Murder for Choir (12 page)

Thank God Eliza was so busy telling me about Binkie that I didn’t need to comment. That left me free to eat the other three sandwiches on my plate and grab two more. If it weren’t for her high-pitched, squeaky voice, the situation would have been ideal. The sound was great for calling dogs but bad for digestion.

Once the photo array was stowed, I changed the subject. “You look like you work out. Does your club have good facilities?”

“Oh yes. Although, running with Binkie is all the exercise I really need. But I do enjoy yoga. My instructor had to cancel this week, which was sad. I find yoga very relaxing.”

“I took a yoga class last night. I wouldn’t say I found it relaxing.”

A voice from behind laughed. “That’s because you don’t take it from Madame Zandri. She’s part yoga instructor and part psychic.”

I turned. A tall woman with bleached blonde hair and black eyebrows stood in the doorway. She was wearing torn jeans and a faded green tank top. Most surprising, she looked to be at least thirty years younger than the rest of the guests.

Eliza sniffed. “Madame Zandri is a lovely teacher. I know several of her private students who say they have out-of-body experiences when doing yoga with her.”

The mystery woman grinned. “You’d have an out-of-body experience, too, if you inhaled Madame Zandri’s incense.” She turned to me and added, “She burns homegrown marijuana.”

“I think it’s time for my facial.” Eliza frowned at the newcomer as she marched into the living room.

As soon as she was out of earshot, I asked, “Does Madame Zandri really burn marijuana?”

“Yep.” She sauntered into the room and grabbed a chocolate chip cookie off the table. “She also uses her homegrown incense during tarot readings.”

“Sounds like more fun than I had. Hi. My name is Paige.”

She smiled as she shook my hand. “Sherrie Bush. Did you take your yoga class at the club?”

“No. Although, I believe Dana Lucas also teaches at the Glen.”

“Dana?” Sherrie laughed. “No wonder a drug-induced haze sounds good. Dana used to be a pretty good teacher. Then her marriage went bust. I guess she couldn’t take out the aggression on her husband so she started using her students.” Sherrie finished her cookie and grabbed another.

I snagged an oatmeal raisin and started munching. From the next room Aunt Millie’s voice announced it was pedicure time. “Do you want to get your toes done?”

We both looked down at her feet. Sherrie was wearing black-and-red high-tops with frayed laces. In several places, I could see the white of her socks peeking through the worn fabric. My clunky white sneakers looked downright stylish in comparison.

“Never mind.” I laughed. Then I switched to my topic of choice. “Dana’s aggression explains the low attendance at her class yesterday.”

“Her ex-husband getting whacked probably made her
students a little leery, too.” Sherrie chomped down on her cookie. “He was murdered a couple nights ago.”

“I heard.” That sounded better than saying, “Yeah, I was the one who found him.” “I’d like to think her students would make a point of coming to class to express their sympathy.”

Sherri laughed. “The new Dana doesn’t encourage sympathy.”

“Did the old Dana?”

Leaning against the table, Sherrie chewed on her cookie and thought about the question. “The old Dana was softer. More interested in helping people. She never yelled or raised her voice, and her classes were challenging, but only because she pushed you to get better control of your body. Going to her classes was the only good thing about having a club membership until her husband two-timed her. I hope the guy I saw her with coming out of the club on Wednesday night treats her better.”

“Guy?” What guy? Greg Lucas was either killed on Wednesday evening or early Thursday morning.

Sherrie raised an eyebrow and studied me for a minute. Finally, she said, “The guy was a little shorter than Dana with brownish hair. I would have thought she would have been done with guys shorter than her after Greg, but I guess the rest of him was different enough to make her take a risk.”

“Different how?”

She smiled. “He was kind of scrawny and cute in an I-need-to-spend-time-in-the-sun kind of way. He even opened the car door for her. Greg would never have done that. Heck, if this guy wasn’t driving a Dodge Neon, I might have fought for him. A girl has to have her standards.”

Sherrie grabbed a glass of wine off the table and downed it. “Time to get my eyebrows plucked. I promised my mother.”

She sauntered back into the living room, leaving me
alone and choking on my oatmeal cookie. Sherrie had just described Larry from the tip of his pasty white toes all the way to his budget car. What the hell was he doing at the Glen Country Club with his arch-nemesis’s ex-wife? Something told me that whatever Larry was doing, it couldn’t be good.

I was conflicted. The nosy part of me wanted to rush out the door, hop in my car, and find out what Larry was doing fraternizing with the yoga Nazi. The wimpy side wanted to stay indoors and hide from whoever was slipping veiled threats in my dance bag.

Wimpy sucked. I opted for nosy. But when I marched into the living room, I ran smack into a cloud of cloying perfume. My eyes began to water, and my nose twitched as women sprayed their wrists with Aunt Millie’s latest and greatest products. From the way the women in the middle of the room were teetering on their heels and slurring their words, I guessed they’d hit the free bar a bit too hard. Either that or Mary Kay’s new line of fragrances could be used as biochemical weapons. One spray and terrorists would start singing “Kumbaya.” Awesome.

I crept around the country club ladies, hoping no one would notice. Until I tripped on a pair of purple-and-gold heels and went crashing to the floor. Crap. All heads turned
in my direction. A blonde woman with no shoes and a smear of red lipstick on her cheek gasped and hurried over. Swaying slightly as she walked, she reached me and held out a hand. “I’m sorry. I have no idea how my shoes got over there.”

The woman grabbed my arm and tugged me to my feet. The minute I let go of her hand, she went flying four steps backward, tripped over the edge of the love seat, and went hurtling into the lap of a sleeping white-haired lady. The sleeping woman woke with a yelp and smacked the blonde with her purse.

The blonde shrieked. “How dare you?” And grabbed the purse with her newly manicured fingers. She cocked back her arm and prepared to let the purse fly when the tiny Eliza snatched the bag from her and smacked her from behind.

“Don’t you dare hit Melinda,” she hollered as the blonde grabbed a pillow off the love seat, glared at Eliza, and gave the pillow a fling.

The blonde had terrible aim. The pillow flew wide to the right and took out two dark-haired women in tennis attire. The blonde shrieked again and grabbed another pillow. Not to be outdone, Eliza took off her shoe. As footwear and foamed fabric flew, I headed for the exit. I closed the door on the sounds of primal screams and shattering glass.

I hurried down the drive, weaving in between the Lexus SUVs, and pulled out my cell. Aunt Millie answered her phone on the third ring. “Where did you go?” she yelled. Somewhere in the background I heard a groan.

“I got a lead from Sherrie and decided to check it out.”

“Kathleen, put down the vase this minute,” Millie yelled.

I looked back at the house and sighed. Leaving Aunt Millie to deal with the fallout felt icky. “Do you need me to come back and help? It sounds like things got out of hand.”

“Don’t worry about me, dear. The day I can’t handle a bunch of inebriated women is the day I die. Besides, once I get enough coffee in them, they’ll feel so guilty they’ll triple their orders. You go run down your lead and save that boy. I’ll take care of the rest.” I heard another crash, and Millie disconnected.

I still felt bad about ditching my aunt with the drunken debutantes, but I knew better than to interfere with Millie when she in Mary Kay sales mode. And she was right. The minute the women realized they’d trashed her living room, they’d get out their credit cards and charge them to the limit. By the time the day was done, Millie would probably earn another pink car.

Cranking the air in my car, I dialed Larry. I hoped he’d have time to get together and chat. Damn. Voice mail. I opted not to leave a message, hung up the phone and hit the gas. No way was I going back into Aunt Millie’s house until the coast was clear. The clock on my dashboard read 3:14
P.M
. The school would still be open. Maybe Larry was putting the finishing touches on his lesson plans.

Football practice was still going on in the field to the left of the school, which meant at least one door to the school would be unlocked. Larry had given me a key to the choir room and another to his office, but I wasn’t entrusted with a key to the front door—yet. Guess they were waiting to see if I could resist the urge to steal the erasers.

The side door near the practice field was open. I walked down to the Fine Arts wing, trying not to look as out of place as I felt. My high school experience hadn’t been terrible. In fact, compared to those of a lot of my friends, my high school life had been downright wonderful. I’d gotten better than average grades, scored leads in the musicals, and even got elected to prom court my senior year. Still, despite
the fond memories, returning to high school in any capacity wasn’t something to which I’d ever aspired. And yet, here I was cruising the halls and championing one of the students I had never wanted to teach. Life was strange.

The choir room door was locked. I knocked just in case Larry was inside. Nothing. I got out my shiny new key and twisted it in the lock.

No one was inside. The adjoining office was also dark. Drat. Still, now that I was here, familiarizing myself with the space wouldn’t hurt. Perhaps I’d poke around some desk drawers, flip through whatever papers I could find—all in order to understand Larry’s organizational system, of course. And if I found something incriminating, well, I couldn’t help it.

I went over my reasoning twice to make sure I could spout it back to someone if I was discovered. As a performer, I liked knowing my lines. Certain I could bluff with the best of them, I crossed the room and began pawing through the stacks of paper on the piano. Lots of bad choral arrangements. I resisted the urge to hide the worst of them and looked in the piano bench. Larry’s metronome and conductor’s baton sat inside along with several ancient-looking cough drops. The rest of the room was filled with equally professional items. Not exactly a surprise, but under the circumstances, disappointing.

That left the office.

I got out my other key, took several deep breaths, and let myself in. Hitting the light, I stepped into the room. Just standing in the small, cluttered space made my muscles tense. Two filing cabinets and an upright piano were positioned against one wall. A large metal desk sat on the opposite side of the room. A desktop computer sat on the desk, along
with enough paper to throw a ticker tape parade. On the wall were photos of kids in glittery costumes smiling wide at the camera. In the middle of each group of kids was Larry.

That’s when it hit me. This was Larry’s personal space. Yeah, I was allowed to use it, too, but as a guest. This felt like breaking and entering. For the first time in my life, I was probably doing something more illegal than photocopying music. Illegal was bad. Then again, so was being threatened for trying to help a teenage boy prove his innocence.

Shoving my doubts aside, I headed for the filing cabinets. Locked. Good. One less thing to feel guilty about invading. I sat down at the desk and flipped on the computer. While I was waiting for it to boot, I scanned the desk calendar. In perfect penmanship, Larry had written in all the official school events. Every football game, dance, and choral concert for the upcoming year was accounted for.

I sifted through the stacks of loose papers. Class lists, music theory worksheets, Illinois Music Educators Association memos, and a bunch of pamphlets for the Symphony Center and other professional Chicago choral groups were piled on the desk. I even found a folder containing handwritten notes about dance steps to the clichéd show choir songs Larry suggested yesterday.

Yikes. The steps weren’t just basic, they were boring. I wasn’t an expert on these competitions, but from the videos I’d seen, any choir doing these steps would be blown out of the water. Judging by the notes in the margin, Larry knew this as well. This combined with his desperation to win might have made Larry snap.

Shoved in the back of the dance steps folder was an overdraft notice from Larry’s bank. He probably didn’t even
know it was in there. It was dated a week ago. Poor Larry was more financially strapped than I was, which was saying something.

I put the papers aside, turned to the computer, and clicked through a bunch of folders. Nothing terribly exciting. A couple of folders labeled
Grades
and followed by a class number were password protected. I clicked on Larry’s e-mail and a password screen appeared. For kicks, I tried a couple of musical terms.

Denied.

I didn’t know Larry well enough to make a real attempt at cracking his password. With Aunt Millie it was easy. Plug in the name of one of her dead dogs, and you were in. My former roommate was even easier. Her theatrical memory skills were impeccable. Her daily memory was sketchy at best so she kept a list of her passwords taped to the bottom of her desk drawer.