Plotting at the PTA (17 page)

It all jumbled together in my fuzzy brain, thoughts and questions banging into and bouncing off each other. The harder I thought, the faster the banging, and I spent the next couple of days responding to questions with answers that didn’t necessarily fit.

* * *

On Wednesday afternoon, I sat at my desk, trying to work through a stack of returns. Lois had poked her head in and asked a question. I’d given an absent answer and assumed she’d go away, but instead she came in, moved a stack of publisher catalogs from chair to floor, and sat down.

I glanced at her, saw the serious expression, and pushed away the keyboard. “What’s up?”

She reached forward and tapped my desk with her index finger. As she was wearing a new-to-her charm bracelet, this made a cheerful jingling noise. She’d found the bracelet at a flea market and I’d been treated to a charm-by-charm recital of each dangling object. Hammer, pliers, saw. Wrench, screwdriver, drill. Why Lois was enchanted by it, I did not know, but the bracelet had inspired a new outfit of denim jumper modified to have front pockets similar to a pair of overalls. She’d belted it with a tape measure, added a pendant plumb bob necklace, and completed her attire with wide-strapped sandals.

Now, she jingled her charm bracelet with a few more finger taps. “The question is, what’s up with you? And what are you doing back here, anyway?”

I clicked the computer’s mouse. “Returns.”

“Now, now. There’s no fooling me. I’m a mother, too, you know. What are you really doing?”

Though Lois was my manager and friend, she sometimes forgot who signed her paychecks. Not that they were very big ones, and I certainly didn’t want to play overbearing owner, but still. “Why is it you’re not afraid of me? I have the power of hiring and firing, you know.”

“You have the power to force Jenna to wear dresses to church, too.” She shrugged. “Paoze and Yvonne are worried that you’re worried. Yvonne thinks store sales are down and we’re going to close.”

The concept that my preoccupation could affect my staff hadn’t entered my head. “Oh. But they’re not. We’re not. We’re doing quite well, really.”

Lois nodded. “And Paoze thinks you’re going to marry that Evan Garrett, hand the store over to me, and sail off into the sunset.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

She looked at me with a sarcastic “Really?” expression all over her face. “How long have you been dating? A year? Time to fish or cut bait, I’d say.”

“I’m not . . . I mean the kids aren’t . . .” The papers on my desk were suddenly in dire need of straightening. “The last couple of days I’ve been catching up on the story project stories, that’s all. I got behind a little bit and had to play catch-up.” I was repeating myself, always a sign that I was uncomfortable. But maybe Lois didn’t know that, maybe—

“You’re repeating yourself,” Lois said. “You only do that when you’re feeling itchy about something.”

Why, why, couldn’t I learn to lie? Even the ability to hold back on the truth would be good. But, no, I had to have the compulsion to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, especially to any woman older than myself. I blamed my lack of control on growing up with two sisters who would sit on me and tickle me until I screamed if I didn’t tell them whatever they wanted to know. The experience had given me full sympathy with torture victims who confessed to sins they didn’t commit.

“Did you know,” I asked, “that Amy Jacobson was Jake?”

Her hand went to her plumb bob. “No kidding?”

“Nope.”

“No kidding.” Her eyes went distant. “That’s just . . . wild.”

“And did you know that Amy and Kelly were good friends their senior year of high school and Amy hated most of Rynwood because everyone said Kelly took her own life?”

For once, Lois didn’t say anything. She toyed with the plumb bob, stared into space, and didn’t make a single sound. The bells to the front door of the store jangled, and she didn’t move. The phone rang and she didn’t twitch.

I took the small mental leap the situation required. “Is that what you think? That Kelly committed suicide?”

She tugged on the plumb bob, making the cord dig deep into the skin at her neck. “It seemed so obvious.”

“Seemed? You don’t think so now?”

“It’s all your fault, you know,” she said vaguely. “I was okay thinking that she was just a depressed teenager who didn’t give herself enough time to get over a breakup. It made sense and it was sad, but I was okay with it. All of us were. But then you come along and ask questions.”

I couldn’t decide if that was compliment or criticism, so I left it alone.

“Which means it’s up to you to get answers.” Her attention swung to me. “Find out what really happened. Find out if Amy was right. Find out if Kelly was murdered. If Amy was murdered. Murder . . .” Her shoulders sagged a little. “I don’t want there to be a killer in town,” she said. “I don’t want to find out that I’ve been selling books to a murderer. I don’t want . . .”

Suddenly Lois straightened up. “Find out,” she said. “You’ve done it before, you can do it again. Find out what happened that night.”

“Okay,” I said soothingly.

“Don’t use that everything-will-be-fine tone with me, young lady. Promise to find out. Promise!”

This had the eerie feel of déjà vu. “I promise.”

“Good.” Lois nodded sharply. “I love getting promises out of you. Get one from Beth and you know the job’s done. So what’s your next step?”

“I have no idea.”

“Oh, you.” She poked my upper arm. “Such a jokester. Bet you’re working on a plan already.”

And, of course, I was. Before she was out of the room, I’d pulled out the phone book and dialed the Engels. Of course Barb knew where Keith Mathieson was; how could she not? She gave me the name of his business. “You tell me if you find out anything, you tell me right away.”

I assured her that I would, pulled out the big fat Madison phone book, and found the listing for the insurance agency where Keith worked. The woman who answered the phone transferred me to Keith without asking any questions, and before I was quite ready, he was saying, “Hello, this is Keith. How can I help you?”

Um. Well.

“Hello?” he asked, a little louder

“Hi, my name is Beth Kennedy,” I said in a rush. “I’ve been talking to Barb Engel, she gave me the name of your company, and I just wondered if you’d give me a few minutes of your time.”

“I’m sorry, what was your name?”

I told him again. “It’s Barb Engel that told me where you work.”

There was a long beat of silence, then, “Mrs. Engel?”

“Yes,” I said. “Barb Engel. Kelly’s mother.”

“Kelly.” He breathed the name. “I haven’t heard anyone talk about her in a long time.”

“I’m sorry to bring up such a sad episode in your life, but I’d like to talk to you about her. About the night she died.”

More silence. This time it went on so long and was so deep that I began to hear the background noises in his office. A radio played a news broadcast, a copy machine was copying, a telephone was ringing.

Finally, he said, “No. I’m sorry. I can’t talk about Kelly. Please give Mrs. Engel my regards. Tell her . . . tell her . . .” There was a click, and then a dial tone.

Slowly and silently, I hung up the phone. Of all the things I’d thought to hear in Keith’s voice, I hadn’t expected this. I hadn’t expected tears.

* * *

Wednesday twilight in mid-May lasted long into the evening. It lasted past packing up the kids and sending them off with their father and his Speak Italian in Two Hours CDs, lasted past a quick vacuum of the house, and even lasted past a PTA meeting during which I mollified my fellow PTA board members with a stack of edited stories. Claudia, however, was a whole other kettle of stinky fish.

She suffered through the presentation by Millie Jefferson, the school psychologist, with her toes tapping and eyes darting in my direction. Millie spoke about summer projects parents could do with their children and handed out packets full of enticing information.

But before Millie was all the way out of the room, Claudia flipped through the inch-high pile of story project papers. “Where are the rest?”

I stifled a bad word. Not that I’d expected a pat on the back, but it would have been nice to get at least a grudging nod of acknowledgment for my work. “The kids who want to do one last interview are handing them in to me on Monday. I’ll have them edited and to the printer by Thursday morning and the books will be printed the week after Memorial Day.”

“Hmm.” Claudia turned a page, read a few words, made a short snorting noise, then turned another page. “What if some of the kids don’t turn in their stories?”

“Then their stories don’t get in the book.”

Randy grunted. “Simple. I like simple.”

But Claudia wasn’t done. “What if the printer doesn’t get the books printed up in time? If anything goes wrong they won’t be ready for the assembly.”

That part was true. The schedule was a little tight and there wasn’t any leeway for disasters. Maybe Claudia was right. Maybe we would wind up looking like an incompetent organization that shouldn’t be allowed to bake cupcakes, let alone tackle a project with this kind of scope. Maybe—

“Well, Beth?” Erica asked, eyebrows raised.

I didn’t like the way her eyebrows were arching, I didn’t like the way she was toying with her reading glasses, and I really didn’t like the way she was accusing me, albeit in a backhanded way, of managing the story project poorly. I had safeguards in place, it would all work out. Why didn’t they trust me?

“Why—” I bit off rest of the question. It would come across as unprofessional at best and whiney at worst. I fished around for words, found a few that might do the job, and started over again. “Why, it’s all taken care of.” I smiled and hoped my high school grammar teacher would forgive me for ending a sentence with a preposition. Saying “Care of everything has been taken” just wouldn’t have been the same.

“Taken care of how?” Claudia asked.

I patted the old diaper bag I used as a briefcase. “The printer gave me a guarantee, double our money back if not delivered at least two days before the school assembly. He said if he can’t get it done here in Rynwood, he’ll send it to a shop in Madison.” And he wouldn’t do that because the printer in Madison was a cousin and the competition between the two was of outrageous proportions.

Claudia was still frowning. “Why is the printer doing all this?”

I kept the smug smile off my face. Mostly. “Because he’s Sydney Stillwell’s brand-new stepfather.”

Enlightened nods went all around the room. Even Randy instantly grasped the implication: New stepfathers were top candidates for PTA projects. New boyfriends and girlfriends were good for donating money, but it took the commitment of marriage to get the hands up when it was time to sign up volunteers.

“Fine.” Erica used her engraved gold pen to draw a line across an item on her legal pad. “Anything else? Claudia?”

The meeting moved on, and I tried to forget the expression I’d read on Erica’s face. She’d looked bizarrely like my mother, back when I was young. They both wore that “Are you about to disappoint me?” expression very, very well.

I hurried out of the room as soon as Erica banged the gavel, not looking back. It was getting dark, and I had somewhere to go.

Chapter 14

B
lue Lake was quiet in the twilight. Gentle waves lapped up against the shore, a rhythmic sound I’d heard every night for years, growing up next to water. The sound comforted me as much as it made me long for what was gone.

The beach sand was cold against my bare feet. The sign on the lifeguard’s chair read N
O GUARD ON DUTY, SWIM AT YOUR OWN RISK
. Of course not, not this late. Almost dark, and nearing the time Kelly drowned. On almost the same day. Creepy didn’t begin to cover what I was feeling.

“Breathe,” I whispered, trying to relax into myself, trying to go back into the past. Trying to be young again, trying to be eighteen, trying to be blond, to be slim, to be valedictorian, to have just lost the boy I’d always thought I’d marry.

Everything was in my head—except the being blond part; even the wildest of my imaginings didn’t get me that far into fantasy—and I was ready as I’d ever be. I took my sweatpants off, laid my purse on top of them, and pulled my sweatshirt over my head and dropped it on the pile. Before I could stop to think, I ran fast as I could, feet thudding onto the sand, into water that was ankle-deep, then knee-deep, then I hurled my body headlong into a shallow racing dive straight into the cold darkness of the lake.

* * *

The water was shockingly cold. The warm temperatures of the last weeks may have heated up the air nicely, but they hadn’t budged the water much above freaking freezing.

I surfaced, gasping with deep hoarse breaths, kicking hard, arms whirling, trying to work hard enough to keep from turning into an ice cube. The raft materialized in front of me and I swam around it twice, then three times, before my body stopped screaming at me to
get out of the water now, you moron!

By the fourth time around, my fingers had turned numb, but the rest of me had adjusted. I rolled onto my back and floated, kicking lazily and looking up at the stars.

The night lights of Madison crowded out the Milky Way and dimmed the smaller pinpoints of light, but the Big Dipper was there, rotating around the North Star just like it always had.

I kicked once more, sending a “kerplunk” of water high into the air, and slid into a sidestroke. Not too far away, two hundred yards at most, was the point of land where Kelly had been found.

All around me was the peace of a mid-May night. Too early for summer revelers, the evening was punctuated only by the chirps of spring peepers and the far away noises of televisions and quiet conversation on patios and decks.

I swam silently by unseen voices, an unwilling voyeur to vacation plans, casserole recipes, and lamentations about the baseball standings.

All of that slid past as I swam into the darkness, my senses tingling. I felt so alive, so free, so . . . young. Kelly had felt this way. She’d heard those same conversations, seen the same lights, felt the same water on her skin.

She’d followed the shore, just like I was, swinging wide around the docks and boats and heading to the county park, its point sticking far out into the lake. In the daytime there were too many boats to swim safely to the point from the beach, but at night the boats were home on their lifts. Why not succumb to the lure of the rising moon? Why not dive in and enjoy the wildness of black water? Why not live a little?

The point was close now. I changed my angle, wanting my feet to touch bottom on sand, not on the mucky grassy area that lurked to the left. I hated mucky and I hated water grass even more.

My breaths were coming a little too fast. Maybe I’d gone too hard, or maybe I’d gone too far. But the point was close and then I’d be able to rest. I’d be able to stop and think about Kelly. Maybe then I’d be able to—

Something touched me.

Brushed up against my ankle.

Flickered up the length of my thigh.

I shrieked. Or, rather, I tried to shriek. Tried to scream, tried to call for someone, anyone. Instead, water rushed into my mouth. I choked and sputtered, tried to suck down air, got more water.

Quit panicking.

I flailed my arms and legs, trying to find the lake bottom, but I was too far out. I opened my mouth for air, but the only thing that came in was more water. Everything was black, the sky, the water, the land, and I’d lost any sense of up and down.

You’re making it worse, you know.

The voice in my head didn’t sound like my own. It was young and self-assured. Once upon a time I’d been young, and these days I was occasionally self-assured, but I couldn’t ever remember being both at the same time.

You’re going to drown if you keep struggling like that. I should know.

Could that be . . . Kelly? A girl dead for more than twenty years was talking to me? Clearly, I was hallucinating.

This happened before, remember?

I did, but didn’t want to. My conversations with the murdered Tarver principal had been a one-off and probably the result of an overactive imagination. My mother always said I’d come to grief because of it, and here I was, about to drown thanks to a remarkably dumb idea to re-create a death scene. Talk about stupid. How could I ever have thought this would help anything?

Keep still.

I wanted to point out that since I didn’t have any air left in my lungs I’d sink to the bottom like a rock, but I didn’t have any breath to talk.

Just do it!

Fine, I thought. If I drown it’ll be your fault.

I stopped waving my arms around, stopped kicking, stopped everything. My body went quiet. I felt myself moving, but didn’t know which direction I was going. Eyes wide open, but the only thing my eyes could see was darkness.

So badly did I want to open my mouth and breathe, that I almost didn’t care if it was water instead of air. My chest hurt, my heart hurt, all of me ached for the loss my children would be facing. I couldn’t let them grow up motherless. I couldn’t let them down. I couldn’t . . . couldn’t . . . but I wanted so badly to breathe . . . Jenna . . . Oliver . . . I’m so sorry. . . .

And then my fingertips brushed sand.

Go!

Instinctively, I curled my legs up underneath me, placed my feet firm against the ground, and shoved with all my might.

All was darkness, but now I knew which way was up. I kicked and clawed my way to the surface, pulling myself higher, stretching my spine long. My head burst through the surface and I turned my face up, sucking in great heaving gulps of air.

Now get dry and warm before you catch a cold.

“Wait,” I gasped. “What happened that night?” I treaded water, searching all through my head for the voice. “Please tell me. Please?”

But she was gone.

* * *

Evan looked down at me. Large beads of water hung off the ends of my hair, and my sweatpants and sweatshirt were stained wet from the moisture of my bathing suit. I stood on his front porch, and the light he’d switched on was far too bright for my eyes.

“Beth, what on earth? Come on in, you’re dripping wet. What happened? No, stay right there on the tile, I’ll get a towel.” He kept talking as he ducked into the guest bathroom. “Are you okay? What’s wrong? The kids are all right, aren’t they? Here, let me dry your hair.” He put the towel on my head and scrubbed, guaranteeing snarls. “You’re shivering. Soon as you get a little dryer, I’ll get you some clothes.”

Ten minutes later my wet stuff was rolling around in his dryer and we were settled in his study. The walls were lined with bookshelves that held a few books, a few diplomas, a few pictures of his grown daughters, and a large number of golfing trophies.

He’d turned on the gas fire and I pulled a chair directly in front of it. Holding my hands out to the warmth, I prepared myself for the questions I knew were coming. But I might as well delay the inevitable as long as possible.

I plucked at the sweatshirt I now wore. I’d pushed the sleeves up toward my elbow; if I’d let them hang, they’d have hung over the ends of my fingertips with six inches to spare. “Is this yours or one of your daughters’?”

“Mine.” He turned a wing chair to face me.

“These too?” I pulled at the sweatpants, the waist bunched up, as I’d had to pull the drawstring tight to keep the pants from sliding off.

He sat, putting one foot up on the fireplace hearth, leaving the other on the floor. “Are you going to explain, or am I going to have to ask what happened?”

I smiled. “You know I don’t like talking about the stupid things I do.”

“Basic questions, then,” he said. I nodded assent. “In what body of water did you come to be submerged?”

“Blue Lake.”

“On what day and hour?”

“Tonight.” I looked at the grandfather clock in the corner of the room. “Just half an hour ago.”

“Did you intentionally go into the water?”

“Yes.”

“Ah.” He propped his elbows on the chair arms and placed his palms together. “Swimming in the dark. I see. And you came here for . . . what?”

What I’d wanted was a hug, but I supposed dry clothes weren’t such a bad substitute. “When I was out swimming, a piece of lake grass wrapped around my ankle.” I flashed back to the panic that had engulfed me so completely. I, who’d learned to swim before I learned my ABCs, had panicked. I shook away the fear. “I got a little scared and I . . . I just wanted to see you.”

His face lost the attorney look and he became Evan again. He leaned forward and took my hands in his. “You’re still cold. Come here.” He pulled me up into his arms and sat us down again, this time with me on his lap.

I laid my forehead against his, taking care to keep my wet hair away from him.

“Now,” he said. “Are you going to tell me why you were out swimming all alone in the dark?”

“I’d rather not.”

He chuckled. “Is this when we start deciding how stupid you were?”

“How about later?” His skin smelled of man-soap, a delicious scent that was doing quivery things to my insides. I kissed his temple, just where his blond hair was going white.

“Was Marina involved in this?” he asked. “Don’t tell me it was some sort of dare.”

“Okay, I won’t tell you.” Marina hadn’t the least idea I’d gone out to the lake. I hadn’t told her for the simple reason that she’d have insisted on going with me. She too would have wanted an explanation, and saying that I wanted to commune with a dead teenager would have earned me a burst of laughter and an elbow in the ribs. “Funny,” she’d have said. “Now tell me the real reason.”

“Ah,” Evan was saying. “I thought so.”

He’d misinterpreted my answer. I started to correct him, then let it go. He would have taken my protestations not as truth, but as a defense of friendship. Which it would have been. Truth, too, though.

Evan kissed my forehead. I loved it when he did that. Loved the feeling of being taken care of, being close, being cherished. I watched his blood beat through the veins in his neck, counting the beats, mesmerized by the feel of this wonderful, handsome man. What did I ever do to deserve him? He was kind, he was thoughtful, he—

“Don’t you think,” he said, “that it’s time to move on from Marina?”

—he could be more than a little overbearing. I drew back a little. Watching his pulse wasn’t that interesting. “What do you mean, move on?”

He stroked my damp hair. “Just a thought, Beth, that’s all. Don’t you think she holds you back? You have so much potential.”

“Have you been talking to my mother?” I slid off his lap and sat on the hearth, fluffing my hair in front of the fire’s heat. “She used to say the same thing about my best friend in high school.”

“And was she right?”

I stopped, midfluff. “No, she wasn’t.” Though I spoke quietly, I spoke with a “no questions allowed” tone of voice.

Evan shifted so that both his legs were on the hearth, crossed at the ankles. His position effectively trapped me—legs on one side of me, chair on the other. I pushed away the feeling of claustrophobia and concentrated on drying my hair. He wasn’t trapping me on purpose, he was just getting comfortable, that was all.

“Don’t you think,” he asked, “that our friends are one of the ways by which we’re measured?”

“Yes.” My breaths started to come short and fast. I didn’t like enclosed spaces, I didn’t like not being able to move when I wanted to, and I really didn’t like being kept from moving by another human being. I hated crowds, even when the crowd was only two people.

I glanced at him. He was sitting with his elbow propped up on one arm of the chair, his chin resting on his thumb, middle finger laid just below his very kissable lower lip. His index finger, however, was tap tap tapping his cheek.

I was not going to start a defense campaign for Marina. Of all the people in the world who didn’t need defending, it was Marina Neff. Sure, she could try the patience of a veteran nursery school teacher with her fake accents and constant wordplay games, but her virtues were as obvious as her faults.

If Mr. Garrett thought he could dictate who my friends were, he was gravely mistaken. Matter of fact—I yanked my fingers through my hair too hard and winced with pain—if Mr. Evan Garrett thought he had any right whatsoever to tell me what to do about anything, he was mistaken. One more comment about Marina and—

“May I ask you something?” Evan sat up, put his feet on the floor, and faced me.

The intensity of his gaze made me nervous. “Um, sure.” As long as the question didn’t involve anything about ending a friendship, a change in staffing at the bookstore, or a lifetime commitment, I was good.

“If I asked you to take Spot with you when you go out, would you do it?”

“Take . . . Spot?” His request made no sense. “But . . .”

“I know that Spot is certainly no protection against a real assailant, but just the presence of a dog could give you a small measure of safety. An attacker wouldn’t know that Spot is more likely to lick him to death than to bite him.”

I gaped at him. “You’re worried about my safety?”

His smile was crooked. “You’d rather I didn’t?”

“Well, no. I mean of course I don’t want you to worry, but it’s just I didn’t expect . . . I didn’t . . . what I mean is . . .” I had no idea what I meant. I’d dived into babble mode, where every word I uttered was bound to be stupid.