Free Murder of a Chocolate-Covered Cherry by Denise Swanson

and why were they running? Did it have something to do with their personal lives—Justin and Frannie had recently started to go steady—or was it about the student newspaper? Justin and Frannie were the coeditors of the
Scoop
and very competitive in their reporting.
    The teens skidded to a stop in front of Skye and Bunny, and Justin said breathlessly, “Xenia is missing, and we think she kidnapped Ashley Yates.”
    Several questions crowded Skye’s lips, but she finally managed to push one out in front of the others. “Why?”
    “Because of the lawsuit,” Frannie answered. “Xenia was way pissed when she heard Ashley’s parents were threatening to sue the paper over the article she wrote.
    Xenia’s article had examined the politics of popularity, using Ashley as a prime example of the price girls were willing to pay to be one of the “in” crowd. Xenia had listed all the things Ashley had done to both gain and keep her popular status, including having sex with the entire boys’ basketball team, one right after the other, in their locker room the night they won the championship.
    “How would kidnapping Ashley make it better?” Skye asked before she could stop herself.
    Both teens shrugged, and Skye could have slapped herself for asking such a stupid question. No one knew why Xenia did anything. Skye wasn’t even sure Xenia did.
    Backtracking, Skye asked what she hoped was a better question. “What makes you think Xenia kidnapped Ashley?”
    Justin and Frannie looked at each other. Finally he gave an almost imperceptible nod, and Frannie said, “The last post on her blog.”
    Before Skye could respond, Bunny jumped in. “A blog is like a diary that you write on the computer and let everyone see. All the kids do it.”
    “I know what a blog is,” Skye retorted. “What I can’t understand is why anyone would write on one that she had kidnapped someone.”
    Justin studied his sneakers and mumbled, “She didn’t exactly write that, but we put two and two together and figured it out.”
    “Are you sure you did the math right?”
    Frannie joined Justin in his intense interest in his shoe. “We’re pretty sure, especially after Xenia’s mom called looking for her.”
    “Why is that?” Skye had never pictured Xenia as a teen who reported her every move to her mom.
    Justin explained, “Since we were off school, Xenia and her mom were going into Chicago to see a matinée of this play Xenia really, really wanted to see, then go to this super cool new restaurant for dinner. But she never showed up.They were supposed to leave their house at eleven this morning, and when Mrs. Craughwell knocked on Xenia’s bedroom door to see if she was ready, she didn’t answer. Mrs. Craughwell went in and she wasn’t there, and she hasn’t shown up all day.”
    “Oh.”
Shit!
It sounded as if Scumble River’s newest wild child might indeed have added kidnapping to her already long list of criminal acts. For a nanosecond Skye wondered if maybe Xenia herself was the kidnapping victim, but she quickly realized how unlikely that would be. No way would Xenia trust anyone enough to put herself in a position to become a victim.
    Still, Skye held out one last hope that neither girl had been kidnapped. “Okay, the big question is whether Ashley is missing or not. Has either of you called her house to check?”
    Frannie nodded. “I pretended to be one of her cheerleading friends.” The teen’s cheeks reddened. “I’m pretty good at imitating voices. Her mom was mad. Said she’d been looking for Ashley all day.”
    “Okay, so both Xenia and Ashley are missing,” Skye acknowledged. “What did you say to Mrs. Yates?”
    “Uh.” Frannie swallowed hard. “Well, the thing is, I didn’t know what to say, so I might have suggested that the cheerleaders had an all-day practice and a slumber party tonight. Which is why I was calling, since I couldn’t remember where the party was. And that Ashley might have forgotten to