“Where’s your coat?”
“Patty’s house,” I murmured.
“ ’Scuse me?”
“The victim’s house. I left it there by mistake.”
Tommy returned to his car, opened his trunk, and retrieved a blanket. He wrapped it around my shoulders. He peered into my eyes and said, “Let’s get you out of the cold.”
“I don’t mind the cold,” I replied, but only because I wasn’t at all certain that I could get to my feet without fainting.
He put his arm around me as he led me to his car. He and I had known each other for more than thirty years, both of us having grown up in this town, along with Lauren, who was his wife in addition to being my best friend. “There a reason you been sittin’ out here by yourself?” he asked as he opened his car door for me.
“Because I’m a coward. Patty’s daughter’s in there, and I can’t face her.”
Tommy put me into his passenger seat, then got into the driver’s seat. “Want to tell me what happened?” he asked gently.
His features and voice were so compassionate at that moment that I started crying. Tommy handed me a box of tissues and said nothing. When I managed to regain my self-control, I said, “Considering you’re a police sergeant and all, this is the stupidest thing I’ve ever said, but I could kill whoever did this. Kelly’s my son’s age. They’re in some of the same classes in junior high. What do you say to a fourteen-year-old girl whose mother’s been murdered, right across the street from her?”
Tommy gave no answer.
“Everybody’s always told me what a great sense of humor I have. But you know what? If positions were reversed right now, if I were . . . dead on the floor and Patty were the one to have found me, she’d have known what to say to my children. She’d have comforted them. I’d trade every ounce of my wit to be the sort of person with that kind of inner strength and poise.”
Again, Tommy said nothing for a long time, then quietly said, “Let me take your statement, then I’ll drive you home.”
“Karen’s on her first date.” My eyes teared up again. “This is what she’ll remember for the rest of her life. How she came home from her first date and learned that the nice lady who gave her a driving lesson that morning had been murdered.”
I was sitting in the interrogation room at the police station. I’d already given my formal statement and called home to tell Jim what was going on, but felt strangely unwilling to leave. Tommy had gotten one of his men to retrieve my coat and had returned it to me—after deciding it wasn’t evidence—so I couldn’t even use the cold as an excuse to stay inside.
Because I’m ludicrously susceptible to caffeine but wanted the comfort of a cup in my hands, I was sipping water from a stained coffee cup that still bore a faint flavor of old coffee. Tommy watched me, his red hair in even worse than its typical hat-head state, with a cowlick standing at attention.
“I thought the curse was over, Tommy. I finally went two full years. Nobody was murdered. Does that sound to you like it should be reason to celebrate? Two stinkin’ years without anyone I know getting murdered? Sheesh! What is it with me?”
Tommy shook his head and sighed. “I dunno.”
“No, I’m really asking, Tommy. I’m just . . . a typical housewife. A suburbanite mom with a little cottage industry on the side that barely brings in enough revenue to require me to declare a profit. Why should I be more deadly than the bubonic plague?”
“You bring out the worst in people?”
I scowled. “Let’s stick with your ‘I don’t know.’ ” I sighed. “Patty Birch, of all people. She was so . . . amazing. Who would do this to her?”
“You said that you and Lauren saw Stephanie early this morning. And that Stephanie had been furious with Patty.”
I nodded. Both of us knew Stephanie too well to seriously believe that she’d committed this horrid crime. “That was because of the tape I told you about. Have you heard back from your crime-scene investigators? Was the tape still there, in Patty’s VCR?”
“Yeah. Watched it when you were calling home. Didn’t make y’all look too swift, but that’s about the sum of it. Can’t see as it was worth bloodshed. Though maybe it was a last straw . . . a trigger. Anyone at the meeting strike you as bein’ on the edge? Ready to snap?”
“Everyone did.”
“Nothing stood out?”
“There was the unseen voice I didn’t recognize who called us amoral. And one time when everyone kind of gasped.”
“At what?”
“I don’t know. Something Jane Daly or Emily Crown said. My attention had wandered.”
He rose and gestured for me to follow him. “I’ll replay it for you.”
“That’s hardly standard police procedure, is it?”
He shrugged. “You’re a material witness. You know these people. Maybe you can tell better ’n me when someone’s hittin’ a nerve.”
He led me to a second room where four officers were watching us on tape. They did a double take at me. To my chagrin, they were watching my aren’t-I-funny . . . not section. Tommy explained that he wanted me to watch this without distractions, and the others left the room. He fast-forwarded till we reached the section I’d missed.
Emily and Jane were in the corner of the high school cafeteria. The camera appeared to be resting at the opposite side of the table. Jane was saying, “. . . because she doesn’t want you to lose weight. I’m telling you, she’s so competitive, she needs to have something over everyone else.”
Emily sighed. “And now she’s going to win yet another award. That’s Perfect Patty for you, isn’t it? She’s so freaking perfect that it would never even occur to her that she’s bringing us mere mortals to shame in comparison.”
Jane rolled her eyes. “You can say that again. Try holding down a job for ten years that you and everyone else knows Patty could do better than you with one arm tied behind her back.”
The screen image shook as if the camera had been jostled. Oblivious to whatever caused the camera motion, Emily cried, “That’s exactly how she makes me feel! The truth of the matter is, Patty is as insensitive and egotistical as they come.”
I caught my own breath at that, just thinking how Patty must have felt hearing that from her so-called “best friend” in front of a half dozen witnesses.
“If she ever once tried to—” Emily must have noticed then that the girl with the hidden camera was within earshot, for she stopped. She put on a smile and said, “Oh, hi, kids. Still trying to get your little camera?”
“Yes.”
Jane smirked and crossed her arms. Again, the posture gave me the image of her as a gnome. If she commented, it was not recorded. Instead, the final scene with Patty began, and Tommy stopped the VCR.
“Any thoughts?” Tommy asked me.
“Well, it doesn’t look to me like a motive for murder, but just shows how . . . bitchy we can be sometimes when we think nobody is looking. Patty herself took the brunt, so if anything, she should have been infuriated. Though I’m sure Jane and Emily’s getting caught talking about her behind her back was horrid for them, too.” I winced, remembering how I’d been guilty of talking behind Patty’s back just this morning. I sank my face in my hands. “How did this happen? Patty was such a terrific person, and her last day on this earth was spent learning that all her friends resented and betrayed her.”
The next morning, my first thought upon waking was that I’d had a terrible dream but that everything was fine now—Patty was alive and well. But as I became fully conscious, I remembered the whole story and realized that Patty was dead. I pulled my pillow over my face, thinking there was no way I could face the day.
Jim was already showered and getting dressed the next time I opened my eyes. He saw that I was awake, knelt beside me, and stroked my hair. “You’re coming to church, aren’t you?” he asked.
“No.” I didn’t want to see any familiar faces, but also didn’t feel like explaining this. “I’ll go to a later service by
myself.”
Our dog, meanwhile, put her front paws on the edge of the bed beside Jim and shoved her cold, wet little nose into my face, whining for attention. I got up, put on my bathrobe and slippers, and went downstairs, just as Jim was trying to hustle everyone into the car. Karen gave me a reassuring smile before heading out to the garage. We’d both gotten home last night just before midnight. She’d said her date was “good,” that dinner was “good,” and the movie was “pretty good.” She was horrified at my news, but at least she’d heard it directly from me.
Our fourteen-year-old, Nathan, stalled as he put on his coat. He was tall and thin with a band of brown freckles across his nose and cheeks. These days he kept his hair very short and combed with gel into what was called a “ski jump” in the front. He asked me what happened last night. I told him only that Kelly’s mother was dead and that I didn’t feel up to talking about it. Void of all energy, I sank into a living room chair and stared at the wall.
Not ten minutes later, the doorbell rang, which, great watchdog that she is, got Betty Cocker to start barking. “Hush, BC,” I said. She looked up at me, continuing to bark. “On second thought, speak.” We’d been working to train her out of the barking at the doorbell, but with a murderer on the loose, we could probably use as much protection around here as possible.
I cinched my robe tighter and approached the door, thinking if this proved to be a reporter, I would go into attack mode myself and save BC the effort. A second thought occurred to me: If this was Stephanie, I would really launch into attack mode.
The barking immediately stopped and turned to tail wags as I opened the door. Standing there was Lauren, who must have made the short walk between our homes. My eyes misted at the welcome sight of her attractive, round face. She had a small bag in her hand, which she ignored as she gave me a hug. “I should have gone with you last night.”
“It wouldn’t have changed anything,” I said as she released me from her hug.
“You might not have doubled back. You might not have had to be the one to find her.”
“It’s the story of my life. I never arrive early enough to prevent the murder, just to find the body. I should run for county coroner.”
She gave BC, whose interest had turned to sniffing the bag in her hand, a quick little pat. “Tommy said you were pretty shaken up last night.”
I nodded. “I didn’t feel like going to church this morning. So the place is quiet, if you can stay for a while.” I put a hopeful tone in my voice, needing Lauren’s companionship.
We automatically started for the kitchen, where, on our stools at the counter, we’d had so many heart-to-hearts over the years. “I brought you a muffin.”
Our standard “comfort” food. “Thanks. Whatever would I do without you and your muffins?”
“I don’t know, but since I bake when I’m upset, I’d weigh two hundred pounds if I didn’t have you to eat them.”
I chuckled a little, my humor returning. “You know, when the doorbell rang this morning, my first thought was that it’d be Stephanie, wanting to know who I thought—”
The doorbell rang, again instantly augmented by my dog’s barks. Lauren and I exchanged glances.
“Couldn’t be,” I said. My parents were currently in Florida, so there was no way that this could be my mother. Reaching for an alternate explanation, I called over my shoulder, “Isn’t this Girl Scout Cookie season?” as I went to the door.
It was indeed Stephanie. The sight of her on my doorstep made me want to join BC at barking. Stephanie was wearing a powder-blue tailored pants suit, her hair wrapped up in a scarf, turban style. I stared at her, speechless. She must really be in quite a mood if she felt inspired to dress like the Queen of Sheba on a Sunday morning. Her au pair must be watching her seven-year-old son, unfortunately; I enjoyed the little boy immensely. Stephanie shot a withering glare at Betty Cocker, who continued to bark.
Finding my voice, I said, “Hi, Stephanie. We were just talking about you.”
She stepped inside and said, “We’ll leave your conversation up to my imagination, all right? Hello, Lauren.”
“Stephanie,” Lauren said with a nod. She’d returned to the living room to give me moral support. Unfortunately, BC immediately quieted down.
“It’s probably good that you’re here, Lauren,” Stephanie said. “We need to discuss what we’re going to do.”
“About . . . ?” I prompted.
“Solving Patty’s murder, of course.” She swept past us and took a seat in the recliner, known in my house as “the big chair” from the days when my children were little enough to cuddle with me there.
I looked at Lauren, who gave me a slight one-shoulder shrug, then took a seat on the love seat and pulled a white paper napkin and a pink-colored muffin out of her bag, which she handed to me. I took a seat beside her as she held out a second muffin to Stephanie, who shook her head. BC was rapt in front of her, her little brown eyes pleading for the muffin that Stephanie had declined.
“As you both no doubt recall, at that ungodly hour yesterday morning when I ran into you in the school parking lot, I said something about wanting to kill Patty. Needless to say, that was just a figure of speech, and I’m completely innocent.”
“Mm-hmm,” I said, taking a bite of Lauren’s homemade muffin. “This is delicious. You don’t know what you’re missing, Stephanie.”
“Alas.” She leaned back in her seat and studied my face. “We all know that you’re going to look into this murder, Molly. You always do. So I thought I’d offer you some assistance.”
“Why?”
She raised her eyebrows. “You don’t think that I’m going to sit back and allow the gossipmongers to carry on at will, do you?”
“What are people saying about you?” Lauren asked. “That you did it?”
“I doubt anyone has that much misplaced nerve, no. Just that I . . . instigated it. Thanks to my making the meeting so inflammatory.”
“They may have a point, there, Stephanie,” I interjected. “I mean, obviously you didn’t mean to get Patty murdered, but you could have handled the whole thing a bit more gently.”
“More gently, you say? I was supposed to pussyfoot around when that . . . when Patty set me up to look like a complete bitch?”
That actually was an insult to my wonderful little female dog, but I decided not to call Stephanie on it. “You didn’t look like a complete bitch. But my point is that people wouldn’t have gotten so upset if you’d warned them about how they came off on the video, or if you’d allowed us to view the tape individually, in the privacy of our own homes, and then called a meeting to discuss it once we’d calmed down.”
She examined her fingernails. “That was precisely how I told Patty I wished to proceed, but she insisted we do it as a group at her house. Anyway, what is important is that it seems as though this entire town has the misconception that I was jealous of Patty Birch. That’s ludicrous. The best way to dispel such nonsense is if I play an active part in solving her murder.”
“Stephanie, I just don’t see—”
“Don’t argue with me, Molly. My mind is made up. You’ve done this before, so tell me—what’s the first step toward figuring out who the murderer is?”
“Jeez, Stephanie. I don’t know.” I glanced at Lauren, whose lips were pursed. “You just . . . try to talk to people in Patty’s social circles . . . her menopause support group, for example. You figure out who had such a fractured relationship with her that they might have resorted to violence.”
“That makes sense. Three heads are definitely going to be better than one.” She gestured at Lauren. “I’m assuming you’ll take advantage of your friendship with the police sergeant’s wife, after all.”
Lauren let out a guffaw. “Stephanie, Molly never takes advantage of our friendship. We’ve been friends our whole lives because we like each other. For good reason.”
“You misunderstood the implication.” She chuckled. “Molly, you know I didn�
�t mean that you’re friends with the chief investigator’s wife because that’s prudent. Now mind you, I’m assuming that you’re innocent, despite how idiotic you were shown to be in the tape and the fact that you had the best opportunity.”
I massaged my suddenly aching temples. “You know, I am not in the mood to put up with this. Please leave, Stephanie.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I obviously underestimated how touchy you would be the morning after your morbid discovery.” She rose and headed for the door. “You know how to find me,” she said over her shoulder as she shut the door behind her.
I growled in frustration and looked at Lauren, who gave me a smile. I said, “If only I could figure out how to lose her.”
Chapter 5
A Different Drummer
The next couple of days seemed to pass in a colorless blur. After having given myself twenty-four hours to cool off, I had called Stephanie and initiated a peace-pipe exchange. She was just being herself, after all, and with a killer on the loose who was very possibly a fellow PTA member, none of us needed to make enemies. The passage of time, however, had done nothing to ease my guilt over my cowardly avoidance of Kelly Birch on the night of the murder. Nathan reported to me that she’d been absent from school both Monday and Tuesday. I planned to tell her after the funeral, which was scheduled for tomorrow afternoon, how very sorry I was about her mother.
But for now, I was seated in “the big chair” with my sketch pad, in search of a cartoon idea. Eventually I drew a couple of elderly women staring after a young man dressed in feathers and streamers who is cheerfully marching down the street while banging on a drum. One woman is gripping the other woman’s sleeve and says to her, “Hold on, Agnes . . . this could be a trap. Are we supposed to march to the beat of a different drum . . . or to a different drummer?”
The phone rang. “And not a moment too soon,” I said to myself as I dropped my feeble attempt at humor, stepped over my sleeping dog, and answered the phone.
Death of a PTA Goddess Page 5