Murder at the PTA Read online

  “Listen, I’d appreciate it if you and Jack kept mum about all this. I don’t want it getting out that Kevin was mixed up with drugs. He’s been struggling a lot lately, especially since his mom died, and . . . well, he’s been applying to colleges, and I really don’t want this destroying his reputation,” Joel said in a desperate tone.

  “Of course,” Sandra said.

  Jack nodded in agreement, not quite knowing what to say.

  Sandra noticed the coffee cup Joel clutched in his right hand. “It looks like you need a refill. Let us go get you one.”

  Joel stared down at his empty cup. “Thank you. I could use the caffeine. It’s going to be a long night.”

  Sandra glanced over at Coach Cooper. “Coach?”

  He shook his head. “I’m good, thank you. I should be getting home. You hang in there, buddy. It’s all going to be fine.”

  Coach Cooper grabbed Joel in a bear hug and held him in his grasp as Joel dissolved into tears. Sandra felt awkward watching this raw moment between the two men, so she gently took Jack by the arm and led him down the hallway toward the cafeteria.

  As they walked, Sandra turned to her son. “Did you know Kevin was taking opioids?”

  Jack vigorously shook his head. “No. I didn’t have a clue!”

  “You guys are close. Have you noticed any changes in his behavior lately?”

  “Yeah, he’s been really depressed for a while now.”

  “Do you think it has to do with his mother’s passing last year?”

  “No . . . I mean, maybe a little, but I think a lot of it has to do with Tara Jackson dumping him last semester.”

  “Who’s Tara Jackson?”

  “Just one of the hottest girls at school. Everyone calls her Beyoncé because she looks exactly like her and always sings lead in the show choir. Kevin was, like, totally in love with her, and they dated for a few months, but then she got bored and moved on. Kevin was so devastated.”

  “Enough to take opioids?”

  Jack shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe . . .”

  They rounded the corner into the cafeteria, where Sandra bought two cups of coffee, one for Joel and one for herself, and a candy bar and bottled water for Jack. As they checked out, Sandra noticed Cathy Langford, a nurse in blue scrubs and a tan knitted sweater to keep herself warm, sitting at a table by herself reading something on her iPad. Sandra had gone to high school with Cathy, and although they would run into each other occasionally at school events, since Ryan and Cathy’s daughter, Amelia, were in the same class, they weren’t particularly close. Still, Sandra thought it would be rude if she didn’t at least say hello.

  Jack was ahead of her, munching on his Twix bar, and was already ambling back down the hall toward the waiting area when Sandra stopped at Cathy’s table.

  “How are you, Cathy?”

  She looked up from her iPad, surprised. “Sandra, what are you doing here? Don’t tell me it’s one of your boys . . . ?”

  “No, they’re both fine,” she said, pausing to consider just how she should respond. “I’m just here to see a friend.”

  She wasn’t about to break her promise to Joel, but she suspected Cathy would find out about Kevin Metcalf soon enough. It just wasn’t going to come from her.

  “I’m sorry I missed your welcome speech at the PTA meeting tonight. I’ve been here working a double shift,” Cathy said, sighing.

  “You didn’t miss much,” Sandra said.

  Cathy smiled tightly as if she knew Sandra was lying and was already fully aware of how her first meeting as PTA president had ended in disaster.

  Sandra casually glanced at Cathy’s iPad, which she had just set down on the table, and saw the blaring logo of the Dirty Laundry site on the screen along with the top headline about Senator Wallage and his alleged sexual harassment scandal.

  Cathy immediately noticed her faux pas and hastily clicked out of the site and went back to her home screen. She scooped the device up off the table and clutched it to her chest.

  There was an awkward moment, as neither woman knew what to say.

  Finally, Cathy could no longer take the tension. “Well, I promise I will make the next meeting.”

  “I’ll see you there then,” Sandra said with a forced smile before heading out the door and scurrying down the hall to catch up with her son, her high heels clicking loudly on the linoleum floor of the hospital.

  Sandra had a sinking feeling the Dirty Laundry site wasn’t going anywhere, and given more time, the latest story would just gain traction and hundreds perhaps thousands of more clicks. And despite the fact that the scandal about her husband was a complete fabrication, the fallout from it was only going to get worse.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Maya Kendrick sat behind the wheel of her Chevy Volt, which was parked across the street from an opulent two-story house in a quiet residential neighborhood just outside Portland. The lights were on inside the house, and she could see him every so often pass by a window, in the kitchen popping open a cold bottle of beer, settling down in the living room to watch a football game. He didn’t appear to be going anywhere, and that was bad news for Maya. She had been staking out Cyrus Farrow’s house while his wife was out of town, patiently waiting for her subject to make a move, any move, to meet his mistress who lived across town.

  Jessica Farrow, Cyrus’s long-suffering wife, was Maya’s client and had recently hired Maya to find proof of her husband’s infidelity so she could use it against him when she officially filed for divorce in the coming weeks.

  But Cyrus had been a good boy, at least this week, just going to and from work at a downtown Portland bank. It seemed implausible that he wouldn’t go at some point to meet Maggie MacDonald, one of the wispy young tellers fresh out of college who he had jumped to hire after meeting her and her size D cups. Maya was starting to suspect that Cyrus somehow knew she was following him and watching him, and so he was purposefully behaving like a loyal and loving husband.

  Jessica was scheduled to be out of town only until the end of the week, and if she returned and Maya still had no pictures of Cyrus with his secret girlfriend, she fully expected to be fired.

  Maya saw movement inside the house. Cyrus was standing up with his cell phone clamped to his ear. Maya put down her half-eaten roast beef sub.

  Maya’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Vanessa, who was sitting next to her, in the passenger’s seat, looked up from her iPad. “Is he on the move?”

  “He’s talking to someone on the phone.”

  “Do you think it’s Maggie?”

  “I’m not sure. I can’t exactly afford to hire some brainiac IT guy to help me tap his phone.”

  Vanessa chuckled and went back to her iPad.

  “How’s the studying going?” Maya asked, glancing over at her daughter.

  Vanessa shrugged. “Okay, I guess. I hate chemistry. I’m never going to use it in life, so what’s the point?”

  “You don’t know that. Keep at it.”

  “I’m so going to fail this test tomorrow.”

  “Positive thoughts.”

  Maya watched Cyrus through the house’s big bay windows pace back and forth, looking like he was cajoling someone on the other end of his phone.

  It could just be Jessica calling from Chicago, where she was on a business trip. Or, if luck was on her side, it might be Maggie wanting to see him. After a few minutes, Cyrus ended the call and just stood in the middle of the living room, staring into space as the football game, which was in its final minutes, played out on the giant wall screen behind him.

  Finally, he sat back down on the couch to finish watching the game.

  Maya sighed loudly.

  “Not going anywhere?” Vanessa asked.

  “Doesn’t look like it,” Maya said, frowning.

  She felt bad dragging her daughter out on a school night to join her on a stakeout. It screamed of bad parenting. But Maya’s partner in her private detective agency, Frances Turner, was nearly eight months pr
egnant and was so big she was about to burst. In the last two months, Frances had had to scale back dramatically on her workload, leaving Maya to pick up the slack. They couldn’t afford to turn down any clients, so Maya had taken it all on, working fourteen- to fifteen-hour days to cover all their active cases. And this night, after leaving Vanessa home one too many times alone, she insisted they have some mother-daughter bonding time, even if that meant sitting together in her Chevy Volt, spying on a cheating husband.

  Maya was incredibly proud of her daughter, who was very social and funny and playful, like her father, but also tough and no-nonsense, like her mother, who had been hardened by her years in law enforcement before she quit and started her own PI firm.

  Raising Vanessa had been easy and joyful, that is up until she reached the point where she started gushing with her friends about boys. There had been one who came sniffing around recently, trying to get Vanessa’s attention. He was a badass rocker dude type with a lot of tattoos. Maya had taken an instant dislike to him and, after investigating him a little, found out he had been arrested twice for shoplifting. She managed to put the kibosh on that one. But boys were like ants, once you squashed one, there were bound to be more around.

  “Did you hear from Frances? How did her ultrasound go today?” Vanessa asked, bored with staring at numbers and symbols on her iPad.

  “Everything looks good apparently. She sounded very upbeat.”

  “Good. How long will she be out on maternity leave?”

  “We haven’t talked about it, but I assume at least a couple of months.”

  Vanessa nodded and quietly gazed out the window.

  “What?” Maya asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Come on, what?”

  “That means you’ll be working weekends for the foreseeable future.”

  “Unfortunately yes. We can’t afford to lose any cases. Why?”

  Vanessa shrugged.

  She didn’t have to answer.

  Maya knew exactly what her daughter was hinting at.

  “We’ll go see him the minute I get a break. I promise.”

  She was talking about her ex-husband, Maya’s father, Max, who at the moment was serving five to ten years in the state penitentiary. Max Kendrick had been a police captain in the Portland division before getting caught up in a widespread corruption scandal. He was indicted on Vanessa’s thirteenth birthday and convicted on his and Maya’s fifteenth wedding anniversary. Max always had good timing.

  Maya took Vanessa to see him as much as she could, but it was an hour-and-a-half drive each way to the prison, and it took another hour to be processed and admitted, and then they could visit with him for only thirty minutes, forty-five if they were lucky. It was exhausting, and Maya found it difficult to put on a happy face and pretend everything was peachy keen when they were with him. Since his incarceration, Maya’s life had become topsy-turvy. She had resigned from the force to avoid the judgment and angry faces of her fellow cops, started her own business with Frances, and kept the bills paid and food on the table after their nest egg had been wiped out by legal fees. She was working to make the best of a very bad situation, and she knew her daughter was hanging her hopes on the myriad of appeals that had been filed on behalf of her father, appeals that Maya knew in her gut would be turned down because the cold, hard fact was her ex-husband was guilty of every crime and rightfully convicted. He just needed to keep his head down and serve his time. But she couldn’t exactly say that to her daughter, who even as she saw him in an orange jumpsuit and with his wrists handcuffed, still held him up on a pedestal.

  “Mom, he’s leaving!” Vanessa cried.

  Maya whipped around to see Cyrus, struggling to put on his coat, halfway to his car, which was parked in the driveway.

  She started the Chevy Volt, thankful her choice of vehicle was one that made zero noise, and pulled out behind Cyrus as he drove off down the street.

  “You think he’s going to see Maggie?” Vanessa asked.

  “Fingers crossed.”

  Maya silently prayed that was exactly where he was going because if she got the evidence Jessica Farrow so desperately craved, then her wealthy client would surely cut a nice check for a job well done by early next week.

  Vanessa was now caught up in tailing Cyrus and set her iPad down on her lap. When they reached a stoplight, Maya noticed what was on her screen.

  “You are not reading your chemistry notes, Vanessa!”

  Vanessa looked down guiltily at her screen and then grabbed the iPad and hid it from her mother’s view. “I’m sorry.”

  She had been scrolling through the Dirty Laundry website.

  “I told you I don’t like you reading that filth.”

  “I know, but everyone at school is texting about the latest headline. It’s so juicy!”

  Maya didn’t want to ask but couldn’t deny she was just a little bit curious. Luckily her daughter was a gossip, again like her father, so she knew she wouldn’t have to wait long to find out.

  “The new PTA president, the wife of that senator, was in the middle of her welcome speech when the news hit that her husband is embroiled in some kind of sexual harassment hush-money scandal.”

  “What’s her name again?”

  “Sandra Wallage.”

  “That’s right,” Maya said.

  “I met her once when she came to a football game. Her son Jack is on the team. I was sitting next to her on the bleachers with some of my friends. This was way before. . .” Vanessa’s voice trailed off.

  “Way before what?”

  Vanessa had no desire to elaborate any further. “Nothing. Anyway, she seemed like a very nice lady.”

  “Well, I remember her from way back when we were in high school together, and she didn’t seem so nice then.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, the Sandra I remember was very stuck-up and cliquish, and she was like the mean-girl boss to a bunch of other girls . . . you know . . . the queen bee, if that’s what you still call them.”

  “Not really, but I get the picture.”

  “Get back to studying for your chemistry test.”

  Vanessa sighed and clicked out of the Dirty Laundry site.

  And Maya breathed a sigh of relief as she followed Cyrus off the highway and into the town of Scarborough, where the pretty, buxom bank teller Maggie MacDonald resided.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The following evening, Frances Turner pretended to be stunned when six of her girlfriends, not including Maya and her daughter, Vanessa, stood eagerly in the living room to yell “Surprise!” when she entered Maya’s modest single-level home in a slightly run-down working-class neighborhood still a few years away from gentrification.

  Frances was a trained police officer and licensed private investigator. It was her job to know what to expect and what she might walk into at all times. Maya had tried keeping the secret, sneaking around, planning all the baby-shower details, and Frances at least attempted to stay in the dark, but there were just too many obvious clues. Like the adorable stuffed elephant with the price tag still on it that she had spotted in Maya’s closet one night while hanging up her coat when she stopped by to discuss a case; the unusual number of texts she noticed that kept popping up on Maya’s cell phone at the office from a few girlfriends Frances went to high school with as well as a couple of women who worked with her in the police department back in the day; and then, the most suspicious of all signs, Maya pressuring her into coming over for dinner on this particular night, the same night of the week that Maya always stayed home to watch her hero and role model Mariska Hargitay collar the dangerous sex fiends marauding New York on a new episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Why was she so insistent that Frances come over on this night, the one night France’s BFF, Abby, had off from work? It didn’t take a detective, and yes, Frances was one, to solve this mystery.

  Maya could see Frances trying her best to act genuinely shocked and overjoyed as the women rushed at her
with hugs and kisses on the cheek as Frances marveled at the large pile of exquisitely wrapped baby gifts that were on Maya’s coffee table.

  “You got me. I sure did not see this coming . . . ,” Frances lied, shaking her head, clutching her heart, perhaps overdoing it just a smidge.

  Vanessa arrived from the kitchen, handing the expectant mother-to-be a virgin cocktail, a Shirley Temple, before escorting her over to the couch, where she sat down and took center stage to gab with her girlfriends and bring everyone up to speed on her progress.

  “I just want this little bugger out of me already. I’m tired of carrying him around,” Frances joked.

  “He doesn’t look so little from here,” a zaftig, wide-eyed African American woman with gorgeous red nails said with a smile, raising her half-empty wineglass. “And we’ve all seen his daddy!”

  “Yes, if he’s as big as his father, I’m terrified he’s going to rip me apart when I finally give birth!” Frances wailed.

  “You’ll be fine. That’s what the drugs are for,” Maya said, laughing.

  Vanessa scooted back to the kitchen to check on the hors d’oeuvres she had baking in the oven. She had volunteered to help Maya throw the party because she was fond of her aunt Frances, even though she wasn’t really her aunt. Plus it gave her a night off from her mother hounding her about her schoolwork.

  After about an hour of gossip, Frances began opening her gifts, most of which were wrapped in blue paper, since Frances already knew she was having a boy. There was a polished gold first-year frame for monthly pictures; an adorable long-sleeve romper that read on the front Ladies, I Have Arrived; a package of drool bibs in assorted colors; some teething toys; and, most practically, in addition to the stuffed elephant, a baby diaper tote bag from Maya. Even though Frances despised being the center of attention, and on more than one occasion had scoffed at the idea of anyone throwing her a baby shower, Maya knew the gifts from her friends would be a lifesaver since neither parent of the soon-to-be-born boy was pulling down a big income to be in any kind of position to buy a lot of baby supplies. They would both be grateful for this very generous head start.