Death of a PTA Goddess (13 page)

“I see.”

“No, you don’t,” she said with a low chuckle. “I’m ashamed of my weakness for the bottle. Part of the reason I joined the PTA three years ago was to keep myself busy. It’s much easier that way . . . keeping your mind occupied with some sort of volunteer effort so you don’t have to remember the horrid things you’ve done to your loved ones. My drinking woes were part of why we left, in fact. To get me a clean start on things.”

“You’re sober now, though, right?”

She frowned and shrugged. “For three months and four days. And, before that, six months and eighteen days.”

She’d slipped up back in mid-December, then. “Patty’s moving here was like your past catching up to you. Is that what you’re saying?”

She grimaced. “You could call it that, yes. When Randy approached my husband for a job, Mike felt that he couldn’t turn Randy down, though I begged him to. I knew Patty would come, too, and what that would do to me.”

“You got back into drinking because your old drinking buddy came back into your life?”

She answered through clenched teeth, “She was the one who pushed me off the wagon. And then threw the wagon into reverse and drove right over my face.”

“In what sense?”

Susan gritted her teeth. In barely contained fury, she said, “She slipped a shot of vodka into my orange juice.”

That was a startling accusation—unfathomable from my perception of the generous, kind-spirited person I’d believed Patty to have been. Was Susan lying to me? “Why? Why would she do that?”

“She was a very odd person . . . wonderful on the outside—charming, gracious, and giving. But her childhood was no bed of roses. Her mother had been the town drunk, and Patty had been overcompensating all her life. She once told me that what put her over the edge was when she had a miscarriage. She started drinking.”

“I had a miscarriage myself. It’s definitely hard to endure.”

“Of course it is,” Susan said in clipped tones. “So are a lot of things.”

“And hard times are not an excuse or explanation for why she would give you a glass of juice with vodka in it.”

Susan lifted her hand a little from the table, as if in concurrence. “She denied having done it, of course.”

“Why do you think Susan spiked your drink? I mean, it’s . . . sick to give a recovering alcoholic a shot of vodka without her knowledge.”

“She must have thought it would give me loose lips. And she was probably right.”

“She was plying you with alcohol to get some secret out of you?”

“She was trying to recruit me to help her get her husband back. My husband is Randy’s boss and makes out his travel assignments. Patty’s plan was to
accidentally
be at Randy’s next hotel. Her thought was that she lost him to Amber on one of his sales trips. She intended to make herself his next . . . dalliance, so to speak. And since I’m the de facto travel agent for my husband’s department, I’m the one who knew when and where her ex was going.”

I rubbed at my forehead, wishing this was all making more sense than it was. “Why would she have had to get you drunk to get that information from you? Did she know you wouldn’t have told her of your own volition?”

“As a general rule, I only give the travel arrangements to my husband and to the travelers themselves. It would be unprofessional of me to do otherwise.”

Our food arrived, but I’d lost my appetite. I simply did not want to accept this picture of Patty as an underhanded, self-centered woman who would trick a recovering alcoholic into having a shot of vodka to advance her own selfish pursuits. With the waitress once again out of earshot, I asked, “Are you sure it wasn’t an accident? Couldn’t she have given it to you by mistake? That she’d meant to spike her own drink?”

“That’s what I’d thought, too, till I saw Adam’s tape. He happened to have been fiddling with Skye’s camera at our house that day, and he showed it to me afterward.”

I did my best to disguise my reaction to this mention of the person I worried might be making my daughter’s life miserable of late. “She’s one of the girls who put that tape together. And his former girlfriend, right?”

“Yes, and, unbeknownst to me, Adam helped them edit the tape.”

“He
did
?”

She nodded grimly. “He mentioned that to me when he saw me testing our own camcorder the other day, so that I’d be able to film the All-Cultures Day for the junior high on Friday.”

“You’re taping that?”

She made a face and nodded. “Patty had extended my role as PTA secretary to include videotaping all of the special PTA-funded events. We talked about that at the first meeting back in September. Remember?”

“Not really. My attention wanders quite a bit during meetings.” If Adam had edited the tape, Susan could know a lot more about the killer’s motive than she was letting on. I tried to make my voice sound casual as I asked, “Did Adam show you the outtakes of the tape?”

“No, he didn’t have them. Skye was in charge of the project and she kept all of the camcorder cassettes at her house. Adam told me that, last winter, he’d shown the girls how to pick and choose which portions of the camcorder cassettes to put on the final tape.”

“Do you still have the recording of Patty spiking your orange juice, though?”

She shrugged and turned her attention to her food. “I think so.”

“You’ve got to turn it into the police, Susan. There could be a reason behind . . .” I let my voice fade, lost in thought. “My God. I hope the two things aren’t connected.”

“What two things?”

“Skye came to see Karen, all in tears yesterday. Fortunately Karen wasn’t home. Skye told me that her house had been burglarized last week.”

Had the police allowed evidence that could have revealed the killer’s motive to slip through their hands?

Chapter 12

Stirring Up Trouble

Susan interrupted my silent reverie by saying, “I’m sorry to hear that Skye’s harassing Karen. Maybe you should talk to her parents. They’re divorced and both remarried. I’ve got their phone numbers in my address book at home, if you need them.”

“Thanks. I’ll let you know if it comes to that.”

“I can’t tell you how relieved I am that Adam gave her the heave-ho. She always struck me as petulant and self-obsessed.”

“That was my impression, too,” I murmured.

The news of Patty’s duplicities and the unedited tape perhaps being in the killer’s hands had so unnerved me that I no longer felt like tapping Susan for information about Skye. We finished our lunch, not discussing anything of consequence.

After Susan had pulled out of the restaurant parking lot, I snatched my cell phone out of the glove box and called Tommy at the police station. As soon as he was on the line I said, “Tommy, I just wanted to double-check something. Have you looked into a recent burglary of a Carlton home?”

“I’ve been rather busy with a murder investigation, Molly.”

“I know, but the crimes might be related. The burglary was at Skye Smith’s house, one of the four girls who made the tape about the PTA. At one point that night, Mr. Alberti had said that the embarrassing sections were left on the cutting room floor, so I was just—” I stopped. The truth was that I was calling to make sure Tommy was aware of the connection, but I needed to be more tactful. “I was wondering if the whole thing was connected.”

“Prob’ly not. Hate to disillusion you, Molly, but we do get a number of burglaries in this town every year. Anyways, if it makes you feel any better, I’ll look into it.”

“You did already ask those girls to give you everything they’d filmed, right?”

Tommy hesitated. “I’m sure we did.”

“So you might not have? I would have thought that was one of the very first things you would do. I mean, you knew there were supposedly embarrassing outtakes.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Tommy, what if the kids recorded something that would have been the one piece of evidence that identified the killer? And what if that evidence has since been stolen in this seemingly random burglary?”

“Come off it, Molly! Just what do you think could have been on that tape? Someone saying, ‘I’m planning on killing the PTA president in March, so don’t count on me for any volunteer work that month!’?”

“No, but what if someone was caught in a compromising position? What if Patty had found out that someone . . . bought themselves a new car with the PTA’s money? And what if the kids recorded their argument?”

“Like I said, Molly, I’ll look into it. Is there anything else?”

“No, just . . . could you keep me posted?”

“Of course, Molly. Just as soon as you get hired as my superior officer, I’ll be sure ’n’ fill you right in on every little detail of my investigation.” He hung up.

I stared at the phone as I turned it off, then returned it to the glove box. Maybe my side of the conversation hadn’t been a lesson in civility and tact. Still, what an outrageous oversight if Tommy truly hadn’t immediately collected the camcorder cassettes from those students.

I drove straight to the high school, ostensibly to give Karen a ride home and spare her from a bus ride. My plan, however, was to try to find out what part of the building Skye Smith would be in during the last period. I could camp out near that exit and perhaps talk to her.

To my frustration, I arrived a few minutes late. Classes had already let out for the day, and my chances now of catching her were greatly reduced. Nevertheless, like a salmon swimming upstream against the torrent of students leaving the building, I made my way into the lobby. Where I ran smack into Karen and Adam, walking arm in arm.

She stopped dead in her tracks, as did Adam, the three of us forming a little eddy in the traffic pattern. “Mom! What are you doing here?”

“I’m . . . giving you a driving lesson. Thought I’d see if you were up for driving home.”

She narrowed her eyes at me, but said, “You remember my mom, right, Adam?”

“Yo,” he said with a nod.

“Nice to see you again, Adam.”

Karen and Adam made a nice-looking couple, all right, and I trusted her, but I sure didn’t know him well enough to trust him. And I wished he would drop the “yo” from his vocabulary. I was always tempted to respond, “Skoal,” but didn’t actually know what that word meant.

“In fact,” I said, “I’m really glad we ran into each other. I just had lunch with your mother, and she mentioned that you helped edit the tape that some students put together in Mr. Alberti’s government class.”

“Yeah, that’s true.”

“Those tapes are kind of important, considering what happened to Patty Birch. Did you see anything when you were editing them that somebody might have wanted to make sure nobody else saw? Maybe that you deliberately left out because it was so embarrassing?”

He shrugged. “Those tapes were mostly lame, you know? Moms and teachers talking on and on about nothing.”

“That’s what I thought you’d say.” I waited, hoping he’d elaborate, but no such luck. I cleared my throat. “Skye came over to our home the other day and mentioned that their house was burglarized. Do you happen to know what was stolen?”

“Just like . . . their VCR and stuff.”

“By stuff, do you mean their tapes? Including the ones of the PTA? Or did you keep the original tapes?”

“No, I gave them back to Skye.” He had no trouble meeting and holding my gaze.

“Do you know how I could find Skye, to ask her about them?”

“Haven’t seen her much today.” He had stiffened, and Karen was giving me the evil eye.

Time for me to exit and give them time alone so as to appear to be less the prying, nervous parent than I actually was. Al might have seen an earlier version of the tape, or discussed the content of the outtakes with his students. Besides, he was another person with opportunity to have killed Patty. Maybe he had some motive that I’d yet to uncover. “I’ve got to talk to Mr. Alberti about some PTA business. How about meeting me in the parking lot, Karen? I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“Yeah, okay. Thanks, Mom.” Her tone was anything but thankful, however.

On the lookout for Skye or her cronies, I made my way toward the wing where Al’s classroom was located. From there it would just be a matter of poking my head into the ten or so rooms till I found him.

After looking in four doorways, I spotted Al. He was alone, reading something on his desk, his shiny pate aimed in my direction. I leaned into the room. “Hi, Al. Have you got a minute?”

He smiled. “Of course. Is this about ballroom dancing?”

“No, ’fraid I’ve hung up the old dance shoes for good.” I closed the door behind me. “It’s about that video your students made. It appears that the original recording might have been stolen from Skye’s house during a burglary.”

He furrowed his brow. “She mentioned last Friday that now she really did need a camcorder from the PTA . . . that hers had been stolen.”

“Did she say anything about the tapes, or whether she’d given them to the police?”

“No, it was all off-topic, and we were having a quiz that day.”

“Did you ever see the tape yourself?” He was shaking his head, so I went on, “Or did the kids ever tell you what happened in scenes they decided to cut?”

“ ’Fraid not. Why do you ask?”

“Just . . . being a concerned citizen, hoping that this crime gets solved sooner rather than later.”

“We can all get behind you on that point.”

I hesitated, wishing there were an easy way to find out how badly Skye Smith and her cronies were harassing my daughter. But Karen was not even in Mr. Alberti’s class, and it was a large school.

“You still look puzzled. Is there anything else on your mind?”

“Always. Just nothing especially interesting.”

He started erasing the blackboard. “You know what we teachers like to say about asking questions . . . that the only stupid question is the one you don’t ask.”

“There
is
one thing. Skye Smith came over to my house, asking for my daughter and being generally unpleasant about Karen’s newly begun relationship with Adam Embrick. The incident made me worry about the likelihood of friction between them during school.”

He turned around again and faced me. “Skye’s a good kid, but overly dramatic and impetuous. My hunch is, by next week she’ll have found somebody new and forgotten all about Mr. Embrick and your daughter.”

I smiled, glad that he was willing to tell me what I so wanted to hear. “Thanks. I’ll see you at a future PTA function, I’m sure.”

He went back to his blackboard. “Take care.”

The hallways had already pretty much emptied out as I made my way down the hall. I found Karen sitting in her fiercest demeanor in the driver’s seat of the car.

“Thanks a lot for embarrassing me half to death with Adam,” she said the moment I sat down beside her.

“If what little I said in the lobby embarrassed you half to death, you’re going to have one heck of a hard time surviving the next few years. I mean, I wasn’t even trying. Are you
daring
me to shock you in front of your new beau?”

She gave me the triple whammy—indignant sigh, tongue click, and eye roll—but started the car. She drove to our neighborhood in silence.

“How’s the homework situation tonight?” I finally asked.

“Easy, for once.”

“Let’s see if Lauren and Rachel are home.”

“Okay.” I knew I wouldn’t have to twist her arm on that one. She pulled into their cul-de-sac. Rachel appeared to have just gotten home from the bus. Her backpack was beside her as she sat on the porch, her now-ancient cat, Misty, in her lap. As we got out of the car, Karen gave Rachel a significant look, which I knew meant: Wait till you hear the awful thing my mother did
now
! The two of them went inside the house where they would no doubt escape to Rachel’s room before I could even get in the door.

I glanced at my parents’ house as I climbed Lauren’s front steps. It had been fortunate for me that my parents were in Florida when all hell had broken loose here in Carlton. They were not due to return for another month, but when they did, my mother, and probably my father, too, would resent the fact that I hadn’t told them about the murder. They would want to return now if they knew about it, somehow assuming that their presence would make things safer for me, despite prior evidence to the contrary.

Lauren was all smiles at our unannounced visit. She and I sat at her faux-wood-grain Formica counter and sipped peach-flavored tea. Cutting right to the chase, I said, “I think I really ruffled your husband’s feathers earlier this afternoon.”

“So what else is new?” Lauren said with a grin.

“I got on his case because it’s possible that he never collected the unedited version of the videotape that we saw at Patty’s house. Now it looks as though someone broke into one of the girls’ homes and may have stolen the tapes.”

“Ouch. So you . . . pointed out to him what a major screwup that was?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, you were right. Not that that helps. I can only imagine how heads are going to roll if that’s really the case . . . if they let a big piece of evidence slip through their fingers like that.”

“I know.” I feigned a big sigh. “You’d think sooner or later he’d just face facts and make me his consultant, wouldn’t you?”

She knew I was joking and chuckled. “Really. So how’s the sleuthing going?”

“In circles. Lately, though, I’ve heard from a couple of people that Patty was trying to win her ex-husband back. That makes Amber Birch a more credible suspect.”

Lauren tilted her head. “Amber isn’t even on the tape, though, right?”

“No, she isn’t.”

“So if these tapes were stolen by the killer, she’s off the hook, right?”

I considered the matter. “Not necessarily. She could have had reason to think she was in the outtakes. I’m starting to think that Patty was a lot more underhanded than she ever appeared to be. Maybe Amber came over after the meeting broke up, and Patty lied and told Amber that she’d been filmed by Skye Smith doing something that would cause Randy to leave her. Then Amber became so enraged, she murdered Patty. Afterward, Amber stole the tapes to destroy the evidence.”

Lauren said, “I guess that’s possible. Have you gotten to know her at all?”

“Not well enough.” An idea hit me. “I just thought of the perfect excuse for going to see her tomorrow morning. She works part-time at that sports equipment store downtown. Or rather, the place that would be downtown if Carlton actually had a downtown.”

“You’re going to buy sports equipment?”

“No, just finally get my skis tuned. Thanks for being my sounding board, Lauren.”

“My pleasure.”

Just then there was a considerable racket as Rachel and Karen came trotting down the stairs. Rachel was saying, “This is going to be so cool. I’m glad you asked me to help.”

“Help with what?” I asked.

“Shopping,” Rachel replied.

Karen said, “Adam asked me to the junior prom.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful,” I said automatically, but needed a moment to accept the news. Having not been asked to my own prom, this would be my first time shopping for one.

It really would be quite terrific to be able to play formal-attire dress-up with Karen, to take photographs, to see her date in a tuxedo, all without having to actually spend an evening in all that uncomfortable clothing myself. I could do this. I could be a prom mother.

“So can I have two hundred dollars?” Karen asked me.

“
How
much?”

“Two hundred. I need a prom dress, and Rachel and I are going to go pick one out next week.”

“Hey, for that kind of money, you shop with me.”

She shrugged. “You can come if you want.”

Well. So much for vicarious prom experiences.

Jim had to work late, which was badly timed, because the phone rang three different times with the caller hanging up the moment I answered. It was really getting on my nerves. A fourth time, Karen happened to pick up. She hung up the phone a few seconds later, but her twisted facial expression told me what had happened. “Was that Skye calling?” I asked.