Curse of the PTA (21 page)

“They each need investigating, right? I get Kyle; you get Elsa.”

I turned and stared in the direction of her house. Which I couldn’t see because it
was a mile away and night was coming on fast, but there’s no controlling instinctive
reactions. “Why?”

“Do you need the truth, or can I make up something?”

“Did you really need to ask that?”

“What if the truth makes me look silly?”

“Especially then.”

“Yeah,” she said glumly. “I figured. Truth, then. Say, remember that old show
Truth or Consequences
? How about if I—”

“Just tell me. I need to get dinner in the oven.”

Her next words came all in a fast whooshing rush. “That woman scares the crap out
of me.”

“Elsa Stinson?”

“See, even her name is scary! Please don’t make me investigate her, let me do the
tie guy, please, please, please.”

I didn’t care one way or another, but . . . “What’s so frightening about El—”

“Don’t say her name!”

“About that woman?” On the video she’d looked intense, fierce even, but scary?

Marina mumbled something.

“What was that?” I asked.

She heaved a huge sigh. “She reminds me way too much of this girl I knew when I was
a kid. Toni Cregar, her name was. All through elementary school, she pushed me around.”

“You got pushed around?”

“Hard to believe, I know. But I was short for my age back then and very shy.”

“That is also hard to believe,” I said dryly.

“Toni the Tiger was queen of the playground and I . . . I wasn’t.” There was a short
silence. “I suppose it would be good for me to deal with someone who looks like her.
Get over that childhood stuff once and for all.”

She was right. It probably would be good for her. Then again, it would probably be
good for me to wear a feather boa at least once in my life, but I didn’t see it happening.
“I’ll do Elsa,” I said. “Getting over stuff is overrated.”

“You’re the best.” She made a loud kissing noise. “Gotta go. Zach and the DH will
start chewing the flesh off my bones if I don’t serve dinner in the next five minutes.”

I hung up, wondering what childhood wounds Jenna and Oliver would carry with them
into adulthood. The divorce, certainly, and the murder of their school principal two
years ago. But did they have playground incidents I didn’t know about? Were there—

The phone rang, and since I was still standing there, lost in thought, I picked it
up. “Kennedy residence, Beth speaking.” I heard traffic noise, a sharp intake of breath,
then nothing.

“Was that Mrs. Neff again?” Jenna asked.

“No.” I put the phone back into its cradle. Absentmindedly, I brushed at the back
of my neck, trying to wipe away a feeling of trickly unease. “Sounded like someone’s
cell phone is calling us by mistake.”

Jenna, buried in her homework, made a grunting noise and I went back to cooking dinner.
Cell phone, I told myself. These things happen. Just a coincidence that the store
is getting hang-up calls at the same time we were getting them at the house.

Pure coincidence.

•   •   •

Oliver was moving the last plate from table to kitchen counter when the phone rang.
This time it was hot, sudsy water with which my hands were covered. “Oliver, could
you get that? I’m all wet over here.”

The phone was in midring when Oliver picked it up. “Kennedy residence, Oliver speaking.”
Pause. He repeated himself, then looked at me. “Mom, no one’s there.”

“Just hang up,” I said. Coincidence. They happened, after all. “Third time’s the charm,
right?”

“What do you mean?” He put the phone away and scrambled up to sit on one of the kitchen
island stools. Not as much of a scramble as it had been a few months ago, though.
My little boy was growing fast.

I smiled at him. “That’s the third time we’ve had a hang-up call tonight. I’m sure
it’s just—” He jumped down from the stool in an awkward heap, his eyes round. “Oliver,
what’s the matter?”

“They’re after me,” he whispered, staring at the phone.

“They who?” I asked.

“The . . . the . . . guys.”

“The bad guys?”

He shut his eyes tight and nodded.

I wiped my hands dry on my pants and hurried to his side. “No one’s after you. You’re
safe at home with me. With your sister. With Spot.” I laid my hand on top of his head.

He jerked away. “No, no, you don’t know! They’re after me and I can’t let them get
me!” His voice went high and thin. “Don’t let them take me, Mommy!”

I dropped to my knees and hugged him tight. Oliver hadn’t called me Mommy in years.
“Shh, Ollster. Shh. I won’t let anyone take you. You don’t need to worry.”

“But what if—”

“Shhh,” I said. “There’s nothing to worry about. Mommy’s here. I’ll take care of you.
I’ll always take care of you, forever and ever.”

He buried his face in my neck. Wrapped his arms around me and held me with a strength
I hadn’t known he had. “Please don’t let them take me away. Please, Mommy.”

“I won’t, sweetheart, I won’t.” But even summoning all the mom powers at my disposal,
it took a long, long time to calm Oliver down from near-hysteria, and through it all,
he wouldn’t say why he was so scared.

I kissed him and held him and made soothing noises. And I made my decision.

Tomorrow I’d call in the big guns.

Chapter 15

T
he next morning, I dropped Jenna off at the middle school, dropped Oliver at Tarver,
drove around the block to give Oliver enough time to get inside and out of sight,
then parked in a spot marked
VISITOR
just outside Tarver’s front door.

I hurried into the front office, got a quick introduction to the gorgeous new vice
principal, Stephanie Pesch, and was soon sitting in the school psychologist’s office,
pouring out my concerns. Millie Jefferson listened for the fifteen minutes it took
me to tell the tale, asking quiet questions when they needed to be asked, giving small
nods of encouragement when my words slowed.

Finally, there was no more to tell. “So what do you think is wrong?” I asked. “I’ve
talked to the mothers of all his friends and they don’t know. Marina Neff is his day-care
provider, and she doesn’t know. His father doesn’t know.”

“How would you like me to help?” Millie asked.

“Well.” I shifted. “I was thinking maybe you had a magic wand in your desk drawer.”

She smiled, making her comfortable round face look even more like a fairy godmother’s.
“I save that for the truly difficult cases.”

Hope sprang up inside me. “You don’t think there’s anything really wrong with Oliver?”

“Anything is possible, but judging from what I know of the boy, I’d say no.”

Relief was a great wave, washing worry out of dark nooks and crannies, cleansing me
of the concern that had been weighing me down. “You have no idea how glad I am to
hear you say that.”

“I’d say nothing is seriously wrong,” Millie went on, “but obviously something isn’t
right. If my years in this field have been at all worthwhile, it will be my working
theory that he’s feeling guilty about something.”

“Guilty? Oliver?”

“How has his schoolwork been the last few weeks?”

I thought back. “Fine. Better, if anything. That’s one reason why . . . um . . .”

“Why you didn’t come to me earlier?” Millie asked gently.

Shame colored my face. It was true. The quality of Oliver’s homework had been a prime
factor in my reasoning that whatever was wrong with him was just a small bump in the
road. If anything had been deeply amiss, his grades would have slipped. Every mom
knew that.

“Don’t worry.” Millie sat back in her chair, suddenly looking less like a fairy godmother
and more like a multidegreed psychologist. “It’s a typical reaction for parents. Don’t
blame yourself.”

But I would. Of course I would. I nodded, indicating external agreement. “What should
I do next?”

“Go to work,” Millie said, moving her reading glasses from the top of her head to
her nose. She made a few fast squiggly notes. Shorthand, I realized. How pretty it
was. “With your permission,” she said, “I’ll talk to Oliver. See what I can see. Today
is Wednesday . . .” She turned to her laptop and tapped keys. “My schedule is full
today and I’m not due back to Tarver until next Monday. Will that be soon enough?”

“Oh.” Somehow I’d thought she’d be able to pull Oliver out of his classroom, have
a cozy chat, and figure it all out before lunchtime. “Well, sure. If that’s the soonest
you can, that’s the soonest you can.”

Millie studied my face. I don’t know what she saw, but she said, “I’ll see if I can
fit him in today. Not a full session, but we can get comfortable with each other.
That will help for Monday.”

The tension in my shoulders eased a fraction. “Thank you.”

“It’s what I’m here for.” She smiled, back to being a fairy godmother. “I’ll call
you tomorrow and let you know how things went.”

I thanked her again and left, worry seeping back into those cracks and crevices. Tomorrow.
It suddenly seemed like a million miles away.

•   •   •

Lois and I and a young man named Cody sat around the table in the workroom. Yvonne
said she’d rather not do interviews, if I didn’t mind. Lois had put her hand on her
heart and promised to be good, but I was starting to think that her definition of
good and mine were quite different.

Cody looked around. “Like, this is where you sort all the books and stuff?”

“And stuff,” Lois said. “Absolutely. We do lots of stuff back here.”

Lois had taken against the boy even before he’d walked into the store. She’d noticed
him walking down the sidewalk a few minutes before his interview. “Another fine piece
of youth,” she’d said, pointing. “Why on earth do they buy pants that long if they’re
just going to let them drag in the dirt? And all that black. They think they’re in
New York, or what?”

I’d looked up from the stack of special orders I was sorting. “He’s clean-shaven and
his hair’s combed.”

She’d snorted. “A five-year-old can do that much.”

I’d started to point out that five-year-olds don’t shave when he’d walked in the door.
Now the interview was five minutes old and going south fast. “So,” I said heartily,
smiling as sincerely as I could. “What makes you want to work in a children’s bookstore,
Cody?”

“Uh . . .” He pulled at his lower lip. “I need a job, like, real bad. My mom says
she’s not making any more of my car payments until I start doing something.”

Lois leaned forward. “So you know how to read?”

“Well, yeah. Like, I graduated high school, you know. It’s on my application.”

Before Lois could get going on her soapbox about the current state of public schools,
I asked, “What reading have you done outside of school assignments?”

“Uh.” More lip pulling. “I guess there’s a couple of those graphic novel things that
I read once.”

“Have you read any Harry Potter books?”

“Nah. They’re too long. I don’t got time for that. I saw the movies, though.” His
face gained some animation. “Like that first movie was cool, you know, when the chess
pieces came alive and—”

“You didn’t read any of the books?” Lois asked.

“Nah. Are they any good?”

“How about the Percy Jackson books?” I asked.
“The Lightning Thief? The Last Olympian?”

“You mean like the video game? I didn’t know they’d made a book out of it.”

I laid a hand on Lois’s arm. “Thanks so much for your time, Cody. Do you have any
questions you’d like to ask?”

“Uh, yeah. You’re that PTA president, right? I hear you guys got a wicked curse going.
That’s fierce, man, fierce.”

“There’s no such thing as a curse,” I said.

“Yeah, whatever.” Cody inched forward on his chair. “And you’re the one who keeps
finding dead people, right? What do they look like? Do they look like they’ve been
murdered, you know, all bug-eyed and scared?” He widened his eyes and made them stick
out as far as they could. “Or do they look more like they’re sleeping? My buddy and
I have this bet, see. I figure murdered people got to look scared.”

I stared at the table. At the pad of paper I’d brought in. At the blank paper.

Don’t listen to him. Don’t go back in time. Don’t relive the awful horror of finding
your friend Sam strangled to death. Don’t see the red blood staining Dennis’s shirt,
don’t see his too-still chest. Don’t, don’t, don’t.

Lois stood up. “We’re done, kid. Don’t call us, we’ll call you, okay?”

“But she hasn’t said which—”

“Out!”

“Oh, man, this sucks,” Cody muttered. “I was so close.” But he slouched to his feet
and scuffed out.

“You okay?” Lois asked.

“Fine,” I said automatically. “I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not. But I’ll make you a mug of chamomile that’ll fix you up fast.” She
patted my shoulder. “Come with me. We’ll drink tea and make fun of him the rest of
the afternoon. I can’t wait to tell Yvonne what he said about Percy Jackson.”

I got to my feet and trailed after her.

Don’t go back. Don’t see it. Don’t relive it.

But, of course, I did.

•   •   •

Since it was Wednesday and Richard was done giving his seminar, I stayed late at the
store. When Richard had the kids on a weeknight he was dutiful about dropping them
off at school the next morning, dressed and breakfasted, their homework done. There
was no reason for me to worry about them. None at all.

Not so very long ago, Evan and I had spent Wednesday evenings together. Those nights
had passed quickly, but now that I was footloose and fancy-free, I’d begun working
late, long past closing time. A salad from the Green Tractor served well enough for
dinner, and I hardly ever spilled dressing on anything important.

And it turned out that I liked working late. The store, dark and quiet, felt comfortable
around me. The shelves were filled with books I knew and loved, books waiting for
new owners to pick them up and take them home.

I shook away the thought. The concept felt right, but it wasn’t something I’d risk
saying out loud in a public setting.

When I finished my To Do list—or at least finished the tasks I had a realistic chance
of completing—I got up and turned off my office light. I’d been in there so long I
hadn’t realized that the sun had set long ago. Shelves and books were lit only by
what was trickling in through the front windows, streetlight leftovers.

Huh.

Since it was unlikely that I’d get through the mostly dark store without crashing
into something, I flicked on the rear bank of overhead lights. Immediately, I was
distracted by the new crop of early-reader books Yvonne had put out, and it took me
a good fifteen minutes to make my way to the back entrance. I reached for the light
switch, turned it to off . . . but nothing happened.

Huh.

I flicked it a few times, but the lights stayed on. Bugger. I tramped back through
the store, turned the lights off at the other switch, hoped I’d be smart enough to
remember to get the broken switch replaced soon, and picked my way carefully across
the darkness.

When I opened the door, I finally recognized the faint noise that I’d been hearing
for the last two hours and hadn’t paid much attention to.

Rain.

Which meant wet.

I liked being wet just fine when it was intentional, but not so much when it was forced
upon me. “Rats,” I said.

The rain continued down.

“Double rats.”

I stared into the alley. The sole city streetlight was burned out, and the only other
illumination came from a few business owners who left the lights over their alley
entrances on all night. The asphalt seemed to attract any stray ray of light and absorb
it without reflecting it back. What if this alley was something out of a Dean Koontz
novel and it was going to suck in every last particle of light in Rynwood, in Wisconsin,
in the country, in the world . . . ?

“Stop that,” I muttered, and yanked my imagination out of the dark and stupid direction
it wanted to go. “Butterflies, kittens, and rainbows.” Much better. “Sunshine, ice
cream, and—”

The sound of footsteps interrupted my positive thoughts. “Lou?” I called. “Is that
you?” The sound stopped. “Hello?”

I peered into the rain, trying to see who it was. Suddenly, all the odd events of
the last few days piled up together in my memory. The hang-up phone calls. The footsteps
I’d heard Saturday morning.

Fear sizzled down my throat. I shrank back into the doorway and felt for the knob.
If I could get out my keys without making a sound, I could get inside and call the
police. Gus would come to my rescue, and . . .

And the guy would be long gone and I’d look like an idiot. Gus would be nice about
having to come out in the rain, but I’d feel head-patted.

I hated that feeling.

So instead, I sank into a crouch and crab walked down the single step. Moving silently
in my sensible shoes, I skirted the side of the building, stayed low while moving
around my car, and edged behind the Dumpster we used for cardboard recycling. From
here, I had a sight line that would let me see anyone walking down the alley.

Rain dripped off the roof and down the back of my neck. I put up the collar of my
light coat and wished I’d ignored Marina’s scoffing when I’d wanted to buy a jacket
with a hood.

I stayed down and waited. Soon, my thighs started screaming at me to “Stand up; we’re
not used to this!” but I ignored them.

The rain came down.

I waited. He was out there. I knew he was. All I had to do was wait. I could wait;
waiting was something moms did every day.

More rain.

My thighs screamed louder.

More waiting.

When my calf muscles had cramped almost to the point of no return, the footsteps came
again, shuffling forward through the river of rain now sheeting off the asphalt.

There he was. I saw a foot, a leg, a second foot and leg, a rain-coated body, and . . .

My right foot slipped. I fell forward, my shoulder crashing hard against the Dumpster,
the thudding noise reverberating off the buildings, the concrete, the asphalt. The
figure turned my way. I gasped.

It was Staci Yost.

•   •   •

We stood in the store’s kitchenette. I’d rummaged through the cabinets and come up
with a handful of clean dish towels. Staci was rubbing at her hair with a terry-cloth
rooster and apologizing like crazy.

“I was so horrible to you at Dad’s visitation. Ryan tried to stop me, I know he did,
but I wouldn’t listen. All those things I said, it would serve me right if you never
forgave me. I’m sorry, Beth, I really am. I can’t believe I was so mean to you in
front of all those people!”

Murmuring something about grief and the pain of loss, I handed her another towel.

“Look at you,” Staci said. “You should be yelling at me for being such a jerk. Instead
you’re helping me dry off.”

I took our wet towels, hung them over the edge of the sink, and tried to think of
something to say. I wasn’t mad at all; I was just relieved that the person in the
alley hadn’t been a man with a stocking mask over his face and a gun in his hand.

“Anyway,” Staci went on, “I’ve wanted to apologize ever since. But every time I picked
up the phone, I just didn’t know what to say, so I hung up.”