Foul Play at the PTA

by Laura Alden

  “Oh, come on. Your kids are great, you run that wonderful bookstore, you have a beautiful house; you even have time to be secretary of the PTA. And you make it look so easy.”

  My spoon halted halfway to my mouth. “I do?”

  “Well, sure.”

  The notion was so ludicrous that I couldn’t think of an appropriate reaction. Rachel went on, concentrating on grinding pepper onto her salad. “You have this air of competency. You always seem to know what to say and do. If you want to know the truth, I’ve always been a little jealous of you.”

  A snort snuck out of my throat. Rachel looked up in surprise. “No, I mean it. I wish I was more like you. You’re smart and funny and brave and—”

  It was the brave comment that did it. I dropped the spoon back into the bowl, threw my head back, and howled with laughter.

  Rachel started giggling; then, as I kept going, her giggle turned into an outright laugh.

  “I’m the least brave person in the world,” I said, wiping my eyes with a napkin. “At least I hope so.”

  Rachel popped a crouton into her mouth. “Last year you saved your kids from Agnes Mephisto’s killer. You’re very courageous.”

  She was making me sound like a Boy Scout. “It wasn’t like that. Honest. My children were being threatened. I just reacted. I didn’t have time to stop and think about the danger.” If I had, things might have turned out very differently, and I didn’t want to think about that, so I didn’t. “Any mother would have done the same.”

  “Maybe.” She didn’t look convinced.

  It suddenly seemed very important to make her understand. “Rachel, on the inside I’m a mess. Almost every minute of the day I’m sure I’m doing the wrong thing.”

  “You are?”

  “Even today, I wasn’t sure I was doing the right thing by coming over here. I couldn’t decide if I was coming over too soon after the funeral, or if I was coming over too late after . . . well, after. Either way, I was bound to be wrong.”

  “You really thought that?”

  “The only thing I know for certain is that I love my children.” My voice was low and husky. “I would do anything, anything, to keep them safe and sound and whole and happy.”

  Rachel’s gaze met mine. The look that passed between us was one of complete understanding and, in that moment, our relationship moved from acquaintanceship to solid friendship.

  “Amen,” she said softly.

  I wanted to reach across the table and grip her hand, but I wasn’t sure I could pull it off at all naturally. Then her fingers twitched in my direction. Hand outstretched, I leaned toward her, glad beyond belief that I hadn’t poked around in the front closet. She met me halfway and our shared grip promised support and understanding and love.

  We released at the same time and went back to slurping soup. One can maintain strong emotion for only so long.

  “The problem,” Rachel said between sips, “is how to do that. How do I keep them whole and happy? Love that phrase, by the way.”

  “Thanks.” It had popped into my head out of the blue, but I was sure the thought wasn’t original. A poem? A minister’s sermon? “I don’t know how to do it, either. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but thanks to a lot of luck and the grace of God, they seem to be okay.” The upcoming teen years, however, were lurking around a dark corner with sharp pointed teeth. I sighed.

  “Your kids are fine,” Rachel said. “Jenna is bright and pretty, and not only is Oliver the cutest little bug on the planet, but he’s very intuitive.”

  I stopped with a forkful of salad halfway to my mouth. “You think so?”

  “Didn’t Oliver tell you about the time he helped Mia get the pinecones out of her hair? Robert Laird and his bully friends snuck up on her at recess one day last year.”

  No, Oliver hadn’t told me. Intuitive he might be, but communicative? Not so much. I sent up an extra-special thank-you that Robert, once one of Oliver’s special friends, had moved away. Hopefully far, far away.

  I didn’t want to say that I couldn’t begin to guess at the virtues of her children, so I cheated. “I think Jenna has a crush on Blake.”

  She smiled. “He says girls are gross, but I overheard him talking with his dad and—” She stopped, tucked her lips between her teeth, and concentrated on stirring her soup.

  I let the wave of grief break over her and pass through. Then I said, “Isn’t it funny how we have them paired off already?”

  She swallowed and nodded. “And how we picked careers for them when they were still in diapers. Sam . . .” Her voice caught and she started again. “One of Sam’s hopes when he started his company was to pass it on to one of the kids. I kept telling him that they might want nothing to do with a mobile shredding business, but he’d laugh and say it didn’t matter, that the only thing that mattered was teaching them how to juggle.”

  “How to . . . ?”

  “Juggle.” She smiled again. “It was how we met. Long story.” Her smile faded. “Now here I am with his children and not the foggiest idea what to do. What do you think?”

  “Um . . .” If she was asking my advice, clearly I hadn’t impressed upon her the depths of my incompetence. I should have told her about the steak knife incident. Or better yet, the story of Beth and the Blender. If neither of those convinced her, surely the state of my closet floor would do the job. No one with so many unmatched shoes could possibly be considered a rational human being. Why I had a dozen solo shoes was one question; another was why I didn’t get rid of them.

  She put her elbows on the table and laid her arms flat. It was the first time she’d looked truly engaged in our conversation, and my mouth got a little dry around the edges in anticipation of what was coming next. On the way over I hadn’t prepared for anything more than comforting the bereaved. I hoped she hadn’t been serious about wanting my opinion on the path her life should take. My own path was more a series of deer trails wandering through the woods, circling back on themselves every so often, coming to dead ends even more often, and never going anywhere.

  “For the last few months,” she said, “ever since their secretary went part-time, I’ve been doing the bookkeeping for Sam and his partner.”

  I hadn’t known Sam had a partner. I wondered who it was, but Rachel was still talking and I didn’t want to interrupt.

  “At first I wasn’t sure I could do the work, but the guys were really patient with me, and it wasn’t as hard as I thought.” She studied her left hand, wiggling her fourth finger, watching the sparkle of the diamond in her engagement ring. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet. “Do you think I can do it?”

  Do what? I wanted to ask.

  “Last night I hardly slept at all,” she said. “I went from being sure I could do it to being sure I’d have to sell the house and we’d have to move in with my parents and the children would turn against me and hate me forever.”

  That was a sleep pattern I knew intimately. It wasn’t the kids who tired me out so much as the worry that constantly plagued me. My ex-husband had never understood, but every mother to whom I’d confessed did.

  She looked up. “Silly, isn’t it? You’ve probably never had a night like that. I know you said you’re not brave, but you’re so nice I bet you said that just to make me feel better.”

  As if. I smiled and started to deny everything, but Rachel kept going.

  “This morning I decided that even if Sam was gone, our marriage vows aren’t. I owe it to us, to our family, to try.”

  Her words were full of bravado, but the expression on her face spoke of fear and a shaky stomach.

  I only wished I knew what she was talking about. There was, however, only one proper course of action. Mom action. “You can do anything,” I said. “You’re young and strong and smart and fearless in your determination to do what’s best for your children. There’s no wall tall enough to keep you from achieving your goals.” Whatever they might be.

  Rachel puffed out her cheeks and blew a sigh
of relief so big it fluffed her bangs back off her face. “You think so?” The soft question made her sound only slightly older than her daughter.

  “Look at all you’ve done so far.” I waved my arms, indicating the homey kitchen, the living room, and the pile of financial printouts littering the small desk in the corner. “You’ve created a beautiful home, taught yourself a new career, and in your spare time raised two well-behaved children who, I’ve been told, can walk and talk and chew gum at the same time. If that doesn’t qualify you for king of the world, I don’t know what does.”

  She didn’t laugh, but she did smile. “Thanks, Beth. You’ve been a big help. I couldn’t have made this decision without you.”

  I hated it when people said things like that. It made me feel that I should do all I could to make the decision the right one. Which ended up with me making offers that ranged from babysitting infant triplets to helping a friend move in a January blizzard.

  “Let me know,” I said, “if I can do anything to help.”

  The referee dropped the puck and two hockey sticks darted out. “Go, Raiders!” I yelled, clapping my mittened hands together. Jenna’s hockey team was on home ice here in the Agnes Mephisto Memorial Ice Arena, and they had a good chance to win this afternoon’s game.

  I sat down next to Marina. “Did you know Sam had a business partner?” I asked.

  Marina huddled inside her capacious wool coat. “ ‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be; / For loan oft loses both itself and friend, / And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.’ ”

  Well, well, well. “That’s a direct quote.”

  Marina tossed up her chin. “Thou dost soundest surprised. Methinks you underestimate this . . . this sprite.”

  Sprite? Marina was many things, but elflike was not one of them. Not unless elves came in tallish, widish, red-haired versions whose use of an indoor voice was limited to whispers about feminine hygiene products.

  “Just going with precedent,” I said. “Never once have I heard you quote Shakespeare correctly.” Not that I was the best judge—English lit had been a long time ago—but even I could tell when iambic pentameter was being beaten with a stick.

  Her chin dropped. “Not even once?”

  “Well, you get the ‘To be or not to be’ part right, but after that . . .” I shrugged.

  She looked at me with narrowed eyes. “You’re not going to bring up the York thing again, are you?”

  Only Marina could turn “Alas, poor Yorick” into “Alan’s poor York.” “Would I do a thing like that?”

  “In a New Yorick minute,” she said.

  “Pretty funny, aren’t you?”

  “Why, yes, I am.” Her proud look made me laugh. “The DH and I are paying huge smacking sums for the second youngest child to learn five-hundred-year-old plays at the collegiate level, so I figured I might as well learn, too. Double instruction for the dollar.” She grinned. “I’m driving the kid nuts.”

  “Good for you. So I take it you knew Sam had a partner?”

  “Sam’s partner is—oh, dear, I thought this was a nohitting league—Brian Keller.”

  “No checking,” I corrected. “Hitting is always illegal. Checking is different.” Much different, but no matter how many times I explained the rules of hockey to Marina, they never seemed to sink into the long-term-memory part of her brain. Lately, however, I had suspicions that she understood much more about hockey than she was letting on. One of these days I’d catch her, and it’d be all over.

  “So you say. You also say they wear sweaters, and if those are sweaters”—she pointed at the ice—“I’m a raven-haired string bean.”

  We could have entered into a debate regarding the merits of using outdated terms of reference—if she was going to make fun of the term “sweaters,” I would ask her about the last time she physically dialed a telephone number—but there were more important topics on the agenda. “Who’s Brian Keller?” I asked, then stood up and whistled loud enough to send an echo around the cavernous building. “Nice save, Jenna!”

  “It was?” Marina’s forehead was creased with puzzlement. “But she fell down.”

  My daughter had, in fact, thrown herself onto the ice, arms outstretched, in a last-ditch effort to keep the puck from sliding into the outside corner. “Quit that,” I said. “Who’s Brian Keller?”

  “He was a friend of Sam’s in college,” Marina said. “Grew up in suburban Milwaukee, played baseball from infancy through high school, went to the University of Wisconsin to major in art history of all things.”

  My spine stiffened in preparation for the defense of all liberal arts degrees. “There’s nothing wrong with majoring in art history.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with declaring your major to be communications, but is it really going to help you get a job? I think not. Sam and Brian connected during a Western civ class—required, in case you wanted to know—and stayed in contact over the years. When they became disenchanted with their wage-slave jobs, they put their heads together and came up with the brilliant idea of selling cheese to the Chinese.

  “Selling—”

  Marina kept going. “Luckily for their net worth, their wives put the kibosh on that idea. Behind every successful man there is a woman who could say, ‘I told you so.’ Though if I remember correctly”—she tapped her cheek with an index finger covered in purple mitten—“Brian and his wife are divorcing. No children.”

  I looked at her in admiration. “How do you know all that?”

  She picked a piece of invisible lint off her sleeve and dropped it onto the cold cement floor. “Some call it gossip, I call it information gathering.”

  “What else do you know?”

  Her breezy manner fell away and her mouth twisted as she watched the players skate from left to right and back again. “That Sam was the nicest guy ever. That no one can dream up a real reason why he was killed. That without Sam, Rachel and the kids are going to have a tough time.”

  All true and very sad, but none of it was useful for finding a killer, saving my bookstore, or restoring order to the city of Rynwood.

  “Anything else?”

  “Why, yes, indeed, my sweetie.”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve figured out how to end static cling.”

  She shook her head. “I’ve decided to let the next generation tackle that. It’ll be good for them.”

  “Well, what is it?”

  “I know who killed Sam.”

  Even though I was used to Marina’s dubiously authoritative pronouncements, this one startled me. “Forty-five seconds ago you had no clue to the killer’s identity. Now you know?”

  “You didn’t see the announcement flashing in big red lights on the scoreboard?”

  It was my own fault; I knew better, but I glanced over at the scoreboard and saw only the score. Home 2, Visitors 1.

  Marina cackled. “Caught you!”

  I closed my eyes. Why did I do things like that?

  “But in answer to your question, my razor-sharp intelligence homed in on the murderer’s identity just as your dainty daughter whacked the puck clear to the other end of the ice. Brian Keller is the killer.”

  Sure he was. “And what’s the rationale for this theory, other than the fact that it’s fun to say.”

  She was repeating the phrase in a singsong fashion, tipping her head from side to side with the beat. “Keller is the killer, Keller is the killer. Rationale? I need no rationale. My instincts are keen and sure.”

  “Then how do you explain your former instincts about Dave Patterson being in love with me?”

  She waved away the comment.

  I grinned. Marina had a talent for ignoring what she didn’t want to see. It was one of the many things about her that I loved. In contrast, the combination of nature and nurture that had created my personality forced me to look for the worst-case scenario in every situation. From late-running school buses on field trips to a child’s wail after a loud thumping noise, my thoughts jumped stra
ight to ambulances and emergency rooms and the fastest way to notify Richard.

  “Dave Patterson was in deep like with you,” Marina said, “but since you spurned his advances, he had to settle for second best.”

  I started objecting to the “spurned” comment, but a forward on the visiting team broke away from the defenseman and scooted up the ice toward Jenna. I jumped to my feet, shouting, my voice mingling with other parental calls. “Go, Jenna! Stop it! Stop it!”

  The skater wound up and whacked the puck straight toward the goal. It skittered and danced on its way to my daughter. My breath caught, for a bouncing puck is one of the hardest to block. Jenna lunged, right leg extended, wide goalie stick on the ice, doing her bighearted best to keep the puck out of the goal.

  Marina was screaming in my ear. “Block that punt! Block that punt!”

  All looked good for the home team until the other player’s shot took a bounce and headed for a spot Jenna couldn’t possibly reach, high and far to her right. There was no way for her to correct, no time for her to move, no chance for—

  Tink!

  They didn’t call the posts a goalie’s best friend for nothing. With sighs of relief or disappointment, depending on which team you supported, the crowd sat back down in a semi-coordinated way.

  “Brian Keller has a motive,” Marina said.

  “He does?”

  “Partners always have motives.” She made it a statement of fact, and, after thinking about it, I realized she was probably right. Marriage partners have motives, such as love, jealousy, and money. Were business partners—except for the love part—any different?

  “So now what?” I asked. “And before you ask, I am not—repeat, not—calling the sheriff’s department and telling Deputy Wheeler your theory.”

  “Not to worry, dearest of all friends. I am sure our fine law enforcement officials and I are as one on this issue.” She held up her mittened hand, and I assumed she was holding her index finger and middle finger together as a single unit. “There is only one thing they need.”

  Ah. I knew there was a catch. “What’s that?”

  “Proof! Proof that will stand up in a court of law.” She leaned close. “And I know just how to get it.”