Curse of the PTA

by Laura Alden

  The next outfit was a multicolor nubbly jacket that centered on orange hues, beige wide-legged pants, and a pink floral shirt that looked designed to remain untucked. I eyed it. Untucked, it would be longer than the jacket, and in spite of the number of young people wearing shirts out below sweaters and jackets, there was no way on this earth I’d ever do so.

  Last was a pair of black pants, a black long-sleeved shirt, and a knee-length sleeveless vest made of wide red and black panels. I didn’t have the panache to pull off wearing something like that, but I liked the look of it. “The red and black thing,” I said.

  “The duster?”

  Whatever. I flipped over a couple of the price tags and almost choked. “Take them all away. Did you see the prices on these things? Bring my clothes back and let’s get out of here.”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” she asked. The leopard and the nubbly outfits slid away, but the red and black remained. “I never said we’d buy anything tonight, did I?”

  I thought back. She’d said let’s go try on some clothes. Silly old Beth for expanding that to purchasing. “What’s the point of trying on clothes I can’t afford?”

  “To figure out what looks good on you.”

  “I don’t need what looks good. I need clothes I can wear to work.”

  “Try it on,” she commanded. “When I’m in Hawaii with the DH one month, three weeks, and five days from now, I want to know that my influence lingers.”

  I hugged my prickly skin and eyed the duster. If I actually wore something like that, I’d have the hem ripped out by the end of the day from standing on it when I crouched down to reach a low bookshelf.

  “Say,” Marina said. “Do you think the fire had anything to do with Dennis’s murder?”

  “You are the queen of the non sequitur.” I held the duster up against me. Hung it back over the door. “It seems like a huge coincidence if they were separate crimes.”

  “That’s what I think. So I was up half of last night watching those lecture videos on the Halpern and Company website.”

  “You were?” Had Marina and I had been friends so long that we were starting to think the same way? “Talk about coincidences.”

  “Did you say something? Anyway, I think I figured out who murdered Dennis. Pretty smart of me, to watch those videos, I’d say. Offering free financial advice was bound to cause problems, you know? And this is the best way to get rid of the nonexistent yet tenacious PTA curse, I’m sure of it. Solve the murder, end the curse.”

  My time in front of the computer screen had been spent scrutinizing body movements, facial expressions, the way each person had watched Dennis, the way they’d applauded at the end, and the way they’d watched other people ask questions. “I watched the videos, too. Did you notice that woman in the second row of the first lecture?” She had short spiky hair, a fierce expression, and she hadn’t taken a single note.

  “Here. Try this.” A short denim skirt sailed over the top of the door, followed by a blouse whose fabric inspiration must have come from the garden at Giverny. “Nope, didn’t see her. But did you see that guy in the front row? That tie? Oh. My. Word.”

  I added the recent arrivals to the reject pile. “How about the fourth lecture? Did you notice that young man? The one with the beard?” It had been the extreme neatness of the beard’s trim that had caught my attention. Maybe he’d just come from the barber, maybe he just liked his beard trimmed tight. Either way, I’d noticed him and subsequently noticed his crossed arms and tapping feet. Why, if he was interested enough in what Dennis had to say that he’d attended the lecture in person, had he looked so hostile?

  “Nah. But did you see the woman in the first video? Front and center? That lace shirt was just soooo nineties.”

  As most of the clothes in my closet were at least that old, I tried not to take her statement personally. “There was a man in the last lecture who creeped me out.” He’d been seated at the far end of the front row. I’d watched every foot of video he’d been in and never once had I seen him blink. It had been fascinating, in an awful sort of way, but also disturbing. Eyes have to blink, it’s what eyes do. About the only time they don’t is when someone is concentrating intensely. And while the lectures had been interesting, not even a speech by Brad Pitt would keep me from blinking. So why hadn’t that guy?

  “Yeah,” Marina said, tossing over a ruffled shell in an odd gray raindrop pattern, a red jacket, and white pants. “We’re talking about that doofus with the plaid flannel shirt and the pocket protector, right? That was wrong on so many levels, I don’t even know where to start.”

  What was it with her and white pants? I put it all aside.

  “Would someone completely innocent wear that combination?” Marina was asking. “I think not.”

  “You’re basing your who-killed-Dennis theory on clothes?”

  “Hark! I hear the flag of doubt being raised.”

  All the way to the top of the flagpole. “I can’t believe you’re accusing people of murder based on the clothes they’re wearing.”

  “Not accusing. We’re declaring them persons of interest.” She put a pair of black pants and a gold sparkly sleeveless top on the door. “Or should it be people of interest?”

  I wasn’t about to touch either those clothes or her question. Exploring the subtleties of grammar and punctuation with Marina was a pointless exercise.

  “Okay, I can hear you in there,” she said. “You’re thinking that judging a person by her clothes is shallow and meaningless. That it doesn’t matter what anyone wears, that clothes are in no way an accurate indicator of intent and action.”

  I fingered the gold spangles, just to see what it felt like. Not nearly as scratchy as I’d anticipated.

  “So let me ask you this.” The top of Marina’s red head popped over the door and she skewered me with a look. “If clothes don’t mean anything, why won’t you let Jenna wear those tank tops with the spaghetti straps?”

  “That’s different.”

  “No, it’s not.” For once, Marina sounded completely serious. “It’s exactly the same thing. You don’t want her to wear clothes like that because they’re not appropriate for her age. You don’t want her to wear something that sends a message about her.”

  “That’s . . .” I wanted to repeat myself, to keep saying that it was different, but I saw where Marina was going, and she was right.

  “But that’s what clothes are all about,” she said. “Sending a message. Like it or not, that’s what they do. Sometimes the message is I don’t care about clothes”—her index finger snuck over the top of the door and pointed at me—“but it’s still a message. Other people choose to have fun with their messages.” Her head disappeared. “See?” A pink feathered boa flung itself over the top of the sparkly shirt. “How about these as part of a new store uniform? Maybe Paoze can wear a flamenco shirt. You know, with those sleeve ruffles?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with fun.” Two small pink feathers drifted free, and one tickled my nose. I sneezed. “But you can’t let it interfere with the things that need doing.”

  “You mean like alphabetizing your socks? Please. All work and no play makes Beth a drab duckling in deep need of a makeover.”

  Was Marina entering a new phase? Out with the Southern belle, and in with the fractured maxims. “Beth needs a makeover like she needs another ex-husband. What we do need, however, is a way to learn more about those people in Dennis’s lectures, and I can’t think how to do that.” I’d watched six different videos and hadn’t recognized a single person. The series had been in Madison, so I shouldn’t have expected to see anyone I knew, and I hadn’t, but I’d still been disappointed.

  “Leave it to me,” Marina said, flinging a sand-hued beaded jacket over the door. A white shell and silky brown pants followed.

  “Leave what to you?” Certainly not my wardrobe.

  “The people on the video. I haff vays ov vinding uut.”

  Suddenly, messed-up maxims didn
’t seem so bad. At least they were original.

  “Speaking of ex-husbands,” Marina said. “What is Richard doing with the kids this weekend?”

  I unclipped the pair of black pants from the hanger. “Not sure. But I did call him last night and convince him to have a man-to-nine-year-old chat with Oliver.”

  “No improvement on that front, I take it?” The beaded jacket and its friends disappeared. “I’d thought maybe the fire would snap him out of whatever funk he’s in. I know, I know, it’s a horrible thing to make hay out of another’s dark cloud, but you can’t blame a redhead for trying.”

  “When we took Spot for a walk last night, Oliver didn’t ask any questions.”

  The rustling noise that Marina was making stopped. “None?”

  I tugged on the pants. Tight, but not so tight I couldn’t walk in them. Hunching down to get at a bottom shelf however . . . “There was a plumber parked at a house on the next block and Oliver didn’t ask why he was there.” My curious son always asked questions. Always. To see him glance at the truck, then look away with sparkless eyes had given my insides a hard, wringing twist.

  Marina was silent. She’d known Oliver since the day he was born. She knew this was serious. “Do you think Richard will be able to help?”

  I held the shiny gold shirt up to me. Put it back on the hanger. “He’s his father.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  No, it wasn’t. Unfortunately, it was all I had. “Let’s just say I’ll be working on a backup plan.” All night and all weekend, if that’s what it took. Finding out what was wrong with my son had escalated from oh-he’ll-be-fine to it-might-be-time-to-interview-therapists.

  I looked at the hooks full of clothes I didn’t want and would never wear. Marina’s intentions were good, but suddenly I didn’t want anything to do with any of it. “Let’s go home, okay?”

  She must have heard the ache I’d tried to keep out of my voice, because she said, “Sure, honey. Whatever you want.” My own clothes slipped over the door.

  Never had jeans and a polo shirt looked so good. I slipped them on and tried not to worry about Oliver. He was with his father. Richard was a great dad, and now that the problem had been brought to his attention, he’d work on getting Oliver to talk. It would all work out. There was no need to worry.

  But I did, of course. Worrying was one of the things moms did best.

  Chapter 12

  I headed to the store bright and early the next morning. Saturday. The kids were probably already up and arguing about what TV show to watch. Richard, if our nearly twenty years of marriage had any bearing on his current habits, was sitting in his recliner, sucking down a pot of coffee, and growling at the headlines of whatever morning newspaper still existed. Richard was not a morning person.

  Sipping at the travel mug of tea I’d brewed before leaving the house, I got out of the car. It was a chai tea, spicy with cardamom, cinnamon, and ginger. But even the pepper that gave it a hint of heat didn’t do a thing to mask the smell coming from Dennis Halpern’s former offices.

  It was that burned-over smell you got from a campfire the morning after a beach party, only magnified a hundred times. A small breeze pushed the sour scent onto my face and I revised the number to a thousand.

  The faint sound of footsteps turned me around. I started to say “Good morning,” but didn’t get beyond the first consonant because no one was in sight.

  What, then, had I heard?

  Who had I heard?

  I shook my head to get rid of a vague sense of creepiness. I walked down the alley to the side street, then slowly made my way to the source of the smell.

  Charred ends of blackened ceiling joists pointed skyward. Exterior walls, pushed in by the post-fire mop-up crew, flopped crazily on top of debris that littered what had been the floor. I made out the shape of what might have once been a filing cabinet, but it could just as easily have been a metal desk.

  What a mess. There aren’t many things messier than a fire. What the flames hadn’t destroyed, the smoke had damaged, and whatever the smoke hadn’t ruined had been taken care of by the water the firefighters had poured on.

  When she was just out of high school, my older sister, Darlene, had dated a volunteer firefighter. I’d been shocked to hear him say that the fire department wasn’t there to save buildings from burning. “We show up,” he’d said, “to save lives and to keep a fire from spreading. Saving the house, the barn, the business, the whatever? Ain’t going to happen. Not by the time we get there.”

  I’d told him that had to be wrong. Then I’d been summarily evicted from the room by Darlene and I’d gone to sit in my favorite tree to think about it. Eventually I’d come to the sad realization that he was right.

  But I didn’t like it then and I didn’t like it now.

  I tipped my head back and swallowed the last of the tea, gagging a little as the bottom sludge hit the back of my throat. After shoving the mug into an outside pocket of my capacious purse, I extracted my cell phone and pushed buttons.

  “Hi, Pete. It’s Beth.” I suddenly realized it wasn’t even nine o’clock yet. “Sorry to bother you so early. I didn’t wake you, did I?”

  “It’d be a crime to sleep in on a morning like this,” he said. “What’s up?”

  I looked at the piles that had once been a small business. “Do you know anything about fires? In buildings?”

  “I know they’re the worst thing in the world to clean up. Most times you’re best off bulldozing the whole kit and caboodle. Between the smoke and the water damage, there’s usually not much worth saving, even if the place hadn’t been even close to burning all the way down. Hard, for homeowners.” He sounded pensive. “You want to save stuff. You know, the personal things that make your house a home. And maybe that photo album looks okay, but it’s going to reek of smoke forever. You’re better off just pitching it.”

  How horribly sad. The pictures of your children. Gone. The hair from their first haircuts you’d tied up with pink and blue ribbons. Gone. The necklace your father had given you on your sixteenth birthday, the Bible you’d received in third-grade Sunday School, the first Mother’s Day card your child gave you, gone, gone, gone.

  All just stuff, all just material things that shouldn’t matter . . . but they did. They mattered very much.

  “How long,” I asked Pete, “until an arson investigator can go in and do his investigation?”

  “You talking about the Halpern fire?”

  If this was Evan I’d been talking to, back in our dating days, I would have tried to sidestep around the topic. Evan had wanted me to stay far away from anything that even dimly resembled meddling with police business. But this was Pete. He was a friend, not a boyfriend. Besides, he wasn’t anything like Evan. “Standing ten feet from it,” I told him.

  Pete laughed. “Bet it stinks something fierce. Arson guys, well, it depends on the building, the kind of fire, how hot a fire. A day to a week, I’d guess.”

  Which was what I’d assumed. I’d just have to wait until Gus gave me the details, and that could be a while.

  “Not much help, am I? Anything else I can not help you with?” He chuckled. “What are the kids up to today?”

  “You’re a big help,” I said. “The kids are with their dad. And . . .” A lightbulb went off in my head. “And come to think of it, there is something you can do, if you don’t mind.”

  “I live to serve.”

  I smiled. Funny, nice, and helpful. “Were you a Boy Scout as a kid?”

  “Tried to be a Cub Scout once. They kicked me out for eating all the cookies.”

  “You’re making that up.”

  “Sure am,” he said cheerfully. “What can I help you with?”

  My smile went flat. “It’s Oliver. There’s something wrong with him.” I gave the symptoms. “This started about a week ago, and he won’t talk to me about it. I’ve asked my ex-husband to find out, but I’m not sure that will work. Oliver thinks you’re great and
maybe you can get him to talk.”

  “You want me to talk to your son?”

  I heard the surprise in his voice. “I’m sorry. It’s too much to ask. Forget I said anything. Please. I’m sorry and—”

  Pete ran over my babbling. “Beth. I’d be happy to talk to Oliver.”

  “You . . . would?”

  “Sure. Anything I can to do to help, I will. He’s a good kid. They’re both good kids.” He paused. “And—”

  A woman’s scream ripped the morning apart. Whatever Pete had been saying was lost in her anguish. I dropped my phone into my purse and ran.

  • • •

  Another scream tore at the air. The alley. It had come from the alley behind the stores on the other side of the street.

  I ran hard as I could, fast as I could toward the sound, a sound layered over now with the barking of dogs. Hard, sharp yips that could mean anything from “Halt, intruder!” to “Hey, let’s play!” More than one dog. Two? Three? I wasn’t sure. However many, they sounded big.

  My feet pounded over the narrow sidewalk between the hair salon and Glenn’s insurance agency. Between the hard surfaces of the buildings, the noises of my running footsteps and panting breaths were larger than life.

  Faster . . . faster . . .

  I burst into the early sunshine flooding the alley. Two dogs, Lou Spezza’s dogs, yipping and barking, their teeth showing white. A woman clutching the edge of a Dumpster, shrieking. Her silver hair shook wildly as her whole body quivered into reedy panic.

  I plunged forward, not thinking, not anticipating, just doing. “Down, boy! Down!” I grabbed their collars and pulled them backward, trying to remember their names. Paired names. Twin names? Yes. “That’s a good boy, Pollux. Good dog, Castor.”

  They each yipped one more time; then they subsided into happy dog grins. Tails wagging, they looked at me, at Flossie, and at me again, waiting for praise and pets.

  “Sit,” I commanded, and the dogs sat on the alley’s cracked asphalt. “Good dogs,” I murmured, looking around. I didn’t see Lou—and where was he, with his dogs out here?—but I spotted a roll of garbage bags, the end trailing long on the ground, marking the spot where it had been dropped. “Stay.” I held my hands in front of their faces. “Stay.” They looked up at me adoringly, their fluffy golden-retriever-esque tails swishing back and forth.