Murder at the PTA Read online

  “In what way?”

  “She tried revising the dress code to ban plunging necklines and skirts that were too short and too tight for the girls and require all boys to wear khakis and dress shirts, no jeans or T-shirts, She also wanted to divide the cafeteria into sections, one for the boys and one for the girls.”

  “Did her suggestions get implemented?”

  Hicks chuckled. “No. We’re living in the twenty-first century. It’s hard to go back to the ways of the past. I’ve been here over ten years and I’ve seen each generation get more and more unrestrained, shall we say, about sex and all that.”

  “Do you think Maisie started the Dirty Laundry site as a way of calling people out for their immoral behavior?”

  Hicks thought about it for a few seconds and then nodded. “It does make sense, I suppose,” he sighed. “There was something virtuous about her intentions, if that’s true, but she went way over the line. I mean, she dragged a U.S. senator’s name through the mud, and he was only tenuously connected to the school by being married to the PTA president!”

  “Sounds like she went a little off the rails,” Maya commented.

  “A little? There is a difference between attempting to rein in student behavior and attacking a man in public service with lies and innuendos!”

  “So you don’t believe there was any truth to her story?”

  “Of course not! And even if there was, it’s none of our business. That’s between Senator Wallage and his wife. But Maisie was acting like the religious police in Saudi Arabia, you know, those men who go around arresting people for anything they personally deem objectionable. It was just too much!”

  Maya paused, waiting for Hicks to calm down a bit, before plowing ahead. “Mr. Hicks, do you believe Maisie hung herself?”

  Hicks flinched, bothered by the unpleasantness of her question, but then thoughtfully considered it and finally nodded. “Yes, yes, I do. The Maisie Portman I knew was a deeply unhappy woman. I was stunned when I heard she had died, but not surprised by the news that she took her own life. She was bothered by so many things. I mean, you never expect anyone to do something so drastic, but somehow it made sense to me, especially after what she did. I can’t imagine anyone feeling good about willfully ruining people’s lives.”

  “Putting your personal opinion aside for a moment, is there anyone you can think of who may have had a reason to want to see Maisie dead?”

  Hicks’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. “Here? At the school? No! Not at all. Even the people she wrote about on her site, I could never imagine any of them being capable of murder. Not one!”

  “How did the students react to her proposed restrictions on their dress code and interactions with each other?”

  “They didn’t take her seriously at all,” Hicks said, shaking his head. “They knew I would never go for it. They see me as a modern, cool guy who has his finger on the pulse of their generation.”

  Maya didn’t believe a word of what he was saying. Anyone claiming to have a finger on the pulse of a generation usually did not.

  “I can’t think of any student who actually gave Maisie a second thought, other than a few disgruntled kids in the drama club.”

  “Drama club?”

  “Yes, based on what happened last year.”

  He stopped, assuming Maya knew what he was talking about. She waited for him to continue, but he just sat there. Finally, she decided she needed to prod him along.

  “What happened?”

  “The drama club was going to stage The Full Monty for the school musical. I had never seen it, nor knew much about it, so I didn’t really object at first. But Maisie went absolutely ballistic. She wrote me a long email calling the show filthy and disgusting. She said our school had no business mounting such a production. Well, I rented the movie and agreed. Come on, it ends with a bunch of men doing a striptease and then flashing their junk in front of the audience right before the final curtain comes down. I called the theater director, Georgina Callis, into my office and told her there was no way I would allow her to do anything remotely that lewd and indecent.”

  “Was that the end of it?”

  “Oh, no. Georgina explained to me that she had no intention of allowing the boys to strip naked in front of their parents and that she had the costumer design flesh-colored underwear for them to wear. Not only that, she assured me there was a trick in the end with the lighting and a big flash would momentarily blind the audience from seeing anything too risqué. So I signed off on it.”

  “But Maisie wasn’t satisfied, I take it,” Maya said.

  “Not in the least. She got just enough parents to sign a petition demanding we not do the show because it was too sexually explicit, and when the school board threatened to get involved, my back was to the wall, so I canceled the whole thing. I told Georgina to do Oklahoma! instead because that never fails to pack them in.”

  “That’s right. I saw it. It was fun.”

  “That show is a national treasure, and Georgina is a talented director. She can make anything work. But she did that production under protest. She blamed Maisie for stifling the creative spirit of her students. It got rather messy.”

  “So Maisie and Georgina clashed over the petition?”

  “I’ll say they did! It got so heated at one point, I practically had to pull them apart in my office one night,” Hicks said, before the light bulb finally went off in his head. “Dear God, I completely forgot about Georgina Callis! She despised Maisie!”

  “Enough to do something about it?”

  “Well, no, I don’t think . . . Then again, I’d never seen so much rage in Georgina than I did when Maisie interfered with her project. Georgina got so fired up and . . . Well, I honestly don’t know. Maybe she could have . . .”

  That was all Maya needed to hear.

  She needed to speak with Georgina Callis.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Georgina Callis—a short, brassy spitfire, with gorgeous dark skin and a mop top of frizzy black hair—was not pleased. She did not appreciate Maya’s interrupting the final dress rehearsal for her production of Hello, Dolly!, which was to premiere in the high school auditorium Friday evening at eight o’clock sharp.

  When Maya quietly approached the free-spirited, artsy Georgina, in her flowing caftan with an African-inspired print, she was sitting in the third row of the theater shouting directions at the six boys dressed as waiters dancing around the diminutive girl playing the title role of Dolly. Maya bent down and asked if she could have a moment with her and was met with a cold stare. Georgina was under enough pressure as it was getting the show ready for opening night, and the last thing she needed was a distraction from a stranger.

  Georgina waved her off dismissively. “I’m sorry, we’re in the middle of a dress rehearsal. I can’t talk right now. You’ll have to call my office tomorrow and make an appointment.”

  Maya wasn’t ready to give up just yet. “It will only take five minutes. I promise.”

  Georgina’s big brown eyes flared. How dare this woman linger when there was so much more work to do. “Who are you again?”

  “I’m Vanessa’s mother . . . Vanessa Kendrick?”

  At the mention of Vanessa’s name, Georgina’s mood lightened considerably. “Oh . . . Vanessa’s a wonderful talent.”

  Maya beamed proudly. “Yes, I know.”

  Georgina leaned in conspiratorially and whispered, “I would have cast her as Dolly, but she’s my utility player; I can plug her into any role, and she was the only one who really nailed Minnie in the auditions.”

  “She speaks very highly of you. She considers you a role model,” Maya said, not above using flattery to get what she needed.

  And Georgina was not above eagerly accepting compliments. “That’s so sweet. I just try to guide her and offer her my support, and maybe a few pearls of wisdom when it comes to performing onstage, but she’s got a good head on her shoulders, that one.”

  Vanessa, who had h
eard from one of her friends that her mother was in the auditorium, came out from backstage with an annoyed look on her face. “Mom, what are you doing here?”

  “I just need to speak with Ms. Callis for a few minutes,” Maya said.

  Vanessa, embarrassed that her mother had crashed their rehearsal, huffed and stomped offstage.

  Georgina suddenly looked worried. “Is this about Vanessa?”

  “No, it’s about Maisie Portman.”

  Georgina’s face fell. “What about her?”

  Maya leaned in and spoke softly. “I’d prefer it if we could talk somewhere more private.”

  Georgina stood up from her third-row seat to address the boys onstage. “Look, I know none of you are professional dancers, and a lot of you have absolutely no rhythm, at least none that I can see, so while I’m outside talking with Mrs. Kendrick, can you please go over the dance steps one more time together as a group so you’re all at least moving in the same direction when I get back? Can you do that for me, please?”

  The boys mumbled yes and nodded their heads.

  “Thank you!” Georgina sighed, before stalking up the aisle and out of the theater as Maya followed close behind her.

  Once they were outside in the deserted hallway, Georgina began to fidget, a bundle of nerves. “Those boys are a disaster. They dance like elephants, and not like the ones from Fantasia! I recruited them from the soccer team because I felt athletes might have some inkling about graceful movement, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. I had to use all my regular boys from the theater department, the talented ones, to fill out the speaking roles, so I didn’t have much of a choice.”

  Maya nodded understandingly, and then tried to get on point. “I was hoping you might shed some light on—”

  “I really hope that old cliché about lousy dress rehearsal /great opening night holds true, because this rehearsal ranks as one of the worst in all my years directing shows, otherwise we are totally screwed,” Georgina wailed to herself before noticing Maya. “But Vanessa is doing a stellar job. She’s like the glue holding the whole damn thing together. Katharine, the girl playing Dolly, is acting like a total diva, which is insane, because she can’t even hit the high notes!”

  Maya tried again. “I know you’ve got a lot on your plate right now, so I’ll make this quick—”

  Georgina, who clearly wanted to get back to rehearsal, beat her to the punch. “What do you want to know about Maisie?”

  “I heard you two had problems.”

  “Where did you hear that? Principal Hicks? Well, you heard right. I hated that uptight, horrible woman. She gleefully undermined me and sabotaged my production of The Full Monty last spring. There was no reasoning with her. I almost quit on the spot. It was only the unwavering support from my students that stopped me.”

  “So you probably were not upset when you found out she died?”

  “I’m not a monster. I have empathy for anyone who finds herself in such a dark place that she would take her own life, but that doesn’t change what she did or how I felt about her. Maisie Portman still haunts me. Thanks to her, I’m stuck doing Hello, Dolly! for the fourth time because it has been deemed acceptable content by the school board. She may be dead, but her censorship agenda lives on! I really wanted to do Rent for the fall musical, but no chance of that! Thank you, Maisie!”

  “The reason I’m asking around about Maisie’s death is because I believe—”

  Georgina was on a roll and didn’t let her finish. “The one I truly feel sorry for is Maisie’s sister, Chelsea. She couldn’t be more different. Talk about a talented actress! Have you seen her work?”

  “No, but actually Chelsea is the one who has hired me to—”

  “That one’s going to win an Oscar someday. Mark my words. We got to know each other in high school doing plays together. Not mindless crowd-pleasers, but real, authentic avant-garde pieces, works that mattered, shows that had the potential to change people’s thinking!”

  Maya’s only hope of getting the conversation back on track was for her to try a bit of flattery again. “The school is so lucky to have an artist like you.”

  That did it. Georgina stopped her passionate monologue and managed to focus again. “Aw, you are too sweet. You mentioned something about Chelsea hiring you?”

  “Yes. Chelsea doesn’t believe Maisie committed suicide. She is convinced someone murdered her.”

  Georgina’s face fell again. “She what?”

  “I’m not sure if you are aware of this, but I am a licensed private investigator.”

  “No, Vanessa never told me what her mother did for a living. How interesting,” she said, those big brown eyes bulging. “But why do you need to talk to me? Is it because of what Hicks told you? About my fractured relationship with Maisie? I’ve directed enough Agatha Christie murder mysteries to know you probably consider me a suspect!”

  “I’m certainly not singling you out,” Maya lied. “I’m talking to everybody who worked with Maisie.”

  “I will admit if what you’re saying is true, if someone staged that scene to make it look like Maisie hung herself, then I would be a likely suspect given my directing experience. But for the record, I am a genuine pacifist, Mrs. Kendrick. Just the idea of taking another human life is incomprehensible to me.”

  “Did you have rehearsal the night Maisie was found?”

  “Yes, but I finished early because of the PTA meeting.”

  “So you were at the school?”

  “Yes, in my office, working on the choreography for the big Harmonia Gardens ‘Hello, Dolly!’ number, the one we’re rehearsing now. Clearly my plan failed.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes, alone. I don’t group-think my choreography. I do everything myself.”

  “Okay, thank you, Ms. Callis.”

  Georgina looked stricken and worried. “I didn’t do anything to harm Maisie, I swear. Although I’d be lying if I told you I never thought about it.”

  “I appreciate your honesty,” Maya said, turning to leave.

  “Don’t go yet. I’m going to dismiss the rest of the cast and keep those lead-footed jocks here until we get it right. You can take your daughter home.”

  Georgina disappeared back inside the theater.

  Maya waited, replaying their conversation in her mind, convincing herself that Georgina was probably telling the truth. It was a gut feeling. But Maya believed her.

  “Maya?”

  Maya spun around to see Sandra approaching.

  “Sandra, what are you doing here?”

  “I got a text from my son to come by and pick him up after rehearsal.”

  “Well, he should be out any second. Ms. Callis is letting most of the cast go for the night,” Maya said.

  Students began filing out of the auditorium and out the door to the parking lot. Maya and Sandra waited patiently for their kids, but after what seemed like an interminable and awkward wait, with the two mothers ignoring what had happened at the docks the night before, they decided to head back inside to find them.

  Georgina was now onstage, yelling at the boys, who were still sadly messing up her intricate choreography. In the otherwise empty auditorium, both Maya and Sandra saw at the exact same time, two students near the back row, in a shadowed corner, locked in an embrace, passionately making out.

  Maya had to squint to get a better look, but it wasn’t hard to identify her daughter, Vanessa, as one half of the head-over-heels-in-lust young couple. She turned to Sandra. “Is that—?”

  “Yes,” Sandra sighed. “That’s my son.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The South Portland High School’s production of Hello, Dolly! roared onto the stage in the 250-seat auditorium the following evening, full of unbridled energy and an infectious spirit. At least, that was how Sandra would have described it if she were writing a review. The cast appeared to be having such a good time the few noticeable mistakes that occurred throughout were forgivable, such as Dolly singing “Put
on your Monday clothes” instead of “Sunday clothes,” or when one of the tap-dancing waiters tripped and fell into the boy playing the maître d’, or when her own son Ryan went blank on his lines at one point in the second act and had to be prompted by his costar and current girlfriend apparently, Maya’s daughter, Vanessa.

  Sandra sat in the front row, cheering the kids on as loudly as she could as the official Wallage representative since Stephen was in DC and Jack had an away game. She even led the standing ovation during the final bows before the curtain fell and the lights went up. She resisted the urge to run backstage with a bouquet of flowers and dole out universal praise to everyone in the cast. Ryan had given her strict instructions not to cause a scene, which, as a proud mother, she was prone to do. Instead, she waited in the hallway outside the auditorium for Ryan to wash off his makeup and get back into his street clothes. All he wanted to do to celebrate opening night was go out for a pizza. Sandra had encouraged Ryan to invite the entire cast, her treat, but he had declined the offer, wanting something a little more low-key, which in her mind meant a more intimate evening with his brand-new girlfriend. So she was hardly surprised when Ryan finally showed up with Vanessa hanging off him, clutching his hand.

  The night before, when both Sandra and Maya had caught their kids making out together in the back of the theater, they had tried playing it cool, pretending not to be surprised or bothered by the fact that their kids were officially an item.

  “You were great!” Sandra cooed. “Both of you!”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Wallage,” Vanessa said, beaming.

  “I was a disaster! I can’t believe I forgot my lines outside of the Harmonia Gardens at the top of Act Two!” Ryan wailed.

  “Oh, honey, I didn’t even notice,” Sandra lied.

  Ryan threw his hands up in the air. “Everybody noticed! Didn’t you hear people in the audience laughing?”

  Vanessa kissed his cheek. “Nobody cared, because you were so handsome and charming.”