Murder at the PTA. Lee Hollis

to enjoy their Italian feast. Before they had finished their salads, Stephen was putting down his fork to make an announcement.

      He adopted a grave face and serious tone. “I want to get this out of the way so we can have a fun weekend together, okay?”

      The boys nodded, both gnawing on large hunks of buttery garlic bread.

      Sandra braced herself.

      She knew what was coming.

      “What they are saying on that muckraking, libelous website—what’s it called again?”

      “Dirty Laundry,” Ryan answered.

      Another calculated move, Sandra thought. Of course Stephen knew the name of the site. He had probably pored over the article multiple times in order to strategize a response.

      “Right. Dirty Laundry. I want to assure all of you that there is not one word of truth to it. What they’re claiming is categorically false. It never happened. I was not having an affair, and there was no hush money. Ever. Take my word for it.”

      “You don’t have to do this, Dad. We believe you,” Jack said.

      Ryan nodded in agreement. He couldn’t talk because he was busy chewing, his mouth full of garlic bread.

      “Actually I do have to do this, Jack. Because someone is out there questioning my honor, and that’s not okay with me. And I couldn’t stand the fact that my family might take any of that trash seriously.”

      But the boys didn’t seem to care. They knew in their hearts their father would never do anything so dumb. But as Jack and Ryan continued to reassure Stephen that they loved him and had his back, Sandra quite noticeably refrained from comment.

      Mercifully the topic quickly changed to Jack’s upcoming football game against a fierce rival team the next day and Ryan’s audition for the fall musical, which he felt went pretty well. He would know if he snagged the lead on Monday and was feeling nervous. But Sandra was confident he would be cast because he was the most talented actor in the entire school. Yes, there was a little motherly bias in her opinion, but the kid was good.

      Sandra offered to clean up, since Stephen and the boys had cooked, so they retreated to the living room to watch a horror movie on Netflix. It gave Sandra the opportunity to decompress from the day and be left alone with her thoughts. After loading the dishwasher and wiping down the stovetop with some surface cleaner and a rag, she disappeared upstairs, where she quickly brushed her teeth, undressed, and crawled into bed. It was only a few minutes after ten o’clock, but the movie was in the midst of its harrowing climax and would be over soon, and Stephen would be coming up to bed.

      She heard the suspenseful score swell and assumed the end credits were rolling. The TV was shut off, and she faintly heard Stephen saying good night to the boys as he came up the stairs. She could hear him coming, so she closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep. He quietly walked into the room and headed into the master bath, closing the door. She knew his routine. He would be in there for ten minutes. She buried her head deep into the pillow.

      When he finally emerged, probably shirtless and in his silk pajama bottoms, he knelt down and kissed her forehead, waiting to see if she would respond.

      She didn’t.

      He circled around to the other side of the bed and climbed in, slipping under the covers and wrapping his strong arm around her waist, pulling her closer to him.

      “You still awake?” he whispered in her ear.

      She moaned and shifted her body, hoping that would be enough to discourage him.

      He started nuzzling the back of her neck.

      He was not about to give up.

      She didn’t have a choice.

      Sandra opened her eyes and turned around to face him. He had the look of an expectant puppy hoping if it was good it might get a bone or a chew toy.

      “I’m not there yet,” Sandra said.

      The color drained from his face, and he nodded. “I understand.”

      He backed away from her, moving slowly, closer to the edge of his own side of the bed.

      “I didn’t do it, Sandra. I want you to know that,” he muttered.

      “Yes, Stephen, you’ve made that quite clear to me and the boys tonight, but you must realize how difficult it is for me to so readily accept your adamant denial.”

      “I know . . . ,” he said, a twinge of guilt in his voice.

      She could have left it at that, but she wasn’t feeling generous. “Since it’s happened before . . .”

      She waited for his response. As a politician, he was an expert at putting out an appropriate response.

      But this time, he had nothing. After a few moments, she could hear him turn over so they were now facing away from each other, back to back.

      “Good night, honey,” he said quietly.

      “Good night, Stephen.”

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      The numbers were just not adding up. After investing in a monthly budget app for her phone, Maya thought she would finally be able to get a handle on her mounting bills, but the math didn’t lie. She slumped over, frustrated, at her kitchen table, staring at the final number. She was going to be more than two hundred dollars short this month.

      It had been a struggle ever since Frances announced she was pregnant. Maya was working double time to make up for Frances’s frequent absences, but they were still splitting the money the agency took in, fifty-fifty. Maya simply could not imagine suggesting that she take a bigger cut from their monthly haul for doing more work because she knew Frances was having a tough time financially too. Frances’s insurance covered only a percentage of her medical bills, plus she had invested a lot of money in a series of Lamaze classes to help prepare her for the childbirth.

      So Maya had decided to just keep her mouth shut and continue carrying the burden of running their detective agency and handling the majority of their caseload. She didn’t tell Frances that they had already lost three top-paying clients to bigger firms because they wanted faster results, or that the office rent check had bounced and she had to do some fast-talking to avoid an eviction notice. The landlord was eager to boot them out because then he could raise the rent for a business that was more flushed with cash. It took a lot of cajoling and pleading for him to give Maya an extra week, but eventually he begrudgingly agreed.

      Maya decided to crunch the numbers again. Maybe in her haste, she had typed a few wrong digits that might have thrown everything off. She carefully went through the list of bills—mortgage, health insurance, utilities, credit cards (at least the ones that hadn’t been canceled yet), groceries, car payment. When she got to the end, scratching off the reserve cash she had listed under miscellaneous expenses in order to squeeze out a few more dollars to balance the budget with, she realized her instinct had been right. She had added up the numbers wrong. She wasn’t two hundred dollars short. She was two hundred and seventy-six dollars short.

      Maya dropped her head down on the table. With the way things were going, she had no clue how she was going to be able to keep the business afloat until after Frances returned from maternity leave. And at this point, she still didn’t know how much time Frances was planning on taking. Two months? Three months? Four? She felt like she was drowning in quicksand with no fallen tree branch in sight to grab hold of in order to pull herself out.

      She was so wrapped up in her own internal drama, she didn’t hear Vanessa stroll into the kitchen and open the fridge to get some water. They had long cut out buying the bottled stuff because it had gotten way too expensive, but Frances had given them a water pitcher filter for Christmas last year, and it had luckily saved a lot of money.

      Vanessa took a glass down from the cupboard and poured from the pitcher. “You look stressed, Mom.”

      “No,