"Shut up," Romy said, clearly thinking about something. In deference to Dex's asthma we walked around the track instead of running, while Romy filled Dex in on Beth's meltdown.
"Ah, high school romance. I never get tired of it," Dex said when she was finished.
"I think this is more than that," Romy said, chewing on a thumbnail. "What if the doll is like the frog?"
Dex stopped walking, shoving his hands into his coat pockets. "Okaaaay," he said slowly. "That's a...a point."
"What does any of that mean?" I asked. It was entirely too cold to be out there in a short-sleeve T-shirt and shorts, and I wished I'd brought my hoodie.
Seeing me shivering, Dex whipped off his coat and placed it around my shoulders. As he did, I caught a flash of silver on his wrist. At first I thought it was a watch, but it was actually some kind of bracelet. I was so busy trying to look for a bloodstone-I was pretty sure Dex wasn't a vamp, but it never hurt to check-that I nearly missed Romy answering me until I heard her say, "-like Mr. Snyder."
My head shot up. "What?"
"Mr. Snyder," Dex repeated. "Our current town scandal and PMS's ongoing case."
I took a deep breath, not sure how to proceed. I had to seem interested, but not too interested. "What happened?" I asked, figuring that was a safe question.
"He was nearly murdered by some sort of invisible being wielding a microscope," Romy answered.
"I'm going to need that explained to me," I said, and Dex mimed holding something over his head and bringing it down with force, making a sound like Ka-DONK.
I blew on my hands to warm them, smiling a little. "No, I understand how you can kill someone with lab equipment. It's the invisible part I'm not getting."
"Mr. Snyder was alone in that room," Romy said. "It was locked from the inside, and there aren't any windows in the lab."
That all lined up with what the newspaper article had said, although it had left out the microscope part.
"And what does the Beth doll have to do with any of that?" I asked. "And what frog?"
"About a week before Mr. Snyder nearly bit it, someone took one of the dead frogs he used in class for dissection," Dex answered, turning so that he was walking backward. "It was stuck to his door with its wee froggy head all bashed in."
I'd seen a lot of gross stuff in my day, but I still wrinkled my nose. "Ew."
"Indeed," Romy said with a shudder. "Poor frog."
"It was already dead," Dex reminded her, but Romy wasn't looking at him.
"And now the doll," she murmured under her breath.
Dex looked over the top of his sunglasses at Romy. "Sometimes I think you forget we can't all see directly into your brain, Romy. You're not exactly clarifying the situation for Izzy here."
Romy tucked her hair behind her ears. "Okay, so the police think that whoever attacked Mr. Snyder had some kind of personal grudge against him."
"Brilliant deduction on their part," Dex interjected, but Romy ignored him. "And the frog was meant as a kind of warning, some way of freaking him out. But, like we said, he was alone in the room. He swore up and down that there was no one in there and the microscope seemed to attack him on its own. Which obviously made us think ghost."
"It made you think ghost, Rome," Dex said, and Romy pushed her glasses up her nose.
"Can you think of a better explanation for a man being attacked in a locked room by something he couldn't see?"
When neither Dex nor I answered, Romy gave a brisk nod. "Exactly. And everyone knows that this place has a ghost: Mary Evans. She was the daughter of Ideal's mayor way back in the early 1900s. She actually went to this school."
"Was it called Mary Evans High then?" Dex asked. "Because that is an astonishing coincidence."
Romy was walking faster now, and both Dex and I sped up, too, Dex still walking backward. "No, back then it was named after some Confederate general. Anyway, Mary fell in love with one of her teachers."
"Gross," Dex and I said at the same time.
Ignoring us, Romy continued. "So they had this big secret romance going on for a while, and then she got knocked up."
"Double super gross," Dex said, turning on his heel so that he wasn't facing us anymore.
"So they were going to run away together," Romy said with a shrug. "Or at least that's what the teacher promised Mary. He was supposed to meet her in a cave right outside of town. It was where they'd been hooking up, apparently."
"But he lied, and then she froze to death waiting for him, and now her ghost haunts the school where she met him," I finished, almost without thinking.
It took me a second to realize that Romy and Dex had stopped walking. I stopped and glanced over my shoulder.
"How did you know that?" Romy asked. "You've lived here, what, a week?"
It had been less than that, but that wasn't how I knew this particular ghost story. There were versions of it all over the place. It didn't mean the story wasn't necessarily true; it was just...kind of boring.
I wasn't sure if I was disappointed or relieved. I'd told Mom this would be an easy case, but I hadn't expected it to be quite this easy. This had to be the ghost we were dealing with.
I realized Dex and Romy were staring at me, waiting for an answer. "Oh, right. The Mary Evans thing. It was, uh, in the brochure they gave my mom about the school."
Dex frowned. "We have a brochure? And it mentions the local ghost story?"
"Do you still have it?" Romy asked. "It would be a good thing to add to my file on Mary Evans."
"I think we threw it out," I said quickly, before trying to change the subject. "So you think that the ghost of Mary Evans is pissed at teachers or-"
Romy chewed her lower lip. "That's what we thought at first. But if the Barbie is a warning for Beth like the frog was a warning for Mr. Snyder, what does that-"
Suddenly, Dex stopped, pressing a hand against his chest. He made a kind of wheezing sound, and at first I thought he was joking. But then Romy grabbed his arm. "Dex?"
He fumbled in his pocket, getting out his inhaler. He took two deep pulls on it, and the wheeze slowly started to fade. One more pull and his breathing sounded normal, if kind of fast. "Sorry," he said. "Wasn't trying to be a drama queen."