Framed & Dangerous (9780545443128) by Kim Harrington Read Free Book Online

“Someone.”
    I grabbed her arm. “You have a theory.”
    Darcy nodded. “Get to school early tomorrow morning. It’s interrogation time.”

Things with Darcy weren’t exactly back to normal. We hadn’t made up. But we were at least working together on this one last case. I was glad she could put her feelings aside to help me. Zane didn’t deserve what was happening to him.
    As planned, I arrived at school early Wednesday morning. Darcy was already there, staring at a plaque on the wall by the gym.
    I approached her. “So what’s the plan?”
    She started slightly, like she’d been deep in thought. “Oh. Hi. Um, they usually hang out at Hunter’s locker in the morning until the bell rings for homeroom. We’ll be waiting there today, and we’ll ambush them.”
    Them , meaning Hunter and Slade. They were our top suspects as of our meeting last night, and the only people we could think of who might be holding a grudge against Zane. We’d most recently solved a case, and it had ended up involving Hunter, Slade, and Slade’s older brothers. I thought we had ended things on a good note, but maybe the boys were looking for vengeance.
    My eyes went to the plaque Darcy had been so entranced by. “What were you looking at?” I asked.
    She ran her fingers over the letters. “Did you ever notice that this says the school gym was built in 1948?” Darcy said.
    I’d walked by the plaque a million times but had to admit, I’d never stopped to read it. “Not before now. Why does it matter?”
    â€œIt’s interesting because our school was built in 1938…” Darcy said, trailing off to let me fill in the blank.
    â€œThey wouldn’t have gone without a gym from 1938 to 1948,” I said. “The gym must have been … rebuilt.”
    Darcy raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps after a fire?”
    Of course — The Prom Killer! “But wait,” I said.“Why would the high school hold their prom at a middle school?”
    Darcy grinned. It felt good to see her smile at me again, even if she was clearly just excited about the case. “Good catch. But this didn’t become the middle school until the town grew and they needed a bigger high school. In 1948, our school was the high school.”
    That was right! I remembered seeing photos and trophies in the big glass case in the lobby, back from when our school was a high school. An idea came to me. “How much time do we have?”
    Darcy glanced down at her watch. “They should be getting here any minute. Why?”
    â€œI want to make a quick detour.”
    I hoped it was still there. I led Darcy down the main hall and toward the giant glass case. It took up almost the entire wall and was full of trophies and plaques from years past. One of the more eye-catching displays was a giant poster with small photos showing each year’s prom king and queen. I remembered Fiona once laughing at some of the styles of decades past.
    I put my hands up to the glass. “It’s still here.”
    â€œWhat?” Darcy said, but then she noticed it.
    The most recent prom king and queen photo was from 1964. That was the last prom held here before they built the high school. The prom queen wore a frilly, long dress and white gloves and the king had a skinny black tie. In the ’50s the prom kings had white tuxes, and the girls wore dresses I’d only seen in those black-and-white movies on TV, with big puffy skirts and ribbons around their waists.
    My eyes searched backward each year: 1951, 1950, 1949, 1947… I stopped.
    Darcy must have seen it at the same time. “Nineteen forty-eight isn’t there,” she said.
    â€œThey had no prom king and queen in 1948.” I looked at Darcy. “The Prom Killer story might be real.”
    The sound of kids’ footsteps dragged us out of our trance, and we remembered why we’d