Murder for Choir (7 page)

“Glad to hear it. So, I was wondering if you’d like to get together today. We could start setting the choreography. The more we do, the less chance there is of Larry trying to help. His help might not be the kind we’re looking for.”

“You don’t like Larry?”

He chuckled. “Larry’s a great guy, but have you seen him dance?”

“Gotcha.” I laughed and felt the need to confess, “Dance isn’t my strongest area, either.”

My aunt trotted down the stairs without the poodle as Devlyn said, “I’ve seen some of the shows you were in. Trust me, you’ll do just fine. So what do you say? Do you have some time this afternoon?”

My aunt picked up the second poodle and headed for the kitchen as I asked, “Can you do it now?”

I walked into the Prospect Glen High School choir room trying to ignore the icky feeling in my stomach. Just down the hall was the auditorium. A place filled with dead-guy cooties.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Devlyn appeared from the storage closet. He’d changed clothes. Now he was wearing a fitted pink T-shirt and a pair of off-white workout shorts. In one hand, he held a CD player. A top hat was in the other.

I nodded, trying not to notice how sexy Devlyn looked in pink. “I thought the cops had shut down the school.”

“They did.” Devlyn plugged the CD player into the back
wall. “After searching the entire building, they decided the only thing off-limits is the auditorium—including the backstage, the dressing rooms, and my office.” He grimaced. “I’m hoping the fingerprint dust cleans up easily. They let me take a quick look, and you wouldn’t believe the mess they made.”

“They fingerprinted your office?”

“And the piano, the microphone cord, and the door handles. I doubt they find anything useful, though. Hundreds of kids and a bunch of teachers touch those things every semester, and the janitorial staff doesn’t get paid well enough to polish doors.”

Fair point.

Putting down my bag, I pulled out the CD I’d burned of this year’s music choices. “You said you worked with Greg, right?”

He took the CD and nodded.

“I don’t mean to be nosy, but you don’t seem that upset by his death. No one does.” Except me and poor Eric.

Devlyn clenched his jaw. “Greg Lucas was a hard man to work with. He was an even harder man to like. I’m not surprised someone wanted him dead.”

Yowzah. “Anyone you can think of that might top the list?”

He smiled. “Are you investigating?”

“No.” Not really. Maybe. “I’m concerned about Eric. There must be better suspects out there than a seventeen-year-old high school student.”

“I can name four or five off the top of my head.”

“Like who?” I asked with a touch more intensity than I’d meant to.

Devlyn laughed. “Honey, you need a hobby.”

“Humor me.”

His smile dropped. He stepped back, perched a hand on his hip, and cocked his head to one side while studying me. I fought the urge to squirm. Finally, he said, “Okay, I’ll play along. There’s the ex-wife, Dana. She was seriously put out when a judge gave Greg joint custody of their son. Dana showed up at
West Side Story
rehearsal at least once a week in a rage over something, threatening to kill Greg. Catfight city.”

Dana Lucas sounded like a great suspect, although I’d hate to think what would happen to the son if she’d done it. “Who else?”

“North Shore High’s football coach, Curtis Bennett, would also be a top contender.”

“Why would the football coach have a problem with a choir director?” If Greg taught marching band, I would almost understand.

Leaning against the wall, Devlyn gave me a grim smile. “Somehow Greg got the star wide receiver to give up playing football to sing in the show choir. The football coach was pissed.”

“Losing a football player isn’t a reason to commit murder.”

He arched an eyebrow at me. “Tell me that after you’ve met Coach Bennett.”

I decided to add the coach to my mental list. “Anyone else?”

“How much time do you have?” Devlyn popped the CD into the player and hit play. The intro to “Ease on Down the Road” echoed through the room. “Larry is an obvious choice. So are a number of female students who hit on Greg and were turned down. Greg was an alley cat who liked the thrill of the hunt. Aggressive women didn’t do it for him. Come on.”

He sauntered past the piano to an empty space in the room and executed a perfect double turn. Holding out his hand, he said, “This is what I was thinking for this number. Let’s dance.” He strutted, turned, and added some hip-hop-style stomping.

I shook my head. “They won’t be able to sing. This is show choir. If they can’t sing while they’re dancing, what’s the point? How about something like…” I did a couple of tap flaps and stomps in between some poses all the while followed by Devlyn’s intense gaze. The fact I didn’t trip over my own feet under his watchful eyes was cause for celebration.

“I like the tap, but the steps aren’t flashy enough.” Devlyn tried a couple variations of what I had just done. “We need minimal-effort glitz with a few lifts or harder moves thrown in to wow the judges. Right?”

“Right.”

“Okay. Let’s do it.”

Holy crap. Devlyn was a machine. Once we got a combination we liked, he insisted I repeat it several times while singing, just to make sure I could. I reminded him that my breathing technique was better than that of the average high school singer. He just shrugged and said I’d teach them to do it. I appreciated his confidence in me. Too bad he didn’t realize the entire choir thought I was a joke.

Aunt Millie had always told me that women don’t sweat, they glow. She was nuts. Sweat poured off my face and trickled down my back. It was Devlyn who glowed. His skin just glistened with a touch of moisture, making his muscles look even more sculpted than they had before.

He grabbed my arm and twirled me up against his chest. “Want to try a lift?” he asked.

No. I wasn’t the cute, one-hundred-pounds-sopping-wet ballerina type. Opera singers didn’t have to be rail thin to
succeed. Still, while my head insisted I say no, the rest of me was enamored with the way Devlyn’s body felt pressed up against my back. The man was gay. That alone should limit the attraction. Right?

Wrong.

Growing up, I always wanted whatever I couldn’t have. As a toddler I wanted matches. My preteen self wanted purple hair and Julia Roberts’s nose (which Aunt Millie was willing to help with, but my parents nixed), and as a teen I wanted any good-looking guy who happened to be in a solid relationship or was otherwise unavailable. My aunt told me that this was my youthful self’s way of helping me avoid getting knocked up and that I would grow out of it. I thought I had.

Until now.

“Are you ready?” Devlyn’s voice was deep and sexy in my ear. I tried to pretend he was my brother. Or my mortician second cousin whose only topic of conversation was making dead people look lifelike. Talk about a turnoff. “I’m going to lift you up onto my shoulder. One. Two.”

Wait. What?

“Three.”

Devlyn put his hands on my waist and lifted. I went up and felt his hands start to slip against my sweaty sides as he tried to prop me onto his shoulder. For a moment the world went into slow motion as my backside brushed his collarbone, then started to descend.

Thunk.

Yeouch!
My hip and knee hit the tile, sending a wave of pain through my right side. That was going to leave a mark. At least my hands had stopped my face from colliding with the ground. Otherwise, I would have needed that long-wished-for nose job.

“Oh God, Paige. Are you okay?” Devlyn looked down at me from above.

I frowned. “Why aren’t you on the ground with me?”

He gaped, then laughed. “Because I wasn’t the one up in the air.”

“Whose fault is that?”

“Mine.” Still chuckling, he held out a hand. “Next time I promise I’ll fall first so you have something soft to land on.”

Oh goody. Something to look forward to.

I took his hand and let him haul me to my feet. My whole body ached. To top it off, the sweat on my skin had attracted every dust mite on the linoleum floor. For the first time I was thankful Devlyn wasn’t attracted to women. My current state made the Bride of Frankenstein look like a cover model.

“Why don’t we call it quits for the day?” Devlyn walked over to the CD player and killed the music. “We can finish blocking the ending tomorrow after camp. Larry said it was going to be an abbreviated schedule considering everything that’s happened.”

Made sense to me. It was hard to preach about jazz hands and Vaseline smiles after a murder.

“Hey,” I said. “You never finished your list of murder suspects. You named the ex-wife, the coach, and Larry, but you said you could name at least four or five.”

Devlyn walked over to a gray duffel bag near the door and pulled out a towel. “I’ll finish the list if you tell me why you’re so certain Eric didn’t do it. You’ve known him for all of three days.”

Technically four, but who was counting? “Eric doesn’t strike me as the murdering type.” He was more like the playing-video-games-while-eating-greasy-pizza kind.

“I saw Eric when I stopped by my office on Tuesday night. He looked pretty angry.”

“Angry enough to strangle someone with a microphone cord?”

Devlyn shrugged. “The cops asked the same thing. I told them that teenagers get angry. They stomp and scream and sometimes they punch things. Then they move on.”

“So who wouldn’t move on? Who else was angry enough with Greg Lucas to kill him?”

“You really want to know?”

I nodded.

Devlyn wiped the back of his neck with a towel. Then he shoved the towel into his workout bag and winked. “Me.”

He was joking. He had to be. Right?

I asked myself that question at least a dozen times on the ride back to Millie’s place. No person in his right mind would willingly offer himself up as a murder suspect. Then again, what person in his right mind actually murdered someone? I didn’t know what to think.

The only thing I was certain of was my need for a shower. I bounded up the living room steps to the second story before Killer could come find me, grabbed a clean set of clothes from my bedroom, and headed for the bathroom. Peeling off my sweaty shirt, shorts, and underwear, I dropped them on the floor, hit the light switch, and took a step toward the shower.

Eek!

Sitting next to the toilet, looking at me with its mouth half open, was a lifeless black poodle. I grabbed a towel and wrapped it around my torso. Yeah, I was being silly. The
dog’s beady blue glass eyes couldn’t see me. But they were enough to wig me out.

I tied the towel tight around me, grabbed my clothes both clean and dirty, and went in search of another bathroom. This week had been stressful enough. Having a lifelike poodle watch me shower was more than my blood pressure could take.

Once I was clean, I went to my frilly green-and-white bedroom to check my cell messages. I lived in hope that my manager would call with an offer to take me away from all this. Nothing. I booted up my laptop. Damn. He hadn’t e-mailed me, either.

I sat back in the ornately decorated wood chair and sighed. If I’d gotten the role with the Lyric Opera, I probably would have heard by now. My heart sank. Until another opportunity presented itself, I’d have to suck it up and do the best job I could with the hand I was dealt.

Snagging my purse off the floor, I pulled a piece of paper out of the side pocket and unfolded it. Ex-wife, Dana Lucas. Football coach, Curtis Bennett. My boss, Larry DeWeese. My three suspects. Grabbing a pen, I added Eric Metz and Devlyn O’Shea. I didn’t think either one of them killed Greg Lucas, but keeping them in mind couldn’t hurt.

Turning to my laptop, I typed
Greg Lucas
and
North Shore High
into the search box and hit enter. I saw several articles dated today about his murder, all giving sketchy details as to the circumstances. Larry was quoted in all of them saying Greg was a talented educator who would be missed. I wondered whether Larry’s nose had grown while spouting that eulogy. One of the articles ran a picture of Greg, his wife, and their son, Jacob. I clicked onto Facebook and did a search for Dana Lucas. Bingo. Her work history
was set for public viewing—yoga and Zumba instructor at the Women’s Wellness Center.