Murder at the PTA (18 page)

Who else?

Joe Sabatini. I didn’t know him, but I’d heard about a scene starring him and Agnes circa last year. After a fifth-grade class had a pizza party in his restaurant, half the kids had become sick. Agnes blamed his food. Though the culprit turned out to be the cream cheese frosting on someone’s mother’s cupcakes, thus ending all homemade treats, no classes were ever again welcome at Sabatini’s. And if Marina’s theory about his being a member of the mob was true . . . well, anything was possible.

Reluctantly I wrote down Erica’s name. Our PTA president had a violent temper. Though she almost always kept it in check, I’d once watched her browbeat a man twice her size into complete submission. He’d been beating a dog, and I was on Erica’s side from beginning to end, but the red-hot intensity of her rage had made me back up a step or three.

Of course, hate wasn’t the only thing that inspired rage. Love could do it, too. I thought for a while, then wrote one last name.

Harry, the Tarver janitor/security guard.

 

“Lois, could you give me a hand?” I strained to push an unused display unit from my office to the front of the store. Somewhere in the middle of making the suspect list, I’d had the bright idea to rearrange the movable shelving up front. If it was good for grocery store sales to move products around every so often, why wouldn’t it be good for a bookstore?

Between oomphs, I said as much to Lois.

“It’ll never work.” Lois shook her head, putting the amethyst crystals that dangled from her ears to flight. Today’s outfit consisted of a tie-dyed headband, an embroidered smock top, and a denim skirt over scuffed cowboy boots. “People like stores to stay the same. It annoys them when they can’t find things.”

With a solid hip check, I shoved the display unit farther north. “Maybe.” The unit went forward another foot. I heard a thud from low down and leaned around to see what I’d done. The last shove had pushed an oversized book to the floor.

“And look at what you’re doing!” Lois walked around the end of the shelving and picked up the book. “Just look.” She held it out, and I saw that the lower corner wasn’t a nice sharp point any longer. “That has to go in the clearance bin.”

Knowing I’d been careless sent me over the top. “Thanks for your assistance, Lois,” I said tightly. “Next time I want advice on how to run my business, I’ll be sure to ask you.”

“There’s no need to be snippy,” Lois said. “I’m only trying to help.”

The front bells jangled, and we both put on smiles to greet the first customer of the day.

“Good morning, ladies.” Evan smiled. “I was walking past and saw you were doing some furniture rearranging. Need some help?”

Lois turned and walked away. I said loudly, “Why, yes, thank you.”

Evan looked at Lois’s retreating back, then at me. “Was it something I said?”

I wiped my forehead with the back of my wrist. Sweaty before eleven a.m. Yee-hah. “No,” I said. “Just a little miscommunication.” Or something.

“Happens.” Evan looked at the unit. “Where does this want to go?”

He pushed it up front, centering it between the front window and a paper skeleton hanging from the ceiling. I came behind with a smaller set of shelves, and we positioned and repositioned until I was happy. We’d never had middle-grade books up front. Maybe the prominent positioning would help sales. Anyway, it didn’t hurt to try.

“Thanks for helping,” I told Evan. A muted sniff came from the back of the store.

“There’s a small fee,” he said. “How about dinner?”

“Dinner?” The store suddenly seemed tiny, its walls closing in on me, pressing tight. Breathing, normally something I did without thinking, became a conscious effort. “Um . . .” A couple of lunches with this outstandingly gorgeous man I could pass off as business, but dinner? That was a solid move into the personal relationship category.

“How about tonight?”

“Sorry. My kids and I already have plans.”

“Oh.” His mouth turned down. “I understand. Some other time, then?”

“Sure.” Maybe in another year, or when Oliver went off to college, whichever came first.

“There is one other thing,” he said. “I need a favor.”

 

“But I’ve been in the hardware only twice in ten years.” My legs, half as long as Evan’s, were whiffing along at time and a half to keep up. I was happy the store was only a block away. Any farther and I’d have had to beg for mercy.

“Perfect.”

When we’d huffed past the barbershop, the shoe store, and the art gallery, I glanced up at him. “Are you . . . ? Uh-oh.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Prepare yourself,” I said.

“For what?”

But it was too late to warn him properly. Don Hatcher, dry cleaner and alleged participant in the affairs of Marina’s next-door neighbor, was fast approaching. I sneaked a look at his hair. Maybe WisconSINs was right. His hair did look different.

“Hello, Beth.” Don stopped in the middle of the sidewalk.

I slowed and stopped a little too far away for comfortable conversation. “Hello, Don. How are you?”

“Got a new one. Ready?”

No.

“Knock knock,” Don said.

“Um, who’s there?” I asked.

“Sabina.”

Oh, dear. “Sabina who?”

“Sabina long time since I’ve seen you.” He threw his head back and laughed. “Get it? Sabina? It’s been a?”

I smiled. Sort of. “Haven’t heard that before.”

“Got it off the Internet.” He winked. “Don’t tell, okay? You know, I haven’t seen you much lately. You’re not taking your cleaning to Madison, are you?” He stepped close as a cloudy frown took up too much of his face.

With Richard and his suits out of the house, my dry-cleaning bill had dropped to almost nothing. “And miss your jokes?” I edged over to Evan’s side. “How could I? And I sent those drapes from Agnes’s house to you. Don’t those count?” Well, Marina had sent them, actually, but I was part of the cleaning team.

“Working on them,” he said. “There’s a spot that’s resisting me—can you believe it?” He winked. “Knock knock.”

“Who’s there,” I said weakly.

“Ally.”

“Ally who?”

“Ally gator. See you!” Laughing, he nodded at the two of us and sauntered off to find another victim.

Evan watched him go. “Is it always knock-knock jokes?”

“This year.” We started walking again. “Last year it was lightbulb jokes.”

“As in how many whatevers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”

“Yup.” I wondered what kind of joke Don would be telling next year. Lois guessed limericks, but even cannibal jokes would be better than that.

We’d come to the front door of the hardware. Evan pulled open the wooden door with its large glass panel and bowed. “Milady.”

If I’d been Dorrie with no Jim, I would have tittered and batted my eyelashes. If I’d been Marina, I would have curtsied and said, “Thank you, milord,” and swished billowing skirts through the doorway. But since I was just me, I flushed a fast bright red, stammered out, “Um, thanks,” and stumbled over the threshold.

Gone were the scary-looking power tools. In their place was a friendly display of doorknobs and door knockers. And where plumbing parts had once awed me to speechlessness, a small lighted Christmas village was spread out across a large table coated with artificial snow. Tiny skaters raced on a mirror pond. A miniature horse and sleigh traveled through a downtown out of Currier and Ives.

“I know it’s not even Halloween,” Evan said, “but—”

“It’s wonderful.” I was entranced by a two-inch-tall chimney sweep. “No one else in town sells these. Look!” I pointed at a miniature cat being chased by a dog. “They even left footprints in the snow.”

“Toothpick.” He stood next to me, hands in his pockets. “Took me forever to get it right.”

“You did this?” I looked at the complicated display, at him, then back to the display. “All by yourself?”

“I detect surprise.” He grinned. “I think my feelings are hurt.”

“Well.” I fumbled to say something that didn’t sound patronizing. “Of course I’m surprised. I’m surprised you had time.” Good answer, Beth. He’d buy that.

Evan looked at me. “Did you know your earlobes turn red when you lie?”

I covered my ears. “They do not.” But they did. Always had.

“First time I noticed it was the second week of kindergarten. It was your turn for show-and-tell, you and Dave Kravis. But he forgot and started crying, and you told him you’d forgotten, too.”

“I don’t remember.”

“You’d brought a bag to school that morning and hung it on your hook.”

Good heavens, the man remembered more about me than I did.

“You didn’t normally carry a bag,” Evan was saying. “So I looked inside and saw a ring of skeleton keys. No five-year-old carries skeleton keys. You’d brought them for show-and-tell, but you didn’t want to make Dave feel bad, so you lied, and your ears turned red.”

I stuck to the faulty-memory story. “Don’t remember.” The whole red-ear thing had been an embarrassment my entire life. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the time I simply told the truth—lying was almost always wrong, and keeping track of lies was hard work—but every so often I wished for the ability to, if not lie, at least dissemble.

“So,” Evan said, “I hear you’re the new secretary for the local PTA. How did you get talked into that job?”

“It was . . .” Spinelessness. Irresolution. Weak-willed timidity. “It’s something I wanted to try.”

“Why?”

I looked at him. Finally, he was shedding his mask and turning into the jerk he was destined to be. “What do you mean, why?”

“This probaby isn’t the right time for this conversation.”

“When better? Go on, you can tell me the truth.”

He half turned away from me, his gaze falling on a girl and her father hauling a fresh-cut Christmas tree through the snow. “The truth is, I’m interested in everything you do.”

“Umm. . . .” This wasn’t the kind of truth I wanted. Why couldn’t he have said something about having an insatiable interest in PTA committees? Or that he was a feng shui master and had recommendations for the school addition?

His arm brushed up against mine. Had I stepped closer to him, or had he moved closer to me? His hands touched my hair. “Beth,” he whispered, his eyes going a deeper blue with each breath. “Kind, sweet Beth.”

The front door opened, and I sprang back.

“The display looks great,” I said loudly. “Really great. I’ll see if my mother still collects these. Last Christmas she had them on so many tables, she ended up eating at the kitchen counter until January.” I smiled at the stooped man walking through the door. “Hello, Mr. Brinkley. Evan was just showing me his line of collectibles. They’re nice, aren’t they?” I was in hapless babble mode. Escape was the only solution. “Well, I have to be going now. Bye!”

My escape was slowed by Mr. Brinkley’s quavery chuckle. “My eyesight isn’t what it used to be, but it sure looked like he was showing you something else.”

I fled.

 

I did my best to smooth things over with Lois. I hadn’t done a very good job, though, because at two o’clock she appeared in front of me, arms folded.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

I sat up straight enough to make my grandmother proud, but my earlobes were already feeling hot in preparation of the lie I was going to tell. “Thinking about how many copies of
The Polar Express
to order for Christmas.” Which was a dumb thing to say because the only thing on the legal pad I was clutching to my chest was a list of names.

“Mmm-hmm. Looks to me like you were doing nothing but staring at that list. What’s it a list of, anyway?”

“Oh . . . nothing.”

“Really,” she said flatly. “I thought when we moved the displays around—”

What “we” was she talking about, exactly? As far as I could recall, all Lois had done was head up the Overly Critical section of the cheerleading squad.

“That maybe you wanted to track customer movement patterns,” Lois continued. “Looks more like you’re daydreaming about that Evan.”

A Marcia giggle came from the back of the room. She’d come in at noon, stared at the changes, and said nothing. Marcia wasn’t into confrontation; she was more the type to offer her opinion in whispery teapot confidences.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “The only daydreams I have are about banana splits with hot fudge topping.”

Marcia giggled again. Both Lois and I looked at her. Whose side was she on, anyway?

 

By the end of the day, Lois had thawed to polite conversation. I’d caved by three thirty and gone out for chocolate and tossed in the promise of a new tea variety for the next morning. As the superintendent of schools had said, I was the conciliatory sort. Lois looked up from the cash register drawer she was closing out. “Big plans for the evening?”

“Plans, yes. Big? No.”

Lois raised one eyebrow but turned her attention back to the drawer. “Five, ten, fifteen, twenty. Have fun with your little plans.”

Between the nonconsultation with her on the rearrangements and the fact that I hadn’t shown her the contents of my list, she was still a little annoyed. But how could I tell her the truth about the list? If I told her that Marina, who was the name behind the anonymous WisconSINs blogger, had received a death threat and I was making a list of suspects, the news would be all over Rynwood within hours and I wouldn’t be any help to Marina at all.

“Fun?” I zipped up my coat. “This will be almost as much fun as going to the dentist. And not nearly as much fun as getting a mammogram.”

“A
ll in all,Beth,she’s done well this marking period, with respect to grades.” Jenna’s teacher, Paul Richey, closed the manila folder. “Did she and Bailey Scharff know each other before this year? Those two have formed a tight friendship.”