Poison at the PTA (13 page)

If I’d been smart, I would have figured out an answer to that before walking into her store. “Um, since it did make a nice amount of money, I’d like to give credit to the person who came up with it.” Ta-da! Beth pulls a fast and believable answer out of thin air!

“I’ll think on it,” Mary Margaret said. Then she frowned. “You sure that’s the reason? Because your ears are turning a little red. From what I hear, that means . . . Well, you know.”

Okay, maybe not so believable. But at least it was fast. “My ears turn red from the cold pretty easily. You’ll let me know if you remember? Maybe you could ask some of the other committee members.”

“Not a problem.” She nudged my elbow, smiling slyly. “Anything to help recognize a good idea.”

I made my escape, ears and face burning bright.

•   •   •

With my back to the wind, I pulled my cell phone from my purse and made a quick phone call, ending with “Ten minutes? Perfect. I’ll be waiting.”

Now that I had a destination, moving was easy. I pushed open the door of the antiques store and welcomed the burst of warmth that enveloped me. “Is or is not central heating the best thing ever invented?” I asked.

Alan, who was standing behind the front counter, considered the question. “Indoor plumbing is pretty good.”

“But what good is indoor plumbing without a warm house to keep it in?” I unzipped my coat and let the heat soak in. “Those pipes freeze up and you might as well get out the outhouse.”

He laughed. “What can I do you for this morning, Beth?”

“I’d like to hog one of your tables for a little while.”

“Stay as long as you’d like.” He swept his arm out, palm up, indicating the completely empty store. “You can see how busy we are.”

“Cold days are hard on retail.”

“No doubt about it,” he agreed. “And I’ve already done inventory. Alice says she’s going to make me do it all over again if I don’t stop complaining.”

“And I will,” Alice said, bustling in from the kitchen with a tray of warm, fresh cookies. “Morning, Beth. You looking for some of these?” She brandished dozens of oatmeal raisin.

“If I eat that many I’ll explode right here in your store.”

“Then take six. That shouldn’t do much more than give you a happy little tummyache.” She put the tray in the glass case and pulled off her silver oven mitts. “Or are you looking for these?” She jiggled the tray labeled
AMAZINGLY AWESOME
. “I know these are your favorites.”

“I’ll take four.” Weak, that’s what I was. Weak. I’d walked in intending to buy two coffees and one cookie, yet here I was, succumbing to weakness.

“That’s my girl.” Alice beamed. “You’re getting to be nothing but skin and bones. And are you getting enough sleep? Seems like those circles under your eyes are a little darker than last time I saw you.”

“Cookies will help.”

“Of course they will. Cookies help pretty much everything. A bag? Oh, you’re staying. How nice. And two coffees. You pick a table and I’ll bring everything—”

Crash!

“Alan!” Alice shrieked. I was twenty years younger and tens of pounds lighter than Alice, but she still reached Alan first.

“Honey, are you okay? What happened? What broke? You’re bleeding! We need to get to the hospital right this minute,” she said breathlessly. “We need to get you to the emergency room. You’ll need stitches. I’m sure of it.”

“What you need to do is calm down,” Alan said. “It’s just a scratch. That plate slipped, that’s all. It slipped and I caught at it and it broke in my hand. There’s no need to make a federal case out of it. Look, the bleeding has stopped already.” He held out his hand.

It hadn’t completely stopped, but it had already moved from the flowing stage to the ooze level. His wife looked unconvinced. “I think he’s right, Alice,” I said. “A good wash, some triple ointment, and a sticky bandage is all he needs.”

“Are you sure?” Lines appeared around her mouth. “Alan . . .”

“I’m fine,” he said shortly. “I’m a grown man, Alice. I know how to take care of myself.”

She watched him go with a troubled look on her face. There was more going on here than a small cut. I was about to ask a gently probing question when the front door opened and a blast of fresh air rushed into the room.

“What’s with the sour looks?” Debra asked.

Dressed in a long floppy sweater, ankle-length skirt and fuzzy boots, slim, blond Debra bore little resemblance to the woman whose closet had once been filled with severely tailored suits in colors that ranged from black to gray to navy blue. This was a kinder, gentler Debra, and I much preferred this version.

She flopped into the wire-backed chair next to me. “Alice, I am dying for a cup of coffee.”

Alice woke up from her pensive pose. “Mugs or china?”

When she’d settled us in with mugs and the best cookies in the world, she said, “I’m going to check on Alan. If you need anything, I’m just a yell away.”

Debra blew across the top of her coffee. “What’s that all about?” she asked, nodding at Alice’s back. I gave the short version and she nodded. “Hope he’s had a tetanus booster lately. You know how Alice can be.”

“It really was just a scratch.”

She nibbled at her first cookie. “And these really are awesome cookies.” She sighed. “Cookie Van Doorne. That’s why we’re here, right? What do you want to know?”

“I drove her home from the PTA in Review,” I said. “I’d known her for years, but that was the first time I had an extended one-on-one conversation with her.”

Debra took another bite. “And?” she asked through the crumbs. “How did that go?”

I added enough cream to my coffee to turn it a lovely shade of brown. Coffee was okay, every once in a while, but I couldn’t drink it down without cream, or at least milk. “I realized that I didn’t know her very well.”

Debra nodded. “That’s Cookie. She was one of those women who was acquaintances with everyone, but not close friends with anyone.”

“No best friend?”

She made a face. “Cookie was also one of those women whose best friend changed every couple of years. Weird, if you ask me. You know when I met my best friend? Kindergarten. She chased after me with a garter snake. I ran away shrieking, but somehow we ended up the best of friends.” She went on to say that though her friend now lived in California, they e-mailed almost daily and visited every year.

I wondered how anyone could switch friends as if they were replacing a pillow. That’s not what a best friend was—a best friend was someone who would always, always be in your life.

Then I remembered that my own best friend was keeping something important from me. As Debra talked about a long-ago road trip with her friend, I wondered if my friendship with Marina was changing into a shape I didn’t recognize.

Mother’s Day couldn’t come soon enough.

“Was there anyone who didn’t like Cookie?” I asked.

My question interrupted Debra’s story. She sighed. “Right. Cookie.” She sipped at her coffee. “I’m sorry. What was the question?”

I didn’t want to think about Marina. Debra didn’t want to talk about Cookie. Outstanding. I pushed an Amazingly Awesome toward her. “Was there anyone who didn’t get along with Cookie?”

This time Debra bit, chewed, and swallowed before she answered. “There’s a big difference between not getting along with someone and being her enemy.” She looked at me carefully. “And why are you asking, anyway?”

Once again, if I’d been as smart as some people claimed I was, I would have prepared an answer for this obvious question. Since I wasn’t all that smart, I said, “Well, um . . .”

Debra sighed. “So it wasn’t an accident. Poisoned, then, right? And what you really want to know is if I know anyone who might have killed her.”

“Gus is out sick,” I said.

Which didn’t make any sense, really, but she nodded. “All of the other tellers got along with her well enough. But they were all coworker friends, not real friends. She didn’t mix with any of them outside of the bank.”

“How about bank customers?”

Debra’s hand stopped with her coffee mug halfway to her mouth. “I can’t believe I forgot about this.” The mug went down with a crash. “I should tell the police, I suppose. Do you think it can wait until Gus is back?”

“Tell me,” I said.

“Well, maybe he knows already.” Her startled look started to fade. “It’s no secret. Everyone in the bank heard it. I could hear them from my office and came out myself to calm things down.”

“Cookie had an argument with someone?”

Debra nodded. “And how. It was one of those screaming-at-the-top-of-your-lungs things. Stephanie almost went over the counter at Cookie, and I thought I was going to have to call the police.”

The small kernel of worry that, with the birth of my children, had taken up permanent residence in my stomach doubled in size. “Stephanie?”

“Sure,” Debra said. “You know her. Stephanie Pesch, the new vice principal at Tarver.”

W
hen I left the antiques store the cold bit at me with teeth so sharp they would have gone through multiple layers of Gore-Tex, fleece, down, and wool.

Then again . . . I looked at myself. Or, since I was so preoccupied, I could have forgotten to zip up my coat and put on my gloves. In three seconds, I was back to thinking about what Debra had told me, and not liking it all over again.

“Beth? Hey, Beth!” A woman jumped down from a large brown box truck parked on a side street. “I have a package for you. It was addressed to your house, but I figured I could drop it off downtown. Do you want it now?”

“It’s not books, is it? Because if it is . . .” I looked at the long length of sidewalk between me and the store’s front door.

She laughed. “It isn’t heavy. Hang on.” She popped back into the truck and popped right back out again, a box balanced on one hand and her digital doohickey in the other. “Sign here . . . and this is all yours. Have a good day!” The truck rumbled away.

It was a nice box: tidy, with no smashed corners, a neat strip of packaging tape keeping it closed, and a simple handwritten label. The shipping label said it had come from Chicago, which didn’t make any sense because I recognized the handwriting. This, too, had come from a dead woman.

“Cookie, what are you doing?” I asked the air quietly. Luckily, no one answered.

I tucked the box under my arm and headed to the store.

“What do you have there?” Lois asked, nodding at my square companion.

“A box,” I said.

Her mouth opened for a quick retort, but the phone rang. She glared at me and spun around to pick up the phone.

Flossie, busy with straightening an endcap of small stuffed animals that unstraightened itself whenever your back was turned, gave me a smile as I went past and said merely, “Good morning, Beth. Hope you stayed warm out there.”

“Morning, Flossie. Not really, but spring is only two months away.”

Once inside the relative safety of my office, I shut the door and, for the first time ever, wished I had a lock on it. Not so much to keep people out, but to keep whatever was inside the box in.

Cookie’s box. Cookie’s letter had said there would be clues. Maybe this was one of them. So why did it feel like a box that Pandora might have sent me? At least Pandora’s had hope flitting out of the bottom. I didn’t anticipate Cookie’s containing anything so positive.

Evil walks among us, she’d said. It’s our duty to make things right, she’d said.

Maybe things were black-and-white to her, but I could rarely see things so clearly. I wasn’t comfortable judging people. If I judged others, that surely meant others were judging me, and the thought made me squirm.

What else had Cookie said? That the punishment doesn’t always match the crime. That shouldn’t we be trying to make sure life is as fair as we can make it?

We’d had that part of our talk in my car, and if I remembered correctly, I’d been too busy trying to skate out from underneath her attempts to pin me down to really think about what she was saying.

“Yes,” I said out loud, looking at the box. “We should be trying to make life as fair as possible.”
And,
I thought,
I’m sorry I didn’t say so when I had the chance
. When Jenna and then Oliver were born, I’d vowed that I’d never miss a chance to tell them how much I loved them. I’d tried hard to keep that vow, but how many chances had I missed with other people? Okay, not that I was ever going to tell Cookie Van Doorne that I loved her, but still. “Sorry, Cookie,” I said quietly. “I should have listened to you. Everyone deserves that.”

“What did you say?” Lois called through the door. “Do you want some tea?”

“Later, thanks.”

Ignoring all of the warnings my dad had ever given me about using the right tool for the job, I used a pair of scissors to open the box. There were box cutters galore in the workroom, but I’d have to run the Lois gauntlet twice to get there and back, and I didn’t feel up to it.

I slit the tape without incident. Put the scissors back in the drawer. Shut the drawer. Looked at the box. Opened one outside flap. Opened the other outside flap. Looked at the interior flaps. Thought about Lois’s offer of tea. Tea would be good right now. I could brew a mug, wander through the store, think about changes in lighting, consider new shelving, brew another mug—

“Stop that,” I said.

There will be clues, Cookie’s letter had said. I’m depending on you, she’d said.

Well.

If Gus had been hale and healthy, I would have taken the whole kit and caboodle over to the police station and we could have opened it together. But he was sick, and from what Winnie had said, he’d been hit hard.

My hand reached out before my brain knew what it was doing. One flap, then the other flap opened up. Out came the bubble wrap, and inside . . .

I frowned. Inside was a jumble of completely unrelated items that looked as if they’d come from a garage sale. Or were bound for one.

Even without touching anything, I could see a doll in the shape of an infant. A Christmas ornament. A white paper bag so flat that nothing could possibly be inside it. A ceramic figurine of a football player. A framed high school graduation photo that, from the clothing and hairstyle, looked about fifteen years old. A brochure for . . . I couldn’t quite make it out, so I took a pen from the mug on my desk and lifted it. A brochure for an African safari.

I released the brochure, and it settled back into place among its neighbors. If these were clues, I was in trouble. The trouble with people having the mistaken assumption that you’re smart is that people expect you to do smart things.

“Beth?” Lois pounded on my door. As I slapped the box flaps shut, she turned the doorknob and burst in. “We have a problem. The computer up front is doing the blue screen thing again, the credit card machine won’t work, and Mrs. Tolliver wants to buy a full hardcover set of Harry Potter books for her grandson, and you know how—”

“I’ll be right there.”

Lois ran to take care of the wealthy, generous, and difficult Mrs. Tolliver. I shoved the box under my desk and hurried after her.

•   •   •

A few minutes later, Mrs. Tolliver’s purchases were wrapped and bagged. She signed the ancient carbon credit card slip I’d unearthed from the back of a drawer and handed it back to me.

“Computers,” she sniffed. “We’re too dependent on them. Is there really so much advantage in using these beasts?” Her well-rounded chin gestured at the computer screen.

“I often wonder the same thing,” I said. Especially whenever the annual bill for software support came around, whenever a new computer had to be purchased, and whenever someone spilled tea on a keyboard.

“Really,” Mrs. Tolliver said in a tone that meant she didn’t believe a word of what I’d said. She picked up the bright yellow plastic bag I was holding out and turned to leave, but my right hand wouldn’t let go.

“The white bag,” I whispered.

“Is there a problem?” Mrs. Tolliver asked icily.

I blinked. “No. Sorry.” I released the bag’s handles. By rights my face should have been burning with embarrassment, but not this time. Odd. “Have a nice day, Mrs. Tolliver. Stay warm out there.”

Before the jingling bells attached to the front door stopped ringing, I had my coat on and my purse in my hand. “Lois, Flossie, I’ll be back in a little bit.”

“Where are you going?” Lois asked. “You’re supposed to be taking it easy, and here you are, running out into that sharp cold twice this morning. How are you supposed to ever get—”

I was out and away. I didn’t like leaving so abruptly, but I had to do this before my courage left me. What I really wanted to do was go back to the quiet of my office and sip a hot mug of tea while I reread
Emily of New Moon.

“Later,” I promised myself. “You do this thing and that can be your reward.”

My pep talk got me down the street and through the same front door I’d gone through earlier that day.

“Didn’t get enough, did you?” Alice asked, smiling. “What do you need this time? Coconut? Oatmeal raisin? Those are almost like health food, you know.”

Her plump face beamed at me over the glass display case. “Actually, I need to talk to Alan a minute.”

“I sent him home,” she said. “You saw that cut he had. On a cold day like this, we’re not going to sell any furniture, so I shooed him off home to put his feet up.”

I sagged. Now I’d have to gird up my bravery a second time. I hated when I had to do that. Girding once was hard enough.

“What did you want to talk to him about?” Alice put her arms on the case and leaned forward comfortably. “Maybe I can help. If not, I can have him call you.”

On the other hand, talking to Alice might be better. They were one of those hand-in-hand couples who told each other everything. Alice would know why Alan had been at the PTA in Review and she’d know if Alan had known Cookie. And if she knew those things, the answers might go a long way to explaining why one of her white cookie bags had been in that box.

“Did you and Alan,” I asked, “know Cookie Van Doorne?”

“That woman.” Alice pushed herself away from the glass case, her face flaming hot, and stood as tall as a rounded five-foot-two-inch-tall woman could. “Not to speak ill of the dead, but I can’t think of a woman I liked less. She was always looking for the worst in people. It’s only people who are bad themselves that see bad in others. She had her own skeletons—I’m sure of it—and if Alan hadn’t said no, I would have found them. I would have . . .” Her shoulders slumped.

I watched as the fury drained out of her, leaving her limp and wounded and empty.

“She’s dead now,” Alice said flatly. “And I can’t say I’m sorry. Not without being a liar, and I won’t let her do that to me. I know I should regret anyone’s death, but I can’t, not this time.”

“What happened?” I’d never heard anything bad about Alan in all the years I’d lived in Rynwood. He and Alice were both retired teachers. They’d opened the antiques store/cookie bakery because they weren’t the kind of people to ride off into the sunset in an RV or to sit around and do nothing. “Did she do something to Alan?”

Alice’s face went red again. “
Do
something? He was the best history teacher Rynwood High School ever had and she tried her best to get him fired!”

I frowned. “Why would she do that?”

Alice cast her eyes to the ceiling. “Her son. Her precious can’t-do-anything-wrong son. Back about twenty years ago, Alan caught him cheating on a final exam and flunked him for that marking period. Cookie threw a fit, said Alan hadn’t liked her son since the time he cut across our backyard on his minibike right after we’d paid good money to have it leveled with good black dirt and spent all weekend raking it flat and rolling it and seeding it.

“The kid,” she went on, “was a rotten, selfish brat, but Alan would never have flunked him if he hadn’t really cheated.”

She was right. Alan was right up there next to Gus in the honorable department. Which was why I’d found it hard to even write his name on the suspect list. Still, you never knew about people. “That was a long time ago,” I said, putting on a smile. “Don’t tell me you’ve held a grudge all these years.”

Alice snorted. “Wasn’t me with the grudge. It was that Cookie creature. When Alan wouldn’t change that grade, she went to the principal. When the principal supported Alan, she went to the school superintendent. When the superintendent supported both the principal and Alan, she started writing letters to the editor, saying that a certain male history teacher was abusing his position, that he had no business being so harsh on today’s youth, that what children needed was a guiding hand, not a hand holding a whip.”

Alice slapped the glass case with the flat of her hand, sending a sharp echo through the room. “A little more paddling is what that kid needed, if you ask me. She’d spared the rod and spoiled the child and now what is he doing? Moving from job to job, last I heard.”

I vaguely remembered Cookie’s son from the funeral. Dark suit, downcast eyes, and a wife and two sons who looked much the same.

“But Alan wasn’t fired,” I said.

“Not for want of her trying.” Though the red in Alice’s face had faded, her expression was still a far cry from her normal affable smile. “And that was just the first phase.”

“First phase of what?”

“Of her attempts to ruin Alan’s life.” She looked at me sourly. “You seem surprised. Obviously you didn’t know Cookie like we did.”

I’d hardly known Cookie at all, it seemed. “What did she do?”

“It was soon after we retired from teaching when we opened this place.” She waved at the cookies, the china, the collectibles, the chintz-covered furniture, the carousel horses, and the brass cash register. “She probably planned it the second she heard we were opening an antiques store.”

“Planned what?”

Alice’s face hardened. “Whispers. Nothing but whispers.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“We couldn’t prove a thing,” Alice went on, “but it was slander, sure enough. Where else could it have come from?”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to think Cookie had been the kind of person to willfully hurt someone, didn’t want to think that she’d tried to have Alan fired. I liked to think the best of people, even my sister Kathy.