Plotting at the PTA

by Laura Alden

  “Come on!”

  I pushed the bike over to where Barb waited.

  “Okay.” Barb lowered her voice and put her head close to mine. “John won’t listen to me, the police won’t listen to me, even my own daughters won’t listen to me anymore.” She looked left and right, and moved even closer. “Kelly was murdered and I know who did it.”

  Somehow I’d had a feeling this was coming. “Um . . .”

  “You have to listen to me.” She gripped my arm. “Aunt Maude promised she’d find out what happened if it was the last thing she did. And now you’re here. You’re going to help, right?”

  My arm was going to be bruised, too. Long pants and long sleeves for a week. Excellent. “Yes,” I said. “I’ll do my best to help.”

  “Okay, then.” She released my arm, nodding. “Okay.”

  Her eyes were sharply focused. The sharpness was concentrated on my face and I didn’t much care for the bug-stuck-on-a-pin feeling I was getting, but it was nice to see her face alive with expression. I watched the sun dapple lilac shadows across her skin and realized that, a long time ago, she’d been a very pretty woman.

  “Is your aunt Maude doing okay?” I asked suddenly.

  “What? She’s fine. Better than fine, for her age. The thing that will help her best is finding out what happened to Kelly.”

  I murmured a vague agreement, but she wasn’t paying any attention.

  “Kelly was a smart girl,” Barb said. “And I’m not saying that just because I’m her mother. She was book smart like crazy, but with lots of common sense, too. The only thing she didn’t get was people.”

  But how many eighteen-year-olds did? At that age, it was so easy to be locked into the importance of your own universe. At that age, you were still a ways away from realizing that adults had feelings, too. “She was young.”

  Barb grimaced. “You say that, but at eighteen my mother was married with a baby on the way. I had my first job when I was twelve. Kelly started saving money for medical school the day after we had to take her sister to the emergency room for stitches. Sliced open her finger washing a knife. Kelly was too young to leave alone, so she came in with me, watching when the doctor sewed up her sister. And there sat Kelly in the corner, all big blue eyes and not saying a word.”

  It was an easy scene to picture. The white hospital room, the shiny tools, the mixed smells of cleanliness and pain, and the little girl on a rolling stool, feet tucked up under her.

  “When we walked out, Kelly asked if girls could be doctors. Girls could do anything, I told her. ‘Then I’m going to be one,’ she said. ‘I want to sew people up and put them back together again.’”

  The Humpty Dumpty rhyme sang through my head. “You told her how expensive medical school would be?”

  “And how many years it would take, and in how much debt she’d be at the end of it. She didn’t care.” Barb almost smiled. “All she wanted was to be a doctor. Surgeon, later. She was trying to decide between cardiac and orthopedic when . . .”

  “Yes,” I said.

  Barb blinked fast a few times. She didn’t apologize, and I was glad for that. Apologizing for the sorrow of a child’s death was ludicrous. “I ask you,” she said, “how could she commit suicide? A girl so focused on medical school that she saved nine out of ten dollars she made? How?”

  “Um, your husband thinks it was an accident.”

  She made a fist, swinging it down to hit herself hard on the thigh. “My husband is an idiot. Kelly was swimming at two years old. Two! Winning swim team trophies when she was six. She could have swam for miles and been fine. Just fine.”

  “So you think it was murder?”

  “Of course it was,” she snapped, sounding as irked at me as she’d been earlier at her husband. “Wasn’t suicide, wasn’t accident. It’s the only thing left.”

  I squinted at the clouds and tried to come up with another option. Didn’t have any luck. “So you . . .” Did I want to take this path? Not really. But the only other choice was to turn and run away. “So you know who did it?”

  The answer came fast and furious. “Faye Lowery.” She practically flung the words out of her mouth. “Faye was always jealous of Kelly. Always, always, always. From kindergarten on up, that little Lowery girl hated my Kelly. She thinks she’s safe now, starting up that flower shop. But I know what she did and someday she’ll get what she deserves.”

  So the perfect Kelly had an enemy. Interesting. But if jealous hatred in a teenage girl was enough to incite murder, there’d be a lot more early deaths in the world. “Um . . .”

  “It’s proof you want, I can see it. Just like the police. But you’re a mother, aren’t you? The burden of proof for us isn’t the same. Listen to this.” Barb held up a bony index finger. “First grade. Kelly got the role of Cinderella. Faye was one of the ugly stepsisters. Third grade, Kelly beat her out in the school spelling bee. Sixth grade, Faye came in second place to Kelly in Field Day. Hundred-meter dash.”

  The lines in her face deepened as she frowned. “Or was it the hundred-yard dash back then?” She put her hands to her forehead. “Why can’t I remember? I should know these things. I used to know, why don’t I remember?”

  Her wild-eyed look tore at me, and I knew better than to say it wasn’t important. “I’ll look it up for you,” I offered, “if you want. The school will have records.” Or not. If schools had retention schedules, names of field day races probably didn’t rate a twenty-year life span. But someone would know, and if Barb wanted, I’d find out.

  “No.” Her hands dropped to her sides, a small flop of noise against soft fabric. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that Faye lost to Kelly. Again. It happened over and over. Swim team. Band. Kelly played flute, you know. Track team. And the final blow was when Kelly was picked as valedictorian.” She nodded fiercely. “That’s what finally did it, don’t you see?”

  Kind of. “The police and your husband say it was an accident, and I’ve heard talk it was . . .” The word wouldn’t come.

  “Suicide?” She scoffed. “Please. We’ve already gone over that. Anyone who thinks Kelly could take her own life didn’t know Kelly. She was a good Catholic girl, and she had too much to live for.”

  “Does anyone else agree with your theory about Faye?” I asked.

  “It’s not a theory.” Barb leaned close and I flinched away. “It’s fact, I’m sure of it. And I’m not the only one who thinks so. My oldest daughter knows it was Faye.” She straightened and gave a sharp nod. “She won’t talk about it, but she knows.”

  Mom and a sister. Character witnesses par excellence. Outstanding. “You can’t think of—”

  “And Amy, of course.”

  I blinked. “Amy? Amy who?”

  “Amy Jacobson.” Barb held up her hand, her fingers crossed tight around each other. “Senior year, she and Kelly were like this.”

  Chapter 12

  Halfway home, my lungs decided they’d had enough of the fast pace I’d set after leaving Barb Engel. My thighs had given up the fight a quarter mile earlier. I let the bike coast, then started rotating the pedals again, this time at a more sustainable rate.

  Amy and Kelly knew each other. Amy and Kelly were good friends. Best friends, if Barb was right. Kelly had died twenty years ago; Amy died a little more than twenty days ago. One had died too young at eighteen, the other had died at—

  My brain made a belated little click.

  “We’re the same age,” I said out loud. “The exact same age.” It was hard to believe. The Amy I’d known had acted like an old woman. Had mostly gray hair. Talked like someone from an earlier generation.

  “Who’s the same age?”

  I jumped, jerking the handlebars, and sent the bike hard right. The front tire banged into the curb and I caromed back left.

  “Hey, there.” A hand steadied my shoulder, gently but firmly. “You all right?”

  I braked to a hard stop. Put my hand to my chest to make sure my heart was still workin
g properly, then looked at the man on the bike next to me, the man who was both instigator-of-near-death and savior-from-great-pain. “Officer Zimmerman.”

  “Oh, geez, call me Sean. It’s not like I’m on duty or anything.”

  His easy smile relaxed me, but I made an internal cluck over the state of his gray T-shirt and denim shorts. The boy was obviously not married or living with his mother. Neither would have let him loose in public with that combination of paint-pocked shirt and dirt-encrusted shorts.

  “Do you often talk to yourself?” He was still smiling.

  “When you hear people say that talking to yourself is the first sign of insanity, don’t believe a word of it.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And it’s Amy who was my age,” I said. “Amy Jacobson.”

  He nodded. “The lady who was really, really allergic to bees. I was on that call. But I’d never have guessed you were the same age.”

  “I’m forty-one.” Almost forty-two, but why age yourself more rapidly than necessary?

  “No kidding.” Sean squinted at me. “I would have said early thirties, max.”

  I wanted to reach out and pat his cheek in gratitude. “I wonder if Amy was sick in some way. Illness can make you age fast.”

  He nodded. “My grandparents were like that. Same age, but Gramps got Parkinson’s and looked twenty years older. Ms. Jacobson, though, I don’t remember anything about her being sick.”

  Illness aged a person. So did pain. And unhappiness. “Remember when I was in your office the other day, asking about Kelly Engel?”

  “Sure. Report said accident, but the notes said . . . something else.”

  “Do the notes say anything about the possibility of murder?”

  His gaze slid away. “There was a mention, but that’s about it.”

  The boy hadn’t been in law enforcement long enough to develop that bland yes-ma’am look. He had the words almost down, but the body language needed work. “The notes mention Barb Engel, I suppose. And her theory that Faye Lowery killed her daughter.”

  He shifted from one foot to another. “The possibility was investigated thoroughly, Mrs. Kennedy. There’s no way Ms. Lowery could have killed Ms. Jacobson. Mrs. Engel was told that, more than once.”

  “You mean there was an alibi?”

  “Ms. Lowery was attending a sleepover party with a number of other girls. All of those girls gave statements that Ms. Lowery did not leave the party during any portion of the evening.”

  A slumber party didn’t seem like such a great alibi to me. Get a bunch of teenage girls talking and which of them is going to notice that one of them was gone for half an hour?

  On the other hand, girls usually had slumber parties with their closest friends, and it could be very easy to get your friends to lie for you. “I know I went out for a little,” she could have whispered, “but it was to meet my boyfriend. Don’t tell, okay?” Ten out of ten girlfriends would go along.

  “Mrs. Engel said that it’d be easy to slip away from a party like that,” Sean said. “And really easy to get your friends to lie for you, but none of the girls ever said anything different. Even years later, none of them changed their stories.”

  I looked at him curiously. “All that was in the notes?”

  “Oh. Well, no, not really.” He picked at a piece of dried paint on his shirt. “The chief told me.”

  My chin went up. “And did Chief Eiseley also tell you that I was an interfering busybody who should keep to her books and not mess around in things she has no business messing around in?”

  Sean flicked a glance at me. “No, ma’am. He said Kelly Engel died a long time ago and it was too bad her mother couldn’t let her rest.”

  The starch went out of my upper vertebrae. True enough. Barb was old before her time thanks to the anger she was nurturing so close. But did she have a choice? Do any of us have a choice about our feelings?

  “It was nice to see you again, Mrs. Kennedy.” Sean dipped his head and pedaled off.

  As I watched him speed away, his legs whirling in small circles, I wondered why Gus could so easily recall so many of the details from a death from so long ago.

  Maybe Barb Engel wasn’t the only one keeping Kelly close.

  * * *

  “Mom! Mom!”

  The kids bounced out of Richard’s SUV and ran across the yard to where I was pulling the first weeds of summer. How was it that I positively enjoyed the task in May, was bored by it in July, and had to force myself to get out the gardening gloves from mid-August on?

  But that guilt was months from now. Today I was happy with the way the shadows were reaching across the lawn, happy with the pile of weeds in my bushel basket, and even happier to greet the children rushing toward me.

  “Look, Mom, we brought you a Mother’s Day present. I get to tell you, but he gets to give it.” Jenna elbowed her brother. “Now, Oliver.”

  Oliver’s gallop had been hampered by his hands being behind his back. Now he handed me his offering. Offerings, actually, because he had two handfuls of the yellowest daffodils I’d ever seen. “Happy Mother’s Day!” he shouted.

  I stared at the flowers. “Why . . . why . . .” Had they ever given me a Mother’s Day present? The construction paper bouquets they’d made in Sunday school counted to some extent, but not like this. I looked up at Richard with my eyebrows raised. He shook his head.

  “Do you like them?” Jenna asked. “I wanted to get you roses, but Dad said these would be better. He said they’d last longer, that you’d have more time to enjoy these.”

  “Your dad was exactly right.” I took the flowers and reached out to hug my children tight. “This is a wonderful present and I can’t imagine anything I would have liked more.” I tipped my head down to smell their hair, to breathe in their scents, to make the moment last forever.

  It didn’t, of course. Oliver was the first one to start squirming, then Jenna. I gave them both one last squeeze and, heart full to bursting, I let them go.

  “The only thing that could make this a better Mother’s Day,” I said, “is if you two get your bags into your rooms without leaving them in the kitchen, or the family room, or on the stairs. And,” I added, “it would be a perfect Mother’s Day if you could do that in complete silence, except perhaps for a few rousing verses of ‘Seventy-six Trombones.’”

  Oliver frowned. “I don’t know that song.”

  “Come on.” Jenna pulled at his shirt. “Let’s get our stuff. She knows we don’t know it.”

  “But . . .”

  Jenna started off and Oliver followed. “What Mom wants,” she said, “is us to take our stuff upstairs without her having to bug us about it.”

  Oliver’s plaintive voice drifted across the grass. “Why didn’t she say so?”

  “She was trying to be funny, I think.”

  “Oh.” The SUV’s doors opened. “No one laughed.”

  “That’s because she wasn’t very funny.”

  I glanced at Richard.

  “The original idea was a new cell phone,” he said, “until it became clear that Jenna assumed she’d get your old one.”

  “Not until she’s fourteen.” I caressed a yellow petal. So soft, it felt almost like a feather. “I thought we agreed on that.”

  “We do. Unless you want to consider waiting until she turns sixteen, when she starts driving.”

  Driving. Someday I’d be waving good-bye to my daughter as she backed out of the garage. The first time Marina’s oldest drove into Madison for a concert with a carload of friends, she’d cleaned the kitchen from top to bottom. “I’d have gone nuts if I hadn’t done something,” she’d said. “The DH read a book about the history of the paper clip. At least that’s what he said. Then I noticed that he’d been reading the same page for half an hour. After that I got some help with the highest shelves.”

  “Or eighteen,” Richard said, “when she leaves for college.”

  In a few short years Jenna would be eighteen. Whe
re was the time going? I suddenly wanted to rush inside and hug the kids hard enough to keep them from growing up. Of course, if they never got older, they’d never have any kids of their own and I was already anticipating all the ways I’d spoil my grandchildren. Lots of books, of course, but also trips to Chicago. We’d spend the morning in the Field Museum, have lunch in what I still thought of as Marshall Field’s, then—

  “Beth?”

  “Hmm?” It was hard to leave my future grandchildren.

  “There’s a problem with Jenna.”

  The grandkids vanished. “What kind of problem?”

  “Don’t look like that,” he said. “It’s not that important. Just a little affair of the heart, I’d say.” He smiled, chuckling.

  How had I not noticed what was going on with Jenna? What kind of mother was I that I didn’t know she was interested in a boy? What else had I missed? “What happened?” I asked, keeping my knee-jerk reaction of how can you say affairs of the heart aren’t important? Maybe Jenna’s only eleven, but that doesn’t mean her feelings aren’t real! tucked safe inside my head.

  “I think it must have happened at her hockey class.” Richard put his hands into his pockets, jingling his loose change. “When I picked her up afterward, she was very quiet. Wasn’t even interested in helping to choose the pizza toppings for dinner.”

  After Jenna’s course of Thursday hockey lessons ended, Coach Sweeney had called me and recommended that she sign up for Saturday morning lessons, mixed boys and girls. “She might go far,” he’d said. “My assistant is a goalie, but he can only be there on Saturdays.”

  I’d basked in the “she might go far” for days. Richard allowed that more coaching would help her and agreed to pay half.

  “She didn’t insist on pepperoni and sausage?” I asked. Jenna, the meat eater.

  “Ate ham and mushrooms without blinking.”

  “Something’s really wrong.” I glanced toward the house.

  “Maybe, but she was almost normal this morning and when there was a television ad about Mother’s Day, she was the one who said we needed to get you something.”