The Skeleton Takes a Bow (A Family Skeleton Mystery) (7 page)

W
e stayed up late that night finishing up the
Doctor Who
DVDs Madison had borrowed so she could take them back to Samantha, but since the next day was Saturday, I figured I’d sleep in and let Madison get off to work with Deborah without my presence. It didn’t work out that way. Instead, I was woken by Deborah shaking my shoulder.

My sister knows that unless there’s an emergency, she’s supposed to warn me before coming inside the house. So naturally, I assumed the worst. “Deborah? What’s wrong?”

“That’s what I want to ask you.”

“We’re fine—I was asleep. Nothing’s wrong.”

“Well, something’s wrong with you. Did you or did you not call the police again and give them that same cock-and-bull story that Sid dreamed up?”

“It’s not a cock-and-bull story, and Sid didn’t dream it up.” Technically Sid can’t dream anything up, since he doesn’t sleep, but I didn’t think it was a good time to remind her of that fact.

“Then you did call again?”

“Of course I called again. I’m supposed to call the police when I have information about a crime—you know, because of being a responsible citizen.”

“Is it responsible to keep wasting the police department’s time and resources?”

“It’s not a waste of resources for them to investigate a crime. And how do you know anything about it anyway?”

“Last night was our bowling league tournament. And Louis was late because he had to pull out his report from the wasted trip he took to the school the other week and confirm that there were no signs of violent death in that auditorium. We almost had to forfeit!”

“Don’t you think a murder investigation is a little bit more important than a bowling game?”

“It was the league championship, thank you very much.”

“How’d you do?”

“We won.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thank you.”

“So why are you still here complaining if my call didn’t hurt anything?”

“Because—because—because there wasn’t any murder!”

“What about the disappearance? A teacher came to Pennycross for an interview and he hasn’t been seen since.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. Louis told me all about it. The guy came for an interview at two in the afternoon. He met with the search committee for, like, an hour, then Principal Dahlgren and two of the other committee members—including the president of the PTO—walked him out. They were there when the guy drove away. They’ve also got a waitress who served him dinner at the River Inn several hours later.”

“Why was he still in town? That’s suspicious, isn’t it?”

“Not really. He’d been driving around looking at neighborhoods where he might want to get an apartment. Apparently he was feeling pretty confident about getting the job.”

“And he just told all this to the waitress?”

“Men do flirt with waitresses, you know. Apparently it was a slow night. They started talking and he asked her about living here. Since he wanted to know about specific apartment buildings, then yeah, he probably had just been riding around. When he left, he said he was heading back home to Medfield or wherever.”

“Medford.”

“Whatever. Anyway, he disappeared somewhere between the River Inn and Medford. It had absolutely nothing to do with Pennycross.”

“Don’t the police think it’s suspicious that Irwin went missing on the same day, in the very place, that a murder was witnessed?”

“I’m sure they would if there was any evidence—any evidence at all—that somebody was actually killed at PHS. Because a call from a lunatic—”

“Excuse me?” I said frostily.

“Fine. A call from an eccentric does not count as evidence. The evidence they do have includes four witnesses that saw Irwin leaving PHS—Dahlgren and the teacher and parent who were members of the search committee, plus the candidate who showed up for his interview just as Irwin was leaving. They also have a waitress who served him at a restaurant some time after that time. What they don’t have is anything that puts him back at PHS, a place he’d never been to before that day.”

“Well, Sid knows what he heard, and he heard Robert Irwin being murdered—he’s positive about his voice.”

“How would Sid know—?” She held up one hand. “No, don’t tell me. I do not want to know. But if you and Sid insist on playing Nancy Drew and Bones Benton, at least leave the police out of it. They’ve got better things to do than dealing with crank phone calls.” She walked out of the room before I could argue with her and stomped down the stairs, calling for Madison to come on so they could get to work.

A minute later, I heard the front door close in not quite a slam. And a minute after that, Sid came into my room and said, “Bones Benton?”

“Don’t you remember the Brains Benton mysteries I had when I was a kid? I loved those books, but they were old and obscure even then.”

“Wow. She must have been saving up that joke for ages.”

“Apparently.”

“So, are you getting up now?”

“No.” I rolled over and closed my eyes, waiting to hear the clatter as he left my room. It didn’t happen. “Sid, are you still in here?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I just wanted to make sure that you’re still going to investigate and that you still want me to help.”

“No.”

“No? What about our pinkie swear?”

“Oh, I’m still investigating. But you’re my partner, not my helper.”

“Oh. Then I’ll let you go back to sleep.”

“Thank you.” This time I did hear the clatter, but before Sid left me alone, I felt the tiniest touch on the top of my head as he gave me a lipless kiss, which isn’t nearly as creepy as it sounds.

W
hen I finally did get up, much later that morning, I found a stack of paper waiting for me on the kitchen table. Sid had printed a copy of his database of PHS gossip. It was far too much to read at one sitting, especially with all the cross-references, but I kept reading a bit at a time through the day, when I wasn’t doing my usual chores of grocery shopping, bill paying, essay grading, and clothes washing. To Sid’s credit, he didn’t rush me. He just kept looking at me expectantly and trustingly.

By the time Madison got home from working with Deborah, though thankfully not accompanied by her, I was thinking that Sid should have trusted somebody else. Maybe there was something useful in all that data, but there was just too much of it and too many suspects for me to logic my way through.

Finally, as I was taking some winter sweaters down to store in the basement, I saw a stack of old board games and came up with an idea for how to clear out some of the suspects.

After dinner—a roasted turkey breast that provided enough leftovers for several more meals—I said, “If the two of you have no objection, I declare tonight Family Game Night.”

“Yu-Gi-Oh?” Madison asked eagerly. “I’ve got a new deck I’ve been wanting to test play.”

“Pass. You blow me away every time, so it’s not really a fair test of the deck.”

“How about Operation?” Sid said.

“Definitely pass. You always win!”

“Is it my fault that I’m good with bones?”

“I could keep my hand that steady, too, if I didn’t breathe. Anyway, I’ve got something else in mind. Do you two remember playing Guess Who?”

“I loved that game,” Sid and Madison said in unison.

I’d played the logic game with both of them at different points in my life. The idea was for a player to pick a card with a character’s picture on it. The other player had a board with pictures of a couple dozen characters and would ask questions to knock out possibilities. Is it a man? What color is his hair? Does he have glasses? And so on, until only one character remained. “I was thinking we could use that game’s technique to eliminate some of our murder suspects.”

“You lost me,” Sid said.

“Okay, we’re sure that the murder victim was Irwin, our missing job seeker. Since he had never been to PHS before that day, then it seems pretty likely that the killer is the one who’s familiar with the school. Meaning a teacher or admin person or janitor—somebody who works at the school. Right?”

“Yeah, but I haven’t been able to identify the voice,” Sid said.

“I know, but maybe we can refresh your memory. I found a list of all the people who work at PHS in that stack of paper you gave me, and we’re going to go through it together. I’ll ask questions. Madison, you mark people off the list. And Sid, you try to remember what you heard.”

“Got it!” he said.

I found the list and handed it to Madison, who got an orange highlighter pen to mark off the names.

“Okay, let’s start with basics. The person who made the phone call had to be the killer. Right, Sid?”

“Right.”

“So think about that voice. Was it a man or a woman?”

With neither eyes nor eyelids, Sid couldn’t close his eyes to concentrate, so he had a habit of putting his hands over his eye sockets when he needed to focus, and he did so then. “A man.”

“Excellent. Madison, cross off all the women. Unless any of the women teachers have particularly deep voices.”

“Not that I’ve ever noticed,” she said. We waited for her to mark off a lot of names. Well over half the people who worked at PHS were women. “That leaves eleven.”

That was the easy part. Since Sid hadn’t actually seen the murderer, I couldn’t ask if any of the remaining candidates had a mustache or whether they wore glasses, the way I would have with the actual game, so I had to be creative with my next question. “Did he have a particular accent?”

He thought hard. “No, not really.”

“Madison, you know the people at PHS better than I do. Do any of the men there have a strong accent?”

She looked at the list. “Yes. Mr. Little has a Southern accent, and Mr. Patel is from India.”

“The guy didn’t sound Southern or Indian,” Sid said.

Madison crossed them off. “Mr. Neal’s got a really soft voice, but not when he’s mad.”

“I think it’s safe to say that the killer was mad, so we better leave him on the list.” I thought for a minute, but was stumped until Madison said, “There might have been sports stuff that night.”

“How can we find out?” Sid wanted to know.

“The calendar is online.”

My laptop was still out from when I’d been grading papers, so I used it to go onto the Web and find the school’s calendar, which conveniently listed practice times as well as games for that night. The baseball team had had the evening off, but the lacrosse and tennis teams had both had practice, and the track team had a meet.

“That lets out Coach Q, Coach Cullen, and Coach McLeod!” Madison crowed.

“Not necessarily. Couldn’t one of them have slipped away?” Sid asked.

I checked the listings. “The track meet was in Springfield—I don’t think Coach McLeod would have been able to sneak off long enough to drive to and from school. But we better keep Coaches Q and Cullen on the list for now.”

Madison marked off the one name. “That gets us to eight. Any other activities that night that might eliminate a suspect?”

I looked over the calendar. “The Spanish club was in Spain that week and didn’t get back into the country until late Friday. Madison, what teacher would have gone with them?”

“Senora Harper and Senor Benson. That makes seven.”

“Okay. I don’t suppose you remember whether any of the ones left were out sick that day.”

“Yes! Well, he wasn’t sick, but Mr. Bell went out of town for a family wedding during part of that week. Six.”

“And isn’t the librarian a wheelchair user?”

Madison nodded.

“Sid, could the killer have been in a wheelchair?”

“Absolutely not. There’s no carpet in the auditorium, and I’d have heard it if he’d been on wheels. We’ve whittled it down to five.”

We tried to come up with ways to eliminate more of the list, but finally admitted defeat. “Still,” I said, “we’re better off. Madison, if you promise to keep from being alone with those five men, I won’t be so worried about you being in school. I mean, five suspects is a number we can handle.”

“Well . . .” Sid said. “Maybe more than five.”

“Who did we miss?” I asked.

“The thing is, if there’s one thing I’ve learned while sitting in that locker, it’s that there are all kinds of people in and out of that school. The families and friends of every student, teacher, and admin person. Delivery people, repairmen, other schools’ teachers for meetings, sports teams and coaches from rival schools. Former students, former teachers. Other candidates interviewing for the job Irwin was trying to get.”

“And Becca has brought some of her theater friends to help with acting exercises and sets,” Madison added.

“Plus there are the male students,” Sid said.

“You told me it was a grown man,” I said.

“I
think
it was, but now that I’ve been around PHS so much, I’ve realized that some of those boys have awfully deep voices.”

“Coccyx! So much for eliminating people. Now our suspect pool includes most of the town.”

“Only men,” Sid said cheerfully. “Let’s try it from the other angle—now that we know who the victim is, that should help. I’ll go online to see what I can find out about Mr. Robert Irwin.” He gave us a big grin. “We’re making progress!”

I was surprised Sid was taking it so well. It seemed to me that our only progress was backward. Then I looked at it from his perspective. As long as we were working on the murder together, he was making a significant contribution to the family. That was what he’d been craving.

Of course, that meant that if we ever did find out who the killer was, part of Sid would be disappointed that he wouldn’t be helping anymore. Maybe a really big part of him.

M
y Sunday was filled with comfortingly normal activities: grading essays, cooking meals to freeze for later in the week, and helping Sid take a hydrogen peroxide sponge bath. Okay, maybe cleaning a skeleton with hydrogen peroxide wouldn’t have been particularly comforting or normal for most households, but that’s how we roll at the Thackery house.

Madison had a science project with a looming deadline that kept her busy, and once Sid was bright and clean, he devoted his day to working on what he called the Irwin dossier, which consisted of all the information he could dig up about Robert Irwin. He only ventured out of the attic to keep us company at meals.

Monday was just as normal: no bodies found or missing persons reported. I got home at my regular time and found Madison already there, playing Mario Kart on the Wii while Byron watched.

“Excuse me,” I said, “but I seem to remember a no-video-game-before-homework rule.”

“I’m already done,” she said, waving the Wii controller around enthusiastically enough that I thought it safer to step out of range. “Rehearsal ended early because Becca had a dentist appointment, and I had a free period today.”

“How did that happen?”

“Mr. Chedworth is still out. I guess he must really have hurt himself. Samantha said she heard he was going to have to have surgery on his foot or leg or something. Word is that he won’t be able to come back to school for the rest of the semester.”

“Poor guy,” I said sympathetically, but then switched to practical-mother-of-a-college-bound-student mode to ask, “Why didn’t they get a substitute?”

“They got a substitute, but I don’t think he knows the material. All he did was tell us to read a section of the textbook, which took about ten minutes. After that, I did my homework, which is why—” She paused to put on enough speed to cross the virtual finish line. “Which is why I’m playing Mario Kart.”

“They are going to hire somebody who can actually teach the rest of the course, aren’t they?”

“I don’t know if they can. Samantha said her mother called to ask, and they’re not sure they’ll be able to find somebody so close to the end of the year. So the good news is that I may have a free period every day!”

“Good news for your homework, maybe, but not so much for your test scores. Which are kind of important.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in SATs.”

“Of course I believe in them—they exist. I suspect that what you meant to say was that I didn’t agree with the way they’re administered. Which I don’t. I think it’s ridiculous that so much of a person’s future is dependent on a test score with no predictive validity other than a student’s performance in the first year of college. They’re a waste of time, energy, and money.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“A lot of things are a waste of time, energy, and money—like paying for gasoline and shaving my legs—but that doesn’t mean I can afford to ignore their existence. As long as most colleges require the SAT, then I want you to get as high a score as possible so you can get into the college you want.”
And maybe even get a scholarship,
I thought but didn’t say out loud. Madison had enough on her plate without worrying about my shaky finances.

“Don’t worry. I test well. And you can help me, right?”

“You remember what happened when I tried to teach you how to ride a bike? And the time you wanted help with a research paper?”

“Oh. Right.”

According to her teachers, Madison was an excellent student, and according to peer review and student feedback, I was a good teacher. Yet when I tried to teach her anything more complicated than how to make a bed, we invariably lost our patience. Come to think of it, the bed-making lesson hadn’t gone that well, either—I’d finally found a video on YouTube to show her how to make a hospital corner.

I made a mental note to call the school the next day and see what the situation was. “So what’s the buzz today?”

“If you mean our so-called murder investigation, nothing.”

“Can’t a devoted mother ask her beloved daughter about her day without bringing murder into the conversation?”

“Sorry. Sid has been so focused, and it’s kind of getting on my nerves. I asked him to race me on Mario Kart, but he wanted to go up and work on his dossier.”

“Sid can be pretty single-minded,” I admitted. “So any non-murder-related news?”

“Some new faces at school today. Well, actually they’re old ones. A bunch of former students showed up—they’re on spring break from college. I totally don’t get it. Don’t they have something better to do with their time than to visit the high school they probably couldn’t wait to get away from?”

“Nostalgia starts early for some,” I said. “Besides, they want everybody to see how cool they are now. And some people like their teachers enough to visit them and tell them how they’re doing.”

“But none of these people had a teacher as awesome as Dr. Georgia Thackery.”

“A fair point.”

“Anyway, Tristan’s big brother showed up at rehearsal, and he is nothing like Tristan.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“Bad. For one, he’s not too bright—he’s on his fifth year of college. Tristan says he comes home and parties just about every weekend, which is why his grades suck. Plus the guy is a total creep. He kept joking about drama fags.”

“Are you serious?”

Madison nodded. “Becca asked him to stop after the third time he said it, and he actually made a joke about it being her time of the month.”

“I hope she let him have it.”

“She was about to, but Tristan dragged him out of there even though rehearsal wasn’t over. He was so embarrassed to have him around that he left early.”

“I can only imagine.”

Madison paused. “I know you and Aunt Deborah don’t always get along, but did she—”

“No. Deborah never made fun of me in public. Or vice versa. We have always kept our sniping private, or at least only in front of immediate family members.”

“Good. I mean, I didn’t think she’d have done anything like that, but I’m glad to know she didn’t. I just felt so bad for Tristan. How can his brother be so awful when he’s such a sweetie?”

“How sweet is that, exactly?”

“Mom!”

“What? I can’t ask about my daughter’s new friend?”

“Yeah, I’m totally sure you were asking about him as a
friend
.”

Maybe Sid wasn’t the only single-minded person in the house—my interest was just different from his.

Since Madison was finished with her homework, I dragged her away from Mario Kart to help me broil chicken, steam broccoli, and mash potatoes. Sid came down just as we got food onto the table and started filling our plates.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

He said, “I have Googled my phalanges down to nubs, but I cannot find anything that connects Robert Irwin to PHS. As far as I can tell, he’d never so much as driven through town before the day he disappeared.”

“You look pretty perky for somebody who hasn’t found anything useful.”

Sid held up one finger, which looked as long as ever despite his early comment. “Good detective work takes time, my dear, but fortunately I have plenty.”

“You’ve got about three and a half weeks,” Madison said. “That’s when we have our show.”

“Don’t worry about that,” he said. “You can leave me in your locker for the rest of the school year—I don’t mind.”

The look Madison flashed me showed that she minded, even if he didn’t.

Sid went on. “My next step will be tracking down information on the PHS Five.”

“Excuse me?” I said.

“Those five teachers-slash-employees we haven’t been able to eliminate yet. If they were ever so much as in the same town as Irwin, I’ll find out about it. If I can’t find the connection that way, I’ll move on to other frequent visitors to the school. And then on to the rest of the town.”

“Sid, you’re talking about an inordinate amount of work,” I said, exhausted just from hearing about his plans.

“True, but I’m not getting any older. I don’t mind. Besides, I’m hoping my young apprentice can help.”

Madison looked confused. “Do you mean me?”

“Who else would I mean? While I continue listening in during the day and hitting the Web at night, you can work on gathering data.”

“Like what?”

“Like which students have deep voices, as a start. And has anybody ever lived in Medford or one of the other towns near there. I can get you a map of the area. Focus on the students whose parents are active in school functions, like Samantha. Her mother coordinates the monthly bake sales. And Jo’s mother is helping her with the costumes for the play, so she’s around a lot. Oh! Oh! There were two parent members of the search committee that interviewed Irwin—see if you can find out who they are!”

Madison had progressed to alarmed. “But, Sid, I can’t—”

He patted her arm in what he probably meant as a gesture of comfort. “You’ll do fine. Just remember to take notes about anything you find out.”

“But—”

“Now if you two don’t mind, I think I’ll get back to it. Lots to do before school tomorrow!” He clattered up the stairs.

“Mom!” Madison said. “I’m not going to ask Samantha if her mother murdered somebody, or ask Mrs. Sinta if she had anything to do with a man disappearing.”

“I know, I know.”

“I’ve got the play, I’ve got homework and projects and Byron to take care of, and now I’m supposed to take notes about my friends? Even if I wanted to snoop around, I’ve got a life!”

“It’s okay, sweetie. I’ll talk to Sid and explain that you’re already doing as much as you can.” I paused. “But you do still believe he heard a murder, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I believe it—I’m just not sure I believe we can do anything about it.”

I was starting to doubt it myself, but I’d promised Sid, and I couldn’t go back on that. “I’ll talk to him,” I said again.

It didn’t happen that night. As soon as we were finished eating, I had work for the next day’s class plus the seemingly never-ending stack of essays to grade. By the time that was over, all I wanted to do was sleep. And of course there was no time the next morning as Madison and I rushed around getting dressed and fed and so forth. I decided it wouldn’t hurt to wait until that night.

But as it turned out, I didn’t have to. After my morning class, I called Mr. Dahlgren at PHS to check on the situation with Madison’s SAT prep class, and in the course of that, I got an idea that I was sure would take care of everybody’s problems. We exchanged more calls and various e-mails, and by the end of the day, it was all set.

Sid and Madison were going to be so pleased!