Foul Play at the PTA

Rynwood? We could count the ways, but today our time will be better spent in helping the police track down the person who stole away Sam Helmstetter’s life.”

This time she’d done it right. Last year the blog had pointed fingers at various people until one of them had retaliated. Not the smartest way to catch a killer. I was relieved to see her take a reasonable approach. She ended the post with a plea for anyone who might have any inkling about anyone who wished Sam harm to contact the police.

All well and good, but it was a passive game, posting and waiting, posting and waiting. Meanwhile, sales at the store were dropping, Yvonne was feeling wretched, and Richard’s severance package wasn’t going to last forever.

Maybe Marina’s efforts would yield results, and maybe they wouldn’t. Time alone would tell.

I turned off the computer and sat, staring at the dark screen. Time would tell a lot of things. It would take time to find out if I’d done a good job as a mother. It would take time to figure out if Evan and I had a future together. Given time, Richard would find a job. In time, we’d know who killed Sam.

All that waiting. I made a face and saw the resulting unattractiveness in the reflection of the screen.

“Only one way to fix that,” I told myself.

Then I headed up to bed. The cure would start tomorrow.

Chapter 9

“Deja vu all over again.” Gus looked at me across the top of his battered desk. The piles of papers were, I was pretty sure, different than the piles I’d seen last year, but one stack of manila folders looks much like any other. Gus had never been good at cleaning out his church choir folder, so why would he be any better at cleaning his desk?

“So I suppose Marina has you poking around into Sam’s death?”

I jerked my head up so fast I was bound to have a stiff neck the next day. “What makes you say that?”

Gus laughed. “I’ve known you for almost twenty years, I’ve known Marina for nearly thirty, and I remember what happened last fall. I’m no genius, but even a small-town cop can figure out a three-syllable word like ‘precedent.’ ”

“Um . . .”

“Don’t worry.” His shoes went up on the edge of the desk and he put his hands behind his head. It was all designed to put the person in this seat at ease, but I’d learned a little bit about precedent, too. This was the position Gus took when he wanted to be friendly, disarming, and so confide-able that you’d willingly confess all your sins, including the one time you took a Popsicle from your grandmother’s freezer without asking.

“I’m not going to scold you,” Gus said. “Homicides are investigated by the county detectives. Deputy Wheeler is in charge.”

It was just like the last time we’d had a murder in Rynwood. Local law enforcement was out of the investigative picture, and also like last time, I didn’t have the least desire to talk to Deputy Wheeler directly. The woman reduced me to speechlessness, and if I could pass on any substantial information to my friend Gus instead, well, what was wrong with that?

“If I find out anything,” I said, “it’s okay to tell you, right?”

He moved his size twelves to the right—the better to see me with—and half smiled. “What’s the matter, you too scared to talk to the big-city cop?”

“Yes.”

He laughed. “You’re not the only one. She scares the bejesus out of me, too.”

As if. I smiled and decided to play along with the fiction that Gus could be scared of anyone. “It’s that look she has,” I said. “Like she knows I’ve done something wrong and it’s only a matter of time before she figures out what it is.”

Gus nodded. “We were talking about how criminals start small, and I almost told her about the time I stole my brother’s favorite comic book.”

I laughed, but Gus didn’t laugh back. Maybe he was a little scared of Deputy Wheeler. I looked at him with knowledge gathered from thousands of mutually attended choir rehearsals, hundreds of Sunday services, dozens of funerals, and nearly twenty Christmas Eve services. When you sit in front of someone for that many hours, you can learn a lot. I knew Gus gnashed his teeth at the oh-so-common mispronunciation of “February,” that he liked Billie Holiday, and loved the music of John Rutter. I’d also heard him weep during Maundy Thursday services and laugh with joy on Easter mornings. No, Gus wasn’t scared of Deputy Wheeler. He just didn’t like her.

“So what theory is Marina working on now?” Gus asked. “Let me guess. Organized crime is moving into the document-shredding business and Sam wouldn’t pay the protection fee. No, wait. Aliens are trying to take over Earth, and they’ve decided the best way is to eliminate the nicest people first.”

I sighed. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? Sam was too nice to have any enemies.”

“He had one.”

“Marina thinks Brian Keller did it,” I said.

Gus laughed so hard his feet slid off the desk. “Leave it to Marina,” he said through spasms that looked painful. “The one guy in the world with a perfect alibi and she targets him as the killer.”

I could make fun of Marina’s theories, but Gus didn’t have the same rights I did. “What perfect alibi?”

“Keller was on television the night of Sam’s murder.” He wiped tears out of the corners of his eyes. “National television.”

“You mean live?”

“He was at the hockey game that night. Minnesota Wild played the Red Wings. He had great seats right at center ice, just above the glass, and got caught upside the head with a puck.” Gus slapped his temple with the heel of his hand. “He says he turned to look at a hot blonde and whammo! He was out cold for a couple minutes. It was all over the TV. The EMTs rolled him out to an ambulance and he ended up staying at the hospital overnight. Got twenty stitches to boot.” Gus fingered stitches he didn’t have. “Two days later he got served with divorce papers. His imminent ex says she was filing anyway, but the timing makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” He chuckled. “I can’t believe Marina hadn’t heard about this.”

I couldn’t either, and my fingers itched to pull out my cell phone. “She’s been . . . busy.”

“Losing her touch, more like. Say, is she still doing that blog?” He sounded amused, which irritated me no end.

“Yes, she’s still doing the blog.” I rose. “See you on Sunday.”

Though it left something to be desired as an exit line, at least I’d said something. But when I reached the door, Gus called me back. “Hey, Beth?”

I turned, one hand on the knob.

“If I tell you to leave this well enough alone, will you listen?”

A number of thoughts rambled around in my head. That he was probably right and I shouldn’t interfere in what was essentially police business. That if Marina and I had left well enough alone last year, a murderer might still be on the loose. That if Sam’s murder wasn’t solved, Yvonne would become a pariah. But my primary thought was that I didn’t like being told what to do.

“Will I listen?” I smiled. “What do you think?” And I left before he could get in another word.

“He what?”

Marina’s voice screeched into my ear canal, making the hammer pound, the anvil bang, and the stirrup swing. Wincing, I pulled my cell phone off the side of my head, but it was too little too late; my ear was ringing with the echo of her disbelief. “Brian Keller can’t possibly have killed Sam,” I said. “He was on TV.” I explained the incident, but Marina, who usually saw the funny side of everything, even when there wasn’t a funny side, didn’t laugh.

“There has to be a way,” she muttered.

“Not unless you believe in time travel.” Which I knew full well she thought was impossible. “If humans could travel in time,” she said on a monthly basis, “someone would have gone back by now and made sure Philo