Murder at the PTA (2010) bk-1 Read online

  Yesterday, it had seemed most of Rynwood thought the same way, but that was before the big guns had muscled in. We could scoff at Gus and his staff, but no outsider had better do so.

  “I’m sure the sheriff and his deputies have had a lot of experience with murder.” I unfolded the packing list.

  “But they don’t know us.” Lois pulled books out of the box, scattering foam peanuts everywhere. “They may have fancy investigating techniques, but they don’t know Rynwood.”

  And to that there was no rejoinder.

  Chapter 7

  Procrastination can be a useful tool. Sometimes, if you delay long enough, the need to do a task evaporates completely, and you can joyfully feel justified in your procrastination. Of course, there are times when the job hangs over your head and clouds your days, making you miserable with stomach-tightening anxiety. You know you should get on with the task; you know that delaying the icky job isn’t going to make things any easier. You know all that, but you still find reasons to put it off.

  So it was Friday, the day after I was asked to call Agnes’s sister, that I tacked Erica’s slip of paper to the bulletin board over the bookstore’s teapot.

  “Who’s Gloria Kuri?” Lois peered at the handwriting. “That’s the area code for the great white north. Is she a new writer?”

  Since I’d purchased the store, I’d done my best to have events promoting any author who happened to wander by. We also had reading groups where we gave gift certificates to any child who read a book a month. We’d had poetry parties where each child read a poem aloud. Last summer the employees had dressed up as children’s book characters and given a prize to everyone who guessed all of them correctly. Lois’s costume was the hardest to figure, but then not many people dress up as Mike Mulligan’s steam shovel.

  “Gloria Kuri is Agnes Mephisto’s sister,” I said. “I was volunteered by the PTA to make a condolence call.”

  “And you haven’t yet, have you?” Lois turned, arms crossed over her bright yellow corduroy blazer. “You don’t want to do it, and you’re putting it off.”

  “I’ll call today,” I said vaguely. “It’s early. She could still be asleep.”

  “It’s ten thirty in the morning.” Lois tapped her watch. “The only day this could be considered early is the first of January.”

  “Maybe she works third shift somewhere and she’s sleeping.” Desperation makes you say stupid things. I hated calls like this. I never said the right thing, could never come up with any words of comfort, and had never once felt as if calling did any good.

  “Then I’m sure she turns the ringer off while she sleeps. Here.” Lois plucked the slip of paper from the board and handed it to me. “Go call.”

  “Now?” I backed away from the fluttering paper. “I can’t. I have to—”

  “This will take all of five minutes.” Lois put the slip in my hand and closed my fingers over it. “Go into your office, shut the door, and dial the number.”

  “What if it gets busy?” I glanced at the empty store. “I’ll call later this afternoon, when Paoze gets here.”

  “You’re worse than a teenager with a term paper.” She took hold of my shoulders and turned me around. “Go.” The push she gave me wasn’t exactly gentle.

  We both knew I’d tacked the phone number on the board to get her to goad me into action. I couldn’t be angry at her high-handedness—irritated, maybe, but not angry.

  I shut my office door and sat at my desk. I looked at the piles of catalogs. I put out one hand, but jerked it back. Lois was right. This wouldn’t take long. And besides, she was probably listening at the door.

  I picked up the receiver and pushed buttons. “Dialing!” I called.

  “About time,” came the muffled response.

  As the phone rang, I tried to think of the right words to say to the sister of someone who was murdered. By the second ring, I’d come to the conclusion there weren’t any.

  “Hello?” The voice was raspy and low, but decidedly female.

  “Is this Gloria Kuri?” I asked. Maybe it would be someone else. Maybe I could leave a message. It’d be cheating and my grandmother would spin in her grave, but it would still count.

  “Yah, this is Gloria.”

  So much for cheating. “My name is Beth Kennedy. I’m secretary of the Tarver Elementary PTA, and I called to say how sorry I am about the death of your sister.” Instantly, I wanted to kick myself. Why had I said I was sorry? I was speaking for the PTA and should’ve said we were sorry. I really wasn’t any good at this stuff.

  “Oh. Well, thanks, I guess.”

  Her near-rudeness gave me a boost. She wasn’t any good at this stuff, either.

  “She was an outstanding principal.”

  “Yeah?”

  There was a pause. “I’m sorry for your loss,” I said. “I’m sure it was the worst phone call you’ve ever taken.”

  “Who would’ve guessed that ol’ Agnes would end up murdered?” Gloria mused. “Of all of us, I’d have figured her last for something like this.”

  “You have a lot of siblings?”

  “Oh, yah. Seven of us. Agnes was the oldest, and I was smack in the middle.” She ran off the names of the five other siblings. I should’ve been taking notes. “If I had to make a stab at a murder victim,” she said, “I’d pick Luke. You meet some bad people in jail, you know?”

  Whether she meant Luke was bad, or that Luke met bad people, I wasn’t sure.

  “Or J.T.,” Gloria added. “She’s got Pop’s temper. Wouldn’t be surprised if she’d started one fight too many with that slacker husband of hers and he finally got guts enough to fight back,” she said. “Yah, that I could’ve seen. But Agnes? Who would’ve figured that?”

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “This must be very difficult for you.”

  “It’s been hard for years, with Agnes. You know, I can’t think of the last time I saw her.”

  “Have you ever been down here to Rynwood?”

  “Nah.”

  Agnes had been principal for ten years, and her sister hadn’t managed to find the time even once to drive down? But I knew how the years could speed by. You always thought there would be time to do everything, until suddenly there was no time left at all. My father had died young from a heart attack and left behind a shelf full of travel books for the places he and Mom planned to visit after he retired. I yearned to make Gloria feel better but knew I couldn’t. “If there’s anything I can do,” I said, “please ask.”

  “Actually,” Gloria said slowly, “there is one thing. I wouldn’t ask, except that you and Agnes were such good friends.”

  “Um . . .” This was what I got for saying I instead of the PTA we. Maybe they were going to bury Agnes down here and she was going to ask me to visit the cemetery and plant flowers. Or maybe she wanted me to speak at the funeral. I could cheat and write a note to be read aloud at the service. I had the letter half written by the time Gloria spoke again.

  “See, it’s such a long ways and I’d have to take time off work, and the boss hates when I do that. You’d think being a clerk in an auto-parts store was like a general in the army for how he goes on when I want a day off. I got to be there by noon today, dead sister or no.”

  “Um . . .”

  “So if I send you a key, you’d take care of things, right? Seeing as how you and Agnes were close.”

  “Things?”

  “At her house. Clean out the refrigerator, change the mail, do something with the plants, if she has any.”

  “I’m not—”

  “I’ll call the cops down there and tell them it’s all good with me. You’re a peach for doing this. Beth, right? What’s your address, honey?”

  Thirty seconds later, I’d given Gloria my address, agreed to forward any important mail, and promised to keep an eye on the shuttered house until spring, when Gloria or another sibling would come down for house sale arrangements. “None of us goes far in winter,” she said.

 
; Again I spoke before I thought. “Who’s going to make the house payments? Pay the utility bills?”

  “That’s not a problem,” Gloria said, and there was a deep sense of bitterness in her tone.

  I said good-bye, hung up, and stared into space. What had I done this time? But on the plus side, at least I didn’t have Marina shaking her head and telling me I needed to learn how to stand up for myself.

  Cheered, I got up and went to tell Lois to break out the chocolate. Even if I’d been guilted into a job I didn’t want to do, at least I’d made the dreaded phone call and survived—a chocolate-worthy day if there ever was one.

  “Mom?”

  “Yes, Oliver? Jenna, you’re not wearing flip-flops to school.”

  “But, Mom—”

  “No whining. I don’t care how trendy they are. A pair of flip-flops is not suitable footgear for forty-five degrees and rain.”

  “It won’t stay this cold.” Her lip started to jut out. “And it might get sunny.”

  “And it might not. Go change.”

  A mutinous ogre took over my heretofore cheerful daughter. The friendly face of yore was replaced by a squatted chin, crossed arms, and slitted eyes. “Bailey’s mom lets her wear flip-flops all winter long.”

  “How nice for her doctor.”

  “Huh?”

  “Unsuitable footwear can lead to colds and flu and bronchitis and pneumonia.” Or at least it might. I was going on instinct; that’s what moms do. “Go change. Now.” I pointed in the direction of the stairs, and she began the long trudge to her bedroom.

  “Mom?”

  I looked past the empty cereal bowls I was still holding and focused on my son. “Yes, Oliver. What is it?” And please don’t bring up the subject of the dog. Not on a Monday.

  Oliver tugged at the collar of his shirt and didn’t meet my eye.

  Uh-oh. I put the cereal bowls in the dishwasher, then sat on an island stool. I patted the seat next to me. “What’s the matter, sweetheart?” I asked in a bad Jimmy Cagney imitation.

  His thin shoulders rose and fell.

  “Did I forget to kiss Polly the Hippopotamus last night?”

  He shook his head.

  “Did you forget something?” Oliver often forgot things the minute he walked out the classroom door. While I appreciated his ability to compartmentalize, it meant numerous mornings scrambling to finish projects and find permission slips.

  “Oliver?” I glanced toward the stairs. When Jenna came down, we had to leave. “Okeydokey, kid.” I gave him a hug and laid my forehead on top of his soft hair. “We can talk tonight. Right now—”

  “I did it,” he said to the floor. “I was bad and now we’ll never get a dog and it’ll all be my fault. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m—”

  “Oliver.” I spoke sharply. It seemed harsh, but it was the best way to handle the boy when he edged into inanity. “Oliver!”

  He dragged a hand across his face and his palm came away wet. My heart crumpled, and it took a superhuman feat of strength not to pull him tight against my heart. I had to be both mother and father to my children now, and this was a time for Dad to show up. “Tell me what you did.”

  “I haven’t, not for a long time. I haven’t!”

  “Okay.” I had no clue what he was talking about—none whatsoever.

  “Please don’t be mad.”

  How I hated when the kids said that.

  “Oliver, just tell me.”

  “It’s the . . .”

  “The what?”

  “The bed.” Jenna thudded into the kitchen. “He wet the bed again last night. Are these okay for me to wear?” She lifted her leg and thumped her hiking boot onto the kitchen table.

  “Jenna! Get that boot off the table!”

  She dragged her heel across the glossy wood, leaving a dark trail.

  “Oh, Jenna. Why did you do that?”

  Her face took on that dreaded stubborn look. “All you care about is the furniture and what we wear. You don’t care anything about us. Especially me!” She ran across the room and opened the door to the garage.

  “Don’t—”

  Too late. She was already out the door, slamming it shut behind her. I winced. I recognized it all: the sulks, the slams. At long last, my mother’s curse was coming true. I had a daughter just like me.

  “Mommy?” Oliver asked.

  “Yes, sweetheart.”

  “Are you mad?” His big, round eyes looked up at me.

  I abandoned the father mode and ran straight back to being Mom. The hug I gave him was as full of love and reassurance as it was possible for a hug to be. “Don’t be silly,” I said. “It’s not your fault you wet the bed. These things happen.”

  “They do?” He squirmed out of my embrace. “Did you do it when you were little?”

  I decided to fictionalize my childhood. “No, but I had a friend who did.”

  “What happened?” A small line appeared between his eyebrows. “Is she okay?”

  “She’s fine. She’s a. . . .” I thought through the friends of my youth and came up empty-handed. Back to fiction. “A police officer.”

  “What’s her name?”

  The short story was becoming a novella. “Sharon.”

  “Here? In Rynwood? Has she found out who killed Mrs. Mephisto yet?”

  The garage door opened six inches. “We’re going to be late,” Jenna wailed.

  “Get your coat, Oliver,” I said. “We’ll talk about this tonight.”

  I backed down the driveway, thinking hard. Oliver hadn’t wet the bed in months. Jenna hadn’t had a shouting sulk like that in . . . well, ever. To have the two incidents occur simultaneously made me think there was a single cause. And there was only one way to fix it.

  I dropped the kids off at school, made a short stop back home to toss Oliver’s pajamas and bedding into the wash and to put some vinegar on the mattress, then headed to the store and the privacy of my office. Any other time I might have been nervous dialing this particular phone number, but today my fingers didn’t quiver at all.

  “Dane County Sheriff’s Department,” said a calm female. “How may I direct your call?”

  “I’d like to speak to the officer in charge of the murder of Agnes Mephisto. She was killed in Rynwood two days ago.”

  “The sheriff oversees all murder investigations, ma’am, but the deputy in charge of that case is Deputy Wheeler. I’ll transfer you now.”

  There was a click, a hum, and then a ring and a half. “Deputy Sharon Wheeler.”

  I gasped loud enough for her to hear.

  “Hello? Ma’am? Are you all right?”

  Her name was Sharon. What were the odds? My multidegreed brother could probably tell me, but then I’d have to feign interest in how he got the answer. “I’m fine. Just a . . . a little frog in my throat.”

  “How can I help you?” The deputy sounded busy but helpful. I knew the tone well; I used it myself every Saturday afternoon I worked at the store.

  “My name is Beth Kennedy,” I said, “from Rynwood. My children attend Tarver Elementary, the school where Agnes Mephisto was principal. I was just wondering if you’re close to finding her murderer.”

  “The investigation is proceeding. The local media will be notified when we have solid information.”

  “Do you have anything?” I asked. “My son and daughter aren’t sleeping well, and I’m worried about them. If I could tell them the police are close to finding the killer, I’m sure it would make a big difference.”

  “I’m sorry about your kids,” Deputy Wheeler said. “We’re doing everything we can.”

  “Thank you.” As if a seven-year-old would care about “everything we can.” I squinched my nose at the phone. “Gloria Kuri, Agnes’s sister, is sending me the key to the house. She wants me to clean out the refrigerator. I should have the key by Saturday. Will it be okay to get into the house?”

  “The house is no longer a crime scene,” Deputy Wheeler said. “If you have lawful
right, you may enter at any time.”

  “What if I find something important? To finding the killer, I mean. Should I call?”

  “At any time,” the deputy said, and I realized I must have sounded like an idiot. Crime-scene people had probably gone over the house with all sorts of fancy equipment. What was I going to find that they already hadn’t?

  “Is there anything else, ma’am?”

  Embarrassment heated my face. “Thanks for taking my call.”

  “Not a problem. Hope those kids of yours are okay.”

  I hung up, thinking that she was just busy, not unfeeling. She probably had children of her own and knew what it was like.

  Still, it sounded to me as if this evening’s first chore would be to haul out the vinyl mattress pad.

  Chapter 8

  Friday night, Richard picked up the kids. While Jenna and Oliver were fastening their seat belts, I told my ex about the wish for a dog and the bed-wetting incident and their reaction to the death of their principal.

  “But they hardly knew Agnes Mephisto.” He glanced at the car. “They can’t possibly be that upset.”

  “They saw her every day at school. And it’s not as if she died from cancer or a car accident. She was murdered.”

  “I think you’re overreacting.”

  This was Richard’s standard response to anything he wished to avoid. It covered everything from worry about finding the perfect Christmas present to panic over blood gushing from a child’s nose.

  “Could be.” I waved good-bye to the kids. “But if you have to buy a new mattress on Monday, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Saturday morning I was at Marina’s bright and early. I knocked and let myself in. The lady of the house sashayed into the kitchen wearing Capri pants and a fitted blouse with a scarf tied flat around her neck. Another scarf was tied around most of her hair, the ends of her light red mop sticking out the top and flopping around in all directions.

  “You look as if you stepped out of a 1950s Good Housekeeping magazine,” I said.

  “How perceptive of you, daahling.”

  “Why the fifties?”

  “Don’t you read the obituaries? That’s when Agnes was born.”