A Charm Without a Chain

By Carolyn Summer Quinn

He's a high school English and Theater teacher who always secretly wanted to be a cop.  So when Monty Farraday is summoned, for reasons unknown, to meet with principal Reginald Brandenburg prior to the start of the school year during the unpredictable summer of 1974, and suddenly finds himself in the middle of the biggest murder mystery to ever hit the town of Lake Covington, Colorado, he wants to solve it. 

 

It's bad enough that Monty and his daughter Jessica are the ones to find the principal's dead body, but the next thing they hear is that a beloved teacher, Naomi Sutherland, was done in a day earlier as well.  Why were two school staff members killed within two days?  Who could possibly be behind this?  And what is the significance of the silver rose charm that Jessica found near the murder scene? 

 

Figuring out the solution to the two murders may initially seem impossible, but look out, Lake Covington, because Monty's on the case!

 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blue Topaz Ocean Enterprises
• Release date: Oct 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223846765

Carolyn Summer Quinn

CAROLYN SUMMER QUINN, Author and Fine Art Photographer, grew up singing show tunes in Roselle and Scotch Plains, NJ, a member of an outrageous and rollicking extended family.  She has a B.A. in English and Theater/Media from Kean University and now delights in living in New York City.  She is the Author of 10 books (so far!) and they've garnered 17 writing awards!

Book preview

Chapter One

A Sea Change by the Lake

Lake Covington, Colorado, 1974

I’VE KNOWN LOTS OF guys who say their mother-in-law is impossible.  Mine has all the charm and appeal of a cross between a steamroller and a diva at a bad opera, and to make matters worse, she had recently moved in with us.  However, she wasn’t even the only problem, because she’s one of four sisters who all reside nearby, too, and they’re just as bad as she is, if not worse.

My mother-in-law’s name is Pegeen Fitzhugh Mulaney.  The rest of the Fitzhugh sisters are Kathleen, Maura, Maeve and Annabelle.  It was a humid day toward the end of July, the hot as heck, sweltering kind that we occasionally get in the summertime in Colorado, and especially rare in our town of Lake Covington, normally a place where the heat is on the dry side.  Heat waves this bad always seem to take us by surprise.

Pegeen had taken over our pink and white kitchen and was presiding over two of the four sisters, Maura and Maeve, at our table.  She’d shut the air conditioning off, proclaiming that it was a waste of electricity and therefore draining our money by running up the bill, and had an old, squeaky metal fan running, which I have to admit did help cool the place down a bit.  Not much of a breeze was coming through the screen of the back door, though she had that open too.  The house was too darn hot, and the sisters were plotting against Annabelle again.  You’d think Pegeen was General Eisenhower and they were planning the invasion of Normandy, the way she was carrying on.

"I’ve had enough of that Annabelle, she was declaring, like a judge about to pronounce sentence on a serial killer.  More than enough!  It’s outrageous!  She’s done it to me for the last time."

Holy moly.  She was really going on about it and just getting warmed up.

To me, too, Maeve agreed.  It’s beyond outrageous, if you ask me. 

Nobody had, I thought, sitting nearby in the living room of the craftsman house by the lake that I’d loved, at least, until Pegeen moved in.

Maura agreed.  She was the youngest – at sixty-five – and tended to go along with whoever happened to be with her at the moment.

Kathleen, Pegeen intoned, is just as bad.  She keeps on bailing Annabelle out.  She said this in funereal tones, as if Annabelle was repeatedly arrested and had to post bond to get out of jail, when she didn’t. 

Nothing could have been further from the truth.  Annabelle was just a scrounge, always and forever on the lookout for a nice, fat, juicy cash handout.  A loan, she’d call it.  I’ll pay you back with interest, she’d add, her ocean blue eyes, so like those of her sisters, all dewy-eyed with feigned honesty. 

Interest?  What a line of bunk that was.  Annabelle would take whatever she could get out of her sisters, go wherever she went, and blow it playing poker, claiming one day she’d hit the jackpot and her ship would come in.  Annabelle was always going on about this mythical ship.  She never paid back the sisters, or anyone else she borrowed from, either.  There was a whole list of people she’d hit up for cash, because she never hit anything but good old rock bottom, and that proverbial boat she kept waiting for had yet to arrive.

I’ve actually often wondered about Annabelle’s situation.  You’d think that she might reasonably have scored a win somewhere, simply due to the law of averages.  But she either didn’t, or at least, she never said she did if she’d ever won even so much as a tiny bit of her cash back.  If she had, of course, that would have meant paying back the others, complete with her oft-repeated promises of interest.  Annabelle, I had a feeling, was bound and determined not to do that.  Maybe for her it was all part of the fun.

Anyway, there Pegeen was, in my house, at my kitchen table, going off about how the rest of them had to get their latest loans to Annabelle back and coming up with some pretty outlandish ways of accomplishing this, including something about getting Maura’s grandson the lawyer to threaten to file a suit against their own sister.

That’s when the phone rang.  The kitchen phone. 

The shrill ringing was enough to stop Pegeen mid-sentence, and to me, that in itself was a delight.

Pegeen managed to answer it very crisply and succinctly, like she thought she was the family butler, for heaven’s sake.  Good ahhhhfternoon.  Farraday residence.

I was Monty Farraday, and this was my residence, though I’d never picked up the phone and said anything like that into it before in my life.  I was chuckling about that under my breath from the next room when Pegeen startled me by adding, "Oh, yes, Mr. Brandenburg.  You’re the principal of the high school, aren’t you?  Yes, yes, I’ve heard quite a lot about you from my son-in-law, Monty."

Oh God no! 

My butt went flying up off the couch where I’d been sitting in the living room, eavesdropping on the Annabelle lawsuit plot, in a flash.  I was a teacher and couldn’t stand my boss, Reginald Brandenburg, and I made no bones about it at home, either.  Brandenburg was a martinet, among quite a few other things, and I had to get that phone away from Pegeen before God forbid she started quoting me to him.

I guess that’s for me, I said, trying my best to sound casual when I felt unnerved, as I strode into the kitchen to take the receiver from her.  Fortunately my dear mother-in-law gave it up without a fight.

Hi, Mr. Brandenburg, I tried to say into the receiver in a jovial tone.  I’m a grown man. I teach English and Theater Arts.  I’m forty-one years old with a master’s degree, and yet my voice went weird and squeaked on the syllable burg as I said it.

Monty Farraday!  And how are you on this fine day? 

What was this?  The principal, unliked if not actively detested among almost the entire faculty of Lake Covington High School, except for his handful of staff sycophants, sounded genuinely pleasant. 

In a good mood. 

Happy, even.

He normally screeched.  This was a sea change.

Oh, I’m doing well, I replied, which was a truckload of total nonsense.  How well can a gentleman really be doing when he’s being observed under the evil eyes of Pegeen, Maeve and Maura?  All three didn’t even make a pretense of not listening, which would have at least been polite.  Instead they were paying rapt attention to every word of my side of the conversation, even the squeaked syllable.

I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind coming over to the school, Brandenburg continued, still in the jovial tone.  I’m here today in my office.

Oh really?  What a surprise.  Of course that’s where he was.  Regular school was over, summer school was over, and we were in the middle of official summer vacation, but where was Reginald Brandenburg, control freak? 

Sitting in his office at the empty school.  Where else? 

And what the hell was he calling me for?

I soon found out because he rolled right on.  There’s something I’d like you to come in so that I could discuss it with you.  Nothing worrying, Monty.  It’s a proposal if you will. 

That was all he said, and it was pure Brandenburg for you.  He enjoyed keeping people in suspense, the little tyrant.  Never mind that he knew I’d be worried and wondering what this was all about until I got there.

Sure, I can stop by the school if you like.  What time?  I managed to ask him pleasantly.  My free hand, the one that was not holding the phone, meanwhile, was saluting him from afar with one particular finger.  Even Pegeen stifled a laugh when she saw that and shook her snow white head.

Oh, let me see, it’s one o’clock now, Monty.  How’s about two-thirty?

That sounds good.  It did to him, anyway.  It would lengthen the time I was kept in the dark, though, which didn’t sit well with me.  Oh well.  What could I do?  I’ll see you then.

Good.  I’m looking forward to it.

Maybe he was looking forward to it, but I certainly wasn’t.  What on earth could that man be wanting to see me about?  Classes didn’t resume for another two weeks.  What kind of proposal did he have in mind?  Was he going to take away some of my free periods and give me extra hall duty detail?  Was I to be put on cafeteria duty?  That was even worse than hall duty, where I would have to stop any student wandering around and demand to see if they had a bathroom or water fountain pass.  Cafeteria duty meant monitoring the kids as they ate and preventing potential food fights and fist fights. 

Maybe, worst of all, Brandenburg wanted me to stay late and run the detention hall.  I’d done that years ago and hated every minute of it.  With my luck he’d want to put me in charge of it daily.

On the other hand, he’d said it was nothing worrying.

That was Brandenburgese for "nothing worrying for him."

Well?  Pegeen demanded, as if she had any right to do so, after I had hung up the phone.  What does that boss of yours want?

Pegeen was a widow.  She had moved in with us after she had fallen and broken a leg, which was now well and fully healed, but still, she hadn’t gone home yet. 

They tell you when you marry that it’s for better or worse.  My wife, Mary Kate, was a gem.  She was the better.  Such a mother-in-law as Pegeen, on the other hand, was definitely on the less pleasant end of the scale.  Was Pegeen ever the worse!  I had to figure out a way to get that woman to return to her house in Boulder and get her out of mine.  This wasn’t easy since her daughter was my wife.

Oh, he wants to see me at the school today, I answered. 

Why are you being so vague with me, Monty?  Pegeen demanded, sounding like she was imitating a television cop, probably Jack Lord, the actor who played McGarrett from Hawaii Five-0.  Pegeen had a thing for him.

Because I don’t know what it’s about yet myself.  He didn’t tell me.

Well hopefully he’s calling you in to discuss a raise in your salary, the old bat continued.  You work too hard, you don’t just teach, you produce that high school’s musicals, which keep you away from home on every one of the nights when there’s a rehearsal, and you certainly ought to be better compensated for every last bit of it.  Her sisters at the kitchen table nodded in agreement.

Amazing.  Just when I was thinking of evicting the old shrew she threw me a bone like that.  It was almost a compliment.

Maybe if you earned more, of course, my daughter could quit her job, stay home and become a proper housewife like I was in my day, Pegeen went on.  Mary Kate owned and ran a day care center where she made more money than I did.  A lot more.  It was astonishing what working people would agree to pay for somebody else to basically raise their children during the week.  My wife loved her job, but Pegeen liked to target it and was always urging her to close the place up and quit working.

On the other hand, if my Mary Kate had hated her job, I have a feeling Pegeen would have been on her back to keep it, stick with it, and never let it go.  That was Pegeen for you.  Anything to cause a little strife.

At that moment my daughter, Jessica, came bounding in through the back door, humming that new hit song, Rock the Boat.  It was a hit all over the country, and all the Lake Covington kids, many of whom had boats of their own, especially loved it.  Even my Jessica had one of her own, a metal canoe.

Jessica had been at her pal Mimi Montford’s house all morning, swimming in her above-ground pool.  Mimi was the daughter of one of my colleagues from the high school, Kirk Montford.  The Montfords, my department supervisor Naomi Sutherland and her husband, Glenn, another teacher, Leon Varrone, and his wife, plus my wife and I, along with our respective children, were all buddies. 

Hey, everybody.  What’s going on?  Jessica stopped in mid-tune and asked as she came in.  She saw the sisters assembled at the table, with me just standing there wishing I could give a slap to Pegeen.  Jessica read the scene without having to be told the particulars.  It was situation normal in the Farraday household since the old bat had moved in here.

Your father, Pegeen reported, in a dark tone more appropriate for issuing flood warnings, has been summoned to the school to see Mr. Brandenburg.

I have to admit it.  I’ve been teaching for nineteen years, but this coming school year was the one I’d been looking forward to the most.

This wasn’t my first choice of a profession, but I had gotten into it thinking it would be fun, and for the most part I’d been right.  The hours were great.  Unless you’re running the rehearsal for the musical or get stuck in charge of detention, you start at eight in the morning and only have to be there until the bell rings at three in the afternoon.  At that point, you’re done for the day and secretly singing hallelujah.  You get June and July and part of August off.  There are shows to produce, field trips to run, football games to attend, proms and dances to chaperone, and all kinds of ways where you can help the high schoolers plan and carry out lots of good, character-building, wholesome activities.  It wasn’t my idea of a bad gig.  I liked it.

So many of the years I’d been at it had been fabulous.

But the last two had been something of a challenge, especially from the time that Reginald Brandenburg had come on board as the principal. 

I had known he was still going to be in charge of the place that year, old Brandenburg in all his dubious glory and tweedy sweaters.  I swear, that man missed his calling.  He could have been the dictator of a small island nation and lived to tell the tale.

As it was, no nation in need of his services was available, so he presided instead over Lake Covington High School in our small town of Lake Covington, Colorado.  From the first day of his arrival he had done his best to turn our rather relaxed and fun-loving faculty into the sort of people who were always either looking over their shoulders one minute or reaching for the Alka Seltzer the next.  I knew of two teachers in the history department who had to start popping antacids for newly minted ulcers that had only arrived after Brandenburg showed up and started to drive them crazy.  And that was just the reactions to the man of two people in the history department.  There were eleven other departments in the school.

Brandenburg stuck his nose everywhere, especially wherever it did not belong.  If a teacher was decorating a bulletin board for, say, Thanksgiving, and stapling colored-paper autumn leaves and a turkey onto it, he wouldn’t like the positioning of the turkey and would decree that it should be moved this way or that.  He supervised the trimming of the Christmas tree in the main hallway as if it belonged in Macy’s window in New York.  He had a conniption fit if the streamers and balloons hung up in the school gym on the night of a school dance weren’t placed just so, either.  I mean, really, who gets worked up over the placement of a bunch of balloons?

Nobody else.

On earth.

Anywhere.

But Reginald Brandenburg did.  He drove us all nuts, and over total nonsense to boot.  He even got in my face two years ago when one of the parents called him up to complain that I hadn’t given her daughter the starring role in the musical I was directing, which at the time was Hello, Dolly!  The daughter was tone deaf, for God’s sake, and in order to play Dolly, a girl had to be able to sing like Carol Channing.

Naturally, with a last name like Brandenburg, same as the famous landmark Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, one of the German teachers started calling him Der Grossen Tor, which meant The Big Gate.  It was from an old song, Lili Marlene, where a soldier stood and waited for his girl by a big gate.  We all particularly liked the grossen part, which was similar to the English words gross or grotesque and that was a pretty good assessment of his personality, even though he was more like a little Napoleon than a big gate.  Another name for him that she also came up with was Brandenburger Tor, German for Brandenburg Gate.  Crazy as it may sound, the man’s whole staff got a kick out of this stuff.

But this year, I had felt, was going to be different.  Oh, Der Grossen Tor was still going to be there, God help us, and he’d still be on patrol, so to speak, haunting the hallways and lurking in the doorways of the classrooms, watching every move everyone made, but there would be two excellent additions to the student body coming in with the freshman class, too.

One was my savvy daughter, Jessica.

The other?  My equally with-it nephew, Colin.

Both kids would be incoming freshman.

I couldn’t wait for them to be there, and to hear their takes on the people I worked with.  My work best buddy was Leon Varrone, and he said that when his daughter, Charlotte, started going to the school, it had given him a whole new perspective on our faculty co-workers.  Ones I always assumed were great teachers turned out to be mediocre, if not astoundingly terrible, he had reported to me one day as we sipped what passed for tomato soup in the faculty dining room, "and some of the more lackluster ones, in the classroom, were fabulous.  Whoever would have thought that my Charlotte would revere the likes of Shari Shelton?  But she’s her favorite."

That was a surprise.  Charlotte’s a bright kid, and Shari Shelton, who taught science and had always struck me as rather pleasant, was nevertheless fatter than the state hospital.  Shari always seemed to be surrounded by a passel of teenagers, sort of like a fan club.  They were there hanging out in her classroom before school and after school.  It actually always struck me as rather suspicious, the sort of thing that maybe Brandenburg should have been keeping an eye on while he occupied himself instead with presiding over the handwriting on the English teachers’ lesson plans or counting the balls in the gym.  Charlotte had become almost a Shari Shelton acolyte.  It was impossible not to wonder why.

I had a feeling whatever the situation was there, Jessica and Colin would be able to figure it out and tell me.  My daughter and Colin, both, were assigned to be in that woman’s homeroom.  All the kids with D, E and F surnames were.  Jessi already knew I had my suspicions about Shari Shelton.  She was going to be on the lookout for anything odd.

Now in the kitchen, with her golden brown hair still dripping wet from Mimi Montford’s pool, Jessica asked, If you’re going over to the school, can I come with you?  I’d like to walk around and find out where all the classrooms are that are on my schedule.  She’d just received the schedule the day before in the mail.

I wasn’t due there for an hour and a half, but I definitely wanted to get away from the house, not to mention Pegeen and her posse.  The school was just three blocks away.  There was usually an ice cream truck parked in front of an elementary school we’d pass on the way there and it would be nice to have a popsicle with my daughter on such a hot day.  If you can get dried off and changed out of your bathing suit in the next five minutes, sure.  I’ll wait for you outside, I said, escaping to wait on a wrought iron bench we had put in the backyard.

Later, I would realize that letting Jessica come with me, that day of all days, was one of the worst decisions I had ever made in forty-one years.

Yet who can know what awaits in the future, or guess what’s going to happen before it does? 

Nobody.  That’s who.

So I had no