Murder at the PTA (25 page)

“Hang on . . . Oh, eww,” Marina said. “He’s got a dead thing. A big dead thing.”

“Male moose weigh more than a thousand pounds.”

“Hokey Pete.” Marina whistled. “But, say, maybe it’s not a real picture. You said there’s a computer up at that hunting camp. Maybe Kirk Photoshopped it for a perfect alibi.”

“Are you serious?” Kirk was prodigious in his computer illiteracy. I’d once seen him puzzling over an ATM machine.

Marina sighed. “Okay. It’s not Kirk Olsen. And I have more bad news. It’s not Dan Daniels, either.”

“No?”

“Nope. I was talking to CeeCee, and she said her sainted husband—she didn’t say that, but that’s how she feels about him, you know—has hockey league on Tuesday nights, and he had a late game. Didn’t even get on the ice until eleven.”

“Lucky,” I muttered.

“Your time will come, my sweet. Another five years and the kids will be old enough for you to risk life and limb by playing something as silly as hockey.”

“Hockey isn’t silly.”

“And neither is my writing the blog.”

I started to protest, but my computer dinged as an e-mail came in. It was from Marina, and there was a single word in the body of the text: “Hypocrite!”

Okay, so she had a point.

“Silly is in the eye of the beholder,” she said. “Put that in my obituary, will you?”

Thinking about Marina’s obituary was pretty much the last thing I wanted to think about. I’d rather think about writing my own. I was halfway through the second paragraph when Marina interrupted.

“Who’s left? You know, on The List?” She capitalized the words.

I pulled the by-now-tattered piece of paper out of the inside pocket of my purse. “Cindy Irving, Joe Sabatini, Erica, and Harry.”

“That’s not very many,” she said.

I didn’t say anything.

“You don’t want it to be Erica, do you?” she asked softly.

Not in the least. I got out my pen and crossed off Kirk and Dan. “What matters is keeping you safe and getting the killer into prison. What I want really doesn’t matter.”

Seven down, four to go.

 

“Did you see WisconSINs this morning?” Lois asked.

I almost dropped the load of books piled high in my arms. What had Marina done now?

“You know,” Lois said, rescuing a stack of Magic Tree Houses before they cascaded to the floor, “if you used the book cart, these things wouldn’t happen.”

“Too far away,” I said vaguely. “What’s on the blog?” I asked. Friday night I’d told Marina that it might be good to take a few days off from blogging. So much for my powers of persuasion. Her identity had become intertwined with that of WisconSINs, and it would take an act of Congress to separate her from the blog.

“Brand-new suspect for Agnes Mephisto’s murder.” Lois grinned. Today she was wearing a flowing white poet shirt over pale pink wide-legged slacks and black ballet slippers. I didn’t have the figure for the pants, but I coveted the shirt. “If I still had kids at Tarver, I’d probably be hauled down to the police station myself.”

“What?” Aghast, I stared at her.

“Not that I’d kill anyone,” Lois said, “unless she was after me or mine, but if she got me all riled up, who knows what might happen?”

“No, no.” I shook my head impatiently, and another book started sliding. “The blog. What does it say?”

“You know how it doesn’t name names, but it says the police should look at the mob connections in town.”

“The mob?”

“They’re everywhere,” Lois said seriously. “WisconSINs says there’s a restaurant in town that the police should look at. And that’s got to be Sabatini’s. It’s the only place in town even close to Italian.”

There was a loud banging on the back door. “Could you unlock that?”

“Sure.” Lois dumped the books she was holding back into my arms and went to flirt with the UPS guy.

I hurried to my desk, found a semiclear space for the books, and called Marina. “What are you thinking?” I whispered fiercely. “You’re getting death threats, and you’re
still
putting up posts about the murder? That’s what he said
not
to do!”

“Quit worrying,” she said over a background noise of toddler-sized shrieks. “I can only be safe when Agnes’s murderer is locked up and the key thrown away. What better way to speed the process than to help the police? I’m sure they’re reading WisconSINs. Everyone is.”

I rubbed my forehead. “You read that e-mail Friday night. You were scared. Scared silly. Did you forget about that?”

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” she said airily. “If General MacArthur wasn’t afraid, I’m not going to be.”

“That was Franklin Roosevelt’s quote, and both he and Douglas MacArthur are dead.”

I banged down the receiver. “This is so stupid,” I muttered. “How can I help her if she’s going to ignore everything I say? Let her stew.”

“In her own juice?”

I jumped and looked up—way up—at Evan Garrett. When had he come in? It was just now ten o’clock; I hadn’t even realized we’d unlocked the front door. “Yes,” I said. “In a big pot, in lots of her own juice. A big fire might tenderize her. Make her easier to deal with.”

“Possible.” He looked thoughtful. “Or she might just get hot. And cranky.”

Suddenly, though the sky outside was October gray, the day felt bright.

“What do you say to a coffee break?” Evan asked. “Doughnut included.”

Lois was nearby, alphabetizing an end cap display of Harry Potter books, something I knew she’d already done.

“Lois?”

“Oh!” She gave a very fake jump. “Yes?”

“I’m going to show Mr. Garrett here the cookies at you-know-where. Would you like anything?”

In a few short minutes we were seated at a small round wooden table that had lived the best years of its life in the Rynwood Pharmacy. A few years ago new owners had taken out the pharmacy soda fountain, and Alice and Alan, owners of the cleverly named Rynwood Antique Mall, bought the furniture so Alice could sell the cookies she made instead of eating them all. “Getting big as a house,” she’d told me, thumping her hips with her fists. “Time to do something about it.”

I perched on the front edge of the chair, not wanting to lean against the stunningly uncomfortable wire-backed soda fountain chair.

Evan was on his second chocolate-chip cookie. I was almost done with my oatmeal and was debating whether to eat raisin next or go for the peanut butter. But I was finding it hard to make a decision because concern for Marina was taking up most of the space in my brain.

“What’s going on up there?” Evan asked. He tapped my head, just above my ear.

I twitched away, then smiled, but it was a weak attempt. “Sorry. I’m a little preoccupied these days.”

“Work? Kids? Parents?” He didn’t seem offended that I’d backed off from his touch.

“Um, not exactly.” The cookies sat there, getting stale.

“You’re my oldest friend, Beth.” Evan’s voice was soft. “Let me help.”

The blue eyes were close enough for me to drown in them. My breaths grew short, and before I fell onto the floor in a hyperventilation faint, I tore my gaze away and grabbed a cookie. “What would you do,” I said around small bits of peanut, “if your really stubborn, um, sister was doing something you considered dangerous?”

He considered the question. At least he wasn’t laughing out loud. “Can I assume she isn’t listening to the wise counsel of siblings?”

I waved the last half of the cookie at him. “Assume away.”

“Is what she doing illegal?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“But dangerous, you said. Dangerous only to her, or will her actions endanger others?”

The phrase rang oddly in my ear, and I suddenly remembered that, until recently, Evan had been a lawyer—a big-shot lawyer who’d probably charged more per hour than I made in a week. “Right now it’s just Ma . . . my theoretical sister.”

“But there is a possibility of future endangerment to others.” He made it a statement.

If the bad guy decided to kidnap Zach, yes. If the bad guy decided to burn down Marina’s house and all who were in it. If, if, if. “I suppose.”

“How will you feel if you do nothing?” Evan asked.

“Depends. If nothing happens to her, none of this matters.” I shrugged. “But if something does happen . . .” Friday’s e-mail came back in a rush, with its promise of pain and blood. I looked straight at Evan. “If something does happen, I’ll never forgive myself.”

“Then you have to do what you can,” he said.

“Why did I have a feeling you were going to say that?”

“Because in addition to your being my oldest friend, I’m yours.” He leaned forward. My eyes closed and his lips, feeling soft and warm as an August evening, touched mine.

 

The feel of Evan’s kiss lingered long after we went back to our respective stores. I found myself touching my mouth from time to time, reliving the moment, until Lois asked, “Getting chapped lips, huh? Have you tried that Burt’s stuff?”

I locked the door promptly at closing time and left the banking chores for the next morning. This evening, I had a Thing to Do.

Hot tomato sauce and garlic scented the parking lot and was positively overwhelming when I opened the door to Sabatini’s. “Hi!” chirped the teenager at the counter. Her plastic name tag gave her the unlikely name of Valley. “I’ll be with you in a sec, okay?” She handed change to a man standing in front of me. “Here you go, sir. Have a good night.”

The man picked up his pizza and turned. It took me a long second to come up with his name. Recognizing people out of their normal environment didn’t come easy to me. “Hi, Harry,” I said. “How are you?”

Tarver’s security guard and janitor looked at me over the top of the cardboard box. “Hello, Mrs. Kennedy.”

Harry’s eyes looked even darker and more sunken than normal. His hair was longer than I’d ever seen it, and grime was crusted underneath his fingernails. He was the embodiment of grief, sliding ever so slowly into depression. But at least he was eating. That had to be a good sign.

“The police were asking me if I did it,” he said. “They kept asking and asking, and nothing I told them mattered.”

Poor Harry. “Didn’t they believe you?”

“They wanted an alibi, and I was waxing the floors at the school. I usually do it Saturdays, but that Saturday the machine was broken, and I couldn’t do it on Monday because of the meeting, so I did it Tuesday.”

It was an ironclad alibi. Everyone knew how Harry was about the floors—everybody, that is, except the sheriff’s department.

“It’ll be okay.” I put a light hand on his arm. “Take care of yourself, Harry.”

“Yes.” He nodded slowly and left.

I sighed and turned my attention back to the business at hand.

“Can I help you?” The clerk looked positively perky.

I gestured at her name tag. “You’re probably tired of answering this, but . . . Valley?”

She crossed her eyes. “If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me about my name, I could buy my car instead of making all these stupid payments.” She heaved a world-class sigh. “My mom and dad are big skiers. I was born nine months after a trip to Sun Valley.”

So original, yet so banal. “At least they didn’t name you Sunny.”

Her grimace eased. “I never thought of that. At least Valley isn’t, like, gag-me cutesy.”

“And they didn’t end it with an
i
.”

We smiled at each other, rapport established. “I’d like to order a large pizza to go,” I said. “Pepperoni and sausage on half, cheese only on the other half.”

She had a pen and order pad at the ready and scribbled away. “Cheese only?” She looked up, grinning. “Kids?”

“A daughter who turns up her nose at any dinner without meat, and a son who is sliding toward vegetarianism.”

“Usually the other way around, isn’t it?” She spun around, tucked the order onto a circular rack, then turned back to me. “I mean, aren’t girls usually the ones who do the veggie thing?” She plopped her arms on the counter. “I tried to be a vegan once, back when I was little.” This from a girl who looked as if she might be seventeen. “But then it was Thanksgiving, and how can you have Thanksgiving without turkey?”

“Plus it’d be hard to be vegan in a place like this.” Clever Beth, manipulating the conversation. “How long have you been working here?”

“Joe hired me two summers ago, right when he opened.”

“That’s Joe Sabatini?”

She giggled. “Want to know a secret?” She looked left and right and motioned me close. “Joe’s last name isn’t Sabatini,” she whispered. “It’s Pigg.”

“Pig?”

“With two
g
s. P-i-g-g.” Her giggle went loud, and she clapped her hands over her mouth. “Isn’t that too funny?” she said through her fingers. “I could be working at Pigg Pizza.” Her shoulders heaved with the effort of not laughing out loud. “At Pizza for Piggs!”

“So where did the Sabatini come from?”

“The Pigg’s Pizza Parlor.” Tears of laughter squeaked out of her eyes. “Oh, geez. Sabatini is some sports person. Like baseball?”

Even I’d heard of that Sabatini. “Gabriela. She plays tennis.”

“Yeah, that’s it. Joe’s a big fan, I guess. He’s from South Dakota, came here to go to Wisconsin.” She shrugged. “All that school and money, and he ended up in dumpy Rynwood running a pizza place. Makes you wonder if college is worth it.”

I walked out with dinner. Joe wasn’t Italian, and he was from South Dakota. Okay, he could still have mob ties, but the likelihood had plummeted from “maybe” to “oh, please.”

And now I’d eliminated everyone Marina had mentioned as a suspect, which didn’t make sense. The bad guy wanted her to quit blogging, but if he wasn’t called out in WisconSINs, why would he care? Because Marina was poking around? What kind of sense did that make? None.

I drove to pick up Jenna and Oliver, pushing other ideas around in my head. Nothing jelled, nothing came together, nothing clicked. As a detective, I made a pretty good children’s bookstore owner.