Murder at the PTA (2010)

“Now,” I said, and they went.

Marina, however, was oblivious. “I posted this about nine this morning, and just look at the comments!” She plopped the laptop on the counter and scrolled down. “Almost fifty already. Okay, some of them are mine, but there must be at least forty.”

“What’s the original post?” My voice was still quiet.

“Well, duh. What you told me last night, about Agnes. Here.” Marina scrolled to the top of the page. Again I saw the title: “A Secret Life Revealed?”

My hands turned into dry fists and my throat grew tight. I made one brief attempt to think calm thoughts, then let myself go. “Are you nuts?” I yelled. “That was private information. I didn’t go up there so you could blog about it.”

She frowned. “You didn’t?”

“No, I did it to help you. To find out who killed Agnes. To find out who sent you death threats.”

“That doesn’t mean I can’t use it on WisconSINs.”

My whole body felt hot. “I didn’t spend my weekend driving to Superior and back so you could get fifty comments on your blog.”

A small ding diverted Marina’s attention. “Fifty-one,” she said, smiling.

“Listen to me!” I pounded my fist on the table. “Some things should stay private. Not everything needs to be broadcast to the world. I gave you that information in confidence.”

“You didn’t say so.” Marina crossed her arms.

I stared at her. “What is wrong with you? Should I get a flag to hold up when something I tell you is off-blog? Put a flower in my lapel?”

She tapped her lips with her index finger. “Not a bad idea.”

Cold anger flowed through me. “I have an even better idea—one that would be even easier. How about I never tell you anything ever again?”

She laughed, but her laugh fell away when I picked up my purse. “Beth, come on. Don’t be so sensitive, okay? Maybe I went a little far, but there’s no harm done. We’re trying to find the killer, right? This has to help. I’m sure of it.”

I put my hand on the kitchen doorknob, as I had countless times before. “I’d say good-bye, but it might show up on your blog.” I shut the door behind me with a quiet thump.

“Are we going home, Mom?” Jenna asked from the backseat. Her arms were full of wriggling dog.

I dragged my thoughts away from I just had a huge fight with Marina; I just had a huge fight with my best friend and concentrated on my children. “What do you two want to do?”

“Play!” Oliver giggled.

The sun was shining bright, and I had no compulsion to go home and do housework. “Play it is.” In a short minute, we were parked at the school and I was opening the trunk to get out the Frisbee I hadn’t put away since our last summer trip to the lake.

“Think we can teach Spot to catch this?” I waggled the plastic disc in front of the dog, and he bounced up and down like a kid on a pogo stick.

“Throw it!” Jenna ran into the empty playground, brother and dog chasing after her.

For a laughing, breathless hour, we were a family, bound together by those invisible cords that can be thinned and loosened, but never broken. “Throw it to me!” Oliver shouted, his small body leaping into the air with wild abandon, the dog at his feet barking with the joy of being able to bark.

“Here!” Jenna held up her arms.

I threw the Frisbee halfway between them. They ran pell-mell toward each other, their gazes locked on the spinning disc, but before either one reached it, a brown streak of dog snatched it out of the air.

“Hey!” Jenna started laughing. “He really can catch them! Look at him go!”

Frisbee in teeth, Spot was galloping into the wild blue yonder.

“Don’t let him run off,” I called, and the three of us started chasing the dog. He thought it a great game, and we chased the canine from one side of the playground to the other. I grew tired, the kids grew tired, but Spot ran on.

“He’s getting away!” Oliver shrieked as the dog darted under a post-and-rail fence that delineated a backyard.

“We’ll catch him,” I said soothingly, deciding that never again would I let the dog off a leash. “Jenna, don’t —”

But she was already climbing through the fence. “Here, boy,” she called.

Spot, his doggy grin not quite hidden by the Frisbee, darted out of her reach and scrambled under the side fence and into the next yard. We repeated the sequence through half a dozen backyards, and my patience was long gone when Spot squirreled under a rusty chain-link fence.

“You two stay here.” Harkening back to my youth, I put my toes in the open diamonds of the fence and climbed over. “Here, Spot.”

The dog actually looked droopy. Without too much effort, I walked him into a corner of the fence, arms outspread. “That’s a good boy, pretty boy,” I crooned. “You’ll never run free again. Nope, never, ever again. That’s a good boy.” I snatched his collar. “There’s a good dog.” I leaned down to pick him up, grateful that we’d chosen a dog under thirty pounds, when I noticed a collection of bicycles leaning against the fence.

I stole a glance at the house—dark, with drawn curtains—and edged closer. It was Paoze’s ancient bike. It had to be. There weren’t many white, scabrous bikes with large metal baskets on the front. It was tempting to take it, right then and there, but I couldn’t do that with the kids around. I’d call Gus later.

Thoughtfully, I carried Spot to the fence and deposited him on the other side. “Don’t let him go,” I told Jenna. When I was halfway over, I looked back at the bike. It had been here in plain sight all the time. All I’d needed to do was look in the right place.

I lowered myself to the ground next to a wagging dog and two chattering children, but I didn’t hear a word they said. I looked at the bike, then at the school. At the bike, then the school.

It had been right here all the time.

Chapter 20

“You want property information?”The Rynwood deputy clerk peppered me with questions. “What kind? Deeds? Liens? Taxation information? Tax maps? A plat book?”

The brilliant idea that had hit me Sunday afternoon while I was straddling the fence was lacking in specifics. “Property ownership,” I said. “That’s public information, right?”

“Sure. Do you have the parcel number or an address?”

I shook my head, shifted from one foot to the other, and tried not to feel intimidated. Rynwood’s city hall was one of those old municipal buildings with high ceilings, elaborate crown molding, and the scent of an aged patriarchal history. That the thirtysomething assistant, Kristen, didn’t seem fazed by the environment intimidated me even more.

“Town, range, and section? Subdivision?”The friendly gaze with which Kristen had begun our conversation was turning into that polite look.

“No, sorry.” Up on that fence, I had been struck by the idea that maybe Agnes’s murder was related to the building addition, but maybe the reason didn’t have anything to do with money or even the design from the Black Lagoon.

Maybe the reason was in plain sight; I just had to look at things the right way.

I glanced at my watch. If the city couldn’t provide, maybe Dane County could, and I was itchy to see how this idea panned out. Due to long-overdue holiday planning and a busy store, I’d had to wait until Wednesday, when Marcia came in to work afternoons, to get this far. “Well, thanks anyway.” I reached into my purse for the car keys.

“Hang on,” Kristen said. “There are ways and there are ways. I’m guessing you don’t have an AccessDane account?”

“A what?”