Death of a PTA Goddess (14 page)

“Yeah. She just called to say she hates my guts. Like I haven’t figured that out already.”

“That does it,” I snapped, reaching for the phone. “I’m going to dial star-six-nine and get her back on the line, then I’m—”

“Don’t, Mom,” Karen cried. “Please. You’ll just make things worse.”

I frowned and hung up the phone. “Okay, but I’ve got a real short fuse on this. We’ll see if Skye can get a handle on herself by the end of the week. If not, I’m talking to her parents.”

Karen grimaced, but said nothing.

The following morning, after calling to verify that Amber was there, I grabbed my skis, stuffed them into the Honda CRV, and headed off in search of Amber. I had to fight off three different sales clerks till I located her in the ski department.

“Molly. Hi. Looking for a trade-in on some new skis?”

“Actually, I thought I’d just have these old ones tuned.”

She took them from me and studied them with a deep scowl on her attractive features. “No offense, but these look older than I am.”

“That’s because they probably are.”

“Have you ever tried parabolic skis?” She gestured at the rows of shiny skis that lined the wall. “They are much, much easier to control. They practically turn by themselves.”

“So do mine. It’s just that they sometimes do so when I’m trying to go straight.”

“Let me just show you what I’ve got in stock, for future reference, if you ever decide you want to upgrade. All right?”

Twenty minutes or so later, I was trying to calculate the exact moment when things had gone awry for me. It was probably the blue screen—a high-tech device that made it look as though I was actually on the slope, skiing like a scene out of an old James Bond movie.

In any case, I had just spent more money on new skis than Karen expected to spend on her prom dress. I put my foot down, literally, and insisted that the bindings merely be transferred from my old skis to the new ones and that my old boots were fine. The unfortunate aspect—probably only one of many that I’d yet to consider—was that all I had to show as I completed my transaction was a receipt. The skis themselves would not be ready for pickup until the end of the week.

As with the other strip mall, where Jane’s crafts store was located, this sporting goods store was near a chain coffee shop. “Now that you’ve sold me new skis, can I buy you a cup of coffee?” I asked Amber.

She smiled. “Tell you what. I’ll part with a couple bucks of my commission and buy you one, okay?”

“Deal,” I said, though my heart sank a little. There was an evil part of my heart that didn’t want to start to like Amber. Yet I was liking her more and more each time we spoke. We made our way to the coffee shop on the opposite side of the parking lot.

I ordered a chai and Amber got a latte, and we settled into chairs. As a conversation starter, I said, “It’s too bad my son gave up karate and is no longer into the Asian disciplines. I always thought it would be neat to drink chai tea while watching tai chi.”

On second thought, not much of a conversation starter, that. Amber had nothing whatsoever to say in response. After a pause, she said, “This is a special occasion. After more than two years in this town, this is the first time I’ve done something social with another mother. I mean, people at work like me and accept me, both at the ski shop and the slope. Just no one who’s in the all-important Carlton PTA.”

“That’s Carlton for you. I grew up here. Our slow-to-warm-up climate doesn’t just refer to the weather. There’s no welcoming or greeting committees for people moving into this town.”

“Till now. Patty started up some groups. She, of course, noticed the absence.”

“Oh, that’s right. I remember hearing about that.” She’d asked me to join, but I’d declined, being too much a product of this town myself.

Amber frowned. “Let’s get real, here. Even if this place brought fruit baskets to new families, I’d have received the pits and rinds. I’m the ‘other woman’ who all married women see as the enemy.”

“Maybe so.”

“Definitely so. Randy and I bought our house and moved in two months before Patty did. Yet everyone treated
me
like the intruder and welcomed Patty with open arms.”

I shrugged, uncomfortable and unwilling to admit to some of the ugly truths, even though I’d thought them myself. “We got to know her quicker because she stepped in to take over as PTA president when Stephanie needed someone to volunteer. Maybe a lot of the PTA’ers . . . felt it would be disloyal somehow to befriend you. And, yes, like you say, when you get older, you still feel young, and yet you come to realize that society doesn’t agree. You do worry about the cliché of your husband having a midlife crisis and dumping you for a younger woman. It happens all the time. How often do you see a fifty-year-old woman dumping her husband for a twenty-year-old stud muffin? It angers us aging women, and the wrong person gets blamed. After all, it’s not you young women who left their spouses and children.”

“No, my husband was the one who did that . . . but
I
betrayed the sisterhood.”

“Well, maybe not you specifically. Only if you look at it in symbolic terms and generalize like I just did.”

Amber pursed her lips. “I’ll tell you something, Molly. There are days when the very hardest thing for me to believe is that anybody could possibly be jealous of me. Sometimes I envy everybody else, just because they don’t have to be me.”

“I think everyone feels that way at times. But I’m sure it was really hard to be in your particular triangle, living right across the street from Patty.”

“
I’ll
say. God. That woman was like . . .” She gestured in the air as if seeking divine inspiration. “Nothing that I did could ever come close to being good enough. I’m not much of a cook. I get bored easily and can’t stand being cooped up in the house. I just . . . want to be outside, climbing mountains or throwing Frisbees or having fun, you know? I can’t stand all those interminable meetings at school, or all that artsy-fartsy junk Patty was into. So if you Carlton moms want to hate me, sorry, but why should I care? Screw all of you.” She paused and gave me a sheepish smile. “I mean . . . it’s not that I hate you and your friends, Molly. It’s that you all hate me without knowing me.”

My cheeks were warming. “I can understand how that must feel.”

“It’s Kelly that gets hurt. I mean, it was bad with Randy’s son, too, but he was only around for a year after Randy and I got married, and now he’s off at Harvard, so it’s not so rough on him.” She gestured as she spoke. The coffee was making her animated, or maybe that was just the effect of her finally feeling free to unburden herself to one of us who’d made her life so hard.

I murmured, “It’s obvious what a tough time you’re having with Kelly.”

“I can’t be like her mom was. All that feathering-of-the-nest stuff. I’m just not into it, but I felt so inferior. And I do want to make Kelly feel welcome . . . like it’s a real home for her. I know that’s what she’s used to, so I try my best, and that just makes Kelly hate me all the more. I see the disdain on her face every time she looks at me.”

“A lot of that goes with the territory of having a teenager, you know.”

“Sure. As you no doubt are thinking, I was a teenager myself just eight years ago, so I remember how it is. But this stuff with Kelly is way worse.”

“Is Kelly’s counseling helping at all?”

She spread her arms wide. “How can it be? The kid thinks I killed her mom!”

“Maybe that’s just an act. Maybe in her heart of hearts she knows you’re innocent.” Though I hated myself, I was determined to check for her reaction to the rumors. “I think she wants to believe that you and Randy were in trouble . . . that he was considering going back to her mother.”

She froze for a moment, then took a sip of her coffee. “That’s what this is about? You invited me for a cup of coffee because you’re trying to figure out who killed your friend, and you think I did it?”

“No. To be completely honest, I don’t think you did it. But, yes, I am desperate to find the killer, largely for Kelly’s sake. She’s a sweet kid, and she deserves better than this.”

Amber held my gaze. “Kelly’s right about her father. It’s hard to say if he’d still be with me, had this not happened to her mother. Now I’m hanging on to my marriage by my fingernails. I didn’t kill her, though.”

“You were right across the street. Are you sure you didn’t see or hear anything? A car pulling into her driveway? Raised voices?”

She combed her fingers through her blond hair. “I wish I had, but I didn’t.” She took another sip. “My break time’s over, and I’ve got to get back to work.” She widened her eyes as she rose from her seat and said jokingly, “Nice talking to you.”

“Amber, maybe when this is all over with, you and I could get Kelly and Nathan together. Maybe go out for lunch some weekend or—” I broke off my words as I caught sight of who was coming in the door.

Skye Smith and one other camera girl had come into the coffee shop.

Chapter 13

Rearview Mirrors

Amber followed my gaze, then turned back toward me. “What?”

I ducked behind her a little, not wanting Skye to see me yet. “Some of my daughter’s friends must be cutting classes today. I think I’ll go nag them about that.”

She nodded, taking my words at face value. “I’ll talk to you again in a couple of days, when your new skis are ready.”

I thanked her and watched her leave. She never looked back, or gave a second glance to Skye and her friend who, in turn, were too engaged in their own animated conversation to notice anyone else in the room. Another indication that Amber was either innocent or an astoundingly good actress. If Amber had actually seen that tape at some point, she’d have recognized Skye and her friend.

The girls purchased frothy drinks at the counter and sat down at a table across the room from me. Skye was doing most of the talking, tossing her bleached hair back from her shoulders every few seconds and speaking in what—to my biased ear—sounded like a perpetual whine. Her friend, who wore glasses and had thick dark hair, appeared to be nodding sympathetically. Bringing what was left of my chai, I walked over to them.

Skye was saying, “So then she said, ‘That’s got nothing to do with—’ ”

Skye’s companion’s eyes widened, and she elbowed Skye, who broke off midsentence to stare at me.

“Hello, Skye. Mind if I join you?”

“Umm . . .”

I pulled up a seat and sat down. I looked at her friend. She had neither Skye’s perfect nose nor her flawless complexion, but behind her lenses, her dark eyes sparkled appealingly. “I’m Molly Masters. We spoke once at a PTA meeting, but I don’t remember your name.”

She jutted out her chin and murmured, “Heather.” In the time it took me to sit down, her demeanor had shifted from caught-red-handed to defiant.

“Cutting classes?” I asked.

“Just study hall,” Heather said with a shrug.

That was what kids always claimed when caught off-campus during school hours. I nodded and turned toward Skye. “Have the police had any luck catching your burglar?”

“I dunno,” Skye said through gritted teeth. “I don’t know what you—”

“Were the original recordings that you girls made of the PTA stolen, or had the police already taken that as evidence?”

“They were stolen,” Skye said, her voice haughty and derisive. “Along with our camcorder, VCR, and DVD player. Which were, like, worth a lot more than the stupid tapes.”

Not to the killer, I said to myself. “Mr. Alberti says that you told him you cut the really embarrassing parts that you recorded. Can you describe those sections to me?”

The girls exchanged glances. “Nothing having to do with
you
,” Skye answered in a you-are-such-an-idiot tone of voice that was difficult for me to endure.

“I figured that much, but I’m asking because I think those tapes might have contained a major clue that could identify Patty Birch’s killer.”

Again, Heather gave a glance to her friend and then replied, “We went over this with the police last night.”

“You did? Good.”

“Yeah,” Skye said. “And, anyways, you can ask Adam Embrick. I’m sure you see
him
all the time. He was the one who wouldn’t let us put in the parts about his mom, the alcoholic.”

“Did you film her drinking liquor at a school function?” I asked, keeping my voice steady to mask my discomfort at the implication. If the killer
had
to turn out to be a fellow PTA board member, Susan Embrick would be my very last choice.

“I dunno.” Skye shrugged. “We axed the stuff about her. I was just trying to be respectful of Adam. A lot of good it did me.”

“Were there any other deleted scenes?”

Heather said, “Like we already told the police, we taped that guy with the dumb-looking mustache when he was talking to some other guy about Patty. The mustached guy wanted to know how to, like, make the moves on her ’cuz she wouldn’t give him the time of day.”

The man with the dumb-looking mustache was obviously Chad Martinez. “What other guy?”

“I don’t know. It was just some middle-aged guy.”

“When did this conversation take place?”

“After school one day, I guess.”

Strange. Could the second man have been Randy Birch? Chad might have approached him to ask about her. Then again, Randy was not one to come to school very often. “Do you remember what he looked like?”

“No, and it was nothing, like, major. We just took it out because it was so pathetic . . . one old guy asking another old guy for dating tips. I mean, sheesh!”

“Anything else?” I asked Heather.

“No,” Skye said, “and besides, you’re kind of interrupting an important conversation.”

“Okay, I’ll let you get back to it in a second. I remember a couple of times in the film where Patty seemed to be a bit upset. One time she was kind of . . . glaring at someone. It was right when you both came up to her and asked if you could get on the agenda for the next meeting. Remember?”

They both stared at me with blank faces and said no.

“Another time it looked as though one of you had come into a room to speak to Patty just as someone else might have been yelling at her. A door slammed, and Patty said something like, ‘a friendly face at last.’ It was right before she kind of winked at the camera, and you ended the film.”

“Oh, yeah,” Heather said, as if recalling this for the first time. “That was me. Some woman had been shouting at her. She kind of stormed out just after I came in. I didn’t catch any of it on the camera, though, and I didn’t overhear anything.”

“Not even a few words?”

Heather shrugged. “Not that I remember.”

“Was she a member of the PTA?”

“Yeah. I’m pretty sure she was one of the ones we taped dissing Patty that time in the cafeteria.”

Aha! Now I was getting someplace! “Was it Emily Crown or Jane Daly?”

Again, a blank face, so I prompted, “The one with dark hair who’s a little heavy, or the one with lighter hair . . . who sometimes wears a red knit cap?”

“I don’t remember. Just that I’m pretty sure it was one of them. I mean, sheesh. It’s not like I knew at the time Patty was gonna get . . . I’m sorry I can’t help you and the police, but nothing we taped you guys saying seemed important enough for me to remember. You know?”

“Adam helped edit the tape, right? Could he have made a copy or shown it to his mother?”

“No way,” both girls said in unison. Skye continued, “He just helped us a little in the beginning. But I had all the camcorder cassettes, and I made the final video myself.”

“There were never any copies of the video?”

“Just one. I made it and kept it myself. Adam never even saw the tape.”

That my daughter’s boyfriend wasn’t involved in this PTA-video mess was a relief to me. “Okay. Thanks for your time.” I gave the girls a smile and started to rise.

“Yeah, right,” Skye mumbled. “Like we had nothing better to do. You can sure tell Karen’s your daughter . . . barging in on other people’s lives.”

That stopped me in my tracks. I glared at her. Skye was pretty, all right, but she was sadly lacking in social graces. “One last thing, Skye. My daughter’s an eminently capable person and can handle her own problems. But don’t make any more harassing phone calls or visits, because it’s
my
home, too, and that makes your behavior
my
problem. I advise you strongly to stop and think how it must look to the guys at Carlton High when they learn how desperate and vindictive you’re acting.” I got up. Skye was now staring at her cup, her cheeks bright red. “It was nice meeting you, Heather.”

Some of my bravura deserted me during my drive home. Had I only made things worse for Karen? I hoped not. In any case, it was too late to take back my words now.

Susan Embrick might have been lying through her teeth to me. If Skye truly had seen her imbibing, Susan was unlikely to have been sober as long as she had claimed to be. That, in turn, cast doubt on her tale of Patty’s having slipped her vodka. But why lie about that?

Come to think of it, of the four girls, Skye never seemed to have been the one to talk to Susan about getting the camera. So then, when exactly had Skye managed to catch Susan drinking? Or was Skye really only referring to the time that Adam was supposedly fooling around with Skye’s camera, and he caught the vodka-in-the-juice incident? Each scenario was perhaps equally likely.

The girls’ account of the deleted scenes also cast a bit more suspicion on Chad, who’d forever chased Patty in vain. Also, either Emily or Jane had had a serious argument with Patty at the end of the tape. That struck me as potentially significant, because it took place within only a week or two of the murder. But how to find out which of the two women had fought with her? As Tommy would no doubt want to point out to me, if that argument had, in fact, led to murder, the killer was not about to say, “Oh, yes, Molly. Come to think of it, I was telling Patty her days were numbered right when that kid with the camera interrupted us.”

I decided to let my subconscious work on the problem for a while. Once back home, I dropped into my chair in the living room with BC at my feet and doodled. I started thinking about how the women in Emily’s group had joked about the changes in their physical appearance. I drew an elderly woman trying on a swimsuit, staring over one shoulder at the mirror behind her. She calls over the fitting-room partition, “Mabel, we need to go to the Lost and Found right away. My rear end is missing.”

After my drawing was complete, I realized that this cartoon could give me an excuse to talk to Emily Crown. Every month, Emily published one of my cartoons in the newsletter that she faxed or e-mailed to members of her menopause group. The deadline for my next cartoon was fast approaching. My usual procedure had been to fax the sample cartoons to Patty, who gave me the okay and brought them to Emily. Because that was no longer an option, it would be reasonable to show this in person to Emily. I called her, and on the fourth ring, just as I was about to hang up, she answered.

“Hi, Emily. This is Molly Masters. I wasn’t sure you’d be home today. I’d just been thinking that you were probably in your office.”

“I work irregular hours. How are you?”

“Fine. After going to your menopause meeting, I thought of a—”

“The support group,” she corrected. “That’s what we call it. Menopause meeting sounds rather daunting.”

“Okay.” Not that it seemed at all less daunting to me to have a support group as opposed to a meeting, but whatever. “I have a cartoon for your next newsletter, but I’m not completely sure how well it’ll go over.”

“Oh?”

“I wanted to show it to you in person, because I’m not sure if I should scrap this one and try again. Do you have a few minutes free today, by any chance?”

She said she did and suggested that it would be easiest for her if I just came by her place now. I hopped into the car, with my roughed-out cartoon as my excuse for dropping in on her.

When I showed her the cartoon, she laughed and said she “couldn’t imagine anyone finding it offensive.” Then she invited me to stay and chat for a while. After a minute of parenting-related conversation, I said in a true anecdote, “Last night I had a nightmare about Karen, that she was the one filming Patty in that last piece of the tape, when Patty revealed that she knew she was being filmed.”

“You dreamed about it?” Emily asked, leaning forward in her seat on the couch a little.

“Yes, but it took place in my own living room,” I fibbed. “Where was that conversation actually recorded? Do you remember?”

“In a room at the high school.”

“That’s right. I remember now. But what was Patty doing in a room at school by herself?”

“As of last month, the principal was letting her use a room at the high school that used to be one of the counselors’ rooms. Before the latest budget cut cost us a counselor, that is.”

“Oh, yeah. I remember Patty telling me that she had her own key to the building.”

“The room is available for use by all the PTA board members. I’m surprised she didn’t tell you that.”

“She probably did, but it must have slipped my mind.” Though this conversation felt more forced by the minute, I pressed on. “When exactly do you think that conversation was recorded? I didn’t notice the time stamp on the tape. Did you?”

“No idea.”

I waited, but she didn’t go on. Emily was being nowhere near as loquacious as she normally was. “When Stephanie and I first arrived at the . . . support group the other night, you said something about Patty. About how she took credit for other people’s ideas. Remember?”

She furrowed her brow. “I doubt that was my exact wording.”

“How would you word it?”

“That she took credit for
my
ideas,” she replied with a sarcastic chuckle.

“Did she really? How infuriating that must have been for you.”

“Not infuriating, really, just annoying at times. It wasn’t all that important who got the credit, after all, and I truly believe Patty never realized when she did that.”

“But that would have made it all the worse, in a way. One time someone stole a cartoon of mine and presented it as his own. At least I knew that
he
knew he’d gotten credit for something of mine. If he’d unknowingly plagiarized it, I wouldn’t have even had that sense of . . . validation.”

“True, but you thought a whole lot less of this man for his deliberate theft, right? If he’d unknowingly plagiarized your cartoon, you wouldn’t have felt so violated, I’m sure.”

“True. So that’s how you could still be friends with Patty,” I said, completing the thought for her. “But, knowingly or not, why would she consistently take your ideas?”

Emily lifted her hand as if to dismiss the matter. “That was Patty. She was a whirlwind of energy, who didn’t always know in which direction she should take that energy.”

At the support group, Emily had claimed “all” of Patty’s ideas came from her originally. How literal had she been? “What about the idea for Al’s students to make that video? Was that your idea?”