Murder by the Slice

by Livia J. Washburn

  “This is the second year on the board for all of us,” Marie went on. “Shannon was on it last year with us, but she wasn’t divorced yet the first part of the year. She wasn’t president, either. Molly Rutherford was. Her son went on to middle school this year, so she’s part of the PTO there. Anyway, Shannon had never been on a PTO board before, and she was as gung ho as she could be. She was up here at the school all the time, so much that a few of the teachers complained to the principal about her interfering with their classes. You never saw anybody so full of ideas and energy.”

  “It sounds like she would have been an asset to the school and the PTO,” Carolyn said.

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? Unfortunately, she’s also got a bossy streak a mile wide, and you never met a bigger perfectionist, not only for herself but where everybody else is concerned, too. And since she was a doctor’s wife and had plenty of time and money, she thought everybody else should be as devoted to the school as she was. All those great ideas she had? She nagged other people into doing the actual work required to carry them out.”

  “A master delegator, that’s Shannon,” Kristina said.

  Marie nodded. “Molly tried to rein her in, but it was impossible. Shannon worked everybody on the board like dogs. Then finally, last spring, her husband got tired of her being here at the school all the time and neglecting him.”

  Lindsey said, “It was so sad.”

  “He had an affair?” Carolyn guessed.

  Marie shook her head. “Joel gave her an ultimatum. Either she cut back on all of her school activities, or he was leaving.”

  Phyllis said, “I take it she didn’t cut back?”

  “She tossed all his stuff on the lawn and told him to get the hell out, and good riddance. Joel wouldn’t back down, and neither would Shannon. They were both too proud for that. They got a divorce, and they’ve hated each other ever since.”

  Lindsey said, “You can’t blame Shannon for being upset. She was married before, you know. She has an older son from another marriage. And now she’s had another one fail.”

  “Oh, come on,” Marie said. “She drove Joel to it. We all know that. What else was he supposed to do? She didn’t have any more time for him while they were still married than she does now that they’re divorced.”

  “They have time enough to fight,” Abby said.

  Again, Phyllis couldn’t stop herself from asking a question. “If you knew she was like that, why did you make her president?”

  “Hey, none of us wanted the job.” Marie laughed ruefully. “Anyway, at the end of the school year, after they broke up, we all felt sorry for Shannon. And for a while she seemed to settle down a little, like the breakup had humbled her. When we were trying to come up with officers for this school year and she said she’d be willing to take on the job of president, we thought it might be good for her. We didn’t know she was going to spend the whole summer stewing in her anger so that when school started again she’d come back as a royal bitch.”

  Marie looked quickly at Lindsey, who held up her hands and said, “I know, I know, don’t go running to Shannon. I swear, you guys must think I’m the worst tattletale in the world.”

  Marie didn’t deny that. She just turned her attention back to Phyllis and Carolyn and said, “Now that you know what you’re getting into, are you still sure you want to be involved with the carnival?”

  They looked at each other. Phyllis shrugged and said, “It’s up to you.”

  Carolyn nodded. “I said I’d do it, and I don’t like to break my word. Of course we’ll continue.”

  “Good luck, then.” Marie looked around the table. “Good luck to us all.”

  She didn’t have to add, We’ll need it.

  Chapter 5

  In the car on the way back to the house, Carolyn said, “I don’t remember you ever making peanutbutter-andbanana cookies for Bobby.”

  Phyllis had been afraid she would catch that. At the time, she had wanted to help Carolyn, who obviously had been struggling to convince the PTO ladies that her idea for a healthy snack contest was worthwhile. So she had thrown out the first thing she could come up with.

  “Well, I haven’t actually ever made it,” she said, “but I’ve thought about it. I’m sure Bobby would like it.” In fact she had no doubt of that. Her grandson, who was almost a year old, would probably love all the ingredients she had mentioned.

  “I think I read somewhere that you’re not supposed to give peanuts to children under two or three.” Carolyn paused, then said with a tone of accusation in her voice, “You changed your mind, didn’t you? You’re going to enter the contest.”

  “What? No. I was just talking, trying to help you drum up some interest in the idea. I’m not going to enter the contest. I’m just going to make a cake for the auction and maybe help with the cookbook.”

  “Well, good.”

  Phyllis took her eyes off the road long enough to look over at Carolyn in surprise. “You don’t want me to enter?”

  “I was sort of hoping that we could work together on this without competing against each other. I might try to come up with a recipe for the contest, but I don’t plan to bake a cake for the auction.”

  “Really?”

  “My lands, Phyllis, have you ever known me to go in for a lot of fancy cake decorating? The proof is in the eating, not how something looks.”

  Phyllis said slowly, “All right.” She wasn’t sure if she believed Carolyn or not. In many of the baking contests they had both entered in the past, presentation had been a vital part of the competition.

  But come to think of it, she didn’t recall Carolyn ever baking any cakes that called for elaborate decorating. And in everyday life, whenever someone needed a cake with a name or HAPPY BIRTHDAY or some other sentiment on it, Phyllis had always been the one who took care of that.

  She went on, “I guess you’ll be in the contest, then, and I’ll be in the auction. I have to admit, it’ll be nice not competing for a change.”

  “Not losing, you mean,” Carolyn said.

  “Ho, ho! You just couldn’t resist, could you?” Phyllis smiled to take any sting out of the words.

  Carolyn changed the subject by saying, “That Shannon is really a witch, isn’t she?”

  “I have a feeling Marie would spell the word one letter differently. I always feel sorry for someone like that who’s so full of anger and resentment. They must have a lot of unhappiness in their lives.”

  “You’re too kindhearted, Phyllis. Someone like that ought to be slapped a few times. Then maybe she’d start treating people decently.”

  “That usually doesn’t work. People just slap back.”

  “I suppose you’re right. Well, maybe we won’t have to deal too much with Shannon as long as Marie’s there to act as a buffer.”

  “I’m a little surprised the two of you are friends from church.”

  “Because of the age difference, you mean? Marie’s mother and I were in the same Sunday school class. You might remember her. Pamela Hoffman?”

  Phyllis shook her head.

  “They moved here while Marie was in high school, so neither of us ever had her in class,” Carolyn went on. “Pamela and I were friends for a long time, until she passed away. I got to know Marie because I saw her so much at the rest home, you know, while I was visiting Pamela there.”

  “She seems nice. A little harried and plainspoken, maybe, but most young people are these days.”

  “Yes, she has a lovely family. Russ is some sort of engineer, or works with computers, or something. I never can keep things like that straight.”

  Neither could Phyllis, so she knew exactly what Carolyn meant.

  They got back to the house a few minutes later. As Phyllis pulled into the driveway and pushed the button on the remote control unit to raise the righthand door on the two-car garage, Carolyn said, “I’ll get started on a handout for the parents. We’ll need to let all of them know about the contest and the auction as soon as
possible. You’ll print them for me, won’t you, Phyllis?”

  Even though Phyllis was far from being any sort of expert with the computer, she was better at such things than Carolyn. And that was one area where Carolyn didn’t mind acknowledging Phyllis’s superiority.

  “Sure, I’ll be glad to.”

  “I can pay you for the paper and ink… .”

  “Don’t worry about that. It’s for a good cause.”

  Sam was at the workbench in the rear of the garage. Phyllis brought the Lincoln smoothly to a halt several feet short of where he was standing. He was cutting a piece of wood with the table saw and finished what he was doing as the two women got out of the car. Then he turned, pushed his safety goggles up onto his forehead, and said, “Hello, ladies. How was your meeting?”

  “It went fine,” Phyllis said. She lingered there, unsure why at first.

  “I’ll get started on that handout,” Carolyn said again as she opened the door that led from the garage into the kitchen. She went into the house and pulled the door closed behind her.

  “That’s a nice thing you’re doin’, helpin’ out Carolyn that way,” Sam said. “Not to mention helping the kids at that school with the funds the carnival will raise. Anything I can do to help?”

  Phyllis smiled. “How are you at cake decorating?”

  “Well, I can use a caulk gun. Sort of the same principle, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose so,” Phyllis said with a laugh. “What about healthy snacks?”

  “I can eat ‘em. As long as they’re not too healthy, like broccoli or cauliflower or things like that.”

  “I was thinking more of peanutbutter-andbanana oatmeal cookies made with applesauce.”

  Sam smacked his lips. “Sounds good.”

  “Maybe I’ll come up with a recipe some time. Not for the contest, though.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m not entering the contest,” Phyllis explained, “and Carolyn’s not going to make a cake for the auction.”

  “Again, why not?”

  “Because we’re not going to compete against each other.” Phyllis added, “And before you can ask, that’s the way Carolyn wants it. She’s not good at decorating cakes, and she knows it.”

  Sam nodded and drawled, “A man’s got to know his limitations. And I reckon Carolyn does, too.”

  “That’s from a movie, isn’t it? That line about knowing your limitations? I’ve heard you say it before.”

  “Yeah, Clint Eastwood says it in one of those Dirty Harry movies. I can’t remember for sure which one. Might’ve been the second one, Magnum Force. The famous line from the first one is ‘Do you feel lucky, punk?’ And ‘Go ahead, make my day,’ comes from the fourth one, Sudden Impact. So, yeah, it was probably from Magnum Force.”

  “What about the third one?”

  “The Enforcer? Nobody remembers much of anything from it or the fifth one, The Dead Pool.”

  She patted him lightly on the arm. “You maybe watch a little too much TV, Sam.”

  “More than likely.” As Phyllis started toward the kitchen door, he went on, “I really would like to help out with the carnival, though. Maybe I could build some of the booths. I’m pretty good with my hands.”

  “Now there’s an idea. I’ll get Marie’s number from Carolyn, and you can call her. I’m sure she could tell you who to talk to about that.”

  “I’d appreciate it. Like I said there at WalMart, I never got to be around the carnivals much. Sounds like fun.”

  Phyllis went on into the house and found Carolyn and Eve in the kitchen, discussing the meeting at Loving Elementary. Eve turned to Phyllis and asked with a smile, “What were you and Sam talking about out there, dear?”

  Phyllis wondered if Eve had an ulterior motive for asking that question. For goodness’ sake, it wasn’t like she and Sam had been out in the garage smooching or anything like that! Eve had no reason to feel jealous.

  “Sam wants to help out with the carnival, too,” Phyllis said. “He’s talking about maybe helping build some of the booths.”

  “I’m sure he’d be good at it. He’s always building things. He’s very good with his hands, you know.”

  Again Phyllis wondered what Eve meant by that. On the surface, at least, it was just an innocent remark. Sam himself had said almost exactly the same thing. Phyllis told herself that she was being too suspicious and trying to read too much into everything. Eve seemed friendly again this morning, as if she had gotten over being miffed at finding Phyllis and Sam sitting together on the kitchen floor. Be grateful for that, Phyllis told herself, and move on.

  “I told him you could give him Marie’s number,” she said to Carolyn.

  “Certainly.” Carolyn and Sam hadn’t gotten along all that well when Sam first rented the empty bedroom upstairs, but over the months she had become friendly with him, even though she was still a little reserved around him at times. The reserve had all been on Carolyn’s part. Sam was the sort of man who was friendly with everybody right from the start.

  That quality might be tested, Phyllis thought, if Sam ever had to spend much time around Shannon Dunston.

  After lunch, Phyllis finally got around to going to the store for the ingredients she would need for her first trial run at the jack-o’-lantern cake. She planned to use a mix for the cake part just to simplify things, although when the time came to bake the one that would actually be in the auction, she would start from scratch. After all, someone would be buying it to eat, not just because it was pretty, and she wanted it to taste as good as possible. And no cake from a mix could ever be as good as one from scratch, at least to Phyllis’s way of thinking.

  While she was pushing her cart along the aisles in the food section at WalMart, she heard a voice behind her say, “Mrs. Newsom, isn’t it?”

  Phyllis turned and to her surprise saw Shannon Dunston standing there, also with a cart. She shouldn’t have been surprised, she told herself. Everyone had to shop, even unpleasant people.

  The really unexpected part was that Shannon was smiling now and seemed quite friendly. She had obviously gotten over her bad mood from that morning.

  Or maybe she was manic-depressive, Phyllis thought. That would explain it, too. Then she mentally chided herself for not giving Shannon the benefit of the doubt. Marie had said that Shannon could be pleasant when she wanted to.

  “Hello, Mrs. Dunston.”

  “Please, call me Shannon,” the younger woman said as she brought her cart alongside Phyllis’s. “I hope you didn’t get the wrong impression from the meeting this morning. I know I can be a little impatient at times. There’s always just so much to do, and it seems like I’m running and running and running all the time, and it’s so hard to get people to actually help—” She stopped, shook her head, and smiled again. “But I don’t have to tell you that. You were a teacher. You know. And I know you saw me arguing with my exhusband, too. You couldn’t have missed it.”

  “I didn’t really pay any attention… ,” Phyllis began.

  “Oh, you don’t have to apologize. Joel is so obnoxious he practically shouts it from the rooftops. Can you believe he wanted to skip some of his child support payments just because he spent too much money remodeling his office? He promised he would catch up later, but that doesn’t do Becca any good now, does it?”

  “Becca is your daughter?” Phyllis asked, hoping that would get Shannon off the subject of her hostility toward her exhusband.

  “That’s right. She’s in the fourth grade at Loving.” Shannon glanced in Phyllis’s cart. “I see you have bananas. Are you going to use them in the snack you plan to make for the contest?”

  Phyllis gave a guilty little start. She had hesitated when she passed the bananas, but after a moment she had finally given in to temptation and put them in her cart. She already had peanut butter, oatmeal, and applesauce at home. The recipe idea still lingered in the back of her mind, intriguing her with its possibilities. But she wasn’t going to enter it in the contest
. She had told Carolyn that she wouldn’t.

  She said, “Actually, I don’t think I’ll be competing—”

  “What? But you have to! It was your recipe that won everyone over to Mrs. Wilbarger’s idea. It really has to be in the contest.” Shannon got a determined look on her face. “I insist.”

  Phyllis didn’t know what to say. She didn’t like being browbeaten, and she had given her word to Carolyn, but Shannon was forceful and clearly accustomed to having people go along with what she wanted.

  And the recipe would make a fine healthy snack, too. Good, and good for you, as Carolyn had said.

  Before Phyllis could decide what to do, she was distracted by a young man who had come up behind Shannon. He wore a T-shirt with the sleeves cut off to reveal several colorful tattoos, and he not only had rings through both earlobes, but his nose was pierced, too, with a silver stud on the left nostril. His head was shaved. Just the sight of him made Phyllis nervous.

  And then a surge of outright fear went through her as the young man’s hand reached out, straight toward the purse hanging from Shannon’s shoulder.

  Chapter 6

  Phyllis opened her mouth to call out a warning to Shannon that the man was about to grab her purse, but before she could say anything, the young man said, “Hey, Mom, can I have a couple bucks? I want to go back to Mickey D’s and get something to eat.”

  Shannon turned her head to look at him, and the sharpness and impatience she had demonstrated during the meeting that morning were back again as she said, “You can have something to eat when we get home. Where did you wander off to, anyway?”

  The young man shrugged. “Went to look at the CDs.”

  “You didn’t take any of them, did you? I don’t want the alarm going off again when we leave the store.”

  “No,” he said sullenly. “I didn’t do anything. I just looked at them.”

  “Good.” Shannon glanced at Phyllis. Clearly, she didn’t want to introduce the young man to her, but she felt compelled to do so. “Mrs. Newsom, this is my son, Kirk.”

  Phyllis nodded. “Hello.”