Plotting at the PTA (24 page)

“Now what?” I muttered. It didn’t sound so hard, climbing in through a window. Unfortunately, I had legs that didn’t bend backward and a head on top of my shoulders.

One cramped calf muscle and two hard whacks on the back of my skull later, I was standing on the bathroom’s linoleum floor. I turned around to shut the window and saw Thurman, pruners in hand, staring at me blankly.

“Hi!” I called, waving cheerily. “How are you? Say hello to Lillian for me.” I slid the window shut and locked it. Just making sure the house was secure, Officer. I’ll be going now, if that’s all right with you. Bye-bye!

The dirt on my hands made me long to wash, but I couldn’t bring myself to use Amy’s towels. I dusted my hands on my pants, hoping my straightlaced and decades-gone grandmother couldn’t see me, and, after peering through the lace curtain for any signs of Thurman, went to open the door for Spot.

“No getting on the furniture,” I told him. “No chewing of anything, no scratching on anything, and whatever you do, don’t shed.”

He trotted inside, ignoring everything I said, and stood in the middle of the kitchen, nose twitching as he sniffed the stale air.

Half a hope rose in me that he could smell Amy’s crime book. “Good dog. Find it, boy.”

He gave me a tilted-head look.

Sighing, I patted him. “Don’t worry about it. You would if you could, I’m sure. Dogs always do their best.” And unlike me, a dog’s best was always good enough.

I shook off my self-pity, told Spot to stay, and started the search.

Working on the theory that Amy would keep a special book in a special place, I went to the dusty living room. Not on the round coffee table, not on the blond bookshelves, not on the end tables, not under the pale turquoise couch.

Methodically, I moved to the kitchen. No binder with the cookbooks. No binder in the junk drawer, no binder anywhere.

“I hate this,” I muttered. This going-through of someone else’s belongings made me feel icky. And it made me want to rush home and clean out my underwear drawer. It wouldn’t do to have anyone else find that ratty pair in the back, not even Marina.

The binder wasn’t in the guest room or the study where I gaped open-mouthed at Amy’s artwork. Why hadn’t she told me she was a graphic novelist? But before I even finished the thought, I knew the answer. I would have pestered her to do a signing at the store. To give a talk. To attend our author parties. All events that took place outside her house, most of which took place during the day.

Poor Amy.

I looked through the living room one last time—two last times—then looked up the narrow wooden stairs to where Amy’s bedroom must be. I didn’t want to go up there, didn’t want to see that most private of places, didn’t want to feel the sorrow that would surely stab at me.

But up the stairs I went, bleached pine step after bleached pine step. At the top, the white paneled door creaked as I pushed it open. “Oh . . .” I breathed, feeling not grief, but a happy surprise.

For Amy’s bedroom was filled with light and filled with white. Tall windows facing east and south were welcoming in so much morning sun that turning on the light would have made no difference.

I blinked at the lush lace at the windows, the lace runner on the dresser, the lace draped over the dresser mirror, the lace-trimmed pillows on the bed, the comforter cover topped with lace, the lace lampshades. Feminine, yes, but more than that, sheer unadulterated gorgeousness.

Amy must have loved this room. She would have woken to this beauty every morning and fallen asleep in its embrace. No one who’d created this room could have been truly unhappy, no one who slept in this space could have left it without a smile on her face.

The binder was on the lower shelf of the white wicker nightstand. I removed it from its resting place and went silently down the stairs. I sat at the kitchen table, Spot sat at my feet, and I began to read.

* * *

When I finally looked up, my back hurt, my head ached, and my stomach was telling me that lunch would have been a good thing to have.

The notebook had ended up to be as much journal as crime-oriented notebook.

In the back were a number of empty notebook pages. I flipped to the back, hesitated, then unsnapped the binder, and removed the pages. “Sorry,” I said out loud. “I’ll replace them.”

I dug into my purse for a pen and turned back to the first pages of Amy’s notebook. There was the newspaper article that described Kelly’s death. There was Kelly’s obituary. There was the article about her funeral, complete with pictures of the crowd-lined street and the black banners hanging from every window in the high school.

It seemed a little overkill, perhaps, and my sympathy for Faye went up a small notch.

I made some notes. Factual ones, having to do with dates and times and places. None of this was more than remotely interesting, but it seemed like something that should be done.

Between the newspaper articles at the front and the articles at the back came pages and pages of scrawling adolescent script. I read it through a second time and this time I searched the angst for the kernels of information that lay beneath.

“It’s all my fault,” the young Amy wrote. “I’ll blame myself forever and ever. She never would have died if I’d really been her best friend. I would have saved her, I never would have let her drown. It’s all my fault, every single bit of it.”

On and on for pages. I wrote, “Amy feels responsible,” and kept going.

It wasn’t until the twentieth page of frenzied journaling that I came across the reason for Amy’s guilt.

“If only I hadn’t gone out on that date. Why,
why,
did I think that seeing some stupid movie with some stupid guy was better than going to the slumber party?”

I wrote, “Amy out on date the night of Kelly’s death.” Tapping the pen point to the paper, I wondered if that was the reason Amy had never married. Would guilt have haunted her to that extreme? Could something that happened when you were eighteen cause you to make a decision you stuck to the rest of your life?

“Well?” I asked the air.

But there was, of course, no answer.

I paged through the loopy handwriting, hunting for the names I’d seen before. There. There. And there.

“Claudia Wolff is such a you-know-what,” Amy had written. “She’s the real reason I didn’t go to the slumber party. Faye’s okay. Tina isn’t so bad, and all Cindy does is talk about either flowers or her chances with Keith now that he’s ditched Kelly. She probably can’t imagine how bad Kelly feels, so she probably called Kelly and asked if she wanted to get back with Keith and maybe that’s why . . . No. I won’t believe it. I won’t
won’t WON’T!!!
”

A tear-sized circle blurred the exclamation points, turning them into wavy lines of blue ink.

Four names went onto my list titled Slumber Party: Faye Lewis, Claudia Wolff, Tina Heller, and Cindy Irving.

I turned the names around in my head. Cindy, Tina, Claudia, Faye.

Faye.

Claudia.

Tina.

Cindy.

Faye, who was so obviously self-confident that the concept of murder to improve her chances of being valedictorian seemed as far-fetched as time travel.

Claudia, who committed her acts of violence via a poisoned tongue, was too passive-aggressive to dirty her hands with something as ugly as murder.

Tina, who formed her opinions via Claudia, might kill to stay in Claudia’s good graces, by why would she have needed to? Had they had a fight?

I put a small star by Tina’s name and considered Cindy. She landscaped the town of Rynwood until it looked like something from a movie set. She didn’t have any children, wasn’t married, and, as far back as I could remember, hadn’t dated anyone. And yet she’d had a huge crush on Keith Mathieson back in high school. Which didn’t mean anything by itself. But . . . ?

I licked my index finger and pushed Amy’s pages backward, then forward, looking for what I was sure I’d seen on the initial read. Or had I? Maybe I’d dreamed it up, along with the voices of Amy and Kelly. Maybe I needed to find a good therapist and—

There!

“Cindy,” Amy wrote, “scares me sometimes. She gets so she wants something so bad and she won’t quit until she gets it. Look at how she got to be first chair clarinet in band. All she did all summer was practice. Then she wanted to be class president. Wonder how much money she spent buying French fries and Cokes for kids? She won, though. And then she decided she wanted Keith Mathieson.”

I shut the book slowly. The rest of it was packed with newspaper clippings of accidental deaths from all over the country and I didn’t see how a beer-infested man falling off a sailboat in Lake Erie had anything to do with Kelly.

Cindy, though. Could she have killed Kelly?

Closing my eyes, I summoned an image of her face, intent on yanking every last weed out of the large flower beds in front of City Hall. I heard the snick of her hand clippers as she trimmed an errant piece of grass next to a city sidewalk. I felt the lash of her tongue as she scolded me for letting a leaf stray into the flower box at the front of my store.

Yes. I could see Cindy killing Kelly for a better chance at Keith. It wouldn’t have mattered, since Kelly was the one who did the dumping, but Cindy didn’t know that. No one knew.

So . . . I looked at my notes and nudged Spot. “Say Cindy had killed Kelly. Just say.” He made a groany noise and rolled onto my foot. “Why would she have killed Amy? Especially at this late date?”

He groaned again, but since I couldn’t interpret dog speech, his suggestion wasn’t helpful.

I stood and started to pace. “Why?” I asked Spot. “Why?” I asked the notebook. “Why?” I asked the kitchen at large, arms spread wide. “Why would . . .”

That’s when I noticed the blinking light on Amy’s answering machine. Without thinking it through, without thinking at all, I crossed the room and hit
PLAY
.

“Hi, Amy,” said a male voice. “It’s Keith. It was nice seeing you the other night. Are we still on for Friday at six? I might be a little late because I have to talk to our new landscaper about some plants she wants to try out. She’s from Rynwood, actually. Do you remember a Cindy Irving? She was in our class at school . . .”

I pushed the
OFF
button. “Come on, Spot,” I said quietly. “Let’s go.”

Chapter 20

T
he trees in the park gave shade from the sun, but no comfort. Spot’s presence at my side gave companionship, but he provided no answers. We walked through the twisting trails, Spot looking up at me every so often to check on my mental status, me asking questions out loud. There weren’t any answers, but who better to ask questions of me than me?

“What do I do now?” The trail underneath my feet was soft and quiet with its covering of brown pine needles. “If I go to the police, will they listen to me? More to the point, will they believe me? I don’t see it, I just don’t. They haven’t listened to me yet, so why would they start now? It’s all about proof and I don’t have any.”

Not yet.

I stopped. Looked around. I’d heard something. For real, that time. Hadn’t I? I stretched out my ears and closed my eyes, trying to hear all around me. If I’d heard a voice, I should have heard footsteps. There might have been footsteps . . . but if I had, where were they now?

A creepy snaky feeling sniggled down the back of my neck, then Spot pushed his head up to my fingertips. He didn’t seem to be worried, so why should I be? Back to the topic at hand.

“I need proof,” I said firmly. “And how am I going to get some?” I flung out the hand that wasn’t hanging on to Spot’s leash. “You can’t make it up, you know. It has to be real. It has to stand up in a court of law.”

Again I heard a rustle that shouldn’t have been there. I stopped. Looked. Listened. Didn’t see anything, didn’t hear anything.

Spot and I turned in a circle, me squinting into the shady murk, him dancing around my feet in anticipation of a new game. Nothing to see but trees, nothing to hear but the rustle of leaves. I shook my head to clear away the spookiness I’d conjured up and started walking again.

“All very well for you to say don’t worry,” I said, “but if I’m going to accomplish anything, I need to come up with something that will satisfy Gus, the prosecutor, and the judge. Cindy killed Kelly to clear the path to Keith. She killed Amy for the same reason. But how do I convince Gus? He’s not going to question her based on a high schooler’s diary and an answering machine message about landscaping.”

Would he?

I thought for a while, head down, feet moving fast. No, he wouldn’t. Even if I could get him or Sean over to the house, all they’d do was take notes, nod, and say this was all very interesting, but what did it prove? What I needed was—

My head jerked back as Spot yanked hard on the leash. When I started to scold him, he erupted into wild barking. “Spot!” I called. “Spot! Quiet!” He was barking and straining at the leash, staring down the trail, muscles quivering.

I squinted into the trees. Saw nothing. His sharp dog nose must be scenting a squirrel or a rabbit. We didn’t have coyotes in the park, did we? “Calm down, boy.” My hand went out to pet him. His back was rigid with tension. “Spot, what do—” I stopped, because I’d suddenly seen what my dog had seen some time ago.

Cindy Irving was rushing down the path, heading toward me with a shovel in her hands and a murderous look on her face. She said nothing at all, just ran toward me, raising the shovel high.

I stood, staring.

The open windows at the police station. She must have heard me talking. She’s been following me, waiting, and now she’s going to kill me.

Cindy came close, closer, and closer yet. Finally, panic grabbed hold of me and I was able to run.

Too little too late she’s going to catch me she has too long a reach with that shovel she knows so well how to use it run don’t let her get near you run
run RUN!

I ran one way and Spot ran the other and the long dog leash pulled taut between us. Cindy, charging toward me, didn’t see the strap and ran straight into it, catching it right at her knees.

Spot yelped and my head flung backward as Cindy’s weight pulled us around. She fell headlong, keening out a long shriek, and crashed hard to the ground. There was a
crack!
as her head hit a tree root. She made a whimpering noise, then rolled to her side and lay still.

For two breaths, three, I stood quiet. When she hadn’t moved after the fourth breath, I went to her. Knelt down. Saw that she was still breathing. “Spot? Come, boy.” He came to me, tail wagging, and I unclipped the leash from his collar. “Good dog. Stay.”

I wrapped the leash around one of Cindy’s thick, powerful wrists. Around the second one. Tied as tight a knot as I could. Then I pulled my cell phone out of my purse and called 911.

An officer would arrive shortly, the efficient dispatcher told me.

“How long is shortly?” I asked. Pleaded, really. Cindy was too big and strong for me to take down a second time. The first had been sheer luck.

“As soon as possible,” the dispatcher said. “Would you like me to stay on the line?”

“Beth?” called a male voice. “Beth!” Pete Peterson pounded into view. “It is you. I thought I heard Spot barking. Are you okay? What’s the matter?”

I told the dispatcher, “No, thanks. I’m good,” and flung myself into Pete’s outstretched arms. Aid, when I thought it would be a half hour coming. Comfort, when I thought there was no hope of finding any. “I am so glad to see you,” I half sobbed. “You wouldn’t believe how glad.”

He cupped the back of my head with his hand and pulled me close. “Don’t worry,” he murmured. “It’ll be okay.”

“Ohhh,” Cindy groaned. “My head really hurts, it . . .” She blinked and looked down at the leash tying her wrists together. “Why am I tied up?”

I looked at her. Because you just tried to whack me on the head with a shovel, why do you think?

She blinked again, then looked up at me. “Why couldn’t you leave well enough alone? Why did you have to go poking around, asking all those questions? It was none of your business!”

Pete stepped out of our embrace, but took firm hold of my hand. “I wouldn’t answer,” he said quietly. “Engaging someone like her is the worst thing you can do.”

I nodded. He was right, and I should have taken his advice, but I couldn’t stop myself from asking Cindy, “Does Keith know how you feel about him?”

Fear, anger, apprehension, and craftiness all flashed over her face. A slippery smile came and went. “He will,” she said slyly. “Sometimes these things take time, that’s all. Eventually he’ll see I’m the best thing that could ever happen to him. Eventually he’ll see how much I love him. Once he sees that, it’ll all be okay.”

Her smile, laced with dreams and fantasy, made her look almost beautiful. It was the look of a bride on her wedding day. Today, everything will come true. Today, everything will be perfect.

I swallowed. Obsession didn’t look anything like I’d imagined.

Cindy strained against the leash that bound her wrists together. “But every time I got close to getting close to him, someone would mess it up for me. First Kelly, then that girl in college, then Amy.”

Suddenly I couldn’t breathe. I put my hand to my neck. Yes, there it was. My pulse. Strong and steady. “What girl?” I asked.

Cindy’s gaze fastened on mine and I realized I was looking into the eyes of a killer. Revulsion rose in me, so strong that I almost choked.

“It was that Kelly that ruined it,” she said. “They were always together, always! How was I going to get a chance with her there all the time? And then after she died, I thought, now. Now is my time. Now he’ll see. But people started saying she committed suicide and he was never the same after that.”

I started to move forward, to ask the question quietly, to whisper it in her ear, but Pete held me back. I tugged, and he held me firm. “Please,” he said. “Please stay back.”

He’d said “please.” Twice. I stayed back. But I did crouch low, putting myself closer to Cindy’s level. “Kelly didn’t commit suicide, did she?”

“What makes you say that?” Her crafty look had returned.

Lots of things, but none of them carried any serious weight, so I didn’t say anything.

Cindy smiled. “You don’t know. No one does. Except me. It really was an accident. Just like the police report says.”

I rocked back on my heels and would have fallen over except for Pete reaching down to support me. “It was?” All these weeks I’d been so sure Kelly had been murdered. Barb had been certain for years. How was I going to tell her she was wrong? How was I going to tell Maude?

“Of course it was.” Cindy giggled. “I didn’t mean to kill her. It was an accident. Just like that college girl. And Amy. Accidents, all of them. Like when that brick almost fell on you? Accident. They happen, you know.”

Pete’s hands gripped my shoulders and I felt the solidity of his legs against my back. “Yes,” I said slowly, “they do.”

“Exactly!” Cindy said triumphantly. “I didn’t mean for Kelly to drown, I just meant to scare her. It’s not my fault. I mean, she was supposed to be this great swimmer,” she said, rolling her eyes. “If she was that good, you’d have thought she could hold her breath a little longer. Sure, I pushed her head down with the rowboat oar, but still.”

Oh, Kelly. I’m so sorry. So so sorry.

“And the college girl?” Pete asked. “She had an accident, too?”

“Well, yeah. People shouldn’t stand so close to deep water. Especially in winter. You never know when you’re going to slip and fall on the ice. Safety first,” she said solemnly, then laughed.

“Amy,” I said.

“That woman.” Cindy shoved the words out of her mouth. “She was trouble from the beginning. Trouble when we were kids and worse trouble now. She should have stayed away from Keith. She had no right to him. No right!” The
T
hit her teeth hard. “Oh, I knew all about the way he visited her at night. I saw; I watched it all.”

“You spent a lot of time watching him,” I said.

She nodded fiercely. “I had to stop her from seeing him. All I was going to do was scare her a little with those wasps. Just knock on the back door and get her outside with a story about a poor, sad little kitten in the bushes. So easy, in spite of those cans of bee killer. I got one away from her, you know. And, anyway, how was I supposed to know she was so allergic? An accident, see. It was an accident.”

Nausea rose in my throat, bitter and sharp. I stood up so fast that blackness threatened to overtake me.

“I have a lovely accident planned for you,” she said. “So lovely. Bookstores can be dangerous places, you know. All those books, all those shelves. I’d lay money that not all of them are fastened to the walls properly.”

Her smile curved up slowly and became the ugliest expression I’d ever seen on a human face.

She laughed. “Scared, little Beth? When I took that dumb notebook of yours, I thought it would tell me everything, but your handwriting is so horrible, I could hardly read it. You can’t be that smart if you can’t write.”

Scared? Yes, I was scared. Scared and nervous and anxious and wishing with all the wishes granted to me that the police were here right now.

“You think you’re so smart, but who’s the smart one now?” Her hands burst free of the leash. She scrambled to her feet faster than light and hurtled toward me.

Spot barked wildly and danced around Cindy, nipping at her ankles, darting away from her kicking feet.

“Leave me alone, dog!” She aimed at his midsection. “I have to find an accident. There’s got to be one here somewhere.”

Pete had shouldered his way in front of me, but Cindy shoved him to the ground with a strength few women have. “Hah. Gotcha.” She stood in front of me, laughing. “And I got you good, smarty pants.”

I stared into her eyes. Why I wasn’t scared, I had no idea. Calm ran through my body like a deep river. There was no need to fear. She would not hurt me. Peace filled my lungs, my smile, my eyes.

Cindy’s hands were inches from my throat.

Don’t be afraid.

I should have been, but I wasn’t.

Cindy’s eyes flared wide and she stopped dead. Whirled around. Threw her head back and looked up at the trees. “Kelly?” she whispered. “Kelly?” Her whisper turned to a shout. “I killed you! You’re dead!” She flung herself around and reached for me again. “It’s you! You’re tricking me! I’ll kill you for that!”

She grabbed my throat, shaking me like a small dog. Pete had scrambled to his feet and his hands were fastened on her wrists, but he couldn’t break her grip. “Let her go!” he shouted. “Let go!”

And all I could do was stare into her mad eyes and feel sorry for her. The poor woman. All she wanted was love, and she was never going to get the love she wanted so badly. The poor, poor woman.

Spots of light sparkled at the edges of my vision and a curtain of darkness started to descend. Cindy was killing me, and still I wasn’t afraid.

Jenna, honey, I love you.

Oliver, sweetie, I love you.

I’m so sorry. . . .

My knees went soft and I sagged. Cindy crowed with triumph, Pete shouted, Spot barked. The world went black . . . it was then, almost too late, that the police came. Gus and Sean and sheriff’s deputies and EMTs. From my kneeling position on the ground, I watched as law enforcement officers wrestled Cindy down and handcuffed her.

The EMTs set down their boxes of equipment. “Ma’am? We need to make sure you’re okay.”

“I’m fine,” I croaked through a raw throat, but they didn’t pay any attention to me.

Gus nodded at Sean, who colored an adorable shade of pink and read Cindy the Miranda warning. Accompanied by the sheriff’s deputies, Sean marched her off, and Gus came over to me just as the EMTs declared me of sound mind and body, packed up their equipment, and went off.

“She’s going to be fine,” he said.

I blinked. Gus was talking to me. He was actually talking to me. And not sounding as if he wanted to shout me down into silence. “She . . . will?” I glanced down the trail, where we could all hear Cindy shouting at the EMTs to leave her alone, to not touch her because she was saving herself for her soul mate.

Gus smiled at me, and it was as if the dark clouds of forty days and forty nights had broken clear. “Stage one cancer only, and they got all of it. She’ll have to do radiation treatments for a few weeks, but they’re saying a complete recovery.”

“Winnie,” I whispered. Suddenly, all became clear. Of course, it could have been clear for weeks if either Gus or Winnie had chosen to confide in their friends, but that would be a topic for another time. “Oh, Gus, I’m so glad.”