Staged to Death (A Caprice De Luca Mystery) by Karen Rose Smith Page A

classrooms on either side of it and across from it.
    Her mother continued, “Tracey’s chemistry class sometimes wanders into the discussion of modern medicine and pharmaceutical companies. Apparently she mentioned PA Pharmaceuticals and some of the advances they’ve made over the years in research and development. Well, Bart Waxman’s son is in that class. The next day Bart marched into Tracey’s classroom a few minutes before his son’s class started and began reaming her out because she was giving PA Pharmaceuticals good press. He’d been let go the week before without much explanation, and his blood pressure was up, that’s for sure, because his face was all red. He yelled at her, telling her she shouldn’t be advertising anything about that dirty-dealing company in her classroom.”
    “And you heard all this?”
    “All of us heard it. He was loud enough to wake the dead! Everyone was buzzing about it last night.”
    “What was his position at PA Pharm?”
    “I think he was a production manager. At least that’s what I heard after his outburst.”
    “And he didn’t know why he was fired?”
    “Not according to him. He said they were all crooks who just want to take the money and run.”
    That sounded like a blanket statement, and Bart Waxman could just have been venting his frustration and anger.
    “I didn’t tell you the best part,” her mom confided with a little bit of slyness that Caprice wasn’t sure if she’d ever heard before.
    “The best part?”
    “The day after Ted Winslow was killed, one of the other teachers told me Ted was Waxman’s boss, and the one who fired him.”
    “Whoa.” Caprice blew out the word without thinking.
    “Exactly. Whoa.”
    That was certainly a motive if Caprice ever heard one. In these economic times no one wanted to be fired from anything. Jobs were too hard to find, especially in Kismet. Interviewing in Harrisburg or York would mean a commute. Most people weren’t happy with change, not unless they were running toward it.
    So the question was: did the police know about Waxman? “Do Dad and Chief Powalski still have a monthly poker game?”
    “Your dad hasn’t mentioned Mack recently, but I think he’s still one of the guys who antes up.”
    Caprice chuckled. Her mom thought she knew the language, but she’d never sat at a poker table in her life. On the other hand, Caprice and Vince had filled in once in a while when her dad felt the group was short of players.
    “In fact,” her mom continued, “one is scheduled for Thursday night.”
    “Does Dad know this story about Waxman?”
    “Sure, he does. I don’t keep secrets from him. We talk about everything. Or at least I talk and he pretends to listen.”
    Her mom and dad had been married for thirty-seven years. Caprice knew their romance very well because, along with her brother and sisters, she’d heard it many times over. Her mom had attended Shippensburg University, about an hour and a half away. She’d been home on summer break, living in York with her parents. She’d spent mornings helping her mom with her gardens, then during the afternoons and evenings worked in a clothing store in one of York’s malls. One morning, she’d gone outside to clip a bouquet of flowers to bring indoors. She’d just finished collecting roses and zinnias when she’d heard noise on the roof. When she’d looked up, she’d spotted a man around her age, nineteen, all bronzed and tanned and muscled, with black hair tousled by the wind. Their gazes locked, and the rest, as they say, was history.
    Nicolas De Luca was a brick mason who had come to fix the flashing around the chimney. Today, at age fifty-seven, he was still a brick mason, though he had a crew of men working under him now. But he went out on jobs himself sometimes, and she knew that worried her mother. Her dad had been from Kismet, and they moved here after they married. When Francesca lost her parents—her mother to a heart attack, her father to a