Murder at the PTA Luncheon Page 11

“Well, it sure better be soon. We’re not used to things like this happening at the Club. Not in Hancock, either, for that matter. I’ve lived here all my life and I’ve never seen anything like it. Don’t think anything like it has happened since the Revolutionary War.”

  “Since the Revolutionary War?” Kathleen repeated, giving an involuntary look at the murals around her.

  “That’s right, young lady. A grocer in town then sold the British bags of rotten potatoes, with just a few good ones on top to disguise the contents. Made money and helped the war effort for the Colonists. Good thinking, I’ve always thought. Seems the British didn’t agree. They killed him one night for revenge.”

  “How do they know the British killed him?”

  “Stands to reason. He was killed when he lit a candle to take up to bed with him. Seems the top was a wick surrounded by wax, but hidden an inch or so down was gunpowder surrounded by paraffin. Poor fellow splattered all over the walls of his own bedroom. Always thought it was an appropriate way to die after what he did: hid the bad with the good, right?” He chuckled gleefully.

  Kathleen thought the whole story a little morbid, but cops don’t have the luxury of getting queasy over two-hundred-year-old murders.

  “There’s a picture of that grocer on the mural that’s over the door to the Club Room. That’s our bar. Not many people see that part of the picture. It’s too high up. But me, I just like knowing that it’s there. But I don’t like having a real murder at the Club—not at all. Always telling people that this town is changing and not for the better. Lots of New Yorkers moving in. Businessmen in all sorts of businesses. And look what happens. First that Jan Ick is murdered at a PTA lunch of some sort, and now Paula’s killed right here at the Club. What is Hancock coming to?”

  “I don’t know, sir,” Kathleen replied, wondering why she was calling him “sir.” Just because everyone else did was no reason for her to continue the tradition.

  “Well, it’s your job to find out, young lady. I’ll be on my way.” And off he marched.

  “Old windbag,” Kathleen muttered.

  Brett was studying the map. “Well, this won’t take much time. The grounds are extensive, but except for the golf course, everything is pretty much right here. Let’s start at the pool, shall we?” And he opened the nearby door to the right, walked through it, and ran smack into another person coming from the opposite direction.

  “Mrs. Henshaw. I’m sorry. I didn’t see you coming.”

  “Detective Fortesque. What a surprise. Oh, you’re here to see where Paula died, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. Kathleen and I were just on our way to the pool.”

  “Kathleen?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, she was working downtown when I was at your home. Let me introduce you. This is Officer Kathleen Somerville, Mrs. Henshaw. Kathleen, this is—”

  “Of course, you must be Susan Henshaw. I’m very pleased to meet you. Brett says you were a big help in giving him background information.”

  Susan said all the right things, even offered to show both of them the pool and the place where Paula had died, but all the time she was watching the policewoman. This was not quite the image she had in mind when Brett mentioned the colleague busy down at the local police office. Not to be sexist, but she hadn’t imagined a woman. But she could deal with that if the woman were ordinary. This woman? This woman could be on the cover of some magazine, not running around investigating a murder. Now, that was sexist. And stupid of her. Shape up, Susan, she lectured herself, turning her back on Detective Fortesque and concentrating on Officer Somerville. It’s time to stop acting childish.

  “Officer Somerville …” she began her maturity campaign.

  “Why don’t you call me Kathleen?”

  “Thanks, I will. Do you need to see anything besides where Paula lay?”

  “We’d like to see most of it: the clubhouse, the pool. Actually, everything but the golf course.”

  It didn’t take long, and when they were done, the three of them sat down at a table near the spot where Paula Porter had died.

  “I’m thirsty. Can I get you all something?” Susan offered, once again the hostess.

  “Let me,” Brett offered.

  “Actually, that would be great. Tell them at the bar inside the door what you want and have it charged to my account. You’ll have to do it,” she added, when she saw him hesitate. “Nothing here is on a cash basis.”

  “How is your investigation going?” she asked Kathleen, more to make conversation than from genuine interest. “I’m sorry,” she interrupted herself. “I should know that you can’t talk about it.”

  “There’s really very little to talk about at this point, Susan. We’re collecting information, visiting the places where the murders took place, trying to get impressions of the people involved.”

  “Well, you’re here now. Does that mean you’ve been to the Ameses’?”

  “Yes, we spent the morning there. And we went to see Mrs. Voos also,” she added, deciding that if Brett had the feeling that every step of the way they were being followed by phone among the members of the PTA, then there was no harm in talking freely about their travels.

  “What did you think about them?”

  “Well …” This was moving beyond simple curiosity, Kathleen thought.

  “They’re interesting women, aren’t they?” Susan was answering her own question.

  Again Kathleen didn’t know how to respond. Was Susan trying to direct her attention to the PTA’s co-presidents because she wanted them considered as prime suspects? Did she have some reason for disliking Charline and Julia that was so serious that she’d be happy to see them arrested for murder? Or was she trying to deflect attention from her own guilt? Maybe she should start asking the questions.

  “Is it usual for the same people to run the PTA for two years in a row?” she asked, thinking of Lars Voos’s contention that it was his wife’s love of children that made her want the job. Somehow that didn’t seem right to Kathleen, and she remembered Brett’s disbelief. “Didn’t anyone else want the jobs?”

  “Oh, someone else wanted them, but Julia and Charline made damn sure that no one else would get them.”

  “Oh?” Kathleen kept her voice noncommittal and prayed: please go on. It was these girlish confidences that sometimes led to information.

  “Oh, it was constitutional, but it was rotten, nonetheless.”

  “Constitutional?”

  “The rules were followed,” Susan admitted. “Even Julia and Charline knew that they had to follow the rules.”

  “Could you explain what you’re talking about?” Kathleen asked, beginning to doubt that she was going to hear anything worthwhile.

  “Our local PTA constitution says that there’s to be an election of officers each year, with nominations for each office coming from a nominating committee.”

  “So the nominating committee picks a slate, is that it?” Kathleen asked.

  “Yes, but—”

  “And who runs against that slate?”

  “Well, no one, really. The slate the nominating committee picks is voted on at a general meeting of the PTA, and of course, the people on the slate get the jobs.”

  “There’s no real election,” Kathleen asserted.

  “Not really, but you’re missing the point. The point is that the nominating committee was fixed,” Susan replied, realizing as she spoke that she had gone too far.

  “You’re telling me that Julia and Charline fixed the nominating committee so that they would be co-presidents next year? Why would they want those jobs so much?” she continued, when Susan nodded yes.

  “Well, I don’t know. And, of course, if Paula knew, she can’t tell us now.”

  “Paula Porter? The woman who died here? What does she have to do with all this? Was she running for an office?”

  “No,” Susan answered. “She was the head of the nominating committee.”

  “And as chairperson of the nominating committee s
he had the power to pick the officers? By herself?”

  “No, but as chairperson she was responsible for choosing her committee members—of course they’re all members of the PTA—and some of our less-involved members would have voted for whoever they were told was the best person for the job—whoever the chairperson told them was the best person, that is.”

  “Julia Ames and Charline Voos.”

  “Yes.”

  “Instead of?” Kathleen asked.

  “Instead of?” Susan repeated the question, knowing perfectly well what was meant, but not wanting to answer.

  “Who else wanted to be officers?” Kathleen asked patiently, becoming interested because of Susan’s discomfort. She thought she could guess …

  “Ellen Cooper and myself,” Susan admitted. “We put our names in to the committee and were shocked when we weren’t picked. It’s not as though we haven’t done everything on the PTA. Between the two of us, we’ve run all the major committees. And that isn’t all that went on,” she continued. “Carol Mann told Julia Ames that she was interested in being vice-president next year—she just mentioned it one day at the Club—and within the hour Charline Voos was on the phone to her explaining that she really didn’t want that job—that there were other, more important things for her to do in the PTA. And poor Carol has such an inferiority complex that she just backed out and didn’t even turn her name in to the committee.”

  Kathleen wasn’t surprised about that. She had seen enough of Julia and Charline to guess that together they could be more than a little intimidating. But, as for this woman and Ellen: just how much did they resent being left out? And did they do anything about it?

  “Listen,” Susan went on urgently, “I really want you to understand. It’s probably all just silly, but it did hurt our feelings. Of course it’s not Paula that anyone got mad at. She wasn’t out to hurt anyone. Paula is just the type of person that other people get to do things … she was that type of person, I mean.”

  Kathleen looked out over the pool. She knew that Susan had said more than she meant to and that she wouldn’t add anything useful, just make excuses for what she had said. But was there anything in this that could explain a murder? Before she could figure out the answer to that, Brett returned with a trayful of drinks.

  “I wasn’t sure what everyone wanted, so I brought two iced teas and a Coke. Ladies first,” he offered, laying the tray before them.

  Both women took tea and left him the Coke. “Did you bring any sweetener, by any chance?” Susan asked. “They usually hand it out with the tea. And it’s usually on the tables; they must have had a party last night and everything was cleaned up.”

  “Those little packets of stuff. I forget.” He jumped up and went back to the clubhouse.

  “I hope he brings back some artificial sweetener,” Kathleen said.

  “He probably will. Around here, more people use it than sugar. They don’t even give out sugar unless you ask for it.”

  Brett returned more slowly than he had left, and he was fooling around with the little blue packets of sweetener as he approached the table.

  “Find something interesting?”

  “I was just wondering if these things could be opened and then resealed so that no one would notice.”

  “Packets of artificial sweetener?”

  Kathleen was quicker than Susan to see what he was getting at. “You mean that’s where the poison came from? Like Tylenol capsules filled with cyanide, only this time it was sugar-substitute packets?”

  “I don’t know, but it is possible.”

  “But you open the packet and add it to the tea; it’s not like pain pills that you just gulp down without looking in them,” Susan protested.

  “Cyanide is a white powder,” Brett explained.

  “Then it is possible? But does it make any difference?”

  “Sure it does. Because if the cyanide was placed directly into the tea, then it had to have been placed in it between the time that it was poured at the bar and the time when Mrs. Porter drank it. But if it was in the packet, then it could have been put in there at any time and—”

  “That means more people could have done it,” Kathleen finished for him. “Good. Nothing like more suspects rather than fewer.”

  “And just how many suspects is that exactly?” Susan asked, stirring her tea with great concentration and hoping no one could see her face.

  “Everyone at the luncheon who was also here yesterday,” Kathleen answered.

  “There could be even more,” Brett added. “It could also be anyone who put cyanide in the sweetener and who put the poison in the sandwich. We still don’t know it wasn’t someone else.”

  “But then how would the killer know who was going to get that particular sandwich or that particular packet of sweetener?”

  “Maybe he didn’t.”

  “You mean maybe we have a madman around who is killing without caring who is killed?” Susan dropped her glass of tea onto the tabletop.

  “It’s possible,” Brett answered, reaching over to mop up Susan’s spilled tea with her napkin.

  “And how will we know if the packet contained the poison?” Kathleen asked.

  “I put in a call to the lab while I was up. They’re going to get back to me.”

  “When?”

  “Right away. They have the information, but it had to be found. Seems the local police did turn in a couple of empty sweetener packets that were lying next to the body, along with everything else, for analysis …”

  “Mrs. Henshaw. Phone for Mrs. Henshaw.” The public-address system blared out over the patio.

  “That may be the answer to our question. I told them to page you.”

  “Well, then let’s get it.” She hopped up and he joined her on her way to the phone. It turned out that the call was, in fact, from the state lab, and Susan handed the receiver to Brett. He took it and listened for a minute or two. “Thanks a lot,” he said and hung up.

  “Well?” Susan asked.

  “Well, first, we’re almost certain from lab evidence that both murders were committed by the same person or persons.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I’ll explain later, but the good news is that the poison was in the packets. Let’s go back and tell Kathleen.”

  They found Kathleen and her response was the same.

  “Good news,” she said to Susan.

  “I don’t understand,” Susan replied. “Why should that be good news?”

  The two police people looked at each other before Brett answered.

  “Because if it hadn’t been in the sweetener, the murderer would have to have been you.”

  NINE

  Kathleen’s work with the narcotics unit had accustomed her to days when all three meals came through a drive-in window and had taught her to eat them quickly for whatever nourishment was available and then forget about them. Brett seemed to have picked up the same philosophy: he ate his food speedily, without talking, without paying any attention to the roomful of chattering people. When he had demolished everything edible on his tray, he stood up, dumped the contents into a waste container, and looked at Kathleen, as though he had just remembered she was there.

  She wasn’t a woman who needed constant male attention. Luckily. “Where are we going now?” she asked, her own tray of Styrofoam and cardboard following his into the trash. He smiled. “I was afraid you might be a nine-to-five person. Glad you’re not. We should take the time to look up Dr. Charles Tyrrell.”

  “The principal?”

  “Yes. He lives in Barnes, but that’s only a twenty-minute drive from here. You’ve got his telephone number in the statements the police took after the PTA lunch. Why don’t we give him a call and see if he’s going to be home this evening?”

  “Great idea. Here, let me just find it in this stuff. Look at that: right on top.”

  “There’s a phone near the rest rooms.” Brett leaned across the table and copied the information he ne
eded on a napkin. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  While he was gone, Kathleen read through the statement she had found:

  I’m Dr. Charles Tyrrell and I live at 208 Glenhaven Boulevard in Barnes, Connecticut. I’m principal of the Hancock Elementary School and I have been for nine years. I cannot tell you what a tragedy this death is. I’ve known Mrs. Ick for four years now and worked closely with her on many PTA projects. She was a wonderful woman and a good mother and, certainly, an asset to the school.

  I was sitting at the far table. The others at my table were the PTA co-presidents, Mrs. Julia Ames and Mrs. Charline Voos. I was sitting between them. There were also three of my teachers at the table: Mrs. Linda Smith, our kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Beverly Johnson, one of our first-grade teachers, and Miss Corrine DeAngelo, the art teacher. The first I knew of the tragedy was a scream—I think it was Susan Henshaw, but I’m not sure—but I know that we all rushed over to where the noise came from—and Charline Voos said to stay away and give her room, so we stood back. But Jan was lying so still and her face was so white that I think I knew then that she must be dead. No, I don’t know what could have killed her, I’m sure.

  I’d appreciate it if you would question the members of the staff of Hancock Elementary first. Not because I think they deserve preferential treatment, but because most of them have a longer way to go to get home. None of the teachers lives here in Hancock. Thank you.

  It was a most concise report, with very little information, Kathleen thought. This Dr. Tyrrell was going to be a very interesting person to interview.

  “Ready to go?”

  “You got through?”

  “Sure did. He was on his way out to a party but agreed to wait and meet with us first. I don’t know if he liked the idea, but I didn’t have to insist. He offered.

  “I’ll drive and you navigate, okay?”

  “Sure,” she agreed, getting into the car and pulling out the Connecticut map from under the seat. “I looked over Dr. Tyrrell’s statement while you were calling …”

  “Brief and to the point, wasn’t it?”

  “Just professional?” she offered.