Murder at the PTA (2010)

“And they didn’t end it with an i.”

We smiled at each other, rapport established. “I’d like to order a large pizza to go,” I said. “Pepperoni and sausage on half, cheese only on the other half.”

She had a pen and order pad at the ready and scribbled away. “Cheese only?” She looked up, grinning. “Kids?”

“A daughter who turns up her nose at any dinner without meat, and a son who is sliding toward vegetarianism.”

“Usually the other way around, isn’t it?” She spun around, tucked the order onto a circular rack, then turned back to me. “I mean, aren’t girls usually the ones who do the veggie thing?” She plopped her arms on the counter. “I tried to be a vegan once, back when I was little.” This from a girl who looked as if she might be seventeen. “But then it was Thanksgiving, and how can you have Thanksgiving without turkey?”

“Plus it’d be hard to be vegan in a place like this.” Clever Beth, manipulating the conversation. “How long have you been working here?”

“Joe hired me two summers ago, right when he opened.”

“That’s Joe Sabatini?”

She giggled. “Want to know a secret?” She looked left and right and motioned me close. “Joe’s last name isn’t Sabatini,” she whispered. “It’s Pigg.”

“Pig?”

“With two gs. P-i-g-g.” Her giggle went loud, and she clapped her hands over her mouth. “Isn’t that too funny?” she said through her fingers. “I could be working at Pigg Pizza.” Her shoulders heaved with the effort of not laughing out loud. “At Pizza for Piggs!”

“So where did the Sabatini come from?”

“The Pigg’s Pizza Parlor.” Tears of laughter squeaked out of her eyes. “Oh, geez. Sabatini is some sports person. Like baseball?”

Even I’d heard of that Sabatini. “Gabriela. She plays tennis.”

“Yeah, that’s it. Joe’s a big fan, I guess. He’s from South Dakota, came here to go to Wisconsin.” She shrugged. “All that school and money, and he ended up in dumpy Rynwood running a pizza place. Makes you wonder if college is worth it.”

I walked out with dinner. Joe wasn’t Italian, and he was from South Dakota. Okay, he could still have mob ties, but the likelihood had plummeted from “maybe” to “oh, please.”

And now I’d eliminated everyone Marina had mentioned as a suspect, which didn’t make sense. The bad guy wanted her to quit blogging, but if he wasn’t called out in WisconSINs, why would he care? Because Marina was poking around? What kind of sense did that make? None.

I drove to pick up Jenna and Oliver, pushing other ideas around in my head. Nothing jelled, nothing came together, nothing clicked. As a detective, I made a pretty good children’s bookstore owner.

The change in the evening’s meal plan from stew to pizza was a success with the kids—so successful, in fact, that I didn’t hear a single complaint when I said we needed to take Spot for a family walk. There was, however, a bit of jockeying over who carried the plastic bag. “We’ll put a schedule on the calendar,” I said. “Since I’m doing dog duty while you two are at your father’s, I’ll take one turn a week, no more. Yesterday was my turn. Tonight is Jenna’s.”

The “But, Mom” whines instantly quelled when I said, “You two wanted this dog, not me. If you can’t handle the responsibility of a dog, he’s going back to the shelter.”

It would have taken a court order to force me to return Spot, but they didn’t know that. He’d spent Saturday cowering in the laundry room, but by Sunday morning he’d turned into a real dog. He played catch with Jenna. He lay quietly on Oliver’s bed while stuffed animals were piled on top of him. He warmed my feet while I worked on the computer late at night. He’d even forged an early truce with the cat, who had taken one look at the interloper, hissed, and inflated to twice his normal size. A tail-wagging Spot just gazed at George, happy, tolerant, and unthreatening. George won the stare-down. Cats always did, but Spot didn’t care. Now that he had a family, he was a Happy Dog.

The sidewalk was unevenly lit by streetlights, but there was enough ambient light to let us walk without squinting at our feet. Oliver held the leash and ran to the corner. “C’mon, Spot!”

“He’s not such a bad dog,” Jenna said.

“Maybe even a good dog?”

“Maybe.” But she was cheerful, not cautious, or—much worse—sarcastic.

If I’d been the optimistic sort, I would have cheered the occasion as evidence of a lessening of Bailey’s influence. But I was more the wait-and-see type.

“What would you think,” I said, “if I asked someone over to have dinner with us?”

“Like Mrs. Neff? Sure. She’s fun.”

“No, more like Mr. Garrett.”

“Who’s that?” Jenna, who had been skipping, stopped dead.

“He’s a friend of mine.”

We stood in the dappled shadows cast by streetlights and barren maple trees. “A boyfriend?” she asked.

“I knew him when I was a little girl.”

She studied me with eyes that knew too much. “Does Gramma Emmerling like him?”

“We can call your grandmother and ask. But I’m not sure if she’ll remember him. He moved away after kindergarten.”

“So you haven’t seen him since you were, like, five?”

“He’s the new owner of the hardware. He just moved here a few weeks ago.”

“Doesn’t he have a family of his own?”

I gave her Evan’s vital statistics, and somewhere in the details about his younger daughter, Jenna relaxed. “I guess it’d be okay if he came over.” She started walking again. “Can you make meat loaf and baked potatoes?”

I took her hand. “Steak sauce on the meat loaf?”

Her hand, which didn’t feel much smaller than my own, squeezed back. “And ketchup on the baked potatoes!”

“Oh, eww.”

She giggled and dropped my hand as she raced to catch up to her brother. “I know something you don’t know,” she called ahead.

“Tell me,” he said, beginning the inane rhyme they’d developed last summer. “Tell me in a tree, show me a bee, tell me for free, show me and I’ll go hee hee hee!” He gave a loud and artificial laugh.

But for once I didn’t shush him. Part of the rhyme had finally shaken something loose in my head.

Show me.

Show me the money.

I smiled. Finally, I knew how to start looking for Agnes’s killer.

Chapter 15

Hal Hopkins of Hopkins Surveying stared at me from the other side of his desk, then repeated the question I’d just asked. “Where did the money for the school addition come from?” His desk was so coated with folders, large papers folded awkwardly small, and large rolls of paper that there wasn’t even space for coffee. Hopkins held a mug in his left hand and fidgeted with his cell phone with the right. “Why do you want to know?”

Good question. I’d have to stop by the library’s video section and study Jessica Fletcher’s techniques. Meanwhile, I summoned my inner bureaucrat. “As a member of the PTA,” I said, “I consider it my duty to tie up loose ends. Agnes didn’t tell us anything about the donor, and before we can make any recommendations on whether or not to proceed with the renovation, we should make every attempt to discover the money’s origins.”