Curse of the PTA (26 page)

Chapter 21

T
he first thing I did Tuesday morning was find the hidden key. I held it in the palm
of my hand and looked at it, feeling gray and old and tired. “It’s done,” I said to
myself. “All you can do is move forward.” I made a fist over the key and hoped Bruce
would find his way through the dark months that were sure to come.

The second thing I did was call a locksmith to get the locks changed, and the third
thing I did was sit through follow-up interviews with the sheriff’s office. There
was no fourth thing because half of Rynwood stopped by to hear what had happened the
night before and there was no time to do anything else.

Except for one small item.

I talked to Lois and Yvonne and called Paoze, telling all of them whom I’d like to
hire as our new part-time staff member. After I got two wide smiles and one solid,
“That is an excellent choice, Mrs. Kennedy,” I walked out of the store with the utmost
confidence. The candidate was surprised, but soon saw the benefits of working for
me and agreed to start work—trial basis only, mind you—on Thursday morning.

Wednesday, full of rain and wind, had only a dribble of calls from reporters. By afternoon,
things were settling back to normal, with one addition. Jenna. She’d asked that she
be allowed to walk to the bookstore after school instead of having to go to Marina’s
house.

“Please, Mom?” she asked. “It’s barely half a mile. That’s, like, not even a ten-minute
walk. I’m tired of having to play with the little kids. I can come here and get my
homework done.”

I said I’d think about it, then called her father to hear what he thought. Predictably,
he thought I was worrying unnecessarily. “She’s twelve years old,” he said. “A young
woman. How long are you going to try and baby them?”

Forever, if he wanted the absolute truth. But I gave Jenna permission to walk downtown
with the condition that there be a two-week tryout period. “If I think it’s not working
out,” I told her, “it ends. And I don’t want to hear any whining if you have to go
back to Mrs. Neff’s.”

The slamming hug she gave me took my breath away. “Thanks, Mom! It’ll be fine. I promise.”

Wednesday afternoon she came in exactly fifteen minutes after school let out, just
as she’d said she would. She shook the rain off her raincoat, said hello to Lois and
Yvonne and myself, poured herself a glass of milk from the carton I’d purchased for
the occasion, took a cookie from the bag I’d purchased for the occasion, and sat down
at the workroom table with her homework.

Lois raised her eyebrows at the sight. I shrugged, but I was sure the glow of my inside
smile was shining through my skin. My daughter, my heart, my joy. She was growing
up. She was going to be all right. Sure, there were fights and battles and sulks and
tears in our future, but in the end, it would be all right.

By Thursday morning the rain had moved east to Michigan. So the sun was shining and
the birds were singing when my new employee walked through the front door. A good
omen, surely.

“Good morning, Flossie,” I said, smiling. “Would you like a cup of tea?”

“Thank you, dear, but I’m a coffee drinker.”

“That’s right. Um, there might be a coffeepot somewhere back there.” I looked over
my shoulder to the kitchenette. Although where, exactly, I wasn’t sure. When Lois
and Yvonne came in, maybe one of them would know.

“Goodness, don’t worry about that. If this works out, I’ll bring one in.” She looked
around at the shelves and shelves of stock. “I’ve been in this store a thousand times,
but I never quite realized how many books you had until this minute.”

I laughed. “When I started working here, I felt exactly the same way. I think everyone
does. You’ll learn fast. A grocery store is a lot bigger than this little place.”

“Yes, but . . .” She picked up a copy of
Owl Moon
and started turning pages. “What a lovely book.”

Smug, that’s what I was feeling. Downright smug. This would all work out. Flossie
needed to retire from the backbreaking grocery business, but she also needed to be
doing something. All she needed was a little time to learn the books. And if her great-nephew
needed some advice on how to run the store, well, she wasn’t far away.

She looked up at me. “How are you feeling? You’ve had a difficult time these last
few days.”

“Yes.” I wrapped my hands tight around my tea mug. Although my difficulties were nothing
compared to Melody’s or Bruce’s.

Poor Bruce. She’d done it all for him. I spent a moment wondering if I could ever
inspire that kind of deep love in anyone. Not that I’d want to incite anyone to murder,
of course, but it might be nice if—

“Beth?” Flossie was frowning at me. “Are you all right?”

“Fine, thanks.”

“I would like to tell you something,” she said. “About Dennis Halpern.”

No. Whatever it was, I didn’t want to hear it.

“Well, not so much about Dennis as about what I thought I saw.”

Still didn’t want to hear it.

“You know how the grocery store is always open until eight? How most times we’re the
only business open at night? The grocery’s front door isn’t far from Halpern and Company’s
front door. Twice I saw Dennis leaving his office late with a woman who wasn’t his
wife. The second time, she saw me quite clearly.”

No, don’t tell me this now. It’s all done, all over with. I want to forget.

Flossie smiled faintly. “But it’s not what you think, or what I thought at the time.
I assumed he was having an affair, so I assumed she’d sent those dogs to me. I was . . .
scared, so I didn’t say anything.”

I frowned. “Do you know who you saw?”

“Tuesday night I found out. She was interviewed on a television station as one of
Dennis’s coworkers. Elsa Stinson. Apparently, she and Dennis were writing a book together.
Nonfiction, combining the elements of . . . Beth, are you sure you’re feeling well?”

There are times when you truly don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

This time, I managed to do both.

•   •   •

That afternoon, after giving Flossie some quick lessons on our point-of-sale software,
I guided her through a purchase. “You get a gold star for the day,” I said, watching
her beep the books one by one. “I’ll be in my office if—”

I broke off. Through the front window I could see two people walking past the store.
A common enough occurrence, but one of the two people was my son. The other was Pete.
Oliver’s head was down, and Pete’s hand was on his shoulder.

Why on earth was Oliver with Pete and not at Marina’s? Why was he so downcast, and
what was Pete saying so earnestly?

I charged out from behind the counter and ran smack into Lois. “Excuse me,” I said,
trying to sidle around her. “I need to—”

“No, you don’t,” she said calmly. “Marina called a little bit ago, but you were working
with our newbie here and I didn’t want to bug you. She said Pete Peterson and Oliver
were going to do something important.”

“Okay, but—”

“And she said to make sure to tell you that Oliver finally talked to Pete.”

“He . . . ?” Light dawned. “Oh. He talked to Pete, you mean.”

Lois squinted at me. “That’s what I said, so I’m pretty sure that’s what I meant.”

My smile was deep and wide. “He talked to Pete.”

“Yeah, I . . . oh.” The rising sun made it over to Lois’s side of the conversation.
“He finally talked about what’s been bothering him.” She danced a little jig. “This
calls for a celebration!”

“Not until I find out what this was all about.”

Her dance ended with a foot stomp. “Ah, it’ll be nothing. The kid’s barely nine years
old. How bad a thing could he possibly have done?”

I looked at her. “Auntie May told me that you and one of your siblings played tic-tac-toe
on the side of your neighbor’s house with spray paint when you were seven.”

“Well, yeah, but that was me. Oliver’s a good kid. I’m sure it’s nothing.”

Somehow that didn’t set my mind to rest, because even good kids could do bad things.
But I nodded and tried to act as if I was reassured. Maybe if I acted that way, I’d
start to believe it.

“Either way,” she said, “you’ll know before long, right?”

Unfortunately, that only raised my anxiety level. And that went up another two painful
notches when I saw Pete and Oliver walking back the way they’d come. This time my
son’s head was hanging even lower and Pete’s arm was around Oliver’s shoulders.

Pete turned his head just before they moved out of sight. As we made eye contact,
he nodded and smiled.

I stared out the window long after they’d passed by. Had that been a reassuring smile?
A don’t-worry-it’ll-be-fine smile? Or had it been a smile manufactured to mask Pete’s
worried concern? What on earth had Oliver done? I shouldn’t have let him walk away.
I was his mother. I should be with him. I should—

“Shouldn’t you be doing something?” Lois asked. “Or are you going to stand there and
mope away the rest of the afternoon?”

I didn’t move from the window. “When did the employees start telling the boss what
to do?”

“When the boss started staring off into space like a zombie. Say, you know what might
fix your zombie-osity? New shoes. You never did get a pair.”

I glanced at her shoes. Plain and brown and very un-Lois-like. “Where did you dig
those up? They look like something out of your great-aunt’s closet.” Actually, her
entire clothing ensemble was unusual. Dark brown pants, ivory sweater, simple gold
studs at her ears. She looked nice, but she didn’t look like Lois.

“Don’t you recognize them? They’re just like the pair you always used to wear. And
this outfit?” She held out her arms and spun in a circle. “I decided to try wearing
what you do. Just to feel what it was like.”

“And?”

She shrugged. “I feel old and boring. No offense.”

“And if I wore what you do, I’d feel that I’d never be taken seriously by anyone over
the age of ten.” I smiled. “No offense.”

“None taken. Say, do you want this?” She plucked at the sweater. “It’s an old one
I dragged out of the attic.”

“Thanks,” I said, “but I already have one almost exactly like that.”

The front door bells jingled and Gus walked in. “Beth. Lois. How are you ladies this
afternoon? And, Yvonne, I see you back there with Flossie. Hello to you both.”

I crossed my eyes at him. “Please don’t tell me I have to talk to more police officers.
Haven’t I fulfilled my quota for the decade?”

He smiled. “Just me. I spent some time at the sheriff’s office yesterday, going over
the details of Mrs. Kreutzer’s case, and there are a couple of things I think you’d
like to know.”

“Doubt it.”

“It’s about Dennis Halpern’s will.”

Something popped up out of the deep recesses of my memory. “He’d planned to change
it,” I said. “Marina and I overheard his attorney at the visitation.”

Gus nodded. “Halpern’s wife was cleaning out some of his papers and she found a note.
Remember that book he wrote? What he wanted to do was donate all royalties the book
earned to the Tarver Foundation. Mrs. Halpern, who is financially very healthy thanks
to Halpern’s investments and life insurance, has decided to go ahead with the donation.”

Suddenly and desperately, I wanted to sit down, put my arms on my desk, lay my head
down, and bawl like a baby. Mrs. Halpern could have ignored the note and no one would
have known the difference. Instead, she was honoring her husband’s wishes. Instead,
she was the living definition of loyalty.

“That’s nice,” Lois said as Yvonne and Flossie came forward to join us, “but there
are royalties and there are royalties. What kind of sales does the book have? Does
it have any kind of legs?”

I blinked away the threatening tears. “It’s doing well. Dennis told me about it when
we were setting the date of his talk. He said he had hopes of it becoming a standard
reference for personal finances. He said . . .” I stopped.

What he’d said was that he wanted to write more books, that the next one would be
written with young adults in mind. After he finished that, he was considering a children’s
book on personal finances, and did I think that would be a good idea?

“He sounds as if he was a very nice man,” Yvonne said.

“Yes.”

We stood there for a quiet moment, the five of us each thinking our own thoughts.
Then, like a blue bolt, what Gus had said penetrated my tiny brain. “All the royalties
will be donated to the Tarver Foundation?” I asked.

Gus nodded. “That’s what she said. She’s going to make the call this week.”

A brilliant idea popped into my brain. The administrators of the foundation followed
a strict set of rules that no one except the administrators had ever seen, but I’d
tried as best I could to track the projects they were willing to fund and the projects
that got turned down.

If the two competing PTA committees got over their fear of the nonexistent curse and
came up with solid proposals for approximately the same amount of money, and if I
got the support of the PTA board, we could go to the Tarver Foundation and ask for
matching funds.

We’d present our case that both fine arts and sports are equally important for a child’s
development. Explain that we’d raised a significant amount of money from our own book
sales, but the funding of both important projects would require more capital than
we had, and wouldn’t the Tarver Foundation like to support this two-pronged approach
to growing children to well-rounded adults, especially considering the upcoming donations
from the widow of Dennis Halpern?

My thoughts ran ahead. Maybe I should call Mrs. Halpern and see if she liked the idea.
Maybe she’d come with me to meet with the foundation, and maybe, just maybe, this
would all work out.

And if it did, we’d have money to buy new playground equipment, the high-quality kind
designed to absorb years of abuse without fading into brittleness. We could buy new
soccer goals. We could pay for a music teacher and buy instruments that the children
could rent. Maybe hire an art teacher. We could have concerts and—