Foul Play at the PTA

by Laura Alden

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  I jerked around. Claudia Wolff was standing behind us, hands on hips, face redder than was healthy.

  Summer turned a whiter shade of pale and moved slightly behind me. In front of me men and girls had stopped dancing. “It’s too hard to talk over the music,” I said pleasantly, and headed for the nearest doorway.

  Claudia didn’t budge. “You can talk to me right here and right now.”

  “That’s fine.” I kept a smile on my face. “What can I do for you?”

  “You can quit taking over the PTA, that’s what you can do.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Don’t go all polite. I know what you’re up to, don’t think I don’t!”

  At least one of us knew. Unfortunately, it wasn’t me.

  She scrutinized me with slitted eyes. “It’s written all over that pretty face. You want to be the next PTA president, don’t you?”

  I couldn’t think of anything I wanted less, other than being elected president of the United States. Now that would be a wretched job. Except for the Air Force One thing. That part would be okay.

  “See, you’re not even denying it.” She nodded, having found what she was looking for somewhere between my forehead and my chin. “You want to run the PTA. Going to Erica with this mini-golf thing without taking it to the board is just the first step, isn’t it?”

  There was no good answer to that question. My kneejerk inclination was to laugh out loud, but it was unlikely Claudia would meet that reaction with an answering laugh. “Um . . .”

  “See, you don’t even know what to say, do you?” she said triumphantly. “I can always tell when I get things right when people don’t know what to say.”

  Or else they went silent because otherwise they were afraid they’d bop her in the nose for being such an idiot.

  “At the next meeting,” Claudia went on, “I was going to talk about my idea for a January fund-raiser. I was going through the proper channels. I was going to follow our bylaws. I was going to do what was right, not what was politically expedient.”

  What politics had to do with the Tarver PTA, I wasn’t sure, but Claudia seemed sure of the connection.

  “Mini-golf.” She made a tsking noise. “What a dumb idea. As if you and your little friend there will get anyone to play golf in January. Puh-lease!” She rolled her eyes. “If you make ten bucks after expenses I’ll be surprised. My idea was a winner, and now you’ve ruined it for everyone. Think of all the money the PTA could have made with . . .” She paused dramatically. “A casino night.”

  My mouth dropped open.

  Claudia half smiled. “See, you’re already jealous you didn’t think of it first. Everybody loves Texas Hold ’em. Everybody loves slot machines and roulette and the chance to win big.” She shook a pair of imaginary dice and threw them across a phantom craps table. “What could be better than a casino night? It’s a perfect idea!”

  It was an absolutely awful idea. A PTA-sponsored casino? Not in this town. Erica would have a tizzy, Agnes Mephisto would spin in her grave, Mack Vogel, the superintendent of the Rynwood schools, would have a conniption fit, and the parental fallout would be horrendous.

  “Just because you’re buddy-buddy with Erica,” Claudia said, “you think you’ll be a shoo-in when her term’s over. Don’t you believe it. Between trying to take things over and hiring that murderer for your store, you’ve made lots of enemies in the PTA. You’ll never be president. Never. You’ll be sorry for this, mark my words!” She shook her fist at me and marched off, her feet stomping in time to the music. “Turkey in the Straw.”

  I stared at her receding back. Half of me wanted to rush up to her and explain my actions in great detail; the other half wanted to sit in the corner and cry. By age forty-one you’d think I’d be able to tolerate a high level of verbal abuse, but it knocked me down, every time.

  Marina appeared. “That woman is a menace. If we held a vote for someone in town to be murdered, she would win, hands down.”

  Shades of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.” I shuddered. “You don’t really mean that.”

  “Want to bet? Anyway, don’t let her bother you. She’s all bluster and smoke with no flame.”

  “She shook her fist at me.”

  Marina moved in and looked at me closely. “Get that hollow tone out of your voice. Claudia Wolff isn’t worth a finger snap of worry.”

  I tried to snap my fingers, but the noise was barely audible.

  Summer had edged forward. “Let me try?” She snapped her fingers. Nothing.

  “Oh, for crying out loud. You two are pathetic.” Marina held out her hand and made the snapping motion. The result was a tiny thudding noise. “Well, shoot,” she said. “Let me try my left hand. Maybe I’m becoming ambidextrous in my middleish middle age.” But when she tried, the result was, if anything, even less impressive.

  I stared at her hands, at mine, at Summer’s. This was not an omen. The fact that all three of us suddenly couldn’t perform the simple act of snapping our fingers didn’t mean that Claudia’s threat would turn into a hex that would end the PTA as we knew it, which would in turn create a gradual slowing of sales at the store because no mother would shop at a store owned by an ostracized PTA ex-secretary, which would in turn force me to sell the house, and, with Richard unemployed, the kids and I would move to a studio apartment above a video arcade, where Jenna and Oliver would spend too many hours learning how to shoot things, and by the time they reached high school their biggest concerns would be making high score in Halo 13 and what color of leather belt to wear around their necks. All for want of a finger snap.

  “Ladies.” Evan stepped into our small circle. “If I may?” He raised his hand, put thumb and middle finger together, and snapped. The noise was loud enough to make children stop whining.

  “Hey.” Marina gave an approving nod. “That’s a good trick. Got any more?”

  “All in good time.” He bowed to her, to Summer, then to me. “Milady? Can I have this dance?” He held out his hand, palm up, and smiled into my eyes.

  “Kind sir.” I dropped a small curtsy and took his hand. We spun off into a waltz and all thoughts of Claudia, hexes, and tumbling bad luck fell away as we danced and danced and danced.

  Chapter 11

  “A waltz,huh?”Lois looked at me over the top of her steaming tea mug. “Are you sure?”

  “No. What difference does it make if it was a waltz or a polka?”

  “It’s like flowers,” she said.

  After years of working with Lois on an almost daily basis, you’d have thought I’d be used to her non sequiturs. “Flowers?”

  “Sure.” She sipped the lemon-flavored brew. “You know how flowers have meanings? Roses are love, daisies are innocence, freesia is trust.”

  “Why is freesia trust?” I wasn’t sure what freesia looked like, exactly, but how could any particular kind of flower mean trust? For that matter, how could a daisy mean innocence? I could see how roses meant love—as in I’d love to be able to grow roses free of mold or spots or bugs—but who dreamt up all the other things? “Are there flowers that mean death and destruction?”

  “Just like flowers,” Lois went on, “dances have emotions associated with them. A fox-trot indicates a platonic relationship. A tango is passionate love. A polka shows that your partner has a sense of fun.”

  “You’re making that up,” I said.

  Lois drew herself up tall. Which today was very tall, considering that she was wearing four-inch-high platform shoes. On a purely period basis they went well with her bell-bottom pants, wide leather belt, and gauzy white shirt complete with square neckline.

  “Questioning my veracity on a Monday morning? How can you do this to me, your loyal employee, your compatriot in arms, your friend and coworker of many years, your—”

  “You’re overdoing it,” I said.

  Her spine unstiffened and she sank down three inches. “It was the compatriot part,
wasn’t it?” she asked sadly.

  “Over the top.”

  Lois sighed and took a sip of tea. “So what happened after that?”

  “Claudia left in a huff.” She’d tried to slam the selfclosing door, which hadn’t gone well. “After that, everything went fine.” The air had seemed to clear, the atmosphere had felt brighter, and the music had sounded more playful. Jenna had taken her partner back, and Marina and I doled out goody bags and ladled punch the rest of the night.

  “That Claudia Wolff is nothing but a bully,” Lois said. “Has been ever since she was a toddler. Some tigers never change their stripes.”

  I looked at her. “Which tigers do?”

  “Oh, you know.” She waved her mug at me. “The ones who can. There’s this breed in a remote province of India that has been known to have their stripes change to white if they’ve had a close call with death.”

  I was about to call her bluff when the bells on the front door jingled. “I’ll get it,” I said, and headed out front, a pleasant owner-of-the-store smile on my face. “Good morning, let me know if—” When I saw who’d come in the door, my words dried up and my feet stopped moving. The nightmares I’d suffered the last two nights weren’t nightmares any longer; they were reality.

  “My, aren’t we nice when it’s in our own best interest?” Claudia asked. “Be polite and get people to buy things so we can make a buck, right?”

  Behind her ranged a group of women, all of whom I knew. Tina Heller, Claudia’s best friend. Heather Kingsley, Isabel Olson, and Carol Casassa. At the back of the pack was Cindy Irving. She was well known for being Johnny-on-the-spot for whatever was happening in town, so I wasn’t sure if she was here in support of Claudia or if she was here in hopes of catching some fireworks.

  “What can I do for you ladies?” Smile, smile, smile. Defuse the anger, be their friend, show them there is nothing to fear but fear itself. Or something like that.

  “You know perfectly well what you can do,” Claudia snapped.

  There were a number of things on my list today: finish the already late December newsletter, take the pile of flattened boxes out for recycling, inventory the picture books, call the gift wrap supplier and ask why we were delivered Valentine’s Day paper instead of Christmas paper, and see if I had money to pay a few bills. However, I had a feeling none of those was what Claudia was talking about. In all likelihood, she wanted one of two things: me to resign from the PTA or—

  “It’s that Yvonne Ganassi,” Claudia said. “I can’t think what you were thinking when you hired her.”

  I’d been thinking she was my hero. “Yvonne is—”

  “A convicted murderer.” Tina Heller stood shoulder to shoulder with Claudia. The two of them created a solid, nylon-parka-covered wall. “A murderer in a children’s bookstore is about the dumbest hire anyone could make.”

  My chin went up. “Yvonne didn’t kill anyone. She was exonerated.”

  “Then why was she sent to prison?” Claudia demanded. “They don’t send innocent people to prison.” Her cohorts nodded; human bobble-heads, all in a row. “Innocent until proven guilty, and the guilty go away for life. Or they should.” She glared at me.

  I could see that any argument I made would be laughed at, ignored, derided, or all three. These women had made up their minds and nothing I said would convince a single brain cell to lean another way. Still, I had to try.

  “Would you like to see a copy of her acquittal?” I asked. “The governor of California handed it to her personally.”

  In the back, Cindy’s face lit up, but the rest of the group didn’t look impressed. “Who cares what some politician did?” Claudia’s scorn was so deep that she splattered a little spit on the p of “politician.” “Everyone knows they issue those things at the drop of a hat for whoever contributes most to their campaigns. Pardons are a get-out-of-jail-free card; they don’t mean you weren’t guilty in the first place.”

  Any minute now she’d implode from having too many conflicting opinions. I just hoped it wouldn’t be in my store. “But—” I stopped. If she didn’t understand that an acquittal and a pardon were two different things, then it wasn’t likely this would turn into a teachable moment.

  “She was convicted of murder.” Claudia’s strident tones rang through the store. “There’s been a murder in Rynwood. I have no idea why the police haven’t arrested her, but I’m sure it’s just a matter of time.”

  My head started to ache. “Yvonne didn’t kill anyone,” I said. “Ever. You’re making a big mistake.”

  Claudia’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re the one making mistakes. First, thinking you can run the PTA. Second, hiring a killer. The streets of our town won’t be safe—our children won’t be safe—until that woman is behind bars.” Claudia raised her mittened hand and, from what I could make out from the movements inside the wool, pointed her index finger at me. “And you can bet I’ll do all I can to get her there. Ladies?”

  She turned and the group filed out. As the last one left, a gust of wind grabbed hold of the door and flung it wide open. I hurried to grab the handle and tried to pull it closed, tugging hard against the wind.

  The group was huddled together outside the store, and my movements caught Claudia’s attention. Her gaze locked on mine and she pointed at me again. She mouthed some words, but since I was horrible at lip reading, I had no idea what she said. It could have been, “Have a nice day,” but it probably wasn’t.

  I smiled at her pleasantly and shut the door.

  “Hokey Pete,” Lois said. “Looks like Claudia has taken a turn for the worse. Say, maybe she killed Sam. Wouldn’t be the first time the real killer has tried to insert herself into an investigation.”

  I wanted to ask on which episode of CSI that had happened, but I stopped myself in time. “Gus said all the people at the PTA meeting that night were cleared.”

  “Well, shoot.” Lois slouched and crossed her arms. “Just when you think you have things all figured out, the facts have to rush in and confuse things.”

  I knew exactly what she meant.

  “Wonder what Claudia was talking about?” Lois mused. “How is she going to get Yvonne into prison?”

  “She’s not. She’s just—” My mother’s admonition against gossip bounded into my brain. Thanks so very much, Mom. I sighed and restarted the sentence. “She’s just worried about her children.”

  Lois snorted. “All I saw was Claudia being seriously mad at you.”

  Which is what worried me. Claudia had been born and raised in Rynwood. If she started marshaling her troops against the store, we could be in real trouble. “Lois,” I asked slowly, “who do you think killed Sam?”

  She sighed. “Oh, honey. I wish I knew. He was just so darn nice.”

  “Didn’t he ever get into a fight, even as a kid?”

  “Not so far as I remember. Though there was one thing . . .” She pinched her nose, then shook her head. “Nope. Can’t remember. Had to do with sports, though. So, high school?”

  Or junior high, or elementary school. Or college, since he’d played baseball at Wisconsin. All it would take to figure it out was some time. Good thing there was a new day every morning. Twenty-four fresh hours to fill with kids, work, housework, starting up the PTA senior story session, and hey, let’s solve a murder, too.

  Beth Kennedy, Renaissance woman. Either that, or Beth Kennedy, overcommitted woman destined for a breakdown.

  One of those.

  I pulled out a notepad. With Lois’s help and a phone call to Flossie, I’d soon have a new list, this one titled “Sam’s Former Teammates.” If I talked to enough of them, maybe, just maybe, I’d find a Clue.

  All I could see of Todd Wietzel was his bottom half. His top half was so far inside a car’s engine compartment that it was invisible. Todd’s wife (Mindy, mother of ten-year-old Caitlin and five-year-old Trevor) had told me I’d find him in the garage. “I think it’s the water pump,” she said, “but he’s sure it’s electrical.”r />
  It could have been a flat tire, for all I knew about cars. All that mattered to me about any internal combustion engine was that it worked when I turned it on. But, as I traipsed down the few steps from kitchen to garage floor, even I could see that the car Todd was working on was something special.

  It was what they called a muscle car—a nickname that had never made any sense to me—and probably looked better than it had when it was new. Dark red paint gleamed under the garage’s fluorescent lights, and inside the red, small bright flecks caught the light and sparkled golden. The chrome rims shone, the tires were so black they seemed to swallow light, and the window glass was cleaner than any glass in a garage had a right to be.

  “Hey, honey, could you hand me the timing light?”

  I glanced at the array of tools spread across a nearby workbench. Looked at the stacks and stacks of red metal drawer sets that held a multitude of mysterious tools. Cast my eye at the floor, where a number of unidentified objects lay scattered about. “Um, what does it look like?”

  Todd’s head popped up. “Hey, Beth. I thought you were Mindy. What are you doing here?”

  I knew Mindy from PTA, and I knew Todd because Caitlin and Jenna played on the same girls’ hockey team. Caitlin played defense and was working hard on developing a wicked slap shot. Of all Sam’s former teammates to talk to, Todd was the easy first choice.

  “Aren’t most show cars put away by now?” I asked, using the only thing I knew about the subject.

  “Yah.” Todd levered himself up and out, then leaned backward in a long stretch. “Out of the blue this guy calls about buying this girl and the electricals aren’t right.”

  “But . . .” I looked from the vehicle to him and back again, remembering all the stories I’d heard. “Didn’t you spend three years restoring this car? Didn’t you enter it into the Rynwood Car Show and win first place?”

  “Yup.” He smiled at it fondly. “Judges said I could win car shows in this class all over the state.”

  “And you’re going to sell it?”