Death of a PTA Goddess (5 page)

Not ten minutes later, the doorbell rang, which, great watchdog that she is, got Betty Cocker to start barking. “Hush, BC,” I said. She looked up at me, continuing to bark. “On second thought, speak.” We’d been working to train her out of the barking at the doorbell, but with a murderer on the loose, we could probably use as much protection around here as possible.

I cinched my robe tighter and approached the door, thinking if this proved to be a reporter, I would go into attack mode myself and save BC the effort. A second thought occurred to me: If this was Stephanie, I would
really
launch into attack mode.

The barking immediately stopped and turned to tail wags as I opened the door. Standing there was Lauren, who must have made the short walk between our homes. My eyes misted at the welcome sight of her attractive, round face. She had a small bag in her hand, which she ignored as she gave me a hug. “I should have gone with you last night.”

“It wouldn’t have changed anything,” I said as she released me from her hug.

“You might not have doubled back. You might not have had to be the one to find her.”

“It’s the story of my life. I never arrive early enough to prevent the murder, just to find the body. I should run for county coroner.”

She gave BC, whose interest had turned to sniffing the bag in her hand, a quick little pat. “Tommy said you were pretty shaken up last night.”

I nodded. “I didn’t feel like going to church this morning. So the place is quiet, if you can stay for a while.” I put a hopeful tone in my voice, needing Lauren’s companionship.

We automatically started for the kitchen, where, on our stools at the counter, we’d had so many heart-to-hearts over the years. “I brought you a muffin.”

Our standard “comfort” food. “Thanks. Whatever would I do without you and your muffins?”

“I don’t know, but since I bake when I’m upset, I’d weigh two hundred pounds if I didn’t have you to eat them.”

I chuckled a little, my humor returning. “You know, when the doorbell rang this morning, my first thought was that it’d be Stephanie, wanting to know who I thought—”

The doorbell rang, again instantly augmented by my dog’s barks. Lauren and I exchanged glances.

“Couldn’t be,” I said. My parents were currently in Florida, so there was no way that this could be my mother. Reaching for an alternate explanation, I called over my shoulder, “Isn’t this Girl Scout Cookie season?” as I went to the door.

It was indeed Stephanie. The sight of her on my doorstep made me want to join BC at barking. Stephanie was wearing a powder-blue tailored pants suit, her hair wrapped up in a scarf, turban style. I stared at her, speechless. She must really be in quite a mood if she felt inspired to dress like the Queen of Sheba on a Sunday morning. Her au pair must be watching her seven-year-old son, unfortunately; I enjoyed the little boy immensely. Stephanie shot a withering glare at Betty Cocker, who continued to bark.

Finding my voice, I said, “Hi, Stephanie. We were just talking about you.”

She stepped inside and said, “We’ll leave your conversation up to my imagination, all right? Hello, Lauren.”

“Stephanie,” Lauren said with a nod. She’d returned to the living room to give me moral support. Unfortunately, BC immediately quieted down.

“It’s probably good that you’re here, Lauren,” Stephanie said. “We need to discuss what we’re going to do.”

“About . . . ?” I prompted.

“Solving Patty’s murder, of course.” She swept past us and took a seat in the recliner, known in my house as “the big chair” from the days when my children were little enough to cuddle with me there.

I looked at Lauren, who gave me a slight one-shoulder shrug, then took a seat on the love seat and pulled a white paper napkin and a pink-colored muffin out of her bag, which she handed to me. I took a seat beside her as she held out a second muffin to Stephanie, who shook her head. BC was rapt in front of her, her little brown eyes pleading for the muffin that Stephanie had declined.

“As you both no doubt recall, at that ungodly hour yesterday morning when I ran into you in the school parking lot, I said something about wanting to kill Patty. Needless to say, that was just a figure of speech, and I’m completely innocent.”

“Mm-hmm,” I said, taking a bite of Lauren’s homemade muffin. “This is delicious. You don’t know what you’re missing, Stephanie.”

“Alas.” She leaned back in her seat and studied my face. “We all know that you’re going to look into this murder, Molly. You always do. So I thought I’d offer you some assistance.”

“Why?”

She raised her eyebrows. “You don’t think that I’m going to sit back and allow the gossipmongers to carry on at will, do you?”

“What are people saying about you?” Lauren asked. “That you did it?”

“I doubt anyone has
that
much misplaced nerve, no. Just that I . . . instigated it. Thanks to my making the meeting so inflammatory.”

“They may have a point, there, Stephanie,” I interjected. “I mean, obviously you didn’t mean to get Patty murdered, but you could have handled the whole thing a bit more gently.”

“More gently, you say? I was supposed to pussyfoot around when that . . . when Patty set me up to look like a complete bitch?”

That actually was an insult to my wonderful little female dog, but I decided not to call Stephanie on it. “You didn’t look like a
complete
bitch. But my point is that people wouldn’t have gotten so upset if you’d warned them about how they came off on the video, or if you’d allowed us to view the tape individually, in the privacy of our own homes, and then called a meeting to discuss it once we’d calmed down.”

She examined her fingernails. “That was precisely how I told Patty I wished to proceed, but she insisted we do it as a group at her house. Anyway, what is important is that it seems as though this entire town has the misconception that I was jealous of Patty Birch. That’s ludicrous. The best way to dispel such nonsense is if I play an active part in solving her murder.”

“Stephanie, I just don’t see—”

“Don’t argue with me, Molly. My mind is made up. You’ve done this before, so tell me—what’s the first step toward figuring out who the murderer is?”

“Jeez, Stephanie. I don’t know.” I glanced at Lauren, whose lips were pursed. “You just . . . try to talk to people in Patty’s social circles . . . her menopause support group, for example. You figure out who had such a fractured relationship with her that they might have resorted to violence.”

“That makes sense. Three heads are definitely going to be better than one.” She gestured at Lauren. “I’m assuming you’ll take advantage of your friendship with the police sergeant’s wife, after all.”

Lauren let out a guffaw. “Stephanie, Molly never takes advantage of our friendship. We’ve been friends our whole lives because we like each other. For good reason.”

“You misunderstood the implication.” She chuckled. “Molly, you know I didn’t mean that you’re friends with the chief investigator’s wife because that’s prudent. Now mind you, I’m assuming that you’re innocent, despite how idiotic you were shown to be in the tape and the fact that you had the best opportunity.”

I massaged my suddenly aching temples. “You know, I am not in the mood to put up with this. Please leave, Stephanie.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I obviously underestimated how touchy you would be the morning after your morbid discovery.” She rose and headed for the door. “You know how to find me,” she said over her shoulder as she shut the door behind her.

I growled in frustration and looked at Lauren, who gave me a smile. I said, “If only I could figure out how to
lose
her.”

Chapter 5

A Different Drummer

The next couple of days seemed to pass in a colorless blur. After having given myself twenty-four hours to cool off, I had called Stephanie and initiated a peace-pipe exchange. She was just being herself, after all, and with a killer on the loose who was very possibly a fellow PTA member, none of us needed to make enemies. The passage of time, however, had done nothing to ease my guilt over my cowardly avoidance of Kelly Birch on the night of the murder. Nathan reported to me that she’d been absent from school both Monday and Tuesday. I planned to tell her after the funeral, which was scheduled for tomorrow afternoon, how very sorry I was about her mother.

But for now, I was seated in “the big chair” with my sketch pad, in search of a cartoon idea. Eventually I drew a couple of elderly women staring after a young man dressed in feathers and streamers who is cheerfully marching down the street while banging on a drum. One woman is gripping the other woman’s sleeve and says to her, “Hold on, Agnes . . . this could be a trap. Are we supposed to march to the beat of a different
drum
. . . or to a different
drummer
?”

The phone rang. “And not a moment too soon,” I said to myself as I dropped my feeble attempt at humor, stepped over my sleeping dog, and answered the phone.

“Molly?” The voice was tense and unfamiliar to me. “This is Jane Daly. You’re down as a substitute chaperone for the eighth graders’ ski trip this evening.”

“I am?” I muttered, needing a moment to transition from stupid-cartoonist mode to addled-mother mode. “Oh, of course I am.” This ski trip was an anticipatory celebration for the eighth graders who’d be graduating from junior high in a few months. With tomorrow and Friday scheduled as in-service days for the junior high, this was not a school night. “My son, Nathan, has been really looking forward to it. Somebody got sick?”

There was a pause. “Patty was supposed to be one of the chaperones.”

I winced. “Oh. Of course. Stupid of me not to realize that.”

“You couldn’t have known she was going.”

“Sure I could have. She started the whole tradition of the ski trip, after all.”

“Yes. It was another of her terrific ideas.”

Her voice sounded flat. Having witnessed her videotaped harangue of Patty, I immediately bristled and asked, “Are you being sarcastic?”

“No, it’s not that. I’m just a little upset, because I just now found out that Kelly’s going on the ski trip, in spite of everything.”

“Kelly Birch?”

“Yes.” She sighed. “Keep a special watch out for her, would you?”

“I will, but I’m . . . surprised to hear she’s going. She hasn’t been in school. I assumed she’d be needing time to cope with her loss.”

“That’s what
I
thought, too, but she’s in school today, and I just got off the phone with her stepmom. Amber thought it’d be good for her. Amber’s going to be working at the ski slope tonight. Wouldn’t do to change one’s routine, just because your stepchildren’s mother died horribly right across the street from you, not four days ago.”

“Yes, well . . .” I let my voice trail off, not really knowing what to say. On the one hand, I shared Jane’s indignation at what appeared to be Amber’s indifference to Kelly’s grief. But Amber, as well as her stepdaughter, was a source of guilt for me.

After assuring Jane that I’d be at the school to help with the loading up of students and ski equipment, we said our good-byes and hung up.

I returned to my seat and pondered my feelings toward Amber Birch. Initially I had drawn nasty conclusions when I’d barged in on her to use her phone, yet it was impossible to say how I’d have reacted under those same circumstances. She was such a natural target for scorn from all of us forty-plus-year-olds who resented anyone’s trophy wife. None of this could be easy on her. I could seek her out and give her a kind word. More important, establishing camaraderie between us would help allow me to discuss her relationship with Patty and learn if she was a suspect . . . said my one face to my second face.

After school, Karen reminded me that I’d promised her that, if I went on the trip, she could go as well. Since then I’d learned that the high school teachers did not have in-service days this week, so this
was
a school night for her. Even so, these days I was anxious to spend some time with my growing-up-too-fast daughter. So far, Jim and I had only managed to elicit her usual one-word responses to questions about her budding romance with Adam Embrick. That she was at all interested in going skiing with her mother and a hundred eighth graders was almost a welcome surprise. I told her that she could come skiing as long as she got her homework done first.

That evening, we each had a bowl of macaroni-and-cheese—the Goddess of Processed Food’s little gift to us harried moms—and a Flintstone vitamin for dessert. Okay, so I’m not exactly centerfold material for
Good
Housekeeping
. Or even
So-so Housekeeping
. Truth be told,
Unlikely-to-cause-permanent-damage Housekeeping
was more my speed. I left a message at Jim’s office as to where we’d be. Then we took off to meet everyone at school.

It was a hectic scene in the junior high parking lot. In their excitement, the students had reverted to that peculiar tendency of young children to be able to spot a Cheerio in the dirt from a hundred paces, but not the twelve-feet-high, fifty-feet-long display of fine china directly in front of them. With many of them carrying skis, the trek along the sidewalk was hazardous to us non-Cheerios.

Jane Daly was the first person to greet me. Again, she was wearing her red gnome hat. “Molly. Several parents are driving up and hauling the kids’ ski equipment.”

“I can do that,” I quickly interjected.

She shook her head. “Those slots have already been taken. We need chaperones on the buses. It’s just you, me, and Chad on one bus, and we’ll have our hands full.”

I nodded. “Good thing it’s just the first hundred eighth graders to turn in their permission slips and not all three hundred of them.”

“Really.” She patted my arm. “I’ve got some running around to do. You take the clipboard and start checking off kids as they get on the bus.”

I got Karen and Nathan situated on the bus and began to check off names as a mob of eighth graders boarded. Their noisy voices were getting to me, so afterward I went outside to catch the few late-arrivals on my list. In the corner of my vision, I caught sight of Chad Martinez, who was pacing the sidewalk a short distance away, looking downhearted.

I smiled at him when he neared. He gave me a slight smile in return. “I’m really sorry about Patty’s death, Chad.”

“Me, too,” he said, his voice choked.

“I know you two were close friends.”

He made no reply, and the silence was heavy. As a less-somber conversation starter, I said, “Well. Two hours on the bus. With a group of young teenagers. Oh, boy.”

Chad’s deep-set eyes were now red-rimmed and appeared to be almost sunken into his skull. He said forlornly, “Patty used to lead us in song the whole way. She knew so many . . . great songs for groups. The only one I know is ‘A Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall.’ ”

“That’s quite a crowd pleaser. Wouldn’t be appropriate now, though. Besides, I keep forgetting the lyrics.”

He furrowed his brow. “It goes: ‘A hundred bottles of beer—’ ”

“I was kidding, Chad.”

“Oh. Of course.” He sighed. “I seem to have lost my sense of humor lately. Not that there’s much to smile about anymore, anyway.”

“Patty would have been the first one to say not to let our”—I stopped at the sight of Kelly Birch, shuffling toward the bus, her head down. Her father gave her a wave, then drove off—“spirits sink,” I said, swallowing the lump in my throat.

She was carrying skis and a boot bag, and Chad leaped at the opportunity to help her out by loading her equipment into a parent’s minivan. By the time she returned to the bus, she was the last on my list and walking side by side with Chad. “Glad you could make it, Kelly,” I said, feeling that this was the wrong time for saying anything substantive.

“Yeah, right,” she muttered into her shoes as she stomped up the stairs of the bus.

Chad sighed and shook his head. He gestured for me to go ahead of him. “After you, Mu—Mo—, er, ma’am.”

“Molly.”

On that note, we were off.

Having lived in Colorado for several years, I found that this eastern ski range made for an interesting switch in terms of overall skiing experience. The steepest run on this mountain would be the bunny hill at Vail. On the other hand, at the Colorado ski resorts, they have snow. At the Adirondack resorts, they have ice. To execute a turn when skiing on ice, one must possess: a) young and strong quadriceps, b) natural grace and coordination, and c) newly tuned skis with edges sharp enough to slice through an overripe tomato. Ignoring a and b so as not to sink into depression, the trouble with c for me was that it required getting off one’s fanny before
it
turned into an overripe tomato, going to a ski store, and having one’s skis tuned. Mine had last been tuned in 1982— assuming that the original manufacturer had tuned them prior to shipping them to the store.

After helping the kids get their skis, poles, and boots from the rental shop at the lodge—where they did indeed have skis with actual edges—Karen, Nathan, and I got on the chairlift. This lift featured two-seater chairs, resembling slightly padded metal benches that are fastened onto a thick, continuous cable overhead. We rode up, got off without incident, and Karen waited for Nathan and me at the top of the run. When we reached her, Nathan looked at me and asked, “Ready, Mom?”

I shook my head, looking down at the illuminated ski run. Despite the relative lack of altitude compared with the Rockies, it would be a long way to fall. If only my pants, jacket, and hat were equipped with air bags. “I’m going to start out as slow as possible. You’ll have to wait for me at the bottom.”

“Okay, but can I go right back up and meet you after my second run?” Nathan asked. “That’ll take about the same amount of time.”

“No.”

He pushed off, and soon the top of his head in its bright blue helmet was all that could be seen from my vantage point as he effortlessly whooshed down the slope. I glanced over at Karen in her yellow helmet, wishing not for the first time that I had purchased one of those for myself. Which I easily could have done while having my skis tuned.

“Want to go down with me?” Karen asked. “I don’t go as fast as Nathan.”

“I think I’ll stay up here and enjoy the view for a while. Have a nice run, and I’ll see you at the bottom.”

I watched her go down, till she and her yellow ski helmet were a safe distance away, then shoved off. As is often the case, I wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected to be and managed to get down just fine, but I was glad to get the first run of the day behind me. Both kids were dutifully waiting for me by the ski lift.

“I’ll go up one more time with you, Mom, then I’m gonna wait up for Robert,” Nathan said, naming one of his closest friends.

“Gallant of you. Thanks.”

Kelly was waiting in line immediately in front of our threesome, noticeably, I thought, keeping to herself, as if unable to participate in the excited voices of her peers surrounding us.

“Would you like to ride up with me, Kelly?” I asked.

She shrugged. Nathan and Karen were giving each other dirty looks at this idea, which would mean that they’d ride the lift together. They rarely argued these days, but they also avoided each other whenever possible. “How about if I ride up with you, Kelly?” Karen said sweetly.

“Okay,” she said, and almost smiled. They got onto the lift.

Nathan and I had only just hopped onto the next seat on the lift when a commotion arose from Karen and Kelly’s chair up ahead. The people waiting in the lift line beside us were all looking up at her.

Aghast, I saw that Kelly was hysterical, waving her arms and screaming, “Get me down! Get me down! Oh, my God! I’m going to die!”

“Stop the chair!” I yelled.

Our cries finally caught the attention of the operator, who stopped the string of chairs. By now, the two girls had to be a good fifteen feet in the air, and Nathan and I were at least six feet up. Kelly let her ski poles drop. They bounced on the hard ice and skittered down the slope, finally stopping just below my chair. I felt a little queasy at how rough the landing had been, unable to block out the thought of how much worse it would be for a person.

Kelly yanked off her mittens and hurled them down. She seemed to be clawing at her face with her bare fingers and was shrieking.

“Do something!” I hollered down to the lift operator. “Back us up!”

“Can’t!” he called back.

I could tell that Karen was trying to soothe her and had one arm around her shoulder, the other, thankfully, gripping the chair itself.

Kelly was squirming so badly in her seat that the chair was swinging in a nerve-wracking manner. I was petrified, unable to look away but increasingly frightened by what I was seeing. Karen would live through a fall from such a height, but not without breaking a bone or two.

“Just stay seated, Karen, Kelly! Everything is going to be fine,” I shouted.

Downwind from the girls, I doubted they could even hear me. Meanwhile, the two lift operators and a third man dressed in the red jacket for the ski patrol had rushed over underneath the girls. They were trying to talk to Kelly, who kept screaming through her tears, “Get me down!”

“Sheesh,” Nathan said. “Kelly’s really freaked out. I’m glad
I’m
not sitting with her.”

I was too engrossed in silent prayer to comment, but I’d have given anything to have been in that chair with her instead of my precious daughter.

“Do you think Karen’s going to fall?”

“No, Nathan, I don’t,” I snapped. “And I don’t feel like talking right now, okay? I’m trying to watch!”