Murder at the PTA by Laura Alden Read Free Book Online Page B

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