Murder at the PTA (20 page)

“I would if I were him,” she said.

To my right, Oliver was still busy counting. “Ninety-one, ninety-two . . .”

Three blocks to go. Time for Mom to come up with some miraculous way of making everything better. Unfortunately, my bag of magic was flat empty. Well, except for the one surefire trick. “Have you told him you’re sorry?”

Half a block later, the answer came like a soft breeze. “No.”

“Do you think apologizing would help?”

“Maybe.”

“If you were him and he was you”—I grimaced at the atrocious grammar, but communication was the important thing—“would you want him to apologize?”

We drove the last block; then I clicked on the turn signal for the approach up our driveway. From the backseat came a very, very quiet “Yeah.”

“Maybe you should do it tomorrow.” I pulled the garage door opener off the visor and handed it to Oliver. He pushed the button with his thumb, and the door rolled up. “Get it done, and then you don’t have to think about it anymore,” I said.

We rolled onto the garage’s dry concrete, and I turned off the windshield wipers. “A hundred and thirty-seven,” Oliver said firmly. “I counted all the way from Mrs. Neff’s house.”

“Good job, Ollster,” I said. “You’re the King of Counting.”

Jenna unbuckled her seat belt, grabbed her backpack, and rushed inside. I helped Oliver with his buckle and held the booster seat while he jumped out. “What did Jenna do?” he asked. “Is she in trouble?”

So much for his not paying attention. “If Jenna wants to tell you, she will.” That meant he’d never know; Jenna wasn’t prone to sharing confidences with her little brother. I had high hopes that someday they’d be friends, but that day was probably decades distant.

“Oh.”

His voice sounded even smaller than usual. As we shut the car doors and headed into the warmth of the house, I studied him with the eagle eyes of a concerned mother. Oliver had a naturally cheerful personality, but now all I could see were sagging shoulders and dragging feet, and the voice in my head was Lauren Atchinson’s.
Is he showing other signs of grief or stress? Would you consider making an appointment with the school psychologist?

I hadn’t seen eye to eye with the school psychologist since she’d suggested Jenna’s basic nonreaction to the divorce could be linked to a deep fear of men’s genitals. But I knew a way to bring Oliver back to life. And with any luck it would bring Jenna and Oliver closer together, too.

Not so very long ago I would have called Richard before making a decision like this. He was their father, after all, and had a right to be involved in anything that affected their lives. But he was out of town, and Oliver needed this right away. Besides, I knew what Richard would say.

I dropped my purse in the study and headed to the kitchen. Jenna had already run upstairs, but Oliver had put his backpack on the kitchen table and, kneeling on the seat of a chair, was sorting through the contents.

“Mommy?” He turned, holding out a scribbly drawing. “Robert says this looks like a whale, but I want it to be a dolphin.”

Jenna plopped into the chair next to Oliver. “What’s that? Looks like a shark.”

“It’s a dolphin!”

Time to head off the impending argument. “Who wants some popcorn before dinner?”

Five minutes later the popping slowed to a stop. I poured the popcorn into a bowl, then drizzled melted butter and salt over the top. “Ready?” We ate the first ritual piece solemnly, then dug in for great greasy handfuls. “Normally,” I said, “we have popcorn on Sunday, right?”

“Um-hmm.” Grunts of agreement came through stuffed mouths.

“And sometimes we have it when someone is sick. Why else do we have popcorn during the week? No talking with your mouth full, please.”

Oliver reached for another handful. “We had popcorn when Mr. Stolz died.”

Oh, geez. I’d forgotten about that. The kids had been all excited about its being their turn to run the garden train and had run down the street, only to find an empty house and drawn shades. I’d given them hugs, talked about heaven, then done my best to distract them with food.

Jenna looked at me, her hand midway to the bowl. “Are we having popcorn because Mrs. Mephisto died?”

“Partly.”

“Whaf’s fe ofer pah?” Oliver asked.

“No talking with your mouth full.”

He swallowed hugely. “What’s the other part?”

I wiped my buttery fingers on a napkin. “Remember the time we had popcorn when I told you about our trip to Florida?”

The spring break trip had been a gift from Richard. “Take the tickets,” he’d said gruffly, and I’d cried myself to sleep that night, certain the divorce had been a horrible mistake. The next day he’d e-mailed the itinerary he’d worked up for the trip—new activities every thirty minutes, kids!—and I hadn’t cried over him since.

“Are we going to Disney World again?” Jenna’s eyes went round.

“No.”

She heaved a tremendous sigh, then shoved a massive handful of popcorn into her mouth. Her cheeks pouched out like a chipmunk’s. I closed my eyes briefly and decided to let this skirmish go. “You have to pick your battles,” my sister Darlene once told me. She had four children, and all four had evolved into functional young adults, so she must have done a few things right.

“We’re not going to Disney World,” I said, “but we are getting something.”

“Are we getting . . .” Oliver didn’t finish the sentence. His gaze was locked on me. “Are we. . . .” Hope was in his eyes, his face, his hands, his entire body.

“Wha—?” Jenna said, spitting out a wet and half-chewed kernel. “Are we what?”

I looked at Oliver. He knew.

His grin started small, then grew and went from ear to ear and practically all the way around his head. He jumped out of his chair and hurtled around the table in leaps and bounds. “We’re getting a dog, Jen! We’re getting a
dog
!”

 

The store was quiet. The lone customer was having a grand time chuckling over picture books by Kevin Henkes. Lois was at the front computer, working on a flyer for the Halloween party and humming an ABBA tune.

I found Paoze in the back corner, dusting the wooden puzzles with the raggedy feather duster that had been in the store as long as the store had existed. One of these days I’d have to get a new one.

“Paoze, I need to talk to you.”

He sprang to attention. “Yes, Mrs. Kennedy.”

I led the way to my office. “Don’t worry. You’re not in trouble.” I closed the door behind us. “And this is more of a personal matter, anyway.”

“Yes, Mrs. Kennedy.”

Time and time again, I’d asked him to call me Beth. “I cannot, Mrs. Kennedy,” he always said. “It would be disrespectful.” Maybe to him it was disrespectful, but it made me feel as if my mother-in-law were standing behind me.

I sat in my desk chair and Paoze perched on the edge of the chair facing me. “Remember the night I dropped you off at your house?” I asked. “Well, a couple of blocks away I thought I saw a . . . a friend of mine. This friend went into a two-story house, a white house with black shutters and what looked like a metal door.” It also had bars on the windows, but so did most houses in that neighborhood.

Paoze didn’t say anything.

“Do you know the house?” I asked.

He looked at his knees, at his hands, at his knees. “Yes.”

The drawn-out hesitation kicked my anxiety into alert mode. He knew something about the house. Something bad. It was a drug house. It was a brothel. It was—

Paoze looked up and met my gaze. “This friend. Do you know her well?”

I frowned. “Her? It’s not a she at all. It’s a he.”

The boy’s brown eyes opened wide. “A man? At that house?” His fingers began tap-tap-tapping his kneecaps. “No man should be going to that house. No man should be let in the door. It is not safe.”

“Not safe? What are you talking about? Randy went up to the door and knocked. The door opened, and he went inside. What’s unsafe about that?”

“Randy? Big Mr. Jarvis?” Paoze spread his arms wide.

“Well, yes.”

The kid smiled, and the tension left his body. “Then this is right. Mr. Jarvis belongs there.”

This conversation might have made sense to Paoze, but I was missing something—like the whole thing. “Belongs where?”

“I . . .” He went back to studying his knees. “I should not tell.”

Shouldn’t or couldn’t? Or wouldn’t? Though his grasp of the English language was firm in a general way, sometimes mistakes slipped into his speech. “Why not?” I asked. “Mr. Jarvis isn’t doing something wrong, is he?”

“Oh, no.” Paoze shook his head vigorously. “Mr. Jarvis is a very good man. I wish to be like him when I grow older.”

Randy as a role model? The mind boggled.

“Kayla says—” He came to an abrupt halt.

“Sara’s roommate?”

“Yes,” he said quietly. “And I should not say more.”

Curiouser and curiouser. What could involve an attractive college junior and a sixtysomething man from Rynwood who ran a gas station and ate large bags of nacho chips for breakfast? I knew Sara, Kayla, and Paoze had a comfortable friendship, but how did Randy figure into the mix? “I don’t want you to break a confidence,” I said. “I just . . .” Just what? What exactly was I trying to do here?

“Kayla only goes during the week.” Paoze’s hands were gripping each other. “I am glad she does not volunteer on weekends. That is when it can get very bad.”

What could Kayla be doing as a volunteer at a place with a metal door and bars on the windows? “Mr. Jarvis is also a volunteer.”

“Yes.”

I thought about this. Randy, a volunteer. Kayla, a volunteer. Kayla’s major was social work. Randy was the treasurer for the Tarver PTA, a child advocacy organization. There were dots here to connect, but the dots were a little too far apart for me to make the leaps.

“Kayla said Mr. Jarvis is very brave,” Paoze said. “I do not worry about her when Mr. Jarvis is there.”

Dot to dot to dot. I’d figured it out. “That house is a women’s shelter,” I said. “Where women and children can go if they feel they’re in danger.”

Paoze’s brown face went very still. “I should not have said. It is much of a secret.”

“Don’t worry.” I smiled at him. “The secret is safe with me.”

“You will not tell?”

“I will not tell, Paoze. And neither did you,” I said softly. “I reached my own conclusions, that’s all.”

After he left, I took the list out of my desk drawer and picked up a pen. I drew a line through the name of Randy Jarvis.

Two down, nine to go.

“Thank you for meeting with me.” Gary Kemmerer, Tarver’s acting principal, folded his hands on top of the desk. Erica, Randy, Julie, and I were representing the PTA, and all four of us were uncomfortable. Five, I amended, as I heard Gary’s toes tapping under the desk.

“As acting principal,” Gary said, “I might not remain in this office for long. The school board is starting a search, and they’re anxious to appoint a new principal as soon as possible.”

“You apply for the job?” Randy asked.

Erica and I blinked at his tactlessness. Julie moved her hands over her oversized belly and looked radiant.

“Yes, in fact, I did.” Gary frowned at Randy. “But that’s not the purpose of this meeting. I invited you here to establish common ground with the PTA. The past ten years have seen a fair share of adversarial instances, and I want to say I’ll do my best to . . .”

He was lapsing into corporate-speak. I put a noncommittal expression on my face and drifted away. Jenna and her apology for whatever. Oliver and enuresis. Paoze. Marina. WisconSINs. Halloween. The threatening e-mails.

“Beth? You don’t approve of this idea?” Gary asked.

I jerked back from the memory of a Marina too frightened to talk. “Um . . .”

“The PTA,” Erica said, “is more than pleased to work hand in hand with Tarver’s leadership—”

“What if the police don’t find the killer?” I blurted out. “I’m worried about these kids if the murderer goes free.”

Erica, Randy, Julie, and Gary all stared at me.

“I know this isn’t what we came here to discuss,” I said, “but it’s a huge concern of mine.” For lots of reasons. “I hear the police have been talking to the teachers. Have they been talking to the staff and administration, too?”

“Good point,” Erica said. “Staff dealt with Agnes from eight thirty in the morning to four in the afternoon. I’m sure most of them had occasional run-ins with her. How about you, Gary?”

“What about me?” His chin went up.

“Do you have an alibi?” Erica smiled, but the steel wasn’t far below the surface.

“As a matter of fact, yes. Now about this—”

“What is it?” Julie asked.

“What is what?”

“Your alibi.” She folded her hands over her tummy. “I think the parents of Tarver children deserve to know that the acting principal has a solid alibi.”