Poison at the PTA

by Laura Alden

  “No best friend?”

  She made a face. “Cookie was also one of those women whose best friend changed every couple of years. Weird, if you ask me. You know when I met my best friend? Kindergarten. She chased after me with a garter snake. I ran away shrieking, but somehow we ended up the best of friends.” She went on to say that though her friend now lived in California, they e-mailed almost daily and visited every year.

  I wondered how anyone could switch friends as if they were replacing a pillow. That’s not what a best friend was—a best friend was someone who would always, always be in your life.

  Then I remembered that my own best friend was keeping something important from me. As Debra talked about a long-ago road trip with her friend, I wondered if my friendship with Marina was changing into a shape I didn’t recognize.

  Mother’s Day couldn’t come soon enough.

  “Was there anyone who didn’t like Cookie?” I asked.

  My question interrupted Debra’s story. She sighed. “Right. Cookie.” She sipped at her coffee. “I’m sorry. What was the question?”

  I didn’t want to think about Marina. Debra didn’t want to talk about Cookie. Outstanding. I pushed an Amazingly Awesome toward her. “Was there anyone who didn’t get along with Cookie?”

  This time Debra bit, chewed, and swallowed before she answered. “There’s a big difference between not getting along with someone and being her enemy.” She looked at me carefully. “And why are you asking, anyway?”

  Once again, if I’d been as smart as some people claimed I was, I would have prepared an answer for this obvious question. Since I wasn’t all that smart, I said, “Well, um . . .”

  Debra sighed. “So it wasn’t an accident. Poisoned, then, right? And what you really want to know is if I know anyone who might have killed her.”

  “Gus is out sick,” I said.

  Which didn’t make any sense, really, but she nodded. “All of the other tellers got along with her well enough. But they were all coworker friends, not real friends. She didn’t mix with any of them outside of the bank.”

  “How about bank customers?”

  Debra’s hand stopped with her coffee mug halfway to her mouth. “I can’t believe I forgot about this.” The mug went down with a crash. “I should tell the police, I suppose. Do you think it can wait until Gus is back?”

  “Tell me,” I said.

  “Well, maybe he knows already.” Her startled look started to fade. “It’s no secret. Everyone in the bank heard it. I could hear them from my office and came out myself to calm things down.”

  “Cookie had an argument with someone?”

  Debra nodded. “And how. It was one of those screaming-at-the-top-of-your-lungs things. Stephanie almost went over the counter at Cookie, and I thought I was going to have to call the police.”

  The small kernel of worry that, with the birth of my children, had taken up permanent residence in my stomach doubled in size. “Stephanie?”

  “Sure,” Debra said. “You know her. Stephanie Pesch, the new vice principal at Tarver.”

  Chapter 12

  When I left the antiques store the cold bit at me with teeth so sharp they would have gone through multiple layers of Gore-Tex, fleece, down, and wool.

  Then again . . . I looked at myself. Or, since I was so preoccupied, I could have forgotten to zip up my coat and put on my gloves. In three seconds, I was back to thinking about what Debra had told me, and not liking it all over again.

  “Beth? Hey, Beth!” A woman jumped down from a large brown box truck parked on a side street. “I have a package for you. It was addressed to your house, but I figured I could drop it off downtown. Do you want it now?”

  “It’s not books, is it? Because if it is . . .” I looked at the long length of sidewalk between me and the store’s front door.

  She laughed. “It isn’t heavy. Hang on.” She popped back into the truck and popped right back out again, a box balanced on one hand and her digital doohickey in the other. “Sign here . . . and this is all yours. Have a good day!” The truck rumbled away.

  It was a nice box: tidy, with no smashed corners, a neat strip of packaging tape keeping it closed, and a simple handwritten label. The shipping label said it had come from Chicago, which didn’t make any sense because I recognized the handwriting. This, too, had come from a dead woman.

  “Cookie, what are you doing?” I asked the air quietly. Luckily, no one answered.

  I tucked the box under my arm and headed to the store.

  “What do you have there?” Lois asked, nodding at my square companion.

  “A box,” I said.

  Her mouth opened for a quick retort, but the phone rang. She glared at me and spun around to pick up the phone.

  Flossie, busy with straightening an endcap of small stuffed animals that unstraightened itself whenever your back was turned, gave me a smile as I went past and said merely, “Good morning, Beth. Hope you stayed warm out there.”

  “Morning, Flossie. Not really, but spring is only two months away.”

  Once inside the relative safety of my office, I shut the door and, for the first time ever, wished I had a lock on it. Not so much to keep people out, but to keep whatever was inside the box in.

  Cookie’s box. Cookie’s letter had said there would be clues. Maybe this was one of them. So why did it feel like a box that Pandora might have sent me? At least Pandora’s had hope flitting out of the bottom. I didn’t anticipate Cookie’s containing anything so positive.

  Evil walks among us, she’d said. It’s our duty to make things right, she’d said.

  Maybe things were black-and-white to her, but I could rarely see things so clearly. I wasn’t comfortable judging people. If I judged others, that surely meant others were judging me, and the thought made me squirm.

  What else had Cookie said? That the punishment doesn’t always match the crime. That shouldn’t we be trying to make sure life is as fair as we can make it?

  We’d had that part of our talk in my car, and if I remembered correctly, I’d been too busy trying to skate out from underneath her attempts to pin me down to really think about what she was saying.

  “Yes,” I said out loud, looking at the box. “We should be trying to make life as fair as possible.” And, I thought, I’m sorry I didn’t say so when I had the chance. When Jenna and then Oliver were born, I’d vowed that I’d never miss a chance to tell them how much I loved them. I’d tried hard to keep that vow, but how many chances had I missed with other people? Okay, not that I was ever going to tell Cookie Van Doorne that I loved her, but still. “Sorry, Cookie,” I said quietly. “I should have listened to you. Everyone deserves that.”

  “What did you say?” Lois called through the door. “Do you want some tea?”

  “Later, thanks.”

  Ignoring all of the warnings my dad had ever given me about using the right tool for the job, I used a pair of scissors to open the box. There were box cutters galore in the workroom, but I’d have to run the Lois gauntlet twice to get there and back, and I didn’t feel up to it.

  I slit the tape without incident. Put the scissors back in the drawer. Shut the drawer. Looked at the box. Opened one outside flap. Opened the other outside flap. Looked at the interior flaps. Thought about Lois’s offer of tea. Tea would be good right now. I could brew a mug, wander through the store, think about changes in lighting, consider new shelving, brew another mug—

  “Stop that,” I said.

  There will be clues, Cookie’s letter had said. I’m depending on you, she’d said.

  Well.

  If Gus had been hale and healthy, I would have taken the whole kit and caboodle over to the police station and we could have opened it together. But he was sick, and from what Winnie had said, he’d been hit hard.

  My hand reached out before my brain knew what it was doing. One flap, then the other flap opened up. Out came the bubble wrap, and inside . . .

  I frowned. Inside was a jumble of c
ompletely unrelated items that looked as if they’d come from a garage sale. Or were bound for one.

  Even without touching anything, I could see a doll in the shape of an infant. A Christmas ornament. A white paper bag so flat that nothing could possibly be inside it. A ceramic figurine of a football player. A framed high school graduation photo that, from the clothing and hairstyle, looked about fifteen years old. A brochure for . . . I couldn’t quite make it out, so I took a pen from the mug on my desk and lifted it. A brochure for an African safari.

  I released the brochure, and it settled back into place among its neighbors. If these were clues, I was in trouble. The trouble with people having the mistaken assumption that you’re smart is that people expect you to do smart things.

  “Beth?” Lois pounded on my door. As I slapped the box flaps shut, she turned the doorknob and burst in. “We have a problem. The computer up front is doing the blue screen thing again, the credit card machine won’t work, and Mrs. Tolliver wants to buy a full hardcover set of Harry Potter books for her grandson, and you know how—”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  Lois ran to take care of the wealthy, generous, and difficult Mrs. Tolliver. I shoved the box under my desk and hurried after her.

  • • •

  A few minutes later, Mrs. Tolliver’s purchases were wrapped and bagged. She signed the ancient carbon credit card slip I’d unearthed from the back of a drawer and handed it back to me.

  “Computers,” she sniffed. “We’re too dependent on them. Is there really so much advantage in using these beasts?” Her well-rounded chin gestured at the computer screen.

  “I often wonder the same thing,” I said. Especially whenever the annual bill for software support came around, whenever a new computer had to be purchased, and whenever someone spilled tea on a keyboard.

  “Really,” Mrs. Tolliver said in a tone that meant she didn’t believe a word of what I’d said. She picked up the bright yellow plastic bag I was holding out and turned to leave, but my right hand wouldn’t let go.

  “The white bag,” I whispered.

  “Is there a problem?” Mrs. Tolliver asked icily.

  I blinked. “No. Sorry.” I released the bag’s handles. By rights my face should have been burning with embarrassment, but not this time. Odd. “Have a nice day, Mrs. Tolliver. Stay warm out there.”

  Before the jingling bells attached to the front door stopped ringing, I had my coat on and my purse in my hand. “Lois, Flossie, I’ll be back in a little bit.”

  “Where are you going?” Lois asked. “You’re supposed to be taking it easy, and here you are, running out into that sharp cold twice this morning. How are you supposed to ever get—”

  I was out and away. I didn’t like leaving so abruptly, but I had to do this before my courage left me. What I really wanted to do was go back to the quiet of my office and sip a hot mug of tea while I reread Emily of New Moon.

  “Later,” I promised myself. “You do this thing and that can be your reward.”

  My pep talk got me down the street and through the same front door I’d gone through earlier that day.

  “Didn’t get enough, did you?” Alice asked, smiling. “What do you need this time? Coconut? Oatmeal raisin? Those are almost like health food, you know.”

  Her plump face beamed at me over the glass display case. “Actually, I need to talk to Alan a minute.”

  “I sent him home,” she said. “You saw that cut he had. On a cold day like this, we’re not going to sell any furniture, so I shooed him off home to put his feet up.”

  I sagged. Now I’d have to gird up my bravery a second time. I hated when I had to do that. Girding once was hard enough.

  “What did you want to talk to him about?” Alice put her arms on the case and leaned forward comfortably. “Maybe I can help. If not, I can have him call you.”

  On the other hand, talking to Alice might be better. They were one of those hand-in-hand couples who told each other everything. Alice would know why Alan had been at the PTA in Review and she’d know if Alan had known Cookie. And if she knew those things, the answers might go a long way to explaining why one of her white cookie bags had been in that box.

  “Did you and Alan,” I asked, “know Cookie Van Doorne?”

  “That woman.” Alice pushed herself away from the glass case, her face flaming hot, and stood as tall as a rounded five-foot-two-inch-tall woman could. “Not to speak ill of the dead, but I can’t think of a woman I liked less. She was always looking for the worst in people. It’s only people who are bad themselves that see bad in others. She had her own skeletons—I’m sure of it—and if Alan hadn’t said no, I would have found them. I would have . . .” Her shoulders slumped.

  I watched as the fury drained out of her, leaving her limp and wounded and empty.

  “She’s dead now,” Alice said flatly. “And I can’t say I’m sorry. Not without being a liar, and I won’t let her do that to me. I know I should regret anyone’s death, but I can’t, not this time.”

  “What happened?” I’d never heard anything bad about Alan in all the years I’d lived in Rynwood. He and Alice were both retired teachers. They’d opened the antiques store/cookie bakery because they weren’t the kind of people to ride off into the sunset in an RV or to sit around and do nothing. “Did she do something to Alan?”

  Alice’s face went red again. “Do something? He was the best history teacher Rynwood High School ever had and she tried her best to get him fired!”

  I frowned. “Why would she do that?”

  Alice cast her eyes to the ceiling. “Her son. Her precious can’t-do-anything-wrong son. Back about twenty years ago, Alan caught him cheating on a final exam and flunked him for that marking period. Cookie threw a fit, said Alan hadn’t liked her son since the time he cut across our backyard on his minibike right after we’d paid good money to have it leveled with good black dirt and spent all weekend raking it flat and rolling it and seeding it.

  “The kid,” she went on, “was a rotten, selfish brat, but Alan would never have flunked him if he hadn’t really cheated.”

  She was right. Alan was right up there next to Gus in the honorable department. Which was why I’d found it hard to even write his name on the suspect list. Still, you never knew about people. “That was a long time ago,” I said, putting on a smile. “Don’t tell me you’ve held a grudge all these years.”

  Alice snorted. “Wasn’t me with the grudge. It was that Cookie creature. When Alan wouldn’t change that grade, she went to the principal. When the principal supported Alan, she went to the school superintendent. When the superintendent supported both the principal and Alan, she started writing letters to the editor, saying that a certain male history teacher was abusing his position, that he had no business being so harsh on today’s youth, that what children needed was a guiding hand, not a hand holding a whip.”

  Alice slapped the glass case with the flat of her hand, sending a sharp echo through the room. “A little more paddling is what that kid needed, if you ask me. She’d spared the rod and spoiled the child and now what is he doing? Moving from job to job, last I heard.”

  I vaguely remembered Cookie’s son from the funeral. Dark suit, downcast eyes, and a wife and two sons who looked much the same.

  “But Alan wasn’t fired,” I said.

  “Not for want of her trying.” Though the red in Alice’s face had faded, her expression was still a far cry from her normal affable smile. “And that was just the first phase.”

  “First phase of what?”

  “Of her attempts to ruin Alan’s life.” She looked at me sourly. “You seem surprised. Obviously you didn’t know Cookie like we did.”

  I’d hardly known Cookie at all, it seemed. “What did she do?”

  “It was soon after we retired from teaching when we opened this place.” She waved at the cookies, the china, the collectibles, the chintz-covered furniture, the carousel horses, and the brass cash register. “She probably p
lanned it the second she heard we were opening an antiques store.”

  “Planned what?”

  Alice’s face hardened. “Whispers. Nothing but whispers.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “We couldn’t prove a thing,” Alice went on, “but it was slander, sure enough. Where else could it have come from?”

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to think Cookie had been the kind of person to willfully hurt someone, didn’t want to think that she’d tried to have Alan fired. I liked to think the best of people, even my sister Kathy.

  “It started the first summer we opened,” Alice said. “Whispers, like I said, that the antiques we had such high prices on were really cheap reproductions from China. From China!” Her red face had returned in full force. “As if we’d want to sell reproductions, as if Alan, a history teacher, would sell a reproduction as real!”

  Of course, although I wanted to believe the best of people, every so often they disappointed. I was sure more than one antiques dealer in the world had tried to do what the whispers claimed. Not Alan, though. He’d once run after me to return a tiny handful of change I’d absentmindedly left at the cookie counter. “What did you do?” I asked.

  “Alan took care of it.” Alice smiled broadly. “He took care of everything. He hired three different experts to authenticate everything in the store. Cost us a fortune and put us in a great big financial hole, but he was right, we had to do it to save the store.”

  “It obviously worked.”

  “We publicized the results in the paper for three weeks running and posted a guarantee sign in the window so big that you could hardly see the antiques. The whole thing had me so scared, but Alan said he’d take care of it, that he’d take care of her.” Alice blew out a breath. “Goodness, I didn’t mean to carry on so. It was over and done with years ago and I’m a silly old woman to bring it all back up again. Here, take a bag of peanut butters back to your nice store to share. How’s Flossie doing? It was such a good thing, for her to start working there.”

  Alice pressed a white bag into my hands. “Now, you won’t tell Alan that I got all hot and bothered about that Van Doorne woman, will you? He wouldn’t want me sharing our dirty laundry with you. But you won’t tell, will you? Ah, that’s a good girl.”