Murder by the Slice

by Livia J. Washburn

  The cupcake was just right. To tell the truth, Phyllis preferred her cake without icing. A really good cake didn’t need icing, but a fancy decorated cake required a lot of it.

  In a large bowl, Phyllis beat powdered sugar with butter and shortening at a low speed until it was blended. She added milk and vanilla and beat that on medium speed until the mixture was smooth. She had to add a few more drops of milk to make it the right spreading consistency. She removed about one third of a cup of the buttercream frosting and set it aside in a small bowl for decorating the stem. Adding red and yellow food coloring to the remaining frosting and blending it made the orange frosting that Phyllis wanted to cover the cake.

  She had bought a nice decorative Halloween plate at the dollar store and she used this to assemble her cake on. The first Bundt cake went down with the flat side up. On the flat side, Phyllis added a small layer of orange frosting. Lining up the indentions, she carefully put the second Bundt cake flat side down on top of the first one. It was easy to then cover the cake with a thin layer of the orange icing. She didn’t want it too thick, since she wanted the shape of the cake to show through well.

  Phyllis took the reserve icing, added green food coloring to the frosting, and blended it into a nice leaf green. She peeled the foil baking cup off the cupcake and quickly frosted the bottom and sides. The frosted cupcake was carefully placed on the hole on top of the cake to make the stem. The frosting on the cake and cupcake would hold it in place.

  Now it was time for the face. She decided to just make a traditional jack-o’-lantern face using chocolate icing. Phyllis put water in a coffee cup and set it in the microwave to heat to boiling. She broke off one square of unsweetened chocolate and chopped it up. This went into a saucepan with a teaspoon of butter, and she heated it over a low heat until it melted. Removing the pan from the burner, Phyllis added powdered sugar and a little of the boiling water from the coffee cup. She beat this by hand with a whisk until the frosting was smooth. She added a little more of the boiling water to the icing mixture and beat it until it was the perfect spreading consistency. The chocolate icing went into a decorating bag with a medium writing tip.

  On a piece of scrap paper, Phyllis sketched out how she wanted the face to look. Using a toothpick she marked off the corners of the triangular eyes and nose, and the ends of the mouth. It was easier to fill in the small holes left by the toothpick than it was to remove unwanted icing.

  Once she had the marks where she wanted them, she piped the chocolate icing, making the triangles and filling them in. She was quite pleased with the end results.

  Carolyn came into the kitchen as Phyllis was putting the finishing touches on the jack-o’-lantern cake. At late as it was now, there was no longer any point in worrying about secrecy. Phyllis stepped back from the table where the cake was sitting and said, “What do you think?”

  “It’s very impressive,” Carolyn admitted. “You’ve outdone yourself, Phyllis. This is going to make my effort look pretty weak.”

  Phyllis glanced over at her. “What sort of cake did you make?” She knew that Carolyn had been working late in the kitchen the night before, and she had gone over to her daughter Sandra’s house that morning to finish up whatever she was working on and to make her low-fat pizza rolls.

  “Oh, you’ll see when we get there,” Carolyn said with an offhand wave. “And speaking of that, we probably need to get there about noon to start setting everything up.”

  Phyllis nodded. “I’ll be ready.” She tried not to let on that Carolyn’s reticence about what she was doing for the auction had her intrigued.

  She put the jack-o’-lantern cake in a box that she’d bought earlier in the week just for the cake, since she knew she didn’t have anything around the house to carry it in. She had two other boxes ready, one with the peanutbutter-andbanana cookies and another with the cookbooks. All she had left to do was rinse the dishes, add them to the breakfast dishes in the dishwasher, and get it running.

  Carolyn took her own car, since she had to go by Sandra’s house to pick up whatever it was she had left there that morning. Phyllis offered Eve a ride, but Eve said, “No, that’s all right, dear, I’ll be coming with Sam later. His work is al ready all done, so he doesn’t have to get there early and neither do I.”

  Phyllis couldn’t very well argue with that, so she wound up driving alone to the school once she had put the boxes into her car. When she got there, she parked in the front lot because she planned to go in through the main entrance. From the road she had seen a few cars parked in the side lot, toward the rear where the playground was located. There were probably some people back there already setting up booths and such.

  As Phyllis was taking the cake out of the car, another vehicle pulled into an empty space nearby and Shannon Dunston got out. “Hello, Phyllis,” Shannon said. She seemed to be in a pretty good mood. She even smiled a little. “Are you ready for the big day?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Here, let me give you a hand,” Shannon offered, taking Phyllis a little by surprise. She reached past Phyllis into the car and picked up the boxes with the cookies and the cookbooks. “I love these carnivals,” Shannon went on as Phyllis locked her car and the two women started toward the front door of the school. “The money they raise goes to help the kids, and they have such a good time, too. And they’re really the reason we’re doing all this, aren’t they?”

  “That’s right,” Phyllis said, somewhat warily. It almost seemed as if Shannon were a completely different person today.

  Maybe the man Phyllis had seen with her earlier in the week really had had a positive effect on her.

  “I really want to get it right this time,” Shannon said. “You met my son, so you know what I’m talking about.”

  Phyllis began, “I’m sure he’s a fine young man—”

  “Kirk has been a trial to me for years now,” Shannon broke in. “I’d like to blame his father … but I have to take some responsibility for the way he turned out, too. I was determined, though, that my daughter, Becca, was going to have every chance to do better. That’s why I’ve worked so hard for the PTO. Nothing is more important to me than her.”

  Phyllis found herself feeling a little sorry for the other woman. Shannon had thrown herself into being a mom, and ultimately that might have contributed to the breakup of her second marriage. Maybe it would have been better for the little girl, Phyllis thought, if Shannon had spent a little less time at school and a little more with her husband. Then the girl would still have both parents together. Of course, other people’s personal lives were none of her business, Phyllis reminded herself.

  When they got to the entrance, Shannon reached out to grasp the handle on one of the glass doors. The door didn’t budge when she pulled on the handle. She tried the other one. “Locked,” she said. “The custodians should have unlocked them by now. Oh, well,” and she delved into her purse with her free hand, “I have a key.” She fished out a ring of keys, found the right one, and unlocked the doors, then held one of them open while Phyllis carried the jack-o’lantern cake inside.

  They went past the office and down the hall to the cafeteria. No one was there, but all the tables and benches were set up as if it were a regular school day. Normally on Friday afternoons the custodians folded them up and stacked them to one side so the cafeteria floor could be waxed and buffed, and the tables and benches would be set up again on Monday morning. But today there would be a concession stand in here selling nachos, pizza, and soft drinks, so people would need places to sit down and eat. Also, the baked goods donated to the auction and the entries for the contest would be laid out on a couple of the tables.

  Several people followed Phyllis and Shannon into the cafeteria. Irene and Holly were in charge of the concession stand, so they had to get ready as well. They had their husbands with them, and quickly introduced the men to Phyllis and Shannon before getting to work. More people began drifting through the cafeteria—custodians, teachers, PTO b
oard members, other parents who had volunteered to help out. And people began arriving with goods for the auction and entries for the contest. Phyllis took charge and managed as best she could, but she was glad when Carolyn showed up a short time later.

  Carolyn was carrying a couple of boxes. In one was a chocolate cake that looked just like a giant Hostess cupcake. Phyllis was impressed. Carolyn thought up a cake for the auction that didn’t require a lot of decoration, but would appeal to the kids and their parents.

  Phyllis glanced into the other box to see how the low-fat pizza rolls turned out. They looked really tasty.

  The cafeteria became even more crowded and hectic as one o’clock approached. Through the windows of the cafeteria, Phyllis could see the side parking lot filling up. A big crowd was going to be on hand. Most of the kids who were going to attend the carnival were being kept out of the building, but they were already swarming over the playground equipment farther out from the paved area where the booths were set up. Some children tagged along with their mothers when they came into the cafeteria to drop things off for the auction or the contest, and Phyllis had to shoo a few of them away from the tables where the cakes, pies, and cookies were displayed. She knew they didn’t mean any harm, but they might not be able to resist the temptation to help themselves.

  As Shannon bustled through to check on things, Phyllis asked her, “Where’s your daughter today? Surely she’s going to be here.”

  “Oh, yes, Becca wouldn’t miss it. She’s with her father. Joel promised to bring her to the carnival.” Shannon shook her head. “As if Joel knows anything about keeping his promises. He won’t break this one, though. He wouldn’t dare.”

  Shannon hurried on to whatever needed her attention next, and Phyllis refrained from shaking her head as she watched the younger woman stalk out of the cafeteria. For a few minutes there earlier, Shannon had gained some sympathy from her, but the edge in her voice as she spoke about her exhusband told Phyllis that the bitterness and anger were still strong inside Shannon.

  Carolyn came over carrying a knife. “Can you help me cut up the contest entries so people can have samples of them?” she asked.

  “Sure,” Phyllis agreed. Carolyn handed her the knife. Phyllis got busy cutting the entries into bite-sized samples, starting with her cookies. The cookies were soft, so they cut easily.

  By the time she was finished with that, the hands of the big clock on the cafeteria wall showed that the hour was almost one. Phyllis took out a handful of the cookbooks and set them next to a computer-printed sign stating the reasonable price of the books. The Oliver Loving Elementary School Fall Carnival would be officially under way any minute now.

  Carolyn moved over beside Phyllis and asked quietly, “Are you ready for this?”

  “Are you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good,” Phyllis said as the sound of voices suddenly swelled from the hallway outside the cafeteria. “Because here they come.”

  Adults and children began pouring into the big, highceilinged room. Since the carnival began at one o’clock, some families had opted to have their lunch there, and the concession stand did a booming business right from the start, as people lined up for pizza and nachos. A veritable tide of youngsters washed over the playground as well. From where she was, Phyllis could see part of the paved area through the windows. A line of eager children formed at every booth she could see. A few minutes later, she saw a tractor chugging across the open field on the other side of the playground, pulling a train of about a dozen little cars, each of which held two kids. She couldn’t see the bounce house, but she would have been willing to bet that it was full by now. A lot of people were going to have a lot of fun here today.

  “Hi, guys,” a bright, happy voice said from behind Phyllis and Carolyn. “Everything going all right?”

  They turned to see Marie Tyler standing there with a tall, dark-haired man. She went on, “Those cakes look great! Oh, there’s one that looks just like a jack-o’-lantern! How adorable!”

  “That’s Phyllis’s,” Carolyn said, with maybe only a hint of jealousy in her voice. She looked over at the man with Marie, nodded, smiled, and said, “Hello, Russ.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Wilbarger,” he said. “Thanks for helping out with all of this. I think Marie would have been pulling her hair out if you hadn’t agreed to give her a hand.”

  “It was my pleasure,” Carolyn said graciously. “I don’t think you’ve met my friend Phyllis Newsom, have you?”

  “Oh, that’s right,” Marie said. “Phyllis, this is my husband, Russ. Honey, this is Carolyn’s friend Phyllis.”

  Phyllis hadn’t said a word since Marie and her husband had come up. She had been trying not to stare too hard at Russ Tyler. Now she forced herself to acknowledge the introduction. “I’m pleased to meet you,” she lied.

  It was a lie because she wasn’t glad to meet Russ Tyler at all.

  Unless she was very badly mistaken, Marie’s husband was the man she had seen in Fort Worth a few days earlier, holding Shannon Dunston’s arm like a lover as he walked with her into that restaurant.

  Chapter 9

  She had to be wrong about what she had seen, Phyllis told herself. She’d been having allergy trouble and her eyes had been watering a lot. That must have blurred her vision. So there was a chance she hadn’t really seen Russ Tyler with Shannon.

  But even as she tried to convince herself, she knew she hadn’t been mistaken. She had gotten a good look at the couple as they entered the restaurant.

  Maybe there was a reasonable explanation. Maybe Shannon and Russ were just friends. Maybe they had been meeting Marie there for lunch. Maybe they worked together… . No, wait, Shannon didn’t have a job. That was why she was able to devote so much time to the PTO.

  And Marie and Shannon wouldn’t have been getting together for lunch, either. Phyllis knew that in her bones.

  Oh, hell, she thought with uncharacteristic vehemence. Oh, hell.

  But she kept a smile plastered on her face as Marie said, “I’d better go see how Irene and Holly are doing with the concession stand. Come on, honey.”

  Russ lifted a hand in farewell and said, “See you later, ladies. Nice to meet you, Phyllis.”

  She managed to nod pleasantly enough. But at the same time she was thinking about how Marie obviously loved him, and about how they had two children together, and she asked herself what in the world he was thinking by jeopardizing all that by having an affair with Shannon Dunston.

  Phyllis took a deep breath. Maybe they weren’t having an affair. Maybe it was just a casual thing, getting together occasionally for lunch. Marie might even know all about it.

  But Phyllis doubted that very seriously.

  “Are you all right?” Carolyn asked quietly. “Something’s bothering you, isn’t it?”

  Phyllis shook her head as she watched Marie talk to Holly and Irene for a moment and then leave the cafeteria with Russ. “I’m fine,” she said. And she was. Luckily, none of this was even remotely any of her business. She could try to just put it all out of her head. A part of her wanted to warn Marie that there might be some hanky-panky going on between her husband and Shannon, but at the same time, her years as a teacher had taught her to butt out of people’s personal lives. What happened at school was all that had really concerned her, although as a human being she felt sympathy for other people’s problems. Everyone involved in this one would just have to work it out for themselves.

  As the carnival went on, Phyllis found herself too busy to worry about anything except keeping up with the constant flow of people in front of the tables as they admired the auction items and handed over tickets so they could sample the healthy snacks. Each entry had been assigned a number, and at the end of the table was an empty jar and a stack of pieces of paper cut into small squares, along with some pencils. When people had tried all the snacks, they could write down the number of the one they liked best and drop the piece of paper in the jar. Half an hour or so before
the auction was scheduled to begin, the voting would be ended and Phyllis and Carolyn would take the jar to the school principal, who had agreed to do an impartial count of the votes.

  There were plenty of entries to select from. As Phyllis looked along the table, she saw baked pita triangles with seasonings, banana bread, berry muffins, roll-ups with whole wheat tortillas, apple breakfast bars, a low-fat carrot cake, walnut-raisin cookies that Phyllis remembered from the recipe had cottage cheese in them. She was really curious what they tasted like. People had embraced the idea of coming up with healthy snacks better than she had at first thought they would.

  The cake auction was going to be spectacular, too. Phyllis was amazed at the variety of cakes people had come up with. There was a sandcastle that sparkled with sugar, a rose garden, and a cute carousel with animal crackers. She saw some cakes she wouldn’t have minded bidding on herself, but she knew she probably wouldn’t. She had to watch how much sugar she took in, and her own baking ideas usually provided more than enough.

  Marie came through the cafeteria several times, sometimes with Russ and sometimes alone. She carried a zippered money bag. Since the concession stand operated on a cash basis, rather than using tickets like the booths and other attractions, the money taken in there had to be collected every so often to keep it from building up too much. Phyllis assumed that Marie was taking the cash back to some place in the school where it could be locked up safely, probably in the principal’s office.

  Around the middle of the afternoon, Shannon and her exhusband came into the cafeteria, along with a pretty little brown-haired girl Phyllis assumed was their daughter, Becca. Joel Dunston gave the girl some money to go to the concession stand; then he and Shannon sat down at the far end of one of the tables. They didn’t sit side by side, Phyllis noticed, but rather across from each other. Both of them leaned forward over the table so that they could talk quietly. Judging by the expressions on their faces, the conversation they were having wasn’t a pleasant one. They both looked like they were barely keeping their anger in check.