Poison at the PTA (4 page)

“No.” She closed her eyes and swayed in her chair. “I really don’t think I am. Beth, could you take me home, please?”

•   •   •

When I said I was driving Cookie home, one of the PTA fathers said he’d drive Cookie’s car to her house and leave it in the driveway. Kirk Olsen offered to pick him up. “Got a hot new ride to show you,” he said, grinning. “Nothing like heated leather seats this time of year.”

Cookie gave a wan thank-you and I helped her into my car.

“I’m sure I’m just coming down with a little something,” she said. “I thought a few cups of decaf would help, but they didn’t seem to.”

Light from the dashboard let me see Cookie push at her shortish gray hair, then see her thin hand fall to her lap. “It’s that time of year,” I said. If you can’t make interesting conversation, that’s no reason not to make inane remarks. “There’s a flu thing going around.” There always was, if you looked hard enough.

“Yes, I’ve heard that.” Cookie sighed and I felt, more than saw, her relax into a slouch. Which was unusual since Cookie had been raised in the era of good posture makes for good girls. “I’m sure that’s it.”

Since I couldn’t think of anything else to say, I kept quiet and reflected that this was always the case regarding conversations with Cookie. Once she’d finished whatever banking transaction I’d slid over to her, we had nothing left to say. She didn’t read, didn’t follow sports, not even the Green Bay Packers, didn’t attend church, didn’t garden. I wasn’t sure what she did in her spare time. Maybe she cooked. Or knitted.

I was busy envisioning every shelf in Cookie’s house crowded with adorable knitted animals when she said, “Beth, I’ve been meaning to talk to you for some time.”

“You . . . have?” I tried to the keep the surprise out of my voice, but I was pretty sure I hadn’t done a very good job.

“It’s all those murders you’ve solved.”

I stifled a sigh. For a number of odd reasons, I’d made contributions to tracking down a number of killers, and each time I’d vowed it would never happen again. Too dangerous and too stupid. That’s why we had law enforcement. They hadn’t needed my help then and they wouldn’t in the future.

What Cookie probably wanted to know was one of three questions people typically asked me about those experiences. One: had I been scared? Absolutely. Two: what did a dead person look like? Sorry, but that’s something I try not to remember. Three: were they going to make a movie about my life? Not a chance. But if they did, I’d like Sandra Bullock to play me.

“Don’t you think,” Cookie went on, “that the punishment doesn’t always match the crime?”

“Excuse me?”

“I mean, if someone kills someone, premeditated, in cold blood, shouldn’t they be killed, too? Isn’t that the fair thing?”

“Um . . .” Getting into an argument about capital punishment was not high on my list of things to do with good friends and relatives, let alone with someone I barely knew.

“I know life isn’t fair,” she went on, “but shouldn’t we be trying to make sure life is as fair as we can make it?”

“That’s a good point,” I said, trying to find a comfortable fence to sit on. “My children are always telling me what’s fair and what isn’t.”

“Yes, I knew you’d agree,” she said with satisfaction.

I hadn’t, not exactly. Not at all, in fact, but since there is a strong tendency among humans to believe what they want to believe, I decided not to fight this particular battle. Skirmish. Whatever it was.

“I’m glad we had this talk, Beth,” Cookie said. “My mind is at ease now, truly.”

Fever, I figured. She was probably running a slight temperature and it was steering her to say things that didn’t make a lot of sense. “We’ll get you home in a jiffy,” I told her. “Do you need anything? Aspirin?”

“Don’t you worry about me,” she said. “I have everything I need.”

Soon, we pulled into her driveway. I steadied her as we tromped through the thin snow to the back door, asked if she needed me to help her to bed, was told no, waited until the kitchen light went on, and went back to my warm car.

I drove home and didn’t even once worry about Cookie.

•   •   •

The next morning I was in the store kitchenette making the first crucial decision of the day—Earl Grey or Irish Breakfast Blend—when the phone rang. Lois snatched it up before I even turned my head.

“Good morning, Children’s Bookshelf . . . Yes, she is. One moment please.” After a short pause came her call. “Yo, Beth! It’s for you.”

I abandoned the tea choices and picked up my office phone. “Good morning. This is Beth.”

“Oh, Beth,” said the faint female voice. “I’m so glad I got hold of you.”

It took me a moment to place the voice. “Cookie?” I frowned and sat down. “You sound awful. Don’t tell me you went to work today.”

“No, no . . .” There was a loud swallow. “I have a horrible upset stomach, and I’m so afraid that I have . . .” Another swallow. “Food poisoning.”

“Oh, that’s too bad,” I said sympathetically. “And food poisoning can be dangerous. Make sure you get enough fluids and . . .” The reason that Cookie Van Doorne was calling me about her health sank in. “Are you saying you think you ate something last night that made you sick?” My mental mom manual was telling me that it usually took twenty-four hours for the nasty effects of food poisoning to make themselves known, but “usually” isn’t “always.”

“I’m not sure,” she said, “but I thought you should know.”

“Yes. Thank you. I’ll starting making calls right away and—” But I was talking to empty air. Cookie had hung up the phone.

Hoping that Cookie was wrong about the food poisoning, and hoping—selfishly—that if she did have food poisoning, it wasn’t because of anything she ate at the PTA event, I dialed a phone number I’d only recently memorized.

“Mary Margaret? It’s Beth. We might have a problem.”

Mary Margaret told me she’d take care of all the phone calls that suddenly had to be made. “I know just what to do, so don’t you worry about a thing. Say, how do you feel?”

In my worry about sickening half of Rynwood, I hadn’t once considered that I myself might get sick. “Fine. How about you?”

“Healthy as a horse. Let’s hope I stay that way, eh?”

For a long, long time.

•   •   •

The phone tree that Mary Margaret quickly set up worked like a charm. Within a few hours, everyone who’d been at last night’s event had been contacted. Some people had been contacted more than once, but better too often than not at all, Mary Margaret reported, and I agreed.

“And now we wait,” she said. “I told all my callers to have anyone who got sick call me. That way we can track what’s going on.”

“Let me know if anyone calls,” I told her. “Morning, noon, or night.”

“You bet. Now, don’t worry, okay? It’ll be fine.”

We hung up. “Don’t worry,” I muttered. “I can’t believe she said not to worry.”

•   •   •

I spent the rest of the day and evening waiting for a phone call from Mary Margaret. All through dinner, no phone call. All through evening chores and dog walking, no phone call. Through bedtime, no phone call. Twice, I started to pick up the phone to call her but stopped. She’d said she’d call if she heard anything, and she would.

The next morning I waited and worried some more. To alleviate some of that worry, I called Cookie. She sounded almost like her normal self and thought she’d be back to work in a day or two. “Must have been one of those stomach viruses,” she said. “Thanks for all you did, Beth. It meant a lot to me.”

“It was nothing,” I said, a little itchy at her gratitude. “Just get better, okay?”

At lunchtime, I couldn’t take it any longer and picked up the phone.

“Hey, Beth,” Mary Margaret said. “The only calls we got were a kid with a sore throat who wasn’t even there. Oh, and Randy Jarvis twisted his knee out shoveling snow.”

I heaved a huge sigh of relief. “And I called Cookie a little bit ago. She said she’s feeling much better.”

“False alarm, then,” Mary Margaret said cheerily. “Well, all’s well that ends well, right?”

“Right,” I said. Sometimes things really did work out.

•   •   •

But a few days later Glenn Kettunen stopped by the store ready to share the unwelcome news. “Say, did you hear about Cookie? She’s in the hospital.”

Less than half an hour later, I was in Cookie’s room, accepting her thanks for the flowers I’d brought.

“How sweet,” she said weakly, watching as I arranged the bouquet. “I’ve never been one for wasting money on fresh flowers, but carnations last a nice long time.”

Since “You’re welcome” didn’t seem to fit, I smiled and drew the guest chair close to the bed. “Is there anything I can get you?” I asked. “Water? Ice?”

“No, thank you.” She closed her eyes and laid her head back against the pillow. Her gray hair hung limply against her head, her skin was an odd shade of white, and the lines on her face were drawn long and deep. She looked . . . sick.

I reached out to pat her arm and was surprised at how thin and frail she felt. “If you’re too tired to talk, I can come back later.”

Her eyes fluttered open. “Momma? Is that you?”

Oh, dear.

I touched her hand and started to say something generically comforting, but her eyes closed, and stayed closed. When I saw that her chest was still rising and falling with reassuring regularity, I sat back in the chair. Out in the hallway, footsteps stepped past, some fast, some slow, some loud, some so soft they could barely be heard. Smells that weren’t of home or bookstore wafted in. Voices murmured. Faint beeps beeped.

I hated hospitals.

What felt like ten years later, Cookie spoke. “They’ve poisoned me.”

In a rush it came to me why Cookie and I had never been, and would never be, good friends. Not only did she take life much too seriously, but she was prone to sincerely believing in the worst-case scenario. Sure, I worried about horrible things, but deep down I didn’t really believe the worst was going to happen. It was best to be prepared, was more my line of thinking.

“What makes you think so?” I asked. Because, really, how would anyone know? There were a lot of poisons in the world and it was likely that they’d each have a different set of symptoms. Why would anyone slide from thinking plain old flu to the icky thought of being poisoned? Maybe this was just the illness talking. Her comments about the mysterious “they” certainly hinted of medication-induced nightmares.

Cookie’s voice rasped out. “Evil walks among us. It’s our duty to make things right.”

I waited. While I didn’t exactly think she was wrong, I also couldn’t give a blanket agreement. Finally, I thought of something to say. “Have you tried to make things right?”

With her eyes still closed, she smiled. “Right and wrong,” she said in a singsong tone. “Good and evil. They want it all different colors of gray, but we know better, don’t we? It’s black-and-white, now as it always was.”

I shifted in the chair, which had suddenly become uncomfortable. “I think I know what you mean,” I said cautiously. “Has someone done something wrong?”

Her lips curved up in a smile. “Oh, yes. So very wrong.”

I waited for her to continue. Watched her breaths move in and out. Waited some more. But she was sound asleep.

•   •   •

From the hospital parking lot, I called Gus and told him about Cookie’s hazy conviction that she’d been poisoned. “She’s very sick,” I finished. “I don’t know if it’s her medication or a fever or what, but she’s not exactly her normal self. It’s hard to say if this was a real conviction or an illness-induced one, but I thought you should know.”

Gus grunted. “Did you tell her doctor?”

“She said she’d run some tests.”

“I’ll stop by and talk to the doctor and Cookie,” Gus said. “Thanks, Beth. You taking care of yourself?”

I assured him I was and ended the call with the vague feeling that I should be doing more.

•   •   •

Over the next few days, I tried to find out how Cookie was doing. I knew the hospital wouldn’t tell me anything, and all her bank coworkers knew was that she wasn’t at work, so I asked around town.

“Cookie?” Denise, my hairstylist, asked between snips. “Oh, is she in the hospital? That’s too bad. I’ll have to stop by and see her.”

When I stopped by Glenn Kettunen’s insurance office, he said, “Cookie? Huh. Didn’t know she was still there. I should send flowers, I guess.”

Instead of sending Jenna to pick up dinner at the Green Tractor, I went myself and asked Ruthie. “Oh, dear. I’d heard she wasn’t feeling good. The poor woman. A hospital is the last place you want to be when you’re sick.”

Late Wednesday morning, Debra O’Conner knocked on my office door. Once upon a time, Debra-don’t-call-me-Debbie had dressed in city-slick clothes, gone to Chicago to get her hair cut, and been on a career path that didn’t include Rynwood’s local bank as the pinnacle.

A couple of years ago, after I’d made a chance remark I couldn’t even remember now, Debra had decided she was perfectly content as a local bank vice president, let her hair grow long, and started cooking dinner for her family every night. I squirmed every time she tried to give me credit for her new happiness; whatever I’d said couldn’t possibly have been that profound. I’d happened to say it at a time she was ready to hear it, that was all.