Either the pet name got to him, or he was ready to crack, anyway. “They wouldn’t let us play!” Tones of outrage rounded out every vowel.
I looked at Jenna. She shrugged.
“Who wouldn’t let you play?” I asked.
“It’s the place we always play every single recess, and they wouldn’t let us!”
They? I immediately had a picture of a cabal of fifth graders standing shoulder to shoulder, forcing Oliver and his friends to slink away. “Did you tell your teacher?”
“Yes!” he shouted. “She said they were right and we couldn’t play there again. Ever.”
This didn’t make sense. “Who?”
“The men.”
Trying to get a story out of this kid was like sweeping sand with a bad broom. “What men?”
“I don’t know. They were mean. They had hammers and colored hats and big papers.” He stretched his hands wide.
My foot moved from gas pedal to brake. “Show me.”
Five minutes later, Oliver was trudging across the playground. “See? Robert and I always play marbles there. And now we can’t.” His lower lip trembled and I pulled him close.
The back side of Tarver Elementary was similar to many primary schools, with swing sets and slides and dirt packed hard by hordes of children. But tonight there was something new—a small forest of fresh wood stakes. Bright pink plastic tape fluttered from the tops of waist-high strips of wood, cryptic handwritten lettering marking each one. Things like “10’ off NE B Cor,” and “12” WM,” and “10’ off SW B Cor.” The pink ribbons flapped noisily in a sudden north wind, and I shivered.
“Mommy?” Oliver pressed against me. “Can you fix it?”
Oh, how I wanted to say yes. Oh, how I wanted to fix everything that had and ever would go wrong for my children.
I pulled out my cell phone and started dialing.
The playground had never seen so many adults. I’d called Marina and Erica. They’d each called four people. Each of those people had called four more. Within minutes of my red alert, parents started arriving. Claudia Wolff had brought her friend Tina, who had brought her husband, Tony, who had brought Don the dry cleaner, who had brought Kirk Olsen. Instead of six degrees of separation, Rynwood had more like three.
“Did we miss anything?” Claudia Wolff charged up. “Hey, who was that handsome hunk we saw you with this noon? You sly cat, you. Do your children know?” She winked at Jenna.
“I’m pulling out these stakes!” a burly man shouted. “Every time she puts them in, we’ll pull them out.”
A murmur of assent ran through the group; I was suddenly sorry I’d called anyone. They called Madison “Mad City” for a reason, and Rynwood was close enough to Madison for the city’s history of civil disobedience to be contagious. “Um . . .”
No one paid attention to me. The crowd was turning nasty, and I sincerely hoped Agnes didn’t make an appearance. These people were ready for a witch hunt. Give them pitchforks and torches and they’d set upon Agnes even if she lacked the black dress and pointed hat.
“Pull them out!” Claudia yelled. “We’ll pile them on her front porch.”
Jenna tugged on my coat sleeve. “Mom, I’m hungry.” I looked at her face and knew the tightness had nothing to do with a delayed dinner.
“Me, too.” Oliver ducked his head under my arm and snuggled close.
It was past time I took the kids away from this. “Me, three,” I said. Jenna smiled, and I felt Oliver’s giggle against my hip bone. “How about a treat tonight? What do you say to Hot Dog Heaven?”
A single shout became a chant. “Pull them out! Pull them out!” Mob rule took hold, and the pack surged forward.
My children and I went in the opposite direction, hand in hand in hand.
“My tummy is all happy now,” Oliver said as I was starting the animal good nights.
“I’m glad.”
“Mom?”
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“Will Robert’s dad get into trouble for taking out those little poles? The men who put them in said to leave them alone or the police will put us in jail.”
“Robert’s dad isn’t going to jail.” I supposed the surveyors had been trying to keep their stakes intact, but scaring children was a poor way of going about it. “I promise.” And one day soon I’d have to figure out who Robert’s dad was. “Time to sleep. It’s way past your bedtime.”
“I know.” He grinned, and my heart went mushy around the edges. “But you made us go out to eat.”
“That’s right.” I picked up an armful of stuffed animals and started the routine. “Good night, Rex. Good night, Fred. Good night, Dancer.” By the time I’d finished, Oliver’s eyes were drooping. “Good night, Oliver.” I kissed my son’s forehead. “Sweet dreams and may tomorrow be your best day ever.”
“Okay,” he said sleepily.
Jenna was already out. I took away her
Sports Illustrated
and clicked off the bedside light. “Night, sweetheart,” I whispered, and kissed her lightly.
I went downstairs as quietly as I could. After half an hour, Oliver slept like a rock, but for the first thirty minutes a cough two floors away would wake him. I flicked on the desk light in the study and turned on the computer. Good little secretary that I was, I wanted to finish the minutes of last night’s meeting before falling into bed.
The first pages of my handwritten notes were filled with quotes from concerned parents. Each succeeding page had an increasing number of doodles. Every person talking had said the same thing, over and over, the same things I’d heard on the phone all day. And I’d probably had dozens of e-mails on the subject, too.
My own eyes were drooping when I reached the proof-reading stage at one in the morning. Yawning, I printed a hard copy and decided to look at e-mail. After subject lines such as “Tarver Addition,” “Agnes Must Go,” and “Legal Action Called For,” there was a series of e-mails from Marina. “Call me,” said the first one. Then, “Call me—urgent.” There were more with increasing numbers of capital letters and exclamation points. The last message had been sent less than five minutes ago.
CALL ME!! URGENT!!!!
“Why didn’t you call me yourself?” Grumbling, I picked up the phone, but there was no dial tone. “Oh . . .”
Thirty seconds after walking in the door, the phone had rung. Carly, mother of Thomas and Victoria, had wanted to know how we were going to stop Agnes. After I’d finished with her, I’d pulled the cord out of the phone jack. Voilà, no more calls.
I went into the kitchen and dialed Marina. “Sorry. I unplugged the phone. You wouldn’t believe how many people have called. What’s so important?”
“Sit down.”
“Why?”
“Sit!”
Marina never yelled at me. She scolded, cajoled, and occasionally henpecked, but she never shouted. I sat on a bar stool with a thump. “Something’s happened.” To Marina’s kids. To her husband. Her parents. Her sister. “Tell me.” My heart pushed blood through my neck in thick clumps.
“It’s Agnes.”
My fear vanished. Annoyance replaced it. “Oh, geez. What’s she done now?”
Marina breathed into the phone. Short, tension-filled puffs. “She’s dead.”
“Dead?” That couldn’t be right. People as obnoxious as Agnes lived forever and turned into Auntie Mays. “As in
dead
dead?”
“Yes.”
The stool cut into the backs of my thighs. Agnes, dead? It couldn’t be.
“And . . . Beth?” Marina’s voice was so quiet I had to press the phone hard against my head. “She was murdered.”
Chapter 4
T
he morning after Agnes was killed, I woke early and wondered how to break the news to Jenna and Oliver. “Good morning, kids! Your principal was murdered last night. How about some cereal?”
No, that wouldn’t work. How about: “Mrs. Mephisto’s head had a bad accident with a blunt object.” Or “Last night, Mrs. Neff’s neighbor noticed the back door of Mrs. Mephisto’s house was open and went inside and saw . . .”
Ick.
I flung back the covers and decided to cook the children’s favorite breakfast. This meant two breakfasts, because naturally they couldn’t both like the same thing. For Jenna I cooked bacon and scrambled eggs; for Oliver I made blueberry pancakes and sausage. By the time we sat down to eat, the kitchen was piled high with dishes I didn’t have time to wash.
“Cool!” Jenna slid into her place at the kitchen table. “It’s like a birthday breakfast.”
“We both have birthdays today,” Oliver said.
“Don’t be stu—” She glanced at me and made a sudden revision. “My birthday is in June and yours is in May. No one has a birthday in October.”
“Robert does.”
Jenna heaved a giant sigh. “No one in this family.”
“Then why are we having birthday breakfast?” he asked.
“Because . . .” Jenna, frowning, realized she had no clue why I’d cooked a real meal on a weekday. “You’re going to tell us something, aren’t you?” She stabbed her fork into a piece of bacon.
I leaned over and cut up Oliver’s sausage into quarter-inch pieces.
“You are, aren’t you?” Jenna shoved a piece of bacon into her mouth. “I bet it’s about what Mrs. Wolff said last night.”
“What?” Oliver moved his head to look at his sister around my arm. “What did Mrs. Wolff say?”
I was glad he’d asked, because I couldn’t remember myself.
“She said you were with some man yesterday. She said you were a sly cat. She said—” Jenna blinked, her eyes flashing fast. “She asked if Oliver and me knew.”
My first instinct was to correct her grammar, but I decided to let it go for once.
“Knew what?” Oliver asked.
With a rush, I remembered why I didn’t care much for Claudia Wolff.
“You’re getting married, aren’t you?” Jenna dropped her silverware on the table in a metallic crash. “You’re going to marry some guy we don’t know.”
“No!” Oliver shrieked. “You can’t! I’ll run away. I’ll lock myself in my room. I’ll—”
I made my thumb and middle finger into a circle, put them in my mouth and blew a loud whistle. The kids went silent, albeit with mutinous expressions.
“Number one,” I said, “I am not about to marry anyone.”
Oliver’s face cleared immediately. He speared a piece of sausage and popped it in his mouth with a flourish.
Jenna wasn’t so easily pacified. “But who was that man?”
“A business acquaintance.”
“Then why did Mrs. Wolff say what she did?”
“I’m not sure.” The alternative answer had a lot to do with a word rhyming with ditch. “Jenna.” I reached across the table and held my daughter’s hand. “Do you really think I’d marry anyone without making sure you loved him, too?”
She used the heel of her other hand to push away her unshed tears. “I guess not.”
“You and Oliver are the most important people in my life.” My own eyes started blinking. “No one else comes close. No one ever will.”
“Okay.”
I reached out to give her a hug, but she leaned sideways and picked up another piece of bacon.
“Why are we having birthday breakfasts?” Oliver asked.
I looked from one young face to the other. When I’d woken up so early, the idea of cooking a nice meal had seemed like a great one. But maybe I’d done it more for me than for them. “I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.”
“Dad!” Jenna shot to her feet. “What’s wrong with Dad?”
“Nothing,” I soothed. “He’s fine. Your grandparents are fine, all your friends are fine.”
“How do you know for sure?” Jenna’s voice went shrill. “Maybe there was a car accident or something.”
“Someone would have called. Everyone’s fine. Sit down, Jenna.” As she eased herself into the chair, I asked, “Remember Mr. Stoltz?”
Oliver poured maple syrup over his pancakes. “The outside train.”
Norman Stoltz had lived two blocks away and had built a magnificent garden train. The place was a kid magnet. If a child put in the requisite number of hours of weeding, he (or she) got to wear an engineer’s hat and run the controls. Sadly, Norman Stoltz had collapsed the year before from a massive heart attack.
“He’s dead.” Jenna eyed me.
“Yes.” I looked at my untouched plate. Cold poached eggs on a piece of cold toast. “I’m afraid Mrs. Mephisto is, too.”
“Our principal?” Oliver asked.
“She died last night.” I watched my children carefully, waiting for an emotional response, waiting for a tumultuous reaction, waiting for tears.
“Like Mr. Stoltz?” Jenna asked. “Her heart gave out?”
The adult phrase sounded strange coming from such young lips. “No, I’m afraid not.”
“She was pretty old.” A drop of maple syrup dripped onto Oliver’s shirt. “Maybe she just got tired.”
“People don’t die because they’re tired,” Jenna said.
“Paoze said that’s why his grandmother died. She was tired and went to sleep and never woke up.”
“Maybe where he came from they die because they’re tired, but not in Wisconsin.”
They both turned to me, each of them looking to be supported as being correct. I sidestepped the referee job. “Mrs. Mephisto was killed,” I said quietly.
“Like car crash killed?” Jenna asked.
“No, she died at home.” Last night, Marina had said an EMT had said the back of her skull had been bashed in. I shied away from the image. My poached eggs, now congealed to the consistency of soft plastic, looked up at me with wide eyes. I pushed the plate away. “The police will find who did it and put him in jail for a long, long time.”
“Mrs. Mephisto was murdered?” Jenna’s eyes went wide.
I wondered how many fictionalized murders my ten-year-old had watched via television and movies. But this time the victim was someone she knew. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. Yes, she was murdered.” I searched for words of comfort—words that would help them through the stages of grief; words they could carry the rest of their lives. Before I came up with the perfect phrase, Jenna jumped up.