Mother's Day, Muffins, and Murder

by Sara Rosett

  Twitter

  The short format of Twitter works great for announcements and reminders for events, as well as for notifications of school closures or changes in schedules.

  Pinterest

  Room moms can create a pinboard for party planning and invite other moms to participate in pinning ideas for food, decorations, and games.

  School clubs can create pinboards for upcoming activities to gather ideas and inspiration.

  A general pinboard for the school could feature events and activities, but check with the school district for their photography policy before posting images of students.

  Chapter Twenty

  The water slid across the floor toward me. I automatically stepped back, but it reached me and sloshed over the tops of my boat shoes. Mrs. Harris said, “Oh my,” as the water soaked into her sensible rubber-soled flats. A few teachers came out of the teachers’ lounge, saw the flood of water, and screeched as the water pushed toward them.

  Now that Vaughn had opened the door and released the water that had been pent up in the records room, the water flowing out of the door was lower. He stepped into the room, and the water came up to his shins. It coursed down the hallway, reaching some of the classrooms. Exclamations and the scrapes of chairs sounded from the nearby classrooms.

  Marie and Mrs. Kirk emerged from the main office. Mrs. Kirk took one look around and said, “I’ll call maintenance. Thank goodness we have tile floors and not carpet.”

  Vaughn came splashing out of the records room. “It’s a broken pipe in the ceiling. The sprinkler system. I’ll turn off the main.” He strode quickly away, water splashing with each step as he hurried across the lobby to the doors that opened to the back field. Water continued to flow out the door of the records room, but as it spread through the hallways, the level of it went down.

  Marie still stood in the door of the office, an appalled look on her face. “This is awful. We should get some towels. . . or something,” she said.

  Mrs. Kirk reappeared. “No, that won’t do us any good. There’s too much water already. Marie, help me open the main doors. Let’s get as much of this water outside as possible.” Mrs. Kirk sloshed through the water to the main doors. Marie followed her, and they opened the row of doors.

  Mrs. Harris and I moved to the doors at the other side of the lobby, the ones that opened to the back field, and propped them open as well. Vaughn, holding a wrench, was on his way back. The water was streaming out the doors and rushing across the blacktop, soaking the grass. Vaughn shook his head as he hurried by. “This is going to be a mess.”

  He was right. Vaughn was able to get the water turned off, but it took an hour to clear the standing water out of the school. I pitched in and helped, along with several other teachers who were on their planning period and some parent volunteers who happened to be in the building at that time. We used mops and brooms to shift the standing water out the doors, and we were all soaked to the knees by the time the worst of it was cleared out. The school district’s maintenance people arrived in a van and went to work repairing the pipe in the records room.

  I gave the still damp floor in the hallway a final swipe with a push broom and returned to the lobby. I paused beside Marie, who stood in the doorway of the records room. “Such a shame,” she said. “All that paper, ruined.”

  Two maintenance men were on ladders, working on the pipes overhead. The ceiling tiles had been soaked. Some had fallen to the floor, and others hung limply in their metal grids, looking more like soaked towels than acoustical tiles. The leak had been at the back of the room, but because the door had been closed and trapped most of the water, it had backed up and soaked into the lower drawers of the filing cabinets.

  “I opened a couple of the files to see how bad it is,” Marie said, nodding toward several of the lowest file drawers, which had been pulled out. The file folders and papers were waterlogged, the pages wavy and the ink smeared. “They’ll have to be destroyed . . . somehow,” Marie said. “These are confidential files. We can’t just throw them away. They have Social Security numbers and test scores on them.”

  “That will be difficult,” I said. “But I’m sure there are companies that handle that sort of thing. Maybe the people who repair the water damage will have some suggestions, or I can ask around.”

  Before Marie could answer, Mrs. Kirk appeared behind our shoulders. “A team is on the way. We should have fans set up, and the tile floors dry before the end of the day.” Mrs. Kirk had made an announcement that the teachers should keep the students in their current classrooms until the water was cleaned up.

  One of the repairmen clattered down the ladder. “That should do it,” he said. “We’ll turn on the water and test it, make sure everything is okay.”

  “Excellent. Thank you for arriving so quickly.” Mrs. Kirk looked around and spotted Vaughn, who was collecting mops and brooms from the volunteers. She motioned him over. “Vaughn will show you the water main.”

  The other repairman stayed on the ladder, to monitor for leaks when the water was turned back on, I imagined.

  “Could you tell us what happened?” Mrs. Kirk asked. “What caused the leak?”

  The repairman had been about to follow Vaughn, but he stopped and pulled a short section of pipe from the pocket of the cargo pants he wore. He pointed at the pipe with a grimy finger. “See that? That’s a pinhole leak. It happens with these copper pipes sometimes. Corrosion,” he said with a shrug. “These older buildings all have it. I wouldn’t be surprised to see more instances of this. The district really should look into replacing it all, but—you know—the cost.” He pointed to the area where they had been working. “We replaced the whole section in the ceiling to be on the safe side. You shouldn’t have any more problems—well, at least not from that pipe,” he said, and left to go with Vaughn.

  Mrs. Kirk put her hands on her hips and surveyed the damage. “And this was all to be digitized this summer,” she said. “I suppose the only good thing about this situation is that they are old files.”

  “Oh, they weren’t current information?” I asked, thinking that was one bit of positive news in the midst of the mess.

  “No,” Mrs. Kirk said. “We’ve used digital records for years now.” She tapped the card label on one of the filing cabinet drawers near her. The writing on the label was runny, but I could still read it. A-H, 1989. “These files were from years ago when we used a paper system—seems like ancient times, doesn’t it? Well, all except for yours, Marie,” Mrs. Kirk said as she gestured at a stack of banker boxes along the floor. “They’ll have to be disposed of now.”

  “I’ll make some calls and see that it’s done,” Marie said.

  Vaughn, his head poking in the open doorway at the back of the lobby, called for Mrs. Kirk, and she strode away.

  Marie reached down and picked up some sodden papers that were plastered to the floor. “If only I hadn’t moved these boxes in here yesterday.” She held the dripping sheet of paper away from her body. “All that work . . . just gone.” She smiled bleakly. “If I’d known all my files were going to be destroyed, I wouldn’t have worked so hard to get everything organized before I retired.”

  “That’s right. I forgot, you only have a few days left.”

  Marie tossed the limp paper into a trash can. “All that work, for nothing.” She wiped her damp fingers on her skirt. “I don’t know why I’m so upset. I mean, files of fundraising activities really are trivial when you compare it to student grades.”

  “Yes, but it was your work. No one likes to see something they’ve put time into damaged.” She murmured an agreement, but was moving from box to box, lifting lids and shaking her head. “No, they’re all a complete loss.”

  “Have you had anything to eat? No? Then come have a plate of food from the teachers’ lounge,” I said, thinking that getting her out of the records room would do more than anything else to cheer her up. She nodded and headed in that direction. I followed her, and was relieved to see th
at there was still some food. I left her microwaving a plate and went back to the lobby.

  I intended to go home and change out of my wet shoes, but as my shoes squished across the lobby, I saw a petite woman hesitating in the open doors as she brushed her bangs from her eyes while she scanned the damp floor and the disarray of mops and brooms propped around the walls. I studied her oval face with its upturned nose and blue eyes, trying to place her. Was she a parent? A substitute teacher?

  Since she looked like she wasn’t sure where to go, I said, “Can I help you?”

  “Ah—yes. I’m Jane Guthrie, Klea Burris’s sister.”

  “Oh,” I said, and immediately realized she looked slightly familiar because her build was similar to Klea’s—she was slender and small, and she had the same upturned nose that Klea had had. “I’m so sorry about Klea,” I said. “We all are.”

  “Thank you. It’s still—I can’t quite take it in. But at least now we know who did it and can move on.” She blinked and swallowed. “I stopped by because the principal—Mrs. Kirk, I think it was—contacted me and said she had some of Klea’s belongings, but”—her gaze ranged around the chaotic scene of the lobby—“this doesn’t look like a good time.”

  “There was a water leak,” I said. “It’s a little crazy right now.”

  “No problem,” Jane said. “I’m here for a few days, sorting through Klea’s belongings and getting her house in order so it can go on the market. I can come back next week.”

  “That would probably be best. I’m Ellie Avery, by the way.”

  “Nice to meet you,” she said, then paused. “That name—you’re the organizer, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Klea mentioned you. She said that you came to her house and gave her some suggestions. I think she wanted to hire you, but money was tight and then—” She cleared her throat and hurried on. “Anyway, she said you were very helpful.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “In fact, I intended to get your phone number from the school, if they would give it to me,” she said with a small smile. “Or look for you online. I have a few things I need help with and thought you might be just the person I need.”

  Jane brushed her bangs off her forehead again. It was a gesture that I remembered Klea making, too. On that day Klea and I had hauled the tables up to the stage when we’d finished, she’d swept her hair off her forehead and said, “Well, that was my workout for the day.” We’d laughed together, and I’d said, “Who would have thought that volunteering at the school was as good as going to the gym?”

  A wave of sadness swept over me. It was still hard to believe that Klea was gone. “What kind of help are you looking for?” I asked, refocusing on Jane.

  “I’ve been sorting through her belongings, deciding what to keep and what to give away. I should be done with that soon, but next week I have to go back to Missouri—that’s where I live—so I can’t be here on Friday, when I have several pickups scheduled. That was the first day I could get on their schedules. A charity is coming to pick up the boxes of belongings I’m giving away, and I have a consignment shop scheduled to pick up the furniture. Could you be there to let them in and make sure they only take what I have marked for them?”

  “Yes, of course. I can do that,” I said, relieved that it was a simple job. If she wanted help cleaning out every room in Klea’s house, there was no way I could get it done before school was out, and my time was limited in the summer.

  “I’ll pay your usual rate,” she said.

  “There’s no need for that. I’d be happy to do it, no charge.”

  “Oh, it’s not a problem—”

  “No, please let me do this. I’d like to,” I said.

  After a moment, she nodded. “Thank you.”

  She suggested we meet during the weekend so she could show me which items should be picked up, and then we exchanged phone numbers. She was about to leave when I said, “There’s something I was wondering about.... I may not have heard because I’m in and out of the school,” I said, mentally amending that phrase in my mind—except for this week—because I’d been at the school more than I’d been home, it seemed. “But I didn’t hear about a memorial service or funeral for Klea. Will it be in Missouri? I know the teachers and staff here will want to know what is planned.”

  Jane looked away for a second, gazing across the busy lobby. “There will be a small memorial service in Missouri. Klea wanted to be cremated. That’s already been taken care of. I’m taking her ashes home next week.”

  “Oh, I see,” I said quickly.

  Jane sighed. “It seemed better this way. I know it’s selfish of me, but if we planned something here, then Ace would show up, and I absolutely will not have him contaminating anything to do with Klea’s memory. It’s so unfair,” she said, her tone becoming heated, “that she finally got away from him, and then she was killed. I’d wanted her to leave him for years, even offered to help her move back to Missouri. She could have lived with us until she got on her feet, but . . .” Her voice changed, and the vigor and passion she spoke with drained out of her as she said, “She wouldn’t do it.”

  Jane shook her head. “She had to do it in her own way. I never could talk her into anything, not even when it was good for her,” she said with a weak smile. “Excuse me, I should go.” She hurried away, and I knew she was leaving before she cried. I could see the tears glistening in her eyes before she turned away.

  I watched her walk along the school’s car circle lane. Then she turned and walked beside the chain-link fence. About halfway down the block, she crossed the street to Klea’s Craftsman, climbed the steps, and went in the front door.

  * * *

  The weekend was actually fairly quiet, except for a soccer game and a trip to the North Dawkins library for Livvy to pick up new books. The school library had closed. All books had to be returned, so she was in book-withdrawal. We returned from the library with a tower of books for each of the kids, which at first glance would seem to keep them in books all summer, but I knew it would only be a week or two before Livvy would want to make another trip because she had “read all the good ones.”

  It was late Sunday evening when I met Jane at Klea’s house. Jane walked me through the rooms, which looked so different with all their contents stowed in boxes. She had marked everything clearly, and I didn’t have any questions. Jane gave me the keys to the front door dead bolts, then said, “If you could do me one more favor, I’d appreciate it.” I could tell she’d been working hard for several days, packing and cleaning. She looked exhausted and leaned against the doorframe.

  I paused on the top porch step. “Sure. What do you need?”

  “Well, I thought I could stay here until Tuesday, but I have to leave tomorrow. I intended to go over to the school on Monday to pick up Klea’s things, but I have to be at the airport in Atlanta at eight tomorrow morning, so there’s no way . . .”

  “I can pick them up from Mrs. Kirk. I’ll bring them back here.”

  “Oh, that would be a relief. Mrs. Kirk said it’s nothing really significant—just some odds and ends—but they were Klea’s, and I’m afraid that if something comes up at home, I may not get back here before the school closes for the summer.”

  “No worries. I’ll take care of it.” I said good-bye to her, then got in the van to get back to the kids, who were at home.

  I’d called in their favorite babysitter, but I knew it wouldn’t be long before I wouldn’t need her services. Livvy would soon be a teenager—teenager!—and I knew that soon she would be perfectly capable of holding down the fort while I was gone. I’d even had a few moms, who were looking for sitters, ask me if she was available. I had said we weren’t quite ready for that, and Livvy had countered that she was ready. “You may be ready for it, but I don’t think I am,” I’d said with a laugh, and since Livvy was more interested in playing soccer, reading, and spending time with her friends than watching other people’s kids, that had been the end of
the that conversation.

  I glanced at the school as I crept by with my foot on the brake. Even though school wasn’t in session, the school speed zone was still in effect. The school had a forlorn, deserted air with the empty parking lot and all the windows dark.

  Abby had told me that Mrs. Kirk had sent the teachers an alert, letting them know that a water remediation crew would work all day Saturday at the school to repair the worst of the water damage so that school could continue until the end of the year. Then, in the summer, any large-scale repairs that needed to be done would be undertaken. Fortunately, there wasn’t a lot they had to do.

  “That’s the beauty of tile floors and cinderblock walls,” Abby had quipped. “No wood or drywall to replace.”

  They must have finished the temporary repairs because the school was quiet. The sun was already low in the sky, casting long shadows from the tall pines that filled the front lawns of the houses across from the school. The patches of shade stretched all the way across the parking lot and engulfed the school, the surrounding fields, and the belt of trees behind the school. I shivered, thinking of Klea’s body in the wooded area. I didn’t think I’d ever want to walk through that shortcut again.

  As I came even with the front of the school, I thought I saw a flash of light in one of the office windows, but it must have been a reflection of another car’s headlights because when I looked again, all the windows were black squares.

  The next morning, the atmosphere of the school was completely different as I pulled into the drop-off line on Monday at fifteen minutes after eight. Kids, some with parent escorts, others on their own, walked toward the school. Buses inched through the traffic, then lumbered into the bus circle and disgorged kids. Cars circulated through the drop-off circle like parts on a conveyer belt that moved in fits and starts.

  The kids and I were cutting it close on time today—it had been one of the those mornings when nothing goes right—so I completed the circuit, dropping the kids at the main doors so they could make it to class before the bell. Then, knowing that if I deviated from the pattern I would gum up the works of the car circle, to say nothing of making parents, teachers, and staff angry with me, I exited the parking lot. Then I returned, but this time, instead of going to the car circle drop-off line, I turned into a parking slot and went into the school, after giving Mrs. Kirk a wave on the way in. She barely acknowledged my greeting, and looked rather harried, but I didn’t feel snubbed. I was sure her mind was on making sure that drop-off ran smoothly.