Curse of the PTA

by Laura Alden

  “And?”

  “And he’s a very nice and polite young man. You have good reason to be proud of your son.”

  On the days when I wasn’t worried sick about him, yes.

  “Something is definitely troubling him,” she went on, “but it’s too soon to say what.”

  “Oh.” I deflated. “How long do you think?”

  “Beth,” she said, “this isn’t like going to the emergency room.”

  “I know, it’s just . . .” But I couldn’t say what I wanted to say. It would sound too stupid.

  Millie filled in the gap. “It’s just that you’re worried about your child and you want to fix everything and make it all better as soon as possible.”

  Exactly. “A little unrealistic, I suppose.”

  “But understandable,” Millie said. “You said your ex-husband hasn’t been able to get Oliver to confide in him, correct? Is there another man that he’s close to? A grandfather or an uncle?”

  “Well,” I said slowly, “there’s a friend of the family who might help out.”

  “See if you can get them together,” Millie advised. “Ask him not to force a conversation, but to open the door for communication, if you see what I mean.”

  Open the door? I’d burst it wide open with a bulldozer, if that’s what it took to help my son.

  • • •

  The rest of the day passed uneventfully, and I spent the evening helping the kids with homework, doing the laundry I’d put off for too long, and worrying about Oliver. Friday morning, I opened my office e-mail and found a message from Marina. “Kyle is the killer,” it said. “You know that tie he wore at the lecture? You should see the rest of them. No way could an innocent man have a tie collection like that. None.”

  I rolled my eyes. No way could Marina know what Kyle Burkhardt had in his closet. None.

  But the e-mail was serving as a reminder that I hadn’t done a lick of research on scary Elsa Stinson. I fired up my new favorite research tool and got to work.

  At lunchtime, Marina called. “You didn’t waste any time looking up stuff about Elsa the Horrible, did you? Kyle’s the killer, I tell you.”

  “You just like the alliteration.”

  “It is fun, yes, but this time I’m right about who did it.”

  “There’s a first time for everything,” I said. “And please tell me that your e-mail about his tie collection was pure imagination?”

  “Nope,” she said cheerfully.

  “You went into his house?” My heart suddenly felt too big for my chest. “How?”

  “Easy. I made up some business cards and rang his front doorbell. Said I was a home organizer and that I was giving free advice on closets.”

  “You did what?” I shrieked.

  “Quit with the yelling, already. I was perfectly safe. Zach was waiting in the car with a cell phone and instructions to call 911 if I didn’t come out in ten minutes. Plus Kyle’s wife was home.”

  I groaned. Her idea of perfectly safe and mine were not on the same page. Not even in the same chapter.

  “Anyway,” she said, “that’s that. I’d say no more proof is needed.”

  “What if I told you Elsa Stinson was in the army and spent two tours of duty overseas in the military police?”

  “An MP? Wow, girls really can do anything, can’t they?”

  “After she left the army, in which she won numerous shooting awards, she spent four years with the Milwaukee Police Department. She wrote a book called The Girl’s Guide to Army Life, and now she’s a private investigator for one of the largest firms in Wisconsin.”

  “Good heavens,” Marina said faintly. “How did you learn all this?”

  “You wouldn’t believe what people put on Facebook.” And LinkedIn and Pinterest. Send a friendly invitation, and bingo bango bongo, you have a new friend. I felt a little guilty about the deception, but I doubted I’d lose sleep over it. Not much, anyway.

  “Gotcha,” Marina said. “Remind me to warn my children about the dangers.”

  It was too late—I’d looked up her older offspring months ago—but I’d decided to save that conversation for another time. Like when the world froze over.

  “So she knows how to handle a gun,” Marina mused. “Interesting.”

  “And as a private investigator, she knows how to find people. She has all the skills the killer has.”

  “Okay, you got me there. But Kyle is a gun guy. There was one of those big gun safes in the corner of the bedroom. And he had dead deer heads mounted all over the living room.”

  So we still had two suspects. Both had the skills and weaponry required; either one could have killed Dennis. The what, where, when, and how questions were answered, and we were closing in on the who part.

  Which left the biggest question of all: Why?

  Chapter 16

  Oliver and I huddled together against the cold of the Agnes Mephisto Memorial Ice Arena. Huddled in a general sense, anyway. We were both sitting on the same aluminum bleacher, on the same folded-up blanket, and our laps were covered with the same green-and-gold Green Bay Packers blanket, but we might as well have been at opposite ends of the arena for all the closeness I was getting from him.

  I looked at my son, perched there on the far end of the blanket, and wondered what I was doing wrong. Was this the price I was paying for the divorce? Sure, that had happened three years ago, but maybe the full reality of the situation was finally hitting my son. Or maybe this was a reaction to my breakup with Evan? That had been months ago, but—

  “Go! Go!” The crowd of parents, stepparents, siblings, and friends were on their feet. Oliver and I rose with them. “Go!” A girl from Jenna’s team had broken away from the rest of the players and was skating for all she was worth down the ice. Blades scraping hard, head up, stick flashing left and right keeping the puck in line. Close to the net now, she pulled her stick back and slammed a shot straight at the net.

  The goalie flung herself onto the puck and stopped it cold.

  “Ohh . . .” Half the crowd dropped back to their chilly seats. “Nice save!” shouted the other half.

  “Where’s Mrs. Neff?” Oliver asked. “She almost always comes to Jenna’s games.”

  Marina enjoyed the rough and tumble of hockey, but even more she enjoyed what happened after the game. What she really liked was watching girls, who twenty minutes before had been outfitted in skates and helmets and hockey pads, come out of the locker room dressed in purple and pink.

  The contrast tickled her, and if she couldn’t attend the entire game, she tried at least to see the last period. This Saturday, however, Marina had been obligated to attend the college homecoming activities of her second-youngest offspring. I told Oliver this, but he didn’t look overly interested. He didn’t even ask what homecoming was.

  My son, my son. What is wrong? Why won’t you talk to me?

  I sighed, snuck an inch closer to Oliver, and tried to concentrate on the game.

  This time it was the bad guys who had the puck. Number two—who, under all her equipment had the cutest freckles and the most adorable pointed chin ever—snuck around the back of the right defenseman and skated toward the goalie. Toward Jenna.

  My darling daughter lunged toward the puck, and the freckled pixie instantly whipped her stick the other way and slapped a shot toward the goal, sending the puck flying through the air, right toward the exposed part of the net.

  But Jenna hadn’t committed herself; her action had been a feint. Quick as a wink, she dug her skates into the ice and pushed herself in the opposite direction, arm outstretched, glove open . . . and caught the puck smack in the middle of her palm.

  The parents around me leapt to their feet, cheering my daughter.

  But I just sat there. Jenna’s first move had been a feint. A fake. A ploy. A ruse. A gambit.

  What if the murderer was doing the same thing? What if I’d been thinking about the incident with Flossie and the dogs all wrong? What if that didn’t have anyth
ing to do with the murder?

  • • •

  I took the kids to Sabatini’s for a victory pizza, where Jenna relived each of the twenty-two saves she’d made, complete with NHL-style commentating and slow-motion replays with Oliver gladly playing the part of the puck. Thanks to precedent set at other victory pizza lunches, I’d asked the hostess to seat us in a corner, distant from any other diners. Far better to let Jenna work off her post-game excitement in a commercial establishment built for abuse than at home, where I’d spoil her stories with mom-admonishments.

  Back home, while Jenna was unpacking her hockey bag in the laundry room and Oliver was out with Spot in the yard, I made the phone call. “Ready,” I said.

  “Give me ten minutes,” he said.

  “Ready for what?” Oliver asked as he and Spot came in the back door.

  I slid my cell phone into my purse and smiled brightly. “For anything,” I said. “What would you like to do this afternoon? Climb every mountain? Pick a pocket or two? Row, row, row your boat?”

  Usually my nonsense made him giggle. Today, though . . .

  He shrugged.

  A vision of the future struck me cold. If Oliver was this uncommunicative when he had a problem at age nine, what would he be like at thirteen? Seventeen?

  I shook away the image. No. It would be fine. It had to be.

  Soon, the front doorbell rang. In the olden days, Jenna and Oliver had fought over whose turn it was to answer the door. Today, no kid went flying, so I went myself.

  I opened the door to see Pete Peterson and his young niece, Alison, standing on the front porch. “Hi, Pete,” I said. “Thanks for doing this.”

  “Hey, not a problem. Anything I can do, you know?”

  “Hello, Alison.” I smiled at the eight-year-old standing next to him. “What have you been doing today?”

  She held up a plastic shopping bag. “Mommy and me went to the dollar store.”

  “That sounds like fun. Why don’t you go inside and find Jenna; then we’ll look through your bag together. And could you please tell Oliver that I need him? Thank you.”

  Pete and I watched as she scampered inside, her dark blond curls bobbing. “She’s a little sweetheart,” I said. He made a noncommittal guy noise, but his smile belied his pride. I knew that Pete’s sister, Wendy, had been through a bad divorce and that Alison rarely saw her dad. Not many men would have stepped up to become the father figure for a young girl, especially not many single men. I was about to say so when Oliver came up behind me.

  “Hi, Mr. Peterson.”

  “Oliver, you are just the man I need,” Pete said.

  My son stared at him. “I am?”

  “What I need is some help at my house. Some guy help.” He winked broadly. “Well, not in the house, exactly. The garage. It needs cleaning like crazy, and I could do with an extra pair of hands.”

  Oliver pulled his hands out of his pockets and eyed them. “I’m not that strong,” he muttered. “Or very big.”

  “Ah, big is overrated,” Pete said. “I’m not what you’d call tall, and I make out okay. And I bet you’re strong enough to move paint cans around, aren’t you?”

  “Um, I think so.”

  “Scraps of wood? Piles of newspapers? Boxes of nuts and bolts that don’t fit anything I own?”

  By now, Oliver was grinning. “I can do all of that.” He looked at me. “Can I, Mom? Go with Mr. Peterson, I mean?”

  I put on a frown. “Seems like you should do that in your own garage first.”

  “Pleeeeeaase!” He gripped his hands tight together and held them up to me. “I’ll help clean our garage next weekend. And I’ll be able to do a better job if I help with Mr. Peterson’s garage first. I’ll learn how to do things.”

  I looked at Pete, trying not to smile. “Well, I suppose it’ll be all right. You’re sure he won’t get in the way?”

  “Oliver?” Pete asked. “He wouldn’t know how.”

  Beaming, Oliver nodded vigorously. I shooed them out, telling them to be back by six thirty for hamburgers and hot dogs. I found Alison and my tomboy daughter at the kitchen table, their heads together as they examined the dollar store purchases.

  “This one’s all glittery,” Alison said. “And pink. I think it’s my favorite. Which one do you like best?”

  “Um . . .” Jenna sounded uncharacteristically indecisive. “I’ve never done this before.”

  “Let’s see.” Alison squinted at Jenna, peered at the purchases, squinted at Jenna. “I think this color would be good on you.” She picked up a bottle of purple fingernail polish and held it next to my daughter’s face.

  I stifled a snorting giggle. The day Jenna tried fingernail polish would be the day—

  “Okay,” my daughter said.

  —would be today. I stared at Alison. How had she done that?

  “Mrs. Kennedy, what color do you want to try?” the pint-sized pied piper asked.

  “Color? Me?” I started to back away. “Oh, sweetie, I have a number of things I have to do this afternoon. Why don’t you and Jenna work together and I’ll view the beautiful results.”

  Alison grabbed a bottle and jumped to her feet. “This color. Here, see?” She thrust a bottle of dark red polish at me. “You’ll look gorgeous. Just like Sandra Bullock.”

  “Yeah, Mom.” Jenna grinned at me. “Just like.”

  I looked from one face to the other, both of them full of youth and enthusiasm and fun, and I felt my own face spread wide in a smile. “Well,” I said, “if you’re sure about the Sandra Bullock thing . . .”

  In answer, Alison grabbed my hand and pulled me to the table. “We’ll do Jenna first, okay? If she doesn’t like the color, we can take it off and try again. Or maybe we should do a bunch of different colors, just to see.”

  Their happy chatter drowned out my plans for the afternoon. No laundry was going to get done, the kitchen floor was going to remain unmopped, and the upstairs bathtub was going to stay slightly gunky.

  But I didn’t care. At all.

  • • •

  Late that night, after the dishes were washed and put away, after the card game, and after the good-byes and the bedtime stories and the good-night kisses, I prowled around the house, tidying and thinking.

  During dinner cleanup operations, Pete had pulled me aside and told me that Oliver had been an excellent assistant and that he’d seemed to have a good time, but that no confidences had been forthcoming.

  “Thanks for trying,” I said. Realistically, it had been too much to hope for. Some days I wasn’t overly fond of realism.

  Pete scratched his head. “There was a time or two when it seemed like he wanted to say something. Once he asked if I could keep a secret. And when we were sweeping up at the end, he asked if I’d ever done anything really bad.”

  Fear clutched at me. What had Oliver done? “What did you tell him?”

  He shrugged. “That, sure, I could keep a secret. My mom still doesn’t know how the front window got broken that one time. And I said I’ve done a couple of sort of bad things, but that it always helps to talk about it.”

  Bless the man. I looked at him, smiling. “Sort of bad? How bad were they?”

  “Now, see,” he said, “that’s where keeping secrets comes in handy.”

  I’d laughed, the kids had come rushing in with two decks of cards, and the evening had moved on. Now I stood in the family room, folding the blanket that had fallen off the back of the couch, wondering. How could Oliver be thinking he’d done something bad? His teacher wasn’t aware of anything. Marina didn’t know of anything. The mothers of his friends didn’t know. His father didn’t know. I didn’t know. What could—

  The ringing of the phone interrupted my circling thoughts. I picked up the handset of the old princess phone, the family room phone, the one manufactured decades ago when phones were still built to take physical abuse. “Kennedy residence, Beth speaking.”

  There was an odd tinkling noise, a sharp intake of brea
th, and the single hoarse word, “Don’t!”

  The line went dead.

  Slowly, mechanically, I hung up the phone.

  For the next couple of hours, and once every hour after that until morning, I checked and rechecked that the doors and windows were locked. Front door, garage door, back door. Upstairs windows, first-floor windows, tiny basement windows. Locked solid, every time, yet the compulsion to make sure drove me around the house, over and over again.

  A hundred times I reached out to call Gus; a hundred times I pulled back.

  Monday. I’d promised Summer I’d wait until Monday. I could wait that long. After all, even though it was still dark, it was already Sunday, with church and Sunday school and choir and a Sunday dinner to cook and homework to oversee, and Sundays weren’t appropriate, really, to tell Gus what needed to be said.

  But maybe I needed to. Maybe it was time to tell him everything. About Flossie and the dogs and the note and how it might be a feint and the footsteps in the alley and Elsa and Kyle and the hang-up calls. I could tell him all that, couldn’t I?

  Yes, I could. And then he’d ask, “Is there anything else?” and I’d think about Summer and the casino and say, “No, that’s it,” and Gus would hear the lie in my voice and press me to tell him and I’d resist but he’d keep pressing and I’d end up telling him.

  No. I’d promised. And why was I so scared, anyway? Someone had called, said “Don’t,” and then hung up. Not exactly worthy of a police car visit, lights spinning and siren blaring.

  But still . . .

  Monday. It couldn’t come soon enough.

  Chapter 17

  Thanks to Jenna-induced panic (“But I don’t remember where I put my shoes!”) and an Oliver-created sulk (“Why do I have to wear a good shirt? School pictures are dumb!”), my arrival at work was late and rushed, and my intention to call Gus first thing was curtailed when I found the note I’d written and taped to the top of the computer screen.

  “Interview, take three, nine o’clock Monday morning.”

  I glanced at my watch. Not nearly enough time to call Gus. Besides, I needed to call Summer first and see if she’d followed through with telling her husband.