Curse of the PTA

PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS

OF LAURA ALDEN

Plotting at the PTA

“Cozy readers will truly delight in the fact that this is the third in the series
of these superfun books, and with each release the plots just keep getting better
and better. . . . Strong characters and monumental surprises, this cozy is a definite
keeper!”

—
Suspense Magazine

“Laura Alden has written another delightful mystery. The plotting is fast-paced. . . .
Just wish I wouldn’t have to wait so long to read the next in the series.”

—MyShelf.com

“An engaging whodunit. . . . Fans will enjoy Laura Alden’s complex murder mystery,
thankfully without a recall in sight.”

—Genre Go Round Reviews

Foul Play at the PTA

“Well-crafted.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“Beth Kennedy gives amateur sleuths a good name. . . . For those of us who appreciate
good characters, it’s just as satisfying as her first book.”

—Lesa’s Book Critiques

Murder at the PTA

“Alden has strong talent and a well-skilled use of language that brings the story
alive and gives vitality to each character . . . an excellent start to a new cozy
series.”

—Fresh Fiction

“A terrific debut.”

—AnnArbor.com

“
Murder at the PTA
is well worth your time.”

—
Mystery Scene

Also Available from Laura Alden

Plotting at the PTA

Murder at the PTA

Foul Play at the PTA

CURSE of the PTA

Laura Alden

AN OBSIDIAN BOOK

OBSIDIAN

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First published by Obsidian, an imprint of New American Library,

a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

First Printing, April 2013

Copyright © Penguin Group (USA), Inc., 2013

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ISBN 978-1-101-59930-3

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the
product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance
to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is
entirely coincidental.

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility
for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

For Jon.

Always.

Chapter 1

“
O
ld and boring,” she said. “No doubt about it.”

I looked up from my notes to see my best friend, Marina, staring at me with that it’s-time-to-improve-Beth
look on her face. “Forty-two isn’t old,” I said. “Forty-two is the new twenty-five.”

“Stop making stuff up. And I notice you didn’t say anything about not being boring.”

“Boring is in the eye of the beholder.” I went back to studying my notes. There were
a lot of them. Tonight was the annual September organizational meeting of the Tarver
Elementary PTA, and due to what must have been temporary insanity on my part, I’d
volunteered to be the PTA’s president.

I’d been secretary for two years, and you’d think I’d have soaked up knowledge aplenty
about how a meeting is run, but I was realizing there was a lot to learn. Which shouldn’t
have been a surprise. Everyone else’s job is always simple, and the previous PTA president
had made running a meeting look as effortless as eating chocolate. I’d spent the last
two weeks researching parliamentary procedure, reading up on management techniques,
and wondering if I was up to the job.

Marina had made great fun of my self-assigned homework, saying that it was just a
PTA meeting, for crying out loud, but I wanted to be prepared. Really prepared. The
PTA vice president, Claudia Wolff, would love to catch me making a mistake, the bigger
mistake the better. Time spent making sure that wouldn’t happen was time well spent.

“And anyway, I wasn’t talking about you,” Marina said from the too-small chair upon
which she was sitting. The fifth-grade furniture was the biggest in the school, but
it still wasn’t exactly adult-sized.

“Oh?” I glanced at the classroom’s wall clock. Ten minutes until the meeting began
and the room was starting to fill up with parents and grandparents. Normally we had
high school students in the gym to watch over the children, but the gym had spent
the summer in a state of repair and the finish on the new floor wasn’t quite ready
for prime time. Instead, the kids and their keepers had been divided among two homes
close to the school.

Which, thanks to the temporary suspension of my former husband’s visitation schedule
due to a Wednesday evening insurance seminar he was leading, meant my Jenna, twelve,
was probably playing a shoot-’em-up video game. My Oliver, nine, was probably playing
a quiet board game with some other quiet children. Jenna was of the opinion that since
she was in middle school, she was old enough to stay home by herself, but she hadn’t
convinced me yet. Maybe when she was sixteen.

“No, I wasn’t talking about you.” Marina stood. “Not exactly.”

“That’s good,” I said vaguely, sorting my stack of papers. Two more PTA board members
came in and settled at the collapsible table the janitor had set up. Two down, one
to go. Randy Jarvis, the treasurer, nodded at me. Claudia busied herself with a fluffle
of movements that accomplished exactly nothing. She repositioned her chair. She cleared
her throat. She moved her purse from her left side to her right. She fussed with her
hair. I made sure my polite smile was on. This could be a very long year.

“It’s your clothes.” Marina plucked at my sleeve. “I was talking about your clothes.
They’re old and they’re boring. You need to venture out of your rut, Beth.”

“My rut is very comfortable, thanks.” After all, there was nothing wrong with khaki
poplin pants and button-up camp shirts. Average clothes that, I thought, went well
with my average-ish height of five foot five and my completely average brown hair.
And today I’d even slipped on a navy blue jacket. I thought I looked professional
and businesslike, a style equally appropriate for tonight’s meeting and for my career
as owner of a children’s bookstore.

“Clothes can be fun.” Marina waved her arms. “Don’t you want to have fun?”

“No, I don’t. Not ever.”

“Liar,” Marina said comfortably, sitting back down, her red hair in disarray. “If
that were true, you wouldn’t have spent half of last summer playing disc golf.”

“Exercise. For me and the children.”

“Fun. It’s all about fun. And those clothes are definitely not.”

I crossed my eyes at her and looked at the clock. We had a missing board member, but
it was time to start the meeting. “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” I said. “Tonight’s
meeting of the Tarver Elementary School PTA will come to order.”

“Um . . .” A slight, dark-haired woman, a PTA newcomer whose name I couldn’t remember,
stood up. “I don’t know if this is the right time, but . . .” She walked to the front
of the room and handed me an envelope. “It’s from Nat. She says she’s really sorry.”

I took the envelope from her. Without opening it, I knew what was inside. It didn’t
take any great leap to guess that the empty board seat, reserved for the new PTA secretary,
Natalie Barnes, was going to stay empty a little longer.

“What does it say?” Claudia asked, leaning over and craning her neck in her attempt
to read the letter.

“Just a second.” I scanned the pages. Natalie’s large handwriting and her lengthy
explanations filled up almost five sheets of paper.

Randy Jarvis, who’d been treasurer for as long as anyone could remember, grunted.
“Bet she says she can’t be secretary.”

I read the last page and handed the letter over to Claudia. “You’re right, Randy.
She resigned.” The scrawling pages had detailed how sorry she was, how much she wished
things were different, and how horrible she felt about all this, but with the way
things were, she was just too busy to be secretary.

He nodded and opened the pack of corn chips he’d brought from his downtown convenience
store. “She got gas from me the other day. Said she got a new job.”

The PTA newcomer, who’d retreated to her seat as soon as she’d given me the envelope,
spoke up. “It’s a really good job, and with her husband on short hours, she couldn’t
pass it up.”

“No, of course not.” It would have been nice to have had a phone call from Natalie
before the meeting, but you couldn’t have everything. “We still have a quorum,” I
said, “so we’ll continue. But I’d like to add an item to the agenda. New PTA secretary.”

Feet shuffled around in the half-filled room. We had a nice-sized group of about twenty,
but you wouldn’t have known it from the flat silence. I saw a couple of people half
stand, then sit down. It was the fight-or-flight reaction starting to take effect,
and who could blame them? Volunteering to bake cookies was one thing; offering your
services for an entire school year was quite another.

I could have stood up and made an impassioned speech about the many pleasures and
rewards of being on the PTA board, but one accidental glance at Claudia would have
made my words cling to the insides of my throat. Working with her this year was not
going to be a pleasure or any sort of reward, unless I was being rewarded in a negative
way.

What had I ever done to deserve Claudia? Sure, I’d skipped school once when I was
a high school senior, but I’d been caught and had car privileges revoked for a month.
I wasn’t always as patient with my children as I could be, though, and my good intentions
to have all three of us eat more fruit and vegetables were constantly being eroded
by the smell of fresh-baked cookies just down the street from the bookstore, and—

Marina’s overly loud throat clearing shook me out of my reverie. I blinked, briefly
reflected that it was good to have friends who kept you from making an idiot of yourself
in public, and went back to the agenda. We moved through approving the agenda, approved
the minutes of the last meeting, and approved payment of the few invoices that had
accrued over the summer.

The only old business item was my recap of last spring’s senior story project. We’d
paired Tarver Elementary students with residents of Sunny Rest Assisted Living. The
end product was a softcover book of the life story of the residents as seen through
the eyes of the children. Sales had done much better than expected by anyone—especially
me—who’d come up with the idea in the first place. The fact that the Tarver PTA was
making serious money and was receiving statewide attention was a fresh shock every
time I thought about it. A nice shock, but still.

I finished with the latest sales figures. The pleased murmurs were music to my ears.
There was nothing—nothing—that Claudia could say that would take this moment away
from me.

“What does that mean in terms of money for the PTA?” one of the fathers in the audience
asked.

I checked my notes to make sure I would be totally, absolutely correct when I publicly
stated the number. I said it, and this time there weren’t even any murmurs. Wide eyes
and open mouths were the order of the day.

The part of me that was small-minded and petty desperately wanted to sneak a look
at Claudia to see how she was reacting to the news. The noble and forgiving part of
me knew that doing such a thing was beneath the person I wanted to be.

So I compromised; I snuck a tiny, fast look.

She looked just like the others. Eyes wide, mouth dropped open.

On the outside, I kept a polite smile on my face. On the inside, I was running around,
shrieking with joy, thrusting my fists into the air. All last spring, Claudia had
done nothing but question the whole story project. Everything from the concept to
the choice of printer had been raked over the hot coals of her caustic commentary.

Sweet, sweet victory.

“We’ll talk about the financial aspects of the story project in a minute,” I said,
nodding at a man sitting in the back row. “But first, we need a secretary.” I looked
across the audience. “Being PTA secretary is a thankless job that is never rewarded
and brings you only criticism and more work than you imagined.”

“Sign me up!” called a female voice from the back of the room. Carol Casassa waved
wildly, grinning.

“She didn’t mean that,” said her husband, Nick, trying to pull her hand down. “Joke.
It was a joke, honest.”

Carol crossed her arms and pouted hugely.

So, yes, a joke. Too bad. Carol would have made an excellent secretary. I looked around
the room, skating over Marina’s upraised hand. She wanted to be secretary about as
much as I wanted to gain back the fifteen pounds I’d so laboriously lost in the last
six months. “Anyone else?”

Marina stood up, ignoring the way that I’d ignored her. “Can I nominate someone? Because
if I can, I nominate Summer Lang.”

All eyes skewed toward Summer.

The thirtyish woman had lived in Rynwood for only a couple of years, but the two of
us had discovered that we had so much in common it was almost scary. Besides the straight
brown hair and the tendency toward clumsiness when feeling uncomfortable, we shared
a compulsion for list making that was not understood by most and made fun of by many,
including my best friend, my offspring, and my employees.

Summer squirmed, looked at the floor, looked at her fingernails. “Um . . . well . . .
I guess I—”

Claudia’s voice soared out. “I nominate Tina Heller.”

My eyes flew open wide and I felt the beginnings of panic stir around in my stomach.

“You want to do this, don’t you, Tina?” Claudia said, prompting her bosom friend.
“You can be secretary. I mean, it can’t be that hard.”

I kept my mouth closed. My mother had always told me that if you can’t say anything
nice, don’t say anything at all. Forty years later, her admonition was finally taking
effect.

“Oh.” Tina, determinedly blond and always on a diet that for sure was going to help
her lose weight this time, opened and closed her mouth a few times before anything
else came out. “Sure. I guess I could. I mean, if you want me to.”

I most certainly did not want her as secretary. “You accept the nomination?” I asked.

“Uh, yeah.”

“Well, there you go.” Claudia lounged back in her chair, smug as a bug in a rug. “We
have a secretary.”

Not so fast, missy. “There is another nomination on the floor.”

Claudia sat upright, fast. “What do you mean? I nominated Tina, and she accepted.
That’s all we need, one nomination, and she’s it. That’s the way it works.”

“Another nomination is on the floor,” I repeated. “Summer, do you accept the nomination
of secretary?”

Summer looked at me. Looked at the glowering Claudia. Looked at Randy, who was crunching
through the last of his corn chips. Looked at Tina, who was biting her lips and texting
madly. Looked back at me.

I hoped that she could magically see on my face the begging that was going on in my
head.

Please run, Summer. Please please please, don’t make me be president of a PTA board
that I’ll be arguing with for the next year over everything from meeting times to
what color paper to use for the bake sale flyers. Please . . .

I held my breath.

“Okay,” she said. “Sure, I accept.”

The sharp pain in my chest eased to nothing. “Then we have two nominations.” I tried
to keep the elation out of my voice, but if Claudia’s sour sideways glance meant anything,
I hadn’t done a very good job.

“But we can’t have two nominations.” Claudia tapped the table with her red-painted
fingernail. “We always only have one. There can’t be two.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because . . .” Her glare sharpened to a point that ended in the middle of my forehead
and started to drill deep into my skull. “Because that’s the way we’ve always done
it.”

Of all the stupid reasons to do something, I’d always thought that was one of the
stupidest. Easier, sure, and it was the way the world worked in a general sort of
way, but I still thought it was stupid.

“That’s the way we’ve always done it,” she said again, “and there’s no reason to change
now. Tina accepted first, so she’ll be secretary.”

“Not necessarily.” Reaching into the old diaper bag I used as a PTA briefcase, I reached
for a manila folder and dropped it onto the table with a small plop. “Our bylaws state
that in cases of multiple nominations, there will be a vote.”