Murder at the PTA (15 page)

The collection included
Little Women
, hardcover, bound in a deep rich blue and inscribed “Agnes Heikkinen” on the inside cover in a young hand; seven Nancy Drews, paper dustcovers intact;
The Little Colonel
; a couple of dingy Bobbsey Twins books. I took down a copy of
The Princess and the Goblin
. Inscribed on the front flyleaf was “To Agnes, from her aunt Agnes, Christmas 1910.”

From Agnes to Agnes, and then passed to our Agnes. A triple play. I slid the book back onto the shelf and was grateful that my family didn’t curse succeeding generations with increasingly inappropriate names. I’d have to thank my mother next time I talked to her—which might be before Christmas, or might not.

Since the most likely place for the photo album was also the place it would take longest to search—the book-lined study—I took on Agnes’s bedroom next.

I looked at the nightstand. The specifications for the school that had been Agnes’s last nighttime reading was thicker than the Chicagoland phone book. I flipped to the end and whistled—829 pages. Why on earth was Agnes reading this? It was something for builders to read: contractors, plumbers, electricians, but not school principals, for heaven’s sake.

“This isn’t frying the eggs,” I told myself, quoting Marina. If I didn’t get a move on, I’d have to come back after the memorial service, when darkness was closing in.

With sturdy resolve, I opened the dresser drawers. I pushed my hands through the stacks of clothing and felt around for any booklike shape. Nothing.

I shut the last drawer with a bang and opened the bifold closet doors. A long line of gray, navy, and maroon suits marched down the clothes rod: an army of lifeless, flat Agneses. I shivered, hoping the image wouldn’t slide into tonight’s dreams.

The shelf above the suits was crowded with hat boxes. Which was odd, because I couldn’t once remember seeing Agnes under a hat. I reached up and jiggled a box. The first box I tried with a pink faded chintz pattern was light. So was the next box, a red-and-white stripe. The next box was also light, and the next, and the next. None contained any photo albums, then.

My body acted on its own volition, fast and with no thought. I grabbed the last box on the shelf and fumbled off the lid.

It was a hat.

So much for that mystery. I started to replace it, but stopped and took a closer look.

The hat was a cloche, made in a rich maroon so dark it was almost black. A light netting was sewn onto the front brim, something else I hadn’t seen on a hat in years. I turned the hat upside down. FAYE’S MILLINERY, read the label. CHICAGO, ILLINOIS. The name wasn’t familiar, but as I’d never bought a formal hat in my life, that wasn’t a huge surprise.

What was a surprise was that Agnes owned expensive hats she never wore. She’d always struck me as one of those people who went through her closet once a year and got rid of anything not worn in the last twelve months. Yet if that was Agnes, why all these hats?

I replaced the box and pushed aside the suits to check the closet floor.

“Oh . . .”

I backed up until I ran into the bed. I sat down fast. My vision clouded with a moisture that could only be tears.

It was always the shoes.

Shoes are worn year after year, collecting memories and miles and dirt from vacations and drops of paint from home-improvement projects. Shoes show how a life is lived. I’d packed away my grandmother’s dresses without a quiver, but when I’d picked up her shoes, I’d fallen apart. I looked at a pair of Agnes’s slippers, worn through at one toe, and wept.

When the tears stopped, I wiped my eyes. “I’m so sorry, Agnes,” I whispered. “So very, very sorry.”

I shut the closet door and went to the bathroom to rinse my face. The mirror showed red-rimmed eyes, but the color would fade by the time I had to stand in front of an auditorium full of people. My hair, however, had to be fixed. I dragged my fingers through the strands, which didn’t help matters at all. My purse with its resident comb and brush was in the car, so I whispered an apology to Agnes and opened the door of her medicine cabinet.

I blinked. “Wow.”

A veritable pharmacy had taken up residence inside—big brown bottles, little clear bottles, medium white bottles, and all sorts of sizes in between. I recognized some as herbal medications; some were vitamins; others were prescription. The prescription labels were from the Hunter Center, an office with which I wasn’t familiar. I didn’t recognize the medications, either. Agnes always prided herself on being healthy, and she had made a big ceremony out of awarding Tarver’s perfect attendance certificates. If she was so healthy, why was—

Oh. My. I was peeking in Agnes’s medicine cabinet.

I shut the door fast. There’d be time to fix my hair at the school. Using someone else’s comb was icky, anyway, and even worse if that someone was dead.

I turned off the lights and scooted down the hall. The study, when I turned on all the lights, wasn’t as dismal as I’d remembered. In a dark and slightly claustrophobic way, it was almost cozy. I crouched down to look at the low-lying books—educational texts, books on economics and financial management. Next up was a shelf of architecture and construction books.

I stood and looked through the next bookcase. History, biography,American history.The last two bookcases had shelves above and closed cabinets below. Inside, one shelf was empty, but the other held a few photo albums. I took down the leftmost one. Its thick burlap cover was promising, but the pages were the sticky cardboard layered with thin clear plastic. It was not the album Gloria wanted. The photos, judging from the clothing and hair-styles, were from the midseventies.

Curiosity made me look closer. Instead of dour faces in formal portraits, I saw photos of a smiling Agnes. Her hair, past her shoulders with feathered bangs, was the same hairstyle she’d been wearing the last time I saw her.

Except for the hair, Happy Agnes didn’t look anything like the Agnes I’d known. She was young and thin and, well, happy. Who, I wondered, had taken the photo? Who had inspired that shining joy? When I turned the page, I knew.

I
slipped into my reserved front-row seat. “Thought you were going to be late,” Erica said. Claudia stepped up to the podium and tapped the microphone with dark red fingernails.

“Good afternoon,” she said somberly. “I’d like to start this memorial service for Agnes Mephisto by asking Pastor Calvin to lead us in prayer.” A black-robed pastor took the microphone. “Let us pray,” he said, and an auditorium full of people bowed their heads.

I tried to pay attention, but Pastor Calvin was famous for his long-windedness, and it became clear that he hadn’t known Agnes at all. The third time he called her “our deeply beloved sister,” I tuned him out completely and took myself back to Agnes’s study. Once I’d recovered from my startling discovery, I’d found the family album quickly enough.

Bound in cracking leather, the black pages were filled with sepia-toned photos stuck on with black adhesive corners. I saw horses and hayfields and ponies and women in long dresses. Most of the photos were labeled with names; some had names and dates. The album was a treasure, and I didn’t blame Gloria for wanting it closer at hand.

I’d laid the old album aside and looked at Happy Agnes one more time. There were also a tanned Agnes and a relaxed Agnes. And, according to the photos on the next page, a married Agnes.

“Dear Father, please take to your heart our sister . . .”

On the second page, Agnes and her husband, John Mephisto, were dressed in their wedding clothes. He was in jeans, a dress shirt and tie, with long hair loose to his shoulders. She was in a white dress that looked like a long T-shirt, her long hair loose. Agnes carried daisies, and she and John were both barefoot.

The next few album pages had snapshots of Agnes and John posing at beaches, at the edge of the Grand Canyon, in front of Mount Rushmore. John was good-looking, if you liked tall, dark, and handsome, and the top of Agnes’s head almost reached his shoulder. Each picture showed Happy Agnes with her expansive smile and one hand holding on tight to her husband. The husband’s smile wasn’t nearly so wide, and his gaze often wandered from the camera.

“And let us remember our own souls. . . .”

Then came two pages of Christmas pictures, then nothing. Most of the album was blank.

“Amen.”

The minister stepped away from the microphone. Claudia took charge. “Thank you, Pastor. I’d like to ask Erica Hale, president of the Tarver Elementary Parent Teacher Association, to say a few words. Erica?”

In a navy blue skirt and jacket over a staid white blouse, Erica looked the part of the grieving colleague. But Agnes and Erica had shouted at each other more times than first graders could count, and our esteemed president had been checking off the days until her term as PTA president was over.

At her house the other night, I’d stayed after Randy and Julie left to beg for gardening tips and had learned a little too much about how Erica felt about the recently deceased principal. “It’s a relief,” she’d said, “to have that woman gone.”

I watched Erica adjust the microphone to suit her short stature and wondered if she would manage to avoid hypocrisy.

“Agnes Mephisto,” she began, “was principal of this school for ten years. Under her guidance, test scores rose, money was saved, and a new era in administration-teacher relations was achieved. . . .”

The level of relations was a new low, but it was new.

“Agnes was an original, and she will be deeply missed.”

I thought about that as Erica came down the stage steps and sat back down. “No lies,” I whispered.

“I didn’t get straight As in law school for nothing.”

“Randy Jarvis is the treasurer of the Tarver PTA,” Claudia was saying. “Randy?”

Mr. Jarvis laboriously stumped up the stairs, one foot up, next foot beside it. One foot up. Next foot beside it. He swayed and flailed his arms at the top, but he regained his balance and plodded to center stage. A large, soft exhalation ran around the room; I hadn’t been alone in holding my breath.

Randy moved the microphone up and stood a moment with his hands on both sides of the lectern. “I met Agnes ten years ago this August.” He looked out across the audience. “Remember that August? Hot as Hades and not a drop of rain. Humid as all get out past Labor Day.”

That sounded like every August, but ten years ago I’d been enamored of an infant Jenna, so I wasn’t the best judge.

“Agnes came into the store and told me she was the new Tarver principal. Asked if I had any kids in the school.”

Randy was starting to ramble. I wondered if there would be a plot, or if it was going to be your average Randy story: long, tedious, and point-free. I deeply wanted to twist around and find Marina. This didn’t sound like the crazy-with-love-for-Agnes Randy she’d theorized.

“That day,” he went on, “Agnes bought a Diet Coke and a bag of Doritos.” He paused. “And an ice-cream sandwich. I nearly forgot about the ice cream.”

Randy held a roomful of people captive while he recited the junk food that Agnes regularly purchased—Doritos and ice cream in summer; potato chips and beef jerky in winter. “I always knew when winter was coming, just by what Agnes bought.” Randy chuckled. No one else did. “Just two weeks ago, Agnes bought potato chips but no jerky. I asked her if that meant we were only going to get half a winter. But she said she just wasn’t hungry.”

Mercifully, he stopped there. He nodded and made his ungainly way down the stairs.

“Our next speaker,” Claudia said, “is Beth Kennedy. Beth became secretary of our PTA only a few weeks ago, but she’s been a part of Tarver for many years. She’s also the owner of the Children’s Bookshelf. Beth?”

I climbed the stage stairs, which suddenly seemed taller and steeper than Mount Everest. At the top, I stopped, catching my breath. What was I doing up here?

The night before, I’d sat in front of the computer and written draft after draft of words appropriate for the occasion—bland words that edged toward hypocrisy without quite tumbling into the pit. I glanced down at them now. “Agnes Mephisto’s love of books was our common bond. . . . Agnes had a strong and admirable drive to push Tarver Elementary to great heights.”

Gag me.

I looked out across the upturned faces—Erica, Randy, overly pregnant Julie, and on the other side of Erica, the school superintendent and administrative staff. Scattered around were teachers and local business owners, a few parents—Debra O’Conner and her husband, CeeCee Daniels and husband, Claudia Wolff, Tina Heller. All of them were here because they were supposed to be; none of them were here because they cared about Agnes.

A sudden surge of anger roared through me. I grabbed the paper and held it high. “Claudia asked me to say a few words, and I spent last night working on this speech. Until ten seconds ago my intentions were to read it.” I crumpled the sheet into a lump and hurled it to the floor. “But it’s crap.”

There were lots of sidelong glances and a soft rustling. Behind me I heard scuffing feet, and I figured Claudia was perching on the edge of her chair, looking around for a hook she could use to yank me away from the microphone.

“Crap,” I repeated. “We can stand up here and say pleasant things about Agnes, but did any of us truly know her? How many of us invited her into our homes? Stopped in her office just to chat?”

More feet were shuffling. I plunged on. “If we’re here to memorialize Agnes, let’s talk about what she was really like.”

Air left the room as two hundred people sucked in a breath at the same time. “Beth!” whispered Claudia. “You can’t—”

I ran over her strangled cry of distress. “Did anyone know Agnes was named for her aunt Agnes? At least three generations of her family had the name. Did anyone know Agnes was from Superior?”