Murder at the PTA (2010) bk-1

by Laura Alden

  I’d laid the old album aside and looked at Happy Agnes one more time. There were also a tanned Agnes and a relaxed Agnes. And, according to the photos on the next page, a married Agnes.

  “Dear Father, please take to your heart our sister . . .”

  On the second page, Agnes and her husband, John Mephisto, were dressed in their wedding clothes. He was in jeans, a dress shirt and tie, with long hair loose to his shoulders. She was in a white dress that looked like a long T-shirt, her long hair loose. Agnes carried daisies, and she and John were both barefoot.

  The next few album pages had snapshots of Agnes and John posing at beaches, at the edge of the Grand Canyon, in front of Mount Rushmore. John was good-looking, if you liked tall, dark, and handsome, and the top of Agnes’s head almost reached his shoulder. Each picture showed Happy Agnes with her expansive smile and one hand holding on tight to her husband. The husband’s smile wasn’t nearly so wide, and his gaze often wandered from the camera.

  “And let us remember our own souls. . . .”

  Then came two pages of Christmas pictures, then nothing. Most of the album was blank.

  “Amen.”

  The minister stepped away from the microphone. Claudia took charge. “Thank you, Pastor. I’d like to ask Erica Hale, president of the Tarver Elementary Parent Teacher Association, to say a few words. Erica?”

  In a navy blue skirt and jacket over a staid white blouse, Erica looked the part of the grieving colleague. But Agnes and Erica had shouted at each other more times than first graders could count, and our esteemed president had been checking off the days until her term as PTA president was over.

  At her house the other night, I’d stayed after Randy and Julie left to beg for gardening tips and had learned a little too much about how Erica felt about the recently deceased principal. “It’s a relief,” she’d said, “to have that woman gone.”

  I watched Erica adjust the microphone to suit her short stature and wondered if she would manage to avoid hypocrisy.

  “Agnes Mephisto,” she began, “was principal of this school for ten years. Under her guidance, test scores rose, money was saved, and a new era in administration-teacher relations was achieved. . . .”

  The level of relations was a new low, but it was new.

  “Agnes was an original, and she will be deeply missed.”

  I thought about that as Erica came down the stage steps and sat back down. “No lies,” I whispered.

  “I didn’t get straight As in law school for nothing.”

  “Randy Jarvis is the treasurer of the Tarver PTA,” Claudia was saying. “Randy?”

  Mr. Jarvis laboriously stumped up the stairs, one foot up, next foot beside it. One foot up. Next foot beside it. He swayed and flailed his arms at the top, but he regained his balance and plodded to center stage. A large, soft exhalation ran around the room; I hadn’t been alone in holding my breath.

  Randy moved the microphone up and stood a moment with his hands on both sides of the lectern. “I met Agnes ten years ago this August.” He looked out across the audience. “Remember that August? Hot as Hades and not a drop of rain. Humid as all get out past Labor Day.”

  That sounded like every August, but ten years ago I’d been enamored of an infant Jenna, so I wasn’t the best judge.

  “Agnes came into the store and told me she was the new Tarver principal. Asked if I had any kids in the school.”

  Randy was starting to ramble. I wondered if there would be a plot, or if it was going to be your average Randy story: long, tedious, and point-free. I deeply wanted to twist around and find Marina. This didn’t sound like the crazy-with-love-for-Agnes Randy she’d theorized.

  “That day,” he went on, “Agnes bought a Diet Coke and a bag of Doritos.” He paused. “And an ice-cream sandwich. I nearly forgot about the ice cream.”

  Randy held a roomful of people captive while he recited the junk food that Agnes regularly purchased—Doritos and ice cream in summer; potato chips and beef jerky in winter. “I always knew when winter was coming, just by what Agnes bought.” Randy chuckled. No one else did. “Just two weeks ago, Agnes bought potato chips but no jerky. I asked her if that meant we were only going to get half a winter. But she said she just wasn’t hungry.”

  Mercifully, he stopped there. He nodded and made his ungainly way down the stairs.

  “Our next speaker,” Claudia said, “is Beth Kennedy. Beth became secretary of our PTA only a few weeks ago, but she’s been a part of Tarver for many years. She’s also the owner of the Children’s Bookshelf. Beth?”

  I climbed the stage stairs, which suddenly seemed taller and steeper than Mount Everest. At the top, I stopped, catching my breath. What was I doing up here?

  The night before, I’d sat in front of the computer and written draft after draft of words appropriate for the occasion—bland words that edged toward hypocrisy without quite tumbling into the pit. I glanced down at them now. “Agnes Mephisto’s love of books was our common bond. . . . Agnes had a strong and admirable drive to push Tarver Elementary to great heights.”

  Gag me.

  I looked out across the upturned faces—Erica, Randy, overly pregnant Julie, and on the other side of Erica, the school superintendent and administrative staff. Scattered around were teachers and local business owners, a few parents—Debra O’Conner and her husband, CeeCee Daniels and husband, Claudia Wolff, Tina Heller. All of them were here because they were supposed to be; none of them were here because they cared about Agnes.

  A sudden surge of anger roared through me. I grabbed the paper and held it high. “Claudia asked me to say a few words, and I spent last night working on this speech. Until ten seconds ago my intentions were to read it.” I crumpled the sheet into a lump and hurled it to the floor. “But it’s crap.”

  There were lots of sidelong glances and a soft rustling. Behind me I heard scuffing feet, and I figured Claudia was perching on the edge of her chair, looking around for a hook she could use to yank me away from the microphone.

  “Crap,” I repeated. “We can stand up here and say pleasant things about Agnes, but did any of us truly know her? How many of us invited her into our homes? Stopped in her office just to chat?”

  More feet were shuffling. I plunged on. “If we’re here to memorialize Agnes, let’s talk about what she was really like.”

  Air left the room as two hundred people sucked in a breath at the same time. “Beth!” whispered Claudia. “You can’t—”

  I ran over her strangled cry of distress. “Did anyone know Agnes was named for her aunt Agnes? At least three generations of her family had the name. Did anyone know Agnes was from Superior?”

  There wasn’t a single nod of confirmation. A movement in the back of the room caught my eye,but I couldn’t make out who it was. “Agnes,” I said, “was a Perry Como fan, and she was a big believer in vitamins.”

  I spotted Marina’s red hair. She was grinning, and I realized that I’d given away that I’d gone back into Agnes’s house and . . . well . . . snooped. The fact that I hadn’t intended to snoop wouldn’t shield me from the grief I was sure to get. Ah, well.

  “Agnes had a marvelous collection of 1930s hats. Her guest room—” My voice cracked as I once again saw that lonely, unloved room. “In her guest room was a shelf of children’s books. Nancy Drew, the Narnia books, Wind in the Willows.”

  In the second row, Debra put her fingers to her lips. A couple of rows behind her, CeeCee tucked her hair behind her ears as she surreptitiously wiped the outsides of her eyes.

  I put my elbows on the lectern. “And Agnes was a hockey fan. Did anyone know that? No one here cared enough about Agnes to learn about her passions. If I had to do it over again, would I? Who knows? But now I’ll never get the chance. Agnes is dead.” I bit my lower lip. “Murdered.”

  Ignoring the rustling, I went on. “There’s no sugar-coating this. Agnes was murdered. Years taken away from her.” My voice hardened. “Whoever stole those years did a great wrong. He
stole Agnes’s life. And it’s our own fault that we hardly knew her.”

  There wasn’t anything left for me to say, so I stopped. “Thank you,” I said, and started back to my seat. Claudia gave me the stink eye, but I pretended not to see.

  Erica leaned over as I sat down. “Where’s your hair shirt?” she asked softly. “No public penance can be complete without one.”

  “Too itchy,” I whispered. Erica turned a laugh into a cough as Claudia introduced the next speaker: the superintendent of the Rynwood School District.

  Mack Vogel took the microphone and gave me a wary glance. “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. On this sad occasion, I’d like to say a few words on the contributions Agnes Mephisto made in the ten years she served as principal of Tarver Elementary.”

  One sentence later, we were listening to the sanitized version of Agnes.

  I sighed. Erica patted my arm and whispered, “Not everyone is as brave as you.”

  But I knew it wasn’t bravery that had made me toss my speech to the floor. It was sheer unadulterated fury. Agnes should not be dead, and she deserved to be remembered as she truly was, not as some mythical, perfect principal.

  Mack was steaming on strong. “Of the many fine attributes we’ll miss in Agnes, at the top of the list must be the dedication she always exhibited.”

  I sighed again and tried to think of something else.

  At long last, the pastor closed the service with another prayer. “Amen,” he finally said. Immediately, people stood and started making their way to the exits. Claudia fixed me with a beady stare as she came down the steps. I said good-bye to my fellow PTA committee members amidst a flutter of questions about the school break-in and the absence of a murder suspect, and I snaked into the departing crowd.

  I’d almost made it to the back door when someone spoke into my ear. “I knew,” he said in a low voice. I stopped and the crowd flowed around us. The man was dressed in a black polyester suit with sleeves two inches too short. He looked like someone I should know, but I couldn’t quite place him.

  He nodded. “I knew all about Agnes and her hockey.”

  It was Harry, the school’s security guard and janitor. No wonder I didn’t recognize him; I’d never seen him out of the navy blue slacks and light blue dress shirt that passed for his uniform.

  “Are you a hockey fan, too?” I asked.

  “Blackhawks,” he said, referring to the NHL team in Chicago. “But Agnes and me got along anyway.”

  I remembered the night Agnes presented the school renovation design. She and Harry had stood together in back, beforehand. So much for my assumption that they were talking about what time to turn down the lights.

  “Agnes knew hockey,” Harry said. “She played goalie. Best kid goalie in Superior until they wouldn’t let her play anymore ’cause she was a girl.” He looked at the floor.

  I laid my hand on Harry’s thin arm. “I’m sorry. She shouldn’t be dead.”

  “No, she shouldn’t. She really shouldn’t.” His voice shook. “I’ll miss her,” he said. “A lot.”

  I squeezed his arm. “She was a fine principal. We’ll all miss her. We’ll—”

  Harry jerked his arm away. “Bull,” he said loudly.

  I shrank away. I knew what was coming next. Harry was going to blast me, the PTA, the administration, the teachers, and the parents with being sanctimonious, self-righteous snobs who couldn’t stand Agnes in life and didn’t have the courage to say so at her death. He was going to say none of us should be here. And he’d be right.

  Harry’s shoulders went back and his chin lifted. I dove deep into my imagination, and the unironed collar of his shirt disappeared. The black suit expanded into a voluminous cape. He surveyed the people streaming by with a fierce and challenging glare. “She deserved better.” He turned on his heel, swirling the cape gracefully, and strode off.

  I watched him go, hearing the jangling of spurs on leather riding boots. Poor Harry, born four hundred years too late. He would have made a wonderful defender of feminine virtue.

  “Was that Harry?” Marina came up beside me. “He looks different. The suit, I guess.” But there was doubt in her voice.

  “Mmm.” She kept talking, but my thoughts were back in the Elizabethan era with Sir Walter Raleigh and mud puddles, so it took me a moment to come back to the present. “Sorry. What did you say?”

  “Oh, for crying out loud.” She waited until a passing group was out of earshot. Then she leaned close. “I know who killed Agnes.”

  Chapter 11

  I sat at Marina’s kitchen table, drinking decaf and shooting holes in her latest who-killed-Agnes theory. “Agnes and her ex-husband have been divorced for more than twenty years,” I said. “Why on earth would he wait until now to kill her?”

  Marina twiddled her fingers in the air in a don’t-bother-me-with-mere-details gesture. “It’s always the ex-husband. There are lots of reasons why he waited this long.”

  “Name three.”

  Though Marina’s lower lip had momentarily drooped when I’d said I already knew Agnes had been married once upon a time, she’d recovered as she retold her tale of grilling Randy Jarvis for Agnes information while buying a candy bar. The empty wrapper now lay on the table in front of us, and I spun it in circles while I waited for Marina.

  “Maybe,” she said, “Agnes changed her last name and it took this long for him to find her. Sure.” She warmed to the idea. “Other than those expensive shoes, who ever heard of a name like Mephisto? Mephistopheles, Mephisto, the devil, same thing. No one would marry a guy with a name like that.”

  “Agnes did,” I said. “John Mephisto, in 1975. There was a wedding invitation in the photo album.”

  “Well, fooey.” Marina licked her finger and touched it to the candy wrapper, sticking on the tiniest of chocolate scraps. “How about Agnes was stalking him for years, making his life miserable, and he finally snapped?”

  “Hard for someone in Rynwood to stalk someone who lives in California.”

  “Aren’t you the party pooper? She could have been cyberstalking. Maybe she stole his identity. Maybe she—”

  The alarm on my watch started beeping. I pushed the stem to shut it off and got up. “Much as I’d love to stay and listen to you flounder for theories, I need to get home before Richard drops off the kids.”

  “I’m not floundering.”

  “Okay, you’re not.” I slid on my coat. “But you’re taking on a lot of water.”

  “Oh, hah very hah.”

  I was turning the doorknob when she said, “Hey, Beth?” She was sticking her finger into the chocolate wrapper again. “Nice speech.” She didn’t look up at me. “At the memorial service. That was really nice.”

  “Oh.” I was used to Marina’s carefree dispensation of compliments, but this sounded deep and real. “Well, thanks.”

  “You were right. None of us really knew her.”

  I thought of Harry. There was one person. But just one.

  “Anyway, I just wanted to say you did good.” Marina looked up and grinned. “Who would have guessed?”

  I stuck my tongue out at her and went into the black night.

  Three hours later, Jenna and Oliver were hugged, unpacked, and sound asleep. I took their dirty clothes to the laundry room, wondering if I’d done the right thing in divorcing Richard. Did every divorced mother wonder the same thing? How much damage had I done to my children by removing their father from their daily life?

  Not that he’d been home every day. His job put him on the road three weeks out of four, and I’d thought divorce wouldn’t be all that different for the kids. “Wrong again,” I told the jug of laundry detergent.

  Bam! Bam! Bam!

  I jumped. Who would be pounding on the back door at this time of night? I started the washing machine and went through the kitchen. Marina’s face was on the glass, pressing her nose flat and making a mark I’d have to clean off later. I waved her in. She rattled the door, and I remembered I’
d already turned the dead bolt.

  The second the door was unlocked, Marina shot inside. “It’s me. It’s me,” she wailed. Her hair flew around her head in a red nimbus.

  “I know it’s you.” I shut the door behind her. “Who else would I let into my house late on a Sunday night?”

  “No, no. It’s me. I’m doing it. And now he’s after me. What am I going to say to the Devoted Husband? I can’t tell the DH—I just can’t.” She paced the room in a very un-Marina-like way. Nervous energy and Marina weren’t on regular speaking terms, but she was tapping her knuckles together and whirling around as if to the manor born.

  “What am I going to do?” Marina said over and over, each repetition growing louder and louder. “What am I going to do?”

  “I’d suggest taking a deep breath and calming down.”

  “You don’t understand!” Her eyes darted around. “I’m in danger. I’ll put you in danger.” A horrified look crossed her face. “I’ve put your kids in danger just by being here! I can’t—”

  “Yes, you can.” There was a chair nearby, and I shoved her toward it. “Sit down and calm down.”

  “But I can’t.” She tried to rise.

  I pressed on her shoulder and didn’t let her up. “Sit.” When she remained motionless for a full second, I said, “Deep breaths. No arguing. We’ll do them together. Ready? One.” After we’d done three, I sat in the chair next to her. “Now, start at the beginning and go to the end. Don’t leave anything out.”

  She gave a shaky laugh. “I knew this was the right place to come. You’re the best person in a crisis I’ve ever known.”

  “Hah. I’m a mom, that’s all. Moms know crises.”

  “That’s not true. Some moms freak out at the sight of blood.”

  I shut one eye and scanned her from head to toe. “Are you bleeding somewhere that doesn’t show? Because if you are—”

  “See? You’re doing it already. I’d worked myself into a panic attack, and now I’m almost laughing.”

  Almost, but not quite. “I could tell the bloop joke.”