Poison at the PTA (23 page)

The slam of a shutting drawer woke me from my cookie-induced stupor. Claudia had finished her examination of the silverware and was moving on to the cabinet under the sink. I unzipped my coat in the semiwarm air. Cookie’s son must have left the heat set to around fifty degrees to keep the water pipes from freezing.

“What do you think you’re going to find?” I asked mildly. Ten minutes ago, my goal had been to tell Claudia that I wasn’t going to let her walk on me ever again. Thanks to her burglary skills, my priorities had shifted for the time being, but I was going to have my say before the night was over.

“I’ll know it when I see it.” She slammed the cabinet door shut.

What exactly she might expect to find under there, I wasn’t sure, so I went ahead and asked.

“It could be anything and it could be anywhere,” she snapped.

“‘It’?”

“You know. The smoking gun, the purloined letter, the candlestick. The whatever-it-is that will tie Cookie to Kirk Olsen. You go ahead and find it, if you think you’re so smart.”

What I thought was that she’d been watching too much television. “Seems to me,” I said, “that the police would already have looked through the house, trying to find that very thing.” If it existed.

The utensil drawer slammed shut, rattling the spatulas and tongs within. “Well, if they did, it didn’t do them any good, did it? And they’re mostly men, aren’t they? How would they know if there was something in a woman’s house that wasn’t right? Men don’t know spot cleaner from window cleaner.”

Pete did, but I kept the thought to myself. As Claudia continued to poke through Cookie’s belongings, I tried, and failed, to come up with a scenario that resulted in cleaning supplies providing a link to a killer’s identity. Perhaps I was lacking in imagination. Maybe I needed to watch more television. For all I knew there could be a
CSI
-type show dedicated entirely to cleaning supply murders.

“
Now
what are you smirking about?” Claudia was frowning at me.

Like I was going to relay that thought out loud. “Nothing.”

“Nothing, she says.” Claudia sniffed. “Laughing at me again, aren’t you, just like always?” I started to object, but she ran right over my words. “I get so tired of you, I can’t stand it. Well, this time I’m the one having the last laugh!” She swept out of the kitchen.

Sighing, I followed her into the small dining room. Nothing in the china cabinet must have had Kirk’s name on it, because she was in and out of the room in short order. The only thing in the living room that got any of her attention was the coffee table, which was piled high with cooking magazines.

Claudia glared at me while she picked up a magazine and flipped through the pages. “Cookie could have written a note, you know. Where better to put a secret note than out in plain view?”

To me, plain view would have been the middle of the dining table, but what did I know?

From the living room she went to the tiny study and plopped herself down in the desk chair. “There’s bound to be something in here,” she muttered, opening drawers and pawing through papers. “I should have looked here first.”

I leaned against the doorjamb. Not so very long ago, in the house of another murder victim, I’d done the very same thing Claudia was doing. If I recalled correctly, I hadn’t found anything of value in the desk. However . . . “Have you seen any photo albums?” I asked. “Those might tell you something.”

Claudia’s head jerked up. “You leave them alone. I’m doing this myself.” She cast a wild glance around the room, jumped to her feet when she spotted a bookcase, and grabbed a small pile of albums. “Got them! They’re mine!”

They were Cookie’s, or rather photos of Cookie’s children, but I shrugged. “Have at them.”

She flicked on the desk light and sat facing me, the pages of the photo album tipped so I couldn’t see the contents.

Whatever. I shifted, trying to make it a very comfortable doorjamb, and thought about Kirk, and Cookie, and how she might have come to realize he was stealing.

She was a small-town bank teller, and people tended to walk themselves into ruts without realizing it. Maybe Kirk had taken his deposits and withdrawals to Cookie for years. Maybe she’d seen that he was making largish deposits. Not deposits bigger than that magic ten-thousand-dollar mark that alerted whomever those large deposits alerted, but enough large amounts that she’d grown suspicious. Maybe she’d asked questions. Maybe she’d asked a few too many questions.

And maybe that was how Cookie had learned so much about the people she’d hinted at in the hospital, the people who—

“Nothing.” Claudia slapped the photo album shut. “Just pictures of babies and little kids.” She got up, dumped the albums back onto the bookcase, and shouldered her way past me.

Next thing I heard was her footsteps tromping up the stairs. Before I could make up my mind to trail after her, she was headed back down.

“Cold up there,” she muttered. “And it was just her bedroom and the rooms her kids must’ve had. Not that you could tell. They look like guest bedrooms that haven’t been used in forever.”

“I told you it would be hard to find anything.” I stifled an eye roll. Or so I thought.

“I’ll figure this out if I have to tear the house apart!”

“Claudia, I’m not—”

“Shut up,” she said, pushing past me. “Just shut up.”

It was time. I stood straight. “Don’t talk to me like that. I don’t deserve to be treated as if—”

“Yeah, yeah. Save it for later.”

She thumped back to the kitchen and I came after her. “I will not save it for later,” I said. “For years you’ve assumed the worst of me when all I’m doing is trying to be polite.”

“Polite?” She snorted. “Those smirks aren’t exactly going to get you the Polite Person of the Year Award. You just think you’re nice. Deep down inside you’re just as mean as anyone else.” She flung open the basement door, hit the light switch, and headed down.

I was hot on her heels. “What gives you the idea that I think I’m better than you? I’ve never thought that.”

“Don’t lie to me!”

My face felt hot, and for once it wasn’t from embarrassment. “Don’t call me a liar.”

She flounced away from me and started poking around the room. It was a typical old-style basement: unfinished, completely utilitarian, and slightly damp. Three sets of ancient wooden shelving lined one wall, the shelves filled with plastic tubs written with black marker on one end.
ST. PATRICK’S DAY COOKIE CUTTERS
.
EASTER COOKIE CUTTERS
.
FOURTH OF JULY COOKIE CUTTERS
. One shelf held a few tools and laundry detergent for the nearby washer and dryer; otherwise it was all cookie cutters, all the time. I hadn’t realized there were that many different kinds of cookie cutters in the world.

“Then don’t lie.” Claudia opened one of the many boxes labeled
CHRISTMAS COOKIE CUTTERS
, looked inside, frowned, then slapped the lid back on. “My kids know they’re going to catch big trouble if they lie to me. Guess your mother didn’t teach you as good as I teach my boys.”

“How can you possibly know if I’m lying?” It was almost a shout. “You hardly even know me.”

She made a
pfft
noise. “I’ve known people like you all my life. People like you think a college education makes you better than people like me. Well, you’re wrong, dead wrong.”

I stared at her. My grandmother, who had been one of the smartest people I’d ever known, hadn’t even graduated from high school. I had many vices, but educational snobbery wasn’t one of them. “You have this all wrong. I don’t—”

“See, there you go, telling me what to think.” She stalked over to the basement’s dark corner and crouched down to peer at the underside of the stairway. “I don’t know where you get off, telling me I’m wrong. My feelings are just as real as yours.”

“But they’re based on erroneous information!”

She made a gagging noise. “Erroneous. Puh-leese. No one talks like that. Or no one should.” She stood and walked to a relatively new furnace. Looked behind that, looked behind the hot water heater, looked behind a folded-up Ping-Pong table, looked behind the washer and dryer. “And you’re not even from here,” she said. “That bookstore has been in Rynwood forever. Why you think you should be the one to run it, I don’t know.”

“Probably because I’m the one who paid for it,” I said dryly.

“Oh, sure,” she huffed. “Now you’re throwing all your money in my face.”

“All what money?” A discussion with Claudia was an exercise in exasperation. “Where do you get these ideas?”

“Please.” She faced me, arms crossed. “You live in that great big house in the nicest part of town. You own that bookstore. You dress nice. Your kids dress nice. Your car is nice. Why is it that people who have money always want to pretend they don’t?”

I had no idea what people with money did, because I certainly wasn’t one of them. “What are you talking about? If I look as if I dress nicely it’s because I take care of my clothes since I can’t afford to buy new. The clothes my children wear are mostly purchased by their grandparents. I only live in that house because my ex-husband pays a big share of the mortgage, and there’s a huge loan on the bookstore.”

I was waving my arms around and shouting. “Do you know the last time I went on a vacation anywhere but to my mother’s? Before Jenna was born. Do you know the last time I bought a new car? Even a new used car? Seven years.”

Her mouth opened, but I was in full rant mode and didn’t let her get a word in.

“We go out to eat once a month, and that’s usually for pizza. We don’t get anything more than basic cable television, and our Internet access speed is slower than molasses in February. Soda is a treat for us and I only buy store-brand cereal!”

A male laugh whirled me around. Standing at the bottom of the stairs was Kirk Olsen.

And he was pointing a gun straight at me.

“Store-brand cereal,” he said, chuckling. “That’s practically cruelty to children. You’d think those kids would rise up in revolt.”

Claudia let out a squeak. “He’s got a gun! Beth, do something!”

Though I’d had a gun pointed at me before, that experience wasn’t making this one any more comfortable. “Do something?” I asked. “Like what?”

“You’re the smart one,” she snapped. “Or so they say.”

“Sorry,” Kirk said. “She’s going to do what I tell her.”

“Why’s that?” Claudia asked.

“Because I’m bigger and stronger than either one of you. And,” he said, smiling, “because I have a gun. Beth, there’s a roll of string on that shelf over there. Claudia, put your hands behind your back and let Beth tie your wrists together. Slowly, now.”

I didn’t move. “They’ll catch you, you know. Someone’s bound to have seen you.”

“Not a chance,” he said confidently. “I followed you both here, then found a nice dark spot a couple blocks away. It’s cold and windy, and I didn’t see a soul. And even if I had, with my hood up not even my mother would have recognized me.”

“Marina knows,” I said.

He laughed. “Not the most credible source, though, is she? She probably had this one as a suspect,” he said, gesturing to Claudia. “Now, tie her up already.”

The steel that rang in his voice compelled me to do his bidding, but the stubbornness in my spine kept me from moving. “No,” I said. “Claudia and I are going to walk out of here. Killing us won’t help.”

“Guess we’re going to have to agree to disagree about that.” Kirk took two swift steps toward me. I ran, tried to run, tried to stay out of his reach, but he was too big, too fast, too tall. His free hand grabbed hold of my wrist and twisted it up behind my back.

I cried out in pain, then hated myself for the pathetic bleat.

“You’ll do what I say,” Kirk said pleasantly. “Won’t you?”

People who say they can ignore pain either have a much higher threshold for pain than I do or they’re nuts. All I wanted was to end the agony that ran hot through my shoulder, back, and arm. “Yes,” I gasped.

He released me, and I stumbled forward into Claudia’s glare. Her expression intimated that I was stupid, incompetent, and going to get us killed. I wanted to tell her to jump right in with her own bright idea to save us, but didn’t. Couldn’t, really, because I was still gasping from pain.

“Tie her up,” Kirk ordered.

I grabbed the string and started to formulate a plan. Tie Claudia’s hands together. Take the scissors that were also on the shelf and move as if to cut the string, but drop the string on the floor. Kirk’s eyes would be distracted for a moment. I’d stab his arm with the scissors, he’d drop the gun and I’d pick it up. Beth saves the day, Claudia is forever grateful, and my children go on to live happy and fulfilled lives.

“Make it good and tight,” Kirk said.

So much for tying Claudia loosely, giving her a chance to escape.

I held her wrists together, her skin cold under mine, and wrapped the string around and around.

Something prodded me in the back. Since I was still wearing my coat, I was able to pretend it was his index finger. “Tighter,” he said.

“You know, you’re just making this worse.”