Poison at the PTA Read online

  I hated hospitals.

  What felt like ten years later, Cookie spoke. “They’ve poisoned me.”

  In a rush it came to me why Cookie and I had never been, and would never be, good friends. Not only did she take life much too seriously, but she was prone to sincerely believing in the worst-case scenario. Sure, I worried about horrible things, but deep down I didn’t really believe the worst was going to happen. It was best to be prepared, was more my line of thinking.

  “What makes you think so?” I asked. Because, really, how would anyone know? There were a lot of poisons in the world and it was likely that they’d each have a different set of symptoms. Why would anyone slide from thinking plain old flu to the icky thought of being poisoned? Maybe this was just the illness talking. Her comments about the mysterious “they” certainly hinted of medication-induced nightmares.

  Cookie’s voice rasped out. “Evil walks among us. It’s our duty to make things right.”

  I waited. While I didn’t exactly think she was wrong, I also couldn’t give a blanket agreement. Finally, I thought of something to say. “Have you tried to make things right?”

  With her eyes still closed, she smiled. “Right and wrong,” she said in a singsong tone. “Good and evil. They want it all different colors of gray, but we know better, don’t we? It’s black-and-white, now as it always was.”

  I shifted in the chair, which had suddenly become uncomfortable. “I think I know what you mean,” I said cautiously. “Has someone done something wrong?”

  Her lips curved up in a smile. “Oh, yes. So very wrong.”

  I waited for her to continue. Watched her breaths move in and out. Waited some more. But she was sound asleep.

  • • •

  From the hospital parking lot, I called Gus and told him about Cookie’s hazy conviction that she’d been poisoned. “She’s very sick,” I finished. “I don’t know if it’s her medication or a fever or what, but she’s not exactly her normal self. It’s hard to say if this was a real conviction or an illness-induced one, but I thought you should know.”

  Gus grunted. “Did you tell her doctor?”

  “She said she’d run some tests.”

  “I’ll stop by and talk to the doctor and Cookie,” Gus said. “Thanks, Beth. You taking care of yourself?”

  I assured him I was and ended the call with the vague feeling that I should be doing more.

  • • •

  Over the next few days, I tried to find out how Cookie was doing. I knew the hospital wouldn’t tell me anything, and all her bank coworkers knew was that she wasn’t at work, so I asked around town.

  “Cookie?” Denise, my hairstylist, asked between snips. “Oh, is she in the hospital? That’s too bad. I’ll have to stop by and see her.”

  When I stopped by Glenn Kettunen’s insurance office, he said, “Cookie? Huh. Didn’t know she was still there. I should send flowers, I guess.”

  Instead of sending Jenna to pick up dinner at the Green Tractor, I went myself and asked Ruthie. “Oh, dear. I’d heard she wasn’t feeling good. The poor woman. A hospital is the last place you want to be when you’re sick.”

  Late Wednesday morning, Debra O’Conner knocked on my office door. Once upon a time, Debra-don’t-call-me-Debbie had dressed in city-slick clothes, gone to Chicago to get her hair cut, and been on a career path that didn’t include Rynwood’s local bank as the pinnacle.

  A couple of years ago, after I’d made a chance remark I couldn’t even remember now, Debra had decided she was perfectly content as a local bank vice president, let her hair grow long, and started cooking dinner for her family every night. I squirmed every time she tried to give me credit for her new happiness; whatever I’d said couldn’t possibly have been that profound. I’d happened to say it at a time she was ready to hear it, that was all.

  Since that fateful remark, though, we’d become good friends and I smiled as she came into my office and sat in the extra chair. “Morning, Debra. What brings you here?” Then my brain registered the solemn expression on her face. “You have bad news. Your family’s all right, aren’t they?”

  She nodded, then said, “It’s Cookie.”

  My worries and fears of the last days grew and grew until they filled my head and flew out into the room to bounce off the walls and ceiling and floor and come back to me with the strength of ten. “She’s doing better, right?” Of course she was. She was so much better that she was headed home and needed someone to bring her a few meals. That’s why Debra was here; she was looking for volunteers to help out and—

  Debra sighed. “I’m sorry, Beth, but Cookie died this morning.”

  Chapter 4

  “You’re not going,” Marina said.

  I picked a cat hair off my black pants. “Thanks for watching the kids. I should be back in a couple of hours.”

  “As the coleader of your intervention team, I forbid you to go.” Marina crossed her arms and stood in front of her kitchen door, blocking my exit. “You promised you’d take it easy, remember? You gave us administrative power over your activities for six weeks, and if I can read a calendar correctly, which I’m pretty sure I can, six weeks isn’t close to over.”

  I zipped up my coat. “If I’m running longer than two hours, I’ll send a text.”

  “Lois agrees, you know. I called her and she about hit the ceiling when I told her you planned on going. She knows how upset these things make you. She’s seen how you get afterward.”

  Where were my gloves? I patted my coat pockets. Ah. There they were. “It’s not about me,” I said quietly. “It’s about Cookie.”

  Marina’s chin went up, and she opened her mouth to say something, but then she sighed and stepped aside. “Why is it that even when I’m trying to do what’s right for you, I get it wrong?”

  I frowned. Marina? Being self-critical? If the world was ending, why hadn’t I gotten a memo? “Hey,” I said. “Is something wrong? Because—”

  She opened the door, letting in a whoosh of cold air that swirled around our ankles. “Go on. You don’t want to be late.”

  No, I didn’t. But I didn’t want to leave this half-finished conversation, either. “You’re okay?”

  “My deah,” she said, slipping into Southern Belle mode, “do Ah look like Ah have a problem?” She did a sideways shuffle and tossed her hair over her shoulder while humming “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah.”

  It was obvious that something was bothering her, but it was equally obvious that she wasn’t going to tell me. So I left.

  • • •

  By the time Cookie’s funeral was over, I was thoroughly upset, just as Marina and Lois had predicted. Funerals wrung me inside out and I’d hated every single one I’d attended. But the mere fact of disliking a task didn’t mean I could avoid doing it. If that were the case, my windows would never get washed.

  Of course, if I was going to be honest with myself, the primary reason I was so upset over Cookie’s death was pure, unadulterated guilt. I should have done more. I should have taken her to the urgent care clinic the night of the PTA in Review. If I had, maybe they would have caught what was wrong in time to save her.

  When I walked back into Marina’s kitchen, postfuneral, she took one look at me and gave me a big hug. “You silly girl,” she murmured. “Repeat after me: ‘I was wrong and you were right.’ Go on, say it.”

  “I was wrong and you were right,” I said. She gave me an extra-hard squeeze and released me. I wiped my eyes, saying, “But I had to go. I just had to.”

  “Yes, yes. We need to work on that overdeveloped sense of right and wrong that you have.”

  “And my guilt complex?”

  “Well, duh.”

  We smiled at each other. We’d been friends for a very long time.

  “And now,” Marina said, “you go home. Take a nap. I’ll bring the kids over in a couple of hours and you will not need to worry about dinner.”

  “I won’t?”

  “Nope,” she said cheerfully. �
�Now away with you.” She gave me a light shove. “As my grandmother used to say, ‘Shoo! Shoo!’”

  I zipped up my coat. “You know, for a redhead, you’re not so bad.”

  “That’s what all my best friends say. Now go.”

  So I was smiling as I went.

  • • •

  Two hours later, I heard the kids stomping into the house. Oliver ran up the stairs on all fours and Jenna called for me. “Mom?”

  “In here.” Yawning, I sat up. The couch springs creaked underneath me.

  Jenna appeared in the doorway of the family room. “I’m making dinner, okay?”

  Visions of blackened pans, sticky messes, and spattered walls danced through my head. “Oh. That sounds . . . very nice, sweetheart.”

  “Yeah, Mrs. Neff helped us plan the menu.” She gave me a smile full of confidence. “It’ll be easy.”

  “Tell me the kitchen rules,” I said.

  “Um, make sure nothing boils over, check that there’s nothing in the oven before turning it on, clean up spills when they happen, and . . .” Her lower lip stuck out in her effort to remember. Suddenly, her face brightened. “And no using the big knife without you there.”

  “Maybe I should come in and supervise.” I started to get out from underneath the fleece blanket.

  “But you’re supposed to be taking it easy,” Jenna said as Oliver thundered down the stairs and ran into the room.

  “Here, Mom.” He dropped an armload of books onto my legs. “I couldn’t pick, so I brought all of them.”

  He’d brought down the entire pile that I had on my nightstand. “Oh, honey. That’s . . . so thoughtful of you.”

  My son smiled, a wide happy smile that lit up the room. “Mrs. Neff said we needed to take care of you tonight, and I know how much you like to read, so I thought you could do that while we make dinner.”

  Fear stabbed at me. My nine-year-old baby boy was capable of many things, but he was still only nine years old.

  “I’m making dinner,” Jenna interjected. “You get to set the table.”

  “Yeah, and that’s part of making dinner, right?”

  Smiling, I lay back against the couch pillows and listened to them wrangle on their way to the kitchen. My children, my loves, my heart, my life. Even if I had to spend half the day tomorrow cleaning up the kitchen, it would be worth it. Tears stung at my eyes for the second time that day, but for a completely different reason.

  • • •

  We had a wonderful dinner of overcooked macaroni and cheese accompanied by a very plain salad of iceberg lettuce covered with far too much dressing. All through the meal, my inside smile was wide and happy and warm.

  Once we finished eating, however, things started to change.

  Oliver pushed his chair back and jumped up. “I did the dishes last night, so it’s your turn, Jenna.”

  My daughter’s face, which up until now had been sunny and clear, darkened. “I did all the cooking.”

  “Not all,” Oliver said, his chin jutting out. “I ripped up the lettuce.”

  “That’s not cooking,” Jenna countered. “That’s just . . . just doing the lettuce.”

  “And I put cheese on the salads.”

  “Too much cheese,” she muttered.

  “It was not too much!” Oliver said in a near-shout.

  “Was, too.”

  “Was not!”

  I was opening my mouth to call a time-out when the front doorbell rang. Before anyone could call dibs on getting the door, a male voice called out, “Anybody home?”

  The moment we heard Pete’s voice, the mounting tension in the room started to ebb. “In the kitchen,” I called. By the time he walked into the room, his cheerful grin in place, any leftover bits of stress and strain had faded away completely.

  “It’s snowing,” he said. “And it’s the perfect temperature to build a snowman.”

  “A snowman?” Oliver’s truculent chin slid back to its normal position. “Can we go out, Mom? Can we?”

  “I want to build a snowwoman,” Jenna said. “I can give her my old goalie stick.”

  My gaze went from one child to the other. Then it went to the uncleared table. And the unwashed dishes.

  “We, um, could do them after we come back inside?” Oliver asked. “Mr. Peterson said the temperature is perfect right now. That won’t last very long. You don’t want us to miss the best snowman-making weather of the winter, do you?”

  My eyebrows rose. When had my son learned that little trick?

  “Many hands make light work,” Pete said easily.

  I shook my head. “Pete, sit down. You’ve been working all day. You don’t need to—”

  But he ignored me. “Come on, Ollster, you clear the table. Jenna can put the food away, right, Jenna? And I’ll fill up the dishwasher.”

  Jenna pointed. “Mom always makes us wash that pot by hand.”

  Mom, the ogre.

  “And a good thing she does,” Pete said. “It’ll last a lifetime that way. Come on, time’s wasting away while you two mawple about.” He clapped his hands lightly and the kids sprang into action.

  I watched Oliver speed from table to kitchen counter and back. Watched Jenna spoon the leftover mac and cheese into a plastic container that was a little too small. “‘Mawple’?” I asked.

  “Combination of ‘dawdle’ and ‘mope,’” he said. “I just made it up. What do you think?” He grinned and headed for the dishwasher.

  In less time than it had taken the kids to argue about the chore, the kitchen was clean and we were bundling up into boots, coats, hats, and mittens. Spot, our brown dog, bounced among us barking happy barks and we tumbled out into the snowy night.

  The sky was dark with night, but there was plenty of light from the houses and from the streetlights to illuminate our efforts. Jenna’s snow-hockey player took shape quickly, but Oliver’s traditional snowman needed all of Pete’s strength to lift the middle ball into place.

  “Ooof!” Pete grunted. “What’d you make this thing out of, gold? Lead? Boxes of National Geographic magazines?”

  Jenna ran to the garage and came back with a cracked goalie stick. She propped it up against her freshly made masterpiece. “I like her. She’s original, not like the snowmen some other people around here make.”

  “What’s wrong with my snowman?” Oliver, puffy from head to toe in winter gear, stuck his chin out again. “At least mine doesn’t—” The end of his sentence was lost forever when a feathery snowball hit him in the chest and exploded.

  At that same time, a second snowball hit Jenna on the arm. This one also exploded nicely.

  The kids yelled, “Hey!” and turned as one unit to see Pete and me, both grinning, both with our hands cocked back with fresh ammunition.

  “Snowball fight!” Jenna shouted, and the game was on.

  It ended as snowball fights tend to, with someone getting a big, fat, hard snowball in the face. This time that someone was me.

  “Ooof!” I stumbled back, trying to wipe the icy white stuff from my face.

  “Sorry, Mom!” Jenna called. “Are you okay?”

  “She’s fine,” Pete said. He stepped close and brushed the snow from my shoulders, my hair, my neck, my face.

  “That stuff’s cold.” I smiled. “Did you get it all?”

  “Almost,” he said, then leaned in close.

  His lips were soft and gentle and warm, warmer than I would have thought possible on such a chill night, but then everything about Pete was warm. His voice warmed me, his laughter warmed me, and his smile did nice warm things to my insides, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise that his kiss would warm me down to my toes. Down to, and including, my toes, my toenails . . .

  “FWEEEEE!”

  And so, it was while kissing Pete Peterson in front of my children for the first time that I learned Jenna knew how to make an earsplitting whistle.

  Like mother, like daughter.

  • • •

  On Monday mornin
g Lois, Yvonne, and I were debating the pros and cons of having a midwinter sale when the front doorbells jingled and Gus walked in.

  “Chief,” Lois said, clicking her heels together and saluting him.

  “At ease, men,” Gus said. “Beth, do you have a minute?”

  “Men?” Lois demanded. “Do I look like a men?”

  She did not. Today’s chosen ensemble was black pants, black sweater, black shoes, and pink socks with pink sequins. She claimed to be starting a new fashion trend, but I suspected she just wanted an excuse to wear the pink socks her granddaughter had given her for Christmas. The only thing Lois had written on her Christmas gift list was “something pink.” Most of her large family had ignored the request, but a few had humored her.

  Gus and I ignored her question and headed back to my office. He closed the door behind us and we sat. Or rather, I sat and Gus perched on the front edge of the guest chair. Since the chair had arms, and since he was in uniform and wearing his crowded utility belt, there wasn’t enough room for all of him to fit between the wooden arms.

  “It’s about Cookie, isn’t it?” I asked.

  He nodded. “I’ve had a preliminary report from the medical examiner and we have cause of death.”

  There suddenly wasn’t enough air in the room. I wanted to rush out of my office and run outside, wanted to breathe deep of the cold, clean January air, wanted to look up into a blue sky spotty with clouds and suck in deep breaths that would wash me clean.

  But instead of doing that, I asked, “What was it?”

  “An overdose of acetaminophen.”

  “An . . . overdose?” No. It couldn’t be true. I didn’t want to know this, not one tiny little bit. “You don’t mean . . .” I couldn’t say the word “suicide” out loud. Didn’t want to let the possibility loose into the room, where it could grow strong enough to escape and get out into the world.

  But Gus was shaking his head. “It’s actually not that hard to OD on acetaminophen. Tylenol, most people know it by, but it’s in a lot of other medications and the lethal dosage is surprisingly low. Cookie had a number of other meds she was taking that included acetaminophen, and if she had a bad headache and had taken a few pills . . . well . . .” He sighed and went on to describe the symptoms of an overdose of acetaminophen.