Death of a PTA Goddess

by Leslie O'Kane

  “Probably so,” Susan said.

  “Emily hasn’t spoken to me, but last night someone stuck a note inside my coat that I couldn’t decipher. Did you happen to see her leave me a note last night?”

  “No, but she very well might have.”

  I saw Stephanie enter the cafeteria, which was surprising. She didn’t have any children in junior high and was as likely to voluntarily attend a luncheon like this as she was to shave her head. She spotted me and gestured for me to come with her. Stifling a grimace, I said to Susan, “I’m being beckoned. See you later, Susan.”

  Stephanie remained in the doorway while waiting for me. Apparently she couldn’t deign to actually enter the cafeteria. There was something about her expression that made her look even more self-satisfied than normal. She immediately said, “You know, Molly, you really should start going to a beauty salon.”

  “Bernie at the butcher’s block at the Shop ’n’ Go is a lot faster and cheaper. Just one chop with the old cleaver and I’m done and out of there.”

  “Molly, make fun of me all you want, but it’s been my experience that if I don’t take my own appearance seriously, nobody else will, either.”

  “What do mean by ‘take your appearance seriously’? Do you want people to burst into tears at the sight of you?”

  She gave me a wry smile. “No, just applause.”

  “Oh, well, that’s a worthy goal. Is that the reason you wanted to speak to me? To tell me that I should change hair stylists?”

  “Hardly, my dear. I thought all women knew that the beauty shop was gossip central.”

  “That might be, but gossip isn’t—”

  She held up her palms. “Molly, if you would just listen to me for a moment, you’ll find out that I’ve all but solved the case.”

  “Pardon?”

  “All on my own, since you’ve proven to be dead weight. I found the big clue we’ve been looking for to identify Patty’s killer.”

  Much as I was tempted to lash out for being termed “dead weight,” I was sufficiently intrigued and asked, “Which clue is that? The killer’s physical description?”

  “No, but the next best thing: the killer’s motive.”

  Chapter 16

  Pinpointing the Problem

  I glanced into the lobby behind us. There were too many students and parents milling about to warrant the risk of being overheard. Furthermore, in the cafeteria, Susan Embrick stood in the middle of the room, her camcorder in hand, panning in a slow circle.

  “Let’s continue this conversation in my car,” I said to Stephanie.

  She grimaced at that suggestion. “My car’s right out front. I’ll give you a ride to yours while I fill you in on everything.”

  Stephanie’s BMW was in the no-parking zone by the entrance. The moment we’d shut our doors behind us, I asked, “Why do you think Patty was killed?”

  Playing the moment at its most casual, Stephanie put her keys in the ignition, then studied her manicured nails. “By a jealous wife or, perhaps, her lover. She was having an affair.”

  “How do you know that?”

  She released an exaggerated sigh and studied my face. “I thought I already explained that.”

  “You heard the rumor at your hairdresser’s?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s hardly an oracle, Stephanie. I mean, come on. It’s just a batch of women yakking while they get their hair done and speculating about a horrible murder that took place two weeks ago. I can only imagine what Tommy would say if we were to try to pass off something like that to him as evidence.”

  She clicked her tongue and started the engine. “That’s not what happened at all, Molly. Furthermore, you’re going to owe me an apology for being so condescending when you hear how clever I was.”

  I dug my fingers into her leather upholstery and stared through her windshield. “Sorry. Go on.”

  She sniffed, then asked, “Where’s your car?”

  Still annoyed at her, I merely pointed.

  She made me wait until she’d pulled into that parking lot before she spoke again. “I was waiting for my appointment, and two women were sitting next to me. They weren’t talking about anything substantive, but I kept thinking—where have I heard that voice before? Then, suddenly, I remembered.”

  I turned to face her and asked excitedly, “One of the women was that unidentified voice on the tape?”

  Not to be rushed, Stephanie said, “I recognized the voice from the tape. She was the woman who called us ‘amoral’ at the end of one of our meetings. Remember?”

  “Of course I do. So who is she?”

  “Her name’s Denise Goodman, but that’s not important.” Stephanie stopped her car directly behind mine and shut off the engine. She rotated in her seat to face me, putting an elbow on her tan leather backrest. “I struck up a conversation with her. I said that I recognized her from a PTA meeting, which wasn’t true, but she fell for it. She launched into a tirade about how she’d quit attending our meetings because she hadn’t been able to stand to be in the same room as Patty Birch, when she knew for a fact that Patty had been having an affair with a married man.”

  “Did she say who this man was?”

  “No, she claimed that he was the husband of another PTA officer, and that she wouldn’t give me the name because she didn’t like to spread vicious rumors.”

  I grumbled, “She didn’t seem to mind spreading vicious rumors at the PTA meeting.”

  Stephanie snorted. “Maybe she draws the line at gossiping about the recently deceased.”

  “They’d be the ones least inclined to care,” I retorted. “How did she find out about Patty and this . . . married man?”

  “She saw them together a half dozen times, going into that restaurant off of Clifton Road . . . Lucinda’s.”

  “Lucinda’s? I’ve never heard of it.”

  “It opened about six months ago. I hear it’s quite good. But the point is, it’s next door to where this woman lives. She’s been on a campaign to put the place out of business, so she keeps track of the license plates of cars and hopes to trap them on some sort of code violation . . . parking exceeding the number of allocation, noise ordinances, et cetera.”

  “That’s all very interesting, Stephanie, but what good does the information do us? We don’t even know who this man is, and Denise Goodman sounds like some sort of a crackpot. For all we know, she might be hallucinating. Or maybe Patty was with her ex-husband. She was trying to win him back, after all. Or maybe it was Chad Martinez, and this . . . Denise person only thought he was married, for some reason.”

  “You’re forgetting something, Molly. She was quite clear that he was married to a PTA officer. That’s exactly the way she put it. Apparently, she saw the two of them . . . the man and his PTA-officer wife . . . at Lucinda’s on their anniversary.”

  Maybe I was just dense, but this was getting me more and more confused. “How could she have known that it was their anniversary, let alone that they were married? Did she stop them in the parking lot or something?”

  “Precisely. They said as much when Denise confronted them in the parking lot.” I raised my eyebrows, and Stephanie held up her palm. “As you already gathered, Denise is more than a little odd. She objects to the traffic and noise at Lucinda’s, so she’s being a gadfly, hanging out in their parking lot and blatantly logging customers’ license plate numbers. She says she’s always very polite whenever the customers ask what she’s doing, but that she explains what a hardship the place is for her, and how she’s hoping it will go under. That night, apparently, the two-timer’s wife told Denise that they were there for a romantic evening on their anniversary and didn’t have the time or patience to hear about her personal troubles.”

  I leaned back into the cushy bucket seat, trying to analyze this information. “Did Denise spill the beans that night? Mention right then that she’d seen the husband numerous times with another woman?”

  “I . . . didn’t ask.”
>
  I furrowed my brow. “Even if Denise said something about seeing the husband’s car in the parking lot before, that could have tipped off his wife, who then could have found out it was Patty. Did Denise say when this took place? What month, at least?”

  Her expression fell a little, and she shook her head. “I didn’t think to ask. When it comes to married PTA officers, there aren’t many possible candidates . . . just Jane, Emily, and Susan. And you, of course, but obviously we can rule Jim out as a philanderer since you’ve never eaten at Lucinda’s.”

  Annoyed that she’d felt obliged to bring my name up, I snapped, “Since there are only three names, if we knew when the conversation took place, we could find out when each of their anniversaries were and identify who it was.”

  “Or you could simply call the three of them and say that you and Jim are trying to find a nice restaurant for your anniversary and do they have any suggestions. One of them is sure to mention Lucinda’s.”

  “My anniversary isn’t for five months.”

  “So?” She flicked her wrist as if to sweep me out her car with an unseen broom. “I’ve got to go, Molly. Now that I’ve done my part, you can determine which of the three Denise was talking about, then notify the police.”

  “No, it’d be best if you were the one to tell the police about this, since you’re the one who actually spoke to Denise Goodman. Furthermore, you should do that right now, in case you’re correct about this being the killer’s motive.”

  Her jaw dropped and she started to protest, but then she threw up her hands and said, “Fine. I’ll call our finefeathered friend, Sergeant Newton, this afternoon.” She started her car.

  “Let’s hope he takes this tip seriously, even though it’s so flimsy.”

  “Flimsy?”

  “We don’t even know if this had anything whatsoever to do with the murder.”

  She chuckled. “Now, Molly. Bear in mind that the victim was Perfect Patty, somebody the whole town seems to think I was jealous of, and who turned out to have been the proverbial ‘other woman.’ Why else would anyone hate her so much as to kill her?”

  The question made me cringe a little as I thought about the underlying level of resentment that some of the people I’d talked to seemed to have toward Patty. All I said, though, was “Good point.”

  Something must have registered on my face, for Stephanie said, “Come to think of it, you didn’t bat an eye when I told you about this. Had you already learned she was fooling around with someone?”

  “No, it’s just . . .” I let my voice fade. “Maybe as I get older, I’ve learned enough about human nature that nothing shocks me.”

  She put her car in reverse as if ready to peel off. “I suppose that’s something of a truism. Toodles.”

  I got out of her car and into mine, mentally trying to assess the likelihood of one of those three women having wound up in a triangle with Patty Birch. If the story was true—as opposed to a fabrication by a strange woman Stephanie had befriended in a beauty salon—the most logical choice would be Susan Embrick. Patty might never even have met Emily’s or Jane’s husband; I had never met Emily’s spouse and had met Jane’s husband only briefly that one time at Chad’s dance studio. In contrast, Susan and Patty had a long and strained history, and Susan’s husband and Patty’s ex-husband had worked together for years.

  During my short drive home, I tried in vain to come up with a better plan than Stephanie’s for determining which female PTA officer Denise Goodman could have meant. I’d had enough social contact with Susan Embrick to feel comfortable with the notion of calling her to ask her opinion about restaurants. If I were to call Emily or Jane, however, and one of them was the killer, it would look so suspicious that I might as well announce, “Say, there. You wouldn’t happen to have gone to an anniversary dinner at Lucinda’s only to discover your hubby was cheating on you with Patty Birch, would you?”

  At home, I found myself hoping that the phone would ring, and Lauren or Tommy himself would be calling to say that, thanks to Stephanie’s tip, the police had at long last made an arrest. That call, however, never came. Eventually I put my frustrations into a cartoon. I drew an exhausted-looking woman with Band-Aids all over both arms and lying on a bed in a hospital room. A doctor says to her, “Okay, Mrs. Schlinklebee, it’s too bad we’ve had to give you seventy-nine blood tests, but we’ve isolated the problem now of why you’ve been feeling light-headed and sluggish. Your test results indicate that you have a shortage of blood.”

  Afterward, having resigned myself, I called Susan, who had three suggestions for restaurants we might want to try and went into detail with each, but said nothing about Lucinda’s. I then asked specifically about Lucinda’s, and she said she’d never been there, but had heard “only positive” comments.

  I thanked her and hung up, feeling slightly encouraged. She’d seemed completely at ease during our conversation, so she was either extraordinarily good at masking her reactions and modulating her voice, or she was innocent.

  Skye’s friend, Heather, had said it was either Emily or Jane whom she’d witnessed storming out of the room following an argument with Patty. Also, Emily had supposedly searched for me last night to ask about my cartoon, but had yet to phone me to ask. What if she’d made up the excuse about looking for me so that she could cover for slipping that threat in my coat pocket? Maybe getting writing samples from her and the other suspects would help the police identify the killer.

  I decided that I would get in touch with Emily. As she was a marriage counselor, it was reasonable to think that she would know which restaurants in town were suitably romantic for an anniversary dinner. I called Emily at home, but got no answer. I then tried her work number, but her phone mail instantly picked up, so I left a message for her to call me “when she had some free time.”

  Within two or three minutes, the phone rang. I answered, and the caller said, “Molly, hi. It’s Emily Crown. Is everything all right?” Her voice was so full of concern that I instantly regretted my decision to leave a message.

  “Yes, everything’s fine. It’s just that . . . Jim and I are having some problems, and I thought I should . . . make a romantic evening, you know? So I was wondering if you, as a marriage counselor, knew of any especially romantic restaurants.”

  “Oh, well, in that case, I’d recommend that you pull all the stops. Have someone watch the kids this weekend. Then don’t stop at making dinner reservations, but rather make hotel reservations as well at a four-star hotel in Albany.”

  Ooh. Thoughtful suggestion, but one that got me nowhere when it came to asking about a particular restaurant right here in Carlton. “I’m not sure if I want to get that romantic. Have you ever been to Lucinda’s Restaurant?”

  “No, I haven’t. Seriously, Molly, even for a perfectly healthy marriage, an occasional night away from home is a great way to keep it healthy.”

  By all indications, Emily was also telling the truth about never having eaten at Lucinda’s. That left Jane, but how could I make my finding out whether or not she’d ever eaten at Lucinda’s seem like idle conversation? It would sound ridiculously suspicious if I were to call her up out of the blue to ask. I would have to contrive a way to bump into Jane instead. “When’s your next menopause meeting?”

  “Support group. Not till next month. Why?”

  A month from now to speak to Jane was far too late. “I . . . seem so emotional these days, I could use some . . . group support.”

  She hesitated. “Molly? Are you sure you don’t, perhaps, need to see a therapist?”

  Emily’s voice had slipped into such soothing, sympathetic tones that I almost did become emotional. On second thought, this could be an opportunity to get a handwriting sample from her. Tommy could compare that with the note.

  “Maybe so, Emily. Do you think you could write some names down for me? This is kind of embarrassing, but if you can use . . . big block-letter handwriting, that’d especially be good. I seem to have misplaced my reading
glasses.” I covered my eyes with my free hand. I was making a total idiot of myself! Not to mention that, if she had written that threatening note, I’d completely tipped my hand. I should never try to do sleuthing off the cuff like this!

  “Let me just give you some names right now. Do you want to see a marriage counselor, or a personal therapist?”

  A phone recommendation would do me no good. “Um, a marriage counselor. The thing is, though, I’m really not sure whether Jim would . . . go for this, or what type of counselor he’d feel comfortable with. But this is . . . something of an emergency. Maybe I could stop by your office today just for a minute or two. Would that work?”

  Again she hesitated, but then said, “That would be fine, Molly, if that would help you. My last appointment of the day is waiting for me now. Why don’t you come here afterward, at six p.m. We’ll work up some suggestions for you then. All right?”

  Now her voice sounded so soothing that I began to suspect she thought I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Who knows? Maybe I was. In any case, I played along and got her office address, thanking her profusely.

  I stared at my phone in its cradle. Shouldn’t my mention of her menopause group have reminded her of the question she’d supposedly needed to ask me about my cartoon?

  Therapists were trained not to give their reactions and to modulate their voices. My question about Lucinda’s might have signaled her that she was all but caught, and so her only hope was to lure me to her office and make me her second victim. Yikes! On the other hand, if she was completely innocent and simply trying to help me out of a dark period in my life, I would never forgive myself for calling the cops on her . . . telling Tommy now that I had reason to suspect her, so please send police to her office to watch over me.

  Inwardly cursing at myself for getting myself into this jam in the first place, I called Jim. He answered with a cheerful, “Hi, sweetie,” having Caller ID on his work phone.

  “Hi. Is it still true that you’d rather join me in my investigations than try to stop me?”