Gracie's Game: Sudden Anger, Accidentally on Purpose (60 page)

It was quite a crowd with the team and all the coaches and various assistants. Ken looked around them, thinking surely any of the girls would stand out in this crowd. He caught a brief glimpse of dark curly hair down the way – was that Cheryl? He couldn't be sure, and saw none of the others.

Suddenly a girl came running forward, long brown hair flying. "Jake!" she screamed.

Jake turned in surprise and Amy launched herself at him. He tried to dodge and one of the assistants stepped in front of her to block her way. "Miss, you're not supposed to be down here," he said sternly.

Amy slipped around the man to throw her arms around Jake. "You've got to help me!" she cried.

Ken stepped into the hall and saw Gracie and Kelly emerge from their hiding spots. He heard footsteps behind him and turned his head quickly to see that it was Shawna.

"I was at the concession stand," she panted. She was holding two rather worse for wear hot dogs. "Kelly called me. Am I too late?"

They turned their attention to the melee down the hall, edging out of the stairwell to get a better view. Amy still clung to Jake despite his attempts to free himself. Teammates and staff were trying to pull her off as well, without any more success than Jake had had.

"Don't let him take me," she pleaded. "He's trying to keep us apart. They were
all
trying to keep you from me."

Jake looked completely confused. "What are you talking about, Amy?" he asked.

She looked up into his eyes, desperation showing on her face. "Don't you see? I got rid of them for you, so we could be together. I love you, Jake!"

Jake managed to pry her grip loose and hold her by the arms in front of him. "Got
rid
of them? What are you talking about? Got rid of
who
?"

Ken stepped up behind Amy, badge in hand to identify himself to the others. "Amy Jones, I'm arresting you for the murder of Meaghan Pruitt," he said.

"Meaghan!" Jake cried. He shook Amy, hard. "You killed Meaghan? Why?"

Ken put his hands on Amy's arms and pulled her back out of Jake's grasp. The football hero looked angry enough to hurt her.

"Because she knew that Meaghan was pregnant, and that you'd promised to marry her," Gracie said from Ken's left.

"She'd have
ruined
your life! I saved you from that," Amy said passionately.

"Amy, if I'd wanted to go out with you I'd have asked," Jake said coldly.

Amy stared at Jake in shock, her face suddenly gone white. She slumped and would've fallen if Ken hadn't still been holding her arms.

The coach stepped up beside Jake, laying a hand gently on the young man's arm. "C'mon, Jake. Let's go on in the locker room and let the Lieutenant do his job." He tugged on Jake's arm and Jake followed him numbly. The crowd erupted in murmurs and questions of anyone and everyone, trying to comprehend what had just happened. "Show's over, everyone," the coach said from the doorway.

Players and staff slowly moved into the locker room, craning their heads to see if anything else would happen. Amy seemed cowed now, not moving as Ken put the handcuffs on her. The coach waved them all inside and then turned to Ken.

"There's a room down the hall you can use if you need it," he told Ken. "Gimme a second to get the key."

As the door shut Amy lifted her head to glare at Gracie. "You little bitch," she said venomously. "You thought you were
so
smart, figuring out who offed your old man. That doesn't mean you can prove
I
did anything."

Chapter 54

The six of them sat at a folding table in a workroom down the hall from the locker room. One of the assistants had set it up for them and even brought in coffee, as the unused room was a little chilly. Shawna and Cheryl munched what was left of their hot dogs. Ken thought it best to let the silence hang for a few minutes to allow Amy to stew about the possible evidence against her. She'd had a brief period of defiance, but now sat still and quiet, handcuffed to the table.

"How'd you finally figure it out, Gracie?" Cheryl asked, wiping mustard from her hands. "Her motive, I mean."

Gracie took a drink of her coffee. "When Ken showed up and Amy saw him and started running. She'd been standing by the rail, and I realized she did that a lot during the games. We all thought she just wanted a little better view, but I suddenly realized it was
Jake
she really wanted a better view of. As I was running through the stadium I started thinking about things she'd said, the way she'd acted at the party, the reason she hung around with the other girls. She was in love with Jake and wanted him to get closer to him so he'd finally notice her. So I knew she'd run to Jake for help."

"So when she found out Jake had agreed to marry Meaghan, she couldn't let that happen," Ken said. "But what's that got to do with this string of accidents you've been yammering about?"

"How'd she find out?" Shawna asked.

"How'd you figure it out? I still don't know what put you on to it," Kelly said.

"And why did she have to
kill
Meaghan?" Cheryl asked.

Gracie held up her hands in a gesture of 'stop'. "It'll be easier if I start from the beginning. Kelly, play Secretary for us once more and read off each accident. Only the non-fatal ones, please."

Kelly pulled a wad of folded papers from his jeans pocket and smoothed them out on the table's surface. "One last time," he said. "Ahem. The first one was Travis' fall, meant for Brittney," Kelly read off.

"I can't prove some of these, Ken," Gracie said. "But in light of what we
do
know they make sense. This was supposed to be the first in the string, but it didn't work out like she expected. Amy was a few seconds late to 2nd hour that morning; she'd waited until the halls were mostly clear to spill water at the foot of the south stairs. Brittney's a library aide that hour so she'd be out and about and hopefully slip. But Travis is an office aide that hour and he got there first!"

"That's a little
thin
, Gracie," Ken remarked.

"The nerd's a
klutz
, he's always bumping into things and falling down. That doesn't mean I had anything to do with it," Amy muttered.

Ken raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. He still wasn't sure about these accidents, but he'd keep his mouth shut until Gracie was done. Even if Amy had committed murder it didn't mean she was behind the accidents.

"Emily's case of winter-time poison ivy," Kelly intoned.

"The evening before she came down with it a bunch of us were decorating for the next game," Gracie set the scene. "On Saturday Emily had told us she was terribly allergic to poison ivy, and Amy heard her say it. Anyway, Amy volunteered to get some more poster board, saying she'd get some from backstage because it was closer than the office. She wore latex gloves to smear the poison ivy on some prop that she knew Emily used, then threw the gloves in the ladies' room trash and washed her hands. I saw the gloves there before I left that night, but didn't think anything about it at the time."

"I think she wanted everyone to think Emily had gotten it making out in the boonies with Jake," Cheryl said.

"Except that Emily hadn't been out with Jake in awhile," Kelly said. "She'd been too busy rehearsing that play. Next is Madison's Heelie wipe-out and the apparently-manufactured dents in her and Emily's cars. Jake had a baseball bat in the bed of his pickup, and Amy probably knew that since she'd been trying to get close to him."

"Did you
intend
for Madison to fall?" Gracie asked Amy.

Amy looked up at her and shrugged. "There's a
reason
you're not supposed to wear Heelies in school - they're dangerous. She's the poster-girl for what happens when you break the rules." She was beginning to feel a false bravado, thinking there was so little to these accusations that they proved nothing. She returned her attention to the table, as if she were bored and none of this were of any concern to her.

"She was keeping track of all of Jake's girlfriends, and happened to notice that the two cars were parked across the aisle from each other," Gracie said. "She couldn't resist grabbing the bat from Jake's truck and smashing the cars to make it look like one had run into the other. Madison rolled over the broken bits of taillight and fell."

"Gracie was smart enough to measure the dents," Shawna said loyally. "They were different heights, so we knew that wasn't what happened.

"But you couldn't have known that Amy did it," Ken couldn't help but say.

"No, not at the time. But after everything else it just had to be her," Gracie said.

"The bolts were loosened on Serene's desktop so when she dropped her books on it it fell off and hit her ankle," Kelly said.

"Oh, now I can
prove
this one!" Gracie said. "Amy sits in that very same chair the hour before; you can ask the teacher. She'd have had plenty of time to work the nuts loose
and
she'd be sure that Serene would be the next person sitting there."

Ken looked over at Amy who continued to stare at the table. Her coffee was untouched and she was shaking, but not from the cold. Tears were sliding down her cheeks as she began to understand the magnitude of her betrayal. "Jake," she whispered in an agonized voice. Ken nodded for Kelly to continue.

"Tony Fletcher tripped over a rock in front of the door at the boutique where Gracie's step-mother works."

Gracie made a wry face. "Okay, granted this one's mostly a hunch. Tony is Tanya's little brother and they were both in the store with their mother. Meaghan came in with Amy; Amy got bored and went outside."

"Tony is a little
brat
," Cheryl threw in. "He runs all over the place and gets into everything he's not supposed to, and his mother won't even try to control him."

"There's a bench outside the store, with a painted rock beside it. Amy picked up the rock and left it in front of the door. Tony ran outside and tripped on it – but it could just as easily have been Tanya."

"Or Meaghan," Kelly suggested.

"Well, actually, yes," Gracie admitted. "Except that Amy had something far worse planned for Meaghan."

Ken raised an eyebrow in silent inquiry, but Gracie shook her head. "All right, I'll let you tell it in order," he said.

"Next we have someone giving cyanide to Andrea," Kelly said.

"We think it was apple seeds," Cheryl said. "You have to eat a lot of 'em to be fatal, but I think she just wanted to make Andrea sick. It was in Home Ec. Class; we made lasagna that day so Amy could've easily dumped a bunch of ground-up apple seeds into the sauce."

"Andrea has a bit of a weight problem, so she ate more than the other girls," Shawna joined the conversation. "Cheryl said Amy only picked at hers, and, who was it? Oh yeah, Bonnie didn't feel good that afternoon either."

"That was when Cheryl saw that bottle of pain pills," Gracie added. "At first we thought Amy was taking them, but later we realized that was probably how she brought in a lot of apple seeds."

Ken looked at the three of them, putting the various pieces in order in his mind. "As a matter of fact the hospital lab
did
verify that the cyanide came from apple seeds," he said. "I got the report late this afternoon." He didn't add that this was merely circumstantial evidence; there was no way to actually prove Amy had put them in the food.

"I don't
like
lasagna, that's why I didn't eat much," Amy said. But her protest lacked emotion, like she was just going through the expected motions.

Kelly waited a minute in case Amy had something to say about the bottle of pills. When it was clear she didn't he continued. "Brittney's bike slid off the path in the park because Amy poured antifreeze on it."

"Hey!
My
bike slid off that same path!" Gracie protested. "And I gave Amy the idea." She sighed at her own culpability. "I told her the story about how my Aunt Jeanine slipped in some spilled antifreeze that hadn't been cleaned up good."

"That morning Amy asked Bobby if he'd put antifreeze in her car after school, and said she'd stop and get some on her way to his house," Cheryl said. "She'd apparently overheard Brittney saying she was going to visit her grandmother that afternoon and that she'd be riding through the park."

"But Bobby says she nearly beat him home, so she must've bought the antifreeze at lunch – and poured a bottle on the bike path," Gracie continued.

"You know, I think I remember seeing Amy come back alone from lunch that day," Kelly said.

"You're right!" Shawna said. "She was saying how Maggie was drunk and had fallen by accident. We'd been talking about Maggie, but I remember now that I thought it was odd Amy hadn't gone to lunch with some of the other girls."

"Okay, on the next item," Kelly said. "That would be the busted jar of nails on the road by the school."

"It
should've
been Allison that got caught in that trap, but that was the day Meaghan died and Allison decided to stay after school to start a memorial to her," Gracie said.

"So this time it was
me
that ran over the nails," Shawna said. "Although that could've happened even if Allison had gotten a flat, too."

"If you'll go check Bobby's garage you'll find there's a Mason jar full of nails missing from the workbench," Cheryl said. "Amy swiped it when he was putting the antifreeze in her car."

"And Bobby told us that Amy said she had to leave school a little early that day," Gracie added. "That gave her means and opportunity, though of course we can't prove she did it."

"How do you know there's a jar of nails missing?" Ken asked.

"Because there's a whole row of jars on the workbench in his garage," Cheryl explained. "They're arranged in order by size.

"Yeah, and she scooted out of the parking lot just a couple of minutes early so she could throw the jar on the street as she drove off," Shawna said in a disgusted tone.

Ken looked over at Amy. She paid no attention, still not looking at anyone, still ignoring these allegations in favor of trying to figure out why Jake had rebuffed her.

"The next thing was that Jennifer put her hand in some acid on the counter in the chem. lab in first hour, and got an acid-burn," Kelly continued with the list.

"I suppose you're going to tell me that Amy was at school early that day, and there's also a bottle of acid missing from Bobby's garage," Ken said, only half facetiously.

"Bobby told me he'd found Amy sitting on the school steps that morning," Kelly confirmed. "She told him some story about having a fight with her parents and not knowing where else to go."

"Oh wow, we'd wondered how she'd get her hands on some acid," Gracie said. "If she'd take nails she could take acid too, but why would Bobby even
have
any?"

"You told me Bobby's a budding mechanic; it
could
be used to clean parts," Ken supplied. "I'll certainly have a word with the boy about that."

"Then there was Tanya's wreck yesterday after school," Kelly said. "From the way Shawna and Cheryl described what happened, it sounded to me like someone had put sugar in her gas tank. It
might
have only been meant as an inconvenience, but another car hit hers when it stalled."