Curse of the PTA (17 page)

“What?”

“The third time someone’s called and
breathed
at me.” She made huffing and puffing noises. “I tell you, it’s creeping me out. Why
is it we don’t have caller ID?”

“Find out how much it costs,” I said. But while I listened to her go on and on about
how crank phone calls were the first sign of serious psychological disturbance, I
was finishing my mental list.

Lou Spezza was hiding something.

And we were getting anonymous phone calls.

Chapter 14

L
ate that morning, I hauled a half dozen boxes of books out to the trunk of my car
and sailed off into the wild blue yonder. Well, I drove, and the sky was a low, leaden
gray, but my spirits were more in keeping with the freedom of the high seas.

Thanks to Yvonne’s unintentional intervention, I’d cast off my feelings of doom and
gloom in spite of my fears about an unknown enemy. It wouldn’t last, of course, but
that was no reason not to enjoy my current perky frame of mild.

My mood endured through the deliveries to various homeschooling mothers and parochial
schools, survived the deliveries to three day-care centers, and made it all the way
through to my entrance into Sunny Rest Assisted Living.

“Morning, Beth,” the receptionist said. “No, wait, it’s afternoon, isn’t it? Are those
for Judy?”

Judy Schultz was Sunny Rest’s activities director. We’d come to know each other fairly
well over the course of last spring’s story project. When I’d mentioned my selection
and delivery service, her ears had pricked up and I’d added the facility to my regular
route.

I hefted the box. “The whole kit and caboodle. Is Judy in her office?”

“Probably. But you could leave them here, if you want.”

I clutched the box tight to my chest. “Um, no thanks.” While I fully trusted that
Judy would fulfill her job responsibilities in a prompt manner, if Mr. Meagher didn’t
get his copy of the latest Lee Child thriller as soon as was physically possible,
my head would be on the chopping block. “I’ll see if she’s in.”

The carpeted hallway kept my footsteps quiet. Most of the rooms were empty due to
the noon hour, but the brightly lit dining area was filled with the clatter and chatter
of a meal.

I slowed, trying to remember where Judy ate her lunch. The receptionist had said she
was in her office, but hadn’t Judy once said something about eating in the employee
lounge? I shifted the heavy box in my arms, thinking that I shouldn’t have stayed
so long at Tiny Tots Day Care.

But who can resist those chubby little smiles? And since I knew almost all of the
parents, it was almost an obligation to stay for a few minutes. Our school superintendent
and his wife had had a late-in-life baby—a
very
late in life baby—and at eighteen months, she was as cute and adorable as any toddler
ever.

“Beth!” A voice came at me from the far end of the hallway. “Can I talk to you for
a second?”

I squinted and saw a woman and a dog walking toward me. “Hey, Summer. Did you know
there’s a great big dog on your left?”

She laughed. “We come here once a week for dog therapy. The residents like Zeppo a
lot, don’t they, boy?”

The pair reached me. When Summer stopped, the dog sat and she rested her hand on his
black head. He looked mostly black Lab, but the shagginess of his tail and the way
his ears were set made me think there was more than one breed in his ancestry. Maybe
lots more.

“Zeppo?” I’d known Summer’s family had bought a dog a few months ago, but I’d never
met him. Last night he’d been with her husband and oldest offspring at a Boy Scout
meeting. Or was it Cub Scouts? Oliver wasn’t interested in scouting, so I’d never
learned the age divisions.

“Yup. He’s the best straight man ever.”

I shifted the box again, trying to ease the growing ache in my arms, and looked at
the dog’s face. Eyes alert and watchful, ears pricked slightly, he looked the picture
of doggy intelligence. “He doesn’t look like he’d miss much.”

“Not a thing. Say, can I ask you a question about the PTA minutes?”

I smiled. This was more like the Summer I knew. Whatever had been biting at her heels
yesterday had vanished. “Fire away.” And after that, I thought, we’d have a little
chat about how to run a committee meeting. No need for me to worry about having to
step in and run the committee myself. She’d be fine with a little guidance.

“It’s when motions are made,” Summer said. “Some of the old minutes have it in bold
and centered on the page, but some of them have the motions italicized and indented.
Which way should it be?”

I looked at her. This was what she was worried about? Methodical and rut-bound as
I was, even I had never thought that how a motion was positioned on a page mattered
a hill of beans. “What matters,” I said, popping my hip forward to let the box rest
on it instead of my forearms, “is that the text of the motion is accurate.”

“But there’s got to be a right way to do it.” Her brow furrowed. “Isn’t there someplace
that says?”

“A handbook for PTA minutes?” I laughed. “Sorry. If there is one, I’ve never—” I stopped.
“What’s the matter?”

Summer was staring over my shoulder. “It’s her,” she whispered. “I knew I should have
left through the maintenance door.”

I turned and saw Auntie May Werner barreling toward us, full steam ahead in her purple
wheelchair. “Hold it right there, missy!” she yelled. “Don’t you move a muscle till
I have my say.”

Neither Summer nor I so much as twitched. With all my might, I was hoping that Auntie
May was yelling at my friend and not me. Shameful, but true.

“I got a question to ask,” Auntie May called, pushing at her chair’s rubber wheels
fiercely, “and I won’t go away until it’s been answered, got it?”

Summer and I glanced at each other. The urge to flee was strong, but the knowledge
of Auntie May’s subsequent wrath glued us in place. And still we didn’t know which
of us Auntie May had her beady little eyes fixed on.

“You.” Auntie May was close now, close enough that I could see a copy of the
National Enquirer
sitting on her lap. She rolled right up to us, stopping only when her small front
wheels ran onto Summer’s feet. Well, one ran onto one of Summer’s feet. The other
would have run over Zeppo’s toes, but he scooted backward out of the way just in time.

Auntie May thumped the arm of her wheelchair with her fist so hard that the beads
of her multiple Mardi Gras necklaces rattled together. It was months past Mardi Gras,
but May liked how the colors matched her wheelchair. “I want to know and I want to
know right now!”

Now that I was out of the firing line, my voice came back. “How can we help, Auntie
May? Is there something we can do for you?”

I was ignored so completely, I wasn’t sure I’d even spoken. “You.” Auntie May pointed
a remarkably long and very knobby index finger up at Summer. “I want to know if the
talk is right. Tell me true, girl, you know I’ll get it out of you one way or another.”

“T-talk?” Summer stammered. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

The elderly woman aimed her gaze straight along the length of her arm, narrowing her
eyes as if she were sighting a rifle. “Don’t mess with me, missy. I’m not going to
live forever, and I don’t want to die without knowing the truth.”

I tried again. “Auntie May, why don’t we—”

“Did you do it?” Auntie May shook her finger. “Did you kill Dennis Halpern?”

“I . . .” Summer’s face twisted and crumpled. Zeppo whined and leaned against her
leg. “I . . .”

The finger dropped. “Ah, she didn’t do it.” Auntie May sounded disgusted. “That girl,”
she said, finally looking at me, “wouldn’t smack a spider if it were climbing up her
arm.” She eyed me up and down. “Not sure you would, either. Bunch of lily-livered,
namby-pamby, soft-skinned pansies running the world these days, I tell you.”

I thought about all the things we had to deal with that earlier generations hadn’t.
The disappearance of pensions. The proliferation of computers. The explosion of information,
all of it demanding attention. The rapid change of . . . of everything. Blink once
and you’ll miss a news cycle. Blink twice and you won’t recognize the clothes your
daughter wants to wear to school.

Auntie May made a snorting noise in the back of her throat. “Now she’s crying. Can’t
take the heat, get out of the kitchen, I say.”

I’d had enough. “You’re the one who fired up the broiler,” I snapped. “Do you do anything
productive around here, or do you just make people unhappy? Come on, Summer. There’s
a reading room just down the hall.” I tugged on the weeping woman’s elbow. Two tugs,
and she and Zeppo came along.

Trailing after us was Auntie May, who was sounding suddenly conciliatory. “Now, Bethie,
you know all I wanted was to find out about Dennis.”

I ignored her. “Just sit a minute, Summer.” I put the ten-ton box on a table and steered
Summer to a cushy chair. “I see a sink right over there. Let me get you a glass of
water, okay? That’s it; just sit. You’ll feel better in a minute.”

She sank into the chair’s deep embrace. Her dog looked at her, tilted his head, then
lay down and closed his eyes.

I gave the purple wheelchair a wide berth, ran the water cold, and came back with
a paper cup two-thirds full. The way Summer was still crying, I was sure she’d spill
a full cup.

“Here.” I sat in the upholstered chair next to her. “Drink.”

“B-but I don’t want—”

“Drink,” I said, gently but firmly.

Using both hands, she took the cup from me and sipped. Sipped again.

I relaxed a little. Why this worked, I did not know, but in my experience getting
overwrought people to drink helped ease the transition back to coherency. Maybe it
was the act of holding something. Maybe it was the swallowing. Maybe it was something
else entirely, and some researcher would someday spend five years analyzing the cause.

Summer took a few more swallows, then wiped at her tears with the back of her hand.
“Thanks, Beth,” she said with a weak voice. “I’m sorry I fell apart like that. It’s
just . . . been so hard.”

“What has?”

“Pretty much everything.” Her head dropped down.

Despair spread out from her, great circles of darkness that I wanted to duck away
from, to hide from, to run fast and far from. Instead, I gritted my teeth and let
it crest and wash through me.

“No,” I told her. “Whatever is wrong can be fixed. No, don’t say it can’t be, because
I know it can.” At least I hoped so. But since I was certain she hadn’t killed Dennis,
almost all other problems were mere details. “Now. Tell me, in your own words, specifically,
what’s been so hard.”

“Besides everything?” The small laugh she managed didn’t last long. “Brett doesn’t
know any of this. I don’t want to bother him, he’s so busy . . .”

Her voice trailed off. I could see why she wouldn’t want to share gossip with her
husband, but if it was gossip that might lead to being questioned by the police and
could possibly lead to . . . to much worse things, it seemed to me that Brett should
be the first person she’d turn to.

“He’s your husband,” I said. “Shouldn’t you tell him?”

The tears started falling again. I dug a tissue out of my purse and handed it to her.
“Thanks,” she sniffed. “I know I should, and I almost have, lots of times, but he’d
be mad and he was mad enough about Destiny.”

Auntie May cackled. “Getting mad about that is like getting mad at the weather. Ain’t
no point. ’Course, that don’t stop people from ranting and raving their fool heads
off.”

Summer frowned. “Destiny is my friend.”

“Oh, sure.” Auntie May nodded, making her neck wattles sway. “Easy enough to say when
you’re young. Harder to say when you’re stuck in one of these.” She whapped her elbows
on the wheelchair arms. “If I’d know this was my destiny, I might have made sure I
had more fun in my seventies.”

I tried to erase an image of a seventy-five-year-old Auntie May doing the Macarena
in high heels while wearing a spaghetti-strapped tank top and short shorts.

“No, you don’t understand,” Summer said.

“What, you think I’m stupid?” Auntie May narrowed her beady little eyes. “Girlie,
every thought you’ve ever had in your tiny little pea brain I’ve had at least hundred
times over. Don’t tell me I don’t understand, because I been there, done that, and
have the scars to prove it.”

But not tattoos, I thought. Please, not. If there was one thing I didn’t ever, ever
want to see, it was body art etched into the small of Auntie May’s back. Although
if she did have a tattoo, what would it be? A snake, maybe. Or a dragon.

“Of course I don’t think you’re stupid.” Summer dabbed at her eyes with the tissue.
“You’re one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. I wish I had a memory like yours.”

“Years of practice.” Thanks to Summer’s compliment, Auntie May turned into Lady Bountiful,
showering her adoring crowd with condescending compliments. “Live long enough and
you might remember half the things I do.”

“Destiny is a girlfriend of mine,” Summer said. “It’s her name. She lives over in
Madison, near the university.”

I thought back to what she’d said a minute ago. “Why was Brett mad about your friend
Destiny?”

“Oh . . .” A tear streaked down Summer’s cheek. “It’s the money, see? How can I tell
him about the money?”

Auntie May and I exchanged glances. “What money, honey?” she asked, then grinned.
“Hey, that—”

I cut her off. “Does this have anything to do with Dennis Halpern?”

More tears. Lots of them, accompanied by wails I couldn’t quite make out. I dug more
tissues out of my purse and waited. May started tapping the arms of her wheelchair
until I reached out and put my hands firmly on the red, white, and blue glittered
fingernails.

May’s whine of protest died when she saw my hard glare. She yanked her fingers away
and made a dramatic show of folding her hands on her lap.

Summer finally put enough sounds together to get out an entire sentence. “It’s a secret.”

“Sweetie,” I said, “your secret is safe with me. You know I won’t tell.”

The two of us looked at Auntie May. She put her nose up in the air. “What, you think
all I do is flap my mouth all day? I can keep my trap shut if I have to.”

“Then consider this a ‘have to’ moment,” I said, “or Summer and I will go talk about
this in private.”

Auntie May crossed her arms. “Fine, but what about him?” She jerked her chin at Zeppo,
who was lying at Summer’s side, eyes closed.