Death of a PTA Goddess (4 page)

The pause was long and heavy. “Could somebody please pass the popcorn?” I asked.

No one laughed.

“Anyone other than Molly?” Stephanie said.

“Sorry. Like I said, it’s compulsive.” I turned to Mr. Alberti. “I hope you gave your students an A.”

“I did.”

“They also deserve a civics lecture on respecting people’s rights to privacy,” Susan snarled.

“You can say that again. Can we buy the tape from them?” Chad asked. “And burn it?”

“Patty, how did you know they were taping you?” Jane asked.

“Because it was her idea in the first place,” Stephanie interjected. “She’s the one who suggested it as a possible project to Al.”

“Patty! How could you!” Jane cried. “Why didn’t you at least warn us?”

“We looked like a bunch of idiots,” Emily said. “All except for Patty herself, of course.” Even though she was supposedly Patty’s best friend, she went on to say, “Since
we
were all at the disadvantage of having no idea that we were being filmed.”

Still calm and the picture of reason, Patty maintained her seat on the couch and said, “I didn’t know for certain that they were taping us. I suggested it, yes, but I didn’t know that the students had taken me up on the idea. I thought it’d be such a wonderful opportunity for them to witness firsthand a government in action.”

“There’s an enormous difference between witnessing a group in action firsthand and secretly filming them,” Susan said.

Patty scanned the room as if looking for sympathetic faces. “It’s not as if the tape revealed anyone’s private lives. They were simply taping public meetings in public places. There was no expectation of privacy.”

“But we were recorded other times as well,” Emily cried, “such as during our private conversations! All it would have taken was a word of warning from you . . . a mention at the first meeting that it was possible students would be taping us.”

“Yeah,” Jane said. “And what about the award from national that we’re finalists for? If they catch wind of this video . . .”

Emily said, “This is so like you, Patty . . . forging straight ahead with your plans, no matter who or what stands in your way, leaving everyone else to pick up the pieces.”

Clearly hurt, Patty scanned her friend’s face. “After all this time, that’s how you feel about me? So what you said about me on film
was
in context?”

Emily merely averted her eyes.

What
had
she said on that tape?

Mr. Alberti dragged a palm across his bald pate. “I apologize for my role in this. Yesterday in class was the first time I actually saw the video myself. The students had assured me that they’d left the embarrassing parts on the cutting-room floor. I should have given stricter guidelines, insisted that they not hide the cameras and never record someone without getting prior consent.”

“And I, too, regret that I suggested this as a project in the first place,” Patty said.

“It’s a little late now, wouldn’t you say?” Jane Daly cried, her focus still exclusively on Patty and not at all on Al’s role.

Patty nodded and said nothing. “Clearly, the only ethical thing for me to do now is to resign. Molly Masters is going to have to take my place.”

“Nobody wants this to go that far,” I immediately said.

“I do,” came a voice behind me.

“Me, too.” It was Jane.

“All those in favor of Molly Masters taking over as—”

“Wait!” I cried, leaping to my feet. “Just wait. We’re all reacting here in the heat of the moment. Let’s let ourselves cool down and take another look at this matter when the full PTA is present at the regular meeting in two weeks.”

“Sounding pretty presidential there, Molly,” somebody remarked.

“Don’t say that! I don’t want to sound presidential. I don’t want to be the president.”

“Which is why you’re not seeing that Patty should resign,” Jane Daly said, getting to her feet. “Come on, everybody, let’s get out of here.”

They rose and headed out the door en masse. I knew the right thing to do was to stay behind and reassure Patty that she’d done nothing wrong. But I couldn’t. Truth be told, I was angry myself. I came off looking like an idiot on that tape. The thought of having had an entire class in my daughter’s school witness that aspect of my personality was excruciating. Every one of us on that video had to feel equally bad, with the possible exception of Patty. Could she have done this deliberately— engineered this so that she could show us what idiots we all were?

I left with the crowd, consciously trying to avoid anyone’s eyes. Stephanie, however, was waiting for me by my car.

I held up a hand. “Not now, Stephanie. I need to be alone for a while and see if I can save face. Oversized nostrils and all.”

She nodded. “Well, I told you so. They say that everybody loves a clown. Though some might quibble with the accuracy of that expression, it’s indisputable that
nobody
loves a shrew.
You
have nothing to be ashamed of.”

“Neither do you, Steph. You were curt with the girls, but we can all stand to be more patient at times.”

She widened her eyes and said, “Yes, we can, can’t we?” then grinned and went to her own car.

That “I told you so” of hers must have been building up for years now. I wondered if she’d be willing to serve as president again. Maybe for a second ten-year term.

I mulled things over during my drive home. Once again, I was embarrassed to admit to myself that I was feeling resentful toward Patty. Although I’d pulled into my garage and shut off my engine, I sat there for a couple of minutes, shivering from the cold, trying to put my thoughts in order.

Wait. There was a reason I was so cold—I’d left my coat at Patty’s. That was an unconscious sign that I needed to say the things I was thinking to Patty’s face, admit to her how bad the tape had made me feel, and suggest that we figure out a way to put the whole incident behind all of us. Maybe we could all learn and grow from the experience.

I pulled out and turned the car around, but cracked myself up at that last thought. Asking for personal growth from a half dozen people at once was as big a fantasy as the Easter bunny. Far easier to blame the person aiming the spotlight and exposing one’s flaws than to perform cosmetic surgery on one’s own personality. Truth be told, that tape could have been so much worse for me and, likely, every single person it depicted. Al’s students were probably telling the truth about the embarrassing sections having been left on the cutting-room floor.

I parked in Patty’s driveway, then trudged up the steps and rang the doorbell, which was oddly loud. Then I noticed something by my feet. It was the leprechaun, who’d seemingly been torn from his position on the door. The wind must have caught him and torn him free, I thought, retrieving it. I opened the glass outer door and tried to hang the leprechaun on his little hooks.

The door, which had been ajar, swung open from the gentle pressure of my attempt to rehang the decoration.

I stared in horror. Patty Birch was lying motionless in a pool of blood in the center of her living room floor, a knife handle protruding from her chest.

Chapter 4

Feeling Woozy

I screamed, my vision locked on her motionless body. This couldn’t be happening. Surely Patty was just playing a macabre joke on me. I took a couple of steps toward her. Her eyes were open and unseeing.

Though I knew I should check for a pulse, I was so certain she was dead that I surrendered to my instincts and staggered back outside again, needing to get away from this house and the hideous sight.

“Help,” I murmured, feeling dizzy. My knees were wobbly. I grabbed the railing on the front porch and steadied myself. I scanned the street, but it was quiet with no cars.

My vision locked upon the large two-story house directly across the street. Patty’s ex-husband lived there, and the lights were on. I ran to the house and leaned on the doorbell.

A young blonde opened her door. I couldn’t remember her name, but I’d seen her once or twice and recognized her as Patty’s ex-husband’s new wife. There weren’t many twenty-somethings with teenage students, so she stood out at school functions. I saw a flicker of recognition in her features, but I said, “Mrs. Birch? I’m Molly Masters.”

She must have seen how grave my expression was, for she immediately demanded, “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Patty. She’s been stabbed.”

“Oh, my God! You mean . . . you . . . you saw . . . is she dead or just . . . bleeding?”

“She’s dead. I need to use your phone.” I grabbed the edge of the door and started to enter.

She put her hands to her face. “Poor Randy! He’ll be so upset when he finds out! They were married for nearly twenty years.”

“Oh, God,” I said, and froze partway through the doorway, remembering now that Patty’s fourteen-year-old daughter was likely home. “Kelly. Is she here?”

“She’s in her room.”

“She’ll hear me. I can’t—”

She held up a hand and shook her head. “Don’t worry. She’ll have her earphones on, listening to music. That’s what she always does when we’re here alone.”

Her tone of voice was so matter-of-fact. What was wrong with this woman! Kelly was bound to be ten times as affected by her mother’s death as Randy would be over losing his ex-wife.

“There’s a phone in the kitchen,” she continued. “I’ll get it for you.”

To steady myself, I leaned against the wall by the front door. Damn it! I should have stayed at Patty’s. Called from there. I focused on the stairs directly in front of me, fearing that Kelly would come down those stairs and spot me shaking like a leaf.

The woman returned and handed me a bright blue cordless phone. “I’ll call from outside,” I said, shoving back out the door. I dialed 911 as I stepped onto the front porch. To my surprise, she came out with me. I slumped down on the wood floor of the porch, unable to support my weight any longer. A male dispatcher answered. I said, “There’s been a murder. A woman was stabbed to death. Patty Birch. Across the street from where I am now.”

“Your name?”

“Molly Masters.”

“Can you give me the address?” he asked.

“What’s her address?” I asked the bleached blonde, holding the phone out so the dispatcher could hear.

“Thirteen forty-six Blackwood Drive,” she answered.

I put the phone back to my ear. “Is there anyone else on those premises?” the man asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I just . . . came to her house. The door was open, and I found her like that. I’m looking at the house now, and I don’t see anyone. My car’s the only one in her driveway.”

“What’s your address?”

My entire body had such a case of the shakes that I was bashing my ear and lips with the phone. I wanted to ask if he meant my home address or the address I was calling from, but could only manage to mutter, “I feel sick.” I thrust the phone into Blonde’s hands.

“Hel-hello?” she said as I crawled as far as the railing to be sick over the side of the porch. “This is Amber Birch. The, um, the woman who called you is vomiting right now. Can I . . . answer any questions?”

She talked to the dispatcher, explaining her relationship to “the victim,” while I tried to pull myself together. When I shakily got to my feet, I glanced up at the house and thought I saw the curtains part in an upstairs room.

“Is Kelly’s father home?” I asked Amber.

She shook her head at me and said, “I hear the police sirens now,” into the phone. She hung up.

“Kelly’s going to see the police cars pulling in across the street.”

“Shit!” Amber said, stomping her foot. “Randy is in Japan. I’ll call him. He can’t make it back here till tomorrow, even if he left immediately. I’m going to have to tell her myself.” She went through the door, taking the phone with her. I felt too dizzy to do anything but sit down.

A moment later, Tommy Newton’s patrol car came screeching to a stop in front of the Birches’ house. He gestured at another pair of officers in a second car to go ahead across the street to Patty’s house. By the time Tommy made it up the porch steps to me, an emergency van was pulling up in Patty’s driveway.

“They’re too late,” I said to Tommy. “The paramedics, I mean.” I hugged my knees to my chest while seated on the top step of Amber Birch’s porch and shivered helplessly.

“Molly? You don’t look so good.”

I didn’t feel so good, either, but mumbled under my breath, “Neither do you.” Everything had such a surreal edge to it that his freckled features looked pale and gaunt in the bright light from the motion detectors above me.

“Where’s your coat?”

“Patty’s house,” I murmured.

“ ’Scuse me?”

“The victim’s house. I left it there by mistake.”

Tommy returned to his car, opened his trunk, and retrieved a blanket. He wrapped it around my shoulders. He peered into my eyes and said, “Let’s get you out of the cold.”

“I don’t mind the cold,” I replied, but only because I wasn’t at all certain that I could get to my feet without fainting.

He put his arm around me as he led me to his car. He and I had known each other for more than thirty years, both of us having grown up in this town, along with Lauren, who was his wife in addition to being my best friend. “There a reason you been sittin’ out here by yourself?” he asked as he opened his car door for me.

“Because I’m a coward. Patty’s daughter’s in there, and I can’t face her.”

Tommy put me into his passenger seat, then got into the driver’s seat. “Want to tell me what happened?” he asked gently.

His features and voice were so compassionate at that moment that I started crying. Tommy handed me a box of tissues and said nothing. When I managed to regain my self-control, I said, “Considering you’re a police sergeant and all, this is the stupidest thing I’ve ever said, but I could kill whoever did this. Kelly’s my son’s age. They’re in some of the same classes in junior high. What do you say to a fourteen-year-old girl whose mother’s been murdered, right across the street from her?”

Tommy gave no answer.

“Everybody’s always told me what a great sense of humor I have. But you know what? If positions were reversed right now, if I were . . . dead on the floor and Patty were the one to have found me, she’d have known what to say to my children. She’d have comforted them. I’d trade every ounce of my wit to be the sort of person with that kind of inner strength and poise.”

Again, Tommy said nothing for a long time, then quietly said, “Let me take your statement, then I’ll drive you home.”

“Karen’s on her first date.” My eyes teared up again. “This is what she’ll remember for the rest of her life. How she came home from her first date and learned that the nice lady who gave her a driving lesson that morning had been murdered.”

I was sitting in the interrogation room at the police station. I’d already given my formal statement and called home to tell Jim what was going on, but felt strangely unwilling to leave. Tommy had gotten one of his men to retrieve my coat and had returned it to me—after deciding it wasn’t evidence—so I couldn’t even use the cold as an excuse to stay inside.

Because I’m ludicrously susceptible to caffeine but wanted the comfort of a cup in my hands, I was sipping water from a stained coffee cup that still bore a faint flavor of old coffee. Tommy watched me, his red hair in even worse than its typical hat-head state, with a cowlick standing at attention.

“I thought the curse was over, Tommy. I finally went two full years. Nobody was murdered. Does that sound to you like it should be reason to celebrate? Two stinkin’ years without anyone I know getting murdered? Sheesh! What is it with me?”

Tommy shook his head and sighed. “I dunno.”

“No, I’m really asking, Tommy. I’m just . . . a typical housewife. A suburbanite mom with a little cottage industry on the side that barely brings in enough revenue to require me to declare a profit. Why should
I
be more deadly than the bubonic plague?”

“You bring out the worst in people?”

I scowled. “Let’s stick with your ‘I don’t know.’ ” I sighed. “Patty Birch, of all people. She was so . . . amazing. Who would do this to her?”

“You said that you and Lauren saw Stephanie early this morning. And that Stephanie had been furious with Patty.”

I nodded. Both of us knew Stephanie too well to seriously believe that she’d committed this horrid crime. “That was because of the tape I told you about. Have you heard back from your crime-scene investigators? Was the tape still there, in Patty’s VCR?”

“Yeah. Watched it when you were calling home. Didn’t make y’all look too swift, but that’s about the sum of it. Can’t see as it was worth bloodshed. Though maybe it was a last straw . . . a trigger. Anyone at the meeting strike you as bein’ on the edge? Ready to snap?”

“Everyone did.”

“Nothing stood out?”

“There was the unseen voice I didn’t recognize who called us amoral. And one time when everyone kind of gasped.”

“At what?”

“I don’t know. Something Jane Daly or Emily Crown said. My attention had wandered.”

He rose and gestured for me to follow him. “I’ll replay it for you.”

“That’s hardly standard police procedure, is it?”

He shrugged. “You’re a material witness. You know these people. Maybe you can tell better ’n me when someone’s hittin’ a nerve.”

He led me to a second room where four officers were watching us on tape. They did a double take at me. To my chagrin, they were watching my aren’t-I-funny . . . not section. Tommy explained that he wanted me to watch this without distractions, and the others left the room. He fast-forwarded till we reached the section I’d missed.

Emily and Jane were in the corner of the high school cafeteria. The camera appeared to be resting at the opposite side of the table. Jane was saying, “. . . because she doesn’t
want
you to lose weight. I’m telling you, she’s so competitive, she needs to have something over everyone else.”

Emily sighed. “And now she’s going to win yet another award. That’s Perfect Patty for you, isn’t it? She’s so freaking perfect that it would never even occur to her that she’s bringing us mere mortals to shame in comparison.”

Jane rolled her eyes. “You can say that again. Try holding down a job for ten years that you and everyone else knows Patty could do better than you with one arm tied behind her back.”

The screen image shook as if the camera had been jostled. Oblivious to whatever caused the camera motion, Emily cried, “That’s exactly how she makes
me
feel! The truth of the matter is, Patty is as insensitive and egotistical as they come.”

I caught my own breath at that, just thinking how Patty must have felt hearing that from her so-called “best friend” in front of a half dozen witnesses.

“If she ever once tried to—” Emily must have noticed then that the girl with the hidden camera was within earshot, for she stopped. She put on a smile and said, “Oh, hi, kids. Still trying to get your little camera?”

“Yes.”

Jane smirked and crossed her arms. Again, the posture gave me the image of her as a gnome. If she commented, it was not recorded. Instead, the final scene with Patty began, and Tommy stopped the VCR.

“Any thoughts?” Tommy asked me.

“Well, it doesn’t look to me like a motive for murder, but just shows how . . . bitchy we can be sometimes when we think nobody is looking. Patty herself took the brunt, so if anything,
she
should have been infuriated. Though I’m sure Jane and Emily’s getting caught talking about her behind her back was horrid for them, too.” I winced, remembering how I’d been guilty of talking behind Patty’s back just this morning. I sank my face in my hands. “How did this happen? Patty was such a terrific person, and her last day on this earth was spent learning that all her friends resented and betrayed her.”

The next morning, my first thought upon waking was that I’d had a terrible dream but that everything was fine now—Patty was alive and well. But as I became fully conscious, I remembered the whole story and realized that Patty was dead. I pulled my pillow over my face, thinking there was no way I could face the day.

Jim was already showered and getting dressed the next time I opened my eyes. He saw that I was awake, knelt beside me, and stroked my hair. “You’re coming to church, aren’t you?” he asked.

“No.” I didn’t want to see any familiar faces, but also didn’t feel like explaining this. “I’ll go to a later service by myself.”

Our dog, meanwhile, put her front paws on the edge of the bed beside Jim and shoved her cold, wet little nose into my face, whining for attention. I got up, put on my bathrobe and slippers, and went downstairs, just as Jim was trying to hustle everyone into the car. Karen gave me a reassuring smile before heading out to the garage. We’d both gotten home last night just before midnight. She’d said her date was “good,” that dinner was “good,” and the movie was “pretty good.” She was horrified at my news, but at least she’d heard it directly from me.

Our fourteen-year-old, Nathan, stalled as he put on his coat. He was tall and thin with a band of brown freckles across his nose and cheeks. These days he kept his hair very short and combed with gel into what was called a “ski jump” in the front. He asked me what happened last night. I told him only that Kelly’s mother was dead and that I didn’t feel up to talking about it. Void of all energy, I sank into a living room chair and stared at the wall.