Foul Play at the PTA bk-2

by Laura Alden

  I dropped to my knees in the snow. “Are you okay?” I touched his shoulder. “Do you need help?”

  The navy blue hat turned to face me. “Beth?”

  Not a little old man at all. I was such a moron. “Rosie, what’s wrong?”

  “Just a . . . little sick.”

  Her voice was weak. She started to push herself up and dropped back down. “Eric said I should . . . shovel before it . . . snowed too much. But I’m . . . so tired.”

  “Here, let me.” I helped her sit up. “You okay like that? We have to get you up and inside. Ready?” With my inexpert assistance, she stood, wavered, gripped my hand, and finally stood almost steady.

  “Um, is anyone else home?” I asked. If Eric Stull was home, letting his sick wife shovel, he was going to get an earful.

  “No, Eric and—” She doubled over, groaning, clutching my hand as if it alone could save her.

  “Let’s get you lying down,” I said. “I’ll help you inside. Up the stairs, there you go. How about the couch in the living room? A few more steps and you’ll be . . . there.”

  I pulled off her boots, slipped off her hat and coat, and laid her back against a pile of pillows. She clutched at a fuzzy blanket on the back of the couch and I spread it over her. The hand-to-forehead test showed she didn’t have much of a fever, and she didn’t seem to be in great distress.

  “Have you been to the doctor?” I asked.

  “No,” she said in a faint voice. “It’s just flu. Came on yesterday after supper.”

  I frowned. Flu meant fever. There were exceptions, but still. “Are you sure?”

  She gave a small nod. “It’s been going around.”

  “Aches and pains?”

  “Dizzy a lot.” She put her hands to her head, pushing her thick dark blond hair tight to her skull, then wiped at her eyes. “Even lying down . . .” Her voice trailed off. “Could you get me some water?” she whispered. “I’m really thirsty.”

  “Right away.” I crossed the living room and formal dining room, and pushed the swinging door that led into the kitchen. Drinking glasses were in a glass-fronted cabinet next to the sink, and as I ran the water cold, I saw a laptop opened on a small desk next to the refrigerator.

  Quickly, I typed Rosie’s symptoms into a search engine and hit return. They were so generic I expected thousands of hits, and that’s what I got.

  I filled a glass with cold water and took it back to Rosie. “Is there anything else I can get you? Anything to eat?”

  “No . . . not hungry.”

  “Let me get you some ice cubes for that water.”

  I hurried back to the laptop and added “loss of appetite” to Rosie’s list of symptoms.

  This time, there weren’t nearly as many hits. And there was a common theme.

  “Oh, no,” I whispered. “He poisoned her.”

  I sat there, staring at the screen. Eric had poisoned Rosie. But how? With what?

  Panic fluttered in my chest, but I ignored it. There was no time to be scared.

  I ran the search engine a few more times, looking for common household items that were poisonous. Prescription drugs, household cleaners, paint thinner, weed killer. The list was long, but I sensed the fastest way to help Rosie—and to show her what her husband had done—was to find some evidence.

  “Beth?” Rosie called.

  I ignored her and rushed down the hall to the master suite. The bathroom cabinet held only two prescriptions. One for birth control, and one for an antibiotic that had Amelia’s name on it. Neither was likely to cause Rosie’s symptoms.

  I scrabbled through the bathroom garbage, looking for wrappers, receipts, anything, and found nothing but used facial tissues.

  What next? I pressed my hands to the sides of my head. Where next?

  Back to the kitchen. The last time I’d been here I’d tried hard not to envy Rosie her fancy kitchen with its six-burner cooktop and warming oven. Now, all trace of jealousy had been blasted away. Sticking with the garbage can theory, I looked under the sink. There was a garbage can, and it was empty.

  Hmm.

  “Beth?”

  I ignored her for the second time and opened the garage door. A dark green garbage tote was in the corner next to the overhead door. I ran down the steps, across the concrete floor, and opened the lid.

  Full to the brim.

  Hardly thinking, I spun the tote around and tipped it over. Six garbage bags spilled across the floor. I swallowed my gag reflex, ripped open the plastic, and started pawing through the contents. Coffee grounds, egg shells, meat scraps, squash seeds. I pushed all of it to one side.

  Nonrecyclable plastic, a ragged T-shirt, wadded-up paper towels. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

  I was going through the last bag, the one that had been on the very bottom of the tote, and I was beginning to despair of finding any proof, when I found the very thing I needed.

  “That’s it.” I picked up the small, but very empty, plastic bag and ran into the house.

  Rosie pushed herself up on one elbow. “Fertilizer? But it’s November. Why would Eric be using fertilizer now?”

  I dragged a chair across the thick carpet and sat down in front of the couch. “Rosie, I have something to tell you. It’ll be hard to hear, and it’ll be scary, and I’m sorry, but you have to listen.”

  She dropped back down. “Later,” she said, groaning. “Oh, I feel awful.”

  And she was going to feel a lot worse. “Where’s Eric?”

  “Airport.”

  “He’s leaving for South America early?”

  She shook her head slightly. “No, going to California. Thanksgiving. His parents.”

  “Without you?”

  “I was supposed to, but . . .” She closed her eyes and took a few breaths. “But I got sick.”

  “Rosie, you’re not sick,” I said.

  Her eyelids opened a fraction of an inch. “Thanks for . . . stopping, Beth. Let yourself out, okay?”

  I took her hand between mine. She resisted, but didn’t pull away. “You’re not sick,” I said quietly. “You’ve been poisoned.”

  “Don’t . . . be silly.”

  “Common household fertilizer causes your symptoms exactly.”

  “How could I have eaten fertilizer?”

  “Who made dinner last night?” I asked.

  “. . . Eric.”

  “How did it taste?”

  “New recipe,” she said slowly. “The girls had burgers, but Eric made pork for us. Heavy sauce. He wouldn’t let me in the kitchen. It was . . . bitter. He said he might have added white pepper by mistake.”

  “And when did you start to feel sick?”

  “Right after I finished the dishes.” Her gaze of disbelief grew slightly less disbelieving. “Why would Eric poison me? If he didn’t want me going with him and the girls, all he had to do was ask. I’d be fine with not visiting his parents.”

  On the drive over, a heart-stopping possibility had occurred to me, but I’d stuffed it down into the bottom of my brain. Now it came back and wouldn’t go away. “Rosie, where are your daughters?”

  “They’re not sick. Just me.”

  I grabbed her shoulders and fairly shouted at her. “Where are the girls?”

  “What’s wrong with you?” She jerked away. “They’re with Eric. They’re on their way to California.”

  I stared at her, aghast. “Right now?”

  “They left not long before you got here.”

  A white van had sped past me half a mile from the Stulls’ house. A white van had tried to run me over. I’d forgotten all about the white van parked near the school the night Sam was killed. It could have been a white van that hit Brian Keller. Maybe Eric was afraid Sam had shared his secret with Brian.

  “Does . . .” My voice croaked and I started again. “Does Eric drive a white van?”

  She nodded. “Why?”

  And a white van was taking two young girls away from their mother. “Rosie, he’s kidnapping Ame
lia and Chelsea.”

  She smiled faintly. “He’s their father. Why would he need to kidnap them?”

  “He’s taking them to South America. He has a second family there and he killed Sam Helmstetter to cover up a mistake and now he’s . . .”

  But Rosie was shaking her head. “Where are you getting that? A second family? That’s . . . silly. Eric and I have been having problems, sure, but what couple doesn’t?” She spoke in complete sentences. Either the poison was working itself through her system or her increasingly emotional state was burning it out fast.

  “Do you have passports for the girls?” I asked. “Where are they?”

  “Passports?” Rosie tried to get up. “Kitchen desk. But . . .” She put her hand to her forehead and fell back. “So dizzy . . .”

  “Where are they?” I stood.

  “Right side,” she said, panting. “Second drawer.”

  I ran to the kitchen and yanked open the drawer. Papers of all sorts, but no little blue passport books. I rifled through the drawer’s entire contents. No passports. I opened the rest of the drawers, pulled cookbooks off shelves, flipped through telephone books. No passports. “They’re not here,” I called.

  “No,” Rosie said. “They wouldn’t be. We carry them when we go across state lines.”

  Frustration clawed at me. She had to believe me. What could I do to convince her? I paced the floor, balling my hands into fists until my knuckles ached. Think, Beth. Think! We didn’t have time for me to trot out all the evidence I’d gathered. What would convince her? Who would convince her?

  Bingo.

  I grabbed the cordless phone off the wall, ran it into the living room, and thrust it into her face. “He has his cell phone, doesn’t he? Call him. Call Eric. Ask him about Eva. And Chago and Rafael. Ask him about the purple ink. Ask him about the picture in his desk blotter. Go ahead, ask him.”

  Rosie’s hand lifted, hesitated, then took the phone from me. As she punched in the numbers, we stared at each other wordlessly. She didn’t want any of this to be true. She wanted everything to be the way it was yesterday, and she wanted me to be stark, raving mad.

  “Eric?” she asked. “Are the girls with you?”

  I leaned close enough to hear his reply.

  “Right here,” he said. “Did you want to say good-bye?”

  She smiled at me. “That’s right. Put Amelia on, will you?” She gave a few mom endearments and kissing noises to her daughters.

  “Ask him about Eva,” I whispered.

  “Have a good time with the palm trees, honey,” she said. “Now let me talk to your dad again.”

  “Rosie,” Eric said, “we’re getting ready to go through security. I have to hang up.”

  Ask him! I mouthed, making hurry-up motions with my hands.

  “Rosie?” Eric asked. “Did you hear me? I have to—”

  All in a rush, in a tumble of words and feelings and doubt and fear, Rosie asked a single question. “Eric, who’s Eva?”

  There was a short silence. So very short, but long enough to tell long tales of lies and betrayal and untold amounts of heartbreak. Then there was a click and the line went dead.

  I took the phone from her. “Let me call the poison control center,” I said. “First thing is to make sure the poison won’t—”

  Tossing off the blanket, she grabbed the phone out of my hand and flung it out of reach. “First thing—the only thing—is getting my daughters back.”

  She ran for the door, and I was right behind her.

  Chapter 19

  “Can’t you go any faster?” Rosie begged.

  Since I was already driving faster than any rational human being should drive in three inches of wet, sloppy snow, I didn’t answer. For years I’d driven like . . . well, like a mother carrying precious cargo. I hadn’t pushed the edge of my driving capabilities in over a decade. Lucky for Rosie, I’d learned to drive in an area of Michigan that got a hundred and fifty inches of snow a year. Some things you never forget.

  At least I hoped so.

  We were headed west on Highway 30, chunking over the rows of slush kicked up by passing cars and large blocks of snow dropping off fenders.

  Stay on target. Stay on target. . . .

  The car began sliding right, starting to turn, starting to spin out of control, and Rosie’s hands shot out and latched on to the dashboard. “Beth! Watch out! Beth! Beth!”

  “Got it,” I said calmly. Or as calmly as I could. My right foot had come off the accelerator when the car started slipping. I desperately wanted to whip the wheel left, but knew I couldn’t. “Turn into the direction of the skid,” my father’s voice said. “Don’t fight the slide—work with it.”

  The car slowed, I turned slightly right, hoped my seat belt was on tight, prayed that the air bags wouldn’t injure us too much, wondered if I’d paid the car insurance bill, and, above all, wished I was home in bed.

  We slid for a year and a day, through a white blurry world, through a soundless universe, and just before the car went into the ditch, I felt control come back to my hands. I eased the wheel left and there we were, driving along in the right lane as if nothing had happened.

  “Just like riding a bike.” I swallowed down the bitter taste of fear.

  “What’s that?” Rosie asked. “This is taking too long.” She pounded the dash. “Can you go any faster?”

  I risked a glance at my passenger. Nothing but large eyes, white showing all around. “Why don’t you call 911?” I asked. “Maybe we can get some police help.”

  “Right.” She rustled around in the purse she’d grabbed as we’d run out her front door.

  She was still explaining the situation to the dispatcher when we drove into the Dane County Regional Airport. “We’re at the airport right now,” she said. “He said they were going to Denver first. What airline? Um . . .” She pressed the tips of her fingers into her forehead. “Um . . . United? Pretty sure it’s United. Departure time?” She gave me a wild look. “I don’t remember. I don’t remember!”

  Panic was starting to grab hold of her, which would do none of us any good. I risked taking a hand off the wheel and gave her arm a gentle, reassuring squeeze.

  “Okay,” she was saying. “I’m taking a deep breath. Okay. Yeah, I’m okay. Eric left late because I was sick”—her eyes narrowed to the thinnest of slits—“and in this snow it might have taken twice as long to get here, so they could be flying out any minute. How long before someone can get here?” She paused, listening, and any semblance of calm vanished. “You want me to what?” She thumbed off the phone and threw it into her purse.

  “Um . . .” Hanging up on a 911 call couldn’t be a good idea.

  “I know,” Rosie said, “I shouldn’t have done that. But she was telling me to stay outside. To wait for the police to arrive!”

  Either the dispatcher didn’t have children or she was just doing what her job told her to do. No mother worth the name would willingly stand idle while her children were in danger. It was a physical impossibility and cruel to even ask.

  Just shy of the second entrance to the terminal, the closest entrance to the United ticketing desk, I started braking into a sloppy stop. Even before the car stopped moving forward, Rosie and I had opened our doors and were out in the cold, running as fast as we could.

  “Ma’am, I’m sorry,” a skycap said, “but you can’t leave your vehicle there. Ma’am? Ma’am!”

  Rosie and I rushed into the building, brushing the edges of our shoulders on the too-slow automatic doors. Inside, we came to an instant stop. All was bedlam. Children screeching, adults scolding, teenagers sulking, airport personnel looking harried and worn. It was Thanksgiving week, and the mass movement of Americans had begun.

  Rosie ran forward, stopped, took two fast paces, and stopped again. “We’re never going to find them,” she said, looking left and right and up the escalator. “It’s too late. They’re gone. I’ll never get them back.”

  Her words, full of desp
air and hopelessness, spurred me to action. I stepped in front of her and grabbed her shoulders. Looking straight into her eyes, I said, “You’re their mother. They need you. They will always need you. Are you going to give up this easily?”

  She shook herself out of my grip. “Of course I’m not,” she snapped. “Come on.” Elbowing aside young and old alike, she bullied to the front of the line, ignoring all shouts and protests, and slapped her driver’s license on the counter. “I’m Rosie Stull. Are my daughters on one of your planes?”

  “Ma’am?” The well-groomed woman smiled blandly.

  Rosie leaned forward and spoke in a low voice. “My soon-to-be-ex-husband has my daughters and I want them back. Amelia and Chelsea Stull.” She stabbed her license with her forefinger. “S-t-u-l-l. They’re traveling with a piece of pond scum named Eric who won’t be my husband much longer. He no longer has my permission to have the girls unattended. I want them back.”

  “Oh, dear.” The woman’s fingers flew across her keyboard. “Oh, dear,” she said, frowning. “Mrs. Stull, I’d really like to help you, but there isn’t anyone named Stull flying with us today.”

  “But there has to be!”

  I tugged at Rosie’s elbow. “Did you ever see the tickets? Eric might not have been telling the truth about the airline.” Or the departure time or the destination, but I didn’t say any of that.

  “The rat fink,” she said through gritted teeth, and allowed me to pull her away from the counter. “He kept the tickets in his briefcase. I never thought to look. Why didn’t I? Why?”

  But there’d been no reason for her to, and now wasn’t the time for her to waste time beating herself with the imaginary hammer so many women carry around. “Time to split up,” I said. “You check with the other airlines, and I’ll go—”

  “No,” she interrupted. “It’ll take too long.” And before I could argue with her, she was off. Weaving in and out of the mass of people snaking in lines through the light-filled space, she trotted back and forth, calling the names of her daughters. “Amelia? Chelsea? Amelia? Chelsea!”