1 Catered to Death (25 page)

When I reached the classroom, I positioned myself so I could observe Maxi without being seen. Maxi was standing in front of a row of potted geraniums and seemed to be digging in the soil. When she was finished, Maxi brushed off her hands and stepped back. I saw her slip something into her pocket. How odd. Well, it wouldn’t hurt to say good-bye to Maxi, would it? Stepping into the room, I said, “Hi, Maxi.”

Maxi whirled. “What are you doing here?”

“I just wanted to say good-bye.”

Maxi took a step toward me. “I don’t know that I’ve ever said hello to you. Are you spying on me?”

“Of course not. I just saw you in the teachers’ lounge, remember? I brought the cake.”

“Oh, right. You’re the lousy caterer. Remind me not to use you for my son’s wedding.”

Another graduate from the Eden Academy Charm School. “Yes, well, I just wanted to say good-bye.”

I eyed Maxi’s pocket where she had one beefy hand tucked inside and seemed to be playing with something.

“So everyone else is down the hall?” Maxi took a step toward me that was somehow menacing. “No one can hear anything because they’re all still shouting at each other?” Maxi chuckled. “What a bunch of lamebrains.”

Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea. I slowly began to back out of the door. “Yes, I’m going home. My husband and son are outside waiting for me.” I was going to add that they were out in the family car polishing their guns but I didn’t have time.

Maxi had almost reached me. I could see that her face had turned a deep shade of red and that her eyes were filled with rage. “I know all about you, Miss Catering Creep. I’ve seen you around here sticking your nose in other people’s business. You think you’re so smart, don’t you?”

“Not really,” I assured her. At that particular moment, I didn’t feel smart at all.

“Oh, yes, you do. I heard about the cupcakes you took to that snotty Claudine and that little gnat Junebug. Who do you think you’re kidding?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said. Oh, boy. It looked like I’d said hi to Maxi at exactly the wrong moment. “I was just giving away free samples. I’m trying to build up my business.”

“So why didn’t I get one? Or Stuart? Or Ruth?”

I didn’t have an answer to that question. “I guess I didn’t think about you guys.”

Maxi laughed, a short, unattractive bark. “Join the club. No one around here ever thinks about us and I for one am getting damn sick of it.”

“I’m sure it’s just an oversight,” I began but Maxi cut me off.

“No, Miss Snoopy Nose, it is not an ‘oversight.’ It’s a slap in the face, over and over and over. Christmas party? Oops, we forgot you, Maxi. We never thought that maybe you’d want to join us for a cup of cheer and perhaps a small token of appreciation for every single thing you do around here like driving in sleet and ice and 40 degrees below weather to haul our brats to school! Bonuses? Sorry, Maxi, but
you don’t get a bonus.
You aren’t important enough to get a raise. You are nothing but a big fat zero!”

“I can see that you have some job satisfaction issues,” I managed to stammer out.

Maxi laughed. “That’s a good one! I hate this place and I hated that old bastard who used to run it.”

I suddenly knew who had killed Frank Ubermann and probably Monica Webber too. “How’d you feel about Monica?” I asked.

“Are you kidding me? I hated her even more than I hated Frank! She was always checking my receipts to make sure I didn’t buy a freaking seventy-nine cent candy bar along with gas for the bus. Always checking my mileage to make sure I didn’t veer off course and stop to give my cousin Rita a ride to work. Always on my back and always throwing me under the bus. It was about time that someone threw her under the bus.”

“Did you?” I asked in a voice that was barely above a whisper.

“You bet I did!”

“But how? I thought you were running your route when Monica was killed.”

“That’s what everyone thought. What they didn’t think was that I might be smart enough to park Bus Number Two a block away and come back, call Monica down to the bus and then release the parking brake while she was crawling under it trying to figure out what was wrong. You know what her problem was?”

“No…”

“She thought she knew everything about everything. She actually thought she could fix the bus and save the school a hundred bucks. All she cared about was money, money, money! She made me sick!”

That was pretty obvious. “Well, I’ve got to run. Nice seeing you, Maxi.”

“What? You saw me pull something out of that geranium pot, didn’t you?” Maxi was perhaps two inches from my face and I could smell French fries and coffee on her breath with an underlying note of Jack Daniels.

“Well, yes, but I don’t know what it was.”

“I’ll tell you what it was.” Maxi reached into her pocket and then pulled out a very unappetizing piece of candy. “Homemade candy loaded with castor beans. The same kind of candy I gave to that moron Frank Ubermann. I knew he wouldn’t turn it down—that man was unbelievable! He could stand there eating my candy while telling me what a terrible job I was doing! Every damn week he’d show up, telling me how the bus looked bad and I drive like a drunk and how he’s going to fix it so I never work again. Every single week—I couldn’t take it anymore.”

I felt my heart flutter. I was right. “You…you killed Frank Ubermann?”

“You want to make something of it?”

“No, not at all,” I assured her. “But he was shot with an arrow. No one said anything about poison.”

“Yeah, I know. I shot him when the poison didn’t seem to be working fast enough. It was so easy,” Maxi bragged. “He was down in the basement getting out all the stuff he borrows for one of his camping trips. I saw him standing there, smug as hell while he rolled up a sleeping bag. Then I heard the rest of the teachers upstairs having a party that I wasn’t invited to and it hit me. Why should I wait for the poison to work? Why not finish Frank off once and for all? So I picked up a bow and arrow and took care of business. Easy as pie.”

“But why would you kill Monica?”

“Duh. Because she was on to me.
 
She found the castor beans on the bus and wanted to know why I had them. Seems Monica was something of a horticulturist in addition to being a little whore. I had to take care of her too and you know what? It really is easier to kill somebody the second time.”

“Fascinating,” I said as I edged toward the door. All I wanted to do was get out of that classroom and to the car where Steve and Tyler were waiting for me.

“I’m guessing it will be even easier the third time,” Maxi noted. “Now you’re going to eat this candy and then I’m going to take you out for a ride in the school bus and I’m going to leave you in the middle of nowhere and you’ll never find your way back before that poison kicks in and you die! That’s what happens to snoopy noses. They pay the price sooner or later.”

“Really, Maxi, I just wanted to tell you that there’s more cake down in the staff lounge.”

Maxi snorted. “Sure. I never get invited to anything around here and you bring some crappy cake in and I’m supposed to be grateful? I’m not buying it, missy. Now take this candy and start chewing!”

“DeeDee, what’s taking so long?” Steve appeared in the doorway and I felt myself flying through the air and into my husband’s arms. They’d never felt better.

“She did it!” I said hysterically, pointing at Maxi and hiding behind Steve. “She told me that she poisoned Frank Ubermann and then shot him with an arrow and she killed Monica too. Now she’s trying to get me to eat the rest of the candy!”

Throwing the candy at us, Maxi tried to run for the classroom door but was stopped by Tyler who loomed behind Steve. “Not so fast,” Tyler said, one arm holding Maxi back.

“He deserved it!” Maxi screamed. “They both deserved it! They wanted to fire me because I always use the school’s credit card to gas up my own car! How did he expect me to get to work on time if I didn’t have any gas?”

“She has a point,” I whispered in Steve’s ear.

“She also has a nice, long stretch in the women’s jail ahead of her.”

Tyler had already dialed 911 on his cell phone. “Nice work, Mom. Maybe I will write this all up and send it to the
Star-Tribune.
Being a journalist might even be more fun than being a bartender.”

“A what?” Steve asked.

Chapter Twenty-Two

“I’m so glad that’s over,” I said, a check from Eden Academy in front of me. Claudine, the witch, had deducted the cost for cleaning up the teachers’ lounge after the food fight featuring my cake but I didn’t care. I had been paid and Frank Ubermann’s and Monica Webber’s murderer had been found.

“You and me both. Now you can move on to your next catering job with a clean slate,” Steve told me.

“Ummm, about catering. I don’t know that it’s really what I want to do anymore,” I told him.

“Why not?”

“It’s too nerve wracking figuring out menus and having to deal with people giving parties. You know, I hadn’t thought about it before but hosts tend to be pretty jumpy. Who needs that? I like cooking for the family.”

Steve stared at me. “So what do you want to do now? I know you have something else in mind. I can tell by the crazed glint in your eyes.”

“I’m thinking of maybe getting a job on the local paper. You know how Tyler pretended to be a reporter? It made me think. I’d like to do something like that.”

“Honey, journalism is a dying field. I told Tyler that too. You both want to go into a dying field?”

“I’m not talking the
New York Times,
Steve. I’m talking our rinky-dink weekly paper. I’m sure I could do something there. I’m going to go down and talk to the editor tomorrow. And Tyler’s young enough that he can figure out the whole digital journalism thing. He’ll do fine.”

Steve looked at me fondly. “You do whatever makes you happy, DeeDee.”

“Really?”

“Sure. It’s only fair because nothing in this world makes me happier than you.”

What a husband.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Writing under the pen name Marlo Hollinger, Nell Musolf is having a very good time crafting mystery novels. While growing up in the Midwest, Nell enjoyed reading, watching too many made-for-TV. movies and imagining dark secrets and ulterior motives in just about everyone she met. In addition to her first mystery, CATERED TO DEATH, Nell has written three romance novels and four non-fiction books for middle-schoolers. She has also written several essays and romantic short stories for a variety of magazines and newspapers. She still lives in the Midwest with her husband, two sons and four cats.

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