Murder by the Slice (10 page)

Maybe there was a reasonable explanation. Maybe Shannon and Russ were just friends. Maybe they had been meeting Marie there for lunch. Maybe they worked together… . No, wait, Shannon didn’t have a job. That was why she was able to devote so much time to the PTO.

And Marie and Shannon wouldn’t have been getting together for lunch, either. Phyllis knew that in her bones.

Oh, hell,
she thought with uncharacteristic vehemence.
Oh, hell.

But she kept a smile plastered on her face as Marie said, “I’d better go see how Irene and Holly are doing with the concession stand. Come on, honey.”

Russ lifted a hand in farewell and said, “See you later, ladies. Nice to meet you, Phyllis.”

She managed to nod pleasantly enough. But at the same time she was thinking about how Marie obviously loved him, and about how they had two children together, and she asked herself what in the world he was thinking by jeopardizing all that by having an affair with Shannon Dunston.

Phyllis took a deep breath. Maybe they weren’t having an affair. Maybe it was just a casual thing, getting together occasionally for lunch. Marie might even know all about it.

But Phyllis doubted that very seriously.

“Are you all right?” Carolyn asked quietly. “Something’s bothering you, isn’t it?”

Phyllis shook her head as she watched Marie talk to Holly and Irene for a moment and then leave the cafeteria with Russ. “I’m fine,” she said. And she was. Luckily, none of this was even remotely any of her business. She could try to just put it all out of her head. A part of her wanted to warn Marie that there might be some hanky-panky going on between her husband and Shannon, but at the same time, her years as a teacher had taught her to butt out of people’s personal lives. What happened at school was all that had really concerned her, although as a human being she felt sympathy for other people’s problems. Everyone involved in this one would just have to work it out for themselves.

As the carnival went on, Phyllis found herself too busy to worry about anything except keeping up with the constant flow of people in front of the tables as they admired the auction items and handed over tickets so they could sample the healthy snacks. Each entry had been assigned a number, and at the end of the table was an empty jar and a stack of pieces of paper cut into small squares, along with some pencils. When people had tried all the snacks, they could write down the number of the one they liked best and drop the piece of paper in the jar. Half an hour or so before the auction was scheduled to begin, the voting would be ended and Phyllis and Carolyn would take the jar to the school principal, who had agreed to do an impartial count of the votes.

There were plenty of entries to select from. As Phyllis looked along the table, she saw baked pita triangles with seasonings, banana bread, berry muffins, roll-ups with whole wheat tortillas, apple breakfast bars, a low-fat carrot cake, walnut-raisin cookies that Phyllis remembered from the recipe had cottage cheese in them. She was really curious what they tasted like. People had embraced the idea of coming up with healthy snacks better than she had at first thought they would.

The cake auction was going to be spectacular, too. Phyllis was amazed at the variety of cakes people had come up with. There was a sandcastle that sparkled with sugar, a rose garden, and a cute carousel with animal crackers. She saw some cakes she wouldn’t have minded bidding on herself, but she knew she probably wouldn’t. She had to watch how much sugar she took in, and her own baking ideas usually provided more than enough.

Marie came through the cafeteria several times, sometimes with Russ and sometimes alone. She carried a zippered money bag. Since the concession stand operated on a cash basis, rather than using tickets like the booths and other attractions, the money taken in there had to be collected every so often to keep it from building up too much. Phyllis assumed that Marie was taking the cash back to some place in the school where it could be locked up safely, probably in the principal’s office.

Around the middle of the afternoon, Shannon and her exhusband came into the cafeteria, along with a pretty little brown-haired girl Phyllis assumed was their daughter, Becca. Joel Dunston gave the girl some money to go to the concession stand; then he and Shannon sat down at the far end of one of the tables. They didn’t sit side by side, Phyllis noticed, but rather across from each other. Both of them leaned forward over the table so that they could talk quietly. Judging by the expressions on their faces, the conversation they were having wasn’t a pleasant one. They both looked like they were barely keeping their anger in check.

They sat back and smiled as Becca returned to the table carrying a bowl of nachos and a soft drink. Phyllis hoped the little girl wasn’t paying too much attention to her parents, or else she would see that the smiles on their faces were patently phony. People ought to be able to put aside their differences for the sake of their children, at least for a little while, Phyllis thought, but sometimes they were unable or unwilling to do so.

When Becca finished her food, she came over to gaze in amazement at the fancy decorated cakes, then moved on to the table with the snacks. “Can I try them?” she asked Phyllis.

“If you have two tickets, you can sample and judge the snacks. If you want a cookbook, it’s four tickets.”

Becca dug in the pocket of her jeans and came up with a crumpled wad of tickets. She tore off two and handed them across the table.

“You can have one sample of each, and you should pay attention to the numbers on them, because down there at the end of the table you can vote for which one you like the best.” Phyllis pointed to the jar, which was now about a third full of the little pieces of paper.

“Okay.” Becca picked up one of the samples.

“Have you been enjoying the carnival?” Phyllis asked.

“Oh, we just got here. My dad was running late, as usual, and my mom’s mad at him about it, as usual.” The little girl sounded bored by her parents’ squabbling. “My mom told him he was going to be late for his own funeral. He said he’d be right on time for hers. He said he might even get there early, so he could enjoy it longer.”

Phyllis caught her breath. Even though Becca didn’t seem particularly upset and had reported her parents’ hurtful comments in matter-of-fact fashion, Phyllis knew the little girl had to be bothered by hearing such things. No child would enjoy her parents’ clawing at each other like that.

“What do you think of the snacks, dear?” Phyllis asked in an attempt to change the subject.

“They’re all really yummy,” Becca said around a mouthful of carrot cake. “Are they really supposed to be good for you?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“They sure don’t taste like it. They’re too good for that.”

Phyllis didn’t argue with her, knowing the commonly held belief among children—and most adults—that if something tasted good, it couldn’t possibly be good for you.

With a self-possession beyond her years, a quality that children from dysfunctional families often seemed to possess, Becca sampled the rest of the entries and finally picked up a pencil and square of paper to record her vote. She folded the paper and dropped it into the jar, then turned and waved at Phyllis before heading back to the table where her parents were still sitting and talking with tautly angry expressions on their faces. They forced smiles again as Becca rejoined them. Joel stood up and took the little girl’s hand. She practically tugged him out of the cafeteria, clearly anxious to see what else the carnival had to offer.

Phyllis kept an eye on Shannon, hoping the woman wouldn’t get up and come over here to indulge in more bitter sniping about her ex-husband. She didn’t; Shannon left the cafeteria instead, turning the opposite way in the hall from the direction Joel and Becca had gone.

A while later, Russ Tyler wandered by. He nodded to Phyllis and Carolyn, saying, “Hello, ladies.” Marie wasn’t with him, and neither were Amber and Aaron, the Tyler children. He walked on through the cafeteria and left by the same exit that the Dunstons had a short time earlier. Phyllis couldn’t help but notice that Russ turned in the same direction Shannon had gone.

At the
school carnival
? Phyllis thought. Surely they hadn’t set up an illicit rendezvous
here
!

A part of her wanted to hurry after Russ and confront him with her suspicions, maybe even catch him and Shannon together. Phyllis knew she couldn’t do that, though. She had to stay here in the cafeteria and help Carolyn tend to the tables, and anyway, she reminded herself for what had to be the dozenth time, it wasn’t any of her business what Shannon and Russ did or didn’t do. She didn’t
want
to catch them in the act.

Carolyn came up beside her and said, “You look like something’s bothering you again.”

“No, I’m just … ready for this carnival to be over. I guess I’m a little tired. I’m not as young as I once was.”

“None of us are,” Carolyn said.

Phyllis was able to force her mind back onto the business at hand, at least for a while. Then Joel Dunston came into the cafeteria alone, crossed the big room to the tables where Phyllis and Carolyn stood, and asked, “Have either of you ladies seen my wife? Shannon Dunston? She’s the president of the PTO.”

Even though Phyllis knew who Joel was, she realized that he had no idea who she was. They had never been introduced. Phyllis noticed that he referred to Shannon as his wife, not his ex-wife. Maybe despite the anger that existed between them, he was having trouble adjusting to the divorce. Maybe he still had feelings for her. If that was the case, then the last thing he needed was to find her in the arms of Russ Tyler.

“Yes, we know Shannon,” Carolyn said. “I haven’t seen her since earlier in the afternoon, though. What about you, Phyllis?”

Phyllis shook her head and said, “Sorry.” She wasn’t going to tell Joel which direction Shannon had gone. Anyway, that had been a while earlier. Shannon could be anywhere in the school by now.

Several children came running up to the table. “Slow down, slow down,” Carolyn told them, years of being a teacher coming out in the stern tone of her voice. “What do you children want?”

“A piece of cake!” one of them cried as he pointed at Phyllis’s jack-o’-lantern cake.

“We can’t cut that one,” Carolyn explained. “It’s for the auction.”

“You mean it’s just for show?” a little girl asked. “It’s not for eating?”

“Whoever buys it at the auction can eat it,” Phyllis explained.

“How about that one?” the little boy who had wanted a piece of the jack-o’-lantern cake asked. He was pointing at the sandcastle cake. Carolyn told him that one was offlimits for the time being, too.

“If you want one of the things on this table, you can ask your mother or father to bid on it,” she said. “But if you have two tickets, you can sample all the snacks on the other table.”

The little boy wrinkled his nose in distaste. “Somebody told me they’re good for you. I don’t want any of that stuff.”

Several of the other kids weren’t so picky, and dug out tickets to sample the snacks. Phyllis and Carolyn had to keep an eye on them to make sure none of them got more than one piece of anything, and by the time the kids moved on, Joel Dunston was gone. The area around the tables had been busy enough so that Phyllis hadn’t noticed when he left.

She wondered if this time he had gone the same direction as Shannon and Russ. She hoped that if those two
had
gotten together, they’d had the sense to do it behind a locked door.

Phyllis was distracted by a little girl, probably a kindergartner, who ran up to the tables, tugging her father along with her. Sporting pigtails and a T-shirt with Elmo from
Sesame Street
on it, she was utterly adorable. She pointed to the jack-o’-lantern cake and said, “Punkin!”

“Yeah, that’s right,” the man told her. He flashed a grin at Phyllis. In his twenties, he wore a black Harley-Davidson T-shirt and had close-cropped blond hair. “Are those cakes for sale?”

“No, we’re going to be auctioning them off in a little while,” Phyllis explained.

“I want the punkin cake, Daddy!” the little girl said.

He smiled down at her and said, “We’ll see,” in a tone of voice that Phyllis knew meant he had no intention of bidding on any of the cakes. “Let’s get some of these snacks instead,” he went on as he handed over four tickets and then started picking out samples for them.

Frances Hickson, the principal of Loving Elementary, showed up a short time later and said, “I guess it’s about time for me to count those votes, isn’t it, ladies?”

Phyllis glanced at the clock and was surprised to see that it was four. The carnival had been going on for three hours. They had been busy enough that it didn’t seem that long.

Carolyn raised her voice and called out to the people in the cafeteria, “Last call for the snack contest! Anyone who wants to sample the snacks and vote on them, now’s the time!”

A few people hurried up to the table and handed over tickets for both the snacks and the cookbooks. When they were done and had cast their votes, Carolyn put the lid on the jar and handed it to Principal Hickson. The school administrator, a nice-looking, fortyish woman with short dark hair, smiled and said, “The auction starts at four thirty, right? I’ll have the results back to you by then. I’ll just take the jar into the music room to count the votes.”

“Thank you,” Carolyn said. As the principal walked away with the jar, heading for the music room behind the stage, Carolyn turned to Phyllis and went on, “I guess we can continue selling samples and cookbooks; people just can’t vote on the snacks anymore.”

Phyllis nodded. “Yes, we want to get rid of as much of this stuff as we can.”

For the next thirty minutes, they continued collecting tickets from anyone who still wanted to sample the snacks, including some kids who were coming back for seconds or even thirds on them. Then Principal Hickson returned with the jar of ballots under one arm and a piece of paper in the other. “We have a winner,” she said with a smile.