Plotting at the PTA (20 page)

“You have no right to question this police department.”

I was suddenly glad I was gripping the door handle. At least this way I knew which way was up. “I have every right,” I said, more quietly. “If I see a wrong, it’s my duty to see that it’s corrected.”

“Beth Kennedy, fighter of evil.”

He smiled, but it was more a smirk than a proper smile, and it looked all wrong. Where had the real Gus gone? Who was this unkind stranger who had taken over his body?

“All that is necessary for evil to triumph,” I said, quoting somebody or other, “is for good men to do nothing.”

“And you’re the good man in this case?” Gus asked.

“I’m certainly not the bad one.”

“You’re implying that I am?”

“I’m trying to get you to do your job.”

The words hung in the air between us, dry and bony and ugly. We stared at each other through the invisible letters. I saw a lined and weary face, one that I loved like a brother. What he saw I did not know.

I took a small step forward, hand out. “Gus, I didn’t—”

“Yes, you did.” His shoulders rearranged themselves inside his uniform, under the Armor Express vest all on-duty officers wore. “You meant every word of it.” He nodded. “Thank you for your comments. I’ll study the file. If I have any questions, I’ll let you know.”

He spun around and marched off. Three seconds later, his office door shut. Firmly, but not loudly.

I opened the front door. Cell phones and cordless handsets had taken away the satisfaction of ending a phone call with a bang, but at least there were still doors to fill the gap.

Slam!

“I knew he wouldn’t be any help.” All the way back to the bookstore, I had my head down, muttering to myself. “Amy was murdered, I know she was. And so was Kelly.” But the proof of that was even more ephemeral than a wasp’s nest. Gee, Chief Eiseley, how do I know Kelly was murdered, Chief Eiseley? Because, that’s why.

“Faye was lying,” I told the sidewalk. “Maybe Barb was right, maybe Faye did kill Kelly. Maybe Amy found out, somehow.” The idea took hold and I started to run with it.

“Sure. That makes a lot of sense.” I almost stumbled into Cindy Irving, who was backing out of a planter bed. Some atavistic instinct made me dance out of the way of her garden cart. I waved at her absently, and carried on with my monologue.

“Yes, Amy found out. Faye had to keep Amy quiet. Everybody knew about Amy’s allergies, so all Faye had to do was find a wasp nest and lure Amy outside.”

My words were coming out clipped and my breaths were puffing out in short bursts.

“Amy found out and Faye found out that Amy had found out. . . .”

I slowed from a fast, arm-pumping walk to a slow and lethargic saunter. Because my logic had just fallen apart. How would Faye have known what Amy was doing? More to the point, how would reclusive Amy have known what Faye was doing?

There was something I was missing. A big fat piece of the puzzle wasn’t in the box.

“Think, Beth,” I told myself. “Think.”

“About what?” Al from the antique store was out in front, sweeping the sidewalk clean.

I jerked out of my daze. “Um, about the likelihood of Alice making a calorie-free cookie that tastes just as good as the real ones.”

He laughed, shook his head, and kept on sweeping.

“Think,” I said, putting one foot in front of the other, working on movement, hoping for momentum, praying for any thought that might help.

But nothing came.

* * *

The next few days zoomed past in a blur of final story session editing, signing permission slips for end-of-school field trips, and covering for Lois at the store. “It’s my youngest,” she’d said on the phone. “You know, the daughter with multiple college degrees and a successful career as a Chicago computer geek? Well, not only hasn’t she had time to get married or provide me with a few more grandchildren, but it turns out none of those cooking lessons I gave her stuck in her pointed head. Especially the one about leaving potato salad out in the sun.”

“You mean . . . ?”

“Yup. Food poisoning.” Lois made a gagging noise. “She’ll be better in a couple three days, but right now she needs some TLC.”

“She needs her mommy.”

“She needs some common sense.” Lois snorted. “I’ll be back by Friday. If I’m lucky, Thursday.”

“You’re a good mom, Lois.”

“That and a buck might get me a cup of coffee. If I can talk Ruthie into a senior discount, that is.”

She’d hung up and I wondered if a grown-up Jenna would ever call me and ask for help. I tried to imagine my tomboy, my don’t-make-me-wear-pink daughter picking up the phone and saying, “Mom? Can you come over? I don’t feel good.”

No, that image didn’t work at all. I’d go to her, of course I would, no matter if she lived in Rynwood, in California, or in Siberia. I’d get to her as fast as I could and mop her fevered brow, murmuring terms of endearment that would make her smile despite her illness.

But Jenna hardly ever got sick, and she was starting to realize that I couldn’t fix all of her problems. When she grew to adulthood, what would she call me about?

I considered it all week, and by Thursday afternoon, I thought she might call if she had to go to the hospital. I’d just decided that though a sliced thumb wasn’t nearly enough to warrant a call to me, a broken leg would be, when the phone rang. Though I was only two feet away, I couldn’t make myself pick up the receiver. Only stared at it.

After two rings, Paoze reached across the counter and took up the receiver. “Good afternoon, Children’s Bookshelf. How may I help you?”

Feigning unconcern, I straightened a pile of bookmarks.

“Beth Kennedy?” Paoze turned to look at me. “One moment, please.”

He leaned forward to pass me the phone over the counter, but I was already there, snatching the receiver out of his hand. I listened for a very short minute. “I’ll be right there.” I dropped the phone, ran to grab my purse, and shot out the door.

* * *

I rushed into Maude’s room. Her frail form lay under thick layers of blankets. Auntie May was sitting bedside, stroking her friend’s limp hand.

“How is she?” I whispered, kneeling on the floor.

Auntie May shook her head. “The doctor won’t say.” She sniffed. “They won’t tell me anything. Just look at her, though. Just look at her!”

Maude’s face was even paler than normal. Her hair, usually brushed into a tidy do, hung on her head in flat strands. In spite of the blankets, her body was quaking with shivers.

“Is she running a fever?”

“What part of ‘they won’t tell me anything’ didn’t you hear?” Auntie May whispered. Or as much of a whisper as she could manage.

I reached out to feel Maude’s forehead, but Auntie May knocked my hand away. “Don’t wake her up,” she said. “First time she’s slept in two days and now you want to take that away from her?”

Guilt spewed into the air and came down over me like a net, wrapping tight. “Why didn’t you call me sooner?”

“Now Miss I’m-So-Busy says she’s not really that busy? Sure, with Maudie here close to death you’ll make time, but when she needs—”

“Nooo.” Maude flung her head to the side.

“There, there.” Auntie May patted her hand. “I’m here. Beth’s here. She’ll tell you all about Kelly.” She sent me a look filled with broken glass and razor wire. “Won’t she?”

“Well, I . . .” What I had was nothing. Not really. The buckets of speculation didn’t count; neither did the tubs of conjecture. My notebook was filling up, but it was filling up with unanswered questions. None of it would comfort Maude.

“Kelly.” Maude lifted her head off the pillow, neck cords straining. “Kelly? Are you there?”

The skin on the back of my neck tingled. I listened, keeping completely still, waiting, trying to hear. But all I heard was my own short breaths and the jangle of Auntie May’s bracelets as she comforted her friend.

I closed my eyes, searching deep, but there was no Kelly anywhere near. I swallowed down my relief. It was always a good thing when you were the only one in your own brain.

“Kelly?” Maude struggled to sit up. “I’ll find out, I promise. If it’s the last thing I do.” She looked at me, but showed no sign of recognition. “I won’t die until I find out, my Kelly. I won’t. . . .” She fell back against the pillow, groaning.

That did it. I reached for the call light and pushed the button firmly.

“Hey, now.” Auntie May grabbed at it with her clawlike hands. “What are you doing?”

I held it out of her reach and made sure the red bulb on the console above the bed went on and stayed on. “Maude is sick. She needs help and I’m making sure she gets it.”

“Aw, she’ll be fine.” Auntie May patted Maude’s cheek. “See, she’s looking better already.”

Maude turned her head from side to side, moaning things I couldn’t make out. Something about justice, something about murder. It sounded like a bad made-for-TV movie, but maybe those movies were more realistic than I’d given them credit for.

“She needs a nurse,” I said.

“Pills.” Auntie May made a gagging noise. “All they want to do is give you pills.”

“Better than needles,” Maude said weakly.

Auntie May shot me a startled glance. “Maudie? Was that you? How are you feeling? Is your fever gone?”

But Maude had descended back to nonsensical ramblings. A picnic, now, with deviled eggs and ham sandwiches and stale potato chips.

“All right, ladies.” Tracy, the nurse’s aide, came bustling into the room. “What’s the problem here?”

Maude fluttered her eyelashes. “Tracy? Is that you?” she asked in a quavery voice.

“All day and half the night.” Tracy stood at the foot of the bed, hands in the pockets of her scrub pants, and surveyed her patient. “Hmm.” She flicked a practiced eye over Auntie May and, finally, looked at me. “Beth, can we talk?”

“Well, sure, but don’t you . . .” I nodded at Maude.

“I’ll tend to her in a minute.” She gave Auntie May a hard look. “And after that I’ll be taking care of you.”

We walked a few steps away from Maude’s doorway. Tracy looked over my shoulder. “That woman will drive me batty,” she muttered. “Come on in here.” Across the hall was a door labeled L
INENS
. The lock was a keyless entry and the buttons made fast electronic beeps as Tracy entered the code and nodded me inside.

Surrounded by white sheets, white pillowcases, and white towels, Tracy gave a deep sigh. “I started to tell you this once before and I never got to finish.”

Which was what I preferred, really, because there were things I didn’t want to know, but she seemed intent on talking.

“It’s about Maude.” Tracy leaned back against the concrete block wall.

“You’re not going to tell me anything that will violate the privacy laws, are you? I wouldn’t want to put you at risk.”

She nodded. “Okay. Thanks. But what I’m going to say doesn’t have anything to do with privacy. It’s common knowledge and I’m surprised you don’t know already.”

There was an awful lot I didn’t know, including the temperature of the sun’s surface, the size of a hockey puck, and what we were going to have for dinner that night. “Don’t know what?”

She shoved her hands in the pockets of her scrub top. “She was in the papers and everything, but it was so long ago that maybe it was before you moved here. See, for years Maude was in the—”

Her beeper went off, loud in the small space. “Hang on, okay?” She unclipped the beeper and scrolled through the numbers. “Rats. I have to go.” The beeper went back onto her pocket. “I get off at three. Could you stay until then? I’d really like to talk to you.”

I glanced at my watch. Two forty-five. “Sure.”

She hurried off to whoever it was that needed tending to, and I went back to Maude’s room.

“What did Tracy want?” Auntie May demanded.

Maude’s eyes were shut and her breathing was even. I gestured toward the sleeping woman and spoke quietly. “Tracy was called away. I don’t know what she wanted.”

Auntie May grunted. “That girl likes to talk more than she should. Just like her mother. Grandmother, too. Yep, Eunice was a corker for talking. Told her once that she’d talk to a post if it had ears. So I painted ears on a fencepost and introduced her to it.” Auntie May snorted out a laugh. “Eunice didn’t find it funny. No sense of humor, that one.”

I picked up my purse, made my good-byes, and went to the nurse’s station.

“Tracy’s working an extra half shift,” said a harried man with a clipboard in one hand and three-ring binder in the other. “Someone called in sick.”

“Is there any chance I could talk to her for a minute?”

“She’ll have a break in two hours.”

I couldn’t possibly wait around that long. However . . . “Could I borrow a phone book, please?”

He thumped it on the counter. “Just leave it there when you’re done,” he said, and strode down the hall.

I flipped pages until I came to Tracy’s last name, but there was no Tracy. And no entry for her husband. Frustrated, I flipped the book shut. Tracy must be one of those people who’d canceled her landline. How was I going to call her at home tonight if I didn’t know her phone number?

I walked the halls for a few minutes, looking for Tracy. A CNA finally took pity on me and told me that Tracy was giving Mrs. Johnson a bath. “She’ll be half an hour, at least,” she said cheerfully.

After thanking her, I started my walk back to the store.

Maude wasn’t going to rest peacefully until I found out once and for all what happened to Kelly. Plus, I wouldn’t rest easy until I satisfied myself that I’d done all I could.

Ever since that night at the lake I hadn’t been sleeping well, I wasn’t able to concentrate for beans, and now I was sick with guilt over Maude.

Think, Beth. Think.

If only I could.

* * *

That night I made a quick dinner of boneless chicken breasts, bread from the bakery, and coleslaw from the grocery store. We went to the park with Spot and met up with Pete for another lesson in disc golf.

“They’re catching on fast,” Pete said, and got big grins from both kids.

The bike ride home was punctuated by bursts of laughter and short stretches of silence. A happy way to travel, and one that made me want to sing made-up songs of spontaneous joy. If I did, however, Jenna would roll her eyes and push ahead, which would have spoiled the mood, so I kept my music inside.
It doesn’t get,
I sang silently,
any better than this. I will bet, that this is bliss.