Verwandte Artikel zu When the Fax Lady Sings: A Molly Masters Mystery

When the Fax Lady Sings: A Molly Masters Mystery - Softcover

O'Kane, Leslie

 
9780449005682: When the Fax Lady Sings: A Molly Masters Mystery
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0449005682 ISBN 13: 9780449005682
Verlag: Ballantine Books, 2001

Inhaltsangabe

While rehearsing for the PTA fundraiser, Molly Master, performing in a group of seven identically dressed clowns, is stunned when one of her fellow performers pulls out a gun and shoots the show director, Corrinne Buldock, and when she investigates the crime, she discovers more than she had ever wanted to know about the school's dirty little secrets. Original.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Leslie O’Kane is the author of the Molly Masters mysteries: The Cold Hard Fax, The Fax of Life, and The School Board Murders. She is also the creator of the Allie Babcock mystery series: Play Dead and Ruff Way to Go. Ms. O’Kane lives with her husband and two children in Boulder, Colorado.

Aus dem Klappentext


Dress rehearsal for the PTA fundraiser is at its chaotic peak when one of the seven identical clowns cavorting on stage pulls out a gun and shoots the director, Corrinne Buldock. Molly Masters, also dressed as a clown, is a stunned and baffled witness to the killing. She wonders: which of her fellow performers, all of them respectable parents and teachers, can conceivably be a murderer?

The rumor is that Corrinne and her old boyfriend split up . . . and that she had just confessed to a sexual involvement with a student. Soon Molly knows more dirty little school secrets than she would care to and more than enough to send a desperate killer back into action. . . .

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter 1

TAG. You're It.

"Tell me again. Why am I doing this?" I asked Lauren Newton, my best friend. Lauren looked over my shoulder in the mirror as I sighed at the reflection that—thanks to the layers of grease paint—had lost all likeness to my face.

We were at the dress rehearsal for a PTA variety show in which I was to be a clown. Lauren, comfortably dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, had opted out of performing and was in charge of costumes and makeup. "For our children," she answered, before dabbing more ruby-colored lipstick on my painted smile.

Against my personal preferences, all seven of us clowns—five females and two males—were supposed to look exactly alike, from our half-bald, half-redhead-being-electrocuted hairpieces down to our oversized shoes. Our director had felt that the similar appearances made our entrance funnier, as we piled one by one out of a golf cart transformed into a clownmobile.

Stephanie Saunders, pacing behind Lauren and three of us would-be clowns, scoffed. "We're doing this because you, Molly, sold everyone on this stupid fund-raising idea of yours."

I glared at her reflection in the mirror above the vanity table that ran the length of the dressing-room wall. Stephanie wore a shimmering black evening gown with a slit up the side that showed off her Tina-Turner-has-nothing-on-me legs. Her long blond hair, nary a strand amiss, was fastened on top of her head with gold clips. At the heart of the skit we were about to rehearse, she would sing a serious love ballad, which we clowns would interrupt.

Giving my reflection a disparaging look, she continued, "Lest you forget, Molly, you were the one who came up with this so-called brilliant campaign. As I recall, your exact words were: 'Let's force our children to watch us perform for a change.' "

Though her recollection was accurate, I'd been joking. In as gentle a tone as I could muster, I replied, "Stephanie, you look stunning, whereas—" I held out my hands to indicate my two fellow clowns at the vanity table and Elsbeth Young in the back of the room. "—all of us are made up as Bozos. If you don't want to become a victim of clownicide, be nice to us, okay?"

Lauren laughed. Stephanie shot her a dirty look. Refusing to have her mood dampened, Lauren said with a smile, "This fund-raiser was a great idea, Stephanie, and you know it."

"I agree," Danielle Underwood said, her typically melodious voice now sharp. For some reason, whenever she'd spoken tonight it had been to snap at someone. Perhaps stage fright was turning her into a grouchy clown. She was drawing triangular eyebrows over her snow-white forehead with my eyeliner pencil. This was only the second time that particular makeup implement had been used; I'd purchased it solely for my children's Halloween costumes last fall. "When I think of all those interminable performances and pageants I've been to, just so I could be there when my son said his one and only line. And half the time his face was hidden behind his giant hamburger or tree costume."

I looked again at my reflection, trying to decide if I would feel better dressed up to look like a hamburger, rather than as its spokesperson, Ronald McDonald. I decided it was too close to call.

Seated at the far end of the table, Nadine Dahl, a secretary at the high school within Carlton Central's all-grade-levels school, let out a sharp, "Ha!" She had been attempting, with limited success, to center the red ring of hair on her head, and I was beginning to suspect that her head might be lopsided. "You ladies only have to go to your own child's performance. Try being on the school staff sometime. We have to go to damn near every production the school puts on." She winked at Lauren, who worked with her in the high school office. "I'll be seeing school performances in my delirium when I'm old and senile. Which will be next week, at the rate I'm going."

I could appreciate the sentiment, though I suspected that Nadine was only a couple of years older than my own forty. I studied her in profile, amazed at how complete the transformation was. She and I looked like twins—well, provided one of the twins had been dropped on her now-lopsided head—and yet in real life, she was thirty pounds heavier and had a button nose, unlike my very nonbutton one.

"You said it," Lauren added. She donned an impish smile and rubbed her hands together. "So, kiddies, it's payback time. Every one of us jumped at this chance. It's not as though anyone could have predicted . . ." Lauren let her voice fade away and cleared her throat.

She'd been inadvertently about to bring up the subject we were all studiously avoiding—the uproar between Olivia Garrett and Stephanie. Claiming that Olivia only wanted her because of the sizable trust fund left by her late father, Olivia's teenage daughter was "divorcing" Olivia in favor of Stephanie. Stephanie, on the other hand, was already wealthy, and her daughter and Olivia's daughter were best friends. To make matters worse, Stephanie's callous remarks to a local television reporter last night had alienated half of the cast, as well as half of the town of Carlton.

Olivia was also a clown in our skit, but was steering clear of Stephanie by dressing someplace else. So were our two male clowns.

The situation between the two women was unlikely to escalate in the forty-eight hours leading up to Friday night's performance. In the wake of the scathing outburst that had been aired on the eleven o'clock news, Stephanie's lawyer had told her not to say another word about the case. Especially not to television reporters.

"As Molly pointed out, you should be the last one to complain, Stephanie," Elsbeth Young muttered from the back of the room. "You're not made up to look ridiculous." Elsbeth was struggling to get into her suit, pulling the red-checkered shirt and yellow-striped pants over her clothes.

"Not true. You're the lucky ones," Stephanie retorted. "You get to be anonymous. I'm the one who's out there center front, supposedly trying to sing a serious song."

"That reminds me, Stephanie," I said, rotating in my chair to face her. "The entire reason I thought up this skit in the first place was because I was supposed to be singing the serious song and you were supposed to be a clown. I, for one, would have paid good money just to see you—our forever classy and impeccably attired PTA president—in big floppy shoes and a red putty nose. I'll bet a lot of other parents in this community would have felt the same way."

Stephanie scowled at me, then leaned close to gaze at the mirror and check her perfect hair for the fiftieth time. "Me, a clown, and you, a torch singer? Please, Molly. There's something to be said for not trying too hard to go against type. Besides, I've heard you sing."

Lauren put her hand on my shoulder to keep me seated. Not to be thwarted so easily, I slammed my upper arm against my side and squeezed the rubber bulb hidden there, squirting water out of the flower on my lapel and into Stephanie's face.

Stephanie gasped and stepped back. Her face dripping, she stared in horror at me.

"Oops," I said in a monotone. "Sorry."

Stephanie swiped the water from her face and narrowed her eyes as she scanned the room to stifle the laughter that had erupted. "Well, Molly. Thank you, at least, for merely using water," she said under her breath, then met my eyes with unmasked fury. "Olivia hates me so much that she undoubtedly would have squirted acid in my face."

Her words...

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Verlag
Ballantine Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2001
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0449005682
ISBN 13 
9780449005682
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
246
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