Murder at the PTA

by Alden, Laura

  “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.”

  “No, no!” She put her index fingers into the shape of a cross and thrust them at me. “Not the bloop joke. Anything but that.” She giggled, and I knew her worst fear had faded.

  “In the beginning,” I started, “Marina Annesley, now Marina Neff, was born in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Fast-forward forty-some years.” I rolled my index fingers, indicating time passing. “Your turn.”

  “I’m the—” She spoke so quietly that I couldn’t hear.

  “Sorry? The what?”

  “The WisconSINista.”

  I knew the term “barista,” though I’d never plucked up the courage to order a cup of coffee from one. Fancy coffee shops with mile-long menus written on chalk-boards intimidated me. But what was a Wisconsinista? A new name for Wisconsin natives? A University of Wisconsin football fan?

  “The what?” I asked.

  She pushed her thumbs up against each other hard enough to whiten the skin around her nails. “The Wiscon—”

  “I heard you the first time. What’s a Wisconsinista?”

  “Why did I know I’d have to explain this to you? I write that blog. You know, WisconSINs? The one everybody is talking about?” In spite of the angst hanging off her, she sounded proud of herself.

  “Oh.” The anonymous blog my staff kept crowding around and reading. The one Gus mentioned. The one that was offering up Randy Jarvis as Agnes’s killer. The anonymous blog I’d thought Lois might be authoring. So. Not written by my staff, but written by my best friend. My mouth twisted a fraction.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Marina said. “Nothing but a bunch of gossip, right? But it’s been fun. You wouldn’t believe some of the e-mail I’ve gotten. And who it’s been about.” She grinned. “Did you know—”

  I held up my hand. “Please. Don’t know. Don’t want to know.”

  “Spoilsport.”

  “My kids tell me that on a daily basis.”

  “No surprise there.” She rolled her eyes. “I started this blog in September, when Zach went back to school. Had to do something to keep from going wacko. Anyway, I got maybe thirty, forty hits a day until Agnes was murdered. Then ka-blooey!” She threw out her arms. “The day after? Thousands! And I’m still getting hundreds.”

  “How nice for you,” I said. “But if it’s that much fun, why are you here?”

  The glow on her face faded to a white that made her freckles stand out sharply. “Because tonight one of those e-mails was different. It came just after I posted about there having to be a connection between the school B and E and the murder. This e-mail was a threat.”

  “Like a cease-and-desist threat?”

  “No.” She covered her mouth with her fingers and spoke through them. “It was ‘Keep trying to find the guy who offed Agnes and you could be next.’”

  “ ‘You could be . . .’ ” The sentence was impossible to finish.

  Time at the kitchen table stopped. The refrigerator hummed, the wall clock ticked, and the washing machine sloshed. But Marina and I, despite being seated comfortably, hung in midair, our feet dangling and our toes frantically trying to touch the ground.

  “That’s a death threat,” I whispered.

  She nodded, and the ground fell farther away. Multiple emotions competed for the top slot. Fear, panic, and a deep and desperate love for this woman who had given me so much. Marina? Dead? Reality had changed in an instant and I didn’t care for it.

  I took one of her hands and flinched at the chill in her skin. “Do you want me to call Gus for you?”

  “No.”

  “Right. It’s probably better if you call.” I gave her hand a pat. “I’ll get the phone and—”

  “No!” She grabbed out and jerked me back down. “No police.”

  This was starting to sound like a B movie. The kidnappers said no police, but one of the parents always ended up calling them. Something would go wrong and a rogue cop would save the kid, retrieve the money, and get a promotion. “What do you mean, no police?”

  “Just what I said.” Color was coming back into her face. “No police.”

  “Marina, you just had a death threat! We’re calling Gus right now.”

  “Call the police and I swear I’ll deny everything.”

  “Are you nuts?”

  “Yes! I mean, no. If I go to the police, I’ll have to tell them I write WisconSINs! I’ll lose my anonymity, I’ll get more threats from people who didn’t like what I wrote about whoever, and I’ll have to shut down the blog. The whole town will hate me.”

  “Gee,” I said dryly. “Shut down the blog or get killed. How on earth will you decide?”

  “I’m not going to get killed.” Sh
e put up her chin. “It’s common knowledge that people who send anonymous threats never carry them out.”

  “Is this the same common knowledge that says you can see the Great Wall of China from the moon? The same common knowledge that says chameleons change color to match their surroundings?”

  “They don’t?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I don’t think this guy is dangerous.”

  “So why are you sitting in my kitchen late on a Sunday night?”

  “He just wanted to scare me, that’s all.”

  “Uh-huh.” I put my elbow on the table and propped up my chin with my hand. “And you know this how, exactly?”

  “If he wanted me dead, I’d be dead.” She ran an index finger across her throat and made a gurgling noise that sounded more like something you’d hear in a dentist’s office than in a dark alley. “He wants two things. That I stop trying to figure out who broke into the school, and that I stop trying to figure out who killed Agnes.”

  “Is that what you’ve been doing?”

  “Sure. Me and half the people in Rynwood.” She flipped her hair back over her shoulders. “I’m just the one with an audience.”

  “And you like that.”

  “Daahling. Everyone loves an audience.” The imaginary cigarette holder she suddenly held was two feet long, and the imaginary smoke ring she blew wafted up toward the ceiling. “I’m just honest enough to admit it.”

  That comment wasn’t worth responding to. “So if you agree to stop trying to figure it out, he’ll stop threatening you.”

  “So he says.”

  “Then it’s easy,” I said. “Stop.”

  “Why did I know you’d say that?”

  “Gee, can’t imagine.” I drummed my fingers on my cheek. “Maybe because I’m right?”

  “Daahling.” She tipped ashes off the ghostly cigarette and onto the linoleum.“You could be right of Rush and I’d still love you, but there is another alternative.” Her glance slewed sideways, and the Greta Garbo facade faded.

  Ahh. “You have an ulterior motive, don’t you?”

  Her mouth opened slightly. “Moi?” She laid her hands flat on her collarbone.

  “Yes.” I folded my arms. “You’re about to ask me to do something I don’t want to do. Last time you did that, I ended up as the PTA’s secretary.”

  “And you enjoy it.” Marina smirked. “Don’t give me that look. You’re having a good time. You and Erica are getting along like a house afire. Has she stopped by yet to give you landscaping advice?”

  Erica had said she’d drop by next weekend, but I wasn’t going to tell Marina that. “Whatever you want, I don’t have the time, I don’t have the money, I don’t know how, and . . . and . . .”

  “And you don’t want to help me.” Marina slumped.

  “Cut it out. You’re not guilting me into participating in whatever nefarious plan is cooking in that red-haired brain.”

  “Nefarious? I’m as law abiding as they come.”

  “Sneaky, then.”

  She gave me an injured-kitten look. “All I want is a little help.”

  “Let the police handle it,” I said.

  “I’ll lose the blog.”

  I shrugged. “Start another.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “You’re right. I don’t. Why on earth would you risk your life over something as trivial as a blog?”

  Marina’s forehead started to turn pink, and I knew I’d said the wrong thing.

  “Trivial?” she said loudly. “Providing information is trivial? People are starved for this kind of knowledge. I get e-mails almost every day, thanking me for doing the blog.”

  That was easy to believe. “Dear Blogger, thanks so much for telling all about Jane Doe. I always knew there was something funny about her, and now I have proof. Can’t wait to tell my neighbor about Jane’s five ex-husbands.”

  “It may be gossip to you,” Marina was saying, “but to some people, lots of people, it’s the foundation communities are based on. Everyone has secrets, but the more we share, the more we can understand each other.”

  I didn’t quite buy it. “How does knowing that Don Hatcher is getting a hair transplant help me understand him?”

  “Because,” Marina said patiently, “now we know to what extremes he’ll go to preserve his vanity.”

  I tilted my head to one side and squinted one eye. “What about Carla going to that spa?”

  “She’s finally serious about losing weight, and everyone should help her and not sabotage her new diet.”

  “Well,” I said slowly, “that’s one way to look at it.”

  “Beth finally comes around!” Marina pumped her fist. “Break out the chocolate.”

  “Just don’t tell my mother.” I looked left and right. “She doesn’t believe in gossip.”

  “And I bet she doesn’t have a single friend to have over for coffee on Monday mornings, let alone someone to go to late on a Sunday night.”

  It was true. Mom had a boatload of acquaintances, but she didn’t have anyone to call her best friend. Maybe there was a tie between gossiping and friendship. Maybe talking about other people tightened connections and secured bonds and—

  “So you’ll help me, right?”

  This was the woman who’d cured my morning sickness; the woman who had shown me how to get gum out of carpet; the woman who had comforted me the night Richard left for good. And all without my asking. If I didn’t help her when she did ask, what kind of friend was I?

  “The blog may be silly to you,” she said, “but it’s all I have. You have the store and the kids and the PTA. I have a husband who’s hardly ever home and a son who hasn’t wanted me around since he was five. I need this, Beth.”

  I couldn’t stand the entreaty sculpted on her face. “Of course I’ll help you.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure. Anything you want. Just ask.”

  “What?” She put her hands to her face in mock horror. “No caveats? No amendments?”

  Though spoken in jest, her words wounded me. I’d always thought of myself as a good friend, but maybe I’d slid into selfishness.

  “No limits,” I said. “What do you want me to do?”

  The next morning, ignoring the protestations of my manager, I shut myself in my office and fired up the computer. Lois stood outside the door and scolded me. “What are you doing in there? We need to finish planning the Halloween party. We need to figure out the November work schedule. We need to figure out how to shoehorn two author events into December.”

  “Later.”

  With a pencil and a pad of paper at the ready, I read Marina’s WisconSINs blog archives.

  Each posting began the same way: “Good morning, Rynwood!” The only variation was the number of exclamation points. The juicier the gossip, the more punctuation it was awarded.

  I waded through the September news about summer vacations (“Thanks to the magic of cell phones with cameras, does anyone think what happened to C.P. in Vegas is going to stay in Vegas?”), college back-to-school parties (“Yet another freshman discovered the joys of Ever-clear. How’s that hangover doing, J.M.?”), and tan lines (“There’s a thin, pale band around the ring finger of D’s left hand. Could this year’s split be the final one for D and J?”), but there wasn’t anything related to Agnes or Tarver Elementary.

  With my pad of paper stubbornly blank, I closed out of the September archives and opened October’s.

  “WisconSINs applauds anyone who tries new things. While many people resist change, there are those who accept new ventures with a song in their hearts and a smile on their lips. Attitude, my daahlings, it’s all about attitude! Get out of your rut and try something new today. There’s a whole world out there just waiting for you!”

  The post’s date was the same day I’d agreed to become the PTA’s secretary. The truly annoying part was she’d been right; I had needed to get out. My rut had been getting deeper and more comfortable on
a daily basis. The sharp edge I’d honed in college had dulled to a butter knife. What had happened to me?

  I stood up and paced. When had my thirst for learning and knowledge been replaced by complacency and contentment? When had I stopped subscribing to The Atlantic Monthly? When had I quit watching NewsHour with Jim Lehrer?

  Silly questions. All that had come to an abrupt halt with the arrival of my daughter. And I didn’t regret it a bit.

  I sat back down and picked up the pencil. I wrote a title, “Murder Suspects.” Now the page wasn’t blank. Back at Marina’s blog, the date of Agnes’s murder was fast approaching. The week before, K.O. was mentioned in passing as a contender for a big competition. K.O. Kirk Olsen. I felt a rush of detection and wrote the name: Kirk Olsen, of the school bus incident.

  When Agnes had ordered the long-established school bus routes reconfigured, Kirk’s children had ended up with a twenty-five-minute bus ride instead of a ten-minute one. He hadn’t been pleased, and he’d been extremely vocal with his opinions. The rerouting had resulted in fewer stops for the buses, lower gas mileage, and the elimination of one bus altogether, but for a week or two, teachers and staff had kept a sharp watch on the school entrances. Kirk went to deer camp every fall and regularly showed up in the paper as the winner of shooting competitions.

  Where there was one name, there must be more. The day before the murder, the blog suggested a new law that prevented parents from naming their children with rhyming first names, especially rhyming boy names with alliteration.

  That could only be a reference to Claudia Wolff with her wild brood of Tyler, Taylor, and Taynor. And hadn’t there been . . . I clicked through more posts, all the way to the day after the murder. Yes. There had been mention of the Fish Fry Friday disaster and mention of the school bus incident.

  Claudia had gone ballistic when Agnes tried to cancel Fish Fry Friday—held in perpetuity on Friday evenings in the school cafeteria—and she’d almost taken her boys out of Tarver. I wrote down her name as Suspect Number Two.

  This was getting kind of fun. Whom else had Marina written about?

  I wrote down another name without even looking. Randy Jarvis. But the pencil’s tip hovered over his name. The night I’d dropped Paoze off at his house, I had seen the silhouette of someone who might have been Randy. But what would Randy have been doing in Madison on a Tuesday night?