Foul Play at the PTA bk-2

by Laura Alden

  Marina’s spoon clattered to the table. “But Yvonne’s innocent! How can she say such a thing?”

  “I didn’t get a chance to explain. Mrs. Tolliver came in, made her pronouncement, and walked out.”

  “That’s not fair!” Marina’s hair was flying away from her head in a thousand different directions; she looked like a red-haired Albert Einstein.

  “There’s not much I can do about it.”

  “There is one thing,” Marina said.

  I shook my head. “I’m not going to let Yvonne go.”

  “Don’t be silly. Your innate—and borderline obsessive, I might add—sense of justice eliminates that option. No, the thing to do is clear.”

  “It is?”

  “And this time we have experience!”

  She didn’t mean . . . she couldn’t mean . . . “No,” I said. “You can’t mean that.”

  “Yup. We need to find Sam’s killer.” She nodded sharply.

  “Not a chance.”

  Marina’s cheeks were flushed with . . . well, I didn’t want to know what. I didn’t want to think it was excitement that was getting her riled up. I’d had enough of that last year when we were trying to figure out who killed Agnes Mephisto. I’d come to care deeply about bringing the killer to justice, but the fun and games had ended abruptly when my children had been threatened.

  “We did it before, we can do it again,” Marina was saying. “Thanks to us a killer is behind bars.”

  “The police would have figured it out,” I said. “They have procedures to follow, so it takes them a little longer, that’s all.”

  “Procedures, my aunt Fanny.” Marina tsked away hundreds of years of case law.

  “Yes, procedures. You know, the laws of the land? Local, state, and federal? We have them for a reason.”

  But as private citizens, Marina and I weren’t hampered by the myriad rules and regulations. We would be free to follow hunches. We could poke into people’s coat closets and medicine cabinets, no warrant required.

  “We don’t need to prove anything beyond a shadow of a doubt,” Marina said. “All we have to do is figure out who did it and let nature take its course.”

  “My nature is quite content to leave this to the police.” Mostly.

  “And how long will that take?”

  As her right eyebrow went up, I thought about what she’d said. How long would it take for the police to find Sam’s killer? Mrs. Tolliver’s attitude could be contagious. The longer the murderer walked about free, the longer the Mrs. Tollivers of the world would consider my newest employee a menace to society. And the longer Yvonne was considered a threat, the longer my store’s sales would suffer.

  “Aha!” Marina pounced. “You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?”

  “Am not.”

  “Are too. That little line between your eyebrows is a dead giveaway. It’s only there when you’re thinking that I’m right and you’re wrong.”

  “No, I think my head is about to explode because of the completely opposing viewpoints in my head.”

  “Completely?”

  “This side of my brain”—I tapped my left temple—“is committed to safety, security, and obeying authority. The other side”—I flicked my index finger at the right side—“has an affinity for anarchy. Is it any wonder I get a line in the middle?”

  “There’s only one solution.” Marina reached for my plate and stacked it on top of hers.

  “What’s that?”

  “Loose the blood-dimmed tide!”

  I stared at her. “You just quoted Yeats.” Sort of.

  “That who it was? It’s the only thing I remember from freshman English. That’s where I met the DH, you know. That widening gyre poem was his favorite.”

  I didn’t know which was more disconcerting, Marina quoting Yeats, or the idea of her DH even having a favorite poem.

  “You’re off work tomorrow, aren’t you?” she asked. “Good. Be ready at ten.”

  “For?”

  “Anything!” she said gaily, then sobered. “But you’d better wear black. Oh, quit looking like that. You thought there might not be a funeral?”

  “It’s been over a week. I thought maybe Rachel decided to have a memorial service later on.” April would be good. The week I was out of town for spring break would be excellent.

  “Somebody said they’re short-staffed at the medical examiner’s. Ew, you know?” She made a face. “And no trying to weasel your way out of this. You know we have to go.”

  I sighed. “Why is doing the right thing so darn uncomfortable?”

  “Because if it were easy it’d be fun, and fun is never the right thing to have.”

  “Never?” What a depressing thought.

  “Well, hardly ever.” She took the plates to the kitchen, whistling the Gilbert and Sullivan tune from H.M.S. Pinafore . I followed after her, once again surprised at the things that bounced out of her mouth.

  I’d hated every funeral I’d ever attended. Too much baggage, too much emotion, too much everything. Marina said it was my own fear of death, and she was probably right, but that didn’t make it any easier to sit through a service.

  Marina elbowed me. “Quit squirming,” she whispered.

  The organ was playing a quiet meditation as people filed in. We’d arrived early, but Marina had asked the usher for a seat in the back. I’d spent the next few minutes reading the service’s bulletin, then a couple of minutes paging through the hymnal. Then I sat with my eyes closed, thinking about Sam. Which led me to think about Sam’s wife, which sent me to thinking about the children. Which would have made me cry, so in the name of distraction I started inventing itches at the back of my knees.

  “Stop that,” Marina said quietly. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to.”

  “You don’t?”

  “Stop that.”

  “Stop what?”

  She ignored my whisper, which showed how smart she was. I hadn’t been looking at her; I’d been studying the church’s stained glass windows, but now I heard an odd scratching noise that didn’t at all belong in a church, let alone a funeral service. Frowning, I looked around to see what was making the noise.

  It was Marina, cradling a small memo pad in her left hand. As an usher went past on his ushering duties, she wrote on her pad.

  I bumped her with my elbow. “What are you doing?” I whispered.

  “Writing down names.” Her voice, though as quiet as it could get, held the “duh” tone.

  “What on earth for?”

  Our school superintendent and his wife, Mack and Joanna Vogel, went past, and Marina bent her head to scribble. “There’s a good chance Sam’s killer will show up, and I’m bound to forget someone if I don’t write down the names.”

  I was appalled. “You’re taking notes?”

  “Shh!” Marina shot quick glances all around. “Do you want the whole town to know what we’re doing?”

  My best friend was an idiot. “The only time killers make an appearance at the funeral is in movies.”

  She watched Randy Jarvis, our PTA treasurer, lumber up the aisle. Writing, she said, “Movies are rooted in reality. The germ came from somewhere, yes?”

  “So the movie plot where a suburban husband singlehandedly fights off a small army of terrorists, rescues his wife, and disarms the ticking time bomb before his children are blown to bits is based in fact?”

  “You’re just being difficult,” she said. Claudia Wolff and her husband went down on the list, followed by Tina and Tony Heller. “And we have to start somewhere.”

  It was a reasonable statement; we did need a place to begin. So why did I feel so depressed? “Oh,” I said.

  “What’s the matter?” Marina looked at me, then saw where I was looking. “Who’s that?”

  “Pete Peterson. Remember?” I’d run into Pete last year after Agnes had been killed. It was Pete who’d been instrumental in putting the last piece of our investigative puzzle together. Sort of.


  “Ah, yes,” Marina said. “Shortish? Balding? All-around good guy who always makes you feel like smiling?”

  “That’s him.”

  Pete was alone, and the somber face he wore looked wholly unnatural.

  Marina studied the back of his head. “You got to watch out for those nice ones. Do you think—”

  “No,” I said shortly. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  She clucked at me. “Just because you laugh at his jokes doesn’t mean he’s not a killer.”

  Her logic, though littered with negatives, was irrefutable. “Doesn’t mean he is, either.” But Pete’s name went on the list in spite of my protests.

  “Oh, my goodness.” Marina perked up. “Look at that.”

  An usher was leading two couples toward the front of the sanctuary. One set I recognized as Bruce Yahrmatter and his wife, the other was—“Is that Dave Patterson?”

  Just before I’d met Evan, Marina had tried to set me up with Dave. He was a nice enough guy, but whenever you talked to him he had this awful habit of saying your name over and over. “Hi, Beth. How are you today?” “How’s business, Beth?” “How’s that dog of yours, Beth?” It wasn’t personal; he did it to everyone, but it set my teeth on edge.

  “Who’s with him?” I asked.

  “Would you believe Viv Reilly?”

  “No!”

  Marina nodded, and when Dave stepped back to let his companion enter the pew ahead of him, I saw that she was right. “How long has her divorce been final?” I asked.

  “A week.”

  Viv and her husband had married and started a family while still very young. Two and a half decades and three beautiful adult daughters later, Viv was one of those women who delighted in strangers assuming she was a fourth sister.

  Her husband had found this amusing for a few years, but when she’d wanted him to pretend that he was her father, he’d declined to participate. From that simple beginning, exceedingly ugly divorce proceedings had commenced. Coward that I was, I’d avoided Viv for months so I didn’t have to hear about it.

  “I don’t care how good she looks,” Marina said, “she’s got to be ten years older than he is.”

  The look she slid me was so open and innocent it could only mean one thing: She was trying to start an argument. Whether she wanted to fight about Viv’s age or was trying to get me going on the double standards so common in female-male relationships, I didn’t know. More likely she was trying to distract me from her note taking. No matter what her intent was, I wasn’t going to be drawn into a verbal battle at a funeral service. I started to say so when the black-robed minister stood and put his hands on the pulpit.

  I jabbed Marina in the ribs and pointed at the memo pad. She heaved a very small sigh and tucked it into her purse.

  “We are here,” the minister said, “not to mourn the death of Sam Helmstetter, but to celebrate his life.”

  I dug into my own purse and found the one thing I always brought to funerals.

  A handkerchief.

  On the way home, Marina handed me her memo pad. “Read, O comrade, and see if anyone twangs your instincts.”

  “But I was right there,” I said. “I saw everyone you saw, and I didn’t see anyone.” Which didn’t make any sense whatsoever, but since the sentence was inspired by Marina, she understood.

  I was still a little startled by my post-funeral behavior. I’d stopped to talk to Sam’s widow, Rachel, and had nearly cried at the emptiness in her face. On impulse I’d asked if she wanted me to stop by the next day. Rachel had nodded slowly and said that would be nice. Good move, Beth, making a condolence call the day after Sam’s funeral. What were you thinking?

  “Sometimes it takes more than one look,” Marina said, as if she had decades of experience in homicide detection instead of what she did have under her belt, which was years of movie watching. “Sometimes something just clicks and—”

  My phone beeped.

  “That’s got to be the most boring ring tone in the history of cell phones,” Marina said.

  This was an old discussion and always ended with me telling her that if she wanted me to have a more interesting ring tone, she was welcome to read the instruction manual and reprogram the phone to her heart’s content.

  I dug into my purse for the phone. “Hello?” To my left, I could feel Marina rolling her eyes. “Hello?” I said again. “This is Beth.”

  “There’s a problem with Thanksgiving,” said a male voice.

  “Hey, Tim,” I said to my brother. “How are you?”

  “How am I?” The puzzlement in his voice was thick. “Reasonably well. Why do you ask?”

  Tim’s social skills hadn’t improved since he was fifteen. When asked by a girl to a Sadie Hawkins dance, he’d replied, “Why would I want to do that?” How he’d managed to date a woman long enough to get married—and stay married long enough to beget offspring—was one of life’s great mysteries. Their son, Max, was, to the disappointment of his multidegreed parents, a completely average teenager. I loved him dearly. Not that I didn’t love my brother; blood is thicker than water, or so they say. But with my lifetime knowledge of sibling behavior, Tim’s question was a good one: Why had I bothered asking him how he was? “What’s the problem with Thanksgiving?”

  “My project team,” he said, “had a procedure scheduled on Gammasphere for January. There was a cancellation and I can get in on Thanksgiving.”

  I waited. But that, apparently, was all he intended to say. No apologies, no remorse, no nothing beyond the bare-bones explanation. Typical Tim. “What about Max?”

  “Max?” He sounded surprised that the name would come up. “What about him?”

  I wanted to reach through the phone and twist my brother’s nose. “What’s he going to do for Thanksgiving?” As in, while you’re closeted away with like-minded physicists, what is your sole offspring going to do with himself?

  “That,” Tim said, “is a reasonable question.” There was a rustling sound as he covered the phone with his hand. “Max!” he called. “I’m going to be working on Thanksgiving. What do you want to do?”

  I closed my eyes and prayed for strength.

  There was muffled conversation, but I couldn’t make it out. Eventually Tim uncovered the receiver. “Max will be fine,” he said.

  “Let me talk to him.”

  “Beth—”

  I firmed up my voice. Too bad I couldn’t do that to my hips as easily. “Put him on the phone.”

  Tim sighed and called for his son.

  “Hi, Aunt Beth.”

  “Where’s your father?” I asked. No way could we have this conversation with Tim in the same room.

  “Um . . . he just made the signal. He’s going over to Mom’s.”

  The signal was a complicated series of taps on the joint wall between the two sets of living quarters. Morse code, I assumed, but had never asked. Even mild technical questions asked of Tim tended to be answered in fifty-minute lectures. He’d served as a teaching assistant while in graduate school and had never recovered.

  “Let me know when he’s gone.”

  There was a pause punctuated by the shutting of a door. “Okay, we can talk now. What’s up?”

  “Still working on that B average?” I asked.

  “Every day.”

  “That’s my boy.”

  “There’s just one thing.” Even though he was alone, his voice went quiet. “I really like my English lit class.”

  I pumped my fist in the air. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. There’s this long poem about a monster. This guy decides he’s going to kill it. He does, but the monster had a mother who’s even meaner. The guy kills the mother, too, and he ends up being the king. When he’s really old, a dragon wakes up. The guy kills the dragon, but he ends up getting killed, too. His people give him a huge funeral, though.”

  “How nice for him.” Beowulf had never been distilled so completely. CliffsNotes had nothing on my nephew.

  “Do yo
u know it?” Max asked. “Dad didn’t, but I think it’s kind of famous.”

  “It sounds familiar. Listen, Max. About Thanksgiving.”

  “Oh. Yeah.” His voice, which had been full of inflection and life when telling me about Grendel, went flat and lifeless. “He’s going to be working, so I guess we’re not coming up.”

  “What do you feel about coming up by yourself?” A good sister would have talked to her brother about the possibility before discussing it with the fifteen-year-old, but today I was being a better aunt than sibling.

  “By . . . myself?”

  “We’d have to clear it with your parents, but there is such a thing as Greyhound.”

  “Greyhound?”

  “The bus. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. Service nationwide with reclining seats, tinted windows, and an onboard restroom.” Not that I’d use one, but it was different for boys.

  “Bus?”

  “Max, stop being a parrot. I still want you to come for Thanksgiving, and there is a way to get you here.”

  “Mom’s driving to Grandma’s, you know, over in Iowa? I could probably go with her.”

  “Talk it over with your parents,” I said. “We’d love to have you.”

  “Really?”

  His teenage angst was palpable and I ached to pull him close in a great big hug. “Really.” We said good-bye and I slid the phone back into my purse. In all likelihood Max would end up going with his mother. Maybe the kids and I would take a trip to Illinois during Christmas vacation. It’d be nice to—

  “That’s two down,” Marina said.

  “Huh?”

  “Once so eloquent,” Marina said, addressing an invisible crowd, “she now resorts to the monosyllables of youth. What lies in store for our fair maiden? Her future, I fear, is bleak.”

  I could fake Shakespeare as well as anyone. I cast caution to the winds. “What, pray tell, is the topic of yon conversement?”

  “Hooray!” She clapped her hands. “Beth’s in the game!”