Schooled in Deceit: A Lacamas Village Cozy Mystery, Book 1, page 1
Schooled
in Deceit
A Lacamas Village Cozy Mystery Series, Book 1
By Jacqueline M. Green
Copyright © 2023 Jacqueline M. Green
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. The resemblance of any characters or businesses to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.
Other Books by Jacqueline M. Green
The Kat McCoy Lake District Cozy Mystery Series
A Dodgy Death
A Stodgy Slaying
A Finicky Fatality
A Hapless Holiday (a Thanksgiving short story)
The Yoga Mat Cozy Mystery Series
Corpse Pose, Indeed
Goddess, Guilted
Warrior, Fatal & Flawed
Triangle, Ill-Fated
Mountain Pose, Maligned (short story prequel)
Savasana for a Scarecrow (Halloween short story)
Savasana for a Santa (Christmas short story)
Savasana for Summer (a summertime short story)
Other books
Cruisin’ for a Corpse (A Second-Chance Reno Cozy Mystery)
Premonition in Pompeii (short story time-traveling cozy mystery)
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
About the author
From the author
Chapter 1
Movie night at home with my husband. I sighed in contentment, a movie bucket of popcorn in my lap, and leaned my head against the back of the couch.
Thoughtful as ever, Rodney stopped at a theater on his way home from working late to pick me up genuine movie popcorn.
If he didn’t hurry back from the bathroom soon, though, I’d probably fall asleep, even though I’d had a quick nap after school. He had a habit of cleaning up as soon as he got home – changing his clothes and washing. It was a nice habit, but sometimes I fell asleep before he was done.
I was usually tired by Friday nights, courtesy of being a second-grade teacher. Fortunately, Rodney was happy to join me on the couch for Friday night movies.
I had just let my eyes fall shut when my cell phone dinged next to me from the side table. I roused myself to pick it up. Not too many people texted me at nine o’clock on a Friday night, so I thought it might be important. Most of my friends were teachers, so they were worn out, too.
I didn’t recognize the number, but it looked like an attachment was sent. I swiped up and saw a picture of Rodney with his arm around a young girl. She looked about ten.
Do you know what your husband has been doing?
My eyebrows rose, and I sat up straighter. I read the text again and looked closer at the picture. My husband wore the same shirt he had just come home in. The photo looked like it was taken in a school gym. Other people were in the background. Rodney and the girl smiled toward a camera in a different direction. They seemed comfortable together, but I had never seen her before.
I slumped back into the couch, my face scrunched up. Surely, there was a logical explanation. Rodney told me he had worked late that night.
“Okay, sweetie, here I am, ready for movie night,” Rodney’s voice came from the hallway. “Did you fall asleep on me yet?”
He chuckled at his own joke as he settled into his spot on the couch, reaching over me to snag the bucket of popcorn. The slight paunch of his middle-aged stomach strained against his T-shirt. He glanced at the phone in my hand, then dug into the popcorn. “Whatcha reading?”
I wordlessly turned the phone toward him, my eyebrows raised in question.
The blood drained from his face, and he gripped the popcorn box. He gulped a couple of times, his Adam’s apple gyrating.
My heart clenched with fear. This was not the reaction I had expected. I straightened up on the couch and turned toward him.
We sat in silence several moments too long.
“What is this picture?” I whispered. “Who is she?”
Rodney’s mouth opened again, but no words came out. Finally, he set the popcorn bucket on the coffee table beside him and turned to me. He took a deep breath and held his hands out in front of him.
“I was going to tell you,” he said, looking earnestly into my face. “I just didn’t know how.”
“Tell me what?” I demanded. “Rodney, you’re scaring me. Who is she?”
He put his hands on my shoulders as if he could hold me into place. “She’s my daughter.”
I recoiled from him, leaping off the couch. “She’s your what?”
“My daughter.” He leaned back into the couch.
I stared at my husband of twenty-three years and now it was my turn to try to speak, but no words emerged. I looked at the picture again, zooming in on the girl’s features. She had Rodney’s eyes and chin. How did I not see that the first time I looked?
Rodney and I were childless, not by choice. After three miscarriages early in our marriage, my body apparently decided I didn’t need children. Neither one of us had been happy about it. We considered adoption, but Rodney was reluctant to go that route. So we made our peace with the reality and built a happy family just the two of us.
Or so I thought.
Apparently, I was the one who had made peace with it. Rodney went and made a child with someone else.
“How could you?” I demanded, fixing him with a glare. My whole body trembled.
Rodney put his elbows on his knees and rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands.
“It wasn’t something I planned. It was an accident.” He looked up at me. “Then I guess I just figured it was meant to be.”
“Meant to be,” I repeated.
“I was so happy to have a child.” He dropped his eyes to his hands.
I clutched my arms around my waist and paced about the room. This could not be happening. Then I looked at the picture on my phone.
“How old is she?”
“Eleven. She goes to school—”
“I don’t need the details of your other family,” I snapped. “I just wanted to know how long you’ve been cheating on me.”
My mind ran back over all of Rodney’s late nights at work. All of the weekend conferences. I closed my eyes. How could I have been so blind?
“Tonight,” I gasped out. “Were you working late?”
His eyes pleaded with me for understanding he would not receive.
“Were you?” I barked.
His eyes dropped to the floor. “She had a school choir concert.”
I turned and left the room.
That night, without another word to Rodney, I moved into the spare room downstairs. The school year was over in a week, and then I would figure out what to do.
Chapter 2
Stay at our house, my older sister begged me after I told her of Rodney’s secret life.
“We have to be in Washington, D.C., for three or four months on David’s case,” Audra said. “I’m overnighting the keys. Stay ’til school starts again.”
She even lined up a temporary job for me at a local bookstore so I wouldn’t be sitting in her big house all summer by myself. She and David lived in Lacamas Village, one of the many small towns surrounding Portland, Ore., and Vancouver, Wash.
“You can think about retirement,” she encouraged me. “Then move to Portland and we can see each other all the time.”
I laughed when she suggested retirement, even though I had worked enough years. I felt tired, yes. The end of every school year was exhausting. What was the saying? There’s no tired like end-of-the-year-teacher-tired? This year, my exhaustion was even more because of my emotional state.
If I hadn’t had to teach that last week before Summer Break, though, I might have turned into a bubbling mess on the kitchen floor. Not that there was much teaching going on that week. I cleaned my classroom so thoroughly that my principal jokingly asked if I planned to come back.
Rodney called and texted when I was at school that week, then followed me around at home, begging me to reconsider. I finally locked the door to the spare room and told him to go away. I needed time and space to think about it all, and I couldn’t do it with his yapping and carrying on behind me.
And reconsider what? I hadn’t even fully considered the complete picture of what
“How long is a while?” The whininess in his voice grated on my nerves. Had he always been like that?
“I’ll let you know.”
The day after school ended, I packed my green fifteen-year-old Subaru and drove away without a look back in the rearview mirror. If I had, I knew I would see Rodney standing in the driveway, shoulders slumped, staring as my car turned the corner and disappeared. The sight might have prompted me to touch my brakes, maybe even turn around.
I stared straight ahead, pausing at the end of our street to yank off my wedding ring and throw it into the back seat.
My shoulders clenched and my chest tight, I drove north out of Sacramento. Then I pulled into the first rest area along the freeway, flung open the back door and dug around until I found my wedding ring. I wasn’t ready to throw it out, but I wasn’t ready to keep wearing it, either, so I set it in the cupholder that held change. That seemed fitting.
Rodney started texting about the time I passed the turnoff to Chico. Babe, where are you? Please don’t shut me out.
I shut off my phone, double-checking that I had turned off the location tracker. I could find my way to Portland before I turned it on again to get me over the Columbia River.
Hours later, my trusty Subaru grinded into the circle and shuddered to a stop just shy of Audra’s driveway. I gave it a pat on the dashboard. “Nice job, RuRu.”
With a sigh of relief, I leaned my head against the headrest. The towering five-bedroom house before me would be my home for the next eight weeks. Maybe more? Audra’s suggestion to retire tempted me.
No, I firmly told myself. I wasn't ready to quit my job. I was just tired after another trying year of teaching second-graders, even if it was my favorite grade. The students were old enough to get some of my jokes but not so old that they had attitude yet.
Retirement, now that I had stacked up nearly thirty years teaching, looked like a good idea. But I was pretty sure that I would change my mind once I rested, just like I had for the past few years.
Audra and her attorney husband, David, lived in Lacamas Village, a trendy town – more of an aptly named village, really – just over the Columbia River from Portland. My sister’s house sat in the middle of an upscale neighborhood near Bigleaf Lake, named for the Bigleaf Maple trees in the area.
It was the perfect place for me to gain some perspective and figure out what to do next. I planned to spend Summer Break going to yoga classes, walking by the lake, and working on a long-forgotten mystery novel I started writing years ago. Maybe I would even try a vegan diet. It sounded like the kind of thing people did in Portland and the perfect recipe to figure out my future.
I set the parking brake and slipped out of the driver's side of the Subaru, then reached into the back for one of the suitcases and the backpack. I hefted the backpack onto my shoulder, then jumped in surprise.
“Hey, you! By the junker!” A man’s scratchy voice came from close behind me.
I spun around to see an older man peering at me from just a few feet away. He was dressed in corduroy and a button-down shirt.
“Can I help you?” I asked, not even bothering to hide my skepticism.
He pointed at my car. “You can’t park that junker here. We have rules in the HOA.”
“It’s not a junker,” I protested. “I literally just drove all the way from Sacramento, and it worked just fine. Thanks for your concern.”
I turned away and started up the driveway.
“They’re not home,” the man continued, hurrying behind me at a pace that surprised me as he pulled out a cell phone. He stopped to punch in some numbers.
“I know they’re not home.” I shook my head and continued toward the front door, reaching out to give the door handle a jiggle. Audra said she locked it when they left, but with the old man on the scene, I wanted to make sure.
“Hello, 911?” The old man raised his voice, apparently to make sure I heard him. “I want to report a breaking and entering.”
I spun back around, my eyes wide. “What the h—”
“Yes, it’s happening right now,” he went on, almost gleefully. “The neighbors are gone, and a woman is trying to break in. She looks like a transient, if you know what I mean.”
I threw up my hands, then turned and set the backpack on the front porch. What was this guy’s problem? Glancing down at my clothes, I realized he might have a point. I wore flipflops, sweats and a faded T-shirt with a couple of holes in the bottom and, oh wait, was that barbecue sauce dripped down the front?
Clearly, I hadn’t started my vegan diet yet, but I also hadn’t realized that barbecue sandwich had left a calling card.
Sirens suddenly materialized from a distance. The old man nodded into the phone.
“I am not a transient!” I hollered, stalking toward the man as I tried to make myself heard to the police dispatcher, who was still on the line.
The old man turned away from me, shielding the phone with his shoulder.
“Look, I have a key.” I ran back up the driveway to my backpack on the porch and dug into the pocket, pulling out the set of keys that Audra had sent to me.
Two police cruisers swept into the circle, lights and sirens at full tilt.
Oh, good grief.
Two officers got out of one car and approached, hands hovering around their waists where their guns were holstered. The other two officers waited near their cruiser.
The old man rushed toward them. They put up their hands to fend him off.
“Hang on, sir, slow down,” said the older of the two officers. “Tell us what’s going on.”
The other officer kept his eyes peeled on me. I decided not to make any sudden moves.
The old man took a breath and pointed at me. “The people who live here are gone for a few months. This woman is breaking in.”
I rolled my eyes, holding up the house keys and jiggling them in my hand. “Got keys right here, officer. The homeowners are my sister and her husband.”
The officers looked at the old man expectantly.
He glared at me. “She looks like a transient, although she’s older than I thought.”
“You’re calling me a bum and old?” I asked. “My second-graders have better manners than you do.”
The younger officer bit back a smile. He gestured toward the house.
“Let’s see if your keys work. Meanwhile,” he turned to the old man, “do you have a phone number for the homeowners? Maybe we can call for clarification.”
He stepped toward me, so I turned to the front door, an imposing structure at the top of the stairs. My hand shook as I slipped the key into the lock. I mean, I knew the key would fit. Of course, it would fit. It had to fit, right?
The key turned easily and the door slid silently open. I breathed a sigh of relief, then turned back to the officer with raised eyebrows.
He shrugged and turned toward his partner. “The key works.”
His partner looked up from the old man’s cell phone. “What’s your name?” he called.
“Misty Michaels.”
He gave a thumbs up, said a few more words into the phone and handed it back to the old man, whose face wrinkled up even more like an old prune.
“Your sister says have a good stay. She’ll call you later.”
I waved, then reached for my backpack and suitcase, hefting them up over the last step and into the foyer. I didn’t wait for them to leave before closing the door solidly behind them.
Leaning against the door, I let out a breath, then reached back and flipped the dead bolt.
Just in case.
This trip already had not gone according to plan.
Chapter 3
“Do not let Samuel Wiggins ruin your visit.” My sister, Audra, called me as soon as she hung up with the cops. “He is just so old school that he can’t stand to see anything change. Every time someone goes to sell their house in our circle, he has a conniption fit.”
I smiled into the phone. “I will steer clear of the old coot.”
“And park that car in the garage,” Audra went on. “He’s not wrong about it being a junker.”
