Buzz Kill (32 page)

It wasn't—unfortunately—until I'd fought my way back to my dad and Ms. Parkins, crawling over about fifty laps while balancing four doughnuts—and continuing to eat one—that something struck me as strange.

I couldn't quite put my finger on it or connect the dots, but all at once, standing there, blocking a bunch of Stingers fans' views, with a mouth full of Bavarian cream, something seemed off—and not just meeting up with a creepy detective, out of the blue, at a football game.

Viv, still absent, missing a chance to prance in front of hundreds.

Ms. Beamish abandoning her fundraising post.

A few words uttered at a locker.

Düsseldorf.

“
Show Boat.”

Wrestling.

Football.

Chicken clock.

“
Oklahoma!”

Familiar handwriting . 
.
 .

I was acting on pure instinct, still not sure what connection, exactly, my brain was trying to make. But as I shoved a pile of pastries into my puzzled father's hands, crashed through a row of people who were getting pretty disgruntled with me, and ran down the steps toward the school, I knew where I was going.

The Honeywell High library, of course.

It might not've possessed the collected works of Montaigne, but it would have exactly what I needed that evening.

I was normally very respectful of books and librarians' efforts to keep them filed in orderly fashion, but that evening I yanked copies of the Honeywell
Historia
—was that even a word?—off the shelf in the special part of the library where they kept yearbooks dating back to about 1950 and tossed them to the floor.

Dropping to my knees, I began to leaf quickly through the 2009 annual, licking my fingers to get the pages moving and searching for pictures of the Language Club—while my brain did its level best to recall the knickknacks on Mr. Killdare's bookshelf. And there it was. A photo of smiling kids and chaperones against a backdrop of Greek ruins.

The Acropolis.

Ditching 2009, I snatched up 2010 and restarted the process until I found more grinning kids—right in front of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Bingo!

Then 2011. A caption that read
“
.
 . 
.
tours charming Copenhagen . 
.
 .”

And next 2012. London.
Big Ben.

The pieces were starting to fall into place, and my fingers shook as I snatched up the most recent
Historia
and flipped through it, practically panting. “Where were they that summer?” I said out loud. “What's the missing memento?”

And then I found it. The photo of students, some of whom I knew—including club president Viv, wearing a very trite beret,
gag
—and Ms. Beamish, all crowded together at the base of the Eiffel Tower. Some of them were hamming it up with souvenirs they'd bought. Replicas of the tower, which they held aloft . . . almost like trophies. Presumably heavy metal copies of a big metal structure.

All at once, I also recalled an announcement made at the end of my junior year.
“Students traveling to Switzerland this summer must have parental permission slips and a deposit filed by Friday . 
.
 .”

Lucerne.
A postcard sent while Mr. Killdare was alive, but that arrived postmortem . . .

“Viv. I gotta find Viv.”

Promising myself that I'd apologize to the staff later, I scrambled to my feet, jumped over the mess I'd made, and tore out of the library, for the first time ever excited—albeit in a bad way—to get to my French classroom.

“I thought you needed help carrying doughnuts,” I heard Viv complaining loudly as I ran toward the dark classroom. “You ordered me to meet you here before halftime to restock—which is causing me to miss a chance to be midfield for at least fifteen minutes while they work on that stupid linebacker's messed-up legs. It's not like there's a devastating injury every day! So where are the boxes? And let's turn on a light, huh?”

“Viv!” I called out to my archrival—to warn her that she might not want to piss off Ms. Beamish right then—then grabbed the door frame and skidded into the room.

But I was too late.

As I watched in horror—the whole thing silhouetted against the window in a Hitchcockian touch that I thought Chase would've appreciated, in spite of not being a fan—Ms. Beamish moved up behind Vivienne Fitch and clocked her with a big metal Eiffel Tower that I'd seen on my teacher's desk for weeks—at least since Hollerin' Hank's death.

The murder weapon. In plain sight. Taken from Mr. Killdare's house—after being used to kill him.

It was probably a mistake to run forward, instead of away, but I acted on instinct, maybe subconsciously trying to make up for the time I'd tried to peel drowning Kenny Kaluka's fingers off my arms while we both struggled to shore, nevertheless getting credit for saving him. Or maybe part of me didn't want to lose a girl I'd enjoyed hating for the better part of two decades. Me and Viv . . . We had something. Something awful, but something. One might call it
historia.

“Viv!” I cried again, shoving aside Ms. Beamish in my effort to save my enemy.

But, of course, before I could drop down to my knees, I found myself in the grip of a woman who, unlucky for me, not only advised the Language Club and directed off-, off-, off-, off-Broadway productions, but who
coached wrestling,
too.

“Let Viv alone, at least,” I pleaded, struggling against what I thought was a headlock. “She didn't know anything!”

“You said she knew who sent the tip,” Ms. Beamish countered. “I heard you, at her locker. I can't let her ever reveal that.”

“I don't think she knew anything,” I protested, stopping my pointless writhing, which, oddly enough, made Ms. Beamish release me. It was like the Chinese handcuffs principle, only on a grander scale. I might've also caught her off-guard by letting her know that she'd possibly just killed—I glanced down at Viv's inert form . . .
Please don't be dead!
—an innocent person.

But as I stepped away and turned to face my teacher, I realized that I wasn't exactly free. Her broad body blocked the door, and she still held the Eiffel Tower, her fingers flexing around it. Testing it—as if she hadn't used
that
before.

Instinctively, I raised my hands, but begged on Viv's behalf again. “Please. Viv probably didn't know a thing. Chase and I were just guessing.”

Ms. Beamish hesitated, seeming uncertain. “I did think it odd . . . I used a disposable phone . . .”

For a second, I thought I'd defused the whole situation. But, of course, that was far from being the case. Her expression was already getting flinty and shrewd again. “
You've
figured out everything, though,” she reminded me. “Or you wouldn't be here.” Her eyes shifted, too, just for an instant, to look at Viv. Then she locked on me again. “And now you've seen too much.”

Yeah, I definitely had. And I had no idea how to stall, except to bring up a subject that I was pretty sure no girl, not even a tomboy like Ms. Beamish—and, let's face it, to a lesser degree, me—could resist “dishing” on.

“You must've really loved him,” I said softly, lowering my hands. “I mean, you had sports in common, and Broadway, and . . .”
You were both big and loud and not easily likable.
I wisely omitted that last part. I didn't need to say more, though. Ms. “BeeBee” Beamish's broad shoulders had already slumped, just a little.

“Yes,” she said, more quietly, too. “But he would never admit we were together, in public. Kept me hidden from everyone.” She frowned, seeming to forget I was there for a second. “It was always like he was ashamed of me, while I loved him, in spite of
his
flaws.”

“You . . . you tried to be part of his life, huh?” I ventured, to keep the conversation going and stave off my
death.
“Gave him a nice chicken clock to brighten up his kitchen, maybe? Kept some stuff at his house?”

Ms. Beamish gave me a weird look. “How did you . . . ?”

I somehow thought I'd be worse off if I mentioned that I'd been actively investigating Mr. Killdare's murder—rooting through his drawers—so I brushed it off, saying, “What girl doesn't do stuff like that?”

Ms. Beamish seemed to accept that. I had a feeling she didn't really care what I knew—because she was going to kill me the second we were done talking.

“So what happened?” I asked, feigning sympathy. Gosh, maybe I did feel this slight touch of compassion for her. It must have really felt crappy to have a boyfriend—an
unmarried
boyfriend—who still didn't want to parade you in public and kept you a secret from no less than the dog sitter. “What went down in the end?”

That was obviously not a good question, because even in the dark, I could see that her eyes glittered. I'd made her angry again. “One day,” she said, “I just couldn't take it. I'd asked him to finally let me sit, as his guest, in the reserved bleachers at the first home game, and he just laughed. Laughed at me!”

She still sounded incredulous, while I thought,
For the last time—what is the big deal with FOOTBALL?

Then Ms. Beamish took a step closer to me, starting to raise her weapon—to either demonstrate what had happened next or to do me in. Or, more likely, to kill both of those birds—one of them a redheaded Ostermeyer—with one replica tower. “When he did that, something inside of me just snapped,” she growled, as if she'd summoned those overpowering emotions again. “I couldn't take it anymore, and I . . .”

“Whoa!” I took a step backward. “No need to show me! I understand!”

“No, you don't,” she shot back. I could tell she was ferociously mad, and I started to get incredibly scared. Still, I dared to take my eyes off Ms. Beamish long enough to check on Viv again. She remained lying on the floor, but I saw her twitch, like she was either coming to or playing possum, which wouldn't have been a bad idea, given the situation. Either way, I was glad she was alive, both for her own sake and because maybe she'd jump up at some point and be helpful. Then I returned my attention to Ms. Beamish, who was still standing there, weapon aloft, like she was starting to savor the process of killing. “Please,” I said, hearing the fear in my voice. “Please, don't . . .”

“
None of you
respect me,” she snarled, stepping closer again, so I moved back, bumping into a desk. “Especially
you.
”

How had this become about
me?

“I . . . I respect you!” I promised.

“No, you don't,” Ms. Beamish countered. “You never speak French during free dialogue! You
sleep
in class!”

Oh, gosh, I really wished I'd tried harder. “That's not disrespect,” I insisted, my voice shaking because she
was
starting to enjoy eliminating her enemies. She was practically salivating. “I just genuinely suck at languages!” I informed her, backing away again. “Ask anybody! Chase'll tell you!”

“Yes,
your
little boyfriend.”

Ugh, to the tenth power.
She might've loved Mr. Killdare, but she definitely had it for Chase, too. There was all kinds of messed up inside her bilingual head.

“Why'd you kill
Mike?
” I asked a question that suddenly popped into
my
head. “What did he do?”

“Caught me taking the trophy,” she said, which explained when it had disappeared. “He just
had
to come back to the locker room to get his hand weights! Right as I was taking it!”

I had no idea what hand weights were, but I felt terrible for Mike. They definitely couldn't have been worth dying over. And speaking of dying . . .

“
Au revoir,
Millicent,” Ms. Beamish said, stalking closer, with a creepy smile on her face. “I suppose I'll have to find a way to pin this on your father, too.” She knitted her unplucked brows as reality struck. “Although it will be more difficult, since he inconveniently showed up at the game . . .”

I probably should've used her moment of doubt to dart away, because I did see her lower her hand, just slightly. But when she flat out admitted to framing my dad, I stopped being scared and got unbelievably mad myself. Both angry and mad in the traditional sense of the word, meaning I didn't exactly think straight.

“You'll never get away with anything—or pin
this
on my dad,” I told her, jabbing a finger at her chest. “Trust me, if you do me in, I'll come back from the grave and bury your stupid tower in YOUR backyard, then ghost-call the cops and tell them to dig it up.” My voice rose as it really sank in just how miserable she'd made my father and what she'd cost him. “Then I'll testify at YOUR trial via medium and crystal ball,” I advised her in no uncertain terms. “I swear, I'll do it, you murdering, framing witch!”

“I HAD NO CHOICE,” she thundered, so loudly that I wondered if they heard her on the football field.
“No choice!”

“Millie!”

I heard Chase's voice coming from the door, and I turned for just a split second, not understanding why he was there when he was supposed to be quarterbacking.

Chase . 
.
 .

Then I spun back around just in time to cry out—for some reason uttering my last words in very pissed off, poorly conjugated French, invoking a host of philosophers who believed strongly in the concept of free will, just like I did.
“TU AS UN CHOIX!”
I hollered.
“YOU HAD A CHOICE!”

The words were barely out when I felt a really heavy clunk against my curls, and everything went black.