Foul Play at the PTA

some time to come to a conclusion. Luckily, Oliver was up in his bedroom reading The Velveteen Rabbit to Spot, and after that he was scheduled for a sleepover with a friend, so there was mother- daughter time aplenty.

“Mom?” Jenna turned halfway around, and I saw her profile against the gray morning light. For an instant, I saw the woman she would become. Her little girl nose lengthened, her cheekbones grew gracefully, and her chin— repositioned through the clever use of orthodontic appliances—accented her full lips. The sight took my breath away, and for a moment I couldn’t speak.

“Mom?”

I shook myself out of the future. Which was too bad, because the future had been wonderful, and the here and now was a little troublesome. I still wasn’t sure why Jenna didn’t want to go to the dance, and guessing was always bad. Calm and cool, as if I didn’t care about her answer, I asked, “Why don’t you want to go?”

She sighed again, tipped her head back and forth, then flopped around and sat on the couch like a human being. “I don’t know.”

Which wasn’t the answer I’d hoped for, though it was the answer I expected. Now I needed to probe mildly enough to make her want to talk, but hard enough to get an honest answer. Every mother is a master negotiator. “Did you want to try on the dress one more time?”

Last week we’d trekked to the mall and bought a dress for the occasion. Jenna had, at first, resisted the idea with all her stubborn might, but she looked interested when the salesclerk brought out a simple royal blue dress, no lace, no bows, no Peter Pan collar. She tried it on, and once she’d seen herself in the mirror, twirling around in a circle, the full skirt billowing out about her, just like in the movies, she’d caved instantly.

“You look very pretty in that dress,” I said. “Your father will hardly recognize you.”

My tomboy smiled a little. “I like it. A lot.”

Cross dress off the list. Next item, please.

“Do you want to practice dancing? We could try that swing step again.” Once I’d convinced Jenna that dancing improved agility and coordination, she was easily persuaded to learn a few basic steps. She’d learned fast and I’d had to borrow a dance DVD from the library to keep up.

“Noo.” She slid a little lower. “I’m good.”

“Have you talked to your friends? Alexis and Bailey are both going tonight, aren’t they?”

“Yeah. They are.”

Hmm. Jenna’s concern couldn’t be . . . couldn’t possibly be . . . a boy, could it? She was barely eleven years old, for heaven’s sake! She’d talked about Blake Helmstetter, but not as if she like liked him, not my little Jenna, not my little girl who—

“I think maybe I’m getting sick.”

Of all the possibilities, that was one I hadn’t considered. Bad mother. Jenna rarely got sick, but since Marina was coming down with a cold, the idea should have crossed my mind at least once.

I hurried to the couch and felt Jenna’s forehead. Normal. “Does your throat hurt?”

“No . . . it’s my stomach.”

She held her hand to her lower abdomen, and I had the sudden and horrifying thought that she might be entering the first phases of Becoming a Woman. In spite of the admonishments of Marina, my mother, my sisters, and every other female who’d raised girls, Jenna and I hadn’t yet had The Talk. Not completely, anyway. I’d told her that her body was going to change as she got older, that a baby was created when a man and a woman loved each other very much, and that a woman’s body was designed for carrying children.

That’s where the conversation either went vague or very technical. The morning after I told Jenna about how eggs travel down the fallopian tubes, her eyes went wide at the sight of two of them staring her in the face, sunnyside up. That had been a few months ago, and I wasn’t sure she’d recovered.

I sat down on the couch and pulled her close. She was much too big to fit into my lap, but we made it work. What did I care if her elbow jabbed into my solar plexus? I could breathe. Mostly.

“Shall I get the pink stuff?” I stroked her hair.

“It’s not that kind of stomachache.”

I kissed her cheek. “What kind of stomachache do you think it is?”

“Um . . .” She snuggled in closer. “The kind I sometimes get before a big game.”

Ah. The lightbulb went on. My Jenna was nervous, and it wasn’t about a hockey game. Wonders, indeed, never ceased. “But your game this afternoon isn’t a big one.” I knew full well that it wasn’t; I was using a common mom ploy. Pretend ignorance, and the kid will be compelled to enlighten you.

“Not real big,” Jenna said. “I mean you never know what’s going to happen, but this other team’s only won once this whole year.”

“Then why the funny tummy? You’re all caught up with your homework, right?”

“Almost.” She squirmed, and I smiled. Jenna was the worst liar on the planet, except for her mother. But while my ears turned red when fibbing, her skin went itchy all over. The bigger the lie, the itchier her skin.

“Don’t you have some math homework?”

“A little, but it’s easy.”

For her, it probably was. “How’s that social studies report going?” When I’d checked it on the computer last night it looked as if she was at the midpoint.

“Half done,” she said. “I’ll finish tomorrow.”

So why, then, the stomachache?

“Mom?”

“What, honey?”

Could she be worried about Evan? Though the pizza parlor incident had troubled me, Evan had laughed it off, saying she just needed time. I’d figured he was right, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe I—

“Mom, are you and Mrs. Neff going to figure out who killed Mr. Helmstetter?”

Once upon a time I’d known with a ninety-five percent accuracy rate what was going on in my children’s heads, but the older they got, the more difficult it was becoming. With Oliver it was still above seventy percent, but Jenna? Fifty, if I was lucky.

I kissed her hairline. “What makes you ask?”

“Well, last year you figured out who killed Mrs. Mephisto, so I was just wondering, you know, if you were going to do it again.” Her question carried the casual tone of someone who was extremely interested in the answer.

I debated her question, trying to decide which path to take. The most attractive choice was the one of distraction. It wasn’t the best path, but that hadn’t ever stopped me before. For if I didn’t use distraction, what was left was the truth, and it wasn’t pretty.

Last year a killer had threatened my children. The only thing that had saved us was my unthinking animal instincts to get my children out of danger. How I’d managed that I still didn’t know, and I didn’t care to think about it too much. It had been my fault they’d come into danger in the first place, and my mother rarely let me forget the fact.

“It won’t happen like that again,” I promised Jenna.

“You mean you and Mrs. Neff aren’t finding the killer?”

She didn’t sound relieved; she sounded disappointed. I bobbled her ponytail around. “It sounds as if you want us to.”

“Well, yeah,” she said. As in, “Duh, Mom.”

“Shouldn’t we let the police do their job?” I asked.

“You’ll be faster,” she said seriously. “Real life isn’t like a TV show, where they solve everything in half an hour.”

I smothered a laugh in her hair. The wisdom of an eleven-year-old. “You’re right, sweetie. Life isn’t like television.”

“Police need the help of everyday citizens,” she said. “Chief Eiseley told us that when school started. He said we need to keep our eyes and ears open and to let a law enforcement officer know if you see something bad happen.”

Bless Gus. Could a town have a better police chief?

“So Oliver wanted to know,” Jenna went on, “if the bad guy was still around, and I told him you and Mrs. Neff