by Laura Alden
Well, actually, the least I could do was leave the box where it was, perhaps use it for a footstool, and forget where it had come from, but thanks to the sense of obligation instilled in me by my mother, that was unlikely to happen.
I’m depending on you.
“But I’m just a children’s bookstore owner,” I told the box. “Wouldn’t it be best if I handed you over to the police? Gus is still out sick, but surely this can wait a few days. What’s the hurry?”
Please help me rest in peace.
And that was the kicker. She’d asked for my help and there was no turning away from that fact. With a grunt, I picked up the box and put it on my desk. My tiny and cowardly little mind had long ago shut away the memory of what I’d seen when I first opened the box, so viewing the odd jumble of items was a fresh surprise.
A baby doll?
A Christmas ornament?
I leaned on the desk and stared. “What were you thinking, Cookie?” I murmured. “Maybe to you this looked like a boxful of clues, but to me it looks like—”
“Like a fine morning to play hooky.” Lois walked into my office, followed closely by Pete. “We have plans for you,” she said, “and whatever is in that box isn’t part of them.”
I flapped the box closed and did my best to shove it casually back under the desk. “My plans today include confirming author programming through May, memorize the new security code, putting together the boxes for tomorrow’s school deliveries, and looking at the inventory numbers.”
Given an uninterrupted thirty minutes, my plans also would have included combing through Cookie’s box with the suspects in mind. I could have told this to Lois and Pete since they’d agreed to help with this amateur-hour investigation, but it would have felt like a betrayal of Cookie.
Lois shook her head. “Bzz! You’re not doing any of that.”
My eyes thinned and my mouth started to open.
“At least not this morning,” she added quickly. “Right, Pete?”
He looked at her, at me, then back at her. “Sometimes people feel better if they get their work done first and play later.”
Lois snorted. “This one will just keep finding work to do and never get around to playing.”
I wanted to protest, and even started to, but stopped. She was pretty much right. Okay, she was right. Which was why I’d agreed to these six weeks of enforced relative inactivity. “What do you have in mind?” I asked.
Pete picked up my coat and held it out. “If I told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise, now, would it?”
Lois smiled that smile, the one that always made me a little nervous. Usually she had that expression on her face right before she hit Paoze with a tall tale along the lines of fetching a left-handed shelf from the hardware store. “Excellent. She hates surprises.”
• • •
Half an hour later, Pete and I were in the Agnes Mephisto Memorial Ice Arena. Not only were we inside the arena, but we were both on the ice. Wearing skates. And skating. Sort of. Pete was skating smoothly and easily; I was hanging on to the boards and trying to remember the last time I’d been on the ice.
“You’re doing fine.” Pete skated a little ahead of me and flipped around so he was skating backward.
I scowled at him. “You do that backward as well as you do it forward.”
“Backward is my second favorite direction.”
“I’m thinking all my directions are going to be down in a minute.”
“You’re doing fine,” he repeated. “All you have to do is loosen up. Here.” He held his hands out to me.
“Not a chance.” I held the wall with a death-defying grip.
“You’re wearing knee pads and wrist guards, and there’s no one here to see you. What’s going to happen?”
I risked a glance at the stands and ice. Vacant and empty. Still. “Bones break easily when you’re old,” I said darkly.
His voice was soft and warm. “Beth, do you really think I’d let you hurt yourself?”
A ripple of something I couldn’t quite identify went though me. Pete wouldn’t let me fall. He’d catch me before I came even close to hitting the ice. I knew this with as much certainty as I knew that the new security code to the store was . . . was . . .
“Rats,” I muttered.
“What’s that?” Pete asked.
I shook my head. Took one hand off the wall. Didn’t immediately collapse onto the ice. Took my other hand off.
“There you go.” Pete took my mittened hands in his bare ones. “Not so bad, is it?”
“It’s not bad at all,” I said breathlessly. “Do I look as awkward as I feel?”
“You look beautiful,” Pete said. “Now, long, even strokes with your blades. Right, left, that’s it.” His smile made him downright handsome. “You’ve got it!”
And I did. All that ancient muscle memory from winters spent skating on the frozen lake was coming back. Once upon a time I’d loved to go out under the full moon and skate with my brother until Mom called us in. It had been too long since I’d skated. Why had I ever stopped?
Pete released one of my hands and flipped around again so we were skating side by side. “Nice, isn’t it?”
The rhythm was coming back to me. Right, left, right, left. I gave him a quick glance. My strides were more or less even, but they had nowhere near the grace and ease of his. Clearly, this wasn’t his first rodeo. “I didn’t know you skated. You never said.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” he said, smiling.
“Are you going to share?”
He squeezed my hand. “All you have to do is ask.”
Another ripple went through me, but this time I knew what it was.
Happiness.
• • •
Less than eight hours later, that happiness was but a fond memory.
“I say we tell the Tarver Foundation to take a hike.” Claudia crossed her arms and stared straight ahead.
“That’s just dumb,” Summer said. “If we want to do all these projects, we need their money.”
“We don’t need it that bad,” Claudia snapped. “We still have book money coming in, and we have our regular fund-raisers, too. All we have to do it save until we have enough.”
“Save?” Summer made a disbelieving noise. “The book money is slowing down and it will take us years to have enough bake sales and dances and school carnivals to make up the rest of that money. It’s nuts to even consider rejecting their offer.”
Yes, it was another PTA meeting that was going nowhere positive. The few people out in the audience looked as bored as I felt. It was probably time for me to intervene, but I’d held out hope that Claudia and Summer could put down their hammers and tongs and come to some sort of solution.
As Summer and Claudia bickered, I spun the gavel in a circle, where it stops no one knows. Like spin the bottle, only not nearly so much fun. Not that I’d know. I’d never been at a party where kids played the game. Did today’s youth even know what it was? So many questions in my head and so few answers. Maybe Pete would know.
“What are you smiling at?” Claudia asked.
After a long pause, I realized she was talking to me. “I think it’s time for a vote.”
“Excuse me?”
Pointedly, I looked at the wall clock. “We’ve been discussing this for almost an hour, and as far as I can tell, we’re no closer to a conclusion. So”—I spun the gavel again—“I move that we accept the Tarver Foundation’s offer to match our funds.” I sensed Claudia’s mouth opening, so I plunged ahead. “And that we accept their matching offer contingent on the foundation accepting that we submit monthly progress reports instead of weekly ones.”
“Second,” Randy said.
I smiled at the gavel. While I wasn’t manipulative enough to have primed Randy to make the second, I was manipulative enough to have asked him (last week) what he objected to most about the foundation’s accountability requests. And since I’d also talked to a representativ
e of the Tarver Foundation that afternoon, I was quite confident they’d accept our mild counteroffer. “All in favor, say aye.”
Three voices said, “Aye.”
“Opposed, say nay.”
“Nay!” Claudia glared at me. “I’m telling you right now that this is a mistake. Please have the secretary put in the minutes that I say you’ll all live to regret this vote.”
“So noted,” I said, nodding at Summer. “This meeting is adjourned.” I gave the gavel a happy bang. The PTA and the Tarver Foundation would be funding four sorely needed projects. New playground equipment, a part-time music teacher, irrigating the soccer field, and starting up a summer arts day camp. Each one was a large undertaking, and the thought of the work ahead made me sway a little, but the results would be well worth it.
“It’s a mistake.” Claudia planted herself in front of me.
“Yes, you said. Excuse me a minute.” I eeled around her and steamed straight for Isabel Olsen. Surely, by the time I reached her, I would have come up with an appropriate question. Something a little less than “Are you a cold-blooded killer?” and a little more than “Say, did you hear about Cookie?”
“Hey, Beth, do you have a minute?” Travis Heer, Whitney’s husband, tapped me on the shoulder. “What do you think about collecting box tops?”
I slowed. “Sure, but can you wait a second? I need to talk to . . .” I looked in Isabel’s direction, but she’d already reached the doorway and was gone. Rats. I stifled a sigh and smiled at the young father. “I’m all yours. Box tops, you said?”
“Yeah.” He launched into a long and detailed explanation of the virtues of box tops. How no other PTA in the area was collecting them, how we could make out like bandits if we put together a collection system, how all the things we could do with the cash we earned would be great. “We could do more of those things on the lists, right?” He was practically bouncing as he talked. “Sports stuff, arts stuff, who cares what kind of stuff as long as it’s for the kids, right? I mean, as long as we can get kids active in something, it’s all good, right?”
I beamed at him. “That’s exactly right. I’ll put it on next month’s agenda. Are you willing to get up and talk about it? Because I’m warning you, if you do, you’re going to get nominated to do all the work of setting up the collection system.”
“Figured as much.” He grinned. “But I’m good with that. For the kids, you know?”
There was nothing like youth and the energy that went with it. “Travis, you are a treasure. Would you like to run for PTA president?”
He backed away, laughing. “What, when you’re doing such a good job?”
Clearly, he thought I was joking. He was wrong. I made a mental note to add him to my short list of potential replacements. Erica, my PTA presidential predecessor, had told me finding a new president was one of my most important jobs. I’d laughed, but she’d been serious.
“If you care about this group, and I know you do, start thinking about it now,” she’d said. So I did, and still was. Travis, I thought. The first male president of the Tarver Elementary PTA. We could do a lot worse.
I looked around the room. Claudia and Tina were clustered in a corner, heads together, sending the occasional ocular dagger in my direction. Carol and Nick Casassa were zipping up their coats and arguing about where they should go over spring break. It sounded as if Carol wanted to take the kids skiing and Nick wanted to go to Arizona to catch the last Milwaukee Brewers spring training game.
When there was a pause in their friendly sparring, I jumped in. “Have you seen Marina?”
Carol pulled on her mittens. “She scooted out after the meeting so fast I wondered if she’d left something in the oven.” She laughed. “If it was those brownies she makes, they won’t be fit for man nor beast. Not even boy beasts.”
“You talking about me?” Nick puffed up his chest. “I have standards. Lots of them.”
“Oh, sure.” Carol lightly bumped his chest with her wool-covered fist. “Like you won’t eat anything that has a sell-by date more than five years old.”
Nick grinned. “Like I said. Standards.”
They left. Claudia and Tina had already gone. I put on my coat and gathered my things.
“Done here, Mrs. Kennedy?” Harry stood in the doorway.
“Yes, Harry. Thanks for staying.”
“Just doing my job.”
I walked out of the room and he shut and locked the classroom door. “Well,” I said, “you’re doing it in an outstanding fashion.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Kennedy. You drive safe home, okay?”
“Yes. Thanks. Have a good night, Harry.” I walked out into the cold, started the car, turned on the headlights, and drove out of the parking lot.
But I didn’t head for home.
• • •
I stood there, hands in my coat pockets, hat on my head, and toes warm in my boots, watching the snow falling on Cookie Van Doorne’s dark house. My house was dark, too, since the kids were with their father, and the thought of that emptiness had somehow sent me here.
Cookie’s house was a simple Cape Cod. I studied the windows and pictured a living room toward the street, dining room and kitchen behind, three bedrooms upstairs. Half bath down, full bath up. Nothing fancy, nothing to set it apart from the other houses on the street, nothing to tell you who had lived behind its walls.
The curtains were drawn across and the shades were pulled down. It could have been a house whose owners had gone away for a vacation or down to Florida for the winter, but it wasn’t, and I felt the house knew it, too. Its owner had been murdered. By someone I knew.
It was not a comfortable thought, so I tried not to think it again. But since that’s a lot like trying not to think about how tired you are when you have insomnia, I kept circling back to the list of names Marina and I had drawn up.
Mine. Hers.
Alan Barnhart.
Isabel Olsen.
Kirk Olsen.
Stephanie Pesch.
It was too short, that list. There must be more names to put on it. There must be someone we missed, someone we hadn’t considered. Maybe someone had snuck into the kitchen when everyone else was listening to Auntie May try to get in her dig at Walter Trommler.
I sighed. No, it had to be someone who’d worked in the kitchen. Someone had put the acetaminophen into a foam cup, filled it with coffee, and handed it to Cookie.
The snow fell.
My toes started to get cold.
More snow fell.
Cookie’s house sat there, quiet and somehow accusing.
Why haven’t you found her killer? it asked. Why aren’t you doing something to help Cookie instead of standing in the snow, staring at me?
It was a very good question. Too bad I didn’t have an answer for it. “Sorry,” I muttered. “This is hard for me, okay? These people are my friends and Cookie was, well, you know how she was.”
“What did you say?”
I shrieked. Jumped. Twisted in the air and landed two feet away from where I’d started. Breathed hard and couldn’t talk.
“Sorry,” the woman said in a laughter-filled voice. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I thought you were talking to me.”
“Just”—I panted—“talking . . . to myself.”
The woman planted her snow shovel on the ground and leaned on the handle. “I live here.” She tipped her head at the house next door to Cookie’s. “You’re not from this neighborhood, are you?”
“No.” I realized how odd it must look, to see a stranger standing in the snow outside an empty house. I was lucky no one had called 911 to report me. “I knew Cookie, though. I just . . . stopped by.” Which didn’t explain anything, really, but I didn’t have anything better. “I brought Cookie home the night she got sick. She was—”
“Then you must be Beth Kennedy. Did you get the box? Sorry I took so long to mail it.”
I blinked. “You sent me the box?”
“And the letter.”
She half laughed, half didn’t. “All a little weird, right?”
“Yes,” I said emphatically, which made her laugh full out.
“That was Cookie. I’m Deirdre Gale, by the way. Cookie said you own that children’s bookstore downtown? I should stop in one of these days. I don’t have any kids myself, but I have nieces and nephews of assorted ages all over the country.”
“Stop by anytime,” I said. “So, about that letter . . . ?”
“Yeah, that postmark probably threw you, didn’t it?”
She smiled, and I suddenly realized that I was talking to a very beautiful woman. Midthirties, tallish, dark hair curling around the edge of her ski hat, high cheekbones, straight nose, full lips. The kind of woman who, if she had the right kind of parents, grew up confident and competent. The kind of woman who would work in a people-oriented field. A doctor, maybe, or a—
“I’m a field engineer,” she said. “I travel a lot for the Madison firm I work for. Right now we’re testing a new windmill design, and the winds up in Alaska are being harder on the bearings than we’d figured.”
—or anything except what she actually was. So much for the stereotypical engineer, from which mold Marina’s introverted DH was cast. “That sounds . . . interesting,” I said vaguely.
“Probably not,” Deirdre said, “but you’re nice for saying so. Anyway, I was up there when I heard that Cookie had died and I mailed the letter right away. The box was here, so I couldn’t get that out until I came home. I was going to drop it off at your bookstore, but the same morning I put it in my Jeep, the project manager for an installation in Chicago called all frantic about the detail sheets not having enough detail.”
She rolled her eyes. “I had to go straight there and hold his hand until he felt better. That took a couple days, so I just mailed the box. I kept meaning to call you, or stop by to explain all this, but . . .” She paused and, for the first time in our odd conversation, didn’t seem to know what words to say.