Foul Play at the PTA

“Hoo, hoo, look who’s talking.” Auntie May peered up at her with sharp eyes that had seen everything from iceboxes to iPhones. Her skin had the transparent sheen of age, but it was surprisingly unlined. She’d been raised in a place and time where ladies wore hats and gloves, keeping their faces and hands white, and it showed.

Auntie May must have rolled in the door when the books were dropping to the ground, and here she was distracting Mrs. Tolliver from crushing me with caustic comments. For the first time ever I was grateful that Sunny Rest Assisted Living was within wheelchair-pushing distance.

“Aren’t you the one,” Auntie May went on in her thin but strong voice, “who didn’t let go of that story about Marlene Upshaw?”

Mrs. Tolliver’s chin went up. “That was decades ago, and it was a different situation altogether.”

I looked at Lois. “Marlene Upshaw?” I mouthed. I’d never heard of her.

“Before my time,” Lois whispered.

“Hah!” Auntie May thumped her fist on the arm of her wheelchair. “Like heck it’s different. Marlene’s life was ruined because you wouldn’t stop telling everyone in town that she was no better than she should be. No wonder she couldn’t get married.” Thump. “No wonder she couldn’t get a job.” Thump. “No wonder she had to leave town.”

Mrs. Tolliver smoothed her gloves. “If I recall correctly, and I’m sure I do, she married quite well. I shed no tears for her.”

Lois and Sara and I flipped our attention back to Auntie May, attendees at a riveting game of gossip.

“He was fat, bald, and thirty years older than she was.” She pointed a knobby-knuckled finger at Mrs. Tolliver. “Are you still fool enough to think all his money could make her happy? What she wanted was to marry Dale Crowley, but you put a stop to that, didn’t you? And then when Eddie Tolliver decides you might be good enough for him, you toss poor Dale away like a dirty handkerchief. What good came of all that gossip?” She leaned forward and fixed her victim with a hawklike stare. “What good?”

Mrs. Tolliver gave a genteel sigh. “And what good comes of dredging up the events of decades past?”

“Good?” Auntie May cackled. “None. I just like seeing you squirm.”

Underneath the expertly applied Tolliver makeup, red spotted her cheeks. Her chest rose and fell and I got the inevitable feeling you get when watching a bad comedy—the feeling that this was going to turn ugly in a hurry.

Mrs. Tolliver drew herself tall and opened her mouth. I winced. Lois winced. Sara closed her eyes. Auntie May smiled. But before she could utter a word, a smooth voice interrupted the incipient storm.

“Oh, dear.” A slim dark-haired woman darted between Auntie May and Mrs. Tolliver. “You’ve dropped some books. Let me help.” She stooped and gathered a few into her hands. “Is this yours?” She stood and handed Mrs. Tolliver The Gift of the Magi. “And this looks like it could be yours.” She slid a copy of A Child’s Christmas in Wales onto Auntie May’s lap.

“Don’t you just love Christmas?” she asked, smiling out of skin almost too white to be real. “And the books this time of year are so beautiful. Now, The Polar Express is nice, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the classics. Do you know The Pint of Judgment?” She looked at the two combatants expectantly. “My mother read it to me every year. It’s one of my earliest memories. What was yours?” And then they were sharing stories of childhood Christmases.

We watched, mouths agape. No one had ever successfully ended an Auntie May vs. Mrs. Tolliver battle. To the best of my knowledge, no one had even tried since 1987.

“Who is she?” I whispered. But Lois shook her head.

We marveled as she had the two women interacting without verbal jabs, then chatting together, and then— wonder of wonders—laughing. I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard Mrs. Tolliver laugh. It had a rusty sound, but was pleasant enough.

“It sounds as if you two ladies had wonderful childhoods,” said our knight-ess in shining armor. “Thank you for sharing your stories. And speaking of stories and books, it seems as if today is a big day in this store.” Her brown eyes smiled into mine.

I swallowed. Maybe she could wade into deep waters without a qualm, but I wasn’t that brave. “We usually have all the Christmas books out by midafternoon, but we’re, um, a little shorthanded these days.”

“Is Marcia taking time off again?” Mrs. Tolliver asked.

“No,” I said. “Well, yes. Kind of. She quit. Kind of.”

“Fired her, is what I hear.”

Auntie May chuckled. Or a noise that I assumed was a chuckle. If it wasn’t a chuckle, she was probably choking to death, and it had been a long time since I’d had any first aid training. “Marcia Trommler,” Auntie May said. “That girl is a piece of work.”

“Goodness knows why you kept her on this long,” Mrs. Tolliver said. “If I owned this store, she would have been let go ages back.”

“Really? I thought . . .” In truth, I’d thought Marcia had been such a fixture in Rynwood that firing her would cause irreparable damage to the store’s profit margin. It sounded stupid, even in my head. Saying it out loud in front of the town’s two rival matriarchs would be equivalent to a social death sentence.

Auntie May cackled. “Bethie, honey, if you don’t like someone, you have to figure you’re not the only one.”

“Words of wisdom,” Mrs. Tolliver said.

I cast a cautious glance heavenward. If there was ever cause for the world to end, it was Mrs. Tolliver paying her sworn enemy a compliment.

“Ah, shucks.” Auntie May grinned, revealing dentureless gums. “That Marcia was a giggler from the time she was two. Can’t abide giggling in girls, let alone grown women. Makes our whole breed look silly.”

“Marcia babysat my children once,” Mrs. Tolliver mused. “But just once. Bernice Klein recommended her.”

Auntie May shook her head. “Bernice was a dab hand in the garden, but she was never going to win the Mother of the Year award.”

“I was much younger then.” Mrs. Tolliver slipped her gloves into her coat pocket. “I’d been taught to respect my elders, and Bernice was a decade older than myself.” She looked at the frail woman in the wheelchair. “Shall we look at what Christmas books the girls have put out? I’m sure they’ll finish in due time.”

“Long as I get a copy of How the Grinch Stole Christmas before leaving,” Auntie May said. Mrs. Tolliver took firm hold of the wheelchair handles and the two moved off, chatting as if they’d been friends for years.

Our angel of mercy looked at the stack of books she was holding. “These are from the floor. Where do they go?”

“Oh, you don’t need to . . .” I glanced at the beckoning empty shelves. “I mean, here, I’ll . . .” Flustered was my new middle name.

“Here?” She set them on the shelf, fanned them out expertly, and started alphabetizing. “I love the Tomie de-Paola books, don’t you? Such wonderful illustrations. Here, let me take those.” She reached for the stack Lois held. “All picture books, right? On these displays?”

I watched, mesmerized, as she unerringly put Patricia Polacco before Elise Primavera and M. Christina Butler after Jennifer Liu Bryan, chattering away about the merits of each book and the life of each author. When she alphabetized Fran Manushkin ahead of Angela McAllister, I found my voice.

“Do you want a job?”

Her eyes widened, showing white all around the brown irises. Small veins of red marred the pale color in a way that seemed wrong. A woman this capable of taming brutal adversaries should have perfectly white whites.

“Well . . . I . . . well . . . that is . . .” The power that had granted her the perfect thing to say seemed to have deserted her.

“I’m Beth Kennedy, the store owner.” I smiled, feeling a trifle relieved that she could, in fact, be caught off guard. Oh, the ugliness of humanity.

“Yvonne Ganassi.”

“Nice to meet you, Yvonne.” I held out my hand. “If you give me a minute I’ll print out a certificate for you.”