Foul Play at the PTA

by Laura Alden

  “You do?”

  “Ah do, dah-ling,” she said, sliding into Southern belle mode. “Y’all just leave it to me and mah blog.”

  “You mean—”

  “Why, yes, ah do.” She batted her eyelashes. “WisconSINs will rise again.”

  It sounded like a bad prophecy, and I was getting ready to say so, when the end-of-game buzzer went off. Making fun of Marina could wait; taking photos of Jenna and her team couldn’t. Mom priorities won, every time.

  That night, I gathered up the kids and met Evan at Sabatini’s Pizza. Though I hadn’t felt overly hungry, the pungent mixture of garlic, oregano, and basil made me forget the popcorn I’d eaten at the hockey game. And the nachos. And the hot dog.

  As Evan let me slide into our side of the booth first, the kids had a swift scuffle over who got the spot next to the window. From that alone I got the feeling the evening was headed straight downhill. Moms can tell this kind of thing. Don’t ask us how we know, we just do. One hundred percent accuracy, money-back guarantee.

  A perky teenaged waitress delivered menus and red plastic glasses of ice water. “Here you go. I’ll be right back for your order.”

  I saw Jenna playing with her straw. “Jenna,” I said quietly. She looked at me, all innocence, and we had a short but silent meeting of the minds over whether she should blow her straw paper at her brother. Luckily, she saw the wisdom of tidying the paper up into a tiny ball.

  Taking her cue, Oliver did the same, and I whisked the papers away to the adult side of the table before any escalation could begin.

  My offspring started to read their menus, and I tried to read their faces. Okay, maybe I was wrong about the evening heading south. Maybe that one hundred percent accuracy was only ninety-nine—

  Oliver peeked over the top of his menu, his gaze locked on Evan. “Are you going to marry our mom?”

  I gave a small squeak.

  Evan, bless him, did not glance my way. Instead he sat quiet and looked Oliver straight on. “I don’t know.”

  Jenna leaned forward, leading with her chin. “Do you want to marry her?”

  My face instantly turned a hundred shades of cringing crimson. “Jenna! You can’t—”

  “It’s all right.” Evan still wasn’t looking at me. “Your mother and I are very good friends, and friendship is what a good marriage is based on. But marriage is a very serious commitment and it can take a lot of time to know if it’s the right thing to do.”

  “Are you going to be our dad?” Oliver’s chin trembled.

  I longed to pull him into my arms and hold him tight, but he wouldn’t want me to do that in public. Besides, the booth seating made logistics difficult.

  “You only have one dad,” Evan said. “I will never try to replace him.”

  Now it was Evan who I wanted in my arms.

  “If you’re not going to be our dad, then what are you?” Oliver asked.

  There was a beat of silence.

  Two beats.

  Was it possible? It seemed that Evan didn’t know what to say. I never thought I’d witness such an event. Only why did it have to happen at the expense of my son? I opened my mouth to say something—anything—but Evan beat me to it.

  “I’m your friend, Oliver.”

  “Oh.” Oliver’s face was serious. “I guess that’s okay.”

  Evan nodded. “Jenna, I’ll be your friend, too. If that’s all right.”

  She fussed with her wristwatch. “I suppose.”

  Evan glanced at me. I smiled and took his hand. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was the love of an eleven-year-old. “Let’s order, shall we?”

  That night, after I’d put the kids to bed and started a load of laundry, I fired up the computer. I launched my browser and navigated to WisconSINs, Marina’s on-again, off-again blog. “Well, would you look at that?” I said to George. Though the black cat didn’t move from his nest on the bookshelf, I was sure he was interested.

  Sometime in the last few months—months in which I’d never once looked at the blog—Marina had revamped the look of the site. A new right sidebar had pictures of Rynwood and links to old posts. The left sidebar had links to local events and businesses, and there was the Children’s Bookshelf, right at the top.

  Classic Marina. Just when you were ready to yell at her for having less sense than a teenager on her first road trip, she did something wonderful. All the irritation that had been rising in me since she’d whipped out her notepad at Sam’s funeral died as if it had never been.

  Smiling, I shook my head and began reading her latest post. Title: “I’m Baaaack!”

  “Greetings, Rynwood-ites! My long sabbatical is over and it’s time for us to get to work. The task at hand is a sad one, yet necessary for the sake of peace, quiet, and tranquillity in our fair city. How much do you love Rynwood? We could count the ways, but today our time will be better spent in helping the police track down the person who stole away Sam Helmstetter’s life.”

  This time she’d done it right. Last year the blog had pointed fingers at various people until one of them had retaliated. Not the smartest way to catch a killer. I was relieved to see her take a reasonable approach. She ended the post with a plea for anyone who might have any inkling about anyone who wished Sam harm to contact the police.

  All well and good, but it was a passive game, posting and waiting, posting and waiting. Meanwhile, sales at the store were dropping, Yvonne was feeling wretched, and Richard’s severance package wasn’t going to last forever.

  Maybe Marina’s efforts would yield results, and maybe they wouldn’t. Time alone would tell.

  I turned off the computer and sat, staring at the dark screen. Time would tell a lot of things. It would take time to find out if I’d done a good job as a mother. It would take time to figure out if Evan and I had a future together. Given time, Richard would find a job. In time, we’d know who killed Sam.

  All that waiting. I made a face and saw the resulting unattractiveness in the reflection of the screen.

  “Only one way to fix that,” I told myself.

  Then I headed up to bed. The cure would start tomorrow.

  Chapter 9

  “Déjà vu all over again.” Gus looked at me across the top of his battered desk. The piles of papers were, I was pretty sure, different than the piles I’d seen last year, but one stack of manila folders looks much like any other. Gus had never been good at cleaning out his church choir folder, so why would he be any better at cleaning his desk?

  “So I suppose Marina has you poking around into Sam’s death?”

  I jerked my head up so fast I was bound to have a stiff neck the next day. “What makes you say that?”

  Gus laughed. “I’ve known you for almost twenty years, I’ve known Marina for nearly thirty, and I remember what happened last fall. I’m no genius, but even a small-town cop can figure out a three-syllable word like ‘precedent.’ ”

  “Um . . .”

  “Don’t worry.” His shoes went up on the edge of the desk and he put his hands behind his head. It was all designed to put the person in this seat at ease, but I’d learned a little bit about precedent, too. This was the position Gus took when he wanted to be friendly, disarming, and so confide-able that you’d willingly confess all your sins, including the one time you took a Popsicle from your grandmother’s freezer without asking.

  “I’m not going to scold you,” Gus said. “Homicides are investigated by the county detectives. Deputy Wheeler is in charge.”

  It was just like the last time we’d had a murder in Rynwood. Local law enforcement was out of the investigative picture, and also like last time, I didn’t have the least desire to talk to Deputy Wheeler directly. The woman reduced me to speechlessness, and if I could pass on any substantial information to my friend Gus instead, well, what was wrong with that?

  “If I find out anything,” I said, “it’s okay to tell you, right?”

  He moved his size twelves to the right—the better to
see me with—and half smiled. “What’s the matter, you too scared to talk to the big-city cop?”

  “Yes.”

  He laughed. “You’re not the only one. She scares the bejesus out of me, too.”

  As if. I smiled and decided to play along with the fiction that Gus could be scared of anyone. “It’s that look she has,” I said. “Like she knows I’ve done something wrong and it’s only a matter of time before she figures out what it is.”

  Gus nodded. “We were talking about how criminals start small, and I almost told her about the time I stole my brother’s favorite comic book.”

  I laughed, but Gus didn’t laugh back. Maybe he was a little scared of Deputy Wheeler. I looked at him with knowledge gathered from thousands of mutually attended choir rehearsals, hundreds of Sunday services, dozens of funerals, and nearly twenty Christmas Eve services. When you sit in front of someone for that many hours, you can learn a lot. I knew Gus gnashed his teeth at the oh-so-common mispronunciation of “February,” that he liked Billie Holiday, and loved the music of John Rutter. I’d also heard him weep during Maundy Thursday services and laugh with joy on Easter mornings. No, Gus wasn’t scared of Deputy Wheeler. He just didn’t like her.

  “So what theory is Marina working on now?” Gus asked. “Let me guess. Organized crime is moving into the document-shredding business and Sam wouldn’t pay the protection fee. No, wait. Aliens are trying to take over Earth, and they’ve decided the best way is to eliminate the nicest people first.”

  I sighed. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? Sam was too nice to have any enemies.”

  “He had one.”

  “Marina thinks Brian Keller did it,” I said.

  Gus laughed so hard his feet slid off the desk. “Leave it to Marina,” he said through spasms that looked painful. “The one guy in the world with a perfect alibi and she targets him as the killer.”

  I could make fun of Marina’s theories, but Gus didn’t have the same rights I did. “What perfect alibi?”

  “Keller was on television the night of Sam’s murder.” He wiped tears out of the corners of his eyes. “National television.”

  “You mean live?”

  “He was at the hockey game that night. Minnesota Wild played the Red Wings. He had great seats right at center ice, just above the glass, and got caught upside the head with a puck.” Gus slapped his temple with the heel of his hand. “He says he turned to look at a hot blonde and whammo! He was out cold for a couple minutes. It was all over the TV. The EMTs rolled him out to an ambulance and he ended up staying at the hospital overnight. Got twenty stitches to boot.” Gus fingered stitches he didn’t have. “Two days later he got served with divorce papers. His imminent ex says she was filing anyway, but the timing makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” He chuckled. “I can’t believe Marina hadn’t heard about this.”

  I couldn’t either, and my fingers itched to pull out my cell phone. “She’s been . . . busy.”

  “Losing her touch, more like. Say, is she still doing that blog?” He sounded amused, which irritated me no end.

  “Yes, she’s still doing the blog.” I rose. “See you on Sunday.”

  Though it left something to be desired as an exit line, at least I’d said something. But when I reached the door, Gus called me back. “Hey, Beth?”

  I turned, one hand on the knob.

  “If I tell you to leave this well enough alone, will you listen?”

  A number of thoughts rambled around in my head. That he was probably right and I shouldn’t interfere in what was essentially police business. That if Marina and I had left well enough alone last year, a murderer might still be on the loose. That if Sam’s murder wasn’t solved, Yvonne would become a pariah. But my primary thought was that I didn’t like being told what to do.

  “Will I listen?” I smiled. “What do you think?” And I left before he could get in another word.

  “He what?”

  Marina’s voice screeched into my ear canal, making the hammer pound, the anvil bang, and the stirrup swing. Wincing, I pulled my cell phone off the side of my head, but it was too little too late; my ear was ringing with the echo of her disbelief. “Brian Keller can’t possibly have killed Sam,” I said. “He was on TV.” I explained the incident, but Marina, who usually saw the funny side of everything, even when there wasn’t a funny side, didn’t laugh.

  “There has to be a way,” she muttered.

  “Not unless you believe in time travel.” Which I knew full well she thought was impossible. “If humans could travel in time,” she said on a monthly basis, “someone would have gone back by now and made sure Philo Farnsworth stayed on the farm instead of inventing that idiot box we call a television.”

  Now she said, “Maybe Brian has a twin.”

  “And maybe you need to get a new theory.” I told her I’d bring pizza to her house after work. We’d pack goody bags for Saturday’s dance and be done with the job in no time.

  I slid the phone back into my purse as I walked into the bookstore. Lois was sitting on the counter, leaning back on her hands, kicking the heels of her Earth shoes against the wood paneling. The first time she’d worn the shoes, I’d asked what else she had in the box labeled “1970.” She’d huffed and said these were brand-new, thank you very much, and clearly I didn’t know a thing about fashion trends.

  True. But I did know ugly when I saw it. Luckily, the thought stayed in my head.

  Lois started whistling. I cocked my head, listening. “ ‘I’ve Been Working on the Railroad,’ ” I said.

  “Bingo!” Lois slid off the counter and landed on the floor with a light thump. Sixty-one years old and she was as limber as a teenager. It was the yoga, she said. Last year for Christmas she’d given me a yoga DVD. Sadly, the plastic wrapper was still wrapped tight around it.

  “But I was whistling sarcastically,” she said. “I haven’t been working at all.”

  I glanced around the store. Not a single customer. My stomach lining rolled over and put another knot in itself. “Where’s Yvonne?”

  “In the back unpacking a box of special orders.”

  “Have we—” My cell phone rang and I fished it out. “Hello?”

  “I know who killed Sam,” Marina said.

  “Excellent. Now hang up and call Deputy Wheeler. Would you like her number?”

  “Don’t you want to hear my theory first?”

  “No. I want the killer in jail fast and—” I stopped. It wouldn’t do to worry Marina about the customer-less state of the store. She’d feel guilty about Yvonne and double her investigative efforts.

  “And what?”

  “And I want life to get back to normal.” Her nose was probably twitching like mad; Marina could scent a lie faster than a first-time mother picked up a dropped pacifier. But it wasn’t a lie, not exactly. “I have to go, okay? There’s a bunch of people coming in.” I clicked off the phone.

  Lois went to the door, opened it, and poked her head out. “Hellooo?”

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Looking for that bunch of people.”

  On a normal day this would have made me laugh. Today I couldn’t even summon a smile. “I have some errands to run. Call me if you need me.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.” She snapped to attention and saluted smartly as I went by.

  The salute, silly though it was, made me pick up my chin. Today, if I couldn’t smile, I could do my best to save my store. All I had to do was find Sam’s killer. And to do that all I had to do was find a reason for Sam to be murdered.

  Piece of cake.

  Flossie Untermayer frowned at me. “Sam Helmstetter didn’t have an enemy in the world.”

  “That’s what everybody says,” I said.

  Flossie, who was seventy-six and proud of it, frowned at her clipboard and made a note with a pencil tied on with a shoelace. She was the only adult I knew who still used No. 2 pencils. She also knew everyone in town. She was one of my top ten favorite people.

/>   “Quite a contradiction, isn’t it?” She pursed her lips and looked at the ceiling of her downtown grocery store. “The only man in town without an enemy, and he’s the man who is murdered. You and Marina are teaming up again, I imagine.”

  I sighed. “How can a reputation be made on one incident?”

  Flossie laughed, a silvery run of light. She’d once danced ballet professionally in Chicago. When she’d aged out of that career, she’d turned to stage acting and singing, and when those roles dried up she came home to Rynwood to take over her family’s grocery store.

  “A reputation can be made even when the incident never really occurred.” She crouched down, the better to view the bottom shelf of cereal boxes. “You should know that.”

  I did, but that didn’t mean I had to like it. “So you can’t think of anyone who’d kill Sam?”

  She looked up at me from her crouch. If I stayed in that position for more than five seconds my thighs would be screaming, but Flossie looked as if she could stay down there, comfortably, for the rest of the day. “The rule is to look at the spouse first and business partners second,” she said.

  “That’s what they say.” The proverbial “they” also claimed that Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Ruthless and depraved Nero might have been, but the violin wasn’t invented for another fifteen hundred years.

  “Yes.” Flossie adjusted her crouch to sink lower. “But even if Rachel wanted to kill Sam, I don’t see how a woman her size would have the strength to strangle a man of Sam’s size. Simple physiology is against it.”

  That’s what Gus had said, back on the night of the murder.

  “And we all know where Brian Keller was that evening.” She chuckled. “Talk about building a reputation on one incident.”

  Everyone in town knew about Brian Keller. Why was I the last to know? Maybe Marina was losing her touch.

  I watched Flossie write a few notes on her clipboard, then asked, “Who do you think killed Sam?” Behind my simple question was a plaintive plea for answers. Please tell me I’ve never met the murderer. Please tell me I don’t go to church with him, walk the same streets, or have him walk into my store, and please, please, keep him away from my children.