Poison at the PTA (26 page)

Gus leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. “Cookie Van Doorne considered herself an arbiter. She was law enforcement, prosecutor, jury, and judge all in one handy package.”

I frowned. “It sounds as if you knew this for a while.”

“Oh, yes. Cookie’s style of justice had not escaped our notice. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you about this earlier, but it wasn’t knowledge I could release. Even to you.” He smiled briefly. “Most of her ‘projects,’ as she called them, were relatively harmless, and, no, I’m not going to say who they were and what they’d done.”

As if I wanted to know. Well, maybe I did, a little, but it would be best if I never knew anything about any of it.

“Anyway,” Gus went on, “I told her that someday she was going to get herself into trouble. That if she didn’t stop being a one-woman Justice League she was going to get hurt.”

“But she didn’t stop,” I said.

“No.” He sighed. “She didn’t. At the time—last summer, I think it was—she smiled and said she had it all worked out. That she’d told all of her projects she had revealing information about them. That if anything happened to her, all the dirt would come out.”

“And did she?”

“Have the information?” He shrugged. “I imagine she did, somewhere. But we searched the house top to bottom and didn’t find . . .” He dropped his hands and his gaze sharpened. “What’s the matter?”

“The box,” I whispered.

“Box? What box?”

“The box Cookie had a neighbor of hers send to me after her death.”

“A box you never thought to mention to me? No, wait. Never mind. I’ve been out sick, and you didn’t want to show it to anyone else.”

I nodded. “Plus, what’s inside is . . . well, it’s weird.” I started to describe some of the contents, but he interrupted.

“And where is said box right now?”

I stood. “At the store. I’ll go get it.”

A
s I hurried up the sidewalk, my purse started singing “The Good Old Hockey Game.” I dug for my cell phone.

“Hey, Mom,” Jenna said.

“Hey, yourself. How are you this lovely morning?” And it was a nice morning, I decided, looking around. The sky was clearing, and while it was too cold for many birds to be twittering, there were signs that spring was indeed coming. Not many signs, but warmer weather would be here soon. I was sure of it.

“Guess what happened.”

“You got your weekend homework done already.”

“Mom.” She shaped the single syllable into approximately six. It might have been more, but I lost count.

“Can I have one more guess?”

“No,” she said. “Coach called me this morning.”

I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “What did he say?”

“I’ve told you about the new girl? Hannah?”

“At least once.”

She blew over the trace of irony I’d let slip into my voice. “Our game this afternoon . . . um, you’ll be there, right?”

“Of course I will. Pete and I both. And we’ll be holding up signs with your name on them.”

“If you do, I will die of embarrassment. Just plain die. Anyway, Coach says I’ll be starting the game today.”

I started to say congratulations, but she wasn’t finished.

“I start first period and Hannah plays second period. Then whoever has the lowest goals-against number for the game will play the third period.” She sounded pleased with the concept.

“That sounds reasonable.”

“Yeah, it’s a good idea. Hannah’s a good goalie, too, so she should get a chance to play. Splitting the periods is about as fair as you can get, don’t you think? Coach is pretty smart.”

“He’s the King Solomon of coaches.” I thought for a moment about the wisdom of Solomon, then asked, “Your muscles won’t get too tight sitting out a period, will they?”

“Mooom, don’t worry so much.”

Oh, my dear, you have no idea how much I worry. Every day of my life I will worry about you—about your safety, about your health, about your happiness—and there is no changing that. It’s what moms do.

“I’ll try,” I said, which was a total and complete lie. “I’ll see you this afternoon, sweetheart. Where’s your brother?”

“Hang on.” The phone clunked down and I was treated to what sounded like a battle from a nearby war zone. Odds were good that the kids were playing one of the video games their father had purchased for them, but you never knew. Maybe rival gangs had infiltrated Richard’s condominium complex and
—

“Hi, Mom!”

A teensy shred of worry wafted off into the sunlight. My children were fine and all was right with the world. Well, almost. “Good morning, honey. What did you three do last night?”

He launched into a bite-by-bite account of the take-out Chinese meal they’d eaten. I heard about the hot-hot-hot! bite of Szechuan chicken he’d tried from his father’s plate and how funny shrimp look. I heard how much he liked the crab rangoons and how they’d played rock-paper-scissors for the last one.

“Who won?”

“Dad did.” He giggled. “Dad used thermonuclear holocaust, but then he split the rangoon, so Jenna and I got half each.”

Who knew so many King Solomons were in our midst? Certainly I’d never suspected my former husband of being one, but perhaps he was rising to the occasion as the kids grew older. “Sounds as if you had fun.”

“I guess so.”

His tone was a little distant. A new worry jabbed at me. “Oliver, are you feeling okay? You’re not coming down with a cold, are you?” This was the result of his nighttime trek in the snow. Only a cold at first. Then it would devolve into flu, then pneumonia. He’d be hospitalized and it would be my fault for not being a better mother.

“I’m good,” he said. “It’s just . . .” He sighed.

My grip on the phone tightened. “What, honey? Whatever it is, you know you can tell me.” Hundreds of concerns flashed through my brain. He’d broken his dad’s computer and was afraid to tell him. He wanted to take up the bassoon. He wanted to take up go-cart racing. “Talk to me, Ollster,” I said gently.

“Mom?”

“Yes, honey?”

“What’s better for a girl, to have brown hair or to have yellow hair?”

I started walking again. This was his question? “I’d say hair color doesn’t matter at all.”

“Yeah, but what’s prettiest?”

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” I said.

“What does that mean?”

“Different people think different things are pretty, just like different people like to eat different things. Your dad likes spicy foods. You don’t. Either way is fine.”

“So I can like yellow hair best?”

“It’s fine to prefer blondes, but what counts more is if the girl is nice.”

“I think,” he said dreamily, “that Mia Helmstetter has the prettiest hair of anyone in the whole school.”

“You . . . do?”

“Do you think she might ever like me someday? I mean, when we’re grown up and stuff?”

I smiled into the phone, smiled at my son, smiled at the whole world. “Anything is possible, Oliver. Anything.”

•   •   •

My smile lasted down the block, across the side street, down most of the next block, and through the front door of my bookstore and into its warmth. Then it stopped. Lois and Flossie were at it again.

“I have no idea why you think the writings of J. K. Rowling are any comparison to the outstanding prose of Katherine Paterson,” Flossie said, frowning at Lois, who didn’t miss a beat.

“A little angst is fine,” she said, “but bring a little humor to a story, will you? Life isn’t all dark and dreary. I don’t care who you are or what’s happened to you. You need to lighten up sometimes.”

Flossie kept on. “It’s the job of a storyteller to tell the story. If the story isn’t amusing, there’s no need to add levity for the sake of levity.”

“Oh, yeah? Uh . . .” Lois faltered, then got her second wind. “What about
Tom Sawyer
? Didn’t you say that’s your favorite young adult book ever? Maybe it would have been better if Twain had taken out all that stuff that makes you laugh.”

I saw a dark expression fall across Flossie’s face. Oh, dear. Lois had crossed a line. Making fun of someone’s favorite childhood book was something you just did not do. Not in my store, anyway. I put my fingers in my mouth and blew.

The piercing whistle had the desired result. The two women stopped arguing and turned to face me.

“What’s the matter with you?” Lois asked, scowling. “We’re just having a friendly disagreement.”

“Yes.” Flossie nodded. “Very friendly. I can’t imagine a friendlier disagreement.”

“I know exactly what you’re disagreeing about,” I said, “and it’s time to stop.”

Lois’s scowl kept going. “So you want us to stop talking about books. That seems a little much for a bookstore.”

“You’re arguing about me and you’re going to stop. I am not an issue in a tug-of-war, I am not a bone of contention for you two to growl over, and I will not tolerate another argument.”

There was a short silence. “Paoze,” Lois muttered. “I’m going to wring his skinny little neck.”

“You say anything to him about this and I’ll fire you.”

“Oh, come on, Beth, you
—”
Lois stopped and gave me a long look. “You would. You really would.”

“Wouldn’t want to, not in the least, but I also can’t have you two going at each other whenever I’m out of the store. Now, I’m going back to my office.” I cast about for a plan. Found one and smiled a slightly evil and Lois-like smile. “By the end of the day, I would like everything taken off the tops of the bookshelves, dusted, and put back. A much easier task if you work together, yes?”

Though I dearly wanted to watch the expressions on their faces, I didn’t want to ruin my exit line, so I spun on my heel and marched to the back of the store.

I closed my office door, but not quite all the way, and before I even got down on my hands and knees to pull Cookie’s box out from under my desk, I heard the murmur of voices. A slow, strained murmur at first, but then a smooth one.

Smiling, I grabbed the cardboard flaps and tugged. It would all work out. Lois and Flossie would go back to being friends and the bookstore would go back to being a happy place.

I sat in my chair and started moving items from the box up to the top of my desk. A Christmas ornament. A flat white paper bag. A fifteen-year-old high school graduation photo. A brochure for an African safari. A ceramic figurine of a football player. A doll. And another dozen or so items that meant absolutely nothing to me.

I fingered the photo of a young man I didn’t recognize, and wondered.

This was the revealing information she’d been killed over? This was her insurance policy? A box of innocuous items that couldn’t mean anything to anyone but her?

I kicked at the box. How stupid to be murdered over something like this. I kicked again and knocked the box on its side. What a stupid, tragic waste of what could have been.

A rustle of paper made me blink.

I leaned down and picked up the box. Had . . . ? Yes. A piece of white notebook paper had slipped out from beneath the inside bottom flap. I jiggled the box and three more sheets fell down.

Then four.

Five.

All with line after line of handwriting on them.

Suddenly, I wished the feeling hadn’t come back to my fingers, because I knew I didn’t want to touch those papers. Didn’t want to see them, didn’t want to read them. They couldn’t contain anything I needed to know.

Averting my eyes, I gathered up the sheets in one hand. I’d shred them, that’s what I’d do. I’d cut them up into tiny pieces and . . .

A sheet fluttered to the floor. I grabbed out and, catching it, read the name at the top of the page.

Kirk Olsen,
it said.
He has embezzled money from his employer and has agreed to repay it all. I have given him until the end of January to do so, and while, to date he has not, I expect to . . .

For the first time ever, I regretted my ability to read quickly. I folded the paper shut.

Only there was more writing on the back. More names.

Marina Neff.

Marina . . .

I smashed the paper into a tight ball. Every single one of those horrible papers went back into the box. I slapped the flaps shut and knew, without a doubt, what I had to do.

•   •   •

I slung my purse over my arm and carried the mostly empty box out to the alley. Out in the chill air, my resolve hardened into a vow of immediate action and I set the box on the pile of snow next to the recycling Dumpster. This would work out fine.

Cold whipped down the back of my neck as I dug through the bottom of my purse, the final location for any item I ever wanted. I fingered through tissues and car keys, pens and checkbook, wallet and bandages. Was that . . . ? I felt the small square of pressed cardboard. Why I had it, I wasn’t quite sure, but everything in a purse is useful at some point.

I turned my back to the wind, tore a match out of the Sabatini’s matchbook, and lit it. The flame flared large, then shrank to a friendlier size. Crouching, I touched the match to Cookie’s handwriting. Marina’s name lit up from behind, then, as I watched, was eaten away by the reaching orange light.

The papers burned. The box burned. And I watched the small blaze with a clear conscience. Yes, I could have given Gus the complete and full contents of the box, but to what end? Cookie’s murderer was in custody. Everything in the box would have been the word of a dead woman against living denials. Besides . . .

Footsteps tapped slowly down the alley. I looked up, readying myself for the lies I’d have to tell, but then I saw who it was. “Hey,” I said.

“Hey.” Marina plodded up, coming to a stop an arm’s length away.

Besides, thanks to my total and complete inability to look away from printed material when it was in front of my eyes, Kirk Olsen had been the only true lawbreaker in the group. Some names I’d recognized, some I hadn’t, but none of them needed to suffer public humiliation for what they’d done.

Did Gus need to know that, as a child, Christine Kettunen had ruined Christmas for her four-year-old brother by telling him there was no Santa Claus? Did anyone in law enforcement need to know that a Randall Crowley had cheated on his high school physics final exam? Did anyone other than Cookie care that someone named Dale Faber had bet against the Green Bay Packers in their last Super Bowl appearance? Well, probably a lot of people, but it wasn’t a crime, even in Wisconsin. And I was quite sure that no one needed to know about the vacation Randy Jarvis took at a nudist colony.

“What’s that?” Marina nodded at the feathery ash.

“Nothing anyone needs to know about.” I peeked into the Dumpster. Excellent. I reached in and pulled out a cardboard tube I’d tossed in yesterday. Using it in a sticklike manner, I poked at the flames, making sure each and every bit burned until it couldn’t burn any longer.