Foul Play at the PTA

by Laura Alden

  Hmm.

  I moved closer to the window.

  Oh, dear. This couldn’t be good. There was no way this was good.

  The red hat and black coat was Claudia, and the multicolored hat and pink coat was her sidekick Tina Heller. Either the other three women had bought new hats and coats or I didn’t know them well enough for clothes recognition.

  Tina turned her head away from the cluster and darted a look my way. The sheer venom in her glare was nearly tangible, fierce and ugly and raw.

  I took an involuntary step backward. What had I ever done to deserve such a look? Okay, Tina wasn’t my favorite person on the planet, but I couldn’t recall doing any of the classic three things that would land me permanently on a woman’s hit list: flirting with her husband, making fun of her new hairstyle, or telling her that she’d gained weight.

  As Yvonne and I watched, another woman scurried down the sidewalk to join the others, her arms laden with an awkward arrangement of sticks and cardboard.

  Lois, who could smell trouble even faster than she could come up with a story for Paoze, came up front. “What’s going on?” She peered out the window. “Is that CeeCee Daniels? What’s she got there? Wait a minute. Those are—”

  “Signs,” I said tonelessly. As my former friend CeeCee distributed the handmade signs around the group, I saw enough text to understand what was going on.

  “They’re picketing us?” Lois’s voice rose almost to a shriek. “They can’t do that! This is a public street. A public sidewalk! They can’t do this, can they?” She turned to me, frowning, scared, angry. “Can they?”

  Lois was looking at me, Yvonne was looking at me. I had a ferocious wish to be an employee again, and not the owner to whom the hard questions ultimately came.

  I turned back to watch the goings-on. The snow piles tossed up by the city’s plows were serving as a lumpy reminder of the coming winter, and into those snowbanks Claudia and her crew stuck handmade sign after handmade sign.

  “Convicted Killer Inside.”

  “Make Rynwood Safe.”

  “Bookstore Harbors Convict.”

  “Can Your Children Be Safe There?”

  Yvonne unpinned her name tag and held it out. “I’ll leave by the back door,” she said. “Then you can go out and tell them I’m gone. If you’re lucky”—she gave a tiny smile—“they’ll all come inside and start buying books.”

  I stared at her. “What?”

  She shook the name tag and the loose point of the pin flapped around dangerously. “I’m quitting.”

  “No, you’re not,” Lois and I said.

  Yvonne continued to hold out her tag and I continued to refuse to take it. “There’s no quitting in bookstores,” I said. Except for Marcia, but that hardly counted since I would have fired her anyway. “And no quitting right before the busiest season of the year.”

  “If this is the busy time,” Yvonne said, looking around at the empty store, “I don’t want to know what the slow season is like.”

  “This is an anomaly,” I said firmly. “Claudia and her cohorts will get tired of standing out there in half an hour. They’ll slink back to wherever they came from, and one by one they’ll come back and shop. There isn’t another children’s bookstore this size within a forty-five-minute drive.”

  Yvonne’s arm wavered, then dropped. “You think this will blow over?”

  “Absolutely.” Which was a complete lie, but if my earlobes were any guide, I was becoming accomplished at the task. “Put that tag back on. We’ll have customers pouring in before we can get another round of tea brewed. Speaking of which, how about chamomile?”

  As Yvonne headed to the teapot, Lois edged close. “Once Claudia gets a bee in her bonnet she might as well have it cast in stone.”

  “I know.”

  “So you don’t really think they’ll go away by lunchtime?”

  We watched a man join the group. He carried a sign that read, “A Killer Is Roaming Free.”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t.”

  “What are you going to do?” Lois’s voice was hushed.

  “I’ll think of something.”

  But what that something was, I had no idea.

  “There’s not much you can do,” Evan said.

  That was not what I wanted to hear. I gripped the phone receiver in my office tighter and hoped I’d heard wrong.

  “If they’re not physically blocking access to your store,” he said, “for the most part they’re within the law.”

  I latched on to the middle of his sentence. “For the most part? You mean there’s a part where they might be breaking the law?” I envisioned a police van pulling up to the curb, officers tumbling out and handcuffing everyone.

  He sighed a lawyerly sigh. “Constitutional law isn’t my area of expertise, but I can tell you that fighting their right to free speech would be an expensive and costly proposition.”

  “I don’t have that kind of money.”

  “And they could get support from many civil rights groups,” Evan said. “I’m afraid yours is not the sympathetic side.”

  “But Yvonne didn’t do anything.” I was nearly shouting. “It isn’t fair!”

  The echo of my words thrummed in a hollow beat down through the memory of my childhood—through everyone’s childhood. It’s not fair! It’s not fair! Which really meant, Make it fair, Mommy. Make it fair, Daddy. But even as we protested, even as children, deep down we knew the truth.

  “Beth—”

  “I know, I know. Don’t expect life to be fair.”

  “You know that already. No, I was going to say that I could lend you money if you really want to fight this.”

  “You . . . would?”

  “Of course.” He sounded surprised. “What’s important to you is important to me. I thought you knew that.”

  Tears stung my eyes. I’d known that he seemed to like spending time with me, that he enjoyed being with Jenna and Oliver, but that was all very different from writing a check. Especially a check the size that a project this size might require.

  “Thanks,” I said softly. “That means a lot to me.”

  “And you mean a lot to me.”

  I closed my eyes briefly, wanting to say the words back to him . . . but I couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. One of those.

  “Why do you think I—” He stopped.

  “Why what?”

  “. . . Nothing.”

  A couple of things went click in my head. Evan meeting with Debra. The money lavished anonymously on an elementary school dance. Money funneled through the bank. Evan stopping short of saying something. They all indicated one conclusion: Evan himself had paid for the dance decorations.

  “Think about my offer,” Evan said. “Okay? Just think about it.”

  And if he wanted to remain anonymous, I wasn’t about to interfere. “I will. Thank you,” I said. “Thank you very, very much.”

  My hand stayed on the phone after I disconnected. What a wonderful man. There were many reasons I was lucky to have Evan in my life, and putting a debt of money into the equation would complicate every single one of them. No, no matter how much money Evan had, borrowing money was out of the question. I’d just hope that Claudia and her followers wouldn’t last long. Maybe this really would blow over.

  “And maybe the Tarver Foundation will give the kids comic books for Christmas,” I said. Then I put a solid smile on my face and went out to cheer up the troops.

  The rest of the day went by with a constant ebbing and flowing of sign holders and a total of zero customers coming in the door. The second day was an exact replica of the first day, and by closing time I knew exactly what I had to do.

  There was only one small detail to take care of.

  Actually doing it.

  Marina and I sat in my cramped office at the back of the store. “Here.” Marina reached across my desk, four slips of paper in her hand. Thanks to a rash of colds and flulike illnesses, all of Marina’s daytime day-care charges were
home in bed. And thanks to a Henry Vilas Zoo field trip, the schoolkids wouldn’t arrive at her house until five o’clock. “Pick one,” she said.

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “As a plate of corned beef. Pick one.”

  “Why is corned beef serious?”

  “Have you ever taken a close look at the stuff? Please.” She shook the papers and they fluttered in her self-created breeze. “If you don’t pick one I’ll do it for you.”

  “Fine.” I plucked one at random.

  “Don’t tell, don’t tell!”

  Sometimes Marina acted about eight years old. “Wouldn’t dream of it,” I said.

  She grinned. “I know. I’m acting like a ten-year-old.”

  “The thought never crossed my mind.”

  “Oh, sure. Now pick a second one and we’ll work out a plan.”

  When we smoothed out the papers, Marina held Wheeler’s Autos and Croftman Accounting. I had Stull Systems and Bluegrass Construction. Four PTA connections to Sam’s shredding business, four companies to investigate.

  “So what’s the plan?” Marina looked around. “Where’s your list? I know there’s one here somewhere.” She lifted the stacks of publishers’ catalogs scattered all across my desk and looked underneath.

  “No list.”

  Marina whacked her ears lightly with the palms of her hands. “Houston? Our communications are garbled. Can you repeat?”

  Last night I’d lain awake with Spot snoring on my right side and George on my left, trying to fight off my fears, trying to think of a way to keep Yvonne from being convicted without benefit of trial, trying to figure out how to find a happy ending for everyone. All I’d gotten for my efforts were a lot of sleepless hours and pet hair all across the flannel comforter cover.

  “There’s no list,” I said. “And cut the dramatics.” She’d started the motion of clutching her hands to her chest in fake heart attack symptoms. “Without knowing more about these four, we can’t make a plan.” I put my fingers on my two pieces of paper and shuffled them back and forth. “My idea is this: We approach the companies as if we were prospective customers and—”

  “And turn the conversation in the proper direction.” Marina nodded. “Gotcha.” She made faces at her picks. “Cars are easy, but how on earth am I going to come up with a reason to need an accountant?”

  I smiled. “I’d planned to take that one and say the store was thinking about switching accountants, but oh, no. You needed to make a game out of it. You were the one who said we had to draw papers. And we’re not switching,” I said as she started to take on a wheedling look. “Picks are picks.”

  She sighed. “I suppose you’re right.”

  Being right should have made me feel good, or at least made me feel something, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the protesters on the sidewalk, Yvonne’s pinched look, and the cash register that hadn’t rung in almost three days.

  But all of that was eclipsed by the memory of the bleakness on Rachel’s face.

  “Hello?” I looked around the empty front office of Bluegrass Construction. Empty of people, anyway. There were rolls of blueprints, stacks of tile samples, piles of siding samples, even buckets of various-sized stones, but I didn’t see a single human.

  “Hello?” I called again. “Is anyone here?”

  A sense of creepiness curled around my neck, and it occurred to me that it might have been wise to tell someone about the white van. It had been an accident, of course it had, but I could have told Marina.

  Somewhere in the back a door slammed. A young woman walked into the office with long-legged strides. The scent of cigarette smoke clung to her clothes, and she was whistling as she unzipped her coat and tossed it over a chair.

  “Oh, hi.” She smiled. “Sorry. Have you been waiting long?”

  “Not a bit.” I smiled back, almost laughing at my silly self for getting all worked up over nothing. Mom had been right: My imagination was going to get me in trouble someday.

  “Good.” She held out her hand. “Gina. Office manager, head of sales, janitor, and lowest person on the totem pole.”

  I laughed. “At least you know where you stand.”

  “True enough.” She sat down behind a desk covered with small squares of carpet. “What can I do for you?”

  The half-truths I’d fabricated on the drive over started to slip away now that I was facing a real person. “Well,” I said, “there’s some work on my house I wouldn’t mind having done.” Which was true. I wouldn’t mind hardwood floors on most of the main level. And I wouldn’t mind a spa tub in the master bathroom. And I really wouldn’t mind a sunroom like Erica’s.

  Gina was taking notes. “We do remodels all the time. Matter of fact, that’s most of what we’ve been doing the last couple of years. What are you thinking? Kitchen? Bathroom?”

  “Both would be wonderful,” I said honestly, “but before I start anything, I need to get a rough idea of how much things cost.” Also true.

  “Sure. That makes sense,” Gina said. “Costs are all over the map, though, depending.”

  “On what?”

  I listened with half an ear as she talked about the variations in cabinet prices, windows, flooring, and fixtures.

  When she paused to take a breath, I jumped in. “And what about labor costs? That can add a lot to the price, especially if the crew isn’t experienced. How long have your guys been in the construction business?”

  “Great question,” Gina said approvingly. “Lots of people wouldn’t think to ask that. Do you mean all the guys, or what?”

  “Let’s start with your foremen. The ones who run the crews.”

  “There’s Bob Lowe. He’s been with us for, oh, geez, forever. Ten years? And what’s-his-name is new this year, but he worked as a finish carpenter for years and years.”

  “How about Floyd Hirsh?” a nonchalant Beth asked.

  “Floyd’s been here about three years. He started here just after I did.”

  I frowned. “And he heads up a crew?”

  “Oh, he’s been in the business a lot longer,” she said easily. “Matter of fact, his dad ran a construction company, but retired a few years ago. Floyd came here because he didn’t want the hassle of owning his own business.”

  “Makes sense to me,” I muttered.

  “Yeah?” Gina asked. “Do you know Floyd?”

  “His daughters go to the same elementary school my children do.”

  “Oh, sure.” Her gaze drifted down. “Then you probably knew Sam Helmstetter.”

  “Yes.”

  She sighed. “It’s so horrible what happened to him. We didn’t have much paperwork for him to shred, but I was told to give him whatever we could. ‘Nice guys shouldn’t always finish last,’ the boss said, ‘so let’s help him out.’ ”

  I was sure both of us were thinking the same thing, that this time a nice guy had indeed finished last. “That was generous,” I said.

  “Yeah, the boss is okay. He was upset about Sam’s murder. Well, everyone was.”

  “Where I work it was all anyone talked about for a week.”

  “Same here,” Gina said. “Bob said it must be some random thing because no one had any reason to kill Sam, but I don’t know if that makes it better or worse. The boss figured it was some crazoid.”

  “What did Floyd say?”

  “Oh, Floyd and his crew were at a site up in Sheboygan that week.”

  There was probably something appropriate for me to say, but nothing came out. “Um, I didn’t know you worked that far away.”

  “Anywhere in the state,” she said. “If you have funding, we’ll travel.” She rubbed her thumb against the tips of her fingers. “To get back to your renovation, how do you feel about granite countertops? They’re kind of expensive, but they sure do look nice.”

  I tried to make appropriate noises while she talked on about my theoretical project, but all I could think was grateful thoughts that Floyd was in the clear.

  As
I was getting into the car, my cell phone rang. “It isn’t Janis Velona,” Marina said. “Turns out she was in the middle of selling a whole freaking fleet of cars to some company in Madison and was there half the night working.”

  I told her about Floyd. “Well, I didn’t think he was right for it, anyway. Have you seen his stuff at the art shows? No one who takes pictures that pretty could kill anyone.”

  Before I could start arguing against her theory, she clicked off. Almost immediately, the phone rang again. Evan this time. I pulled Marina’s list out of my purse and eyed it. “Hullo. What’s up?”

  “You have the kids this weekend, don’t you?” he asked. “Do you have plans for Saturday night?”

  The weekend was days away. How could I possibly know what was going on? “I’d have to check the calendar.”

  “I propose—”

  Suddenly, I stopped breathing. Stopped thinking, stopped seeing, stopped everything.

  “—that I take all four of us to dinner.” He named a restaurant in Madison.

  My breath started whooshing through my lungs again. “Jenna and Oliver have never been there.” Mostly because eating there cost more than a weekend trip to Door County. “Are you sure? Oliver might be a little young for this.”

  “He’ll be fine,” Evan said. “He’s a good kid. They’re both good kids.”

  I knew that, but it was pure pleasure to hear other people say so. “Then it’s a date.” We set a time, chatted a little more, and when I hung up, I found a pen and drew a line through Wheeler’s Autos.

  Two down, two to go.

  The front door of Stull Systems, Inc., stumped me. I stood in front of it, a damp cold breeze ruffling my hair, puzzling over how to get into the building. My knowledge of architecture was limited, but even I knew that the exterior doors of most commercial buildings opened outward. There should be hinges and a doorknob visible to the casual observer. Instead, what I saw was a mass of computer parts. Circuit boards and hard drives and fans and who knew what else covered every square inch of the door. There was nothing to indicate which way the door would swing, and no particular part shouted “Use me for opening!”