Murder at the PTA (2010) bk-1

by Laura Alden

  “Then what is it?” What could matter more than architecture at an architecture firm? It’d be like a doctor not knowing how to diagnose shingles. Or a children’s bookstore owner not knowing the plot of The Indian in the Cupboard.

  “I’m the best rainmaker they’ve ever had.” He ripped a paper match out of a matchbook, and a small flame flared. The stink of sulfur wafted by as Bick held the match close to the pipe’s bowl and puffed furiously. A small cloud of smoke billowed around his head. He opened another desk drawer and set out a plastic rectangular box the size of a four-slice toaster. It whirred into motion, and the smoke was sucked into a vent.

  Bick caught my lifted eyebrows. “Compromise, compromise,” he said. “I can smoke if I use this little guy. It’s not the same, though.” He looked around the room. It was the size of a small master bedroom. “There’s nothing like a room filled with pipe smoke.”

  “No doubt.”

  His laugh was as deep and rich as his speaking voice. If he sang, it’d be a low bass. “Are you married?” he asked.

  I looked at my empty left ring finger. Taking off those rings had been one of the hardest things I’d ever done. The sudden and overwhelming sense of failure had taken me by surprise. I’d been prepared for sorrow, but not for such a stunning sense of disappointment in myself. So much for those vows I’d taken for life. I’d meant every word, every syllable, and now I was raising two children by myself. Where had I gone wrong? What was wrong with me?

  My voice didn’t want to work, but I coughed it loose. “Why would you guess I’m not married?”

  “Not a guess, not a guess.” He aimed the pipe’s stem at me and, for the first time, I took note of the intelligence in his face. “Facts. You and your husband divorced last year. You own a bookstore. You became the Tarver PTA’s secretary a month ago.”

  I stared at him. Half of me was annoyed at what felt like a personal invasion; the other half was impressed. A tiny portion was flattered, but I stomped hard on that part. “I called yesterday afternoon at three thirty. How do you know all that?”

  “Did my homework.” He blew a lazy smoke ring.

  Hal the surveyor had been right; Bick was sharp. “Did you do your homework on the Tarver Elementary School addition?”

  Another smoke ring. “Ask me a question about Tarver Elementary, any question.”

  “What year was it built?”

  He gave me a slitted glance. “The original school or the one built after the explosion?”

  “What explosion?”

  “One score for me.” He held up his index finger. “The original building was completed in 1930. A disgruntled janitor dynamited the place in 1947. The guy wired dynamite all through the crawl space and set it off by touching together two exposed wires.”

  Horror fluttered in my heart. “Tell me he didn’t do that during school hours.”

  “No, no. July. They rebuilt the new school on the same spot. No crawl space, though.” His cheeks sank deep as he drew on the pipe. “That particular barn door is locked tight.”

  I tried to shake away a sight I’d never seen. “An explosion. I can’t believe I’ve never heard about it.”

  Bick shrugged. “Long time ago.”

  Next time I saw Auntie May in her wheelchair, I’d ask her about it—if she didn’t run me over first. “Why is there a step between the early-elementary wing and the main hall?” A ramp had been added to allow the building to be handicapped accessible, but I’d always wondered why the step existed.

  “Builder error,” he said promptly. “They were in a hurry to get the school built, so they started laying block at both ends. When they met in the middle, things weren’t quite right.”

  “You’re making that up.”

  “Construction isn’t about getting everything right. It’s about how to best cover up your mistakes.”

  “I didn’t need to know that.”

  He smiled. “Then go back to thinking I made that part up.”

  “I will. Last question,” I said. “Who put up the money for the Tarver addition?” My heart thudded against my ribs. Please, let him tell me. Please, don’t let Marina get hurt. Please . . .

  His sharp gaze focused tight and drilled into me. “Hmm.” He puffed on his pipe, blowing tiny smoke signals into the air. I tried not to squirm under the intensity and failed miserably. He blew a big puff, took the pipe out of his mouth, and asked, “How about dinner tonight?”

  “I . . . I’m sorry. What did you say?”

  “Never mind, never mind.” He studied his pipe. “The money for Tarver. Interesting question.” We both watched the smoke for a minute. I wondered if Native Americans truly had sent up smoke signals, or if the whole thing was a Hollywood invention.

  “Why,” Bick asked, “do you want to know?”

  I spouted out what I’d told Hal the previous day—member of the PTA, wanted to be responsible, blah, blah, blah. My explanation tailed off. “And that’s about it.”

  Bick’s focus tightened even closer. I kept up the stare-down for almost a full second before looking away. He didn’t believe a word of it. And here I’d thought the ability to detect lies was a Mom Skill.

  “Actually, I have no idea where the money came from,” Bick said. “Agnes never gave out more information than necessary.”

  Was there such a thing as architect/client confidentiality? As with attorneys and priests? I’d never heard of it, but there were many things I didn’t know and even more things I didn’t understand—golf handicapping, for one.

  Bick pulled out a lower desk drawer and propped his foot up. The look projected comfort and ease, but I detected small vertical lines between his eyebrows, lines that hadn’t been there earlier. “So,” he said, “have you heard anything? I talked to Mack Vogel last Thursday, and he said the board was going to bring it to a vote this week.”

  “Bring what to vote?”

  “The project.” He spoke slowly, as if to a child. “The Tarver Elementary addition, remember it?”

  Ah. So this was why I’d been invited into the inner sanctum on such short notice. Old Bick wanted to continue to be the company rainmaker, and he was feeling parched. “You said you’re not here for your design skills, but did you design the Tarver addition?”

  Bick took the pipe out of his mouth and howled with laughter. “Me? Design that? Even I couldn’t design something that ugly.”

  “You don’t like it?”

  He snorted out twin plumes of smoke; a small dragon in disgust. “Not me, not Browne, and definitely not Browne. That thing is a travesty.”

  My mouth opened and closed a few times before I found the traction to get going. “Your firm didn’t design it?”

  Another twin snort. “We provided three preliminary designs, but Agnes rejected them all. She had her own ideas.”

  I smiled. Sounded like Agnes.

  “We told her we’d design anything she wanted, but who knew she’d want something that atrocious? Couldn’t change her mind an inch.” He shrugged. “But who’s going to turn away a paying client? A school job with no bond issue to pass? Project sent from heaven.” He made a face. “And except for the execrable taste of one particular person, it would have been.”

  “Where were the invoices sent?” I asked.

  “No, no.” Bick shook his head. “He who doesn’t pay the bills doesn’t get that information. And it wouldn’t do you any good, anyway.”

  I turned that over in my mind, but I couldn’t make sense of it. “You asked if I knew whether or not the project was a go-ahead.”

  Though Bick didn’t twitch, I could see invisible antenna springing forward at full attention. “Yes?” he asked.

  “Actually, I have no idea.” Take that, Mr. Won’t-Share-Information.

  He froze, then pointed the pipe stem at me. “How about lunch?”

  Mack Vogel, superintendent of the Rynwood School District, was an imposing presence. As a church elder, he often read the Scriptures, his wide voice filling the sanctua
ry, long arms waving with emotion. More than one small Rynwoodite grew up with the vague notion that Mr. Vogel was the image of our Heavenly Father.

  Fallen leaves swirled around my ankles with a noisy rattle as I trod up wooden porch steps and knocked on a front door that had been opened by Vogels for more than a century. The wind had shifted from a warmish south breeze to northwest gusts that were sneaking down my neck and up my pant legs. I stuck my hands in my pockets and shivered. It was time to get out winter coats and warm hats and fat boots the kids wouldn’t want to wear.

  I knocked a second time, then looked around at the home Mack and Joanna and their four children had taken over when his parents had moved to Florida. After they’d finished roofing, replumbing, rewiring, plastering, and painting, they rested for two weeks and then started landscaping.

  In peak season, roses climbed arbors, daylilies bloomed against picket fences, and creeping thyme planted between the bricks of the walkways perfumed the air. It was a showpiece, and Mack and Joanna gladly opened their house and grounds for fund-raising events, small concerts, and weddings.

  Today, though, withering stems and spent flowers were turning the landscape into a forlorn wasteland. A few hardy mums were trying to perk things up, but leaves were floating down even now to cover them.

  The front door opened and the early-evening sun lit Mack’s face. “Oh. Hello, Beth.” His normally resonant voice was flat. “What can I do for you?”

  “Hi, Mack.” I frowned. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. Would you like to come in?”

  He didn’t look fine—fatigue was written in the dark bags under his eyes and in the set of his mouth—but who was I to disagree with the school superintendent?

  Mack led me inside, and he stood in the middle of the living room, looking at the piles of newspapers and magazines and mail that covered every flat surface. His breathy sigh was full of weariness. “Just toss something on the floor. It doesn’t matter.”

  Those last three words told me that something was truly, deeply wrong. Before today, I’d assumed the Vogels’ house repelled disorder with some sort of magical power. Never once in the multitude of functions I’d attended there had I ever seen a speck of anything even resembling dirt. “Um, is Joanna here?”

  His eyes looked glassy, then wet, and then, to my shock, he started crying. His shoulders shook in great heaving sobs, and he covered his face.

  I stood stock-still. It wasn’t a simple wink-out-a-few-tears kind of cry; it was a full-blown bawl. His face was red and twisted and old. “Jo-Jo-anna,” he kept repeating, her name coming out in small gulps. “Jo-Jo-anna.”

  The cowardly parts that made up the majority of my body desperately wanted to flee. They wanted to pat Mack on the shoulder, say I’d come back at a better time, and run away fast.

  The silvery ring of a handbell trickled down the stairs. Mack groaned. “I can’t do this anymore.” He swayed, a tall tree beginning its slow topple to the forest floor.

  I took a fast step forward and shoved a chair behind his knees. “Sit.” I pushed down on his shoulders, and he sank fast onto the velvet upholstery.

  The bell tinkled again. “You sit,” I said. “I’ll go up.”

  Faster than a striking snake, he reached up to grab my hand. “Thank you,” he said. I squeezed back and slid out of his grasp. At the bottom of the stairway, I put my hand on the acorn newel post and looked across the room. Mack sat loosely, looking as if he’d forgotten how to use his muscles.

  I was getting a very bad feeling about this.

  The small tinkling bell sounded again. I took a deep breath for courage and went up. At the top of the stairs a six-paneled oak door stood slightly ajar. I sucked in another breath and knocked. “Joanna? It’s Beth Kennedy. May I come in?”

  “Beth?” Her voice sounded strong and vibrant. “What are you doing here? Come the heck in. If I have to spend one more day in this bed without seeing anyone other than Mack, I’m going to go stark raving mad.” She laughed. “If I’m not already.”

  From a Garden Club tour I remembered a brass bed covered with quilts and brightly colored pillows, lace sheer curtains at the bay window, a watercolor landscape of a country garden, a wood floor cushioned with an Aubusson rug. All that was gone. In their place were a hospital bed, stark white shades, and a wide collection of medical charts and graphs.

  I stared at Joanna, at the naked windows and floors, at the charts littered with images that told me exactly what was going on. “You’re . . .” I couldn’t say the word. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was inferring an incorrect conclusion. Maybe I was—

  “Pregnant,” Joanna said cheerfully. “That’s me.”

  “But . . .” The words crowding into my mouth couldn’t be said out loud.

  “But I’m forty-nine years old.” She grinned. “Yah. Who would have guessed?”

  “Um . . .” It felt like years since I’d finished a sentence.

  “I felt weird,but I figured it was hormonal stuff. Menopause, whatever. I finally went to the doctor because I was throwing up in the mornings.” Joanne giggled. “She took one look at me and asked, ‘Have you been taking your birth control pills?’ Lo and behold, I’d run out for a few weeks, busy hosting three weddings this summer and seven concerts. Never once thought about getting pregnant. I’m almost fifty years old, for heaven’s sake!”

  I dragged over a chair and sat down. “What do your children think?” One of the girls and both boys were married, and the younger girl was away at college. I tried to imagine my own mother getting pregnant when I was in my twenties and couldn’t do it.

  “Haven’t told them yet. Been too busy with bed rest.”

  “From now until the end?”

  “You bet. My doctor is worried about a miscarriage. Guess the rate goes way up when the mommy is more than forty. I’m stuck here for the duration.” Smiling, she flung out her arms. “Nothing to do for months and months.”

  My knees knocked together, and I put my hands on them to keep them still. I’d felt old giving birth to Oliver when I was thirty-three. Joanna would be fifty when the baby was born. Fifty!

  “Poor Mack is frantic.” She chuckled. “He’s got a bug about keeping this room germ-free. I’m surprised he didn’t make you put on a gown and mask before coming up.”

  “How far along are you?”

  “Two weeks into the second trimester. The morning sickness is already gone, thank goodness. That gives me only five and a half months of lolling around in bed.” She looked sad for a moment, then perked up. “But that’s five and a half months I don’t have to polish Vogel furniture, dust Vogel knickknacks, vacuum old Vogel floors, or wash the glass on the front of Vogel pictures. Have you ever taken a close look at Mack’s great-grandmother?” She shuddered. “With a face like that, I’m amazed there were any more Vogels at all.”

  “I’ll try and remember to look.”

  “Don’t get me wrong.” She pleated the white sheet that lay across her chest. “I love this house. Keeping it in the family is important to me. But you know something?” She looked up at me, her face earnest. “It consumes me. I could do with a break.”

  Having a baby seemed like an extreme way to get out of housekeeping, but I kept that thought to myself.

  “Honey?” Mack knocked on the door. “Joanna? Are you all right?”

  Joanna grinned at me. “Mack?” she called in a faint voice. “Is that you?”

  The door creaked open, and Mack’s mostly white head of hair came inside. “Dinner’s almost ready.” He spoke with a sickroom voice. “Broiled chicken, rice, and a spinach salad. I’ll have the tray here in ten minutes.”

  She held up a trembling hand. “Could I have noodles instead of rice?”

  His frown came and went in an instant. “You can have anything you want. It’ll take a few extra minutes, though.”

  She sighed and turned her head away. “Never mind. It’s too much trouble.”

  “No!” His voice bounced off the room�
�s many hard surfaces. “No,” he said more quietly. “It’s not too much trouble.” He came to the bed, kissed her forehead, and left.

  “I’d like rice just fine,” Joanna whispered. “But I like the idea of Mack washing extra dishes even better.” She gave an exaggerated wink.

  After I’d said good-bye, I went down to the kitchen. The room, which I’d always seen with shiny copper kettles hanging from hooks and decorated with flower-filled earthenware vases, was a disaster. Dirty pots filled the sink, dirty dishes cluttered half the counters, and lumpy grocery bags crowded the other half.

  Mack was standing at the sink, trying to fill a pot with water. Since the sink was overflowing with dishes, he was filling a glass with hot water and dumping it into the pasta pot, over and over and over.

  “I’ll have to cook another chicken breast,” he said dully. “This one will be dried to leather by the time the pasta is done.” He dumped a last glassful into the pot and lugged it over to the cooktop.

  I looked at him, at the kitchen, at him, at the kitchen. Then I rolled up my sleeves and started running hot water into the sink. “Sit down,” I said. “Eat that chicken and rice while the water is heating.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?” I opened the cupboard door and rummaged around for dish soap.

  “Joanna hasn’t had dinner yet.”

  “It’s silly to let food go to waste,” I said. “And how long has it been since you’ve eaten? Did you have lunch?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Eat something. You’re not going to be any help to your wife if you keel over in a dead faint.”

  Irresolute, he stood, the pot top in one hand. The other hand, without anything to do, wandered around aimlessly, plucking at a shirt button, tugging on a belt loop, finally coming to rest at his side. “She needs to eat,” he said.

  I tried to match this battle-fatigued husband with the decisive school superintendent I’d known for years. Again my imagination came up short. “You need to eat, too.” I found a dish mop behind a tottering stack of glasses. “I’ll wash; you eat.”