Murder at the PTA (2010) bk-1

by Laura Alden

  “Sounds nice,” I said.

  “It was all fine and dandy until Carol came down with some weird tropical disease.”

  “How weird is it?”

  “Weird enough that she won’t tell me any details.” Denise sounded miffed. “All that sister-in-law of mine will say is that she’s not coming back for a while, not until small children won’t run away from her, screaming for their mothers.”

  “Some skin disease?”

  “That’s my guess.”

  Ick.

  “But,” Denise said, “she’s also losing some serious weight, so she’s not exactly down in the dumps about the whole thing.”

  I laughed. “How long have they been gone? Do they even know that Agnes Mephisto is dead?”

  “They left the Friday before, so they weren’t here, but I told them when they called in to say Carol was sick. Nick didn’t sound one bit sorry. I know he didn’t like her and all, but he could at least have faked a little sympathy!” She went on to list her brother’s faults, one of which was apparently the ability to telecommute from Florida while his wife was in the hospital.

  My head nodded at appropriate times, but my mind was miles away.

  As Bike Trail Nick clearly wasn’t the killer, one more name could be struck from the list. I smiled into the mirror. At this rate I’d have the case solved by the end of next week.

  Friday night the kids and I went to Marina’s house and ate more pizza than was good for us. When I mentioned this, she drew herself up and put her nose in the air. “My pizza,” she said with a horrible Italian accent, “iz made of ze freshest ingredients, no?” The three youngsters giggled, egging her on. “Flour from ze new bag. Yeast from ze unopened packet. Tomato sauce from ze can bought only this morning.”

  I forked off a piece of thick-crusted pepperoni and sausage. Guy pizza, but every once in a while it hit the spot. “Your Italian accent sounds like it has spent too much time watching old French movies.”

  “The Swedish chef,” Jenna said, and for some reason this sent Oliver and Zach into paroxysms of laughter.

  Oliver recovered first. “Know what?” He thrust his pizza-laden fork into the air. “We’re getting a dog!”

  “You are?” Marina looked at him, then looked at me. “You are?”

  “Um, yes.”

  “When did this come about?” And why? her tone implied.

  “Oh, we’ve been talking about it for a while.” On and off. Mainly off.

  “Really?” Marina arched her eyebrows. “You never mentioned it.”

  “Not a dog,” Jenna said. “A puppy.”

  “Future dog.” Zach’s face lit up. “Cool. I’ve never had a dog. What kind are you getting?”

  “Snoopy dog!” Oliver shouted.

  “I want a golden retriever,” Jenna said.

  Zach looked thoughtful. “Nathan O’Conner has a chocolate Lab. He jumps into the water and catches tennis balls.”

  “Don’t want a Lab dog,” Oliver said. The three children started talking at once, each arguing at the top of his or her lungs for the breed of his or her choice.

  I put my fingers in my mouth and whistled loud enough to make us all wince. The kids fell silent. Whistling was my best trick, but it didn’t do to use it too often.

  Marina fixed her gaze on her son. “You’ll take the plates.” She pointed at Jenna. “You’ll be in charge of the silverware.”

  Oliver bounced in his chair. “What do I do?”

  “Hmm.” Marina tapped her nose. “Reroof the garage?”

  He giggled and, once again, my heart melted into a puddle of love.

  “Maybe eliminate national debt?” Marina frowned; then her face cleared. “I know. How about you find a cure for avaricious greed?”

  Oliver tried to repeat the word, looking like a little bird hoping for worms to be dropped into his mouth.

  “No.” Marina drummed her fingers on the table. “Eliminating avaricious greed might take longer than one night. What do you think about putting the napkins in the trash instead?” Oliver nodded happily. “Ready?” The three kids half rose. “Back, back, back,” Marina ordered. “Down, down, down.” They dropped their hind ends in their chairs and she held up her closed fist. “On three.” She put up her index finger. “One. Two.” A second finger went up next to the first. “Three!”

  Before her third finger went up, the kids were hurrying around the table, collecting and clearing like professionals. Table clear, dirties in the dishwasher, they scampered off to the family room with only empty place mats to show they’d ever sat down with us.

  I looked at Marina with admiration. “How did you do that?”

  “Bribery.”

  “Why doesn’t it work that well for me?”

  “Got to bribe them with the right stuff. Next time,” she said, nodding sagely, “try cold, hard cash.”

  “Marina, you didn’t!”

  She crossed her eyes at me. “Sucker. We’ve been playing restaurant after school all week. I told them if they kept quiet about it and did well tonight, they could watch two movies.”

  “You are a devious woman.”

  “Why, thank you.”

  “Speaking of devious.” I got up and fetched my purse. “So, the other day I went through the WisconSINs blog posts and made a list of—”

  “Great God in heaven.” Marina flopped forward and thunked her forehead against the table. “Not a list. Please, anything but a list.”

  “Do you want my help or not?” I asked. Marina made a small mewing sound that was probably a yes. She’d once dared me to go a full week without a list. I’d lasted two days, but I had broken down upon realizing we’d needed milk, eggs, bread, and bananas. Three things I could keep in my head. Four things were one too many.

  “So what’s the title of this list?” Marina lifted her head and propped it up with her two fists, one atop the other.

  All my lists had titles. Why anyone found this amusing, I had no idea. I unfolded the piece of lined yellow paper. “Murder Suspects.”

  “So descriptive,” Marina murmured.

  Brushing the paper flat, I said, “Some of these people are identified on your blog as potential suspects.”

  Marina jumped her chair around the table to sit side by side with me. “Lemme see, lemme see.” It sounded as if she were repeating a take-out order for a Chinese restaurant.

  “Not so fast, twinkle toes.” I held the paper out of her reach. “First, the introduction.”

  She slumped back and folded her arms across her chest.

  “Cut that out.” I opened the paper a few inches, then closed it up again. “There is no order to this list. Not most likely suspect to least likely, and not least likely to most. I just wrote names down as they came to me”

  Marina looked heavenward. “On with it, O Queen of the Lists.”

  I held the paper a little farther out of her grasp. “Suspect number one: Kirk Olsen.”

  She nodded. “The affair of the school buses.”

  “Suspect number two is Claudia Wolff.”

  “Ooo, the Dysfunction from Fish Fry Friday.” Marina perked up. “I could stand it if Claudia was the killer. Sad for those horrible children, though.” She looked downcast for a moment, then brightened. “Growing up without a mom would be bad, but could it be any worse than having Claudia Wolff as your primary caregiver?”

  “Well . . .”

  “Can’t be Claudia, though,” she said, sighing.

  “Why not?”

  “She was up with a sick kid that night. Taylor? Tyner? One of those. Claudia was calling around to borrow a vaporizer. She called me around eleven.” Marina shook her head sadly. “Another good suspect toasted. Who’s next?”

  The lyrics of a Tom Lehrer song went through my head. I tried to turn them off, but I knew they’d keep coming back until I replaced them with something else. I crossed off Claudia. “Next is Randy Jarvis.”

  “Ah.” She looked left and right. “He’s my favorite,” she whisp
ered.

  Their relationship had been strained at best since the time she and Randy had gone at each other hammer and tongs over the end-of-school gift the PTA gave out. Randy had pushed for root beer floats; Marina had wanted to hand out paperback books. After too many hours of discussion, Erica banged her gavel and said they’d hand out gift certificates to the Children’s Bookshelf.

  “Randy and Agnes were having it on,” Marina said. “I’m sure of it. I know he didn’t look grief-stricken at the memorial service, but he’s a man, and he’s from Wisconsin. He wouldn’t show public grief if his mother was run over by a truck right in front of him.”

  I didn’t see how Randy’s not crying at the memorial service proved he’d been involved with Agnes, but I didn’t pursue the issue. “Randy didn’t kill Agnes,” I said.

  “Yes, he did.” She spread her arms wide. “Here’s how it worked. The meeting at the school ended. Everybody left. Randy hung around, left his car at the school, and walked to Agnes’s house for an assignation. They had an argument. In the heat of anger he picked up something heavy”—she picked up an invisible object—“and hit her on the head.” Her arm swung down. I winced as her hand thudded against the table. “After that, he sneaked out the back door.”

  “You really think Randy would have walked three blocks?”

  She wavered, in love with her theory, but seeing the flaw. Randy hadn’t walked that far in years. “Well . . .”

  “Marina, Randy wasn’t even in town that night.”

  “Don’t be silly. Where else would he be? No, wait. Let me guess.” She started playing an air guitar. “He plays guitar for a classic-rock band. They play in nasty little bars all over the county. But, wait! A discerning crowd hears the emotion Randy pours into the solo for ‘Free Bird,’ and the applause doesn’t stop for half an hour.” Her hair bounced all around as she bobbed her head in time to music only she could hear.

  Suddenly I was tired of the game. A murderer was roaming free while my children were watching Free Willy. Not that, deep down, I thought they were in any danger, but still . . . “On Tuesday nights,” I said, “Randy is a volunteer.”

  Marina’s mouth slacked open. “He’s a what?”

  “Every Tuesday and one Saturday a month. And don’t ask where he’s volunteering, because I’m not going to tell you. Confidential sources.”

  She stuck her tongue out at me. “Don’t you hate it when someone you can’t stand turns out to be a good person? What a waste of a perfectly good suspect. Who’s next on the list?”

  I rattled off the rest of the names. “Nick Casassa, Dan Daniels, Cindy Irving, Joe Sabatini, Erica Hale, Harry the janitor, Lauren Atchinson, and Gary Kemmerer.”

  “Lauren Atchinson?”

  I shrugged and told her that Nick, Lauren, and Gary all had solid alibis.

  “What are they?” Her eyes were bright.

  “Not saying.”

  “Come on, pretty please?”

  “Nope. Not a chance. Move on to the next question, please.”

  She pouted and flounced her hair a few times, but I didn’t budge. She sighed dramatically. “How about Agnes’s ex-husband?”

  “Do you want the long or the short version?”

  She cocked her head, listening to the sounds emanating from the family room. “Isn’t that the start of The Willy Show? We have time for all the details.” She rubbed her palms together.

  I dug into my purse for another set of notes. If I was going to keep on with this investigating stuff, I was going to need a bigger purse. “John Mephisto remarried a week and a half after his divorce from Agnes.”

  Marina blew a soft, sympathetic whistle. “Ouch.”

  “Yup.”

  “What was that all about?”

  “Agnes and John got married the summer after they graduated from college. University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire. After driving around the country for a summer in a VW bus—”

  “How very seventies,” Marina said.

  “Agnes went on to graduate school here in Madison. John Mephisto started working as a junior loan officer for the State Bank of Madison. Agnes, one of a handful of females in the doctoral program—”

  “Agnes had a PhD?”

  “She was taking her studies very seriously. Mephisto was left to his own devices in a town where he knew very few people.”

  Marina made a slicing motion across her neck. “Never mind the rest. So what wife is Mephisto on now? Three? Four?”

  “Still on two, actually. They live near San Diego.”

  “Hmm.” Marina frowned. “Doesn’t sound like he holds a grudge against Agnes.”

  “Plus he was in Las Vegas the week Agnes died, attending a regional business leaders’ conference.”

  Marina’s face lit up. “So he could have sneaked out and flown here. Done the deed and zipped back to Vegas.”

  “Nope.” I shook my head. “At the approximate time Agnes was killed, he was accepting an award for ‘most environmentally friendly office management.’ ”

  “Well, shoot.” Marina stuck her lower lip out. “It would have been okay if he’d done it.”

  “Sorry.”

  She flicked at my notes. “Where’d you get this, anyway?”

  “A few phone calls, a few Web site searches.” Actually, most of the information had come from Agnes’s sister, Gloria. I’d called, ostensibly to confirm that the photo album had arrived. With only a small push, she’d been more than pleased to dish up the dirty on her sister’s failed marriage. Turned out Mephisto had also been from Superior. “He was slime,” Gloria said. “He went after Agnes for one reason and one reason only.”

  Marina leaned down and picked a fallen scrunchie off the floor. She set it on the table and spun it around her index finger. “So many people with alibis.” Twirl, twirl. “This never happened on Dragnet.” She held on to the table and tipped her chair back. If any of our children had done that, we’d have scolded, “Four on the floor.” But since it was just us, we didn’t have to be adults. “So now what? Do you want to split up the rest of the names, or are you still gung ho on doing this yourself?”

  “Mom?” Zach ran into the room. “We get to watch another movie, right?”

  The chair thudded down, and Marina spread her arms wide. “Come here, my son, and let me bestow upon you the kiss of motherhood.”

  He wrinkled his nose and looked like a young male version of his mother. “Aw, quit. I’m too old for that.” Marina’s arms drooped and her lower lip trembled, but Zach only rolled his eyes. “Stop that, too,” he said. “Hey, can we have popcorn during the second movie?”

  Marina heaved a loud sigh. “Despite the scorn heaped on my head, I will indeed labor and sweat to bring you corn that is popped.”

  “None of that air crap.”

  “Young princeling, your wish is my command.”

  “Cool.” He ran off, then turned and trotted backward. “Thanks, Mom! You’re okay, even if you do talk funny sometimes.”

  “He’s getting so big,” Marina said softly. “A few more years and he’ll be gone, too.”

  I was quiet, remembering that sunny September day when I’d taken Oliver to his first-grade classroom. Preschool and kindergarten hadn’t seemed real, somehow, filled with naptime and tambourines and construction paper. First grade was the beginning of Oliver’s true education, and the real start of his growing away from me.

  “Well.” Marina pushed herself to her feet. “That’s what motherhood is all about. Love ’em and leave ’em go. Want some popcorn?”

  “Sure.” The reason I even owned a stove-top cooker was because I’d tasted Marina’s popcorn. That microwaved gunk hadn’t come into our house for years.

  With metallic screeches, she slid aside the cast-iron pan that lived permanently on the range and took the popcorn cooker out of a cabinet. “I’ll make a second batch for us. Garlic, cheese, and just a touch of chili powder.” With her head in the refrigerator, she asked, “You’re not planning on kissing anyone later
on tonight, are you?”

  My thoughts immediately went to Evan, and my cheeks flamed. “No-o,” I stammered. Rats. There were one or two things I wanted to keep to myself, and Marina would be all over that stutter faster than a first-time mother on a dropped pacifier.

  Wildly, I looked around for a subject changer. Marina’s laptop computer sat at the end of the counter, booted up and ready for service. I sidled toward it as Marina came out of the fridge, butter in hand and eyebrows raised. “Hey.” I angled the screen toward her. “You have mail.”

  She squinted at the screen. “My reading glasses are AWOL. What’s the subject line say?”

  “There are three of them.”

  “Read on, my dear.” She sliced off a chunk of butter and put it in a glass measuring cup. “Now that you’re party to my bloggership, there is nothing about me you do not know.”

  Without even meaning to, she was making me feel guilty. “Um, the first one is from Lands’ End. A shipment is on its way.”

  “New jeans for Zach, winter coat for the DH.”

  “Where is he, anyway?”

  “The DH,” she said, “is at this moment traversing the state with three other like-minded men. Tomorrow’s plans include setting up a grill in a parking lot at eight in the morning, cooking, and eating vast amounts of fatty foods, then sitting on cold concrete for a minimum of three hours watching young men run, throw an inflated leather object, and collide against one another with sickening thuds.”

  “Ah.” I looked back at the screen. “E-mail number two is an advertisement from the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau. How many years have you been trying to get your DH to take you there?”

  She counted on her fingers, ran through all the digits, and started over on the right hand.“Too many. Something always seems to come up. New car, college tuition, new roof, college room and board, new carpet, college textbooks, new furnace, college fees, et cetera, et cetera.”

  College. I hadn’t put a dime into the kids’ college funds since the divorce. One of these days I’d have to talk to Richard about it—after school let out for the summer, maybe.

  “E-mail number three,” I said, “is from a gobbledygook e-mail address of letters and numbers. Why do people do that?”