Page 16 of Don’t Say a Word (Angelhart Investigations #2)

Chapter Twelve

Angie Williams

Mrs. Clark had been murdered.

There was nothing on the news, other than “a faculty member” had been found dead at Sun Valley High School, but everyone knew.

Andy Perez had texted Angie shortly after they finished dinner.

omg, just heard it’s Miz Clark

Then Peter Barilla texted both of them in a group chat.

wtf? is this true?

Gina’s volleyball group chat hadn’t stopped pinging for the last hour. Everyone was talking about it. Rumors were flying.

Mr. Parsons found her body...

They were at our game today! I’m crying, I love Mrs. Clark.

Parsons was sleeping with her.

My mom won’t let me go to school tomorrow.

Do we even have school?

Joey heard from Debbie who heard from Coach that there was blood everywhere.

I can’t believe this.

Gina, my mom saw your friend Angie yelling at Mrs. Clark during the game. What happened?

Angie had told Gina about her argument with Mrs. Clark, but she hadn’t realized other people saw it.

“What do you want me to say?” Gina asked.

“Nothing,” Angie said. “It’s no one’s business.”

Gina’s phone rang and they both yelped.

“It’s my mom,” Gina said as she answered. “Hi, Mom.”

“Gina, you need to come home now.”

“I’m on my way.”

“I can see where you are, you’re parked by Angie’s apartment. And if you were driving, you wouldn’t answer your phone, would you?”

“I’m sorry, Mom. I meant, I’ll leave right now.”

“Tell Angie to be careful.”

“Do you know what happened to Mrs. Clark?”

“All I know for certain is that she was killed sometime after the volleyball game and the police are investigating.”

“Do we have school tomorrow?”

“It hasn’t been canceled. But if you want to stay home—”

“No, I’m okay, I just want to know what happened.”

“Please come home, Gina. It won’t take you longer than ten minutes. Eleven minutes and you’re grounded.”

“Yes, Mom.”

“I love you,” she said and hung up.

Gina turned to Angie. “I gotta—”

“I know.” Angie hugged her best friend and got out of the car. Gina drove away, and Angie glanced down at her phone when it vibrated.

It was Andy again, in their group chat with Peter.

A, you didn’t go to school today but my little sister said she saw you.

Angie told him she went to the volleyball game. Then said, I talked to Mrs. Clark right before I left. A PI is investigating Elijah’s death.

Andy said: Really?

She responded. Yeah. I’m going to talk to her.

Andy: Elijah was acting weird the last couple weeks.

Angie didn’t want to get into this conversation, especially over text. We’ll talk tomorrow.

She pocketed her phone and walked slowly to her door.

She didn’t want to go home, but where could she go?

After a long minute, she unlocked the door and stepped inside.

Her mom and Bruce were slouched on the couch in front of the television, the stench of marijuana heavy in the small dark apartment.

“You’re not supposed to smoke in the apartment,” Angie said.

“Fuck you,” Bruce said.

Her mother hit him. “Don’t swear at my daughter. Angie, where were you so late?”

“Gina’s.”

“You could have called.”

“You don’t usually care.”

“I always care! Oh, my God, you think I don’t care about my own daughter?”

Clearly, her mother was stoned and drunk.

If she was just stoned, she would just say hey and Angie would go to her room and that would be that.

But Lori was an emotional drunk. Everything was over-the-top when Lori had been drinking.

As if to confirm the fact, Angie saw a near-empty bottle of vodka on the counter.

“You made your mother cry,” Bruce said. “Apologize.”

Bruce was a mean drunk. Not to Lori though. He draped his arm around Lori’s thin shoulders as she started to cry.

Angie quickly weighed her options. Bruce had never hit her, but he did break things, and her mom would blame her. She didn’t want drama tonight.

“Sorry,” she said. She walked to her room and closed the door.

Her room smelled of residual pot, so she opened the small barred window to air out the space, relieved that the temperatures had fallen and there was a light breeze. She lit a lavender candle and sat at her desk.

She heard Bruce and Lori talking, but not what they said. Then they were walking down the hall together, bumping into the walls, and her mother giggled. Their bedroom door closed, but Angie could hear everything—the groaning and giggling and loud sex talk, as if Bruce wanted her to hear everything.

She put on her headphones and turned up her music loud enough to drown them out.

The last time she talked to Mrs. Clark, Angie had been mean and yelled at her. Why had she been so angry? It wasn’t Mrs. Clark’s fault that the police were useless. Mrs. Clark was trying to help, and Angie took her frustration and anger out on her.

Now she couldn’t even apologize.

Her cell phone vibrated. It was Chris.

They hadn’t talked in three months. She didn’t want to talk to him now.

Scratch that. She absolutely wanted to talk to Chris, but didn’t want to dump this on him. If she answered, he’d get her to talk. He was good at that.

Benny must have told him about seeing her today.

She declined the call, then texted him.

Going to sleep, call you later.

He immediately texted back.

Call me now. We need to talk.

She responded with later and then silenced her phone and turned it facedown so she wouldn’t see any other texts from Chris.

Angie looked at the card she’d taken from Mrs. Clark’s desk, flipped it over and over in her fingers. It was getting late, and she didn’t want the PI to come here while her mom and Bruce were wasted. And Angie wasn’t an idiot—she wasn’t going out at night to meet someone she didn’t know.

She’d call Margo Angelhart tomorrow.