Murder at the PTA Luncheon

by Valerie Wolzien

  “Of course, sir. We think that too at the Inn. It’s just that the Vooses and the Henshaws, being such old friends and all …”

  “Don’t misunderstand me, Chan.” Brett squinted to read the man’s name tag. “I’m not criticizing. Not at all. Ah, the Vooses are leaving now. I think it’s time we pay our respects, Kathleen. Do you mind bringing us two more cups of coffee—at the Henshaws’ table this time?”

  “Of course not, sir.” The man rushed off to bring two clean cups and Brett and Kathleen got up and headed over to Susan and her husband.

  “I thought you didn’t want to be seen with Susan this evening,” Kathleen hissed.

  “I’ve changed my mind. Susan may be safer with a visible bodyguard.”

  “With a what?” Susan asked, hearing the last word. “Oh, are you joining us?” she continued, as the two police people pulled chairs out from the table.

  “It looks like it,” Jed commented dryly.

  “We think you might need—”

  “We were curious about what the Vooses wanted to talk about,” Brett interrupted Kathleen.

  “They just …” Susan started when Chan returned with the coffee Brett requested.

  “I hope this is all right, sir?” he asked of Brett, but managed to include Jed in the question.

  “Just fine,” Brett said. Jed just smiled.

  After fluffing out the flowers and checking to see if the ashtray had been touched, he left them alone again. “You were saying?” Brett asked Susan as soon as the man had departed.

  “They just stopped by to say hello,” Susan said.

  “Hello?” Kathleen repeated.

  “You know, ‘Hello, how are you? What a surprise to see you here,’ that type of thing,” Jed said, a little angry that he and his wife couldn’t have this time alone together.

  “They really said that?” Brett persisted.

  “They really said what?”

  “They really said something about it being a surprise to see you?”

  “Yes, they did,” Susan answered. “Although, of course, it really isn’t. All of Hancock eats here.”

  “But the point is that the Vooses called before coming to find out if you were here, so they shouldn’t have been the least surprised to run into you,” Kathleen said.

  “What?” Jed leaned on the table, nearly upsetting his wife’s wine. “Oh, shit!” He grabbed the glass. “What did you say?”

  “I said that the Vooses didn’t just happen to find you here. They came here to find you,” Kathleen repeated.

  “How do you know that?”

  “We know, so if they actually said that they were surprised to see you—”

  “They did,” Jed stated emphatically. “They did,” he repeated to himself. “So what does all this mean?”

  “It means that they wanted to find you for some reason. Did they say anything that might give you some hint as to why?”

  “Let me think. Can you think of anything, Sue?”

  “No,” Susan answered slowly. “They really acted like it was just a casual greeting. You know, two couples running into each other by chance and the one stopping to say hello to the other. It really didn’t seem to be much more than that. Although …”

  “Although?” Kathleen prompted.

  “Although Charline seemed nervous. I thought so at the time. In fact, she seemed very nervous. And, you know, they made a big deal about running into us and we’re really not very good friends. In fact, I’ve always felt that Charline looked down on me as being not quite in her class.”

  “Now wait. Let’s take this one thing at a time,” Brett came back into the conversation. “First they lied to you about the meeting being by chance, and then they acted more friendly than usual. How much more friendly?”

  “Well, now that I think about it, much more,” Susan answered. “They would usually just wave or say hello to us and then go to their table— Should we be seen together like this?” she asked, interrupting herself.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Brett answered, not telling her that he was making his presence known quite intentionally. “Go on,” he urged.

  “Well, they really were much more friendly than usual. I can’t remember them stopping by the table like that before. I don’t know why I didn’t think about it at the time.”

  “And Charline seemed uncomfortable, you said?”

  “Nervous. She just rambled on and on about how we must get together more often and see more of each other. Were we going out on the Island this year?—that type of thing. Social chitchat, but not at all like her. Charline is usually quite businesslike and to the point.”

  “You know, the same is true of her husband,” Jed added. “We meet around the kids’ school and at some of the club functions, but I don’t think he could possibly consider me his friend. I don’t think of him as mine. And he was acting like we were old war buddies or something. You don’t think that this has anything to do with Susan’s hit on the head tonight, do you? You don’t think that Lars Voos was the one who—”

  “I don’t think anything at this point. And you better not either,” Brett interrupted, trying to calm the other man, who was getting furious at the thought that he might just have been with the person who hurt his wife. “What we do know is that the Vooses wanted to see you here and we still don’t know the reason.”

  “Well, I can’t think of anything they said to let us know why either. It was just like Susan said. Social chitchat.”

  “Did they ask you any questions?”

  “Besides whether we were going to the Island this summer—they have a house in Montauk—nothing. Oh, and they wanted to know how Susan was feeling …”

  “Just Susan?”

  “Just Susan,” Jed answered. “Just like they might know that there was a reason she might not feel very well,” he added. “They must have something to do with this. I’ll bet Lars Voos was the one that hit her on the head. He’s the murderer.” Jed rose from his chair and was grabbed by all three of his tablemates, Susan managing at last to spill the glass of wine that she had left untouched all evening.

  “Look.” Brett grabbed Jed by the arm and held him still. “This is not the time or place to make a stink. Understand? We’ll take care of it, and I can assure you, if Lars Voos is in any way involved in this thing, if he did anything to hurt your wife, we will find out about it and see to it that he gets what he deserves. But you have to let us do this. Stay out of it.” This last order was whispered as a battalion of waiters and busboys rallied around to clean up the spilled liquid.

  “Tell your husband you’re not feeling well and let’s get out of here,” Kathleen whispered to Susan.

  Susan did as she was told and the four of them, bills paid, good-byes said, were out of the Inn in record time.

  “Quick thinking,” Brett complimented Kathleen as they had a private conference by the police car in the lot, Jed and Susan having gone off to find their Mercedes.

  “You think Lars is our murderer?” she asked.

  “No, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that he did hit Susan on the head this afternoon.”

  “And you think he came to the Inn to kill her?”

  “No, but I’ll be damned if I do know why he came. Maybe he wanted to know if he had hurt her. Or, more likely, to see if she recognized him. That would account for Charline’s nervousness. Whatever the reason, my intuition tells me that Lars hit Susan on the head this afternoon. Of course, if that’s true, it’s a relief.”

  “A relief?”

  “Because I don’t think he’ll try again. I think it was a spur-of-the-moment type of thing. He was trying to protect himself from something and lashed out. But he won’t do it again. It’s time to get busy looking into his business. You go home with Susan and keep an eye on her. I may be all wrong about this and there may be dozens of men trying to murder her in the night. I’ve got some checking up to do.”

  “Do you want me to meet you someplace tomorrow morning, or
will you come to the Henshaws’?”

  “I’ll be over first thing. We can talk then.” A beige Mercedes pulled up beside them. “Well, here’s your ride.”

  Kathleen got in, and watching them drive off, Brett got the distinct feeling that he had wanted to kiss her good-night.

  You have work to do, he reminded himself, as he returned to his motel room and its overworked phone.

  Kathleen was looking around the well-decorated guest room a few minutes later and thinking along similar lines. The drive from the Inn had been uneventful; most of the talk had centered around Jed’s worries about his wife’s safety and Kathleen’s assurances of the police protection. Riding into the driveway of the house, she had spied two separate policemen stationed within view of the front door. The Henshaws had appeared unaware of their presence. As she was led to the second-floor guest room, Kathleen had gotten a pretty good idea of the upstairs layout. Of course, if Brett’s instincts were right, Susan didn’t need protection. But she would do her job nevertheless. Now, alone in the room she was to sleep in, she found herself wishing for a phone.

  Of course the reason she wanted to talk to Brett was purely professional, she assured herself, thinking, at the same time, that the phrase “purely professional” sounded phony. It was just that the case was her major concern and with whom else was she to talk it over? Brett was a professional and would understand the way she thought. She just had more in common with him than with the suburbanites around here.

  Susan had lent her a nightgown and she stopped in the midst of removing her clothes and looked at it. Pink, of course, and high-necked, and, naturally, not transparent. Suburbanites, she thought with disgust, wondering if they had sex for any other reason than to fill their schools and give the women a hobby running for PTA offices, and, in this case, murdering other people. She put on the virginal clothing and sat down on the bed to rummage in her large purse. She kept a small leather pouch of emergency supplies there; they usually came in handy for sitting in sleazy hotel rooms during all-night stakeouts, not in this type of luxury setting. She found the turquoise pouch and dumped it onto the white bedspread. Toothbrush, toothpaste, skin lotion, nail file, diaphragm …

  There was a knock at the door. “Kathleen, may I come in?”

  Kathleen was tired and had to resist answering “It’s your house.” She rushed over to the door and opened it for her hostess.

  “I just wanted to see if there’s anything you need. I didn’t even think of a toothbrush or anything like that before …” She stopped, seeing the small pile in the center of the bed. “It looks like you have everything you might need.”

  Kathleen self-consciously picked up a small bottle of nail varnish and the diaphragm and put them back into the pouch and out of sight. “Yes, I’ve learned to be prepared in this business,” she answered, looking at Susan’s very silky, very expensive, very revealing negligee, then glancing at the Mother Hubbard that had been lent to her.

  Now it was Susan’s turn to feel self-conscious. She glanced at the peachy gown she was wearing, almost embarrassed. “I gave you that one because I thought it was more likely to fit you. You’re … taller, and, well, more filled out than I am … and I thought everything I wear would be binding on you. My mother-in-law sent that for Christmas last year,” she finished apologetically. “You know, it really is so very typical of what a mother-in-law would get you that it makes me laugh.” And she did just that.

  Kathleen found herself joining in. “Come to think of it, it looks a lot like one my mother-in-law sent me the first Christmas Peter and I were married. Only, that one was yellow and it made anyone anywhere near it look jaundiced.” She laughed more.

  “I didn’t know you were married,” Susan commented when she had her breath back.

  “I’m not. Not anymore.” Kathleen sobered up quickly. “My husband’s dead.” As usual, she was surprised how easy it was to say. My husband’s dead, she repeated in her mind. Three, no, four words that anyone could repeat in polite conversation. And no one could or would guess the razor’s edge of anguish that she felt each time she had to confront the truth: Peter was dead and she would never see him again.

  There was an unusual silence; Susan had not rushed in to say the polite, soothing things. Kathleen was surprised. And because she was surprised, she explained more than usual. “He was a cop, too. In fact, I met him on my first assignment out of the Academy. We fell in love right away, and were married two months later. He died almost three years ago.”

  “How?”

  Kathleen was surprised. Only the most insensitive people usually jumped right in with questions like that, and Susan hadn’t struck her that way. She looked into the other woman’s face and saw compassion and, she thought, understanding. She took a deep breath. “He was killed in an automobile accident on the way home from work one night.”

  Susan still didn’t say anything, still waited for the rest of the story.

  “He was drunk,” Kathleen continued, surprising herself. “He was drunk and he hit a slippery patch of road and wrapped his car around a phone pole.” She took a deep breath.

  “He was an alcoholic. I knew that when I married him. I could say that I was young and thought that love would cure him, but I didn’t think that far. I loved him. I loved his honesty, his integrity, his dedication to his work. He never drank on the job. He was a good cop. But when things got too much for him, when he saw the terrible things people do to each other—and cops are exposed to that part of the world more often than most people—then, when he couldn’t take it anymore, he drank to forget. Usually he drank at home. This time he had been out on a case, a murder case involving a little girl. He had to forget, to escape the ugliness right away. So he went to a bar about halfway between the station and our house. Except that he never completed the second half of the trip.”

  Susan didn’t say anything right away; instead, she reached out and covered the other woman’s hand with her own.

  Kathleen looked up and smiled at the gesture. “I feel you understand, but you couldn’t,” she said.

  “Why not?” Susan said. “Your husband saw what was happening in the world and he tried to help and sometimes it got to be too much for him and he had to escape. At least he didn’t turn his back on the people who needed help. He did what he could. I think that’s wonderful. No wonder you loved him.”

  “But if only he had cared less about them and more about me. If only he had taken better care of himself for me,” Kathleen cried out, starting to cry, horrified at her own words.

  Susan tightened her grip on Kathleen’s hand, but didn’t say anything. She thought that Kathleen knew that an alcoholic wasn’t in control of his own life, and she knew that Kathleen understood the terrible things that a policeman had to learn to live with. She let the other woman cry it out.

  Kathleen did just that and then, with her customary determination, she pulled herself together. “I’m involved with another man now—engaged, in fact—but I still miss Peter,” she said, not apologizing for her behavior.

  “Of course you do. I would always miss Jed if anything happened to him. I know how you feel.”

  Kathleen, who had spent a lot of time in the past few days looking down on this woman, thought she did indeed know how she felt. “I think I’d better apologize,” she said.

  “For crying?”

  “For thinking that you were a typical suburban housewife.”

  Susan laughed a bit bitterly. “There is no such thing as a typical suburban housewife anymore. I sometimes doubt if there ever was … say, do you want a nightcap?”

  Kathleen, still sniffling, nodded yes.

  “Let’s go downstairs and get some brandy or Scotch or something.”

  Once settled on the couch with a drink in her hand, Kathleen felt better. Susan got herself a drink and looked through the shutters out the window. “Your men are still there,” she commented, going over to the fireplace.

  “You knew they were there!” Kathleen was
surprised again.

  “While it’s true that people do walk their dogs at night in Hancock, rarely do two men walk two ominous German shepherds in circles in front of a house for hours on end. Shelties, maybe, or huskies, or spaniels seem to be getting more popular I’ve noticed. But not German shepherds. The only person I know with a German shepherd is Carol Mann—come to think of it, one of those dogs out there is probably it. Adolph, I think it’s called. I always thought it was rather a bad joke.”

  She stooped down and turned a switch near the andirons. Flames shot up through the logs which, Kathleen had just noticed, were artificial. Susan smiled at Kathleen’s surprise. “Pretty tacky, I know. The people who lived in this house before us had it put in. We have a real fireplace in the den, but we’ve never gotten around to having this replaced. I guess we don’t mind it. And it is convenient. It doesn’t give off much heat, but it’s nice to have on a night like this. Cheerful.”

  “I can see why you keep it,” Kathleen said, sipping her drink and then setting down the half-empty glass. Without asking, Susan picked up the bottle of Courvoisier and refilled it.

  “I think I have all the protection I need right outside that window,” she said, when Kathleen started to protest. “And you’ve had a hard day.”

  “You don’t seem very worried about your life,” Kathleen commented, deciding not to make a fuss about the drink. Besides, it looked good.

  “I think Lars Voos tried to kill me today—that is, if anyone tried. But I think that he is the person who hit me on the head. And he’s probably decided that it’s not a good idea,” she finished.

  “That’s what Brett thinks,” Kathleen blurted out, instantly regretting it.

  “Then I’d better tell him about the aftershave or cologne or whatever. It’s just like in a book or on TV, isn’t it?”

  “What is?”

  “How I recognized Lars. His cologne. I smelled it when he hit me over the head tonight. In fact, that’s all I remember thinking about the person who hit me. That he smelled good. He hit me before I could realize that there wasn’t supposed to be anyone in the room but me.”