Murder at the PTA (2010) bk-1

by Laura Alden

  The floor was covered with a glaringly red carpet. The walls were painted a darkish shade of green. The floor molding and window frames were painted in a white bright enough to hurt the eyes.

  I circled the room, staring with disbelief at the memorabilia. Signed jerseys of Wild players—Brunette #15; Gaborik #10. Signed green-and-yellow jerseys of North Star players, the team that left town in the early nineties and became the Dallas Stars—Broten #7; Bellows #23. Signed hockey sticks. Photos of Agnes with coaches and players and general managers.

  “So Agnes was a hockey fan.” Marina slipped off her scarf, and her hair came tumbling down. “Weird. Don’t think I once heard her talk about hockey.”

  I studied a framed set of used tickets; Agnes must have had two season passes. It was almost a five-hour drive from Rynwood to the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul. How on earth had Agnes managed to attend all those midweek games and make it to school the next morning? No wonder she’d been cranky all the time.

  “Look.” Marina stuck a hockey helmet over her head. “This year’s new fashion accessory.”

  I gaped at a framed photo of Agnes with a man wearing the longish hair of the early 1980s. He wore a yellowish beige jacket, light blue shirt, and dark blue tie. “That’s Agnes with Herb Brooks. Herb Brooks! Look at that ice rink. She must have been there. The Miracle on Ice! Marina, Agnes saw it!”

  “What is it with you and hockey, anyway?”

  I couldn’t believe it. Agnes had seen the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team win the gold medal.

  Marina dragged the helmet off and shook out her hair. “Do you realize what time it is?”

  “Uh-huh.” My gaze was locked on to the photo. Agnes and Herb Brooks. Agnes and—

  “You’re going to be late,” Marina said.

  “What?” I looked at my watch and shrieked. “I’m late! Put that down, Marina. There’s no time for you to play slot hockey. It’s not a toy, anyway; it’s a collector’s item.” I shooed her up the stairs and drove to the store, pushing the speed limit all the way.

  “Sorry I’m late.” I rushed in, my bag of clothes in hand. “Paoze, you can go. Thanks for hanging around.”

  “There is no problem to stay, Mrs. Kennedy.” Paoze smiled at me. “I will wait until you are ready.”

  I said hello to Marcia, my other part-time worker, as I hurried back to my office. In three minutes or less, I was dressed in mostly wrinkle-free polyester and ready to help customers, if, that is, I could stop thinking about the veritable Who’s Who of Minnesota hockey in Agnes’s basement. A hot shot of emotion ran through me—one I’d never in a hundred million years expected to feel in regard to Agnes.

  Envy.

  I shook it away as best I could and found Paoze. “All set. Thanks again.”

  “I was glad to stay.” He gave another blinding smile, slipped on his jacket, and left.

  Marcia, a fiftyish emphatic blonde, patted her heart. “What a cutie. Those white teeth!”

  “He’s a nice kid.” The bells on the door jangled, and a young family walked in. I gave them the owner-of-the-store nod.

  “Do you think he has a girlfriend?” Marcia asked.

  “Paoze?” The rolls of stickers were already showing signs of Saturday abuse and the swags of orange and black crepe paper hanging above the rolls weren’t helping. I moved to start the Sisyphean task of tidying. “I don’t know. He doesn’t talk about himself much.”

  “Polite. Clean-cut. Well educated, or going to be. Smart.” She ticked off Paoze’s characteristics and giggled. “If I weren’t almost old enough to be his grandmother, I’d get him to ask me out.”

  “Your husband might object to that.”

  “My kids, too. Say, did you hear about the school?”

  “Tarver?”

  She nodded vigorously. “I heard about it from Cindy. She takes care of the flowers at city hall? She says the guys—that’s what she calls the police officers—had a call last night from someone across the street who saw some lights on that weren’t supposed to be on. By the time the guys got there, the burglar was gone, but there was a big mess all over the offices. Papers everywhere. Books tossed all over.” Her face glowed with the excitement of the tale. “I bet it has something to do with that principal’s murder. I mean, how could it not?”

  The school? I put my hand to my throat. The building where my children spent almost eight hours a day? Tarver wasn’t safe? I breathed in and out, in and out. “What rooms? Do you know?” Not room 16, I begged. Not room 37.

  “Just the offices,” Marcia said.

  “Offices,” I repeated, and felt my pulse rate drop down toward normal.

  “At least that’s what Cindy told me. The principal’s office, mainly. Hey, do you feel okay? You look a little pale.”

  The front bell tinkled and a gray-haired couple came in. A small cloud of leaves came in with them and puddled on the floor. Sweeping the floor in October was a never-ending chore. “Hello,” I said, smiling. “My name is Beth. Let me know if you have any questions.”

  The woman asked about our selection of Little House books. “We have the full set,” I told her. “In hardcover and paperback. Let me show—”

  Someone tugged on my sleeve. “Mrs. Kennedy?”

  I turned and gasped. “Paoze! What happened?”

  Chapter 9

  Paoze’s formerly white shirt was streaked with grime and had a large gash down one sleeve. One bony knee was exposed where his dark blue dress pants had ripped, and blood oozed out of a scrape on his cheek.

  “My—my bicycle,” he stammered. “It is—is gone.”

  “Oh, no.” I waved Marcia over and asked her to help the customers. “Come with me,” I told Paoze, and practically dragged him back to my office. “Sit.” I pushed him toward a chair.

  “I must—”

  “Sit!”

  We kept a first-aid kit in the cupboard above the teapot and, after pushing around mugs and cheap flower vases and ancient ketchup packets, I found the white plastic box. Inside were all the medical supplies a mother could want. I flipped past adhesive bandages, white tape, and gauze, and found the antiseptic wipes.

  “Hold still. This might sting a little.” I held his chin steady with one hand and dabbed his cheek with the other. “The scrape isn’t deep, just messy. But it needs to be cleaned up so it doesn’t get infected.” The wipe was turning pink with blood. Inside the medical kit was a small box of latex gloves; in a perfect world I would have remembered about those before I started playing EMT.

  “What happened?” I dabbed at his wound. Dirt and small bits of gravel were embedded in his skin. If I couldn’t get them out, I’d need to take him to an emergency room. And Paoze didn’t have health insurance, so I’d have to pay the bill myself. I dabbed a little harder.

  “Each time I lock my bicycle. Each time.”

  His jaw muscles flexed against my efforts. “I know you do. You’re very careful.” He was so careful that Lois had taken to calling him the oldest young man in Wisconsin.

  “My father teaches me these things. I purchased the lock the same day I purchased the bicycle.” He pronounced it as two separate words. By. Cycle. “The lock I use each time.” His voice cracked. “Each time,” he repeated.

  I didn’t know what to say. You do the right thing; you try to protect yourself, but life has a way of beating you up no matter what. “How did you get this?” I indicated his scrape and his torn clothing.

  He put his fingers through the hole in his sleeve and fidgeted with the frayed edges. “My bicycle is locked in back.”

  I nodded. The storefronts of downtown Rynwood had alleys for shipping and receiving. Lucky buildings had Bilco-type doors that went straight to basements. Buildings like mine had back doors that got propped open with a wedge of wood during deliveries.

  “I always lock the bicycle to the fence. Always.”

  His forceful insistence bounced him half out of the chair. “I know you do. Now sit down and stay down. You’re still bl
eeding.” I opened another wipe. “You looked at the fence and saw the bike was gone. What did you do then?”

  “My eyes must be wrong, I think. I rubbed them”—he demonstrated—“but the bicycle is still not there. I look around but see nothing. Then I hear.” He tipped his head to the right, affecting a listening pose, and messing up my medical administrations. Florence Nightingale probably never had problems like this.

  Paoze went on. “Someone is laughing on the other side of the fence. Two boys, I think, laughing and trying not to be heard.”

  “Oh, Paoze,” I said, dismayed. “You didn’t.” The fence he spoke of was eight feet high and wooden, old and full of splinters and rusty nails. It had been built long ago to keep people from tossing garbage into an empty lot.

  “I jumped high and grabbed on to the top. Put my leg over”—he indicated the pant leg with the torn-out knee—“and dropped to the ground. But I could see no one.” He bit his lower lip. “No one is there, and my bicycle is gone.”

  To most people, a stolen bicycle was annoying, and a violation of sorts, but not more than that. For Paoze, it was nearly a tragedy. The boy didn’t have a driver’s license, and he depended on his ancient bike for transportation to work. If it rained, he brought a change of clothes in his backpack. When I’d asked him about what he’d do in winter, he’d given me that smile and said, “I will be on time every day.” And I’d believed him.

  I studied the woebegone look on his face. Never once had I heard him complain about anything. Never once had he been less than cheerful. To see him like this made my heart ache. I picked up the phone and dialed. “Lois? Are you busy?”

  Fifteen minutes later, Lois was ensconced behind the cash register, Marcia was helping customers, and I was pushing Paoze out the front door. “It’ll be fine,” I said. “What are you worried about?”

  “I am not worried,” he said, but we both knew it was a lie. Unworried people don’t frown hard enough to crease their foreheads, nor do they constantly push down their cuticles with their thumbnails. More than once I yanked Paoze toward the middle of the sidewalk, out of harm’s way of people or lampposts because he was so engrossed in the ends of his fingers.

  “Hello, Cindy,” I said, greeting the woman on her hands and knees in front of the brick building. She was weeding the mums, though it was hard to believe many weeds were growing in mid-October. I hoped the city wasn’t paying her by the hour.

  The uniformed man behind the long counter greeted us. His dark blue pants and long-sleeved shirt were crisp, and his badge gleamed bright. “Hi, Mrs. Kennedy. Not another murder, I hope.”

  “Not today,” I said. “I know it’s Saturday, but is Gus here?”

  “Where else would I be?” Gus stood in the doorway of his office and beckoned us in. “Winnie is off touring the county on the last good garage sales weekend of the year, and I’d rather finish up the paperwork on the school breaking and entering than paint the living room ceiling.” He winked, and we all settled into chairs. “So. How can I help?”

  I bumped Paoze with my elbow, but he kept his head down and didn’t say a word. I bumped him again. Still nothing. Well, maybe he’d join in on the chorus. “Paoze here just had his bike stolen.”

  “I’m sorry, son,” Gus said. Not where was it stolen, or when, or how old was it, or was it locked—no, Gus’s first comment was one of sympathy. I could have kissed him.

  “Thank you, sir,” Paoze said to his knees. “It is not nice to have something stolen.”

  “No, it isn’t.” Gus opened a drawer, pulled out a form, and uncapped a pen. As he wrote down Paoze’s hushed answers, I tried to remember if I’d ever had anything stolen. My brother’s playing keep-away with my Barbie doll probably didn’t count.

  “Sir?” Paoze lifted his head and looked at Gus. “Will my bicycle come back?”

  Gus capped the pen and folded his hands on his desk. “I won’t lie to you, son. We don’t recover many stolen bicycles.”

  Paoze’s perfect posture slumped into a curve. “Yes, sir,” he whispered. “Thank you.”

  “Most bikes are stolen for parts. Stripped down and sold, bit by bit. Your bike . . . Well, I doubt there’s much of a market for parts to a twenty-year-old department store ride.”

  I squinted at Gus. “Do you know who took it?”

  “Let’s just say the chances of recovering this particular bike are slightly better than average.” Gus smiled, but it wasn’t the kind smile he’d shown earlier. “Don’t get your hopes up, Paoze, but there’s a slim chance you and your bike will be reunited.”

  Paoze bit his lip. “Thank you, sir.”

  We were almost out of Gus’s office when I had a thought. “Paoze, go back to the store and wait for me, okay? Gus, do you have another minute? And do you mind if I shut the door?”

  When we were seated again, I pushed at my cuticles. “The sheriff’s department is investigating Agnes’s murder.”

  “That’s right.” His voice was neutral. “They have the equipment, experience, and manpower.”

  “But they don’t know Rynwood like you do.” I’d have to tell Lois I’d used her line. She’d be so proud.

  “It’s out of my hands.”

  “How about the break-in at the school?” I asked. “Is it true the only room broken into was the principal’s office?”

  He looked at me curiously. “Where did you hear that?”

  “Around.” I wasn’t about to tell him I’d heard it from Marcia who’d heard it from Cindy who’d probably overheard it by listening at open windows. “Were any of the classrooms disturbed?”

  “Not a one. And if you’re worrying about the safety of your children, quit. There’s an officer at the school the whole school day, and he’ll stay that way until things calm down.”

  “Thanks, Gus.” I’d tried not to worry and hadn’t been doing a very good job. Knowing there was an officer on duty would ease my sleep—only a little, but even a smidgen would be nice. “So you’re not investigating the murder at all?”

  “Nope.”

  “But if you get information, you tell the sheriff, right?” I persisted. “Or that Deputy Wheeler?”

  Gus put his elbows on the desk. “Why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind, Beth? If I think it’s important, I’ll pass it up the line.”

  I blew out a breath. That was the answer I wanted. I didn’t have to talk to Sharon Wheeler again; I could chat amicably with my friend Gus. So I told him about the call to Gloria, my subsequent task of refrigerator cleaning, Agnes’s hockey fandom, and her connection with the Republican Party.

  Gus sat back in his chair. “You think some Democratic Chicago Blackhawks fan killed Agnes?” A smile came and went.

  “I knew you’d laugh at me. But we thought someone should know.”

  He leaned back a little farther and put his hands behind his head. “Did you read that blog this morning?”

  “WisconSINs? No.”

  “It spent a lot of time raising questions about the whereabouts of a certain white-haired and overweight gentleman the night Agnes was killed.”

  I thought a moment. “Randy Jarvis?”

  “Don’t know who else it could be. Tell you what. I’ll call the sheriff and tell him about Randy and slide in a mention of Agnes’s right-wing persuasion. What’s important isn’t the fact itself, but that she kept it a secret.”

  “Thanks, Gus.”

  I was opening the door when he said, “Are you going to the memorial service?”

  “The what?”

  “Didn’t you know? There’s a memorial service for Agnes tomorrow afternoon. I thought it was the PTA’s deal.”

  “No.” I opened the door roughly. But I could guess whose idea it was.

  I took care of the worst of Paoze’s clothing issues with safety pins and whip stitches. Once again, the Mom Sewing Kit saved the day. He was set to walk the five miles to Madison when I stopped him. “If you work until the end of the day, I’ll drive you home.”

 
“Mrs. Kennedy, you do not need to do this.”

  “If you hadn’t been working here, your bike wouldn’t have been stolen. That makes it my responsibility.” He looked dubious, so I started making things up. “And I have to go to Madison tonight. I’m meeting a friend for dinner.” A little more arm-twisting, and I had him convinced. Come closing time, we companionably tallied the day’s receipts and locked the doors.

  “But this is not the way to Madison.” Paoze frowned as I turned left instead of right.

  “There’s a stop I need to make.”

  A few minutes later, I pulled into the driveway and pushed the button to open the garage door.

  “This is your house?” Paoze asked.

  “For now.” As long as Richard kept up with the hefty child-support payments, the kids and I could stay. If, for whatever reason, the payments stopped coming, the house would be up for sale faster than water froze in January.

  We walked into the garage, Paoze trailing behind. “Could you help me get this down?” I indicated the mountain bike on the wall, looming above a trio of bikes standing on the garage floor. Together, we wrestled it off the yellow hooks and bounced it onto the concrete.

  I left Paoze holding the bike upright while I rummaged through a plastic bin of sports equipment. Down at the bottom, beneath the soccer balls and jump ropes and baseball gloves, I found a keyed bicycle lock with a key still in the slot. “Ha!” I pulled it out and handed it to Paoze. “That should do you.”

  He held the lock with his arm straight out. “Mrs. Kennedy, I do not understand.”

  “For you.” I waved at the lock and the bike. They were Richard’s castoffs. He’d bought new equipment last summer.

  “I cannot take this.”

  Paoze tried to hand me the lock, but I put my hands behind my back. “Your bike was stolen from my store, and it’s up to me to replace it.”