Great! Skye yanked open the door and dashed out of the office. As she jogged down the hall toward the library, where the meeting was being held, she ran through Homer’s list of commands: Stop finding bodies, stop finding murderers, and stop Pru Cormorant from riling up parents against the bookstore. Nope. She had as much chance of doing any of them as she had of winning a million dollars.
CHAPTER 12
Crime and Punishment
After the meeting, which went well despite her tardiness, Skye spent a few minutes talking to Trixie about the murder, then retreated to the relative safety of her office. She sank into the chair behind the desk, let her tote bag fall to the floor, closed her eyes, and murmured to herself, “I totally take back all those times when I was a kid and I said I’d never need a nap.”
Shaking off her fatigue, Skye turned on her computer and found the document containing the teachers’ schedule. The first of Pru Cormorant’s two planning periods was second hour. Skye had forty minutes to figure out how to tame Scumble River High’s own Cruella De Vil. Too bad Skye felt more like a Dalmatian puppy than the Teacher Whisperer Homer expected her to be.
After some thought, Skye decided the best way to approach Pru was unofficially, which meant she needed to run into the mulish woman by chance rather than appear to have sought her out. Unfortunately, there was one major obstacle to that scheme.
Pru had one of the nicest classrooms in the school. Not only did it have actual walls instead of folding curtains—it had windows and an exterior door. So, when the weather was pleasant, the best place to find Pru when she wasn’t teaching was right outside her room sitting in a lawn chair. This made casually bumping into her difficult.
Concentrating, Skye tried to come up with a plausible reason for being outdoors and near the English teacher’s room. A few minutes before the second bell rang, the solution came to her. She could claim to be exercising. In fact, she could credit Pru with motivating her to work out, saying that after their chat about wedding pictures in the faculty lounge last Friday, she’d had a change of heart.
Skye hated to encourage the older woman’s narrow-minded idea of beauty, but if it helped the bookstore and got the principal off her back, she was willing to do so—but only this one time. After all, a man may have to do what a man has to do, but a woman has to do what he can’t. And clearly, Homer couldn’t handle Pru.
Having decided on a plan, Skye exchanged her black pumps for the tennis shoes she kept in her bottom drawer—a good school psychologist was prepared for any occasion—tied her hair back into a ponytail, and took the bottle of water from her lunch bag. At the last minute, thinking it might add an air of authenticity to her disguise, she grabbed the stopwatch from her WISC-IV test kit and put the lanyard around her neck. She just hoped she remembered to put it back when she was finished, as it was impossible to administer the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children without a timer.
When Skye walked out of the building, she turned left and saw Pru in a lounge chair with a copy of Cosmopolitan tented over her face. Skye wondered how the teacher could consider romances porn, yet buy a magazine with a cover that contained a scantily clad woman and a promise of an article inside titled, “Six Sex Positions for the New Millennium.” Not that Skye cared what the older woman read, but it did seem a tad two-faced. Of course, being hypocritical had never bothered Pru in the past.
A snore drifted out from under the periodical, and Skye wondered how she could wake Pru without making it obvious she wanted to talk to her. Shrugging, she decided she’d have to “accidentally” run into her chair.
Backing up out of sight, Skye started to jog. As she rounded the corner, she increased her speed and banged into the lawn chair. Pru snatched the magazine from her face and gazed up at Skye, an angry expression twisting her features.
Before the older woman could yell at her, Skye said, “I’m so sorry. Enjoying some fresh air?”
“Yes, I was.” Pru’s pale blue eyes were malicious. “What are you doing out here, dear?”
“Just jogging during my morning break.”
“Really.” Pru raised a drawn-on eyebrow. “I thought you told me that you weren’t going to lose weight for your wedding pictures.”
“True.” Skye forced herself to look contrite. “But I considered what you said and decided you might be right, so I’m trying to run a couple of miles every day.”
“How energetic of you.” Pru’s tiny pointed teeth appeared in her version of a smile. “Well, all I can say is that I hope you keep it up.”
“Me, too.”
“So many young people have no follow-through these days.” Pru tucked a greasy strand of hair behind her ear. “When I was your age we were expected to stick to our decisions, not change course every five minutes.”
Skye nodded silently, a firm believer that you rarely learn anything valuable if your mouth is moving.
“Look at those two over at the bookshop.”
Eureka! Just the subject Skye wanted to talk about. “Risé and Orlando? How are they not sticking to their plans and following through on their decisions?”
“They’re prime examples.” Pru pursed her thin lips. “I heard that they both had completely different careers before coming here and opening that store.” She tsked. “All this hopping from job to job is what’s ruining America. It used to be you stayed in your position until you retired, and it was a disgrace to get fired or quit.”
“Still”—Skye tried to steer the conversation into a more positive light—“now that you’ve seen Tales and Treats, surely you don’t still think it’s full of porn and how-to manuals on the occult, do you?”
“Maybe not,” Pru admitted. “After the unfortunate incident of her pets escaping and emptying out the store, I went back and spoke to Ms. Vaughn about my concerns.”
Skye had to bite her tongue to stop herself from blurting out, “You mean after you let the chinchillas loose.” Instead she asked, “And what did Risé say?”
“She assured me they wouldn’t be selling the racier romances or the darker science fiction to anyone under eighteen. And they do have that lovely café. She gave me a card for free coffees for a year to show her appreciation for my concern.”
“I guess that means you can stop gathering signatures for your petition and disband the protesters.” Skye wondered whether the complimentary beverage card was a bribe. More important, had it worked?
“Yes.” Pru thrust out her bottom lip. “Hardly anybody signed anyway,” she muttered, then brightened. “But clearly, something is wrong with that store and its owners, or there wouldn’t have been a murder, so I’m still going to keep my eye on them.”
“Being robbed is not their fault,” Skye pointed out. “That could happen to any business.”
“Not in Scumble River.” Pru shook her head. “I can’t remember the last burglary around here. I believe that everything happens for a reason. And more often than not the reason is someone’s past goof-ups. Thus, there has to be a reason that store is attracting violence. And I think it has to do with that couple’s previous life.”
“What did they do before?” Skye asked. Risé had mentioned her husband’s prior occupation but not what she had done. “I thought Orlando was a book scout, which should be pretty harmless.”
“Maybe.” Pru twitched her shoulders. “But she was some hotshot executive.”
“I wonder why she’d give that up,” Skye mused. “Her salary had to be a lot more than the money they can make from the store, and she’s got to be within five or six years of retirement age.”