Murder by the Slice (7 page)

For the next few days Phyllis threw herself into her preparations. She baked the jack-o’-lantern cake first but didn’t let anyone see it except Sam. She didn’t fully trust Eve not to tell Carolyn about it, and of course since Carolyn had declared that she was going to make a cake for the auction, too, the old spirit of competitiveness that had existed between them for so long was back in the forefront.

Phyllis moved some pans around in the cabinet hunting for her Bundt pan. She had two, but they were slightly different. This time she’d just bake two cakes one after the other using the same pan. Since one of the pans was a new silicone type, she decided to use that. It would be easiest to find another pan like it before the day of the carnival.

Since she was using a white cake mix, she thought about adding food coloring to the cake to make it orange, too. She decided against that, however. The icing was going to have enough food coloring, and she didn’t want to run out. She probably would use a little in the cake for the auction to make it a lighter orange than the frosting.

She lightly sprayed the Bundt pan with oil and set it on a cookie sheet. The silicone pan was too flexible to use without something under it. Even with having to use an extra pan under it, she liked the silicone pan because it was so easy to get the cake out after it had baked.

Following the recipe on the box, she quickly blended the cake mix with eggs, water, and oil. She poured the mixture into the Bundt pan and put it into the hot oven. She set a timer and went ahead and cleaned up the dishes that she’d need again in a little while.

After the cake had baked to a golden color and cooled enough to be removed from the pan, Phyllis repeated the process.

Since she still had the kitchen to herself, she went ahead and whipped up a double batch of buttercream icing. She was a little surprised at how much food coloring it took to finally make the icing a perfect pumpkin orange. Keeping in mind that this was just a practice cake, Phyllis didn’t worry too much about getting the face exactly right. She used a green ice-cream cone for the stem, as in the magazine, but she wasn’t really satisfied with the way it looked. An upsidedown cupcake might work better for the carnival cake, she thought. That way she could make the icing on it look more like a stem.

Phyllis put the cake in the cabinet, away from prying eyes.

Later, after Carolyn and Eve were both out of the house, she took the cake from the cabinet where she had hidden it. Sam was upstairs in his room watching a movie on his DVD player, but he was willing to stop it to come down and see what Phyllis wanted.

“There it is,” she told him as she waved a hand at her creation sitting on the kitchen counter. “What do you think?”

“Looks like a jack-o’-lantern, all right. Pretty scary, eh, kids?”

Phyllis had a feeling he was making some reference to movies or TV, but she didn’t get it. “Is that all you have to say?”

“Well, I haven’t tasted it yet, so looks are all I’ve got to go by,” he pointed out. “But I’m sure it’s good. Everything you bake is.” He paused. “You gonna cut it?”

“I might as well. It was just for practice, after all.” She picked up a knife. “You want a big piece, I suppose?” She knew he had quite a sweet tooth.

“Yeah. Maybe not a piece with an eye on it, though. That’d be a mite creepy.”

After Sam had eaten his slice of cake and proclaimed it delicious, Phyllis wrapped up the rest of it and drove over to the north side of town to share it with her grandson, Bobby, after calling first to make sure her daughter-in-law, Sarah, was going to be home. When she got there, Bobby toddled down the walk to meet her, followed closely by his pretty blond mother. Phyllis scooped the boy up into her arms and kissed his cheek as Bobby hugged her tightly around the neck with his chubby arms. “G’anma!” he said happily.

Phyllis didn’t particularly like being called
Grandma
, but she would put up with it from this little boy.

“Bring me anyt’ing?” he asked.

“Bobby,” Sarah scolded mildly. “Is that any way to say hello to your grandmother?”

“It’s all right,” Phyllis said. “As a matter of fact, I did bring you something, Bobby. I brought some jack-o’-lantern cake.”

“Cake!” he said clapping his small, chubby hands together.

Sarah had started to frown a little, so Phyllis told her, “Don’t worry, we’ll just give him a small piece.” She handed Bobby to Sarah and turned back to the car to get the covered plate she had used to carry the cake.

“That certainly looks good,” Sarah commented as the three of them went into the neatly kept brick house. The place didn’t have the personality that the big two-story frame house where Mike had grown up did, but unless you wanted to buy an old house, you couldn’t get anything except these brick cookie-cutters anymore. And people had a right to live where and how they wanted to, Phyllis reminded herself, although as a parent it was sometimes difficult for her not to speak up and offer an opinion. Anyway, Mike and Sarah and Bobby all seemed very happy.

Sarah got out saucers and a knife to cut the cake, then hesitated. “Do I try him with the fork?” she asked. “Or should I just let him use his fingers?”

Bobby waved his hands in the air, wiggling his fingers as if answering her. Sarah laughed and cut several wedges of cake.

“Why a pumpkin? It’s not Halloween yet,” she asked as she broke off a small piece from one slice and handed it to Bobby, who stuffed it in his mouth.

“It’s a trial cake for an auction at a PTO carnival,” Phyllis explained. She hadn’t talked to Mike or Sarah for several days, and they didn’t know yet about her involvement with the carnival at Loving Elementary.

Sarah took a bite and frowned.

“It’s doesn’t taste good?” Phyllis asked anxiously. “I haven’t really tried it yet myself.”

“No, it’s not that. The cake tastes just fine. Really good, in fact.” Sarah handed another piece to Bobby, who had finished the first bite she’d given him. “I was just thinking about the fact that you’re entering a baking contest again. This will be the first one since the Peach Festival, won’t it?”

“Yes, but nothing’s going to happen,” Phyllis said, feeling a little uneasy in spite of herself. The memory of everything that had happened that day—the dead man, the paramedics, then the police and the revelation that the death had been a case of cold-blooded murder—was still all too vivid in Phyllis’s mind.

But this was a PTO carnival at an elementary school. Nobody was going to get murdered at something like that. Phyllis forced the very thought out of her head as an utter impossibility. She took a bite of the cake instead.

Sarah and Bobby were right. It was good, even if it was from a mix.

Chapter 7

Phyllis left the rest of the cake there so that Mike could have some when he got home from his shift as a Parker County deputy sheriff.

As she turned into the driveway at her house, Sam pulled his pickup to a stop at the curb in front, where he usually parked it. Phyllis put the Lincoln in the garage, but instead of entering the house through the kitchen she left the garage door open and walked out into the front yard to meet Sam. She knew he had been going over to the elementary school to talk to the custodians about helping with the construction of the carnival booths. That was what Marie had told him to do when he called her about volunteering. The school custodians were traditionally in charge of any construction that needed to be done.

“How did it go?” Phyllis asked.

“Just fine,” Sam replied with a nod. “I even knew one of the fellas. He used to be a custodian up at Poolville when I was still there.”

They climbed the steps to the porch together. As they reached the top step, Eve emerged from the house and said, “Why, hello there, you two. I was just about to sit out here for a while and enjoy the weather. It’s such a beautiful day. Why don’t you join me?”

Eve was right about it being a pretty day. The sky was a deep blue, dotted here and there with white fluffy clouds, and the air had the sort of crispness to it, without actually being chilly, that was only found in autumn. Eve sat down in the big porch swing and patted the empty space beside her as she smiled at Sam.

He sat down on the porch steps instead, and stretched his legs out in front of him as he leaned back and rested his elbows on the porch. He looked supremely comfortable. Phyllis sat down on the swing next to Eve and said, “Sam’s going to help the custodians at the school put together the booths for the carnival.”

“I’ve been wanting to do something to help out with that, too,” Eve said. “As you know, I’m not a cook, but maybe they’d like to have a kissing booth. I’m sure I could run one of those just fine. Don’t you think so, Sam?”

“Yes, ma’am, I expect you could,” he said.

Phyllis wondered what he meant by
that
. Did he really think Eve was kissable? Of course, it was no business of hers what Sam thought about such matters… .

“I’m not sure that would be a good idea,” Phyllis said. “Remember that other carnival kissing booth you volunteered at, Eve?”

“You mean at which I volunteered?” Eve said, still and always an English teacher even though she was retired. “That commotion wasn’t my fault. You’d think all those women would have realized it was for a good cause and didn’t really mean anything when I kissed their husbands.”

“You’d think,” Phyllis said.

From his lounging position on the steps, Sam said, “I remember some of the carnivals at our elementary school had a dunkin’ booth set up. Kids really got a kick out of dunkin’ their teachers in a big tub of water.”

Eve laughed. “If you’re hinting that you’d like to see me in a wet T-shirt, dear, all you have to do is ask!”

Sam immediately turned a deep shade of red. Phyllis didn’t know whether to laugh at him or be annoyed with Eve for making such a suggestive comment. She didn’t do either, because Sam quickly changed the subject by saying, “You know, there’s been some trouble there at the elementary school lately. The custodian I know told me about it. Seems somebody got into the school and stole some computers and stuff.”

“Broke in, you mean?” Phyllis asked.

“Well, that’s the funny part. The sheriff’s department came out and investigated, of course, and the deputies didn’t find any sign of forced entry. Best they can figure, somebody found a way in—a door that accidentally got left unlocked or something like that. Or else they got their hands on a key somehow. The custodians say they’re careful about making sure everything’s locked up tight. So at this point nobody really knows what happened.”

“That’s such a shame,” Eve said. “Imagine, someone stealing from a school.”

“Some people will steal from anybody,” Phyllis said, “even schools and churches and places like that.”

Sam nodded. “It’s a mean ol’ world sometimes.”

The discussion sobered all three of them, so despite the beautiful day they went inside before much longer. Anyway, Phyllis told herself, she had to start thinking about supper.

And she wished she could get rid of the image in her head that involved Eve, Sam, and a kissing booth… .

When Phyllis and Carolyn arrived for the Friday morning meeting at Loving Elementary, they didn’t have to ask for directions this time, although they did stop in the office to let the secretary know they would be in the school. The days when people could wander in and out of a school with nobody paying any attention to them were long gone.

As they walked down the hall toward the conference room, they heard voices—loud, angry voices. Actually, Phyllis realized as they came closer, there was only one voice, and it belonged to Shannon Dunston.

“… been doing, then, since you obviously haven’t been doing what you were told to?” Shannon was saying. Someone answered her, but Phyllis couldn’t make out the words. She and Carolyn traded frowns of concern. There was still a little tension between the two due to Phyllis entering the snack contest, but that was momentarily forgotten in the face of this new trouble.

When they reached the open door of the conference room, they saw several of the members of the PTO board sitting at the table. Shannon stood at the head of the table, a fierce glare directed toward Lindsey Gonzales. Kristina Padgett and Irene Vernon sat across the table from Lindsey, who was alone on her side. Marie, Holly Underwood, and Abby Granger weren’t there yet.

“I’m sorry, Shannon,” Lindsey said. She looked and sounded like she was fighting back tears. “I’ve just been really busy this week.”

“Those posters should already be collected and put up in the businesses all over town,” Shannon snapped. “People aren’t going to come to the carnival if they don’t even know about it.”

“Ladies,” Phyllis said, “you might not be aware of it, but we could hear you down the hall.”

“You mean people might hear that Lindsey can’t even do a simple job?”

“I’ll do it!” Lindsey burst out. “I’ll do it this afternoon! I swear I will, Shannon.”

“Never mind,” Shannon said, scorn dripping from her voice. “I’ll take care of it. That’s the president’s job, isn’t it, doing everything that doesn’t get done?” She swept her withering gaze around to the other two board members in the room.

Phyllis waited to see if Lindsey, Kristina, and Irene were going to get up and walk out. Phyllis would have, if Shannon had attacked her like that. Clearly, Shannon didn’t understand—or didn’t care—that the board members were volunteers. They didn’t have to be here. If they wanted to, the entire board could just quit and dump all the responsibility for the carnival in her lap.

But no one stood up. The three women just sat there, pointedly looking at the table and not meeting Shannon’s gaze. After a moment of awkward silence, Shannon said, “Where are the others? Can’t anybody be on time?”

As Phyllis and Carolyn pulled out folding chairs to sit down at the table, the chair legs scraping on the tile floor, Phyllis heard footsteps in the hall. A few seconds later, Marie appeared in the doorway, a smile on her face. That smile vanished quickly as she must have sensed the hostile atmosphere in the room. “Uh-oh,” she said. “What happened?”