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Bryan Fagan was raised in Southern Illinois but now resides in the Shenandoah Valley with his wife, Jody.
Fireworks by Jennifer Luckenbill 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BD Fagan

 

“I admit, mistakes were made,” I said.

“It’s important to admit that,” Audrey said. “It’ll help if you list them.”

I looked around the break room. It was as devoid of eavesdroppers as it was of charm, a windowless room with pale blue walls and institutional tile flooring from the Eisenhower administration. “You just want the juicy details,” I said.

Audrey sniffed. “You can think whatever you want, Vicky Stonecipher. I just want to help you improve yourself. I have almost ten years of life experience on you, you know.”

“You mean twenty years.” I sighed. Audrey didn’t snap back with a witty retort, which told me she was really looking forward to my litany of errors. Audrey and I had worked side by side at the Goshen Independent, a small regional newspaper in downstate Illinois, for three years; sitting so close together, we naturally confided our little secrets to one another. Audrey was approaching 50, twice divorced, with an active social life that she described in embarrassingly minute detail, although she never was embarrassed; she liked to play the maternal role toward me, clucking her tongue at my mistakes.

“All right,” I said. “Mistake number one was agreeing to go in the first place. Why did I want to go to a high-school reunion anyway?”

“Don’t ask me, honey. I stopped going to those years ago.” Audrey smiled comfortingly. “You probably don’t have much in common with your old classmates after ten years.”

“Right. But it’s such a small town…everyone would think I was stuck up if I didn’t go.” Stevenson, my home town, had only 4,000 residents; my parents still lived there, constantly informing me of all the success stories from my class and of the grandchildren my classmates were giving their parents. “Especially my parents.”

“Besides, you wanted to hear what everyone was saying about the people who didn’t come, right?”

“There might be something to that.” I chewed my lip. “Mistake number two was wearing that low-cut dress.”

“Oh, that red one?” Audrey asked, putting her hand on my arm. “Honey, I could have told you that was a mistake.”

“It was an excuse to dress up! I never dress up. You know me: sweatshirts and jeans.” I waved a hand at myself: my favorite jeans, comfortable and faded, an Egyptian College sweatshirt, and worn sneakers. “But those looks I got from men…when I see that look on my dog’s face, he’s looking at red meat.” I sighed. “My third mistake was understandable: talking to people.”

“I’ve never seen you make that mistake before,” Audrey said. “At the last Christmas party, I had a few people ask if you were stuck to the wallpaper. If you hadn’t gone to the buffet occasionally, I wouldn’t have known.”

“Thanks for the support,” I said, then shrugged. “It was either that or sit at my table, alone and pathetic. That would have been worse. Dinner wasn’t bad, since the food was a distraction. But after that…hearing the same 9-to-5 success stories depressed me, so when people asked me what I did for a living, I started making up answers off the top of my head.”

Audrey’s eyebrows rose. “Is there something wrong about being a copy editor?”

“No,” I said. It wasn’t the job but the location. Goshen was only an hour from my home town; ending up so close to where I grew up was certainly not what I had hoped for. I didn’t dream of faraway cities, just somewhere…different. “But what I was telling other people was more exciting: firefighter in Sheboygan, freelance writer in Denver, missionary in the Congo, private investigator in San Francisco. If anyone asked for details, I just made stuff up.” I paused and took a sip of apple juice. “Call that last one Mistake number three B.”

“Why?”

“You’ll see. The final mistake—the one that changed the reunion from a waste of time to a tragedy—was when I stopped by the bathroom on my way out the door.”

Audrey looked confused at my pause. “I don’t understand.”

“I accidentally opened the men’s room door. The sad thing is, I didn’t even realize my mistake until long, long after I found the body lying under the sink.”

“Oh, Vicky,” Audrey gasped.

“Yeah, ‘Oh, Vicky,’” I said. “It makes me want a drink just remembering it.”

 

The dead man was Kenny Obermueller. He had been an athlete in high school, handsome in a greasy way. My strongest memory of Kenny was him leering at girls from the open door of the shop building, but for some reason, he’d never lacked for female companionship. Ten years later, he was still built like an athlete, but he’d shed the oil and replaced it with a little style; his suit certainly hadn’t come from any department store rack. I hadn’t recognized him at first; the suit and tie alone constituted a disguise, not to mention the black eye and the cut on his cheek. The blood under his carefully manicured fingernails, the steak knife in his back, and the pool of blood didn’t help my recognition skills either.

I stumbled away. Someone else came in after me; I heard him gasp, then call the police on his cell phone. I didn’t wait around; my first instinct was to steady my nerves with a scotch and soda, so I headed for the bar. Far be it from me to deny my instincts.

 

Pretty extreme reaction over a guy you didn’t even like, Audrey said.

Yeah, but a dead body is a dead body. I’d seen him working the room like a politician a half hour before. Then he was dead. It hit me hard.

Hit you mostly in the alcohol reflex gland, apparently.

Quiet.

 

Dreading further socializing, I had been one of the last ones to leave the dining area of the small hotel the reunion committee had chosen for the gathering. The dance area—a conference room with all the chairs and tables shoved against the wall—was opposite the dining area. The bar was easy to spot through the strobing lights, but even it had been shoved into one corner of the crowded room. The music still throbbed, and my former classmates and their spouses still danced as if everything was normal. They didn’t know yet, of course.

My drink was served in a plastic cup rather than a comfortingly solid glass tumbler, but you can’t have everything—and when it came down to it, as long as what was inside the cup was wet and strongly laced with alcohol, I wasn’t going to complain. I gulped at the drink without tasting it. I wanted nothing more than to give my statement to the police and go home. I kept my eyes focused on my drink, trying to project an aura of low-key hostility to ward off conversation, but someone approached me anyway. I didn’t look up, hoping whoever it was would go away, but he or she hovered patiently a few feet away. I resolved to say nothing, but eventually the silent presence got to me. I sighed and looked into the eyes of Sandra Billingsworth.

I vaguely remembered her from dinner. In high school, Sandra had been a mousy little girl whom I remembered only because of how forgettable she was. She still wouldn’t cause heads to turn, but with the help of cosmetics and a better wardrobe, she had improved her looks all the way to plain. But she kept staring at me; evidently, the changes didn’t extend to any sort of assertiveness.

“What do you want?” I asked, hoping to scare her away.

“Vicky, you said you were a private investigator, didn’t you?” she blurted.

I thought about it. I remembered telling that to someone, so it seemed safe enough to admit to it. “Yes,” I said carefully.

“Then you’ve got to help me,” Sandra said. “They’re going to arrest my husband, Donnie.”

Donnie had also been in our class, more memorable than Sandra but not for positive reasons. I almost played innocent about why he would be getting arrested at the reunion, but if Sandra knew Kenny was dead, the news must have begun spreading already. “Why would your husband have killed Kenny?” I asked.

“In high school, they hated each other with a passion. They got in a few fights. Donnie’s got a scar on his stomach—he told me it was from where Kenny cut him with a knife. He said he burned Kenny with a cigarette once.”

“And since high school?”

“Nothing, until tonight,” Sandra said, then paused. I stared at her, waiting for more, but she bit her cheek and looked worried instead. This must really be damning, I thought. Finally, she leaned in and whispered, “They got in a fight tonight.”

“That’s impressive,” I said. “There wasn’t much time for it.”

“We came in at the same time as Kenny did. He said something…something rude about me. It was…it was just rude. Well, Donnie wasn’t going to stand for it, so he punched Kenny right in the eye. Kenny hit him back, but before anything else could happen, some other guys broke up the fight.”

“I see.” Kenny did have a knack for something: two fights, one fatal, in less than two hours. Good to see a classmate could achieve excellence in a difficult field.

“Donnie said Kenny scratched him more than punched him,” Sandra said. “Long scratches, on the back of his hand. The looked painful to me.”

That explained the blood under Kenny’s fingernails, I thought. “And let me guess,” I said, trying to get Sandra back on track, “he doesn’t have an alibi for after dinner.”

She shook her head. Her face scrunched up in an effort to hold back tears. “He wasn’t with me. And I can’t even lie for him, because I was sitting at a table with friends when it happened. He says he was taking a walk to ‘clear his head,’ but I bet he was out sneaking a smoke.” Her expression changed suddenly to annoyance, her irritation with her husband’s habit temporarily trumping the seriousness of the situation. “He’ll kill himself with those cigarettes.”

“I’m sure he will,” I said. “But I’m not interested in taking his case.”

“You have to,” she said. “They’ll put him in jail if you don’t.”

“I don’t have to do anything,” I said. My eyes were fixed on the bar. My drink was almost gone, and I had a feeling that when the news of Kenny’s hastened departure got around, it would take forever to get a refill. “Trust me, the police do a good job.”

“Please.” Sandra wasn’t fighting the tears anymore. “We’ve got two boys. You can’t let their daddy go to jail.” She began fumbling at her purse, presumably looking for pictures.

I rolled my eyes. “I charge three thousand dollars a day,” I said, hoping money would convince her to give in.

“Fine,” Sandra said, relieved.

“I get my money whether or not he gets arrested,” I said. “Plus expenses.”

“Of course.”

“If I work past midnight, I’ll charge for another day.”

“Understandable,” she said, unperturbed. She began digging in her purse, and for a second, I was afraid she would come up with a wad of bills. Instead, she pulled out a checkbook. “How much do you want up front?”

I stared at her, wondering what I could say that would give her pause. I drew in a breath, thinking of the most outrageous demands I could make: personal servitude, illegal favors, their firstborn. But seeing her ready to write a check probably larger than her monthly paycheck, I thought there might not be anything she wouldn’t agree to. Besides, saying outrageous things had been how I’d gotten into this mess in the first place. “Put that away,” I said. I wasn’t going to take her money. I’d feel bad about exploiting someone else’s moment of weakness, and I had a feeling it was illegal to take money for private investigating when you didn’t have a private investigator’s license. “I don’t require payment up front.”

She mumbled her thanks. “Don’t thank me yet.” I sighed, looking at my former classmates. “I’m going to have to talk to these people, aren’t I?” I said.

“I guess so,” she said. “However you usually do it. Why?”

“I’ve gone ten years without speaking to most of them. It wasn’t exactly an accident.” I sighed. “All right. Fine. Let’s see what your husband has to say for himself.”

We found him getting his jacket from the coat check; I wondered if he was about to flee. He was about a half foot shorter than me; I had to remind myself he was a father now and not a kid sneaking out of a party that had just been raided by the cops. He looked the same as I remembered him in high school: same sparse moustache, shifty eyes, and awful bowl haircut. He looked from one of us to the other with the expression of a child trying to gauge which parent would believe his lies. “I didn’t do it,” he said, managing to look neither of us in the eye.

“Oh, I know, honey,” Sandra. “Vicky’s going to help you.”

“You are?” he asked. I closed my eyes in resignation and shrugged. Somehow he took that as a positive response. “That’s great, thanks.” He stepped toward me, arms outstretched, but I fended off the hug with a hand in his chest.

“Wait until I’ve done something to help you first,” I said. I still had no idea whether he had killed Kenny, so I wasn’t sure I wanted to get too chummy with him. Besides, the last thing I wanted was a hug from a man whose eye level was at my cleavage. Sandra didn’t look too thrilled with the prospect either.

 

You shouldn’t have worn that dress.

Tell me about it. Wait—don’t. That’s just an expression.

 

“Let’s get started, then,” I said. I paused; the logical start, it seemed to me, would be to canvass my classmates and their spouses and see if anyone had been seen near that bathroom at the right time. But that would take forever, and the police were better equipped for the job. Besides, the thought of talking to that many people gave me the willies. I decided to focus on the most likely suspects instead. “Who would have had the motive to kill Kenny? Besides you, that is.”

            “I dunno,” Donnie said. “It ain’t like I joined a ‘We Hate Kenny Obermueller Club’ or something.”

            “I don’t think there would have been a shortage of members,” Sandra said. “Although you could have been the president, honey.”

            “That’s not the kind of support he needs right now, Sandra,” I said. “Anyway—who here would want Kenny dead? Have you heard anything?”

Sandra smiled wickedly, obviously enjoying the opportunity to share gossip, despite the circumstances. “I suppose Marty White will benefit. He and Kenny were business partners.”

“In what?”

“Real estate development.” I couldn’t imagine Kenny dealing in real estate. Used cars, yes, but not real estate. “There’s Robin Schultz—she was his girlfriend when we graduated, if you remember. It ended when she was in law school. I don’t think it ended well, so there might still be some bad feelings.” I had some bad feelings toward Robin—and the fact that Ms. Most Likely to Succeed was a lawyer now didn’t help matters. “And Lee Jenkins—he’s married to Kenny’s ex-fiancée Jean.”

“Ex-fiancée?”

“She was between Robin and whatshername, the girl he’s dating now with the…Well, never mind. You remember Jean—Jean Goings, she was a couple of years behind us, always tried out for the cheerleading squad.”

A light came on in my head. “Yeah, I remember her. But wasn’t she—I mean, everybody said—”

“Apparently not.” Sandra smiled. “And before you ask, she’s not here. Lee came alone, said Jean didn’t even want to risk seeing Kenny.”

“Well, that’s something she won’t have to worry about any more. Anyone else?” They shook their heads. “Then I better get started.”

The word was beginning to spread; as I moved through the crowd, I noticed quite a few groups, heads together, speaking in serious whispers. That meant I probably wouldn’t have to break the news of Kenny’s death to anyone, which was one load off my mind. I couldn’t do much about my other major concern, that of Donnie’s guilt; for the moment, I had to take it for granted that Donnie hadn’t done it.

I spotted Marty White first—not surprising, given his build. He had been a heavy boy in school, and he had expanded to “huge” in the decade following. I hadn’t associated with him much then. He hadn’t been popular, but he had been Kenny’s loyal sidekick—well, maybe “lackey” was a better word. Whatever mischief Kenny wanted done, Marty was willing to do, consequences be damned.

There is a cliché about fat men moving quickly or gracefully despite their weight, one used so often I expect to hear about a ballet company full of obese dancers and Olympic teams of overweight sprinters. Marty was a man who forced the use of that cliché. He was dancing spastically to the beat of some song I had ignored ten years ago and wished I could again. The women on the dance floor gave him a wide berth to avoid his flailing limbs, which only encouraged him to lurch after them.

The music stopped when someone whispered in the DJ’s ear, but it took a few seconds for Marty to restrain all of his body parts. He stood in the middle of the emptying dance floor, panting and sweating so much I was a little concerned for his health. At first, I couldn’t force myself to get close to him, and not just because of his sweat and flab. I didn’t want to start a conversation—didn’t want to continue the charade—didn’t want the stress of talking to someone who was, after ten years, essentially a stranger to me. He wasn’t intimidating, and I didn’t care what he thought of me, but that didn’t matter.

But then I looked back into the crowd and saw Sandra and Donnie watching me expectantly. I sighed and forced myself to walk out to him. “Hi, I’m Vicky Stonecipher,” I said. “You’re Marty White, aren’t you?”

My faced flushed with embarrassment—why did I ask his name when I full well knew who he was?—but he clearly didn’t hear me, even though he was staring right at me.

 

The dress?

Yes, the dress. When I get home tonight, I’m burning it.

 

Waving my hand in front of his face didn’t help, so I crossed my arms over my chest. “Hey! Remember me?” I said, annoyance overcoming my shyness.

“What? Sure,” he said in that tone of voice that said he was very bad at lying but hoped I’d overlook it. “Say, why did the music stop?”

He doesn’t know, I thought, and for a moment, I seriously considered just running away. Only a dread of facing Sandra’s disappointment kept me rooted to the spot. After an uncomfortable silence that lasted somewhere between six seconds and six hours, I managed to say, “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” I may have stuttered; I can’t remember. The embarrassed flush of my face caused my brain to overheat. “I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

“What? Are we being kicked out or something?”

“No,” I said, pausing for a second before just deciding to blurt it out. “Kenny is dead.”

His face scrunched up in concentration and his eyes glazed as if it were taking all of his brain power to comprehend what I had said. “Ohhh.” He sat down heavily on the dance floor.

He was still perspiring profusely. “You might be more comfortable if you took off that jacket,” I said.

“What? No. Hey, my best friend just died, and you’re giving me fashion advice?” Marty shifted from confused to angry on the fly. I was too dismayed to react to his anger, but then his face sagged, his anger gone as quickly as it came. “No, I’m…I’m sorry. Was he still—what happened?”

I shifted uncomfortably, unsure of whether to be direct. It hadn’t worked so far, but I decided the quicker it was over the better—for me, at least. “He was stabbed in the men’s room,” I said. Seeing an opening, I said, “Do you have any idea who might have been angry enough at Kenny to kill him?”

He waved his hand vaguely. It was an effeminate gesture, one I didn’t expect from a big man like Marty. “There was always talk. Some people didn’t like Ken that much. I don’t know why. Jealousy, I think.”

I jumped to the next obvious question without thinking. “Were you jealous of him?”

“What? No!” he said defensively. “Why should I have been jealous? Just because he had a great car, big house, beautiful fiancée? We’re business partners. If I wanted what he had, I could get it.”

“What about Robin Schultz and Lee Jenkins?”

Marty started to wave his hand again, then stopped himself. He pulled at his jacket cuff and began rubbing his wrist. “Lee—Lee’s an idiot, but a harmless one. Bark, and he’ll back down. But Robin’s been after Ken for years, using one legal excuse after another to hound him. I have no idea what he did to bother her so much.”

I brightened a bit. If Robin carried a grudge after all these years, maybe she had finally physically acted upon her anger. “Well, broken engagements can sometimes leave bad feelings.”

“Engagements?” He slapped his forehead. “Oh, God. I’ll have to tell Cindy.”

“Who’s Cindy?”

“Cindy is—was—Ken’s fiancée. You don’t know her.” Marty got to his feet, his face ashen. “I told her not to come tonight, that it would be boring. Now I wish….” He trailed off. “Hey, I’m sorry I snapped at you. You’re just the messenger. I’ll make it up to you.”

“You don’t have to,” I said, imagining that his idea of “making it up to me” involved a date.

“No, no, I insist,” he said, scratching his arm through his jacket absently. He looked uncomfortable, his face twisted in discomfort or worry. “If you ever need any work, I’m sure we—I could throw something your way.”

“Like what?” I asked. I remembered being at the same table with Marty at some part during the dinner, but I couldn’t remember what I had said I did for a living.

 

Remembering what lies you’ve told to whom is the first rule of lying.

Thanks. Next time I act like a compulsive liar—which will be never—I’ll remember that.

 

“I don’t know,” he said. “Engineering stuff. You’re an engineer, right?”

A light bulb went on in my head. “I do remember saying that, now that you mention it,” I said.

“Right.” Marty didn’t react to the strange phrasing. “Ken handled that part of the business. I handled more of the marketing, you know? Meet and greets, lining up investors, that kind of thing.” He pulled out a cell phone. “If you’ll excuse me?”

I nodded, and Marty wandered toward end of a long line at the bar; it seemed everyone wanted to get a drink before the police showed up.

 

Or maybe you’re a class full of lushes.

It was a party. Introduce a body to a place with alcohol and voila, instant wake.

Or maybe without loud music and dancing everyone discovered they were surrounded by very boring people.

 

I started circling clumps of my former classmates looking for Lee or Robin, but the buzz of gossip gave me a headache. It might have been better than the music, but the side effects were worse. Then Robin’s whine cut through the babble and alcohol. “This is horrible,” she lamented. “Horrible.”

“I know,” a companion said.

“I headed the reunion committee, and this happens. I’m never going to hear the end of it.”

It was more horrible for Kenny, but there was no reason to antagonize her—yet. I could see the bottom of my drink, and I was much more interested in rectifying that. I spotted Sandra in the crowd and walked over to her—anything to delay talking to Robin.           “I changed my mind. You can start paying my fee by refilling this,” I said, handing her my plastic cup. Sandra took it and headed for the bar without a word.

 

What, is your class so cheap you have to reuse plastic cups?

No, I wasn’t thinking. But on the other hand, I didn’t have to waste time finding a trash can.

Pretty thin excuse. You just liked being rude, didn’t you?

Well....

 

I really didn’t want to talk to Robin. In high school, I’d always hated her because I always compared myself to her, and I always came up short. Higher grades, better looks, more popularity—that she was the top girl in all three categories didn’t help me. I even played second fiddle to her in basketball, volleyball, and softball before she confided to me that sports were “too masculine” after our junior year. She moved on to cheerleading and, unsurprisingly, became the squad’s captain. I tried for a rivalry, but it was one sided; she never noticed my efforts except to be condescending. In the years since we had graduated, she was the classmate I had thought of most whenever I felt fat or ugly or stupid. After learning she had become a lawyer, I knew she’d be popping into my self-denigrating thoughts for another decade.

On the other hand, there was a chance that she had killed Kenny. I’m not quite so insecure that Robin on trial for murder would have made me happy, but it wouldn’t have made me sad, either.

As I approached her, a man was walking away from her, his back to me. I considered following him for a second, more from curiosity than anything else, but decided not to. His brown hair was shaggy and disheveled, and his light gray suit was too tight across the shoulders and too short in the sleeves. My class aspired to somewhat less than the height of fashion, but this guy would stand out.

This time it was easier to start the conversation; imagining Robin spontaneously confessing was tantalizing, although unlikely, given her profession. Still, I had to focus on the fantasy before I could step in front of Robin and introduce myself. “Hi,” I said, holding out my hand. “We didn’t have a chance to talk during dinner, did we?”

She looked at me for a moment; I felt like a fool, waiting for her to return my handshake. But then she smiled and daintily slipped her hand into mine. “No, we didn’t, Vicky. You’ve…uh, changed.”

Her glance at my chest told me what had changed; in high school, I had possessed a more “athletic” build. I smiled weakly and, self conscious, crossed my arms across my chest again. Robin still looked fabulous, although it was a different kind of fabulous than in high school: instead of having big hair teased more than a fat kid during recess or emphasizing her curves with tight clothes, her hair was shoulder length (although impeccably coiffed), and her clothes were subtle and stylish. “So have you,” I said. I waited for a beat before adding, “For the better, of course.”

“Of course,” she said with a tiny laugh.

Her eyes were already scanning the room to find someone more interesting to talk to. I knew I had to say something interesting to keep her attention. “I heard you were the dead man’s fiancée at one point,” I said. That sounded stilted even to my own ears, but “dead man” was more interesting than “Kenny.”

She didn’t bat an eye, but she did focus both of hers on me. “That was a long time ago.”

“Less than ten years,” I said. “Not so long ago that I can’t remember you two together.”

“Things change,” Robin said. “People change.”

“So who changed?” I asked. “Him or you?”

She paused for a second, and I thought my question might be too intrusive. But she said, “I did, of course. I developed a conscience, something Kenny has—had—only in a rudimentary form. I went to college, and my horizons broadened. I realized Kenny would never change.”

“When was the last time you talked to him?” I asked.

“Oh, last week,” Robin said with a tiny smile. “I called his office to tell him that I was going to kill his latest development.”

“What?” The word “kill” made me think I had something. “Why?”

“Don’t you know what he does?” Robin asked.

“He and Marty are developers,” I said. “That’s all I know.”

She rolled her eyes, bringing back memories of all the patronizing comments she had made toward me in high school. “Kenny’s the developer. Marty just cashes in when they put up those god-awful housing developments with half-million dollar homes on quarter-acre lots.” She shook her head. “All those bland McMansions in what used to be beautiful fields and pastures.”

A lot of people wouldn’t consider corn fields and cow pastures “beauty,” but I couldn’t help agreeing with her, no matter how much it galled me. What Marty and Kenny built were eyesores. “There’s an awful lot of land,” I said weakly. “I doubt those developments will ever make much of a dent around here.”

“That’s what they said about hunting the buffalo,” she said venomously.

 

Meow!

Well. She always was like that. I could’ve been reasonable, and it still wouldn’t have mattered.

 

I raised my eyebrows. “Aren’t you overreacting a bit?”

“I’m a lawyer. It’s my job to overreact sometimes, if it’s for a good cause.” She smiled, and her face became as placid as a lake on a still day. “Like you don’t know the value of theatrics in your job.”

“What?” I hadn’t talked to Robin during dinner; I had no idea what she had heard.

“Well, isn’t part of being a psychic putting on a show?” Robin asked. Her smile grew into a smirk. “Make the rubes feel like they’re getting their money’s worth?”

“Yeah,” I said. I had told someone I was a psychic, but I had no idea who. It didn’t matter anyway; Robin thinking I was a two-bit con artist was humiliating enough. Only the natural instinct to strike back verbally kept me from hiding in a closet for the rest of the night. “So is shutting down Marty and Kenny part of your job or simply a hobby?”

“Ah, I have it good: it’s a combination of both.” Her eyes were searching the crowd again; my time was running out.

I was acutely aware of how bad an investigator I would make; I was too easily flustered and too inexperienced to know what questions to ask. “Who do you think killed him? Maybe Marty or Lee Jenkins had something to do with it.”

Robin laughed softly and signaled to someone in the crowd. “Kenny was an awful person,” she said. She could have been talking about a character from a book read long ago, not a former fiancée. “Who knows who killed him? It could have been anyone. The only thing that was consistent about him, in all the years that I knew him, was that if you knew him long enough, he was sure to stab you in the back. Becky!” she shouted to someone nearby. “Good luck with the psychic business, Vicky.”

The interview was over. I was relieved I didn’t have to talk to her any longer, although I was disappointed she was such an unsatisfactory suspect. Unexpectedly, Sandra helped me get over that disappointment by shoving another drink in my hand, then pointing toward Lee, who was leaning against the wall in a darkened corner next to an emergency exit. “There’s your next target,” she said and gave me a little shove.

I remembered Lee as a slope-browed gearhead with a Cro-Magnon’s sense of wit and delicacy.

 

Were all the males in your class so ugly and crude? Do you remember any of them fondly?

They were teenage boys. If I remembered them fondly, I’d suspect someone had tampered with my memories.

 

He still looked like a caveman, shaggy haired and slouching, albeit a caveman who had been shoved into an ill-fitting suit. All that was missing was a club in one hand and a woman being dragged by her hair in the other. Of course, he was the man I had seen with Robin.

“I ain’t going to admit to doing nothing,” he said before I had a chance to say anything, “because I didn’t do nothing. Your psychic tricks won’t work on me.”

“All right,” I said, wondering if he thought I had telepathic powers or was confusing “psychic” with “psychiatrist.” “Any particular nothing you’re referring to?”

“No,” he said. “Just…just nothing in general.”

My feeling of superiority was making this conversation much easier. “Uh-huh. Well, to move on to the next logical point of conversation, have you heard about Kenny?”

“No,” he said. “No, wait—yes.”

“All right.” I was having trouble not laughing at him. “When did you see him last?”

“I haven’t seen him all night,” he said.

I had no idea if he was lying, but it was time to try some mind tricks. I took a deep breath and stared at him. “Try it again: When did you see him last?”

“I saw him across the room during dinner.”

His inability to lie emboldened me. “Again: When did you—”

“When I was coming out of the bathroom and he was going in, all right? I bumped him with the door, he shoved me, and I shoved back.” My respect for Kenny increased—three scuffles in such a short time. “You know we don’t get along because of what he did to Jean, right? I called him a…name, and then he called me a name back. Then I left. That was it, all right?” He looked like a kid trying to weasel his way out of a spanking, not an adult trying to avoid a murder charge. “Nothing else happened. I swear. I ain’t going to pretend I liked the guy, but he didn’t deserve to be killed. Messed up some, yeah, but not killed.”

I decided this was probably the truth; even someone as dumb as Lee wouldn’t admit to seeing the dead man just before he was killed except as the last resort. “Was anyone else in the bathroom?”

“I didn’t see anyone,” Lee said. “But there must have been. I heard someone shouting at him after I left.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, but I couldn’t hear any of the words,” he said. “Just that two people were angry at each other.”

“Could you identify the voice if you had to?” I asked, excited.

“No. I couldn’t even tell you if it was a man or a woman.” He thought for a second. “But it had to be a man, ‘cause it was in the men’s room.”

“Are you telling the truth?” I said, giving him a disbelieving stare.

He held up his hand. “My hand to God.”

“All right,” I said. Getting information from Lee was so easy it was making me feel guilty. “What were you and Robin talking about a few minutes ago?”

“I haven’t talked to her—”

I imitated the sound of a buzzer. “I saw you. Now try again.”

“It was nothing. I just bumped into—”

Shaking my head, I said, “Third time’s the charm. Why were you talking with Robin?”

He rubbed his temples. “She hired me to do a job,” he muttered. It was difficult to hear him, even though the blaring music of earlier was nothing more than a distant echo. “I asked her if she still wanted me to do it.”

“Why would you need to ask her now—” I stopped myself. “It had something to do with Kenny, didn’t it?”

“Yeah.” He nodded miserably. “I was supposed to sabotage some of the construction equipment—slashed tires, sand in the gas tanks and crankcases, that sort of thing. But that was all. No one was supposed to get hurt, I swear.”

“You shouldn’t swear so much. It’s a nasty habit.” Confusion crashed over his face. “Sorry. But that would have hurt more people than just Kenny, you know—construction workers, for instance, and Marty—”

“Screw Marty. He’s just as bad as Kenny, worse in some ways. Kenny never got his hands dirty if he didn’t have to. He always had Marty do the bad stuff for him. Do you know what he said about Jean—”

Lee seemed like he was just getting started on long litany of Marty’s faults, so I tried to exit as gracefully as I could. “Never mind, never mind. Just tell the truth when the police get here.”

As I walked away, I realized how flustered he had been: he hadn’t even looked at my chest.

 

I’d interviewed all the suspects, unless you counted the mysterious Shouting Man, but the only mystery I was interested in at the moment was how I was going to get another drink. Fortunately, Sandra showed up with one, Donnie in tow.

“How did it go?” she asked, and as I dutifully filled her in, I could see a couple of uniformed officers and a detective beginning to question the crowd.

“Marty did it,” Sandra said. “He’s the only one who didn’t look glad about Kenny being dead.”

“That’s idiot logic,” I said. “This isn’t an Agatha Christie novel. Did you ever think Marty might not be acting? That he might honestly be upset?”

 

He is in real estate.

Hardy-har-har. It’s not like he was a lawyer or anything.

No, I mean, he might be able act a little. He does have to be able to redirect buyers’ attention from the negatives to the positives, doesn’t he?

That seems farfetched, but….

 

“But he has a motive,” Donnie said. He was rubbing his hand. There were three long pink, puffy lines, presumably Kenny’s fingernail marks, on the back of his hand. They looked more irritating than painful, and they didn’t look deep enough for Kenny to get a noticeable amount of blood beneath his fingers. “He gets to take over their business.”

“Probably,” I said. “But Robin and Lee have motives too. There’s nothing to rule out any of them.”

“Well,” Donnie said, “the murder did happen in the men’s room, and I don’t think Robin really has the strength to kill someone with a steak knife.”

“You have a point there,” I said. I had grave doubts about all three suspects, when it came down to it. Marty seemed genuinely affected by news of Kenny’s death, and I didn’t think Lee could lie well enough to not blurt out a confession if he had done it. “She could have hired someone else to do it, I guess.” But it was too depressing to think that my favorite suspect was innocent, so I wasn’t going to give up on her. Making Robin squirm would have been the only positive to all the work I had done, except for the free drinks.

 

Work? You talked to three people!

That’s hard work for an introvert. Besides, if you count Sandra, I talked to four people. And Donnie makes five!

Poor baby. You would make the worst private detective ever.

Probably. Although I like the booze, just like private detectives do in the books. Mmmm—booze.

 

“But who would she hire?” Sandra asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Lee’s the obvious choice, but I don’t think he did it. He’s not clever enough to lie about it, trust me.”

“Maybe he’s more clever than you realize,” Sandra said. “Maybe he’s acting.”

“He’s not clever,” I said. “He’d be lucky to aspire to animal cunning. No. Robin could be connected with whoever was shouting at Kenny in the bathroom. But I have no idea how he would know to wait for Kenny in that particular bathroom; this hotel has a half dozen. Anyway, if you open the door to hired killers, you have to admit it might not be anyone from our class at all.”

“So where do we go from here?” Sandra asked. “You can’t prove anything yet, can you?”

“No, but Donnie hasn’t been arrested yet,” I said.

We waited for someone to talk to Donnie and me. A policeman was interviewing Marty, who was saying he had warned Kenny that there might be people at the reunion who had a grudge against them, and there had been a few protesters at some of their development sites. He hadn’t told me that, but that could have been because of shock.

Robin had a grudge, I thought, and wracked my brain to think of how she could be the culprit. She probably would have been noticed going in or out of the men’s room, unless she had been disguised. But I find it hard to believe someone so feminine could disguise herself as a man, so she must have had an accomplice. Lee…no, I’d been down that road. He hadn’t done it. But maybe he had directed Robin to someone else or he knew who Robin had hired. Maybe it was someone who was supposed to help him sabotage Kenny’s project. That was why he had been so insistent that he hadn’t done it, that no one was supposed to get hurt.

“My God,” Sandra said. “He’s sweating like a pig. He has to have done it.”

My concentration broken, I looked up. Marty’s collar was soaking up perspiration like a sponge, and his face was red and dripping. “He wouldn’t be sweating if he weren’t wearing that jacket,” I said. “Why doesn’t he take it off?”

“Maybe he’s trying to look professional at all times,” Sandra said. “You know, so we’ll all forget who he was in high school.”

“Maybe,” I said. I was excited. If I could find Lee quickly, maybe I could force him to tell me the whole truth.

“I don’t think so,” Donnie said. “He wasn’t wearing his jacket during supper.”

I shrugged as I glanced through the police-maintained disorder. “Probably just more comfortable eating without it.”

“I think he was afraid of getting stains on it,” Sandra said. “He ate like a slob. It was fascinating. If he had been wearing long sleeves, the cuffs would have been dyed red with tomato sauce.”

Suddenly, everything clicked. I let out a deep breath that I hadn’t realized I had been holding and smiled. My solution wasn’t as good as blaming Robin, but it would end the matter.

“You’ve figured it out, haven’t you?” Sandra asked, and I nodded. “That’s wonderful!” she cried, and this time I was able to avoid her hug. Donnie surprised me by grabbing me from behind, though, until Sandra punched him in the arm and glared at him.

The detective turned away from Marty and walked toward us. I stepped between him and Donnie. “Hello, detective,” I said as cheerfully as I could.

“And you are?”

“Vicky Stonecipher,” I said.

He looked over his notes. “Yes, the woman who found the body. If you’ll wait just a moment, I have a few interviews to conduct first.”

“I could save you time,” I said. “I know who did it.”

“Do you,” he said.

He gave me a steady stare. I knew he could smell the alcohol on my breath, and he probably thought I was drunk, but I wasn’t going to back down. “Yes, and I think I can convince you how.”

“God save me from amateurs,” he said, almost under his breath. “Every time a crime is reported, someone’s always got a crackpot theory.”

“I’m not a crackpot,” I said. “Like I said, I can back it up.”

 “All right.” He sighed. “Who’s the murderer?”

So I told him.

 

“So, what happened?” Audrey said. Her yogurt was almost untouched.

“They arrested Marty. There were scratches on his left arm, deep ones. I’m sure it’s his blood under Kenny’s nails.”

“But why did he do it?”

“Donnie was right—it had to do with the business.” Rumors had flown around the room after the arrest, and my old classmates’ rumor network was as efficient as it had been in high school. At lunch the next day Sandra phoned me with the final results of the gossip, which she assured me was of the highest reliability. I had no reason to doubt her, and I didn’t care enough to dig around myself. “Kenny had cut Marty out of the partnership the day before. Like Robin said, if you stayed around Kenny long enough, he’d stab you in the back. Marty probably brooded about it during dinner—maybe he picked up the knife without thinking about, just something he did because he was angry. I think he followed Kenny into the bathroom to confront him, then hid when Lee came in. Afterwards, they argued, and Marty pulled the knife, but Kenny didn’t think Marty would hurt him, not after all these years of doing whatever Kenny said….” I trailed off. “Marty was flustered when I told him about Kenny’s murder because he was trying not to show how much he knew. He even offered me work to try to distract me or buy me off.”

“Not so bright after all, was he?” Audrey said, scraping up the last of her yogurt from the plastic container.

“Some things take longer than ten years to change,” I said.

The clock read 5:30, almost time for us to start punching our keyboards and assembling the paper. I had barely settled in at my desk when the editor-in-chief came up to me. “I heard about a murder about a class reunion yesterday,” he said. “A reunion from your old high school, as a matter of fact.”

“Yeah?” I said. “Well, you better put a reporter on it.”

“Oh, I have,” he said. “But if there were someone there, someone who had an in with the people at the reunion, maybe even someone who had an eyewitness account, that would be even better than a reporter. Say, that wasn’t your class, was it?”

If I said “yes,” he would ask me to write about it. That would entail hours of asking questions and intruding into the lives of people who knew Kenny. Talking to three people at the reunion was bad enough; scheduling interviews with grieving relatives and other people who had better things do and then following through with the interviews would be torture. I looked him right in the eyes and said, “No.”

His face said he didn’t believe me, but that was OK. I was sure this lie wasn’t a mistake.

 


Lies Told

 

 

at a High School Reunion