Murder at the PTA (2010)

“Sad, but true. Ah, for the days of unencumbered youth.” She heaved a bosom-raising sigh.

“Take off your rose-colored glasses. We need to get to work.” I thumped my pad of paper. “We need a plan.”

“Oh, goodie.” She clapped her hands. “I love plans.”

“When was the last time you went along with a plan? 1983?”

She pulled her mustache tips out straight. “I’ll have you know I’m completely capable of following a plan.”

“You can, but will you?”

“Wasting time, my sweet, we’re wasting time.”

“Fine.” I picked up the pencil. “Tonight is brainstorming night. I ran into Gus at the grocery store, and he says the sheriff’s department says the investigation is proceeding, but that could mean anything.”

“Means they’re getting nowhere,” Marina said darkly.

“We don’t know that.”

She looked at the ceiling. “Is she truly this innocent?” she asked the white paint. “I know she doesn’t get out much, and she has a history of serious shyness, so she’s the worst person on the planet to hunt down a killer —”

“Hey!”

“But she’s the best thing I’ve got.”

“Gee, thanks.”

She stopped fiddling with the mustache. “You don’t have to do this.” Her voice was quiet. “Help me, I mean. This kind of stuff isn’t your style.”

A sense of relief filled me. I was off the hook! I could go home, back to my journal and dirty laundry. No threats, no murders, no pushing myself into a shape that didn’t suit me. “Well . . .”

“No, really. This is going to mean tracking down clues and figuring things out about suspects and eliminating possibilities. You’d have to get out and do stuff you don’t like to do. I pushed you to be PTA secretary, and that’s as much pushing as I should do. You’re quiet and retiring, and you don’t like all that . . . that doing.”

The relief was replaced by irritation. “I’m not exactly a hermit. You make it sound as if I live in an ivory tower. Did you forget I was a journalism major? I know all sorts of techniques that would be useful for this.”

She gave me one of those you’re-being-argumentative-for-no-good-reason looks. “Only on paper. You don’t know anything about real investigating.”

“And you do?”

“I’m the one being threatened. Dragging you into this is pure selfishness on my part. This kind of stuff isn’t for you, Beth. You’d have to make people talk to you. Make people want to talk to you.”

That people thing again.

“It’s so not you.” She leaned forward and placed her warm hands on my chill ones. “You’d have to change, and I don’t want that. I love you the way you are, dear heart.”

There was no good choice. If I helped Marina, I’d be stressed out and uncomfortable and cranky and impatient with my children. If I didn’t help, I’d feel guilty the rest of my life that I didn’t help my best friend in her hour of need.

The scrunchie in Marina’s hair dropped to the floor with a small plop. “I should never have asked you to help.” She patted my hands. “Forget I ever brought it up. Let’s talk about something else. What are you doing for Jenna’s and Oliver’s Halloween costumes?”

She chattered on about costumes she’d once made for her older children, and I listened with half an ear as my conscience fought with my stick-in-the-mud-ness.

I didn’t want to do things that made me uncomfortable. I didn’t want to change. But there were dark circles under Marina’s eyes, something I’d never seen before. And there were the hat boxes in Agnes’s closet.

No, there wasn’t a good choice here, but there was only one I could make.

I waited for a pause in Marina’s description of a gladiator outfit she’d made for her daughter. “Like it or not,” I said, “I’m going to help you.”

“You will?” Marina looked at me. “For really real?”

“Yup.”

“Hooray!” She leaped up out of her chair and ran around the table. “You’re the best friend ever, ever, ever.” The hug she gave me squeezed my breath away. “Ever!”

And after all, maybe I’d have to change only a little.

Denise twirled my chair to face the mirror and flung a plastic cutting cape over my top half. “What are we doing today?” she asked.

I glanced briefly at my image in the mirror, then looked away. “How about auburn hair just past my shoulders that has enough body to hold a curl, but not enough curl to be unmanageable?”

“Honey, I’m a hairdresser, not a magician.”

She twirled me around again and released the chair’s back. The base of my skull snugged into the guillotine- like gap in the sink. I relaxed as Denise ran warm water over my head.

“Normal cut?” she asked. “Two inches off the bottom?”

“I wish you could take two inches off my bottom.”

She laughed. “Not with scissors, you don’t.” The shampoo bottle squeaked as she pumped out a dollop of goo. “I hear you’re cozy with Erica Hale these days.”

“I’m on the PTA committee, that’s all. Erica’s okay.”

“Don’t get on her bad side.” Denise rubbed shampoo into my temples. “She can be vicious as a cat with kittens. Uh-oh. Did I scrub too hard? Sorry. I get carried away when I talk about the lawyer my so very ex-husband hired.”

I winced away from her overeager shampooing. “Divorce is never easy.”

“You got that right.” She rinsed my hair, put a towel around my head, and sat me up straight. “Speaking of divorce, do you know about Dorrie and Jim? According to Dorrie, it’s really over this time.”

“That’s what she said the last time.”

Denise started combing out my hair. “And probably the time before that. Two inches?”

As she snipped away, I wondered what the difference was between an expensive haircut and a normal one. I’d always figured it was about sixty dollars, but maybe Debra was onto something. Maybe one of these days I’d spring for a fancy salon cut. Like after the kids were married and before I became a grandmother.

But why was I wasting my time with idle thoughts? I had questions to pose, things to do.

“So how’s your brother these days?” I asked.“Haven’t seen Nick or Carol at any PTA meetings lately.”

“Oh, they’re fine.”

I watched her in the mirror. Such a short answer wasn’t typical for Denise. “Really? I kept looking for Nick at the meetings about the school addition, you know, before Agnes was killed.” Small lie, but not a big one. My ears couldn’t be more than a faint pink.

“They’re stuck in Florida,” she whispered. Snip snip snip went the scissors.

“Stuck? In Florida?”

“Shhhh.” Denise looked around. “Carol’s really embarrassed about it. She doesn’t want anyone to know, okay? She’s afraid of it coming out on . . . on that blog.”

My gaze met her mirrored one. “Carol’s okay, isn’t she?”

“She will be.”

“What happened?”

“A week or two ago they went on a Caribbean cruise. For their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, you know?”

“Sounds nice,” I said.

“It was all fine and dandy until Carol came down with some weird tropical disease.”

“How weird is it?”

“Weird enough that she won’t tell me any details.” Denise sounded miffed. “All that sister-in-law of mine will