Murder at the PTA (2010) bk-1

by Laura Alden

  Knowing I’d been careless sent me over the top. “Thanks for your assistance, Lois,” I said tightly. “Next time I want advice on how to run my business, I’ll be sure to ask you.”

  “There’s no need to be snippy,” Lois said. “I’m only trying to help.”

  The front bells jangled, and we both put on smiles to greet the first customer of the day.

  “Good morning, ladies.” Evan smiled. “I was walking past and saw you were doing some furniture rearranging. Need some help?”

  Lois turned and walked away. I said loudly, “Why, yes, thank you.”

  Evan looked at Lois’s retreating back, then at me. “Was it something I said?”

  I wiped my forehead with the back of my wrist. Sweaty before eleven a.m. Yee-hah. “No,” I said. “Just a little miscommunication.” Or something.

  “Happens.” Evan looked at the unit. “Where does this want to go?”

  He pushed it up front, centering it between the front window and a paper skeleton hanging from the ceiling. I came behind with a smaller set of shelves, and we positioned and repositioned until I was happy. We’d never had middle-grade books up front. Maybe the prominent positioning would help sales. Anyway, it didn’t hurt to try.

  “Thanks for helping,” I told Evan. A muted sniff came from the back of the store.

  “There’s a small fee,” he said. “How about dinner?”

  “Dinner?” The store suddenly seemed tiny, its walls closing in on me, pressing tight. Breathing, normally something I did without thinking, became a conscious effort. “Um . . .” A couple of lunches with this outstandingly gorgeous man I could pass off as business, but dinner? That was a solid move into the personal relationship category.

  “How about tonight?”

  “Sorry. My kids and I already have plans.”

  “Oh.” His mouth turned down. “I understand. Some other time, then?”

  “Sure.” Maybe in another year, or when Oliver went off to college, whichever came first.

  “There is one other thing,” he said. “I need a favor.”

  “But I’ve been in the hardware only twice in ten years.” My legs, half as long as Evan’s, were whiffing along at time and a half to keep up. I was happy the store was only a block away. Any farther and I’d have had to beg for mercy.

  “Perfect.”

  When we’d huffed past the barbershop, the shoe store, and the art gallery, I glanced up at him. “Are you . . . ? Uh-oh.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Prepare yourself,” I said.

  “For what?”

  But it was too late to warn him properly. Don Hatcher, dry cleaner and alleged participant in the affairs of Marina’s next-door neighbor, was fast approaching. I sneaked a look at his hair. Maybe WisconSINs was right. His hair did look different.

  “Hello, Beth.” Don stopped in the middle of the sidewalk.

  I slowed and stopped a little too far away for comfortable conversation. “Hello, Don. How are you?”

  “Got a new one. Ready?”

  No.

  “Knock knock,” Don said.

  “Um, who’s there?” I asked.

  “Sabina.”

  Oh, dear. “Sabina who?”

  “Sabina long time since I’ve seen you.” He threw his head back and laughed. “Get it? Sabina? It’s been a?”

  I smiled. Sort of. “Haven’t heard that before.”

  “Got it off the Internet.” He winked. “Don’t tell, okay? You know, I haven’t seen you much lately. You’re not taking your cleaning to Madison, are you?” He stepped close as a cloudy frown took up too much of his face.

  With Richard and his suits out of the house, my dry-cleaning bill had dropped to almost nothing. “And miss your jokes?” I edged over to Evan’s side. “How could I? And I sent those drapes from Agnes’s house to you. Don’t those count?” Well, Marina had sent them, actually, but I was part of the cleaning team.

  “Working on them,” he said. “There’s a spot that’s resisting me—can you believe it?” He winked. “Knock knock.”

  “Who’s there,” I said weakly.

  “Ally.”

  “Ally who?”

  “Ally gator. See you!” Laughing, he nodded at the two of us and sauntered off to find another victim.

  Evan watched him go. “Is it always knock-knock jokes?”

  “This year.” We started walking again. “Last year it was lightbulb jokes.”

  “As in how many whatevers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”

  “Yup.” I wondered what kind of joke Don would be telling next year. Lois guessed limericks, but even cannibal jokes would be better than that.

  We’d come to the front door of the hardware. Evan pulled open the wooden door with its large glass panel and bowed. “Milady.”

  If I’d been Dorrie with no Jim, I would have tittered and batted my eyelashes. If I’d been Marina, I would have curtsied and said, “Thank you, milord,” and swished billowing skirts through the doorway. But since I was just me, I flushed a fast bright red, stammered out, “Um, thanks,” and stumbled over the threshold.

  Gone were the scary-looking power tools. In their place was a friendly display of doorknobs and door knockers. And where plumbing parts had once awed me to speechlessness, a small lighted Christmas village was spread out across a large table coated with artificial snow. Tiny skaters raced on a mirror pond. A miniature horse and sleigh traveled through a downtown out of Currier and Ives.

  “I know it’s not even Halloween,” Evan said, “but—”

  “It’s wonderful.” I was entranced by a two-inch-tall chimney sweep. “No one else in town sells these. Look!” I pointed at a miniature cat being chased by a dog. “They even left footprints in the snow.”

  “Toothpick.” He stood next to me, hands in his pockets. “Took me forever to get it right.”

  “You did this?” I looked at the complicated display, at him, then back to the display. “All by yourself?”

  “I detect surprise.” He grinned. “I think my feelings are hurt.”

  “Well.” I fumbled to say something that didn’t sound patronizing. “Of course I’m surprised. I’m surprised you had time.” Good answer, Beth. He’d buy that.

  Evan looked at me. “Did you know your earlobes turn red when you lie?”

  I covered my ears. “They do not.” But they did. Always had.

  “First time I noticed it was the second week of kindergarten. It was your turn for show-and-tell, you and Dave Kravis. But he forgot and started crying, and you told him you’d forgotten, too.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “You’d brought a bag to school that morning and hung it on your hook.”

  Good heavens, the man remembered more about me than I did.

  “You didn’t normally carry a bag,” Evan was saying. “So I looked inside and saw a ring of skeleton keys. No five-year-old carries skeleton keys. You’d brought them for show-and-tell, but you didn’t want to make Dave feel bad, so you lied, and your ears turned red.”

  I stuck to the faulty-memory story. “Don’t remember.” The whole red-ear thing had been an embarrassment my entire life. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the time I simply told the truth—lying was almost always wrong, and keeping track of lies was hard work—but every so often I wished for the ability to, if not lie, at least dissemble.

  “So,” Evan said, “I hear you’re the new secretary for the local PTA. How did you get talked into that job?”

  “It was . . .” Spinelessness. Irresolution. Weak-willed timidity. “It’s something I wanted to try.”

  “Why?”

  I looked at him. Finally, he was shedding his mask and turning into the jerk he was destined to be. “What do you mean, why?”

  “This probaby isn’t the right time for this conversation.”

  “When better? Go on, you can tell me the truth.”

  He half turned away from me, his gaze falling on a girl and her father haul
ing a fresh-cut Christmas tree through the snow. “The truth is, I’m interested in everything you do.”

  “Umm. . . .” This wasn’t the kind of truth I wanted. Why couldn’t he have said something about having an insatiable interest in PTA committees? Or that he was a feng shui master and had recommendations for the school addition?

  His arm brushed up against mine. Had I stepped closer to him, or had he moved closer to me? His hands touched my hair. “Beth,” he whispered, his eyes going a deeper blue with each breath. “Kind, sweet Beth.”

  The front door opened, and I sprang back.

  “The display looks great,” I said loudly. “Really great. I’ll see if my mother still collects these. Last Christmas she had them on so many tables, she ended up eating at the kitchen counter until January.” I smiled at the stooped man walking through the door. “Hello, Mr. Brinkley. Evan was just showing me his line of collectibles. They’re nice, aren’t they?” I was in hapless babble mode. Escape was the only solution. “Well, I have to be going now. Bye!”

  My escape was slowed by Mr. Brinkley’s quavery chuckle. “My eyesight isn’t what it used to be, but it sure looked like he was showing you something else.”

  I fled.

  I did my best to smooth things over with Lois. I hadn’t done a very good job, though, because at two o’clock she appeared in front of me, arms folded.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  I sat up straight enough to make my grandmother proud, but my earlobes were already feeling hot in preparation of the lie I was going to tell. “Thinking about how many copies of The Polar Express to order for Christmas.” Which was a dumb thing to say because the only thing on the legal pad I was clutching to my chest was a list of names.

  “Mmm-hmm. Looks to me like you were doing nothing but staring at that list. What’s it a list of, anyway?”

  “Oh . . . nothing.”

  “Really,” she said flatly. “I thought when we moved the displays around—”

  What “we” was she talking about, exactly? As far as I could recall, all Lois had done was head up the Overly Critical section of the cheerleading squad.

  “That maybe you wanted to track customer movement patterns,” Lois continued. “Looks more like you’re daydreaming about that Evan.”

  A Marcia giggle came from the back of the room. She’d come in at noon, stared at the changes, and said nothing. Marcia wasn’t into confrontation; she was more the type to offer her opinion in whispery teapot confidences.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “The only daydreams I have are about banana splits with hot fudge topping.”

  Marcia giggled again. Both Lois and I looked at her. Whose side was she on, anyway?

  By the end of the day, Lois had thawed to polite conversation. I’d caved by three thirty and gone out for chocolate and tossed in the promise of a new tea variety for the next morning. As the superintendent of schools had said, I was the conciliatory sort. Lois looked up from the cash register drawer she was closing out. “Big plans for the evening?”

  “Plans, yes. Big? No.”

  Lois raised one eyebrow but turned her attention back to the drawer. “Five, ten, fifteen, twenty. Have fun with your little plans.”

  Between the nonconsultation with her on the rearrangements and the fact that I hadn’t shown her the contents of my list, she was still a little annoyed. But how could I tell her the truth about the list? If I told her that Marina, who was the name behind the anonymous WisconSINs blogger, had received a death threat and I was making a list of suspects, the news would be all over Rynwood within hours and I wouldn’t be any help to Marina at all.

  “Fun?” I zipped up my coat. “This will be almost as much fun as going to the dentist. And not nearly as much fun as getting a mammogram.”

  Chapter 12

  “All in all,Beth,she’s done well this marking period, with respect to grades.” Jenna’s teacher, Paul Richey, closed the manila folder. “Did she and Bailey Scharff know each other before this year? Those two have formed a tight friendship.”

  “Not very well.”

  “Mmm.” Paul drummed his fingers on the folder.

  The memory of Evan telling me he had two daughters popped into my head. This was followed by the memory of his elbow brushing my arm and the smell of his skin and—

  “Beth?”

  I blinked. “Sorry. You were saying?”

  Paul was frowning. “Are you all right?”

  “What? I’m fine. Just a little distracted. Sorry.” A good mother would be fully present at her daughter’s parent-teacher conference, not daydreaming about a man. Once again, I wouldn’t be a candidate for the Mother of the Year Award. Since Jenna was ten, this would be the tenth year in a row.

  “Understandable,” Paul said. “Concentration has been hard for everyone since Agnes was killed.”

  “Yes.”

  We sat quietly. At the bookstore, Paul had more than once railed against Agnes and her heavy-handed management techniques, her habit of dictating rather than building consensus, and her unwavering belief that her opinions were correct ones. But every Tarver Elementary teacher had the same complaints, and if complaining about the boss made a person a murder suspect, then if I died the police would have to put Lois and Marcia on the list.

  Paul sighed. “I can’t say I’m sad she’s gone. But she didn’t deserve to be murdered.”

  “No.”

  We sat a few moments longer, thinking our own thoughts. Then Paul stirred and advised me that it might be best for Jenna to have more than one friend.

  I thanked him, gathered my purse and coat, and walked out of the room. Onward and upward—or at least onward.

  “Beth!”

  I flinched at the reverberations echoing off the hallway’s hard surfaces. “Oh, Debra. Hi.” If Harry the janitor could see the marks her high heels were leaving on the floor, he’d have a coronary.

  “Can I talk to you?”

  As always, Debra’s hair looked perfect. With an iron will, I kept my hands still and didn’t check for stray strands. “Sure. But I’m meeting with Oliver’s teacher in a few minutes.”

  “It’s about the memorial service,” she said. “You were right. None of us knew Agnes. We were a bunch of hypocrites, pretending we cared, pretending she mattered to us.”

  “Oh,” I said faintly. Someone had paid attention? I’d have to be more careful next time I spoke in public. Or here was an even better idea—never again open my mouth in any group of more than four people.

  “I sat up most of the night, thinking.” Debra chewed on her lower lip, mussing the perfectly applied lipstick. “There are a lot of hypocritical things in my life. Agnes was just the tip of the iceberg. My career, my house, my car, even my hair.” She tousled the artful coiffure. “Everything I’ve ever done was to impress or please someone. I wouldn’t know a real emotion if it bit me on the hind end.”

  I stared at her and couldn’t think of a thing to say.

  “So I’m going to change.”

  “You are?”

  “Yes. Starting tomorrow.” She nodded decisively. “Why wait?”

  Good heavens. “Um, big changes are worth a few days of thinking, don’t you think?”

  Behind us, a door opened. “Good-bye, Mr. Egoscue, Mrs. Egoscue,” chirped an unbelievably young voice. “Thanks for coming! Oh, good, Mrs. Kennedy. Right on time. Come on in. I’m ready for you.”

  I didn’t move. “Debra, let’s go to the Green Tractor. I can meet you there in twenty minutes. We’ll get Ruthie to make us ice-cream sundaes and brew up a pot of decaf.”

  “I appreciate the offer,” Debra said, “but I have errands to run. I just wanted to thank you.” She hurried off.

  “Mrs. Kennedy?” Lauren Atchinson stood in the classroom door.

  What was the right thing to do? Since it was my speechifying that had affected Debra, wasn’t it my responsibility to go after her and offer my help, as little as that might be? On the other hand, I need
ed to talk to Ms. Atchinson about my son.

  “Mrs. Kennedy?”

  On the other hand, because of me, Debra might be hurtling onto a path of self-destruction. How could I turn away from her now?

  “Mrs. Kennedy, if you need to reschedule, I might have time the week after next.”

  But it was no contest. Motherhood trumped everything, every time.

  In Oliver’s classroom construction paper pumpkins spattered the concrete block walls, each one decorated with leering grins and a child’s scrawled name. I looked for Oliver’s and finally found it, a lopsided one-toothed visage.

  “First off,” Lauren said, “Oliver is a very nice little boy.”

  “Thank you.”

  “For an older parent, you’re doing a great job of socializing him with peers.”

  “A what?” Had she really said what I thought she’d said?

  She opened a manila folder. “You can’t have a lot in common with people my age, and I just wanted to say I think you’re doing a great job.”

  Responses rushed into my head. They all jammed up together, making an outraged bottleneck, and not a single word made its way out of my open mouth.

  “So.” Lauren handed me a sheet of paper. “Here’s a chart of Oliver’s progress.”

  Young, I thought. She’s not even twenty-five. She knows not what she does.

  I studied the graph. On the left were the titles of Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, Physical Education, and Other. All the titles had a series of horizontal lines extending across the sheet, and on the right was a scale of one to ten for each. Across the sheet’s bottom was a label for each week in the six-week marking period.

  “As I’m sure you can see,” Lauren said, “there’s been a falling off.”

  She had a gift for understatement. At the beginning of the year, Oliver was scoring between seven and nine for each subject. The lines jiggled a bit until the last two weeks. After that, each line looked like the Dow Jones in 2009. Crash!

  “Have there been problems at home?” Lauren frowned, tilting her head to one side. “Is there anything I can do? I’d honestly like to help.”