The Skeleton Takes a Bow Page 23

  She’d stopped behind a trio of trees that had grown close together, and those of us with eyes ducked behind them to get a look at the cabin. It was small, about the size of a one-bedroom starter house, and though the windows were shuttered, I could see light shining out through the cracks. There were three cars parked in the grassy clearing next to it. Two were out in the open, but the dark blue one closest to the house was mostly covered with a tarp, and I had a hunch that we’d found Robert Irwin’s missing Honda.

  Now that Sid’s skeleton was no longer rattling, we could hear raised voices from inside the cabin. Deborah drew herself up, and I could tell she was getting ready to storm in, gun or no gun. I grabbed her sleeve and pulled on the tire iron. When she looked stubborn, I put Sid’s hand around the iron. She hesitated, then nodded and released her grip.

  Sid straightened his shoulder blades, made for the front door, and started beating it down with the tire iron. He’d never shown anything but human strength before, so I don’t know if he somehow surpassed that or if the door was just flimsy, but he broke through after only a dozen blows and stepped inside.

  That’s when the screaming began. Had it been Madison’s voice, Deborah and I would have started running, but it was Adam Jr. who was screaming. There was a gunshot, another, then silence. We launched ourselves and pushed our way in through the splintered remains of the door.

  Sid—all of him, skull included—was standing over an unconscious Adam Jr. There was a rifle on the floor next to him. Sid turned in my direction, and just for a second I saw him as the boy must have—a looming monster of bare bones, armed with a heavy bar of steel. Then he raised his fist triumphantly and said, “The Bone Ranger rides again!” And it was just Sid.

  “Did you shoot him?” I asked.

  “Of course not. I scared him good, though—he’s fainted.”

  “Where’s Madison?”

  Before he could answer, I heard her calling from behind a closed door. “Mom?”

  It wasn’t locked, but even if it had been, I wouldn’t have needed a tire iron to get through.

  Madison and Tristan were on the floor, crouched behind a bed, but in an instant she’d jumped up and was holding on to me. When Deborah poked her head in, Madison grabbed her, too, and the three of us were hugging and crying and saying nothing that made any sense at all. Eventually we calmed down enough to take notice of Tristan, who was staring up at us with an expression made up of equal parts relief and trepidation.

  He said, “Adam?”

  “He’s alive,” Deborah said in a tone that said how little she cared.

  At that moment we heard an amplified voice from outside the cabin. “This is the police. Put down your weapons and come outside with your hands up.”

  I looked at Deborah and knew we were thinking the same thing. Sid!

  But when we all went back through the main room of the cabin, Sid was nowhere to be seen. The tire iron was on the floor, and Adam’s hands had been tied. Since I wasn’t hearing screams of terror from outside, I decided Sid must have decamped and found a place to hide, which was a very good idea.

  “I repeat, this is the police. Put down your weapons and come out with your hands up.”

  Deborah, Madison, and I obeyed the weapons part, but Madison kept holding our hands as we went out the door.

  47

  Our tardy rescuers were a combination of North Ashfield and Pennycross police officers, including Deborah’s pal Louis Raymond. Though from his glower, I wasn’t sure if he still considered her a pal or not. She looked directly at him, then, as Charles would have said, cut him dead.

  Once the police determined that none of us Thackerys were armed, a trio of policewomen came running with blankets and hot chocolate and tried to gently separate us. It didn’t happen—Madison kept a firm grip on both of us. I don’t know if it was for comfort or to make sure we kept our stories straight, but I was content with either answer.

  Adam was treated far less politely, but the police weren’t quite sure how to handle Tristan until Officer Raymond took us back into the cabin, sat us down, and asked Madison what had happened.

  “I was backstage at the play and saw Adam messing ’round with Sid—I mean, with my skull.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “A prop for the show,” I said. “The kids call it Sid.”

  Madison nodded, grateful for the save. “I told Adam to put the skull down, that it was mine, but he ran out the door with it. I chased after him, but when I caught up with him, he kept waving it over his head where I couldn’t reach it. So I kicked him.”

  “Good girl,” Deborah said.

  “But not smart,” Madison said. “He got mad and pushed me down.” She looked at her hose, and for the first time I noticed the tear on one knee and enough of a bloody scrape that I started wishing that Sid had done more than scare that zygomatic creep. “Jo is going to be mad at me.”

  “Don’t worry about the costume,” Raymond said. “Just tell us what happened next.”

  “Adam had gotten to his car by the time I got up, and I started beating on the hood.”

  “That was a pretty strong reaction to him taking a skull.”

  “I know,” she said sheepishly. “I lost my temper, big time, but he made me so mad. Taking something that’s mine and pushing me down and all.”

  Of course I knew why she’d gone to such lengths to get Sid back, and I would have been angry at her if I hadn’t known that I would have done the same.

  Madison went on. “I kept yelling for him to give me it back. Finally he opened the passenger door and said something like, ‘You want it—come get it.’ He held out the skull, but when I reached for it, he grabbed me and pulled me inside the car and just drove off with me hanging halfway out of the door.

  “I wasn’t going to get in the car with him—I know you’re not supposed to go with somebody like that—and I tried to get back out, but he slugged me.”

  “Where is that—?” Deborah said. She started to stand up, but Madison pulled her down.

  “Did he knock you unconscious?” Raymond asked.

  “I guess. He hit me pretty hard and I was kind of out of it. By the time I woke all the way up, we were parked here and he dragged me inside.”

  “Then what?”

  “He started drinking. Well, drinking more. I think he’d been drinking before—I could smell it on him. He had, like, a whole case of beer in the basement, and I don’t know how much he went through.”

  “The kid acted drunk at the school,” I said.

  “He kept fooling around with the skull, too,” Madison said, “trying to see how it had talked at the end of the play.”

  “You mean when it accused his father of murder?” Raymond asked.

  “Is that what it said?”

  I was so grateful for all the acting Madison had done. Had I not known the truth, I’d have believed she was baffled myself.

  “Apparently,” he said, looking at Deborah. She ignored him. “What happened next?”

  “That’s when Tristan showed up.”

  “Was he in on it, too?”

  “No way,” she said firmly. “He said he’d heard I was missing and was afraid Adam had done something stupid, so he came to find out for sure. I guess the family comes out here in the summer a lot, and Tristan knows Adam uses it for partying sometimes.

  “Tristan was really mad at his brother for grabbing me that way, and kept trying to convince him to let me go because it was only making things worse, but Adam said they couldn’t because I knew too much.”

  “What did you know?”

  “I have no idea. It got kind of confusing after a while. My head hurt because of Adam hitting me, and when I asked for an aspirin or something, he said I should drink a beer and I’d feel better.” She made a face. “It didn’t help my head at all, but Adam kept telling me
to drink. He made Tristan drink some, too. After a while he got that rifle out and started messing with it. He said he and Tristan had to defend their dad. Tristan finally got him to let us go into the bedroom.” She looked embarrassed. “Tristan said we wanted to make out, but he really meant to try to help me get away. Only he wanted me to promise not to tell anybody what had happened. I kept telling him it would never work. My mother knows me better than that. I’d never have left the theater wearing my costume!”

  It wasn’t funny, certainly not in light of what had nearly happened, but I couldn’t help snickering. Deborah gave me a dirty look to make me stop.

  Raymond nodded for Madison to continue.

  “Tristan and I were still in the bedroom when we heard some really loud noises.”

  “That was us,” I said. “We broke down the door.”

  Madison said, “Then I heard a gunshot, maybe two.”

  “The kid missed,” Deborah said, “and passed out. Drunk, from what Madison just said.”

  “Mom and Aunt Deborah came for me, and a little while later, you guys showed up. That’s all I know. No, wait, one other thing. When we heard all the noises and the gunshots, Tristan threw himself over me. He really didn’t want me to get hurt.”

  “We’ll keep that in mind.” Then he turned to me. “Can you explain your part in this?”

  “We got an anonymous call that Madison was in a cabin in North Ashfield and came looking for her,” I lied.

  “And you didn’t see fit to call the police here or in Pennycross?”

  Deborah made a sound of disgust. “After the way you treated us last night when Madison went missing? As if we were a couple of hysterical females? Since you obviously weren’t going to believe anything we said, we came and found the place on our own.”

  “So you broke down the door? That’s impressive.”

  “I thought about picking the lock,” Deborah said with a smirk, “but this way was faster.”

  I suspect he’d have asked for more details, like how we’d actually found the cabin, but another officer called him away. Not being Sid, I couldn’t hear everything they said, but I did catch the words “body” and “freezer in the basement.”

  After all that time, we’d finally found Robert Irwin’s body.

  The police might have continued to pester us, but when Madison realized there’d been a corpse in the basement the whole time she’d been there, she started shaking and then sobbing, which made me cry and Deborah fume, so they finally let us go home. One of the professionally supportive officers walked us back down the track to where Deborah’s truck was parked, and held back the lone reporter who’d realized there was a big story brewing.

  I checked the back of the truck and saw that Sid’s suitcase was closed, even though I was sure I’d left it open before. I couldn’t very well check inside in front of the police officer and the reporter, and there was no room to move it to the front of the truck, so I lightly rapped “Shave and a haircut” on it. After a second, I heard Sid tap back: “Two bits.” He’d found his way back.

  As we started to pull out, a Pennycross police car arrived, and an officer escorted Adam McDaniel Sr. out of the backseat. This time it was I who caught his eye, and I deliberately winked back at him.

  48

  When we got home and Madison had been thoroughly greeted by Byron, she admitted that she was starving. Deborah and I nearly came to blows over who was going to feed her. I finally let my sister take over at the stove, but only because she’s better at omelets than I am. Besides, I couldn’t stand for Madison to be out of my sight for long enough to cook, and of course I had to treat Sid like the hero he was.

  Though Deborah was trying to act as if she were taking it all in stride, she showed she was more upset than she wanted to admit when she set the table for four people.

  Sid grinned and took his place at the table, and when Deborah started to apologize, he said, “That’s okay. I’ll take some orange juice. And a mop.”

  The fact that we all laughed as if it were the funniest thing we’d ever heard showed just how fried we all were.

  After that, I insisted we set the alarm, turn off all the phones, and go to bed. Madison and Byron shared my bed with me, and Deborah took our parents’. As for Sid, I expected him to go up to his attic to catch up on the breaking story we’d just lived through, but I kept hearing him clattering around the house, checking on us and humming happily.

  I wished that could have been the end of it, but of course it wasn’t. There were more talks with the police, and calls and visits from local reporters. I even tossed my old boyfriend a bone, so to speak, and gave him an exclusive interview. Plus I had to call my parents and tell them the whole story before they learned about it some other way.

  Under the circumstances, the second performance of Hamlet was postponed. Guildenstern was actually willing to go through with it, but Rosencrantz’s father and brother were under arrest. Plus the auditorium was finally being processed as a crime scene.

  Fortunately, PHS’s spring break started on Monday, which gave Mr. Dahlgren a chance to put a plan in place to soothe parents and students alike and meant I had time to find a therapist to help Madison get past her ordeal. It was so close to the end of the semester that I couldn’t take the whole week off, but between me, Sid, and Deborah, we made sure Madison was never left alone.

  By the following Monday, Madison said she was ready to go back to school and, after consulting with her therapist, I allowed it and went back to work myself, though only at McQuaid. Mr. Dahlgren had called during the break to let me know that Mr. Chedworth had recovered more quickly than expected and would be returning for the rest of the school year. Chedworth himself called later on to apologize for any financial losses, but though I’d miss Ms. Rad and Lance, I was just as glad to get my time back. Sid decided he was perfectly happy staying home from PHS, too.

  That Wednesday, Deborah brought over a Chinese take-out feast so we could catch up while we ate. Sid tried his drink and a mop joke again, but it wasn’t as funny the second time.

  “So I was talking to Louis today,” Deborah started to say as we handed around the sweet-and-sour pork.

  “I thought he was mad at you,” Madison said.

  “He’s getting over it. He knows the team won’t win without me.”

  “Yeah, it’s all about the bowling,” I said drily. “What’s the word on the investigation?”

  She said, “Well, since they found Irwin’s body in McDaniel’s freezer, the guy can’t pretend he didn’t know it was there, but it looks like his lawyer is planning to claim either self-defense or accident. He supposedly only hid the body because he panicked.”

  “Will he be able to get away with that?” I asked.

  “It depends on how good that lawyer is.”

  “What about Patty Craft?”

  “They’re not even going to be able to charge him with that. Louis says they’re all sure he had something to do with her death, and it’s clear that he’d been giving her drug samples for a while, but there’s no proof he killed her. It could still be an accident or suicide—they can’t even get enough of a case to charge him with mercy killing.”

  “Coccyx!” I said. “What about his charming son?”

  Deborah snickered. “First off, the guys at the station have been having a field day with all of Junior’s stories of being attacked by a walking skeleton. They’re blaming it on the beer, of course, combined with seeing Sid’s big speech at the end of Hamlet. Louis still suspects me of having something to do with that, by the way, but he can’t pin anything on me.”

  “But he does have evidence to use against Adam, right?”

  “Plenty. Kidnapping charges to start with. He tried to claim Madison went with him willingly, but his own brother is telling what really happened. He’s also being charged with helping to hide Irwin’s body. Unfortunately,
Louis doesn’t think they can charge him for the attack on you. Which seems to have been his own idea, by the way. He says he was just trying to scare you off, but Louis isn’t sure he believes him. As for Adam Sr., he was smart enough not to do anything that stupid even though he knew you were asking questions.”

  “How did they find out about that, anyway?” I asked. “I know I’m not the most subtle sleuth in the world, but I was nowhere close to figuring out that the McDaniels were involved.”

  “It turns out Adam Sr. was working with the Sechrest Foundation, and had been for years. After he hired Irwin to take Adam Jr.’s SAT, he started helping Frisenda find more parents willing to pay for help cheating. For a commission, of course.”

  “Hence his devotion to the PTO,” I said. “That means it wasn’t just his son’s reputation he was worried about—it was his own. I should have known.”

  “Anyway, Frisenda told him all about you.”

  “That slimy tibia! Now I’m doubly glad I sicced Charles on him.”

  “How’s that?” Deborah asked.

  “When I told Charles what the foundation is really about, he said it was a pox upon our community and was not to be borne. It turns out he has friends at several of the big standardized testing companies, and they were very interested in hearing about the cheating. Plus he spread the word through the adjunct network—even put Sara Weiss on the job. Between them, they took it viral.”

  “The Sechrest Web site disappeared today,” Sid added.

  “What about Tristan?” Madison asked.

  “Thanks to you, he’s not being charged with anything,” Deborah said. “He probably did know about Irwin, but only long after the fact, and he seems to have believed his father’s story that the man’s death was accidental. And he really was trying to save you from his brother.”

  “He’s left PHS,” Madison said. “He’s going to live with his mother in Boston now. He texted me a few times, and I thanked him for what he did for me, but . . .” She shrugged. “I don’t think I could ever trust him after this.”