Mother's Day, Muffins, and Murder

by Sara Rosett

  Ms. McCormick’s desk was at the back of the room. I went and perched on her chair. I checked the clock. Only forty-seven minutes to go.

  I swiveled in the chair and studied the desk, which was covered with papers, sticky notes, pens, and books. An aloe vera plant in a clay pot perched on one corner beside the computer. A couple of framed pictures were also propped up on the desk, including one of an older couple on a golf course, whom I supposed were Ms. McCormick’s parents. Another showed Ms. McCormick with a man with longish brown hair who looked to be about her age. They stood on a beach, smiling happily and holding up sand dollars. Several sheets of stickers were scattered around the desk. Lots of them were happy faces of many varieties, along with stars, rainbows, and several sheets that proclaimed, You’re a Star! and Good Job! The graded papers were liberally spotted with the stickers and plenty of hand-drawn happy faces and exclamation points.

  I debated for a moment, knowing that poking around in the desk drawers was snooping, but then I thought of Klea’s body in the woods. I inched open each drawer and found nothing more exciting than extra office supplies and a stash of gummy bears at the back of a lower drawer.

  I closed the last drawer and sat back in the seat, wishing I’d brought my phone with me, but it was locked inside the van in the parking lot. I watched the kids for a bit. Most of them had settled down to their task and were working through the problems.

  Livvy looked back over her shoulder at me. I smiled at her, then crossed my eyes. She grinned before she could help it and quickly turned back to her paper.

  More out of habit than anything else, I tidied the desk, sorting papers into stacks and dropping paper clips and rubber bands into the pencil tray. Most of the papers were easy to sort—obvious homework papers or memos from the office, but there were a couple that I frowned over.

  One was a schematic of some sort. A hand-drawn sketch, it was filled with lines that traveled from one geometric shape to another. It must be some sort of flowchart, I decided as I tried to make out the notes inside the shapes, but the words—whatever they were—were abbreviated and I couldn’t decipher them. There were four similar sheets and the only words I could actually read were across the top of the pages: Undersea Exploration, Mayan Temple, Egyptian Pyramid, and Jungle Trek.

  I fingered the sheets, paging back and forth. They all began with the same set of shapes running in a smooth line down the left-hand side of the page, but after a few shapes, the lines branched off in different directions without a pattern that I could see repeated anywhere among the four sheets of paper. Perhaps it was some sort of quiz or puzzle for her class?

  A whisper of conversation floated my way. I got up and paced up and down the rows of desks, and the room fell silent again. Most of the students had made at least some progress on the problems and several were near the end. The minutes were ticking down in the class. I wandered around the classroom and even helped a few students get unstuck on their problems.

  One student finished his last problem and hopped up. He dropped the paper into a basket on a table at the front of the room, then looked at me questioningly as he pointed to the computers.

  I nodded, and he headed to the back of the room, where he logged in and was soon playing a game. Livvy was the third student to finish and headed for the back of the room. Soon, all the chairs around the computers were full, and I had instituted a ten-minute limit so that everyone could have a turn. Low groans and cheers sounded from around the computers as the kids moved through the bright images on the screen, cartoony versions of a deserted island or the jungle.

  The bell rang and there was a scramble for backpacks and a surge for the door. Livvy gave me a little raised-eyebrow look with a lift of her head, which I took to mean Bye, Mom, and then the room was quiet.

  Ms. McCormick had a schedule taped to her desktop and it showed that the next hour was her planning period, so there wasn’t a flow of kids coming in for the next class. I walked around the room, picking up a stray pencil and a page of homework that hadn’t been deposited in the basket. I shut down the computers, then walked back to Ms. McCormick’s desk and paused, looking over it, taking in the framed photos and the plant and the super-cheerful stickers and notes. Could this really be the desk of a killer?

  I shook my head and was about to leave the room when the flowchart pages caught my eye again. It must have been because I was standing a little distance away and looking at them upside down that I noticed it. I wasn’t trying to read them individually, but looking at the page as a whole, I could see what I hadn’t noticed before—that the printed abbreviations on the flowchart page were made with precise, even strokes. The perfectly spaced letters looked exactly like the printing on the threatening note I’d received.

  Organizing Tips for PTA Moms

  End-of-Year Tips

  • Write a thank-you note to your children’s teachers.

  • Get contact information for your child’s friends so you can stay in touch over the summer.

  • Have a plan for sorting the reams of paper that will come home as the school year ends, deciding which papers or artwork to keep.

  • Have an end-of-school ritual like a trip to get ice cream or a visit to a pool to mark the last day of school and celebrate the beginning of summer.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I hurried over to the desk, and compared the writing on the flowcharts, which was careful and exact, to the flowing writing on the graded papers. They weren’t exactly the same, but they were similar enough that it looked as if the same person had written both things. When Ms. McCormick wrote on the graded papers, her letters were printed and small, but not nearly as perfectly formed. Those notes looked as if she’d been in a hurry, jotting down short notes to the students and scribbling the grades quickly across the top of the papers. The painfully exact lettering on the flowchart looked like the printing on the note I’d received in Livvy’s take-home folder.

  I snatched up one of the flowchart papers and dashed out the door. Once I entered the hallway, which was a mass of kids and bumping backpacks, I had to slow down. I spotted Livvy at the other end of the hallway. She stood outside the door to her science classroom, talking to another girl. I waved, catching her eye.

  Her easy stance shifted so that she looked as stiff as one of Nathan’s action figures. I waved for her to come to me, figuring that would be slightly less embarrassing for her than me going into her classroom. After a second of hesitation, she motored down the hall to me.

  “Mom,” she said, drawing out the syllable and infusing it with as much chagrin as any tween can. “What is it?”

  “Did you ever see Ms. McCormick working on papers like this?”

  “Sure,” Livvy said without a moment’s hesitation. “It’s for the game,” she said easily, and then her eyes widened. “I wasn’t supposed to tell.”

  “Tell what?”

  Livvy clamped her lips together and sent me a mulish look.

  “This is not the time for secrets, Livvy.” I said it so sharply that, after a sigh, Livvy nodded, then looked up and down the hall. “It’s Ms. McCormick’s secret project, her game,” she said in a voice that made me lean close to her to hear. “She was letting us test it, but didn’t want us to tell anyone.” Livvy pointed to the words at the top. “See, this one is for the Egyptian Pyramid.” Livvy’s finger traced along the line of shapes. “They all start out this way, with a really easy problem.” She paused over the first geometric shape, then traced the line on down the page. “But they get harder.”

  “Did you ever see her actually writing on these flowcharts? Is this her writing?”

  “Sure,” Livvy said, back in her normal voice.

  “It’s very different from the way she writes on your homework papers.”

  Livvy shrugged. “She says math is exact and you have to be neat when you’re working problems. Ms. McCormick said that writing stuff for the game is the same way. You should see her when she works problems on the whiteboard, it looks li
ke something from a computer.”

  “You said it was her game. Did Ms. McCormick have early access to the game, or was it actually her game?”

  “It was her game. She was making it up as she went along. That’s why she wanted us to play it, so that she could make it better before she told everyone about it.” Livvy looked around the almost empty hall. “Mom, I’ve got to go.”

  “Of course. I’ll see you after school.”

  Livvy scooted down the hall and into her classroom. She made it before the bell rang. I went slowly back into Ms. McCormick’s room. I stopped inside the doorway and looked at the lesson that was printed on the side of the whiteboard. The letters were exact. They did look like a computer printout . . . just like the flowchart and the printing on the threatening note.

  * * *

  “I don’t know why I didn’t see it right away,” I said to Detective Waraday.

  After Peg fled, he must have gotten a search warrant because when I stepped out into the hall to track him down and share the news about the handwriting, he was already in the hallway, leading a group of crime scene technicians to Ms. McCormick’s room. As the technicians worked around us, Detective Waraday and I stood at the whiteboard where Ms. McCormick had written the day’s lesson.

  Detective Waraday slipped the papers with the flowcharts into plastic sleeves. “It’s not surprising. You weren’t looking for it. I’m sure you were only thinking about keeping the kids in line for fifty minutes, which is enough to occupy anyone’s mind.”

  One of the crime scene techs was going through Ms. McCormick’s desk while another had opened the storage closet and was removing items one at a time and examining them. Detective Waraday had looked disgruntled when he arrived with the crime scene technicians. If Ms. McCormick was the murderer, then she’d had plenty of time to get rid of any evidence that might have been left behind, but it looked as if they were going to go over the room inch by inch.

  Detective Waraday pointed to the flowchart. “You say this had something to do with a game?”

  “Yes. My daughter—she’s in Ms. McCormick’s class—I asked her about the paper, and she told me just now that it was a secret. Apparently, Ms. McCormick was designing a game about math and was letting the kids play it on the computers. Livvy had mentioned the game before, but not that Ms. McCormick had created it.”

  “And that was the word your daughter used, ‘secret’?” Detective Waraday asked thoughtfully. “Something like that wouldn’t be allowed on school time?”

  “I don’t know. You’d have to ask Mrs. Kirk, but Livvy said they only were allowed to play it if they finished their schoolwork, so it wasn’t like Ms. McCormick was ignoring the kids or their studies.”

  Detective Waraday said, “Perhaps there would be some sort of conflict of interest with the school district or her contract or something.”

  “I suppose that could be a possibility,” I said. “If Ms. McCormick left those papers out on her desk—and they were out today—and Klea saw them and realized what they were . . .”

  Detective Waraday frowned. “Did you know what these were?”

  “No.”

  “And you’d actually heard of the game. I’m not sure someone not associated with the class would make that assumption. In fact, I think most people wouldn’t know what these were.”

  The sound of a voice came from the doorway. “Oh, sorry, I didn’t realize . . .”

  Abby stood uncertainly. “Sorry,” she said again. “I heard that you had to wrangle Ms. McCormick’s class, and I popped down to make sure you were okay.” Her gaze traveled from Detective Waraday to the crime scene techs going through drawers and closets.

  “No, that was last period. It went fine,” I said. I turned to Detective Waraday. “Do you need anything else from me?”

  “Not at this time,” he said. He closed the door behind me as I left.

  “What is going on in there?” Abby asked in a whisper as I fell into step with her in the quiet hall, which was as still as a library on Friday night.

  “Detective Waraday wanted to talk to Ms. McCormick, but she bolted. Left her class and drove off campus right after lunch. I think she wrote the note.”

  “What note?” Abby asked.

  “That’s right—I haven’t had a chance to tell you.” I quickly caught Abby up on what had happened, describing the smashed window, the threatening note, and the scandal in Ms. McCormick’s past, figuring that if Marie and Peg knew about it, it would only be a short time before the word spread through the school, at least to the teachers. “That should probably be confidential, but I don’t think there’s any way that the news won’t get out.”

  “I won’t tell anyone,” Abby said, then shook her head. “A drug bust?” She mouthed the words, not even wanting to speak them aloud. “How did she ever get hired?”

  “It’s a long, complicated story that I don’t think I should go into,” I said as we arrived at the door to Abby’s classroom. A low murmur of conversation broke off when she peered inside, called a few names, and pointed out that they still had one more quiz left to take this week.

  She turned back to me. “Call me if anything else happens, okay? I can’t believe you’re dealing with vandalism and threats and you didn’t call.”

  “It was late when it happened, and you’re busy,” I said.

  “Not that busy,” she said firmly. “I’m calling you tonight to check on you.”

  “Okay,” I said with a grin. “Hey, before I go, did you ever hear Ms. McCormick talk about a game?”

  “No . . . what kind of game? Playground game or board game or what?”

  “A computer game. It looks like Ms. McCormick was working on one and letting the kids test it for her. I saw her notes for it, and the handwriting looked exactly like the writing on the note.”

  Abby frowned at the tile floor for a second. “No, she never mentioned it, but we aren’t on the same team—not even the same grade. I’ve only spoken to her a few times, in fact. But it sounds like you should steer clear of her.”

  I sighed. “I vowed I was going to stay out of all this, but that’s not going so well.”

  “Hmm. Well, you do have a way of getting at the truth, so perhaps it’s not all bad, especially if it was Ms. McCormick.” She shivered. “I hate to think that she . . . hurt Klea. I mean, that’s what the detective must think since they’re going through her classroom.”

  “Well, I think they have to check into it since she ran off campus instead of talking to Detective Waraday. Just doing that by itself looks suspicious. It is possible that Klea found out what Ms. McCormick was doing with the game or maybe Klea found out about that thing from Ms. McCormick’s past,” I said, being intentionally vague since we were standing at the door of Abby’s classroom, even though I was speaking softly. “You aren’t the only person I’ve heard say that Klea was nosy. Maybe Klea figured out Ms. McCormick’s secret—at least one of them.”

  “And Klea threatened to expose Ms. McCormick, so Ms. McCormick killed Klea?” Abby whispered. “Ugh. I don’t even like to think about it.” She glanced at her watch. “It can’t already be one-thirty,” she said. “And we haven’t even started going over homework. I’ve got to go. I’ll call you tonight.”

  I waved at her, distractedly. One-thirty. I had a bad feeling that I had something on my calendar today at one-thirty. “Oh, great,” I muttered as I remembered my schedule for the day. I half walked, half ran down the hallway. I could not postpone my organizing appointment with Margo again.

  * * *

  Fortunately, Margo lived in the neighborhood that surrounded the school. I was only a few minutes late when I rang the doorbell of her brick rancher. I’d met Margo once last year when her youngest was still at school with my kids, but he was now at the middle school, so I hadn’t seen as much of Margo as I used to. I’d been surprised to hear from her a few weeks ago when she filled out the online contact form on my website. She wanted to use one of my a la carte services, a one-time c
onsultation to help work out the cabinet design of her kitchen remodel.

  When she opened the door, she looked just the same, slender with a sprinkling of freckles across her cheeks. She taught yoga at the local gym, and I’d always seen her in workout clothes, which was how she was dressed today. She had a phone tucked between her ear and her shoulder, and mouthed hello, and then raised a finger. One minute.

  I nodded, and she waved me inside, motioning for me to go down the hallway to the kitchen. She followed me into the small square of space that was walled off from the living room as she wrapped up her conversation.

  She ended the call and ran her hand through her short red curls. “Well, here it is. It will be completely gutted, and we’ll start from scratch.” She waved her hand around the kitchen. Formica countertops, faded linoleum, and a dropped ceiling with fluorescent lights showed the house had been built in another era. She motioned to the wall that separated the kitchen from the living room. “That wall will come down to open up the room. And in here—” She took a few steps into the breakfast nook next to the kitchen and moved to the wall of windows that overlooked the backyard. “We’re blowing out this wall to give us more space. This whole area”—she circled her hand around the breakfast nook—“will actually be where the sandbox is now.”

  “Wow. That’s a big job,” I said.

  She ran her hands through her curls again. “Don’t I know it. I’m lying awake at night, trying to figure out whether to put in a lazy Susan or those rollout shelf things. That’s when I decided to call you. If you can help me configure the cabinet design, then I’ll only have to worry about the tile, counters, fixtures, hardware, and lights,” she said with a grimace.

  “What are your thoughts right now?”

  Margo pointed to the round table in the breakfast nook. It was covered with sketches on grid paper, as well as glossy brochures featuring gorgeous kitchen cabinets and paint chips. We settled into the chairs, and it was a relief to focus on organizing and debate the pros and cons of drawer depths and dividers. After about thirty minutes, we had roughed out a way to maximize as much storage space in the new kitchen as possible. I was usually limited by what the client had in place. It wasn’t often that I had a blank slate to work with, so to speak, and I had a great time exploring possibilities.