Murder at the PTA (33 page)

 

Six hours after leaving Marina’s house, I was sitting in Gloria Kuri’s living room and sipping a mug of coffee strong enough to curl my toes—not my hair, though. Nothing was strong enough to curl those stick-straight tresses.

Gloria caught my glance at her living room decor. “I need to do something about them. Last week I got a new Oklahoma one and it’s messing up everything.”

None of Gloria’s furniture was placed against a wall; the couch, the overstuffed chairs, the coffee table, and the console television floated in the middle of the room. With the single exception of a wood fireplace burning bright, every bit of flat wall space was consumed by vintage postcards, and each one was mounted in the exact same type of frame.

“Got started collecting when I was a kid.” Gloria looked around. “That one there. The Wisconsin Dells ducks in 1954. You know about the ducks, right?”

I nodded. Once upon a time, my parents had trundled the whole family across Lake Michigan in a car ferry. My older teenaged sisters had been ostentatiously bored the entire trip, but my brother and I had loved the resort area and riding on the old army land-and-water vehicles.

“After the Dells, you branched out?” I asked.

Gloria laughed, a throaty smoker’s laugh. Her house didn’t smell a whit like cigarette smoke, though. Maybe she didn’t smoke in her house for the sake of the postcards. “You could say so,” she said. “If you’re buying Wisconsin cards, why not Minnesota?”

“Why not?” I agreed.

“Then Michigan, then Illinois, and then I figured I should get one from every state. Then I started for two for every state. I’m on seven.” She frowned. “But now I got this Oklahoma one. I gotta decide if I want to get rid of one of the old Oklahomas or start into the eights. And they don’t make these frames no more. I’d have to buy new ones. Eight times fifty of even a cheap frame is a lot of bucks.”

“What about putting one set in another room?” I suggested. “Then you’d have to buy only fifty frames.”

She stared at me. “They have to stay together.”

It occurred to me that Gloria and Agnes weren’t as different as I’d first thought. Whether from nature or nurture, both had the gift of making people feel stupid. With both hands I held out the cardboard box that had been sitting on my lap. “This is for you. From Agnes’s house.”

“Yeah?” Gloria put down her coffee and took the box from me. “Oof, that’s heavier than I thought. What’s in here, rocks?” She held it close to her ear and shook it back and forth.

“They were in her guest room.”

“Bet that got used a lot.” Gloria rolled her eyes. “Can’t imagine Aggie had a whole lot of friends staying over.”

Or relatives, I thought.

Gloria unstuck the tape and pulled back the flaps. “Books,” she said. “You brought me books.” She poked at them with her index finger. “Not even new ones.”

I was starting to understand why Agnes hadn’t often traveled to Superior. “No, they’re quite old—from the 1920s and 1930s. That’s one of the reasons I brought them up. Books that old should be in a regulated environment. And most of them are inscribed inside the front cover by Agnes Kuri.”

“These are Aunt Agnes’s books?” Gloria’s face hardened into stone. She picked the top book,
Alice in Wonderland
, from the box. “And my sister kept them all these years.” Gloria put the box on the table, picked up two books, and stood.

“You’re not going to—”

“You bet I am.” Gloria pushed the fireplace screen aside with her foot and pitched
Alice
into the flames,
Fahrenheit 451
in heat and glowing life. In went
Anne of Avonlea.

“If I were a nicer person,” she said, “I’d let my brothers and sisters take a turn.”
A Girl of the Limberlost
was committed to the flames
. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
followed. “But I ain’t that nice.” Book after book went in. “There.” She dusted her hands and replaced the screen, then sat down and put her feet up on the coffee table, a wide grin on her face. “I ain’t had that much fun in years. Thanks.”

“You’re, um, welcome.” The fumes of burning glue stung my eyes.

Gloria laughed. “Let me tell you about my dear departed sister. My parents named her Agnes after my dad’s aunt. Dad loved his auntie Agnes. She lived with us for years, the old bat. Only one to have her own room, and we always had to run whenever she rang this dang bell.”

I wondered if Joanna was still ringing her bell to summon Mack.

“Anyway,” Gloria went on, “we waited on her hand and foot, and when she finally died, turns out she had enough money to buy this whole town ten times over. She’d hung on to her stocks during the Depression, and ended up making a killing. How did that old biddy know to pick up Xerox and IBM early? Coca-Cola, too, can you believe it?” Gloria’s cheeks were blotched with red indignation.

With the inevitability of an incipient train wreck observed from afar, I knew where this was going.

“Agnes ended up with everything.” She slouched low into the couch, shoulders slumping. “Who’d have thought a name would mean so much? It’s not like Agnes was going to carry on the family name. We had plenty of boys around to do that.

“Anyone else in the family would’ve shared.” Gloria’s face was etched with hostility. “Not my sister. She said she had things to do with that money.” Spittle flew out of Gloria’s mouth at every overpronounced consonant. “What could have been better than taking care of family? She had millions! It’s not like we asked for much. A nice house, a little income. Wouldn’t have made a dent in what she had.”

“How old was Agnes when your aunt died?” I asked.

She didn’t answer for a moment, mired in an ancient battle. “College,” she finally said. “The one in Eau Claire.”

There it was. The timing explained the first, very short marriage. Poor Agnes. I wondered how much money he’d taken from her. No wonder she hadn’t married again. No wonder she kept her distance from people.

And then, with the certainty of a celestial voice from on high, I knew that Agnes herself had donated the money for the school addition. The Tarver Foundation was Agnes.

“Did you know she was sick?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“She was a patient at a cancer clinic. The prognosis wasn’t good.”

Gloria stared at the flames. “Seems a good time to give her sisters and brothers some of Aunt’s money. But all she cared about was that stupid foundation. That’s all she’s cared about for years. Who the heck is Ezekiel Tarver, anyway?”

“Maybe she intended to give something to her family,” I said, “but was killed first.”

Gloria watched the fire. “Maybe.”

I got up, touched her shoulder, and left. Before I’d backed all the way out of the driveway, I’d started punching buttons on my cell phone.

“Hey, pest,” my sister Darlene said. “What’s up?”

“Just wanted to hear your dulcet tones.” Though I spoke lightly, I meant it as sincerely as I’d ever meant anything I’d ever said.

“Aren’t you the funny one? Have I told you about the stunt your oldest nephew pulled the other day? You’d think he’d have more sense at age twenty-five.” She went on, telling a tale of pumpkins and white sheets and toilet paper. I pushed the phone against my ear until the skin burned, pulling the comfort of my sister’s amused voice into my heart.

 

Early the next afternoon, I parked in Marina’s sunny driveway. The day was as warm as mid-September. After leaving Gloria’s house, I’d driven south until just before Oliver’s bedtime; then I’d stopped and found a place to sleep. In the motel room’s weak light, I’d spoken to the kids, then told Marina about my afternoon.

“Wow,” Marina had said. “So Agnes was loaded. Who would have guessed? And it was bucks from Agnes that were paying for the addition. No wonder she was pushing it so hard.”

“We don’t know for sure,” I’d cautioned. “It’s just a guess.”

“Guess, schmess,” she’d said. “The puzzle pieces are fitting together. I can feel it.”

Now I knocked on her back door and walked in. Maybe Marina could feel things fitting together, but what I felt was a gnawing sense of failure. I didn’t feel any closer to identifying the killer than I had the night Marina had sat in my kitchen, pleading for help.

“Mom’s here!” Oliver thudded into me, his small arms wrapping around my waist.

I kissed the top of his head. “Hi, handsome. Are you and Jenna ready to go?”

“Hi, Mom.” Jenna sauntered into the kitchen, too cool to hug me. “Mrs. Neff made us pack an hour ago.” She kicked the bottom of her backpack, which lay near the door.

“Beth!” Marina swept into the room, carrying her laptop like a platter, her hands palm up. “Your timing is impeccable.” She thrust the computer at me.

A crawling sense of dread wiggled its way into my stomach. She wouldn’t have, would she? I read the title on the screen.

“Jenna? Oliver?” I asked quietly. “Please get your coats, get the dog, take your bags, and wait for me in the car.”

“But, Mom—”

“Now,” I said, and they went.

Marina, however, was oblivious. “I posted this about nine this morning, and just look at the comments!” She plopped the laptop on the counter and scrolled down. “Almost fifty already. Okay, some of them are mine, but there must be at least forty.”

“What’s the original post?” My voice was still quiet.

“Well, duh. What you told me last night, about Agnes. Here.” Marina scrolled to the top of the page. Again I saw the title: “A Secret Life Revealed?”

My hands turned into dry fists and my throat grew tight. I made one brief attempt to think calm thoughts, then let myself go. “Are you nuts?” I yelled. “That was private information. I didn’t go up there so you could blog about it.”

She frowned. “You didn’t?”

“No, I did it to help you. To find out who killed Agnes. To find out who sent you death threats.”

“That doesn’t mean I can’t use it on WisconSINs.”

My whole body felt hot. “I didn’t spend my weekend driving to Superior and back so you could get fifty comments on your blog.”

A small ding diverted Marina’s attention. “Fifty-one,” she said, smiling.

“Listen to me!” I pounded my fist on the table. “Some things should stay private. Not everything needs to be broadcast to the world. I gave you that information in confidence.”

“You didn’t say so.” Marina crossed her arms.

I stared at her. “What is wrong with you? Should I get a flag to hold up when something I tell you is off-blog? Put a flower in my lapel?”

She tapped her lips with her index finger. “Not a bad idea.”

Cold anger flowed through me. “I have an even better idea—one that would be even easier. How about I never tell you anything ever again?”

She laughed, but her laugh fell away when I picked up my purse. “Beth, come on. Don’t be so sensitive, okay? Maybe I went a little far, but there’s no harm done. We’re trying to find the killer, right? This has to help. I’m sure of it.”

I put my hand on the kitchen doorknob, as I had countless times before. “I’d say good-bye, but it might show up on your blog.” I shut the door behind me with a quiet thump.

“Are we going home, Mom?” Jenna asked from the backseat. Her arms were full of wriggling dog.

I dragged my thoughts away from
I just had a huge fight with Marina; I just had a huge fight with my best friend
and concentrated on my children. “What do you two want to do?”

“Play!” Oliver giggled.

The sun was shining bright, and I had no compulsion to go home and do housework. “Play it is.” In a short minute, we were parked at the school and I was opening the trunk to get out the Frisbee I hadn’t put away since our last summer trip to the lake.

“Think we can teach Spot to catch this?” I waggled the plastic disc in front of the dog, and he bounced up and down like a kid on a pogo stick.

“Throw it!” Jenna ran into the empty playground, brother and dog chasing after her.

For a laughing, breathless hour, we were a family, bound together by those invisible cords that can be thinned and loosened, but never broken. “Throw it to me!” Oliver shouted, his small body leaping into the air with wild abandon, the dog at his feet barking with the joy of being able to bark.

“Here!” Jenna held up her arms.

I threw the Frisbee halfway between them. They ran pell-mell toward each other, their gazes locked on the spinning disc, but before either one reached it, a brown streak of dog snatched it out of the air.

“Hey!” Jenna started laughing. “He really can catch them! Look at him go!”

Frisbee in teeth, Spot was galloping into the wild blue yonder.

“Don’t let him run off,” I called, and the three of us started chasing the dog. He thought it a great game, and we chased the canine from one side of the playground to the other. I grew tired, the kids grew tired, but Spot ran on.

“He’s getting away!” Oliver shrieked as the dog darted under a post-and-rail fence that delineated a backyard.

“We’ll catch him,” I said soothingly, deciding that never again would I let the dog off a leash. “Jenna, don’t—”

But she was already climbing through the fence. “Here, boy,” she called.

Spot, his doggy grin not quite hidden by the Frisbee, darted out of her reach and scrambled under the side fence and into the next yard. We repeated the sequence through half a dozen backyards, and my patience was long gone when Spot squirreled under a rusty chain-link fence.

“You two stay here.” Harkening back to my youth, I put my toes in the open diamonds of the fence and climbed over. “Here, Spot.”

The dog actually looked droopy. Without too much effort, I walked him into a corner of the fence, arms outspread. “That’s a good boy, pretty boy,” I crooned. “You’ll never run free again. Nope, never, ever again. That’s a good boy.” I snatched his collar. “There’s a good dog.” I leaned down to pick him up, grateful that we’d chosen a dog under thirty pounds, when I noticed a collection of bicycles leaning against the fence.