by Laura Alden
“If you want,” I said, “come into my office. We can sit down and talk about whatever it is that’s troubling you.”
She drew in a long breath and stepped back. “Um, thanks, but I’m fine.” She rubbed her face and her hands came away wet with tears. “Really, I’m fine.” To prove it, she smiled wide, a grimace that didn’t carry an ounce of happiness. “I’m just tired; that’s all.”
“Tired,” I said. “You’re sure about that?”
Her shoulders came back up. She looked at me straight on. “Honest, Mrs. Kennedy. I really am just tired. I’ll catch up on sleep this weekend.”
I nodded and let her get back to work, watching the top of her blond head bob between the shelves as she went to help a customer. She’d sounded like she was telling the truth. But was she? I watched her greet the woman, saw her manufactured smile, and wondered.
• • •
The next morning was Friday, the day I’d recently decided was perfect for delivering books to the local schools. For years I’d made it a point to personally drop off books that teachers had special ordered. It cost me two hours of time almost every week, but it generated a tremendous amount of loyalty, and that was beyond price.
Plus it gave me an opportunity to peek in on my son. Not Jenna, though, not now that she was in middle school. She’d made me promise with a triple cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die-stick-a-needle-in-my-eye that I wouldn’t come anywhere near any of her classrooms.
“I will die,” she said. “Just die. Middle school is different, Mom.”
She was right, but in spite of my promise, I’d found it difficult almost beyond bearing to walk in and out of the middle school without seeing her. So close to my daughter, yet so far. But Oliver would be at Tarver for two more years, so I had two more years of happy kid-peeking.
I plopped the box of books on the counter of the front office. “Good morning, Lindsay. How are you this fine day?”
Lindsay, six feet tall and skinny as a runway model, was as competent a school secretary as you could imagine. Teachers, parents, and the rest of the school staff continued to be amazed that she’d choose to work at the school instead of finding a higher-paying job at some fancy office in Madison. We all wanted her to stay forever, and since we couldn’t do anything about the size of her paycheck, the parents had banded together and made a quiet schedule for presenting her with gifts of chocolate, cookies, and muffins.
“Getting fat,” she said, thumping her bony hips. “Put on almost a pound since school started.”
I looked at her.
“Gotta nip that stuff in the bud, you know.” She grinned. “Want a chocolate-chip scone? Mrs. Eberhard gave me a plateful.”
“Did I hear you say scones?” A round-faced woman stood in the doorway that led to the back offices. “Chocolate chip?” She spoke with the soft-edged tones of someone from the South. Charleston, South Carolina, to be specific.
“Morning, Millie.” I smiled at the school psychologist. “I’ll split one with you.”
“Oh, my dear.” She shook her head sorrowfully. “I like you very much, but scones are not to be split and shared.”
“Especially Mrs. Eberhard’s,” Lindsay said. “Here.” She held out a plate, aiming it alternately at me, then at Millie. “Scone, anyone?”
Since it would have been rude not to take what was offered, I took the smallest one. Which was still probably three hundred calories too big, but it was Friday, after all. I’d make sure to work it off playing with the kids tomorrow. Absolutely. For sure.
We ate the first two bites in reverent silence, giving Mrs. Eberhard’s scones the attention they deserved. “How’s it going with the new vice principal?” After lengthy deliberations, the school board had hired Stephanie Pesch in July. All I knew about her was that she had come highly recommended and that she was young.
“She’s a very nice young lady,” Millie said. “I think she’ll do well.”
“Good thing she’s wasn’t hired by the high school,” Lindsay said, laughing. “She’s a hottie.”
I smiled, then asked the dreaded question. “Have the kids been affected much by Dennis Halpern’s death?”
Lindsay squinched her face. “Staff and faculty more than the kids, I think. Kids are bloodthirsty little buggers.”
“It’s not quite real,” Millie said. “To them, Mr. Halpern’s murder is more like a television show that’s being filmed right here at the school. They didn’t see what you did, Beth.”
No, they hadn’t, and for that I was profoundly grateful.
“Oh, wow, I forgot.” Lindsay’s eyes went wide. “It must have been . . . awful.”
I’d started to clench the muscles at the back of my neck, anticipating more questions, preparing for more curiosity, steeling myself to being dragged back to that night and having to tell the story all over again. But Lindsay was looking at me with sympathy, and Millie’s large brown eyes were full of nothing but kindness.
“Yes,” I said. “It was awful.”
The room was quiet as we finished eating the scones. Millie dusted off her hands. “Well, back to work. Tests to analyze and all that. Lindsay, thank you. Beth, if you need to talk—or even if you don’t need to—you know my door’s always open.”
I watched her go. “She’s a nice lady.”
“Yup.” Lindsay nodded. “Say, if you want—” The electronic beeping of the phone cut across her sentence. “Oh, drat.” She made a face as she picked up the phone. “Good morning. Tarver Elementary.”
I waited a moment, but when she said, “Sure, I can do that for you. Just let me pull up that program, okay?” I waved good-bye and headed down the hallway to find my Oliver.
He was where he should be, inside his fourth grade classroom. From what I could tell of his concentrated look and hunched posture, the class was practicing writing. Mrs. Sullivan was a big believer in teaching cursive handwriting. No matter how loudly the students protested that they didn’t need to learn cursive, why should they when everything was done on the computer, she ignored them with a bland smile and handed out worksheets.
Oliver had been in tears over the “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” homework. “I can’t make a Q,” he’d wailed. “It keeps turning into a G. I’m never going to get this right. I’m going to get an F on this homework, and I’m going to fail fourth grade and never get to go to college.”
The tears coursing down his face had made my own eyes prickle even as I was trying not to laugh. “Sweetheart, look,” I’d said, pointing at the handout. “Read what it says at the top of the page.”
He’d sniffed. “Um, it says . . . you will not be graded on this homework. It says it’s for ref . . . refer . . . reference purposes only.”
“That’s right. Do you know what that means?”
“Um, there’s a reference section in the library. My homework is going to be in the library?” He’d sat up straight, mouth opening in horror.
“No. A reference is something you can look up.” Sort of. “Mrs. Sullivan is going to keep your homework”—I tapped the tearstained piece of paper—“and at the end of the year, you’ll write this sentence again.”
“And you think I’ll be better then?”
I squeezed his shoulder. “You’ll be lots better.”
He looked at his homework, and I could almost see the direction of his nine-year-old brain. “So I don’t have to do a really good job on this?”
“You should do the best job you can,” I said firmly. “You should always do your best.”
“But if . . .” His voice faded off when he saw my face. He sighed. “But it’s hard to always be trying so hard.”
I’d kissed the top of his head. “Once you get in the habit, it’s not so bad.”
Now, as I watched the tip of his tongue sticking out the side of his mouth as he practiced his writing, I hoped my words had sniggled deep down inside him. If I could teach my children that you should always do your best and if I could show them that not
hing mattered more than having a kind heart, then I could count my parenting as successful. Of course, it would be nice if they’d end up with a solid sense of humor and a slightly above-average dose of ambition. And if—
“Hey, Beth.”
I turned. “Hey, yourself, Pete. What are you doing . . . ?” Then I made the obvious connection. “Oh. Right.”
Pete Peterson owned and operated Cleaner Than Pete, a company that cleaned up things no one in their right mind wanted to touch with an eleven-foot pole. He’d started with sewers that had backed up into people’s houses, expanded to tidying up vandalism, and then branched out into crime-scene cleanup.
We’d met two years ago while he was cleaning a murder scene, and last year, after his sister had moved to Rynwood with her young daughter, we’d started running into each other more often.
Pete was one of those friendly guys who didn’t have a worry in the world. His typical stance was a round-shouldered comfortable slouch, hands in pockets, smile on his face. Medium height, balding, and permanently cheerful, Pete smiled easily and laughed often.
“One of these days they’re going to figure out a way to keep water from being so heavy.” He set the full bucket of soapy water he was carrying on the floor and flexed his hand. “Are we on for golf tomorrow?”
“The kids are already working on their strategies.” Last May, Pete had volunteered to teach Jenna and Oliver how to play disc golf. The four of us had spent many a Saturday afternoon hurling plastic discs at various objects from various distances. His niece, Alison, and his sister, Wendy, occasionally joined us, and the ensuing hilarity was the stuff of which memories are made.
Pete mimicked a throw with a wrist twist at the end. “Jenna been working on that new move?”
“Every day.” With Jenna, doing her best was not a problem—at least when it came to sports-related activities. Her hockey coach had endorsed the disc golf, saying that it would help her hand-eye coordination. Since she was starting to dream dreams of Olympic teams, anything that might improve her goalie skills was added to her list of things to do.
“And how about you?” Pete’s smile went down a notch, from happy-go-lucky to things-could-be-worse. “It sounds like you probably had a rough couple of days. You okay?”
“Sure,” I said. “It’s just . . .”
Pete waited, something that few people knew how to do. Most people—myself included—would try to supply you with the words, but sometimes all you needed was a few seconds to figure out what you were really feeling and another few seconds to translate those feelings into a semblance of a sentence.
“Well, there are two things, really,” I said at last. Pete nodded, so I went on. “First is that Dennis was killed. That’s hard enough. Then that he was killed at a PTA meeting that I invited him to, so I feel sort of responsible.” I rubbed my eyes. “And I ran right toward what could have been deadly danger without once thinking of my children, and we didn’t even catch the guy, and we couldn’t save Dennis from dying, and now the whole town’s talking about me and . . . and that’s a lot more than two things, isn’t it?” I laughed, but it came out so shaky and pathetic that I stopped as fast as I could.
“None of it is your fault,” Pete said. “You know that, right? I mean, it seems pretty clear that Halpern’s death was premeditated, so having him killed at your PTA meeting doesn’t mean a thing. And you can’t help your reactions. Maybe you ran toward danger, but it was with the intent of helping. How can you fault yourself for that? And as for everyone talking about it?” He smiled. “I think they’re all proud of you.”
Proud of me? As if. But it was nice of him to try and make me feel better. “In my head, I know none of it is my fault. It’s here that I’m having troubles.” I tapped my chest, and then I finally heard what he’d said. “You think that whoever killed Dennis planned it ahead of time?”
“Sure. If the killer was a nutcase who wanted to kill a whole bunch of people, coming into an elementary school at night is a pretty dumb place to do it.”
My mind skated over and far away from the idea of mass death at Tarver. “Do you really think it wasn’t a random killing? You’re not just saying that to make me feel better?”
“I’m about as good a liar as you are.” He grinned. “Your ears turn red, right? I stutter.”
I laughed, and this time it was a real one. “I’ll remember that.”
“Ah, I should have kept my mouth shut. Now you know all my secrets.” Pete picked up the bucket. “So the next question is, who killed Halpern? Any ideas?”
I gave him an answer that was cast-in-stone correct. “I have no clue. And finding the killer is a job for the police. For the sheriff. I’m staying out of this completely.”
“Sounds good,” he said easily. “See you tomorrow, then?”
We set a time to meet in the park—barring rain—and he went back to his labors. But as I watched him walk toward the restroom where Dennis had lain, I found myself staring at the door at the end of the hallway, the door through which the killer had escaped.
And I wondered.
Chapter 5
The weekend passed happily enough. Friday night we made pizza and played a video game Jenna had been given for her birthday. Saturday morning was spent on chores, homework, and hockey practice. Saturday afternoon was disc golf, and the evening was a chicken casserole and a nice long walk with the three of us and Spot, our solid brown dog. Sunday morning we went to church, where I sang in the choir, and the rest of the day was spent reading and watching a movie.
Monday morning I parked in the alley and looked up from locking my car to see Lou Spezza being towed along by two energetic dogs. Mutts, by the look of them, with a healthy dose of golden retriever and maybe a smattering of husky. “Morning,” Lou called. “Happy Monday to you.” He stopped at the bottom of the stairs that led to his above-store apartment and, after a short choking moment, the dogs also stopped.
“And to you.” I smiled at him. Lou’s new store, Made in the Midwest, had filled in the only empty downtown storefront, and everyone from the chamber of commerce on down was giddy that we had one hundred percent occupancy. “I didn’t know you had dogs.” I walked behind the two stores that separated us and crouched in front of the canines.
“Didn’t until Saturday.” He stooped and patted the head of one dog, then the other. “Meet Castor and Pollux.”
I held out my hand, knuckles up, and had it promptly licked by two long tongues. “That’s a good boy. Yes, you’re a good boy, too.”
“They are, aren’t they?” Lou beamed, his dark mustache curving up on both ends. He caressed the dogs again, his muscles rippling under the thick black hair that covered his arms.
Lou was fiftyish and strong enough to move extremely heavy boxes by himself, and that was all I knew about him. I’d never seen any sign of a wife, and the one time I’d asked, he’d looked so sad that I’d changed the subject immediately.
His happy face dimmed. “Say, you’re a friend of that Summer Lang, aren’t you?”
“Yes. Why?” His face went grim, and I started to get a twisty feeling about what he was going to say next.
Lou glanced left and right, then behind him. He moved in a little closer. “They’re saying she might be the one who killed that man, that Dennis Halpern.”
“That’s nuts,” I said, loud enough to have the bricks walls bounce my words back to me. “Summer wouldn’t kill anyone. Why on earth would she?”
“They’re saying she had a fight with him right before the PTA meeting.”
The mysterious “they” was on the loose again, and they were starting to irritate me, right down to the bone. “Where did you hear this?” If Summer and Dennis had argued, it was news to me.
“Just now, at the convenience store. I went out to get a newspaper and I was behind two women who were talking about it.”
“Who?”
But he shook his head. “Sorry. I don’t know their names. But I’d say younger than you by a few year
s. And from the sounds of it, I think they’re in your PTA.”
I’d been petting Castor (or was it Pollux?), and my hand stopped mid-pet. “What makes you say that?”
“Oh, ah.” He pulled at one end of his mustache. “Well, as I remember, and I’m getting up there in age, so don’t quote me on any of this, mind you. As I recall, they were commenting on the, ah, on the fact of your presidency.”
I looked at him, but he was concentrating on picking loose dog hairs off his shirt. There was a ninety-nine-percent chance that I knew who the two women had been, and there was a one-hundred-percent chance that they’d been bad-mouthing me.
“Thanks, Lou.” I gave the dogs one more pat each, stood, and headed for Randy Jarvis’s convenience store.
• • •
From halfway across the store’s parking lot, I could see that a gaggle of people were gathered around the coffee station. Randy was standing behind the counter, silent as usual, taking in the action with the calm complacency that was his habitual attitude toward almost everything.
Come to think of it, I’d never seen him get upset about anything. Not when a gang of teenagers robbed him, not when an elderly man drove into one of his brand-new gas pumps, and not even when a monstrous cloudburst of a rainstorm flooded his store. Ankle-deep in thick, brown water, Randy hadn’t stumped around in anger or broken down in sobs at the wreck of his store. He’d glanced around, then phlegmatically gone to work cleaning up the mess.
There was something to be said for such an approach, but I wasn’t sure we got to choose the basic way that we approached life. I was a list maker. Randy was a plodder. Marina was a court jester. As I pushed open the glass door of Randy’s Quick Mart, I looked at the faces and added a few more. Denise, my hairstylist, was a talker. CeeCee Daniels, PTA member, was a follower. Kirk Olsen was a doer, but only after someone had told him what to do. Which made his recent career switch to stockbroking a puzzle Marina hadn’t yet grown tired of trying to solve. Violet Demps was a thinker. And Glenn Kettunen was . . .