Foul Play at the PTA

“Jenna Kennedy?” Devon’s face brightened. “She’s good.”

I beamed. Clearly, Devon was an excellent judge of talent. “And she’s only been playing hockey for a year.”

“No kidding? That’s great. If she keeps at it—” The phone rang again. “I should count all the calls,” she said, looking at the phone with loathing, “and ask for a raise.” Eyes crossed, she put the receiver to her ear. “Stull Systems.”

This was obviously not a good time to talk. I waved and slipped out.

“It’s him,” Marina said. She plopped down in my office’s company chair, squeezing her hips down between its narrow arms.

“Him who?”

“Andrew Bieber. The accountant. He’s the one who killed Sam.”

Her voice was full of excitement and certainty. The combination troubled me. “Why are you so sure?”

She leaned forward. “These.” Her face went still and she stared at me with a concentration she didn’t use on anything except rare sirloin steaks.

“Um . . .”

“Look again.” She hopped the chair closer and stared at me a second time. “Don’t you see?”

What I saw was her eyes starting to dry out from not blinking often enough.

“It’s those serial killer eyes,” she said impatiently, rubbing her eyelids. “That Andrew Bieber has them big- time.”

“Serial killers have special eyes?”

“It’s that intensity, that . . . that look. Charles Manson has them. Son of Sam has them. Jeffrey Dahmer had them.”

I held up a hand to stop her horrible litany. The last thing I needed was more things to haunt my nights. “The way he looks isn’t going to mean anything to the Dane County Sheriff’s Department. We need evidence. We need proof.”

“He has those eyes,” Marina said stubbornly.

I flashed back on my morning visit to Stull Systems. Marina felt something was wrong with Andrew Bieber, and I felt a wrongness at Stull Systems. Though I wanted to poke holes all through the serial killer eyes theory, maybe her reaction was justified at a level too visceral to be quantified.

We had two down, and we still had two to go.

“There’s something weird at Stull,” I said.

“Stull Systems?” a quiet voice asked. “You mean Eric Stull?”

Chapter 16

Marina and I turned to look at Yvonne. She was holding a book in each hand and wearing an apologetic expression. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. I had a question about which of these would be better for a fourth-grade boy.”

The books she held were Indian in the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks and Snow Treasure by Marie Mc-Swigan. “Both are wonderful,” I said, perking up at the thought of a real live customer. “Who’s buying it for him?” A grandparent might be more inclined to buy Snow Treasure since it took place during World War II. A parent might lean more toward Indian, and since it was a trilogy, maybe the parent would buy all three and—

“No one,” Yvonne said. “I’m just trying to learn our stock.”

“Oh.” I deflated down to normal size. “That’s a great idea.”

“Is Stull Systems in trouble?” Yvonne looked from me to Marina and back.

“No. Well, not that I know of.”

She smiled at me, a slow quirk. “That didn’t have the ring of sincerity.”

If my cousin Bill were here, he’d confirm my conclusion: Yvonne had an excellent hooey detector. It was a term we’d come up with as children when one parent or another would claim that eating overcooked vegetables was good for us. “What a bunch of hooey,” Bill said one Thanksgiving, and thus was born the hooey detector.

Thanksgiving. The thought was suddenly depressing. The overcrowded Emmerling Thanksgiving I’d been planning for so many weeks had diminished to a simple dinner for five. I wouldn’t even have to get out the leaves for the table.

I pulled myself back to the present, where Marina was saying, “Beth? Insincere? What, pray tell, gave it away? The flag she was waving labeled ‘I’m lying through my teeth’? Or was it the neon sign over her head flashing ‘Liar’ and a big red arrow pointing at her head?”

I considered the situation. Looked at Marina. Quirked my eyebrows and tilted my head to Yvonne. “Shall we add a third to the team?”

“Hmm.” Marina focused her laserlike stare on the poor woman, who inched backward. Before she could escape, Marina gave a sharp nod. “Great minds think alike,” she said, “and somehow so do ours. Young lady, come in and shut the door.”

The door closed softly. Come to think of it, everything Yvonne did was quiet. She talked quietly, moved quietly, made only quiet noises. I wanted to ask if she’d always been like that, but was afraid I’d hear prison stories I didn’t want to hear—chicken-livered Beth—so I’d never asked.

“What do you know about Stull Systems?” Marina demanded. “Stream of consciousness here. No thinking, just talking.”

Yvonne stood there and didn’t say a word.

“Come on, woman,” Marina said. “You must know something!”

She shook her head. “Sorry. All I know is Eric Stull is president. The person I know there is Violet, the office manager.”

“Not today,” I said. “Devon Pettigrew is temping.”

“She’ll be there for a while,” Yvonne said. “Violet’s having a rough pregnancy.”

“Waitaminnut.” Marina shoved her cheeks together, mashing her face into an amorphous blob. “Is this Violet Demps you’re talking about? She can’t be having a baby—she’s almost as old as I am.”

Yvonne made a small shrug. “All I know is she’s five months pregnant.”

“How do you know all this?” Marina asked. “I didn’t know it and Violet goes to my church.”

“Well—” Yvonne stopped. “I can trust you, can’t I? To keep quiet, I mean? Nothing bad,” she said quickly. “It’s just confidential.”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.” Marina drew her index finger across her chest.

I caught Yvonne’s doubtful look. “She means it,” I said. “She only pretends to be an overgrown thirteen- year-old. Inside she’s a trustworthy adult.”

“Okay.” Her thin shoulders rose and fell. “Okay. Violet is my sponsor. She’s a member of Innocent Behind Bars. Have you heard of them? They find people like me who were wrongfully imprisoned, do what they can to get us freed, then help us find our way back into a normal life.”

“Sounds like a great group,” I said.

“Oh, they are,” Yvonne said, and there was more passion in her words than in anything I’d yet heard her say. “Without them I’d be—” She pulled back from herself. “Anyway, Violet helped bring me here and has been wonderful about getting me settled.”

“So Violet,” Marina said, “knows a lot about Stull Systems.”

“She’s run the office ever since they started up.”

“Then we need to talk to her,” I said decisively. “Marina, why don’t you call and—”

Marina was shaking her head. “No can do. Remember how big my church is? I know people who know her, is all.”

“She’s not answering the phone these days anyway,” Yvonne said. “Says talking on the phone makes her