. “Could you two be quiet? Some of us are trying to concentrate.”

Theresa and Skye rolled their eyes, then watched as Tony’s wife, Hilary, picked up her ball and approached the alley to take her turn.

Tony shouted out instructions. “Keep your arm straight and look at your mark.”

Hilary took a deep breath and nodded. Lines formed at her mouth, and she stared at the pins.

As Hilary released the ball, Skye heard a familiar voice and then a loud wave of laughter. She cringed, turned, and stared.

Bunny was holding court near the bar. Skye watched as the redhead leaned toward another tackily dressed woman and announced, “Darling, my philosophy is if the shoe fits … buy it in every color.”

Charlie stood beside Bunny with a silly grin on his face. So that was how Bunny got to the bowling alley. May would have a fit when she found out Charlie had taken Simon’s mother out on a date.

It was Skye’s turn to bowl, but her attention was focused on the table behind her. Her ball rolled into the gutter, and the other team perked up.

When Skye returned to her seat after throwing her second
gutter ball, Simon gritted from behind clenched teeth, “She’s here.”

“Ignore her. She’s probably doing this to get your attention.”

He visibly forced himself to relax. “You’re right.”

“Good. Go get a strike.”

He hugged her and got up.

Skye scanned the area. Oh, no. Charlie was gone, and Bunny was leading a pack of men to a nearby table. Her hips swayed like a Chevy with bad suspension, and the men were nearly drooling. She wore a short black skirt with a slit up the back and a chiffon top with a neckline that plunged deeply into her silicone valley.

One of the men handed Bunny a drink, then ran his finger down her cleavage. She laughed and batted his hand away.

How much alcohol had she already consumed? Her face was red and her gestures exaggerated. Skye glanced at Simon, who was getting ready to roll his second ball. After that he’d turn around and see what his mother was up to. Skye wondered what to do. Hiding in the bathroom held a great deal of appeal.

Where was Charlie? He had brought Bunny, so he should be keeping an eye on her. Skye excused herself to the Dugans, and edged out of the bowling area.

Nate Turner, the guy running against Charlie for head honcho of the GUMBs, leaned against the bar with a beer in one hand and a shot glass in the other. As Skye passed, she heard him say to the bartender, “I married Miss Right. I just didn’t know her first name was Always.” The bartender smiled weakly, and Skye wondered how many times the man had heard that old joke.

Skye finally found Charlie coming out of the men’s room. “Why did you bring Bunny here?” she demanded.

“She was bored. You leave her by herself all the time. What do you expect?”

“Hey, she wasn’t exactly an invited guest, remember?”

He shrugged. “What’s the harm? She wanted a pizza. We’ll eat, have a couple of beers, and leave. It’s not your problem.”

“Except it is.” Skye realized her voice had risen and she made herself calm down. “While you’ve been occupied with other things, Bunny’s been knocking back drinks like they might reinstate prohibition tomorrow and virtually doing a strip tease for several of your dearest friends.” Skye pointed at Bunny’s table. “Simon will have a cow when he gets a load of her behavior.”

“Oh, I’d better get over there, huh?”

“Good idea,” Skye said. Usually Uncle Charlie was the one in charge, but somehow Miss Bunny’s presence was making him act like a big goofball.

Skye and Charlie arrived just as Simon walked up to his mother. The laughter at the table died as if a switch had been thrown.

Simon stared at the men until one by one they made their excuses and left. Finally he said, “I see you’ve set aside this special time to humiliate yourself in public.”

“What?” Bunny pushed a red curl out of her face. “But I’ve always loved bowling. I used to take you when you were little.”

A pained expression darted across Simon’s features. “I remember.”

“Did you know I was the women’s champ at the Las Vegas Lucky Strike three years running?”

“How would I know that? It’s not like you ever wrote me a letter.” He took Skye’s hand. “Let’s go.”

The Dugans were waiting for them. Theresa said, “Everything okay?”

“Peachy,” Skye answered.

From that point on, Simon bowled poorly and Skye did worse. The other team ended up winning by two pins. Skye was relieved to see that Bunny and Charlie were gone by the
time they finished changing shoes and gathering their things together.

As they got ready to leave, Skye said to Simon, “I’ll meet you by the door. I have to use the bathroom.”

Bob Ginardi and Tony Zello were waiting for her as she exited the ladies’ room. Tony said, “Can we talk to you a minute?”

“Okay.” Skye didn’t really trust either man, although she had no good reason for being leery of Tony—she really liked his father, old Doc Zello.

They drew her over to a corner and Tony continued, “We were really impressed with how you solved the murder during the bicentennial. The way you handled that saved the town a lot of embarrassment.”

“Thanks.”

“We’d like you to do the same thing for the GUMBs,” Tony said.

“Oh.” What were these two up to?

“We want you to figure out who killed the Addisons, but keep anything else you find out quiet,” Bob chimed in. “For the good of the organization.”

“Like what?” Skye asked.

“Oh, anything you find out that doesn’t have to do with the murder.” Tony forced a laugh. “Everyone has some skeleton in their closet they’d rather didn’t rattle too loudly.”

“I understand.” Skye thought quickly. Wally would probably want her to agree with the men’s plans in order to keep tabs on them. “Okay, I’ll do a little poking around and see what I can come up with.”

“Wonderful,” Tony said.

The two men shook her hand and walked away. Now this was an interesting twist. What did Tony and/or Bob have to hide?

  
CHAPTER 10
  

The boy stood on the burning deck
…

—Felicia D. Hemans

S
kye was surprised to see Frannie and Justin leaning against the Bel Air’s hood Saturday morning when she came out of the bank. After the Bitsy incident, Skye would have bet big money that Frannie wouldn’t be talking to Justin for a while. Clearly, the girl was more enlightened than Skye gave her credit for.

“Hi, Ms. D.” Frannie waved a red-mittened hand. “Got a sec?”

“Sure. But let’s sit in the car. My cold’s almost gone, and I don’t want to take any chance on bringing it back.”

As soon as they were settled and the car’s heater was blowing full blast, Justin said, “We’ve been thinking about a story for the first edition of our newspaper.”

“Good. Any ideas?” Skye could see they were itching to tell her what they had come up with.

“We’ve been hearing some interesting stuff about that murdered couple.” Frannie bounced up and down in her excitement.

“And?” Skye didn’t need to ask how the teens had heard about the Addisons’ private lives. If gossip were an Olympic event, Scumble River’s citizens would win the gold, silver, and bronze medals. Every man, woman, child, and pet had probably been fully informed regarding the Addisons’ history within hours of Skye and Jed finding the bodies.

“We want to cover that story for the paper,” Justin said, leaning forward and looking around Frannie to Skye.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Skye definitely didn’t want Frannie and Justin involved. Last time, they had been too close to the line of fire for her comfort level. “The school newspaper should cover stories that the town paper doesn’t, and believe me, the
Star
is covering the murder.”

“But we want to come at it from a different angle,” Frannie said. “We want to write about it from the kids’ point of view.”

“Let me think about it.” Skye did not like the sound of their proposal, but couldn’t immediately come up with any good reason to object. “I’ll get back to you guys in a few days.”

After a few token protests the teens left. As Skye put the car in gear and pulled into traffic, she wondered how she could stop the pair from sticking their noses into something that might be very ugly, not to mention extremely dangerous.

Skye made a face. Had Wally and Simon felt the same way about her in the past when she’d investigated? She shrugged. This time it was different. Both men had asked for her help.

Simon and Wally had opened the door, and today she was going to walk through it. Since both Belle and Joy thought Ken’s office manager, Yolanda Doozier, had important information about his medical malpractice, Skye wanted to talk to the woman ASAP.

A call early that morning to the medical clinic had informed her that Yolanda didn’t work Saturdays, which
meant Skye would have to seek her out at home. One good thing about living in a small town: Skye knew exactly where that was. Yolanda, her great-grandmother, and younger brother, Elvis, all lived in an farmhouse east of town on State Road.

When Skye turned right on State Road, it was deserted. Neither cable TV nor gas lines ran this way, and electricity was often iffy in bad weather. Most of the families who had once lived in this area had long since moved to town. Skye passed fields wearing their winter coat of white and a couple of collapsed barns that looked like dinosaur skeletons.

The Doozier house was the only residence for miles. As she slowed to pull into their driveway, Skye felt a twinge of frustration. The lane hadn’t been plowed, and it was obvious from the pristine snow that no one had driven in or out of there since before Wednesday’s huge snowfall.

Where were Yolanda, Elvis, and their great-grandmother, MeMa, staying? Skye closed her eyes and concentrated. She should be able to figure this out. Where would they go? Skye hit her forehead with the palm of her hand. Earl’s, of course. Somehow all Dooziers eventually ended up at Earl’s.

The patriarch of the Doozier clan, Earl, lived with his wife, Glenda, and his son and daughter, Junior and Bambi, north of town near the river. His nephew, Cletus, and younger sister Elvira lived with them, too. Dollars to donuts, when the snow got bad, MeMa, Elvis, and Yolanda packed up and moved in as well.

It was touch and go, but Skye finally managed to turn the Bel Air around without landing in a ditch. She retraced her route until she came to Kinsman Street, where she turned right, then right again on Cattail Path. This road hadn’t been plowed, but car tires had flattened the snow until it was a slippery sheet of ice. She slowed the Chevy to a crawl.

City services didn’t often venture into this part of town—when
they did, machinery, tools, and sometimes people turned up missing.

Scumble River was originally built in the fork between the two branches of the Scumble River. Since then it had spread along both banks. The group of people who lived along this bank of the river was known as Red-Raggers. These were not folks who appreciated uninvited guests.

Earl Doozier was the king of the Red-Raggers.

Skye had visited the Dooziers three times in the past two and a half years. The first time was to obtain a consent to reevaluate Junior Doozier for special education services. The second was when Junior and his father had fished her out of the river. And the third was to ask Earl and his wife some questions about an incident they’d witnessed during the Scumble River bicentennial. She hoped she was now on good enough terms with the family for Yolanda to talk to her. She knew that no Doozier would ever willingly give information to the police.

When Skye pulled into the Dooziers’ rutted driveway, she was relieved to see signs of occupancy—tracks in the snow and various vehicles scattered in and near the garage.

The house itself was dilapidated to the point of looking third world. Gray snow covered the front yard. Cars up on cinder blocks and old appliances were scattered around like lawn ornaments. A sign had been added since the last time she had visited. Tacked to a post at the end of the lane, it said: TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT. SURVIVORS WILL BE PROSECUTED.

Even in the cold air, Skye could smell animals, and the growls coming from the backyard were anything but welcoming. She was trying to remember if she had actually ever seen the Dooziers’ dogs when Junior burst out the side door.

He had a red crew cut, and a wide jack-o’-lantern grin lit up his freckled face. “Miz D., what are you doing here? You okay?” He had come to her aid on more than one occasion, and now considered himself her personal guardian angel.

“I’m fine, thanks. How about you?”

“I’m bored.”

Skye dug into her purse for one of the little treats she always kept there for the various kids she worked with, and pulled out a McDonald’s Happy Meal toy. She handed it to Junior. “Is this any fun?”

“Sure. Wait until Cletus sees what I got.” He started to run off.

Skye stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “Is your Aunt Yolanda staying with you?”

“Yeah, she’s here. Come on.”

Junior led her through the side door, past a small entryway, and up a few steps leading to the kitchen. The odor of stale beer and the sound of angry shouting permeated the air.

Earl Doozier, heavily tattooed and wearing only sweat-pants, stood nose-to-nose with a raven-haired beauty whose lush curves made the twisting Scumble River look as straight as the Mississippi. She sported a heart-linked ankle bracelet, and a rose tattoo peeked from her cleavage.

Skye recognized the woman as Yolanda. They had gone to high school together, though Yolanda was a couple of years younger than Skye.