Murder at the PTA (2010) bk-1

by Laura Alden

  “Beth?” Lois stood in front of me, arms full of picture books. “Are you all right?”

  Not hardly. “Fine, thanks. But I could use another cup of that tea.”

  Friday night there was a double knock on the kitchen door, and Marina stuck her head inside. “Can I come in?”

  “No.”

  She laughed, sending forth a bubbling stream of cheer, and came inside with the smell of outside air clinging to her clothes. “Would it help if I promised never to talk you into doing anything ever again?”

  “Wouldn’t be worth the breath it would take to say it. You’d break a promise like that inside of two weeks.” I went back to slicing up carrots. The firm noise of knife hitting cutting board echoed around the room.

  “It’s not like I knew Agnes was going to pull a stunt like that.”

  “My brain believes you, but the rest of me isn’t so sure.” I started in on the broccoli.

  “Is this my punishment?” She waved a hand at the vegetables. “Rabbit food for dinner? And then I’ll be forced to watch Bambi.” With her fingers spread wide, she fake-choked herself.

  Marina was a big believer in meat, potatoes, and action movies. Part of my mission in life was to get her to appreciate vegetables and epic historical sagas. So far her reaction had been the same as Jenna’s and Oliver’s—lots of face scrunching accompanied by a considerable amount of whining. “No better than you deserve,” I said.

  “Do you realize what that could do to my digestive system? And I have it on good authority that watching Bambi after the age of forty turns your hair white.”

  “Do you realize how many Tarver parents came through the store in the last two days?”

  She dropped to her knees, hands clasped and raised high. “Please, forgive me. You’re my best friend, and I would never ever wish an Agnes project on you.”

  “Get up, you goofball.”

  “Not until you say I’m forgiven. I will stay on this floor until the crows pick me clean. I will stay until my bones are bleached. I will—”

  “Okay, okay. Forgiveness is bestowed.”

  She pushed herself to her feet. “Good. My knees were killing me. What are we eating, anyway?”

  “Vegetarian stew.” Her eyes stretched open enough for white to be seen all around the hazel irises. I laughed. “Gotcha. We’re having chicken stir-fry, and I rented Rear Window.”

  “Weenie.” She socked me on the arm. “Maybe we should call Agnes and invite her over.”

  “Maybe you should keep your ideas to yourself.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Poooor Agnes.” Marina hitched herself onto a stool at the butcher block-topped kitchen island.“She looked all alone tonight. No cars in the driveway, no lights on except in the kitchen. She’s probably going to eat a frozen dinner and watch bad television.”

  Agnes lived across the street and one door down from Marina. “This interest in Agnes’s personal habits is becoming unhealthy.”

  “Any interest in Agnes is unhealthy.” She picked chocolate chips from a bowl of trail mix I’d set out. “Maybe she just needs a friend.”

  “She’s been in Rynwood ten years.” I opened a box of chicken broth.

  “Meaning what? That if she doesn’t have friends by now, there’s something wrong with her?” Marina popped a handful of chocolate in her mouth.

  “Don’t eat any more of that. You’ll spoil your dinner. I’m saying maybe Agnes likes to be alone. I would after a week with a school full of people.”

  “Hmm.” Marina reached for the bowl. I yanked it away. “Some nights,” she said, “there’s a car in the driveway until the wee hours.”

  “Then she doesn’t need an invitation from us,” I said. Not that Marina had been serious. She and Agnes went toe-to-toe at full volume the first year Agnes had been principal—something about the color Agnes wanted to repaint the cafeteria, if I remembered correctly. A decade later, neither one had a kind word to say about the other.

  “Why the sudden concern about Agnes?” I asked. She made a grab for the bowl, but I held it out of her reach. “You can’t stand the woman. What’s the deal?”

  “No deal.”

  “Hah.” I held the bowl a scant inch from her stretching fingers. “Tell,” I said, making the bowl dance tantalizingly. She lunged, but with a mother’s instinct I anticipated her move and whisked it to a safe distance. “Tell!”

  “Meanie.”

  “Yes, I’m the meanest mom in the whole wide world. What’s your interest in Agnes?”

  She slumped back and crossed her arms. “I want to know who the anonymous donor is.”

  I stared at her, then started laughing. “And you think Agnes is going to just let that slip?”

  “It could happen.”

  “Oh, sure. And I could win the lottery. Agnes is as secretive as the CIA.” I relented and put the bowl back on the counter.

  “She can’t be the only one who knows who made the donation.” Marina spoke around a mouthful of chocolate-chipless trail mix. She’d already picked out the good stuff.

  “It’s probably no one we’ve ever heard of.”

  “I have a theory.” She leaned forward, smiling in the special way that meant she had the tastiest tidbits of gossip to share.

  I turned away and opened the refrigerator door. Inside was a dish of chicken I’d cut up into small bits and set to marinating an hour earlier. “Don’t want to hear it.”

  “Ooo, all grumpy tonight, are we?”

  “Yes. I’ve had my fill of Agnes and the Addition. That’s all I’ve heard about for two days. New subject, please.” I sloshed some oil in the bottom of the wok.

  “Have you heard my theory that Joe Sabatini is mobbed up?”

  “Yes, and I don’t believe you. Just because the guy owns a pizza place and has an Italian name doesn’t make him a member of the Mafia.”

  “Spoilsport.” She kicked her toes against the island, just like Jenna and Oliver did. “Say, have you heard the latest about Rhonda, my next-door neighbor?”

  “The one with the—” I made a big curvy motion in front of my chest.

  “That’s her.” Marina nodded. “All real.”

  “How do you know?” I’d always assumed Rhonda Tracy’s endowment had some assistance.

  “Can’t you tell?”

  “No. Why can you?”

  “Reality TV,” Marina said promptly. “You find out all sorts of interesting things, and quit making faces at me. Anyway, Rhonda keeps getting home delivery of dry cleaning.”

  “Oh?” I dropped the chicken into the wok. The instant sizzle sent small drops of oil bouncing high.

  “The truck says ‘Lakeside Dry Cleaning.’”

  I grabbed tongs out of a drawer and tossed the chicken around. “Since when does Lakeside deliver?”

  “They don’t.”

  “If they don’t deliver, what is the truck doing at Rhonda’s house?”

  Marina raised one eyebrow. “You tell me.”

  Light dawned. “Marina Neff, do you mean . . . ?”

  “Yep. Rhonda and Don the dry cleaner. Same Don whose wife took off on him a few years ago for parts unknown. Not that I blame her,” Marina said. “Don’s weenieness has grown amazingly since he lost his hair.” She tipped the last of the trail mix out of the bowl and into her mouth. “All those chemicals can’t be good for you.”

  “No one in the history of the world has had an affair with a dry cleaner,” I said. “Doctors, lawyers, health club instructors. But a dry cleaner?”

  Marina and I looked at each other and started laughing. It was a good, long laugh, one that almost made me forget about the upcoming Monday meeting—almost.

  Monday night at six forty-five we moved the PTA meeting from classroom to gym, and even then the place was packed from stem to stern. Occasional snatches of conversation reached the committee table, and every scrap carried the scent of mutiny. A revolution was in the offing, and all I wanted was to keep my head down, take notes, and get home before te
n o’clock. After ten on a weeknight my babysitter charged double.

  Erica pounded the table with her gavel, and the room quieted. “Thank you for attending this special meeting of the Tarver Elementary PTA. I am aware of the charged emotions regarding tonight’s topic.” She scanned the audience, studying the faces. “If anyone gets carried away, he or she will be removed.” She nodded at Harry, the school’s janitor, who doubled as a security guard. He stood at the back of the room, six feet tall and Ichabod Crane thin. “Everyone who wishes to speak,” Erica said, “will get an opportunity to voice her or his opinion.”

  Rats. There went the babysitting budget.

  “But with this many attendees, I will be strictly enforcing a speaking limit of three minutes.”

  I counted heads and multiplied. Midnight, easy.

  “Let’s begin,” Erica said. “The first and only item on the agenda is the Tarver Elementary addition.” She sat back. “Agnes, you have the floor.”

  Out in the audience, dozens of arms crossed simultaneously. Agnes, who had been standing next to Harry, waded through a thick silence to the front of the gym. She turned and faced a wall of opposition. To her credit, she smiled. “Good evening, everyone. I’m delighted to have this opportunity to show my presentation to so many people. Harry?”

  The janitor flicked switches, and we sat in a red glow cast by exit lights.

  Agnes’s disembodied voice came out of the dark. “Start it, please.”

  A click, and a PowerPoint presentation sprang up on the screen that had unrolled behind the head table. The committee hopped their chairs one hundred eighty degrees. Well, most of us hopped. Randy Jarvis hadn’t done any hopping in years.

  A blast of pretentious music sequenced with the appearance of the title images. Browne and Browne Architects presents . . . The Tarver Elementary School Addition.

  “Oh, my,” I whispered. Agnes had hired an architect weeks ago. Months ago. She’d spent money that wasn’t hers on an unpopular project. She’d made plans without the input of teachers, staff, or parents.

  I glanced down the table. Erica’s frown was visible in the glow of the pale green lettering. Randy looked jovial, but then, he always did. Julie Reed, the vice president, looked asleep. Though since she had a set of six-year-old twins and an advanced pregnancy, it was understandable that a dark room would send her nodding.

  “This is our future.” Agnes spoke loudly enough to be heard over the music. “A wonderful future for us all.”

  The title dissolved into a three-dimensional rotating image of the school.

  “This is our current structure,” Agnes said. “Watch and wait.”

  The familiar single-story brick building started to change. It sprouted oddly shaped boxes. It changed color, and the brick disappeared. Landscaping evolved from juniper bushes to grasses that waved in an unfelt breeze. The main entrance vanished and grew back in a different place. Large banks of windows morphed into triangle shapes. And, in the center of the building’s face to the world, the existing front door grew into a great expanse of shiny mirrored glass.

  “This,” Agnes said, pride ringing through her voice, “is the new face of Tarver Elementary.”

  It was, without a doubt, the ugliest building I’d ever seen in my life.

  There was silence. No one moved; no one spoke. Then, with a noise that started low and rose with a rush to a pounding height, the room erupted in anger.

  Chapter 3

  I ran as fast as I could, but my pursuer’s footsteps came closer and closer. I fell, rolling in a tumbling somersault. “Hah!” he shouted. “Now I’ll brrrring!”

  I rolled the other way, desperate to escape his cold grasp.

  “Mrrrr!”

  I opened my eyes. Our cat, George, gazed at me disapprovingly.

  The phone rang again. I tried to sit up, but the sheets and comforter had wrapped tightly around me in my nightmare struggles. I jabbed with my elbows and picked up the phone.

  “Beth? This is Heather Kingsley. Listen, I wanted to catch you before you left the house.”

  I rubbed at the sleep seeds in the corners of my eyes. Somebody’s mother. Emma. “Um, hi, Heather.”

  “We need to do something about Agnes,” Heather said in her breathy voice. “And we need to do it fast. I already talked to Erica and Julie about my husband. You know Mitch? He’s a lawyer, and he says that Agnes doesn’t need the PTA’s permission to build, but—”

  I gasped. “Oh, no.”

  Heather paused. “He’s a good lawyer. Not one of those ambulance chasers.”

  I gave the sheets a kick and jumped out of bed. “Sorry, Heather, but I can’t talk now. I’ll call you later.” If the clock on my nightstand was right, I had fifteen minutes to get the kids dressed, fed, and delivered to school. How could I have slept so late?

  “Oliver!” I charged into his room and slapped on the overhead light. “Up! We’re late!” A small hand pushed a stuffed tiger to the side, and Oliver’s head peeked out of the covers. “Jammies off. Here, wear this.” I opened drawers and piled clothes onto his dresser. “Put the fire on, kiddo. Downstairs in three minutes.”

  I hurried to Jenna’s room, but she wasn’t there. Her bed, however, was neatly made up and her pajamas were on the hook behind her door. I smiled. Typical Jenna.

  No time for a shower. I rushed into the nearest clothing available and hurried downstairs. Jenna sat at the kitchen island, eating a bowl of cold cereal and watching the Weather Channel.

  “How long have you been awake? Why didn’t you get me up?” I grabbed a bowl and poured cereal. “Oliver! Your breakfast is ready!” The phone rang.

  “Beth!” The voice was so loud that I winced and held the receiver away from my ear. “Kirk Olsen here.”

  I opened the refrigerator door and got the milk. Neal and Avery’s father. “Good morning, Kirk. I’m running late, so if you don’t mind—”

  He ran roughshod over my words. “It’s That Woman. This addition is a hundred times worse than the time she changed the bus routes. A thousand times worse than the time she changed the school mascot from a golden retriever to a bulldog.”

  I poured milk on Oliver’s cereal and put my hand over the receiver. “Oliver! Now! Sorry, Kirk. You were saying?”

  Kirk Olsen had reached the middle of last night’s meeting when Oliver finished eating. “Kirk? Sorry, but I really have to go. Talk to you later.” I hung up the phone and looked at my children. “There’s no time to make sandwiches. I’ll give you money for hot lunch.”

  Jenna’s face brightened; Oliver’s soured. My son had never been big on change. I kissed the top of his head. “Get your backpacks, you two. Time to scoot.”

  I was reaching for my purse when the phone rang again. All my Nice Girl instincts screamed at me to answer. I took one step toward the phone and saw the kitchen clock. No. Couldn’t be done. I grabbed my purse and headed for the garage, ignoring a ringing telephone for the first time in my life.

  “Alexander Graham Bell has a lot to answer for.” I pushed the OFF button on the store’s cordless phone and was sincerely glad the store had only two phone lines.

  Lois laughed and got out her pen. “Fourteen.” She’d started a tally when the third anti-Agnes call came in. “Bet we hit thirty before closing.” Lois held out her hand. “Five bucks.” She’d barely finished the sentence when the phone rang again.

  “No bets.” I handed the receiver to Lois. “If it’s the president of the United States, tell him I’m in the bathroom and I’ll call back. Anyone else, say I’m dead.”

  Lois answered the phone and looked at me, eyebrows raised. “Hi, Marina. No, I’m afraid you can’t talk to her.”

  I held out my hand.

  “She’s here, but she says she’s dead.”

  I wrestled the phone away. “I’m not dead yet.”

  “You will be soon,” Marina said, chuckling.

  I held the phone away from my ear, stared at it, then put it back. “Sorry?”

 
; Marina’s sigh whistled in my ear. “Movie quote.”

  “Oh.” I tried to think back through the movies we’d watched. “Young Frankenstein?”

  “Good guess, but no. Speaking of which, I’d guess your day has been busy.”

  “Not with bookselling, it hasn’t. If one more person talks to me about the addition, my eardrums will shatter.”

  “Well, we don’t want that. How would you be able to hear my latest news? Want to guess at today’s news flash?”

  “Your neighbor’s black Lab has been seeing a poodle.”

  “Better.”

  “Your sister is quitting her stockbroker job and moving to Mexico City to teach orphans.”

  “Better.”

  “Um . . .” I scratched my cheek and suddenly remembered I hadn’t had a shower this morning. Ick. “I can’t think of anything better than that.”

  “Think of Randy Jarvis.”

  “Okay.” Nice guy, would probably fool the doctors and outlive us all.

  “Randy.” She paused dramatically. “And Agnes Mephisto.”

  “No.” I winced away from the idea of the three-hundred-pound Randy getting cozy with Agnes.

  “Oh, yes.” Marina chuckled. “Give me another reason Randy’s car would be parked in Agnes’s driveway last Saturday night.”

  I fished around for an explanation. “Randy’s good with car stuff. Maybe Agnes had something wrong with . . . with one of her tires. Randy was helping.”

  “At two in the morning?”

  “Why not? Agnes didn’t want to risk hurting her tire, so it had to be done as soon as she saw it, which was after she’d come home from a late movie. And car places put lug nuts on really tight these days.” I was liking this theory. A lot. “Randy was going to take the tire in and get it fixed—”

  Marina started laughing. “Beth, with an imagination like that, you should write a book. You probably know where Randy was going to take this imaginary tire.”

  Rynwood Auto, I thought. “Well, it could be true.”

  “Ooo, Ms. Defensive. Only problem is it’s happened more than once. Kendra, put that down. Kendra, I said—” There was a crash and a child’s wail. “Uh-oh. Gotta go.”