Mother's Day, Muffins, and Murder

by Sara Rosett

  “How do you know that . . . for sure, I mean?” I’d thought the trash can in the woods had probably come from the school, but I hadn’t looked closely at it. “Someone could have just taken a trash can off the grounds. There are usually two big trash cans on wheels by the back door on the blacktop. I know there were some on the field yesterday for the first day of Field Day.”

  “I asked—that’s how I know.” Gabrielle folded her arms. “Detective Waraday told me the trash can had the school’s name on the side, and he had someone do an inventory. One trash can was missing. It must be someone associated with the school.” She chewed on a corner of her lip for a moment. “It’s a shame, really, that it happened on the morning of the muffins and mommy thing. It makes it so much more complicated . . . so many more people were here on campus. I printed off a list of everyone who checked in that morning from the sign-in system.” As she spoke, she reached into a legal-size leather portfolio and removed several pages of paper.

  “How did you do that?” I asked.

  “I can run reports. It’s all part of my organizing projects. I needed to know when the high-traffic times are for the office so I could help them streamline their routines. Of course, they can’t afford to upgrade that check-in computer,” she said in an aside. “If they could speed that up, it would help to reduce the line and get everyone out of there so much faster. But back to the point—I figured we could split the list. You check half, and I’ll check half.” She held out several printed pages.

  “For what?”

  “Alibis, of course. What else would we check?”

  I blinked. There were so many objections . . . I didn’t quite know where to start. “Gabrielle . . .” I said warningly.

  “Oh, don’t go all huffy on me. I remember how that detective treated you . . . last time,” she said. She looked away and focused her gaze on the field outside the doors for a moment, and I realized she was regaining her composure.

  The last time, when Detective Waraday and I had had that misunderstanding—when he’d suspected me of being a murderer—Gabrielle had been related to the victim. It was something she didn’t like to talk about. She usually avoided the subject, and that was what she did now. She shifted her shoulders and looked back to me, then plowed on again, speaking quickly—well, as quickly as she could with her languid Southern accent. “That Detective Waraday made your life he—” She smiled at an inquisitive stare from one of the kindergarteners walking by on his way to the library, then cleared her throat. “He made your life very uncomfortable, all because you were the first person on the scene. That’s me this time. Even though I didn’t see her face, I know that was Klea’s body in the storage closet. I can’t risk a smidgen of rumor being associated with me. You know people won’t call me if they think I had anything to do with Klea’s death. No one is going to invite a suspected murderer into their home or business for an organizing consultation. My business would dry up faster than a puddle after a July rain shower.”

  “You do have a point,” I said slowly. I knew she needed to keep the clients she had, but I wasn’t about to start sleuthing. My conscience immediately prickled. I’d already promised myself I’d spend as much time at the school as I could, possibly poking around—to make sure everything was safe for my kids, of course—but that was totally different from teaming up with Gabrielle to look for a murderer. I’d been on a team with her before, and I wasn’t looking to repeat that wild ride. “I don’t think—”

  “Oh, look, here’s Vaughn.” She nodded at the doors that opened onto the back field, where the janitor was carrying a table with the legs flattened against the tabletop. He paused to let a group of students go first, then maneuvered through the door. I switched my lawn chair to my other hand and caught one door to hold it open for him as Gabrielle tucked her portfolio under an arm and gripped one end of the table. “Vaughn, you are just the person I wanted to talk to,” she said. As she helped him carry the table inside, she looked back at me and gave a jerk of her head.

  I hitched my tote bag higher on my shoulder and walked behind them into the cafeteria, which today smelled like chicken nuggets. I didn’t like following Gabrielle’s directions, and I certainly wasn’t signing on to be her sleuthing buddy, but I had wondered what Vaughn had to say about Klea’s death. After all, he was her closest work associate.

  Gabrielle and Vaughn placed the table against the wall, and she brushed her hands on her skinny jeans. Again, today, she was dressed down—at least for her. The lemon-colored camp shirt with rolled sleeves, jeans, and leopard-print heels that were only two inches instead of her usual three-inch stilettos must mean it was another hands-on workday for her. Just looking at her shoes made my feet hurt, but she always wore heels. I had a feeling she could run a marathon in them without blinking an eye. She placed a hand on his arm. “Vaughn, honey, how are you doing? We’re so sorry about Klea. Were you close?”

  Vaughn had been at the school as long as I could remember. With his thin silver hair, bushy gray eyebrows, and wrinkled face, he certainly had to be near retirement age, and was probably at least fifteen years older than Gabrielle, but he responded as I’d seen almost every other male respond to her. Like a bee attracted to a bright flower, he focused on her, giving her all his attention. “It’s very sad,” he said with a shake of his head. He gave the table a shove with his foot to make sure it was secure against the wall. “But I didn’t really know her. She kept to herself,” Vaughn said, and moved to leave the cafeteria.

  “Did she?” Gabrielle asked as we walked with him through the lobby. “In what way?”

  He shrugged one of his broad shoulders as he came even with the door to the janitor’s office. “She didn’t talk about . . . anything personal . . . nothing about kids, husband, family, that sort of thing. Not at all like that Rosa, who worked here before her. She talked so much, she couldn’t get her work done. It was a relief to have Klea. I don’t think she had many friends, actually,” he said. “She never talked about meeting anyone for drinks after work or traveling to meet family. She didn’t jabber all day. Just came in and put her purse away, then went straight to work.”

  “Did you see her put her purse away Wednesday morning? You know, before the fire drill?” I asked, glancing inside the little room at the row of lockers, curious to see if he’d tell us what he’d told Detective Waraday.

  “Yeah. She was here when I got here at seven-thirty-five. She’d already unlocked the doors. That’s the advantage of living across the street—no traffic, she used to say. She’d kid me about being late sometimes. I live on the other side of North Dawkins,” he said with a grin. Then the smile dropped off his face. “That was one of the few things we talked about, traffic. It’s a shame what happened to her—ignoble, you know.”

  The word choice of ignoble surprised me a bit. It wasn’t a word that usually came up in conversation, but when I glanced in the room, I saw a crossword puzzle book, folded back to a partially completed puzzle, on the round table. A hardback dictionary was propped up on the windowsill behind the table. He caught my glance and said, “I like crosswords. I had Klea hooked on them, too. Maybe that’s why she didn’t talk much. If we both happened to be in here on a break, we worked puzzles.”

  “Did she say anything that morning?” I asked.

  “No, Mrs. Kirk came in with a list of things to do to prep for Field Day, so Klea and I didn’t talk.”

  “I see.” So it had been Mrs. Kirk who backed up Vaughn’s statement about seeing Klea that morning. No wonder Detective Waraday hadn’t seemed to think there was any issue to investigate further. You couldn’t get much better than the principal of the school seconding your statements.

  “Did you see her again that morning?” Gabrielle asked.

  “No,” Vaughn said, and I thought, with a cold feeling creeping over me, that he hadn’t seen her because she had been in the storage closet. Sometime between seven-thirty and eight-twenty-five, when the announcements started, Klea had been killed. “Mrs.
Kirk had a list of things she needed moved to prep for Field Day, so I went with her to the cafeteria to figure out if we had any extra tables we could move that day or if we’d have to wait until the next morning.”

  “But the fire drill . . .” Gabrielle said. I sent Gabrielle a warning glance, and she must have received the same warning from Detective Waraday about talking about what she’d seen in the closet as I had, because she stopped. After a second’s pause, she ended with, “I mean, she wasn’t there, was she?”

  Vaughn shook his head. “No, and I wish I had spoken up, but I didn’t want to make trouble for her. I figured she was at the other end of the school. Most of the school goes out these central doors,” he said as he tilted his head toward the main doors that opened onto the covered porch, where the car circle pickup line curved in front of the school. “But there are several classes that go out the south doors,” he said, referring to a set of doors at the end of one hallway that opened to the area near the bus circle.

  Vaughn lifted his powerful shoulder again. “I thought she was over there. And then it was a false alarm. . . .”

  “Yes, it was,” I said, and realized Gabrielle was sending me a significant look. When I didn’t respond—because I had no idea what she was trying to convey—she rolled her eyes.

  “Who set off the alarm? That’s the question, isn’t it?” Gabrielle said.

  Even though the question wasn’t addressed to Vaughn, he answered. “One of the fifth-graders, most likely. We have that problem during the last weeks of school. High spirits, you know.” He rubbed his hand across the back of his neck, then said, “A false alarm is nothing unusual this time of year. No, what bothered me was the trash can. I sure didn’t like that, when I heard about it.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Well, she was a janitor. Was it some sort of statement? You know, was someone insinuating that she was trash, or does someone have it in for janitors?”

  “Like it was some sort of . . . serial killer?” Gabrielle asked, her expression incredulous.

  Vaughn immediately looked like he wished he could take the words back. “I’m not saying that’s what happened, but you got to wonder. At least, I do. A janitor is killed, and her body is found in a trash can. You got to wonder.” He shifted around us. “Excuse me, I’ve got to get back to work.”

  “Wait, Vaughn,” I said before he got too far away. “Do you know where the trash can went missing from?”

  “Oh sure, it was from the main office. The detective showed me a picture of it, and I recognized it right away. It had a streak of yellow paint on the handle from when the office was painted last summer. It usually sits in the corner by the cubbyholes in the main office.” He caught sight of Mrs. Kirk coming out of the office and moved away quickly.

  Gabrielle and I did the same. I headed for the checkout computer in the main office, noticing that a new, smaller trash can stood by the row of teacher cubbyholes. Gabrielle followed me, signing out after I did.

  As I headed out the main doors to the overflow parking lot, I heard Gabrielle calling me. “Ellie, wait.”

  I’d arrived early this morning, so my van was fairly close, and I was opening the back of the van so I could stow the chair and my tote bag by the time she caught up with me. As Gabrielle hurried over, she waved the sheets of paper at me. “You forgot your portion of the list.”

  “Gabrielle,” I sighed, not sure where to start. “I know you want to get this thing cleared up, and I understand that you’re worried about your clients, but I don’t think you need to worry about being a suspect.”

  “No? Are you sure? Did you think you’d be a suspect last time? I bet you didn’t. I don’t want to be blindsided.”

  She flapped the papers at me. “Come on, Ellie. At least take a look.”

  “And,” I continued as if she hadn’t spoken, “I know Detective Waraday would not be happy for you to be poking around in his investigation.”

  “But we’d be helping him,” she said, her eyes wide.

  “Trust me, he doesn’t want our help.”

  “Well, whether or not you help me, I’m doing it. You don’t even have to talk to anyone. Just look at the list. Please,” she said, drawing out the word like Livvy did when she asked if a friend could stay for a sleepover, but my impassive face must have gotten across the message that pleading wouldn’t work with me. I had years of practicing that it’s not going to happen expression with the kids.

  Gabrielle glanced around the empty parking lot and her voice went completely serious as she took a step closer. “I’m not going to stand around and wait to show up on the evening news. And I promise you that if I show up on the news, you’ll be next, because who was with me when I saw the body?”

  “I wasn’t with you.”

  “You were there on the scene.”

  On the scene. Detective Waraday had used those same words, and they echoed in my head.

  “I’ll make that very clear to anyone who asks. You were there.”

  “That’s blackmail,” I said.

  She grinned. “No, don’t think of it that way. It’s just a little motivator.”

  I blew out a breath. I couldn’t tell her what Detective Waraday had said about the investigation focusing on Klea’s personal life—he’d asked me not to talk about that—so I couldn’t use that as an argument to convince Gabrielle to back off.

  Gabrielle waved the papers again, her expression expectant and hopeful. The phrase a dog with a bone came to mind. She was as persistent as Rex when he wanted a treat. Gabrielle wasn’t going to give up. I sighed again and took the papers. “I will look through them, but I am not chasing down half the parents from Muffins with Mom Day and asking them for an alibi.”

  She must have sensed that she wouldn’t get any more out of me today because she said quickly, “That’s okay. I’ll do all the asking. I just want you to read over them, see if anything pops out. You know more of the parents than I do.” She gave my upper arm a quick squeeze. “Thanks, Ellie. I knew I could count on you. I’ll call you later so we can compare notes.” She marched off, her heels clicking across the asphalt of the parking lot.

  I stood there for a second, scanning the list in my hand, then let out a snort. She hadn’t given me half of the list. Of course not. Once I’d agreed to look it over, she’d given me the whole list, a complete printout of every parent or volunteer who had signed in from when the doors opened at seven-thirty until the eight-twenty-five bell rang on Wednesday. Hundreds of names. I stuffed the list in my tote bag, then put it in the back of the van, along with my lawn chair and closed the hatchback door.

  “Excuse me, Mrs. Avery,” said a voice behind me, and I turned to see Detective Waraday.

  Chapter Seven

  “Oh, hello,” I said. “I didn’t see you there.” I glanced around, looking to see if Gabrielle was still in the vicinity, but she was already motoring out of the parking lot in her compact SUV.

  “Do you have a moment?” Detective Waraday asked.

  I checked my watch. It was only a little after noon. “Yes. I have some time.” It was noon, but I didn’t have any other plans, except to go home and work on an ad for Everything In Its Place, my organizing business, and to clean house. Everything seemed fine at the school, and although part of me wanted to camp out in the workroom all day, I knew that realistically I couldn’t do that.

  “Good. I have a request.” Detective Waraday looked away, squinting as he gazed across the tops of the cars. “I’d like for you to look at Mrs. Burris’s house.”

  “Um—why?” I’d been braced for questions that would rehash everything that Detective Waraday had asked me yesterday.

  “Mrs. Burris lived alone. You saw her house a few weeks ago. I’d like to know if it is in the same state it was when you saw it.”

  “Oh. Sure.” I paused uncertainly. “Um, should we walk?”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  “No. It’s not far.” Leaving my stuff inside the van, I
clicked the button on the key fob to lock it, then pocketed the keys and fell into step beside Detective Waraday. We crossed the parking lot and walked on the grassy verge outside of the chain-link fence that ran along the side field, stepping over a few rutted tracks where the tires of a car had dug into the soft turf. This morning, when Field Day began, each side of the street had been lined with cars parked parallel, bumper to bumper. Parents who had arrived to find the overflow lot full had wedged their cars in somewhere on the surrounding residential streets. The extra cars were gone, and only one class was having recess as students ran back and forth across the field.

  Klea’s house was about halfway up the block, and we glanced up and down the now-quiet street before crossing to the other side. Klea’s Craftsman bungalow looked a little rough around the edges. The white trim on the porch pillars was peeling, and the grass in the small yard was ankle high. A paved driveway ran down the right side of the property to a carport that listed to the side, following the sloping line of the ground, which plunged from Klea’s property to a rainwater drain set into the grass on her neighbor’s property a few feet below. A huge oak tree, with a trunk so thick that my fingers wouldn’t touch if I tried to put both arms around it, threw a blanket of shade over the entire front yard.

  “You said she lived alone. Was she a widow?” I asked, thinking of what Vaughn had said about how Klea never mentioned family. “I knew her from school, but not that well,” I explained.

  “She was getting a divorce.” Detective Waraday looked at me sharply as he stopped so that I would walk in front of him along the little strip of concrete to the wide set of steps at the foot of the porch. “I’m surprised you didn’t know that.”

  “I’d only talked to her a few times, really. I saw her around the school a lot, but we were acquaintances, not close friends. We didn’t know each other well. When I came for the consultation, we talked about organizing her things and that was all.”