Poison at the PTA Read online

  “Go on,” I said, laughing.

  “Thanks, Beth.” Whitney gave me a quick, hard hug. “You’re the best.” She backed away, grinning broadly. “The absolute best!”

  By this time, the room was mostly empty. Claudia and Tina were still there, talking about what color to paint Tina’s living room, and Carol and Nick Casassa were still there, talking to Rachel.

  “Anyone still eating?” I asked, gesturing at the foodstuffs. Claudia and Tina ignored me; the others shook their heads. Soon everything was done except washing the lemonade jug and cleaning out the coffeepot, a task I’d never cared for, as my skin had an odd attraction to coffee grounds. The wet gritty stuff stuck to my hands with the power of a covalent bond and spread to my arms, clothes, and face in my efforts to get it off.

  Well, maybe this time would be different.

  I trudged down the hall to the kitchen, jug under one arm and holding the coffeemaker as far away from my body as possible. The leftover coffee went down the drain and I pulled open the little drawer where the coffee grounds hid out. Sure enough, one side of the filter was folded down.

  Different, I told myself. This time will be different.

  I carried the drawer to the garbage can and tipped it upside down.

  Nothing.

  I tapped the drawer on the side of the can.

  Nothing. Once again, I’d been foiled by the incredible surface tension of coffee grounds. No wonder I drank tea.

  I gave the thing one almighty hard tap and ka-blam! Wet grounds scattered across the lip of the garbage can, all over my hands, across the front of my shirt, and up against the bright white kitchen wall.

  The mess was tremendous.

  For a long moment I looked at it. Then I sighed and started the cleanup.

  Half a roll of paper towels later, everything was as I’d found it. Everything, that is, except a part of the wall that was very hard to reach. For some reason, the countertop ended three inches shy of the wall, creating a gap destined to collect dust, dirt, and stray coffee grounds.

  I dampened a couple of paper towels, knelt down, and wiped down the wall. The towels came out thick with coffee grounds and other unknown gunk. I tossed them into the garbage and did it all over again. This time the towels weren’t as gunky, but they still weren’t what anyone except a teenaged boy would call clean.

  Once again I went into the fray. Last time, I promised myself, and stretched my arm as deep into the gap as possible. I even squeezed my elbow back there. After all, as my father had often told me, if you’re not going to do a job right, why do it at all? It had been a way of life for Dad, and now here I was, on my hands and knees, cleaning what probably hadn’t been cleaned in—

  The far edge of the paper towel touched something that rolled. It was a plastic-sounding roll.

  A spice jar, I figured. Easy enough to see that happening. Pepper, maybe, falling on its side, rolling toward the wall, and dropping over the edge. Too much trouble to retrieve, so it had been abandoned.

  Poor pepper, I thought, and extended my arm a little more. Almost . . . a little farther . . . Ha! Got you!

  I scooted it out into the light and picked it up. Peered at it. Not a spice jar at all. It was a small pill bottle for an over-the-counter medication. I picked it up and immediately recognized the label. Acetaminophen.

  That was weird. Or maybe not. Almost everybody had a bottle of the stuff in their house. Maybe one of the kitchen staff got regular headaches and had carried it in her purse.

  I shook the bottle. No rattle.

  Huh. More weirdness. Something was in there. I could feel the weight of it shifting around. I fussed with the childproof cap, wishing Jenna was there to open it for me, and finally figured out how to pop off the top.

  As I’d suspected, there were no pills inside. But there was something.

  I leaned the bottle this way and that, trying to get the contents into the light. There, at the bottom, was . . .

  From my kneeling position, I sat down hard on the floor. Pulled in some deep breaths. Maybe I’d been wrong, maybe I was too tired to see properly, maybe I was hallucinating from lack of sleep. It was possible. Likely, even.

  I looked into the bottom of the bottle and saw exactly what I’d seen the first time.

  Powder. White powder with little bits of reddish orange scattered throughout. Powered acetaminophen. It didn’t take much of a mental leap to land on a conclusion I really didn’t want to face.

  Cookie hadn’t accidentally overdosed on acetaminophen. Someone had sprinkled the bitter stuff into her coffee.

  She’d been poisoned.

  She’d been murdered.

  Chapter 7

  I made sure the other PTA members had left; then while still in the kitchen, still staring at the bottle, I called Gus and told him what I’d found.

  “All right,” he said calmly. “I’m on my way. Is anyone else in the building?”

  “Harry,” I said. “He came back to make sure the school was locked up.”

  “That’s fine. Harry’s a good man. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  I thumbed off my cell and looked at Harry. He was the school janitor, the security guard, and the fixer of all things, but above all, a quiet and usually unnoticed presence. I’d known Harry for years but didn’t know anything about him.

  “Chief Eiseley will be here in a few minutes,” I said.

  A great conservator of words, Harry just nodded. Sadly, Harry was also a fan of Chicago’s NHL team, the Blackhawks, instead of being the Minnesota Wild fan that he should be, but we’d learned to discuss hockey without coming to blows.

  “That girl of yours,” he said. “she’s a good goalie.”

  I beamed. “Thank you.” My smile faded as I remembered that she now had competition for the starting spot. I said as much to Harry.

  “A test for her,” he said. “If she keeps on, it’ll happen again. Better if she learns now how to deal with it.”

  He was right. And if I was smart, I’d remember to pass on his advice to Jenna. Matter of fact, it was such good advice that I wondered how much experience he had in giving it out. “Do you have any children, Harry?” He didn’t wear a wedding band, but not all men did, especially men who, in the course of any given day, could come in contact with everything from thick mud to live wires to leaking pipes.

  Instead of answering, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. With a flick of the wrist, he flipped it open and held it out for me to see.

  I blinked. Blinked again. It was a family photo. A smiling Harry sat shoulder to shoulder with a happy-looking woman. Grouped around them were two young men and three young women. “Your family?” I asked.

  “Old picture, though.” He studied it. “Need a new one that has the grandbabies.”

  Harry had grandchildren? My mouth flopped open and shut a few times before I could get my vocal cords working. “How many?” I asked.

  “Two.” He paused. “For now. Two more on the way.”

  I looked again at the picture. “You look very happy. You all do.”

  He shrugged. “We get along most days.”

  “Do they live around here?”

  “Oldest son.” Harry pointed at the photo. “He’s out in Seattle, doing computer stuff for that big company out there.”

  “Microsoft?” I asked faintly.

  “That’s the one. Oldest girl, she’s career army, about to move up to captain, she says. Next son, he’s teaching history at that college in Indiana. South Bend.”

  “Notre Dame?”

  “Yuh-huh. Next daughter, she’s not too far away, over in Milwaukee. She and her husband, doctor and doctor.” He chuckled quietly. “Busy folks, those two, always cutting up somebody and putting them back together.”

  “Surgeons?”

  He nodded. “Our youngest girl, she was in the Peace Corps. Now she’s in Washington, doing flunky work for some senator.” He tucked his wallet back into his pocket. “She’s talking about goi
ng to law school. My bride and I, we’re not so sure that’d be the best thing for her, but she’ll do what she’ll do.”

  “Kids tend to do that.” I stared at him. How could I not have known any of this? How could I not have known that after decades of marriage, Harry still loved his wife deeply enough to call her his bride? Why on earth hadn’t he ever mentioned the many accomplishments of his children?

  “Beth?” Gus walked into the kitchen. “Are you okay? You look a little strange.”

  “It’s been . . . a strange evening,” I said.

  “Where’s the bottle?” he asked.

  I gestured to where it was standing like the cheese all alone on the stainless-steel countertop. “I was cleaning up something I’d spilled and found it down there.” I showed him the small gap. “My fingerprints are all over it. I’m really sorry, but I didn’t know what it was when I picked it up, so I couldn’t help . . .” With great effort, I made myself stop babbling like an idiot.

  Gus took a pair of bright purple gloves from his pocket, pulled them on, and studied the bottle and its contents. For a long moment no one said anything. Harry and I watched Gus as he screwed the bottle’s top back on. Police work in action. Gus reached into an inside coat pocket for a paper bag. An evidence bag, I’m sure he would have called it, but to me it looked remarkably like a brown lunch bag.

  After using a black marking pen to make some notations, Gus dropped the pill bottle into the bag and extracted a small stapler from his coat pocket to secure it.

  He turned to face us, and his expression was as grim as I’d ever seen it. The Gus I’d known for years was a kind man given to buying more cookies from Girl Scouts than was good for anyone’s cholesterol. Right now, however, he looked every inch the hard, weatherworn, experienced police chief that he was.

  “I don’t have to tell either of you how important this evidence could be.” He held the brown bag with his index finger and thumb.

  “Sorry about the fingerprints,” I said again. “I wouldn’t have touched it if I’d known what it was.”

  “Not your fault. But I will ask you to come down to the station tomorrow. We’ll need to fingerprint you for elimination purposes. This could be critical information,” Gus said, tapping the bag, “or it could be nothing. We won’t know for a while. Beth, Harry, I’m asking both of you to keep quiet.”

  Harry, the man who had never told anyone about the many accomplishments of his children, wasn’t the one Gus was concerned about. It was the fact that I told Marina pretty much everything and that Marina told everybody everything.

  But things were different now. “I promise,” I told Gus.

  • • •

  The short drive home was quiet and dark, which matched the quiet and dark of the empty house. First thing I did after walking in the door was turn on every light in the kitchen. Maybe light would chase away the sadness that was settling in on my shoulder.

  I picked up the phone and dialed.

  “You’re late,” Richard pointed out.

  My former husband had a knack for stating the obvious. “Yes,” I said, and left it at that. If I explained, he’d start lecturing me about getting involved in things I had no business being involved in, I’d get my back up about him lecturing me about anything at all, and we’d devolve to a level of acute politeness that would take weeks to thaw. “Is Oliver still up?” I asked.

  “I was about to send him to brush his teeth,” Richard said.

  “This won’t take long.”

  Richard sighed and put down the phone. A moment later I heard my son’s voice. “Hi, Mom.”

  Maybe someday I’d hear those two words and not melt into warm mush. But I hoped not. “Hi, Ollster. What did you do tonight?” I asked.

  “I played with that new video game Dad gave us for Christmas.”

  Wonderful. “Anything else?” I asked.

  “I made up a new song.”

  Oliver’s songs were usually composed of roughly two notes and two sentences, but they were my favorite songs in the world. “Can I hear it?”

  “It’s not quite done yet, but it goes like this.” He hummed a dah-di-dah sequence, then sang, “Miss Stephanie is pretty as can be. Miss Stephanie has a smile for me. Miss Stephanie is . . .” He stopped. “That’s all I have right now.”

  “You can finish it tomorrow,” I said. And maybe tomorrow would be the right time to talk to him about how cute little Mia Helmstetter was looking this year. I sent him a good-night kiss. “What’s your sister doing?”

  “Nothing. After supper she shut herself up in her room and hasn’t come out.”

  That didn’t sound good. “Knock on her door, please, and tell her I want to say good night.”

  I heard his tap-tap on the door. “Jenna, Mom wants to talk to you.” There was a pause. “Mom? She says she’s asleep.”

  Riiight. “Okay, sweetheart. Tell her I love her and to sleep tight.”

  “And don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

  “Not a single chomp.”

  He giggled. “Night, Mom.”

  After he hung up, I pulled out the phone book and flipped it open. “Coach Doan?” I asked. “This is Beth Kennedy, Jenna’s mother.”

  His voice was cautious. “I thought I might hear from you. How’s she taking it?”

  Bingo! “Well, that’s the thing. She’s staying with her dad tonight, so I don’t know what’s going on.”

  It didn’t take long for him to give me the story I’d already anticipated. “Of course I understand,” I reassured him. “And I’ll do my best to make sure Jenna does.”

  “She’s a good kid,” Coach said. “It’ll be fine in the end.”

  Fine? Easy for him to say. I wasn’t so sure it would be that simple to find the words to console a young girl who was no longer the starting goalie for her hockey team.

  Fatigue was starting to tug at my eyes. It was only nine o’clock, but I was ready for bed. I took Spot out for a short walk and brought George the cat upstairs with me. Five minutes later I had my teeth brushed and my pajamas on. Just as I was crawling under the covers, the phone rang.

  Jenna. Maybe she’d felt the need to talk to her mother about the goalie situation. Maybe it was Marina, ready to talk. Maybe it was my mother, ready to move from northern Michigan to Florida.

  All that flashed through my head in the time it took my hand to pick up the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey. How are you?”

  Smiling, I finished my crawl into bed. “Pete, did you know you’re the only person I really wanted to talk to right now?”

  “I was hoping so,” he said.

  We talked about his day; then I told him about Oliver’s crush on his vice principal and about Jenna’s displacement from starting goalie. But I didn’t tell him about Marina, and I didn’t tell him about what I’d found in the school kitchen. One would have been a betrayal of a deep friendship; the other would have been a betrayal of the promise I’d made to Gus. Pete wouldn’t talk; as a forensic cleaner he knew better than most how to keep things to himself, but still.

  As Pete gave me comforting reassurances about Oliver and said that Jenna would learn how to deal with her new hockey reality, I felt the muscles at the back of my neck start to relax.

  “You really think it’s going to be okay?” I asked.

  “Everything’s going to be just fine. Sleep tight, sweetheart.”

  When he hung up, I held the phone to my chest for a moment, keeping him close. He was right. Everything would be okay. There was no reason to worry and get all worked up about things that wouldn’t happen. Oliver would be fine. Jenna would be fine. Marina and I would find a way back to normal, and . . .

  And Cookie was dead. Poisoned by someone who’d been at the PTA in Review night.

  I put the phone away and cuddled up to my comfortable cat, but even his loud purrs couldn’t quiet the thoughts that were racing through my head.

  Cookie had been poisoned.

  She’d been poi
soned by someone during the PTA in Review night.

  Cookie had been murdered.

  By someone I knew.

  At some point sleep swept over me, but it was a long time coming.

  Chapter 8

  The next morning I presented myself at the police station bright and early. But it was my second stop. First, I’d knocked on the back door of the antiques store until Alice Barnhart let me in.

  “It’s not even eight o’clock,” she said, wiping flour from her hands onto her flour-covered apron.

  “I know, and I’m sorry for barging in like this when you’re not open, but there are people out there in desperate need of your cookies.”

  “These are the only ones out of the oven.” She dropped half a dozen freshly baked M&M cookies into a white bag. “People? You, for instance?”

  “Me and everybody else in this town,” I said. “Everybody in the state, if they knew about your cookies. You could franchise and make money hand over fist.”

  “And you could do the same thing with your bookstore.”

  I squinched my face. “That sounds horrible.”

  “For you and me both,” she said cheerfully. “Big money means big headaches. I’m much happier with the money I have and my only headache being getting Alan to the doctor once a year.”

  I thanked her for the early sale and she shooed me off. “Don’t worry about it. Now get out of here and let me start the next batch.”

  A cold biting wind pushed me down the sidewalk. Light snow swirled around my ankles and dusted the evergreen shrubs with white. With my head down against the blustery weather, I cradled the cookies like a swaddled infant and hurried into the police station.

  “And what to my wondering eyes should appear,” said Gus, “but a children’s bookstore owner and a kind offering for a morning snack?”

  “Doesn’t scan.” I handed over the bag.

  “That’s why I’m a cop and not a poet.” He reached in for a cookie. “Hey, these are still warm. How’d you manage that? Alice isn’t open for another hour.”