Murder at the PTA (2010)

dingier. Peeling paint was ubiquitous, plywood covered random windows, and the tiny front yards were nothing but beaten earth.

“Here.” Paoze indicated a miserable-looking house. The roof was a shingle patchwork, not a single window was intact, and the spalling concrete front porch looked downright dangerous.

I didn’t want to look, yet I couldn’t look away. Paoze, the ever-helpful, always clean-cut young man, lived here? Appalled didn’t come close to what I was feeling. But what could I say? The kid was on tuition scholarship, but he had to come up with room and board. From what little he’d said about his parents, they were having a hard enough time paying their own bills, forget having anything left over for their son. If Paoze was paying rent and buying groceries solely on the paychecks I was signing, he must be eating a lot of macaroni and cheese.

He opened his door. “Thank you very much for the ride, Mrs. Kennedy. I will borrow the bicycle this time and consider purchasing.” And he was gone into the rain.

I popped open the trunk and felt the car move as he lifted out the bike. He shut the trunk lid and moved through the rain, carrying the bike’s loose front tire with one hand and hanging on to the handlebars with the other. Through the curtains of sweeping rain, I watched him reinstall the front tire, unlock the front door, and wheel the bike inside. The glimpse I got of the interior stairway was of stained carpet, warped paneling, and a bare bulb sticking out of the ceiling. Without even knowing, I could smell the mold, the cigarettes, and the greasy odor of old cooking.

The door shut. He hadn’t even waved good-bye.

I was halfway home when my cell phone rang. “Oh, hi, Beth. I didn’t expect you to answer.” The woman giggled. “I don’t know why, but I didn’t. Sometimes I have no idea why I do things.”

Pointless conversations give me headaches. I’d pulled over to the curb when the phone rang, and now I tapped the steering wheel as red taillights went wetly past. Conversations like this also brought out the worst in me.

“This is Beth Kennedy,” I said. “To whom am I speaking, please?”

“To whom?” she mimicked. “Never knew anyone to say ‘whom’ other than youm.” She giggled again. “This is Claudia. Claudia Wolff in case you know more than one Claudia.”

“Hi, Claudia. What can I do for you?”

“You can tell me you haven’t heard about the break-in at Tarver. Did you know? Someone smashed half the windows in the school. Sprayed graffiti all over and stole a bunch of computers.”

This was why I didn’t care for gossip. Almost everything she’d said was wrong. “I talked to Gus about it earlier today.”

“Oh.” Her voice drooped, but it took her only a moment to perk back up again. “Well, anyway, that’s not why I called. Erica, our PTA president? She asked me to set up a memorial service for Agnes.”

Ten bucks said a service was Claudia’s idea from the get-go, and Erica had washed her hands of it by saying the project was all hers.

“So I’m putting together a program,” she said, “and that takes hours and hours to do a nice job. But it’s for Agnes, so I want to do it right.”

“Mmm.” I made a noncommittal noise. Claudia was one of those perennially underappreciated volunteers, according to Claudia. And, to be fair, she was probably right. She did a tremendous amount of PTA work, but it was hard to feel sorry for someone who spent a lot of time asking for people to feel sorry for her.

“Listen to this,” she said. “None of Agnes’s family can make it tomorrow. Can you believe it? Six brothers and sisters and none of them is driving down!”

“Mmm,” I said. Engaging her in conversation was like making eye contact with a large slobbery dog. You didn’t want to do it unless it was absolutely unavoidable. Either one could be a long, messy process.

“So,” she said, “it only makes sense that everyone on the PTA committee says a few words. Service starts at two in the auditorium. Be there fifteen minutes early, okay? See you!”

“No, wait. Claudia—” But she was gone. I pushed the buttons to call her back and got a busy signal. I tried again; still busy.

I stared at the phone cross-eyed, making my headache worse. I didn’t want to speak at the memorial service. I didn’t even want to go, though I would because I was a Good Girl. But speaking? What on earth could I say that wouldn’t make me worry about lightning striking me dead? Maybe I’d get Marina to help. I considered the possibility for half a second, then rejected it completely. The cat would be better help than Marina.

My phone rang again. “Beth? This is Gloria Kuri, Agnes’s sister.”

“Hi, Gloria. Sorry you can’t make it down to the memorial service tomorrow. I’m sure there will be a good turnout.” I wasn’t sure at all, and for my own sake I was hoping for a small showing. Public speaking wasn’t my forte, and the smaller the crowd, the less my knees would be knocking.

“Yeah, well.”

I massaged the skin at the middle of my forehead. My siblings and I weren’t the closest, but if one of them died, I’d move heaven and earth to attend a service given in their honor. Clearly, Agnes’s family was even more messed up than mine.

Gloria went on. “You know, I was wondering if you already went to Agnes’s house and cleaned out the fridge and stuff.”

“Did it this morning.”

“Oh.” There was a pause in which no profusion of thanks was forthcoming. “Then I wonder if I could ask you one more favor.”

I could tell how this was going to go. Every week one sibling or other would remember that Agnes had something he or she wanted. Gloria would call me and I’d be asked to trot over to the house and hunt for an object I may or may not find, then box it up, and ship it north. The object would undoubtedly be ungodly heavy and cost me a fortune in postage, a fortune for which I’d get promises of repayment, but repayment would mysteriously never appear. “Well . . .”

“I’m looking for a photo album,” Gloria said. “Agnes was the oldest daughter, so she got all the family photos when Momma died. Now I’m oldest, and I don’t want that album sitting in an empty house all winter. I’m sending you money ahead for the postage, so you don’t have to worry about that.”

Shame heated my face. Misjudgment was my new middle name.

“Sure,” I told Gloria. “I’ll stop by tomorrow before the service and get it in Monday’s mail.”

We disconnected, and I wondered if I’d misjudged Claudia, too. Maybe I should stop judging altogether. Maybe I should assume that people’s intentions were honest and kind, and if their actions didn’t show that, well, then, there was some miscommunication—that was all.

I’d almost convinced myself when I remembered the stricken expression on Paoze’s face after his bike had been stolen—and the scattered papers in Agnes’s office at Tarver and the stain on Agnes’s living room floor.

My headache throbbed in time to the beat of the windshield wipers. Swish, swish, swish.

To my right, dark figures hurried down the sidewalk, bending their heads against the rain. I watched them for a while—watched one particular large and lumbering figure for quite some time—then I put the transmission in drive, signaled, and when the road was clear, merged into the eastbound traffic.

Without Marina at my side, Agnes’s house seemed darker than before. I turned on all the lights in the living room, but none of them penetrated the gloom. The scent of the stain remover Marina used had faded away, and the house already had the stale smell of abandonment.

I strained to hear something—the ticking of a clock, the hum of a furnace, any noise at all—but the only sound was that of my own breathing. On this quiet postchurch Sunday noon, no noises penetrated from outside. There were no car doors shutting, no children’s voices calling. The owner of this house was dead, and the house was, too.

“Stop that,” I said out loud. If I creeped myself out, I wouldn’t be in any shape to read what I’d prepared for the memorial service.

I checked the living room end tables and looked through the entertainment center. No photo albums. Not even any photos.

I bypassed the kitchen and headed down the carpeted hallway. In the soulless guest bedroom there were