Test Scores: A Kyle Shannon Mystery

By Linda Mickey

In Burr Meadow School District 1926, a school board election is approaching. No one pays much attention to it until an injured student becomes a campaign focal point. Everyone agrees that it shouldn't take an ambulance thirty minutes to get to the school but how to ease the traffic jams that caused the delay is the question.

Kyle Shannon is on a temp assignment at the district and does her best to relieve the congestion on Black Point Road but tight budgets and dictates from the superintendent hamper her progress. When a district employee is found shot to death near one of the buildings, there doesn't seem to be a motive. It appears to be a random shooting and the Major Crimes Task Force is not called in.

However, following a second attack near the same building, the task force is activated and Kyle finds herself involved in another homicide investigation. The police think drug trafficking is behind it all but Kyle isn't so sure. She suspects something else is going on. Parents want answers and so does she.

With her nerves fraying, Kyle forces herself to focus on finding the person responsible for the violent events. Her single-mindedness leads to a killer but will it cost her more than she is willing to pay?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Linda Mickey
• Release date: Jul 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310928444

Linda Mickey

Touring the county morgue, chatting with forensic scientists, and figuring out who killed whom...that's what Linda Mickey likes to do. There is something special about the hours spent at the keyboard crafting a whodunnit: developing characters, understanding the crime and why it was committed,then planting clues and red herrings in the narrative. At the same time, Mickey is fascinated by the business aspects of writing and publishing. As a speaker and workshop facilitator, she is frequently asked as many questions about how to manage a writing business as how to create believable dialogue. In fact, queries about publishing industry-related topics came up so often that she complied what she knew about business and what she had learned about the publishing industry into Dollars and Sense for Writers. Mickey is employed by a small accounting firm. In other words, her life is all about death and taxes.

Book preview

Test Scores

A Kyle Shannon Mystery

By Linda Mickey

Published by Finish Off Press Ltd. at Smashwords

Copyright © 2015 Linda Mickey

Discover other titles by Linda Mickey at www.smashwords.com

This book is also available in print.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means (graphic, electronic, or mechanical including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system) without the written permission of the publisher.

This book is a work of fiction. While the names of some towns and businesses are real, the characters or actions that appear within them are imaginary and products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, entities, or events is entirely coincidental.

Test Scores

By Linda Mickey

Dedicated to R. Robert, Nina, and Nan

Acknowledgements

For specific expertise provided for this novel, I thank the teachers and schoolboard members who told me, honestly, what it was like in their world. For obvious reasons, they asked not to be acknowledged by name.

In addition, I thank my editors and readers. Without them, Kyle wouldn’t know what day it was nor would I.

Characters

Kyle Shannon

Jake Prince - Kyle’s best friend and lover

Ian Page - Detective, Vernon Hills Police Department

Liz Page - Ian’s wife

Pete & Mary Penzler - owners of Penzler’s Corner Market

Geneva Walker - Jake’s cousin

Trent Walker - Geneva’s husband

Mrs. Sims - Kyle’s next door neighbor

District 1926 Staff, Faculty, and School Board members

Alicia Bernick - Superintendent, District 1926

Helene O’Grady - District financial officer, currently on maternity leave

Angelo Avanti - Chief maintenance engineer

Julio Calladora - Maintenance crew supervisor

Callie Elkhorn - School board member, substitute teacher

Martin Delavan - Principal, Heffner Golf Middle School

Brandon Thick - Alternative arts teacher, coach at Heffner Golf Middle School

Lauren Pearce - Office manager at Heffner Golf Middle School

Lucas Pearce - school board member, realtor, married to Lauren

Buildings

B-MESS1 - Burr Meadow Elementary School, Building 1

B-MESS2 - Burr Meadow Elementary School, Building 2

Heffner Golf Middle School

Lester Hall - storage building

The one-size-fits-all approach to education is convenient but lazy. - James Dyson

Chapter One

There are no sound effects in Team of Rivals, the audio book that had my complete attention, yet I was sure I heard a siren. My concentration broken, I looked around. Stuck in traffic on Black Point Road, I was half a block from Heffner Golf Middle School.

The siren whined again, its wail like fingernails on a chalkboard. A thunderous horn blast followed. I flinched. It had come from somewhere directly behind me.

Wig-wagging red lights appeared in the rearview mirror. An ambulance. I wanted to get out of the way but there was nowhere to go. I was completely boxed in by westbound mini vans on my left, a school bus in front of me, and a dirty, rock-laden mound of melting snow on the right.

Heffner Golf Middle School and Burr Meadow Elementary were the only buildings at this end of the street. The ambulance must be headed to one of them.

Oh dear god in heaven. Please, please don’t let it be ...

Movement in my side mirror made me turn to get a better look. A dark green Mini Cooper stopped at an angle blocking the eastbound lane. A woman hopped out, ran to the Heffner Golf driveway, and threw up her arm. Palm extended, Geneva Walker, the sixth grade science teacher, stopped all the westbound traffic leaving Burr Meadow Elementary. Then she frantically signaled the ambulance. It maneuvered into the hole she created and eased by me on the now open lane. Slowing to turn into the Heffner Golf driveway, it narrowly missed the maple tree on the parkway as it swerved to avoid an Escalade, probably driven by someone who thought Geneva stopped traffic just for them. In a moment, siren blaring, it bounced over the lawn and out of sight behind the brick facade.

For a moment, all was silent. No more sirens, no other ambulances and no SWAT team. So it wasn’t…couldn’t be…a shooting. No men in black combat attire carrying assault rifles meant no need to worry.

Seconds after I put all that together, car horns sounded and drivers began shouting. Others must have reached the same conclusion I had. More horns joined in. Geneva seemed oblivious to them as she returned to her own vehicle and guided it back into line.

Turning into the circle drive in front of the school, I parked and then hurried to the building entry where the security guard stood, as usual, at the open doors. The fact that he seemed his normal, genial self was reassuring, as I still didn’t know what had brought an ambulance to Heffner Golf.

The guard represented the school’s tacit acknowledgement that the parents expected some level of security but he was not armed and didn’t even carry a two-way radio. In the mornings, he steered parents and visitors to the school office and in the evenings he returned to do a walk-around to confirm all the doors were secure.

What’s up? I asked.

Not sure, he replied, waving at a couple of boys. Lots going on out back, I hear.

Inside the Heffner Golf office, pandemonium reigned. It was always busy first thing but questions about the ambulance fell on the school office manager like hailstones and Lauren Pearce flinched with each new assertion that she was withholding information. Frantic parents didn’t care one whit about privacy laws; they wanted answers. Luckily there was a counter separating Lauren from the waving fists and hurled expletives.

I quickly surveyed the enclosed office behind her. It was empty. The school principal must be out handling the situation, whatever that was.

Dodging students, I climbed the central staircase up to the District 1926 offices. There, behind a thick wall of etched glass, the district superintendent ran her territory supported by her staff of ten. That the district felt it was completely separate from Heffner Golf couldn’t have been clearer. Was the barrier bulletproof? Probably.

As a temp, I’ve been assigned to a lot of places, including the executive wing of a large corporation, but I had never experienced such opulence. The district finance office where I now worked was roughly the size of my townhouse living room. In addition to a solid cherry desk with a black leather executive chair and matching guest chair, a love seat and two more chairs formed a sitting area facing a wall-mounted flat screen television. I even had my own mini refrigerator. Our tax dollars at work.

Just as I turned on my computer, Eli Stein came through the door. He carried a paper bowl, steam rising from its contents and filling my office with the smell of…chocolate?

A gangly eighth grader, Eli had an upper torso that hadn’t grown into the lower part of his body, his long legs and large feet an indicator of a growth spurt yet to come. Eli’s brown eyes rarely looked at anyone directly. He carried his head down and slightly tilted; giving the impression that there was nothing more important in his world than his untied shoelaces. A hint of dark fuzz sprouted from his chin and he had longish sable-colored hair. Not Van Halen 1980’s long. More like One Direction. Baggy jeans, oversized rugby or tee shirts, and the occasional denim vest made up his personal style. Outwardly, Eli was a bit messy. Inside, he was something else. Whenever he looked me in the eyes, which was rare, I saw intelligence, sensibility, and something that implied he knew things he wasn’t supposed to know…at least not yet, not at his age.

Eli became a part of my morning routine about three weeks earlier. I had no idea why he sought refuge in my office but he often came in, sat in the guest chair, and watched me work. On rare occasions, he would be in a philosophical mood, making statements like We can’t be alone in the universe or Brothers were designed to help us learn patience. After a while he would get up and leave. This day he had his breakfast with him.

He was one of the kids who got dropped off early by a commuting parent and had to fend for himself until homeroom. There were enough like him that the cafeteria opened at 7:00 in the morning and offered a few breakfast items like cereals and bagels. A microwave and toaster were available just beyond the cashier. All the comforts of home.

I made a point of sniffing the air. Chocolate?

Oatmeal with chocolate milk instead of white. He leaned his bowl toward me.

It didn’t look particularly appetizing, the oats were gray-brown in color, but it sure smelled yummy. I said as much.

Eli shrugged. I saw Mrs. Walker do it once. Thought I’d try it. He took another spoonful. I’m not that into chocolate.

Any idea what’s going on this morning?

He wordlessly signaled me aside. I rolled out of the way and he tapped the keys on my computer. A video appeared. Two boys dribbled a ball around the icy asphalt as two others rushed forward to intercept them. In the resulting tangled of feet and legs, down they all went and that was followed almost immediately by a scream of pain. Several kids ran up to the pile and then I heard a female voice yelling that Raj was injured and an ambulance was needed right away.

I leaned back and looked at Eli. He pointed at the monitor so I continued watching. A close-up of a boy’s leg with a bone protruding from brown skin. A compound fracture. I wanted to be sick. The screen went dark for a few seconds and then I saw a line of cars in the distance. A siren sounded faintly in the distance. After momentary blip, I watched an ambulance caught in traffic. Finally the video showed Martin Delavan, the school principal, running forward. He pushed the kids out of the way just as the ambulance came bouncing across the snow mounds.

Well, I said. That certainly gives a clear picture of what happened. Is that your video?

Eli shrugged.

A friend of yours?

Another shrug. I’d gotten all I was going to get on that subject. I tried another approach.

So what’s on the schedule for today?

He raised and lowered his shoulders slowly.

Any tests?

Same response.

Ah. Did you study?

Eli didn’t move. That meant no. Oh dear.

Stop by after and let me know how it went?

The bowl empty, Eli passed it to me, hitched up his sagging jeans and shuffled quickly toward the door. Guess it wouldn’t do to have his friends see him come out of the district offices. He slowed to a casual, measured gait as soon as his feet left the carpeting and reached the tile floor of Heffner Golf Middle School’s second floor.

It was a safe bet that I would not see him again today. Eli came into and out of my office entirely on his own schedule. I had just violated one of his unspoken rules and had extended an invitation of sorts, reaching across some unseen privacy line. If I ever wanted to see him again, any discussion of tests was probably off the table unless he broached the subject himself.

Chapter Two

Before I had a chance to fully digest the video I’d seen and its implications for the school, Geneva entered and sank into the guest chair next to my desk. I didn’t know her well yet but I knew her cousin, Jake Prince, intimately. I met him on another temp assignment and we’d been dating for more than a year.

Geneva’s enormous dark eyes were downcast; her straight ebony ponytail flopped over her left shoulder, the tip brushing her thigh. Usually vibrantly cheery, she now breathed with the tiredness of an old woman who has no wish to stir unless it is to take herself to bed.

After a deep sigh, she took the pieces of paper she had in her hands, and ripped them in half, in half again, and then again and again. Wordlessly, she clutched the shreds in her fists; two red splotches growing on her bronze cheeks and her lower lip quivering as though a January wind had blown through her soul.

You look as flummoxed as I feel, she said finally.

I watched and waited for her to say more while her hands shook and her teeth pulled at her lower lip. Whatever troubled her must have something to do with the shreds still clutched in the fists sitting atop her navy wool slacks. After about a minute, she released another tortured sigh. Then she pushed herself up from the chair, walked around to my wastebasket, dropped the pieces in, brushed off her hands, and departed, leaving me to my silent bewilderment.

Hello Goodbye?

The Beatles tune played in my mind while I wondered what that display was all about. When Geneva didn’t return after my count to ten, I retrieved a couple of the bits and read them, searching for a sentence that was long enough to allow me to decipher the contents of the document. After several tries, I found a phrase that explained the subject matter of the pages, if not the reason behind their destruction.

Common Core.

I’d heard rumblings from several of the teachers about the newest fix-our-system program emanating from the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Apparently No Child Left Behind was nothing compared to Common Core.

Was Common Core another way to tighten control on classrooms? Even more teaching to the tests? A complete waste of taxpayer resources? Good idea, bad implementation? Who knew?

Certainly not me. I am not an educator. I’m a temp and being a temp puts me into some extraordinary situations. My assignments have included a stint as an executive assistant at a mid-size manufacturing corporation and one as a bookkeeper/organizer for a horse trainer. I even worked in the temp agency office covering for my supervisor while she had hip surgery. This time out I manned the District 1926 business office while the finance manager, Helene O’Grady, lay in bed waiting for her baby’s due date.

I am not an accountant or CPA but I can open mail, pay bills, order supplies, and prepare reports; all tasks that the district superintendent, Alicia Bernick, listed when she interviewed me. Today I was in my fifth week on the assignment.

Now, as I sorted through a few more of Geneva’s fragments, I recognized the heading from the staff newsletter. It looked like PARCC testing, Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, would affect Geneva in the next school year. The shredded paper indicated she didn’t care much for the newest brilliant idea coming out of Washington or its impact on her personally. Was she opposed to the program entirely or just the implementation of it locally? It would be a good topic for conversation during our lunch breaks.

As I dropped the bits back into the wastebasket, a quiet knock came on my office door. Angelo Avanti, the district’s chief maintenance engineer, stepped into the office.

He was a jolly man who always had a friendly greeting for the students and staff. Angelo wasn’t particularly old in years but, similar to an aging football player, his knees simply wouldn’t allow him to abuse them any longer so his career of crawling around tight spaces as a plumber had ended. He thought we didn’t notice that he grit his teeth whenever he pushed himself out of a chair or turned around quickly.

Some gray streaked his black hair, his hazel eyes sparkled, and, although he sometimes moved like he was eighty years old, the rest of him seemed nowhere near sixty. He hummed constantly, everything from the Bears fight song to Michael Jackson.

Miss Shannon, we need to talk.

He always addressed the staff by their surnames. I tried again to break the habit.

My name is Kyle. What do we need to talk about?

You know what happened this morning?

I saw an ambulance had trouble getting around the traffic backup on Black Point Road.

Angelo lowered himself into the chair next to my desk. It was bad. Real bad. Raj Patel fell on the playground. Some of the other boys fell on top of him. His leg was broken and it was bleeding.

I know. I’ve seen some video. How long before the ambulance got to him?

Nearly thirty minutes.

"Are you sure it was that long? Did you call 9-1-1?"

One of the students called. She saw Raj get hurt and she called right away.

This was one time when it was a blessing that all kids have phones. It was also a curse. I had just seen the whole incident as a video already posted on the Internet. What if it got picked up by a news organization? The Heffner Golf school principal could have a big public relations problem on his hands.

You saw how bad the traffic was today, Angelo hurried on. It didn’t used to be like that. It ran smooth, slow but smooth. No backups like what we get now.

Black Point Road was a two-lane asphalt ribbon bordered by a gravel shoulder barely wide enough for a bicycle. Although the district had lobbied for widening, the county road remained a funnel clogged with vehicles delivering children, faculty, and staff. The approach to the schools was always problematic but add one ambulance to the mix and all semblance of order vanished like a magician’s rabbit. The snarl of cars on Black Point Road had become more than an inconvenience. Now it was a serious safety hazard.

I said, When I started working here, cars used the circle. Now it’s blocked off and reserved exclusively for staff parking.

That’s right. Cars pulled up to the front entrance, dropped off the kids, and then pulled out. A big loop that kept moving. The buses went to the gym entrance like now but they would pull into spaces, drop off and none left until all the buses were here and empty. Much safer for everybody. Just like B-MESS does now.

Angelo had just reminded me of a key point. Buses delivering kids to the Burr Meadow elementary school buildings (affectionately called B-MESS1 and B-MESS2 by the staff) waited. They did not pull back onto Black Point Road.

So why don’t we do that? I asked, preparing myself for the bureaucratic nonsense I suspected was coming.

Budget cuts. Heffner has fewer buses now so they have to go back out. B-MESS buses are not needed again until noon when the kindergarteners leave. So they can stay parked until after the morning rush. He took a breath. At the turn-in from Black Point Road, there used to be paint on the street marking two lanes. And I had cones up. I would stand in the street to direct people into their places and the cones would guide them. Cars go left to pull into the circle and drop off. Then they pull forward and make a left turn onto Black Point, merge with B-MESS1 cars, and drive back out to Stable Road. Buses drop off by the gym door and pull away. Then they go behind the gym building and follow the maintenance road out to the front exit. Everyone going the same way in a big circle. Traffic moves. Slowly but no jam ups like we have now.

Let me guess: the cones have disappeared, the paint wore off, plus two weeks ago Alicia decided not to let parents into the circle.

Angelo nodded. I asked her about it last Friday and she said traffic problems are for the police. She does not want me to be out there anymore. She said everyone is an adult and all the drivers will work it out.

Since the district superintendent never started her day before nine, she missed the traffic turmoil. If she ever experienced it, she might decide it was worth her time to remedy the situation.

Come to think of it, she had done something. She started a half hour later than the rest of her staff and she made the front circle off limits to parents’ cars, designating it exclusively for school staff. Her space, the only one assigned to a specific individual, was twice the size of the others. Someone would have to work very hard to damage her sleek, black BMW.

And that was the point, I suddenly realized. A hideous sawhorse sign, proclaiming in large, red lettering Staff Only, had appeared on the same day as her BMW. The superintendent was a major contributor to the morning’s problems. Would the B-MES and Heffner Golf principals point that out to her? Probably not. A union did not protect them and they wanted to keep their jobs.

Hokey smokes. I thought of many other things to say but decided four-letter words wouldn’t help matters. You mentioned painted markings.

Arrows and words. An arrow to the right that said buses. An arrow going left that said cars. I know I bought paint. Now I can’t find it.

Are you sure? Was it ever delivered?

I think so. Last summer. I was on vacation. But I remember my crew supervisor told me it came.

So you requisitioned more paint but the purchase has not been approved?

He nodded again.

As in many school districts, any expenditure over $500 had to be approved by the school board. Some districts, like Hawthorn 73, were huge and the boards met twice a month. District 1926 was much smaller. Its board met monthly. Lag time between a request and an approval could be nearly eight weeks.

What about the cones?

Mr. Thick took them. He uses them for practice.

Brandon Thick, language and alternative arts teacher, was also the girls’ softball and lacrosse coach. Alternative arts was the highbrow name for