Paul was frowning. “Are you all right?”
“What? I’m fine. Just a little distracted. Sorry.” A good mother would be fully present at her daughter’s parent-teacher conference, not daydreaming about a man. Once again, I wouldn’t be a candidate for the Mother of the Year Award. Since Jenna was ten, this would be the tenth year in a row.
“Understandable,” Paul said. “Concentration has been hard for everyone since Agnes was killed.”
“Yes.”
We sat quietly. At the bookstore, Paul had more than once railed against Agnes and her heavy-handed management techniques, her habit of dictating rather than building consensus, and her unwavering belief that her opinions were correct ones. But every Tarver Elementary teacher had the same complaints, and if complaining about the boss made a person a murder suspect, then if I died the police would have to put Lois and Marcia on the list.
Paul sighed. “I can’t say I’m sad she’s gone. But she didn’t deserve to be murdered.”
“No.”
We sat a few moments longer, thinking our own thoughts. Then Paul stirred and advised me that it might be best for Jenna to have more than one friend.
I thanked him, gathered my purse and coat, and walked out of the room. Onward and upward—or at least onward.
“Beth!”
I flinched at the reverberations echoing off the hallway’s hard surfaces. “Oh, Debra. Hi.” If Harry the janitor could see the marks her high heels were leaving on the floor, he’d have a coronary.
“Can I talk to you?”
As always, Debra’s hair looked perfect. With an iron will, I kept my hands still and didn’t check for stray strands. “Sure. But I’m meeting with Oliver’s teacher in a few minutes.”
“It’s about the memorial service,” she said. “You were right. None of us knew Agnes. We were a bunch of hypocrites, pretending we cared, pretending she mattered to us.”
“Oh,” I said faintly. Someone had paid attention? I’d have to be more careful next time I spoke in public. Or here was an even better idea—never again open my mouth in any group of more than four people.
“I sat up most of the night, thinking.” Debra chewed on her lower lip, mussing the perfectly applied lipstick. “There are a lot of hypocritical things in my life. Agnes was just the tip of the iceberg. My career, my house, my car, even my hair.” She tousled the artful coiffure. “Everything I’ve ever done was to impress or please someone. I wouldn’t know a real emotion if it bit me on the hind end.”
I stared at her and couldn’t think of a thing to say.
“So I’m going to change.”
“You are?”
“Yes. Starting tomorrow.” She nodded decisively. “Why wait?”
Good heavens. “Um, big changes are worth a few days of thinking, don’t you think?”
Behind us, a door opened. “Good-bye, Mr. Egoscue, Mrs. Egoscue,” chirped an unbelievably young voice. “Thanks for coming! Oh, good, Mrs. Kennedy. Right on time. Come on in. I’m ready for you.”
I didn’t move. “Debra, let’s go to the Green Tractor. I can meet you there in twenty minutes. We’ll get Ruthie to make us ice-cream sundaes and brew up a pot of decaf.”
“I appreciate the offer,” Debra said, “but I have errands to run. I just wanted to thank you.” She hurried off.
“Mrs. Kennedy?” Lauren Atchinson stood in the classroom door.
What was the right thing to do? Since it was my speechifying that had affected Debra, wasn’t it my responsibility to go after her and offer my help, as little as that might be? On the other hand, I needed to talk to Ms. Atchinson about my son.
“Mrs. Kennedy?”
On the other hand, because of me, Debra might be hurtling onto a path of self-destruction. How could I turn away from her now?
“Mrs. Kennedy, if you need to reschedule, I might have time the week after next.”
But it was no contest. Motherhood trumped everything, every time.
In Oliver’s classroom construction paper pumpkins spattered the concrete block walls, each one decorated with leering grins and a child’s scrawled name. I looked for Oliver’s and finally found it, a lopsided one-toothed visage.
“First off,” Lauren said, “Oliver is a very nice little boy.”
“Thank you.”
“For an older parent, you’re doing a great job of socializing him with peers.”
“A what?” Had she really said what I thought she’d said?
She opened a manila folder. “You can’t have a lot in common with people my age, and I just wanted to say I think you’re doing a great job.”
Responses rushed into my head. They all jammed up together, making an outraged bottleneck, and not a single word made its way out of my open mouth.
“So.” Lauren handed me a sheet of paper. “Here’s a chart of Oliver’s progress.”
Young, I thought. She’s not even twenty-five. She knows not what she does.
I studied the graph. On the left were the titles of Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, Physical Education, and Other. All the titles had a series of horizontal lines extending across the sheet, and on the right was a scale of one to ten for each. Across the sheet’s bottom was a label for each week in the six-week marking period.
“As I’m sure you can see,” Lauren said, “there’s been a falling off.”
She had a gift for understatement. At the beginning of the year, Oliver was scoring between seven and nine for each subject. The lines jiggled a bit until the last two weeks. After that, each line looked like the Dow Jones in 2009. Crash!
“Have there been problems at home?” Lauren frowned, tilting her head to one side. “Is there anything I can do? I’d honestly like to help.”
She looked earnest and caring, but what was I going to say? That he and his sister wanted a puppy and I didn’t? That he was suddenly afraid of eating spaghetti? That the idea of a man in my life frightened him? That he’d gone back to wetting his bed?
“Mrs. Mephisto’s death has been hard on him,” I said. “He’s known only one other person who died. That she was murdered makes it even more difficult.”
“It’s so hard to think someone in Rynwood was murdered.” She fidgeted with her necklace. “The police came around and talked to all the teachers, did you know? They said they were just gathering information,but funny thing is they were asking us all what we were doing that night.”
I smiled. “Where’s an alibi when you need one?” I suddenly remembered Lauren’s vehement recommendation of appointing Gary Kemmerer as principal. Maybe I should add the two of them to the list. Who knew what ten years of working under Agnes could do to a man? And Lauren might have the kind of malleable personality that could be manipulated to do the direst of deeds.
“Oh, I had an alibi,” she said. “Tuesdays are my ballet nights. I was in Madison helping to block out a scene from The Nutcracker. The choreographer and the director and I were there past midnight.”
Mentally, I added Lauren and Gary to the list, then crossed off Lauren’s name. I wasn’t obsessive about my lists; I was just accurate.
“The police will catch the killer,” I said. “I’m sure that will help Oliver.”
Lauren nodded. “So you can directly correlate his downturn with the death of Mrs. Mephisto?”
“Yes.”
“Is he showing other signs of grief or stress?”
Though I knew she was only trying to help, my irritation level was rising. Clearly, obfuscation was in order. “He has a history of enuresis,” I said. “I’ve been following the recommendations of his pediatrician and expect to eliminate the problem in a short time frame.”
“I didn’t realize Oliver had bed-wetting issues.”
So much for that idea. “It’s not uncommon,” I said calmly.