Poison at the PTA (22 page)

I turned around and headed back, but a hand grabbed at my arm and held it fast.

“Oh, no you don’t.”

Marina looped her arm through mine. Using her weight advantage, she steered me around in a half circle and started walking us away from the police station. “No going back to wherever you were going. It’s our official no-kids-allowed night and we don’t even have half a plan for what we’re going to do.”

I tried to pull away. “Just give me five minutes. I need to tell Gus something.”

She gestured to a battered minivan passing us on the street. “That Gus?” Through the side window, we could clearly see Gus as passenger and Winnie as driver, both of them waving. “When did he come back to work?” Marina asked. “Gotta tell you. He still doesn’t look that good. Did you see that pansy wave he gave us?”

I watched the van tail off into the dusky evening. Tomorrow. I’d call Gus tomorrow morning. And if he wasn’t in his office . . . well, this could wait until Monday. It was important, but it wasn’t worth risking Gus’s health.

Marina was still talking. “It’s freezing out here. Let’s get back to the bookstore and figure out what’s on for tonight.”

By the time we’d walked into the store’s warmth, she’d already proposed hanging out in an airport bar, buying me an entirely new—and much more fun—wardrobe, driving to Chicago for pizza, and flying to the Bahamas.

I rejected all of her suggestions.

“Huh.” She put on a thoughtful look. “Okay, if the Bahamas are out, how about Cancún? You and me, kid, in lounge chairs, umbrella drinks in our hands, sun on our faces, toes in the sand. What do you say?”

On the surface her tone was casually light, but I could hear the tension that lay underneath. You can’t hide much from someone who’s been your best friend for years. I opened my mouth to ask what was wrong, to tell her that I wasn’t going anywhere until she told me what was bothering her, but then I remembered her vow about Mother’s Day, a date I’d picked out of the air.

“Stupid air,” I muttered. Why hadn’t it told me to choose St. Patrick’s Day? Or better yet, Valentine’s Day, because if she’d agreed to that I’d already know what was wrong and we’d be dealing with the problem instead of doing our best to ignore it.

“What was that?” Marina asked.

“Stupid hair.” I pushed back my flyaway strands. “I need to try a new conditioner, I think.”

Her narrowed eyes were a definite indication that she didn’t believe me, but before she could call me on the lie, there was a pounding at the front door.

“It’s Claudia Wolff,” Marina whispered loudly. “Hide!”

“Too late. She’s already seen us.”

“We can pretend we didn’t hear her.” Marina talked fast, tugging at my coat sleeve. “We can pretend we didn’t see her. We didn’t turn on any lights. We can plead complete ignorance. Plausible deniability, right?”

“Deniability is for weenies,” I said, moving toward the door. “Buck up.”

“But I don’t want to talk to Claudia.”

I stopped and stared at her. “Was that a whine?” Marina was many things, a number of which were annoying, but the one thing she wasn’t was a whiner. “Are you feeling okay?”

“I’m fine,” she almost snapped. “I just don’t want to talk to Claudia. She’s bound to say something that will ruin the mood for our entire evening. Don’t do it, Beth. Just don’t.”

But my ingrained be-nice reaction was already kicking in. “I’m sure it won’t take long. I won’t even open the door all the way.” With a twist of the wrist, I unlocked the front door and cracked it open. “Hey, Claudia, you know we’re closed, right? Marina and I are just— Ow!”

The door hit my hand, which, in the classic “For every action there is a reaction,” was shoved back and hit my face. It startled me more than hurt me, but Claudia showed no concern about which it might have been.

She burst through the door, her breath going in and out in fast puffs. “Do you know what I heard?”

For years I’d believed the old teacher’s mantra, that there are no stupid questions. Tonight could be the night I changed my mind. I locked the door. Again. “Why, no, I don’t, Claudia. Why don’t you tell us?”

She ignored, or didn’t hear, my sarcasm. “I was at Sabatini’s just now, right? My family had dinner, and I was heading out to get some shopping done while my husband took the boys home. I went to the restroom before I left, and you’ll never guess what I heard.”

“You’re right,” Marina said. “We’ll never guess. You win, we lose. See you later, Claudia. Have a good—”

“It was Kirk Olsen.” Claudia’s face was flushed, and I suddenly realized it wasn’t from the cold. “He was talking to what’s his name—the guy who owns Sabatini’s.”

“Joe,” I murmured. Joe Pigg, actually, but if she didn’t already know that fun fact, I wasn’t going to spread it around.

“Yeah, Joe, that’s it. Anyway, they were in—oh, what do you call it?—back there where the entrance to the men’s bathrooms are in that little space. Ah, what is it?” She frowned, the narrative halted for want of the right word.

“Alcove,” I supplied.

“That’s it,” she said. “They were in that alcove, yucking it up about something, and that’s when Kirk said what he said.” She looked from me to Marina and back, clearly waiting for one of us to beg her to go on. When she couldn’t stand the wait any longer, she rushed back into the story. “Kirk said that with Cookie dead, the town’s safe for men who know what they want.”

A tingle ran up my back, ending in a knot of tension at the base of my neck.

Claudia’s cheeks were now stained bright red. “Don’t you see? Kirk must have killed Cookie! Why else would he say stuff like that?”

Marina sniffed. “If you’re so sure Kirk did it, why haven’t you called the police?”

“I’m on my way to the police station,” she said. “But then I saw you and Beth in here, and I had to stop to say that you’re not the only crime solver in this town.” She put on a triumphant smile. “I can catch killers, too, and I figured this one out first. All by myself.”

She went on, but I stopped listening.

It really was Kirk.

Our short list, the list we’d joked about and not taken very seriously, the list we hadn’t wanted to be right, it had been right all along.

Kirk had poisoned Cookie.

He’d added acetaminophen to her coffee and let her go home to die.

I wanted to close my eyes against the reality. I didn’t want to know this awful truth. I wanted things to go back to the way they’d been, with Cookie a slightly annoying acquaintance and Kirk a slightly overbearing PTA member who thought a little too highly of himself and enjoyed bragging about his cars and vacations a little too much.

But though I certainly didn’t want Kirk to be a murderer, too many signs were pointing straight at him. But . . .
why
was he? Why on earth would he have done such a thing? What could have driven him to such a horrible crime? Why would he have killed a woman, a mostly mild-mannered bank teller who—

The “why” suddenly clicked into place.

Stockbrokers make money on commission. Deirdre said he wasn’t that great a stockbroker. Kirk couldn’t have been making much money, yet he’d been buying cars and trips and country club memberships.

He’d been stealing from someone. And Cookie had found out.

I tuned back in to my surroundings. Marina and Claudia were in a face-off, neither one brooking any opposition.

“It was poison,” Marina said loudly. “That means the killer is most likely a woman and—”

Claudia leaned forward. “I don’t care about most likely. I know what I heard and—”

“And you think just because of that one conversation, you know what’s really going on?” Marina snorted. “Please. Finding a killer takes a lot more than eavesdropping. It takes courage and smarts and . . . and all sorts of things. And what it really takes is knowing your suspects. Your suspect is a man and just that alone makes you wrong, right, Beth?”

I didn’t want to say she was wrong, not in front of Claudia. “We don’t know anything, not for sure.”

“Come on, Beth,” Marina scoffed. “Tell her that the killer is a female. Tell her she’s wrong.”

Claudia put her chin up. “Tell her
she’s
wrong. Tell her I’m right about Kirk.”

“Oh, please.” Marina laughed. “There is no way that you’re right. No way at all. Right, Beth?”

I suddenly felt like a referee in a hockey game, trying to keep apart two players who, more than anything else in the world, wanted to rip each other’s arms off.

“Tell her, Beth.” Marina stood, hands on hips, a small smile on her face, sure of me.

The small ache in my heart grew five sizes. “I think . . . you’re wrong.”

She frowned. “You mean Claudia’s wrong.”

I shook my head slowly. “No, I’m sorry, but I think she’s right.”

Marina went very, very still. “You can’t mean that.”

“Kirk Olsen is the last one on the list,” I said. “He’s the only one left who could have killed Cookie. And I think he did it because—”

She wasn’t listening. She was too busy buttoning up her coat buttons and pulling on her gloves. “Fine. If you want to team up with Claudia here, you go right ahead. I’ll be busy having fun instead of messing around with things that should be left to the police. Have a good time.”

“Marina, don’t—”

She walked away from my words, unlocking the front door with a twist of her wrist, and headed off into the dark night.

“Well.” Claudia smirked. “You and Marina having a little tiff. I never thought I’d see the day.”

It wasn’t a tiff—it was more like the end of an era.

I blinked back tears. “Anyway.” The word came out weak and soggy. I coughed and started over. “I think you’re right. I think Kirk Olsen is Cookie’s murderer.”

Claudia crossed her arms and smiled. “I knew you’d see it my way.”

Not what I was thinking, but whatever. “Kirk may be the murderer, but you need more proof than an overheard scrap of conversation that could be interpreted in many different ways.” Claudia glowered, but I kept going. “Plus, what you have is all hearsay. What you need is evidence. If you can find even one piece, the police will listen to you. Without it, there’s no proof of anything.”

“But—”

“The police can’t arrest anyone without solid evidence,” I said firmly.

She pouted, something I rarely found attractive in children, let alone grown women. “Then we need to find some,” she said.

“We”? There was no “we” in this scenario. I was done investigating; I’d hung up my hat not half an hour ago.

“Yeah,” Claudia said eagerly. “We can do this. I’m sure of it. With my know-how and a little of your experience, we can tie up Kirk Olsen in knots and hand him over to the cops with a bow on top.”

I got a visual and immediately tried to erase it out of my head. “Claudia, I’m not investigating anything. I have a store to run, a PTA to lead, and, most of all, two children to mother.”

“What about all those other times?” she demanded. “So you’ll hunt down killers with Marina, but not with me? Is that what you’re saying?”

I sighed. “What I’m saying is leave it to the police. That’s what they do.”

“In Rynwood?” She snorted. “When’s the last time they solved a murder without outside help?”

“They’ll figure it out just fine,” I said.

“And what am I going to do in the meantime?” Claudia asked. “Now that I know this about Kirk, I have to do something with it.” She eyed me. “I bet you know something about Kirk that you’re not sharing. Don’t shake your head at me, I can tell you’re holding back. If it’s not about Kirk, then it’s about Cookie.”

I was still shaking my head. “I don’t know anything, really I don’t. Nothing except . . .”

The box.

“W
hat box?” Claudia asked.

Why is it that the things I most wanted to keep to myself, I often gave away? It couldn’t be a Freudian slip because there was nothing subconscious about my wish to keep quiet about the box, but there was bound to be some name for what I’d just done. Though “stupidity” covered it nicely, perhaps there was a multisyllabic term that was a bit more precise and—

“What box?” Claudia asked again, this time with heat in her voice.

I looked at her. If it had been Marina, I might have sent up a distraction that she would have recognized as a distraction in a heartbeat, but she would have let it go because she understood that sometimes you just don’t push, that respecting someone else’s wishes is more important than satisfying your own curiosity, that—

“Beth Kennedy, if you don’t tell me what box you’re talking about I’m going to . . . to . . .”

To what? To make my life miserable? She’d already done that at least a dozen times over the years. What was one more?

“. . . to start a petition to have you kicked out as PTA president.” She put her nose in the air and smiled triumphantly.

I laughed out loud. “Go right ahead. Being president isn’t nearly as much fun as you think it is.”

“But you wouldn’t like it taken away, now, would you?” I wouldn’t, and she saw it plain on my face. “You like being in charge and you like having things go your way and—”

I’d had enough. “And I don’t give in to blackmail.”

Her mouth dropped open. “What are you talking about? I’m not blackmailing you. I wouldn’t do such a thing. How could you think I’d do something like that? Just because you would doesn’t mean I would. I can’t believe you!”

I sighed. Again. “Maybe blackmail wasn’t the best word. How about coercion?”

“They’re the same thing. And I can’t believe you’d accuse me of either one. All we’re doing is having a friendly conversation.”

She went on and on while I considered my next move. Which should come first, grabbing a dictionary and shoving the definition of “coercion” under her stubby nose, or raising my voice to drown out her analysis of my flawed character by giving her a detailed description of her own?

But since I’d been raised to be a Good Girl, I kept quiet and let her rant. A sneak of a smile slipped out, though, and Claudia stopped abruptly.

“What’s so funny? What are you smiling about?”

Since I’d been mentally starting the second page of my outline titled Claudia’s Character, outline item D, Child-Rearing Weaknesses, I cleared the smile off my face and said, “Don’t you have shopping to do?”

Her eyes narrowed to small slits. “You’re not going to tell me about that box, are you?”

Spending time with Claudia always ended up with me using my weekly allotment of sighs inside of ten minutes. I tried to stifle this one, but didn’t do a very good job.

“You’re sighing at me,” she said accusingly. “I hate it when people do that.”

I bit down on my inclination to say, in that case, maybe she should consider some behavior modification. “Cookie sent the box to me. I have no right to reveal to anyone else what might prove to be some very private belongings.”

Claudia snorted. “What private things could Cookie have? She was a bank teller.”

“She was a person,” I said quietly. “And every person deserves respect.”

“Yeah? Well, I’m a person. Do you respect me?”

Her question caught at me. I did not respect Claudia. I did not hold her in high regard, did not admire her, and, in a general way, did not appreciate anything she’d ever done.

“You think I’m an idiot, don’t you?”

“Of course not,” I said automatically. Narrow-minded, petty, and shortsighted, but an idiot? No.

“Yes, you do.” Claudia nodded.

I sighed. There wasn’t much I disliked more than people telling me what I thought. “No, I don’t.”

“Yes, you do, and you’re sighing again. Do you know how that makes me feel?”

My best defense against Claudia had always been silence, but tonight that strategy wasn’t doing the trick. “Claudia—”

“It makes me feel like an idiot, is how it makes me feel!”

“I’m sorry that you feel that way. I—”

“Are you really sorry? Or are you just saying that?”

What I was sorriest about was that we were having this conversation at all. “It’s getting late. Why don’t we—”

“Oh, sure, cut off the conversation when you’re losing. That’s what you always do, isn’t it? You’re big on stacking the deck in your favor, aren’t you? Setting yourself up for the advantage, you’re really good at that.”

Maybe someday I’d understand what she was talking about, but I hoped not.

“You think you’re so smart, don’t you?”

Clearly, she’d never heard the story about the fax number, either.

“And there’s that smile again, so superior.” She made a gagging noise. “You’re no smarter than I am. And I’m going to prove it to you and to everyone else in this town. I’m going to prove that Kirk Olsen murdered Cookie. I’ll figure it out all by myself. I mean, if
you
can find killers, it can’t be that hard.”

She flounced off, a difficult thing to do in a thick winter coat and heavy boots, and banged through the front door that Marina had left unlocked.

Marina . . .

Oh, my friend, what has happened to us? What is happening?

I stood in the quiet store, listening to nothing, doing nothing, thinking about things I’d said but shouldn’t have, about things I should have said but didn’t, thinking about lost opportunities and missed chances, about who I was and who I wanted to be.

For the last fifteen minutes I’d been a doormat for Claudia. Was that who I wanted to be? No. Was that anyone I wanted Jenna and Oliver to be? No again, with feeling. Lots of it.

I zipped up my coat and hurried out the door, pausing only to arm the security system and lock the door. I caught a glimpse of her at the end of the block. “Claudia!” I called, but she reached the corner, walked across the street, and turned left. I trotted down the sidewalk, a rising wind in my face, and when I got to the corner myself, I saw the back end of Claudia flick out of view behind the building.

It was like chasing a cat, I thought. But at least I had a good idea where she was going, unlike a cat-chasing episode. The only reasonable place Claudia could be headed was the city parking lot.

“Gotcha,” I muttered, and half walked, half ran through the alley behind the stores until I reached my car. Wherever she was going, I’d follow. Whatever she had to say, I’d talk over her. Maybe she wouldn’t listen—probably she wouldn’t—but at least I’d tell her all those things I’d swallowed over the years in the effort to be polite. From now on, she’d have to find someone else to be rude to. I wasn’t going to roll over for her ever again.

The very thought made me sit tall in the driver’s seat, shoulders square and chin proud. Maybe all that time my mother had spent telling me to sit up straight would have been better spent telling me how to stand up for myself.

I drove down the alley and cut straight across the side street and into the parking lot. She had to be here somewhere; surely she couldn’t be gone already. . . . There! On the far side of the lot, turning right.

Huh. Turning that way meant she wasn’t driving out to the mall and she wasn’t going home. Where . . . ?

But it didn’t matter where she was going. If she was going to . . . to her mother’s house, I’d follow. If she decided to drive to Milwaukee, I’d follow. If she was going to the moon, I’d follow.

She drove through downtown, and when an oncoming car lit the interior of her SUV, I could see that she was holding a cell phone to her ear.
Talking when driving, Claudia? Not safe, not safe at all. Do you do that when your boys are in the car? Tsk-tsk-tsk.

With the wind buffeting the car, I followed her into a residential area and was close behind when she turned and then turned again to go around a block-sized neighborhood park, and didn’t let the gap between us widen by a single foot as she barreled down a long street, then made a fast turn and—

And I suddenly knew where Claudia was going.

I let off on the gas pedal and took my time turning onto a short side street, then turning right onto a treelined street of older houses. A few ranches, a few two-story homes, and a few Cape Cod houses. Half a block later, I spotted Claudia’s SUV parked exactly where I’d expected to see it.

Right in the middle of Cookie Van Doorne’s driveway.

•   •   •

I parked on the street and walked up the short driveway, cold wind tugging at me from every direction. What on earth did Claudia think she was going to find out by staring at a vacant house? Yes, I’d done it myself not so long ago, but that had been because I hadn’t wanted to go home to a kidless house, not because I’d thought I’d find something that would prove who killed Cookie.

The front tires of Claudia’s SUV were deep into a snowdrift. I came around the driver’s side and followed in her footsteps. Unfortunately, Claudia was a little shorter and her feet a little smaller than mine, and using her steps to break trail ended up being more annoying than helpful. When I came around the corner of the house, I saw Claudia crouching at the back door and jiggling the door handle.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

Claudia shrieked, jumped, and whirled around. When she recognized me, the fear that had been on her face turned into a scowl. “What are you doing here? And look what you’ve made me do. I’ve dropped my card. It’s ten bucks for a replacement. If I can’t find it I’m sending you the bill.”

“What card? A Valentine’s card?” Not that delivering a Valentine’s Day card to a woman who’d been dead for weeks made any sense at all, but who knew what lurked in Claudia’s mind?

“Don’t be stupid.” She hunkered down and felt around in the snow with both hands. “My credit card. Well, my ATM card, if you want to get technical about it, and I bet you do, don’t you?” She shot me a fast, fierce glare, then turned her attention back to the snow. “It’s more flexible than the credit cards, and flexibility is what you need.”

I frowned. “Why do you need a flexible card?”

“Jeez, Beth, are you really that stupid? To get into . . . Ha!” Triumphantly, she held up a small rectangular piece of plastic. “Found it, no thanks to you.” If she’d had laser vision, her gaze would have peeled the flesh off my skin. “I would have been done with this ten minutes ago if you hadn’t come along.”

The wind kicked up a skirl of snow, almost obscuring Claudia from view. It was a nice moment, in many ways, but when the snow fell back, I saw what she was doing. “Claudia, stop! You can’t do that. That’s breaking and entering. That’s illegal. That’s—”

With a faint
click
, the door popped open. Claudia crowed happily, and stood up. “Please. Are you honestly going to tell me you’ve never opened a door with a credit card?”

Why was it such a bad thing to be good? “I’ve always lived in houses with dead bolts. Credit cards don’t work to open those.”

“You have to be the most boring person in the world.” She pushed the door open and reached inside to turn on the light. “I’m going in. Call the cops if you want, but you know they won’t get here for at least fifteen minutes, and by then I’ll be gone.”

“Claudia, you—”

But she was already inside. A
whoosh!
of wind pushed me forward a step, then another, and then I was close enough to see into the kitchen, close enough to see Claudia opening drawers and cupboard doors.

A wave of revulsion passed through me. Cookie would have hated to see someone else pawing through her belongings. I might have logged off from investigating her death, but I wasn’t going to let Claudia rummage through her personal things without supervision. Someone had obviously taken the time to clean up after the house had been broken into the other day. To have things disturbed a second time was just plain wrong.

I hurried up the back steps, did my best to bang the snow off my boots, went into the kitchen . . . and did a classic double take.

“Wow . . .” I blinked once. Twice, then three times, but the kitchen still looked the same way it had when I’d walked into the room. There was nothing out of the ordinary about its bones: counters, refrigerator, range, coffeemaker, sink under a window, table with chairs. No, that was all very normal. I supposed with a name like Cookie, you’d get your fair share of cookie-shaped gifts, but this was . . . “Wow,” I said again.

Cookie-shaped magnets covered the refrigerator. More cookie-shaped magnets covered the range. Framed photos of cookies covered every inch of wall space and the cabinet doors were decoupaged with magazine photos of cookies. The drawer handles were metal cookies. The clock was a large plastic cookie. The wall calendar featured cookie recipes. The table’s place mats were a cookie print.

Chocolate chip cookies, Oreo cookies, oatmeal cookies, meringue cookies, peanut butter cookies, sugar cookies, chocolate cookies, cutout cookies, no-bake cookies, butter cookies, Snickerdoodles, gingerbread, jam thumbprints, Lebkuchen, Springerle, Russian tea cakes, every cookie I’d ever seen or tasted was represented, plus dozens I didn’t recognize.