Curse of the PTA

by Laura Alden

  “Look at that.” Marina bumped my rib cage. “The box is closed. That should make you happy, yes?”

  Absolutely yes. To me, open caskets were the worst part of it all. That particular quirk was probably due to an unfortunate incident in my youth while at the visitation for a friend’s grandmother. Somehow I’d managed to trip on a flat carpet and fallen forward against the casket. The resulting thump had dislodged Grandma just enough to give me shrieking nightmares for weeks.

  “Still does,” I said, eyeing the casket. It was hard to see through the mass of people, but I could make out the long, dark oblong at the front of the room.

  “What?” Marina asked. “Speak up. It’s a little loud in here.”

  We inched deeper into the room. Here, the acoustics were such that we could hear the conversations of the people immediately adjacent to us, but beyond that we could hear only murmurs.

  I didn’t want to hear anyone else’s conversation. Marina, however, was listening to the couple next to us as they quietly but fiercely argued about where to go for their upcoming anniversary. I knew them vaguely from church, and since I could tell Marina was about to offer a suggestion (or else point out that they wouldn’t be having many more anniversaries if they didn’t stop fighting), I said, “Looks like half of Rynwood is here. Between the two of us, is there anyone we don’t know?”

  Marina made a quick scan of the faces. “There’s a whole group over there I don’t know. And I’m not sure who’s standing next to Mack Vogel.”

  I craned my head around to see who was standing next to our stocky, white-haired school superintendent. “That’s Mack’s sister. She and her husband live in Virginia.”

  “Hmm.” Marina was still scanning the room, but her gaze had changed from that of recognition to one of speculation. “Do you realize who’s here?”

  “Lots of people.” Actually, it was one of the biggest turnouts I’d ever seen at a visitation. I’d heard Dennis had had a number of ex-wives and a large assortment of children and stepchildren. Maybe a lot of the people here were family. Or maybe in the years Dennis had lived in Rynwood he’d made a lot of friends. Or maybe his parents had known a lot of people. Auntie May was holding court up near the front of the room. If I remembered, I’d ask her. Or not. If I asked, she would tell me, and the sitter I’d hired for the evening had to be home by ten.

  “Exactly.”

  “Exactly what?” Having a conversation with Marina could be like trying to run while bouncing a ball on cracked concrete. Sometimes you and the ball were moving in the same direction, sometimes the ball took a hard turn while you kept going straight.

  “I bet the odds are good,” she said. “More than good. I bet they’re up above ninety percent.”

  “What, that these shoes are going to permanently deform my toes before the end of the night?”

  “That there’s, like, a ninety-five-percent chance that the killer is in this room.” She closed one eye and nodded slowly. “This very room.”

  I looked around. Saw friends and acquaintances. Fellow business owners and PTA parents. Church members and residents of Sunny Rest. Saw a room full of people with whom I shared the streets and sidewalks. Most of them I liked, many of them I liked very much. Sure, there were a few I didn’t like, but I didn’t want any of them to be a murderer. Not even the ones I would be happy to see move to another continent.

  It was a selfish wish, of course. I didn’t want to know someone who could kill. I didn’t want to know a murderer, I didn’t want to know that I’d sold a book to someone who could end a person’s life.

  Marina bumped my shoulder. “Now, there’s a good candidate for a killer if there ever was one.”

  “Mack?” I asked doubtfully. It wasn’t unheard of for him to turn red and blustery at school board meetings, but that was due to his inability to suffer fools for more than their prescribed five minutes of speaking time. But Mack, kill someone? I didn’t see it. He was more the lawsuit type than the type to take the law into his own hands.

  “Don’t be silly. Mack Vogel wouldn’t get his hands dirty. No, I mean her.” She jerked her chin at a fiftyish woman with blond hair that stayed blond courtesy of regular visits to the hair salon. She was standing with a woman about her own age, another blonde, only her hair color was courtesy of nature. Or so I’d heard.

  “Marcia?” I asked.

  “Of course Marcia. See those beady little eyes? See how she’s looking at you? If looks could kill, you’d be roasting over a spit and half-done by now.”

  Lovely image. But I knew why Marcia Trommler hated me. Just under a year ago, I’d fired her. It had been an easy decision to justify: She’d come in late, she’d leave early, she’d called in often to say she couldn’t make it into work because of her grandson’s swimming lessons, and so on. I’d never been fired, but it must be a horrible feeling. So it was easy to understand why she hated me. I didn’t like it, but I understood.

  I watched her now as she chatted with Melody Kreutzer. Melody worked at Glenn Kettunen’s insurance agency, doing I didn’t know exactly what. Glenn always said she was worth her weight in gold, but that could have meant she wrote up more life insurance policies than anyone in the region or that she had knack for ordering out lunch and bringing it back still piping-hot.

  Marcia kept darting little glances in my direction, Melody kept adjusting her numerous and ubiquitous bracelets. The two actions seemed almost to be choreographed. Marcia glared at me, Melody fiddled with a bracelet. They talked, Marcia glared, Melody fiddled. It needed only a catchy jingle and they could have been a public-service announcement for signs of obsessive-compulsive behavior.

  “If she was the killing type,” I said, “she would have killed me last year.”

  Marina nodded. “Good point. She’s the kind that will lash out in anger. Makes you wonder if she has a license to carry.”

  “To . . . carry?”

  Marina rolled her eyes. “License to carry a concealed handgun.”

  “Oh, right. I knew that.”

  “Of course you did. Just like I know who wrote Billy Budd.”

  “Herman Melville,” I said. “And why did that come up?”

  “Saw it on the DH’s Netflix queue list. I was pretty sure it was a book first, though.”

  I should have known.

  “How about him?” Marina surreptitiously pointed to Lou Spezza. Surreptitiously for Marina, anyway. I could tell because she kept her index finger below the level of her shoulder.

  “His store’s only been open for a month,” I said. “Far as I can tell, he didn’t even know Dennis.”

  “Then why is he here?”

  When she saw that I didn’t have an answer, she gave a small crow of triumph. “One point for the good guys.”

  “I thought we were on the same team.”

  “Of course we are. But that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy scoring points off you every once in a while.”

  “Some friend you are. Now, give me one good reason why Lou would kill Dennis.”

  “I have lots.” She waved her hands around. “Lots. Like . . . like Dennis was parking behind Lou’s store without permission.”

  “That’s a reason to kill someone?”

  “Haven’t you ever heard of road rage?”

  “In an alley?”

  “Road rage can happen anywhere,” she said darkly. “Besides, he looks like a killer, don’t you think? Those hairy arms?” She shuddered. “Imagine that arm wrapped around your neck, choking the life out of you.” She hacked out a breath. “And that big black mustache is a dead giveaway. No innocent person has a mustache like that.”

  I looked at her. “If a mustache is an indication of murderous intent, the police would have arrested Joe Sabatini days ago.”

  She sighed, and for good reason: I was right. Last summer, Joe Sabatini, owner of Sabatini’s, the town’s premier pizza place, had grown the bushiest mustache I’d ever seen. It was the result of a lost bet over the Stanley Cup play-offs, and
he’d morosely said he’d have to wear it until the next year’s play-offs.

  Marina furrowed her brow and studied the crowd, which by now had swelled even larger. “Are you going to shoot down all my theories?”

  “Only the ones that don’t make sense.”

  Her gaze lasered in on someone, but there were too many people in the room for me to figure out the identity of her latest target. “Why do you make things so difficult?”

  “Why do you ignore the facts?”

  “Facts, schmacts. I don’t need logic to tell me that woman would run down anyone who got in her way.” She flung out her arm and pointed her index finger straight ahead.

  I moved to her side so I could follow the line. “Alice? You must be joking. She’s more likely to feed someone to death than to shoot them.”

  “Of course not Alice.” She shook her finger. “Her!”

  The crowd moved and shifted, and suddenly a line of sight opened and I saw exactly who Marina meant. And she was right. That woman would run over anyone who got in her way. But since the running over-ing would be done with a wheelchair, and since the occupant of the wheelchair weighed less than a hundred pounds, you couldn’t exactly claim murderous intent even if all four wheels ran over a fallen torso.

  There was only one problem. “Give me one good reason why Auntie May would kill Dennis Halpern.”

  “At age five, he rode his tricycle over her petunia bed and she’s harbored a grudge ever since.”

  I considered the theory. It wasn’t bad. Matter of fact, it was pretty good. There was only one problem. “Whoever shot Dennis ran away. On two feet.”

  We both studied the diminutive form. Auntie May hadn’t been out of her purple wheelchair since she broke her hip years ago and moved to Sunny Rest where she could terrorize the residents, the staff, and visitors without having to set foot outside.

  “Well, bugger boo.” Marina made a clicking noise with her tongue. “Another perfectly good theory down the tubes.”

  I glanced over at her. “You don’t really think Auntie May killed him, do you?”

  “Of course not.” She looked affronted. “And I don’t think Lou or Marcia did it, either.”

  “Do you have any honest-to-goodness, take-it-to-the-judge suspects?”

  “Can I count my standard theory?” Her eyebrows rose in same way Spot’s did when he saw anyone come within five feet of his leash.

  “The one that says Claudia did it?” I asked.

  “It’s my favorite,” she said, clasping her hands together under her chin. “Wouldn’t it be lovely to know that she was stuck in some prison somewhere and that she wouldn’t be seen in Rynwood for years upon years? Come on, admit it.”

  The idea did have a certain attraction. However . . . “Why would Claudia kill Dennis?”

  “Because she can’t stand the idea of you as PTA president.”

  “Then why didn’t she kill me?”

  “Because she wants to make the run up to your death a slow and agonizing wait.”

  I eyed her. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Why does it have to? Does murder always make sense? I bet most times it doesn’t. And if Claudia is involved, I’m sure it doesn’t.”

  Or at least that’s what I think she said. I was only half listening because in our shuffle forward toward what I always thought of as a receiving line, we’d wound up standing behind a man I knew only by sight. He lived in Rynwood and worked at a high-powered law firm in Madison, but since he didn’t shop downtown, didn’t attend my church, and since his children were grown, our paths had never crossed.

  I only knew who he was due to seeing him occasionally at the country club, back in the days when I was dating Evan. The man was wearing a dark blue suit, white shirt, striped tie, and polished shoes and was talking to another fiftyish man dressed almost identically. They resembled each other physically, too, with their squared shoulders and how their heads set and how their hands moved. Brothers, maybe? Although their resemblance was more in the way they carried themselves than in the shape of their faces or bodies.

  “Beth, are you in there?” Marina asked.

  I put my finger to my lips and tipped my head at the pair in front of us.

  “No, it’s been a while since I saw him,” Evan’s friend was saying.

  His companion said, “We had a drink together last summer. I was coming out of court and he was passing by. It was nice to catch up.”

  Two attorneys. No wonder they looked alike. They’d probably gone to the same law school.

  I gave myself a mental shake. Bad Beth, for thinking such a thing. There were plenty of lawyers out there who were kind and considerate people who wanted only to help others. They were out there somewhere. I was sure of it.

  “Wish I’d made the time,” Evan’s friend said. He sounded regretful, as people do. “He called me a few weeks back.”

  “Dennis did?” A gap opened ahead of them, and the companion moved one purposeful step forward. Evan’s friend did, too, making it an almost simultaneous move.

  “He wanted to make an appointment. I had him talk to my secretary, and we were set to meet next week. He said it wasn’t a rush. He wanted to make a small change in his will.”

  The companion made a “huh” noise. “That reminds me. My daughter and her husband are having a baby. I should make some changes in my own will.”

  Their talk quickly went into attorney-speak. Marina clutched at me. “Did you hear that?” she whispered fiercely. “Did you hear?”

  “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” I mused. A small change to one person could be a big change to someone else. To some people, a bequest of, say, five thousand dollars, would be an insult. To others, it would be the difference between having a full stomach and going hungry. Was everything relative? Was there, anywhere, a universal truth? Was there any single belief that all humankind shared and—

  “I bet that’s why Dennis was killed.” Marina’s face was alive with speculation. “He was going to cut someone out of his will, and that person killed him before the papers got drawn up.”

  Trust Marina to make a situation as melodramatic as possible. “He said a small change, remember?”

  She shrugged. “Who’s to say what’s small and what isn’t?”

  As that was exactly what I’d been thinking, I couldn’t disagree with her. On the other hand . . . “Maybe instead of cutting, he was going to add someone to his will.” A new grandchild, maybe. Or maybe he wanted to increase what he’d like to donate to his alma mater, wherever that might be. Or maybe—

  “Maybe he had a mistress and wanted to leave her a bunch of money.”

  Back to the soap opera. “Dennis was sixty years old. What would he be doing with a mistress?”

  “Don’t be such a naïf, Beth.”

  Naïf? What new TV show had she been watching?

  “Men are men at any age,” she went on. “Get a couple of willing participants and who’s to say what goes on behind closed doors?”

  I was suddenly glad that doors did, in fact, close. There were a lot of things I didn’t want to see. Or even speculate about. And, speaking of which, it wasn’t exactly appropriate of us to be talking about Dennis and his imaginary mistress at his visitation, of all places. “We really shouldn’t be—”

  “Oh, no.” Marina’s eyes went round. “What if his mistress was”—she leaned close to whisper in my ear—“Summer? He wanted to break it off but she didn’t, and she got angry and—”

  “No,” I said loudly. Loudly enough that the lawyers in front of us turned to look. I gave them an apologetic smile. They glanced at each other, and though I didn’t see the mutual eye roll, it was inherent in the lift of their eyebrows. They turned back around and I glared at Marina.

  “No way did Summer kill Dennis,” I said quietly. “No way was she his mistress. That’s just stupid, and you know it. Summer and her husband are happily married, and you’re just making up stories to satisfy your bizarre need to make things
as exciting as possible. Summer is our friend, and you will stop this right now.”

  “But maybe—”

  “No.” I crossed my arms. “Quit with the wacked-out theories. If you want to help, you have to think like a sensible person.”

  She sighed. “But that’s hard. And not nearly as much fun.”

  “This isn’t about you having fun; it’s about Dennis.” I nodded toward the front of the room, where the long rectangular box lay in rest. “And about his family. They’re the ones who deserve to know what really happened.”

  Then I thought about what I’d just said. Yes, they deserved to know what happened, but did it really matter? When the police tracked down the killer and sent him away forever, Dennis would be just as dead. Would knowing that the murderer was in prison help them heal any faster? Would the knowledge of justice being done ease the pain?

  I didn’t know. And, with any luck, I’d never have to learn the answer.

  “Okay,” Marina said. “No more fun. We’re going to think. And if we’re thinking that Dennis changing the will had something to do with his death, we need to find out who’s in the will.”

  A shift in the line thinned the mass of people in front of us, and suddenly we saw the entire Halpern family standing in a line. A long line. A really, really long line.

  “Wow,” Marina breathed. “I had no idea Dennis had such a big family.”

  I took a quick head count. Even assuming each of his children had married and was accompanied by a spouse, that still resulted in eight children. “I’m sure some are stepchildren.”

  “And every one a suspect,” she said with satisfaction. “One of them is bound to be the killer, don’t you think, protecting her or his inheritance? And even better, we don’t know any of them. No emotions involved. It will be all clinical and detached.”

  One of the women in line turned. The moment I saw her face, Marina’s latest theory went out the window. “Back to the drawing board,” I said, nodding at the woman and the man next to her.