Page 84 of Half Baked

“What?No!” I exclaimed in indignation. “Why?”

“Oh, it was on account of the demonstration you did with that hot detective.”

“Noah?” I asked before I could stop myself. “What about it?”

If she caught my familiarity with Noah, she didn’t comment. “She said you were vulgar and disrupted the meeting, and she single-handedly kicked Deidre out of the group. It was totally against the rules. She’s supposed to run it by the membership committee, but she didn’t. Almost everyone is upset. Even the members who usually fall in line.”

Anger simmered under my skin. How dare Evelyn treat my aunt that way?

“Does she realize how ill Deidre is?” I demanded. “If she found out in one of her clear moments, it wouldkillher.”

“Everly doesn’t care. She’s just plain evil.”

No one was just plain evil, but then I thought about Martin Schroeder and amended the thought to veryfewpeople were plain evil.

“Believe it or not,” I said, forcing myself to remain calm, “that’s not why I’m asking about her. I had no idea she’d kicked Aunt Deidre out.”

“Well…the woman’s onmypoop list, so if you want any dirt on her, I’ll tell you what I know.”

Noah sat up straighter.

“This probably seems random,” I said, “but I’ve been talking to people who knew my mom. I knew her just as my mother, and I’m trying to better understand who she was as a person.”

“Oh, that’s sweet, Maddie. I can tell you anything you want to know about her, but what does that have to do with Everly?”

“Well, while talking to people, it’s come to my attention that Everly didn’t care for my mother very much. I wondered if it had something to do with my mom being president of the women’s club for a while.”

“Your mother was an amazing woman,” she said. “So good for the group. The best leader we’d had in ages, and in all honesty, no one who’s come after her has been as dedicated and altruistic. The bylaws state that a president can only be in office for two three-year terms, but Everly always manages put a puppet in the presidency during the years she’s biding her time, waiting to be the official president again. But members still talk about how wonderful your mother was and I think it drives Everly bat poop crazy.”

“She was an amazing woman,” I agreed, only my already complicated feelings about my mother had grown even more complicated.

“It was such a shame when she stepped down,” Connie said with a sigh. “There were all sorts of rumors swirling about. And, of course, many of them centered on Everly since she took over.”

“Everly replaced my mom?”

“In the middle of the term too,” she said with a tut. “It was just so sudden. I’ll never forget it. Your mother was running the meeting just like usual, but when she got to new business, she said she was stepping down due to personal reasons and forfeiting to the president-elect, Everly Barton.”

I glanced at Noah, who was looking up from his phone at me. “Do you know what those personal reasons were?” I asked.

“No. Rumors were flying, of course. People halfway joked that Everly, who had wanted to be president desperately, had found something on her and blackmailed her to quit.”

“Do you think that’s true?” I asked, my blood running cold.

“Of course not. What in the world could Everly have found on Andrea? She was the sweetest woman you’d ever meet.”

The look in Noah’s eyes said he knew what Everly probably had on her. We were in agreement there. “How soon before my mother’s murder did she step down?”

“About three months before.”

Now, I was convinced Everly knew.

“So what were the rumors?” I asked.

“Oh, stupid stuff. Like Andrea was teaching subversive material in her English classes, and Everly was trying to get the board of education to fire her. And then there was one about her giving you favoritism.”

“I wasn’t even in her class,” I protested.

“It was all nonsense,” Connie said. “There was no basis for any of the rumors, but like I said, it was all so sudden, and Andrea’s explanation was so vague, and well…nature abhors a vacuum. People had to come up with a reason for her sudden departure. No one ever believed any of it, mind you.”

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