Curse of the PTA (8 page)

Far better to put the dress on the chair’s seat. “Other than the snacking—”

Marina interrupted. “The nonsnacking, you mean.”

I looked at her. She’d spent almost fifty years in the land of hyperbole and exaggeration;
now she was going to start living a life of accuracy? “Okay, the nonsnacking. Other
than that, have you noticed anything wrong?”

“Not unless you think his dedication to trying to beat his sister in Super Mario is
cause for concern.”

When Oliver started getting up at three in the morning to sharpen his video game skills,
I’d start worrying. Until then, it wasn’t exactly high on my worry list. The nonsnacking
thing, on the other hand, was a very bad sign.

“I’ll talk to him,” I said. “He’s probably going through some kick on . . . on . . .”
There had to be something appropriate to fill in the blank, but nothing was popping
into life. “. . . On a gluten-free diet.” Which didn’t make any sense at all. “Who
knows what lurks in the minds of nine-year-old boys?”

“Probably nothing we really want to know about.” Marina made a face.

But I did want to know. I wanted to know what my children were thinking from the minute
they woke up in the morning to the second they went to sleep. It couldn’t happen,
of course. I didn’t even know what
I
thought about all day long. And if I did know what was going on in the heads of my
offspring, I’d probably be alternately proud and horrified with a heavy emphasis on
horrified.

Which led to another complication. If I did know what they were thinking, would I
have to punish them for their thoughts? That didn’t seem fair. Then again, actions
spring from thoughts and—

“Speaking of things lurking in minds,” Marina said. “What’s in yours?”

“Nothing,” I said. Nothing worth repeating, anyway.

“Please, my deah,” she said, suddenly in Southern-belle mode. “Ah do declare that
you are a worse liar now than evah.” She shook her head sadly. “You didn’t even say
a word and those little eahs of yours started turning pink.”

I touched my earlobes. “They are not.”

“Just the teensiest bit.” She held her thumb and forefinger a fraction of an inch
apart. “And if you don’t believe me, go look in the mirror. No need? I didn’t think
so. Now, tell Aunt Marina what’s troubling you.”

“What makes you think something’s wrong?”

“Please. Oliver isn’t snacking, and you’ve been sitting in my kitchen for half an
hour and haven’t once looked at the clock.”

“You’re calling me a clock watcher?”

“When you have to get home and start dinner for your kids, you are.”

“That’s not clock watching; that’s taking care of my children.”

“Tomato, tomahto.” She flipped her hand back and forth. “Does anyone actually say
tomahto? Never mind. What I really want to know is if there’s something you want to
talk about.”

Then she sat back in her chair and waited.

It was moments like this that reminded me why Marina Neff had been my best friend
for two decades. On any given day she could try the patience of a canonized saint.
Her children, both Zach and the older ones who’d already left the nest, had learned
to tolerate her by ignoring eighty percent of what she said. Her DH rarely heard anything
anyone said, so that worked out. Then there was me, and I’d long ago learned to look
past the over-the-top antics and listen to the kind heart underneath. Some days it
was harder than others. Today, not so much.

I sighed. “Would you believe me if I said I wasn’t sleeping well because I’ve been
troubled about the devaluation of the dollar?”

“Nope.”

I studied my dull reflection in the oak tabletop and thought about what I didn’t want
to think about.

“It’s Dennis, isn’t it?” Marina asked.

Using my index finger as a paintbrush, I traced an outline of my head.

“Please don’t tell me you’re feeling guilty about his death.”

“Okay, I won’t.”

Her shoulders rose and fell as a small sigh gusted out of her. “And how many times
will I have to tell you it’s not your fault before you start believing me?”

“You’ll have to get in line behind Gus and Pete,” I muttered.

“Two smart guys. You should listen to them.”

I drew my outline again. It didn’t look any better the second time. “I’m the one who
asked Dennis to come to the meeting. He didn’t want to, but I called him and called
him and he finally agreed.”

“Not your fault.”

“And now Summer is being pilloried by the entire town.” My words cracked, and guilt
came pouring out. “If there’s a fly in her house, Summer traps it in her hands and
takes it outside. There’s no possible way she could have killed a human being. So
she had a fight with Dennis, what of it? She knew him from somewhere before; that’s
all. She was the one who gave me his name in the first place, so she must have thought
he was okay. It’s a small town, they could be neighbors, for all I know, and arguing
about . . . about tree trimming.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“I try and think that. Over and over. And just when it’s starting to work, I suddenly
get this feeling that if it weren’t for me, Dennis would still be alive.”

Marina reached across the table and held my hand quiet. “Beth, listen to me. None
of this is your fault.”

I looked straight into her understanding eyes. “How can it not be?”

She patted my hand. “Because it isn’t, okay? And you’d better not doubt me. I’m a
mom, and moms know these things.”

“Does it work when you’re not my mother?”

She ignored that. “There’s one way to get you off this guilt trip, you know.”

“What’s that?”

“Find the killer.”

“Oh, no. Not that again. There’s no way I’m going to—”

She plowed right over my objections. “We’ll start tomorrow, right after lunch. Wear
black.” One final hand pat; then she stood. “Zach?” she called. “Turn off that TV.
It’s almost time for dinner.”

I opened my mouth, then shut it again. There was the odd chance that she was right.
I thought of all the wondering I’d done the last few days. Wondering about Claudia
and Summer and wondering about the door at the end of the hallway and about Dennis
and about all the whys and whens and what-ifs.

It was time to stop wondering. And time to start thinking.

Chapter 6

T
here are a lot of things in this world that I don’t much care for. When I was a child,
I thought growing up would mean never having to do anything I didn’t want to. How
kids get that idea, I do not know, but we all did and they all do. Of course, if we
knew at age seven that every day of our lives would be filled with doing things we’d
really rather not, none of us would choose to grow up at all.

“Doesn’t sound like a bad idea,” I said.

“What’s that?” Marina asked. She was just ahead of me as we walked into the Rose Room.
The noise level was that odd muted loudness peculiar to funeral homes and really bad
parties.

“Wearing black is a bad idea,” I said, picking an imaginary dog hair off my black
pants, “when you have pets.”

She slid me a glance. “Your cat is black and your dog is brown. If you’re picking
off white hairs, they’re your own and not a household mammal’s. So what, pray tell,
is a bad idea?”

I didn’t answer. Didn’t have to. Marina knew how I felt about funerals, and since
visitations at funeral homes were an extension of the funeral experience, I hated
them, too. A character flaw, without a doubt, but it was thick and deep and no matter
how many times I went through the visitation/funeral sequence, I hadn’t learned to
embrace it. Any of it.

“Oh, come on.” Marina hooked her arm through mine and nodded at our surroundings.
“Lovely room, soft music, fresh-cut flowers. What’s not to like?”

It was a lovely room. The Scovill Funeral Home was in what had originally been the
residence of a family who’d made their late 1800’s fortune in Wisconsin lumber. When
the lumber boom had ended, the family moved away to find greener entrepreneurial pastures.

The Scovill family had owned it for almost fifty years, and they’d done a tremendous
job of restoring, renovating, and maintaining the Victorian-era building. There were
polished oak doors and polished oak trim. Beveled glass in the windows, period wallpaper
everywhere. Plaster medallions decorated the ceiling, and the carpet was so thick
it almost needed mowing.

But no matter what the decor, no matter what the music, and no matter how nice the
flowers were arranged, I couldn’t get my thoughts away from the sad fact that the
place existed because people died.

I hated funerals and I hated funeral homes. Every time I said so, Marina told me I
should quit being so afraid of death. She was probably right, but how does one go
about doing that? It’s not like you can try it once and see how you like it.

“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.