The Merchant of Menace jj-10

by Jill Churchill

  “Your mother was very pretty, Pet," Jane said. Pet nodded solemnly.

  The next pictures were badly done snapshots. The newlywed couple posed by a presumably new car with palm trees in the background. Sitting on a beach and all but invisible under a bigumbrella. Playing with a dog in a tiny fenced yard. In every picture, Pet's mom was laughing and Sam was looking serious. No wonder they hadn't gotten along. There was just the slightest suggestion of "the floozy with a heart of gold" in Pet's mom's appearance. Not trashy, just a little more voluptuous and carefree than most women. But then, she was young, too.

  “This is my favorite," Pet said, turning to a new page.

  It was her mother in a maternity dress, standing sideways with a great, bulging midsection.

  “That's me," Pet said with a giggle. It was the first time Jane had heard Pet sound genuinely happy. "That was the night before I was born."

  “That's a great picture. I have one like that, too. The day before Mike was born. What was your mother's name, Pet?"

  “Patricia. Like me. Only she was called Patty Sue.”

  The rest of the pictures told a story that Pet probably wouldn't understand until she was older. The pictures of Patty Sue with Pet, and there were a lot of them, were the old Patty Sue, laughing and happy. Those with Sam and Patty Sue alone were serious. A filmed history of a marriage falling apart. Someday Jane might have to look through her photos and see if her own marriage had gone to pieces in the photo record.

  Or maybe she wouldn't.

  The last picture was of Pet's third birthday. She was sitting on Patty Sue's lap with a birthday cake in front of them and icing all over Pet's face. Patty Sue was wiping away tears of laughter. Sam wasn't in the picture.

  “Pet, your scrapbook is wonderful. You're so lucky to have all these pictures and I'm sure you'll treasure them all your life," Jane said.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Jeffry," Pet said, closing the album and putting it in a plastic bag that protected it. Just then Todd, still playing at the computer in the den, called to her and she excused herself quite properly and left the room.

  Too bad Pet hadn't gotten to have her mother a little longer, Jane thought. She might have absorbed more of the woman's sense of fun and frivolity. Pet did need to be tickled sometimes and Jane guessed that Patty Sue had been a tickling kind of mother.

  “Sam, I have to get home," she said, going into the kitchen. "I'm worried about my water pipes. The wind's picked up and that'll make the cold worse."

  “I'll drive you home," he said, closing the door on the dishwasher. The kitchen was spotless.

  “No, it's only three houses away. No use you going out, too.”

  Luckily, the mild fight to get Todd away from the computer game and into his outerwear prevented any extended good-byes or anything more specific than Sam's vague remark about doing this again someday. Todd raced away up the street, while Jane followed as quickly as she could without risking a fall.

  As she came in the kitchen door, Todd greeted her with a grim face. "Mom, old thing, you're not going to like this.”

  “Not the pipes!”

  He nodded. "I went in the guest bathroom and heard a noise in the basement. Water everywhere."

  “Perfect! Just perfect! Sunday night with broken pipes!"

  “Go ahead, Mom. Say 'shit.' "

  “Shit!”

  It didn't help. But it made Todd yelp with laughter.

  “Mrs. Pargeter, may I speak with Bruce." After a short pause, Bruce answered.

  “Bruce, it's Jane Jeffry. I hate myself for asking this — I really know all about keeping pipes from freezing and I left the water running, but Katie didn't know and turned it off and what I don't know is where the little handle to turn the flow off is. I've been slogging around in the basement—" She could hear her voice rising to an hysterical squeak but couldn't help it.

  “I'll find the shut-off valve for you," Bruce said calmly. "Can't fix the pipe tonight though."

  “But we'll have other water, right?"

  “Maybe. I'll have to see the system.”

  Jane stomped around, looking for another flashlight as hers was already going dim and she was afraid to turn on the basement light. Water and electricity didn't go together well, she'd heard. Bruce arrived quickly and seemed quite confident that it was no big deal, even though he hadn't looked over the situation yet.

  “Why's it dark down here?" he asked at the head of the basement stairs. Jane started to explain her understanding of electricity, but Bruce laughed, flipped on the basement light and went down the steps. He was back in less than five minutes.

  “You're lucky. That guest bath is an addition to the original plan and has its own shut-off valve. I'll get back in the morning and fix it."

  “I have water everywhere else? What a relief! Oh, Bruce, I'm so thankful.”

  He brushed off her thanks. "I finished up Mrs. Newton's kitchen today and nobody usually wants anything done over the holidays except emergencies like this. Glad to do it. See you tomorrow.”

  Weak with relief, Jane went to the comfort of her favorite squashy chair in the living room and collapsed. It was horrible to contemplate how much worse it might have been. A houseful of kids, last-minute holiday activities, and no water! Yikes!

  It was Sunday night and she deserved to veg out. She wondered what was on Masterpiece Theatre. It was a measure of how hectic life had been the last couple days that she couldn't remember. She hoped it was something very soothing. A Jane Austen movie, maybe. She glanced at her watch and was surprised that it was only six-thirty. She looked around for the television controller, loathe to get up again even — to turn the set on. Not on the coffee table. Not at the side of the chair. She leaned forward and fished around underneath the front of the chair, then remembered that the last time she'd lost it, it was down in the plump cushions. Ah, there it was.

  No, it wasn't. The hard plastic object she pulled out was a computer disk.

  The missing disk? It wasn't one of hers. She only bought the brightly colored ones. This one was black. And unlabeled.

  She hoisted herself out of the chair with effort and dialed Mel's number to leave a message. She was surprised that he answered. "Didn't you go out to dinner with your mother?" she asked, momentarily distracted from her purpose.

  “I begged off and I'm in deep trouble. But I was cold clear through and would have died soon if I hadn't soaked in a hot bath. What's up?”

  Jane reported what she'd found.

  “Is it the one we're looking for?" he asked. "I imagine so. It's not one of mine. And it's not a game disk. There's no label."

  “I'll be right over," he said with a martyred sigh.

  Jane hung up, stood for a moment in thought, and went down to boot up her computer.

  Twenty-one

  Before Mel could pull himself together and get over to pick up the disk, Jane's doorbell rang. It was Ginger, all bundled up and looking perky.

  “I'm here for our interview," she said.

  Jane didn't invite her in. "Ginger, I'm not doing an interview. Period. I told you that.”

  “But I thought—"

  “No, I made it very clear the first time you asked. You couldn't have misunderstood. And I'm really sorry, but I can't invite you in. I'm busy.”

  Ginger looked surprised, but not offended. "Well, you win some, you lose some. Did the police find the disk?"

  “No, they didn't," Jane said truthfully. She was glad Ginger hadn't phrased the question "Has the disk been found?"

  “Okay," Ginger agreed a little too readily. "I'll work on another angle.”

  Jane shut the door on her and watched through the little window in it as Ginger headedfor her car. Mel turned into the driveway just then and Ginger changed course. Apparently she was questioning him and he was making "no comment" gestures. She accepted this rejection as well in apparent good spirits.

  Jane was standing at the door with the disk in hand when he reached her.

  “You're sur
e this is the right one?" he asked. "No, I'm just sure it's not mine. And it was in the chair he flung himself into the night he was here.”

  Mel looked miserably cold and tired as he trudged back to his car with the disk in his pocket.

  Jane raced for the phone. "Shelley! I found the disk. It was in my favorite chair in the living room. Down in the cushions."

  “Have you called Mel?"

  “He just picked it up."

  “Oh," Shelley said with disappointment. "I was hoping we could take a quick look at it before you turned it over."

  “We can. I made a copy of it."

  “Jane! You're brilliant!”

  Shelley arrived seconds later, looking uncharacteristically disheveled. "Pop it in your computer. Let's see what's on it.”

  They headed for the basement.

  “What's the water over by the laundry room door?" Shelley asked.

  “Broken pipe," Jane said. Half an hour ago this was a crisis; now she was hardly interested enough to answer the question.

  Jane punched a few keys and produced a list of the files on the disk. "Oh, good, he's saved these in the same word processing program that I have. That'll make it easier." She punched a few more keys and sat back smugly while the computer clicked and hummed. Then a screen she'd never seen before came up.

  PASSWORD:

  “Password?" they said in one voice.

  “Hell!" Shelley added for good measure. Jane typed in: LANCE.

  The screen said: ACCESS DENIED — INVALID PASSWORD.

  “Try 'King,' " Shelley said.

  That didn't work either. Neither did `Lanceking' or the call letters of the television station.

  “This is hopeless," Shelley said. "There are about a million words and a lot more that aren't even real words that he could have used."

  “No, people usually use something that's easy to remember so they don't lock themselves out of their own stuff. I wonder if he's listed in the phone book.”

  Shelley grabbed one from the shelf. "How surprising. Yes, he is. Or somebody with the same name." Shelley gave her the street address, which didn't work, and the telephone number, which didn't work either.

  “Bring a pad of paper and a pencil upstairs while I make coffee," Jane said. "Let's write a list of things to try.”

  They ended up with a long string of words: reporter, television, Wilhite, research, dossiers, jerk ("No, we think of him that way, he probably didn't," Shelley said), and a couple dozen others. Coffee'd up, they went back down and tried them all out. None worked."Okay," Jane said, closing her eyes as if to summon up a vision. "We have to pretend that we are Lance King—"

  “Yuck."

  “He'd use a word he likes," Jane said. She opened her eyes and tapped in the word "scandal.”

  It didn't work. Shelley said, "No, we have to really think like he did. He didn't see his work as scandalmongering. He saw himself as the guardian of the public.”

  Jane typed in "guardian.”

  The computer said: PASSWORD ACCEPTED. PROCEED.

  They shrieked.

  Jane studied the list of files. They were numbered. She picked 001. It opened up and they groaned.

  The text was in code. Not a computer code, just an ordinary code.

  File 001 said: Kamoieppi Pixvup — xet e tvoqqis op dummihi. Qsutvovoap vuu? Djidl vuxp sidusft gus vjuti ziest.

  “What now, Sherlock?" Shelley asked.

  “I dunno. Do you suppose it's a simple letter substitution?"

  “Maybe. If we dump them all together, alphabetize, and count each letter, we should be able to figure out which one represents E. It's the most common."

  “Big help. We'd know one letter," Jane said. "Maybe it's a foreign language. It does look like a language, doesn't it. I could ask Mel if Lance was fluent in something or other."

  “And you don't think he'd wonder just a bit why you're asking? I presume you didn't mention having copied this disk."

  “You've got a point. My dad! My dad knows languages!"

  “Can you E-mail him?"

  “Yes, I'll do that. Let me print this one out. They're in the Netherlands. Heaven knows what time of day or night it is there now."

  “Probably about two in the morning," Shelley said.

  “I'll do that right after we print all the files out. You know, I do those letter substitution things in the puzzle magazines sometimes. If that's what this is, it shouldn't be that hard to do.”

  Shelley was doubtful. "But Jane, those give you clues. Like all the words in the list have to do with carnivals or something. And when they're sentences, they're real sentences with lots of 'the's and 'for's and such. This is just the man's personal notes. They're probably just phrases."

  “It can't hurt to try anyway.”

  Jane made duplicate copies of each of the small files on paper, one set for her, one for Shelley, and sent an E-mail to her father before they abandoned the cold and rather damp-smelling basement.

  “My family will think I've run away from home," Shelley said. "I can't remember if I even mentioned I was coming over here, I was in such a rush. I'll work on this at home and give you a call if I figure anything out.”

  Jane dinked around with the printouts for nearly an hour and got nowhere. It was no wonder, considering what a long day it had been, that she felt brain-dead. It was still Sunday, the day that had started out with church. But that morning seemed like it was days and days ago. She'd put the coded messages away somewhere safe and let her subconscious work on them while she was busy with other things. She got another sheet of paper and started making yet another list of reminders to herself.

  The day after tomorrow was Christmas Eve day. Her shopping was done, but a lot of wrapping remained. Note: Get more tape and ribbon.

  Christmas Eve day was also the normal trash pickup day. Would they send the monster trucks around on what was normally a half holiday? She hoped so. The parties she'd given had generated so much trash that if she didn't get it out this week, it would become a whole Dumpster load by the next week. Note: Put out trash and recycle.

  That made her think about Sam Dwyer and his fanatic recycling. She had a lot of plastic-coated paper plates. She'd just put them in a big bag. But if she were to recycle them, would they go in the plastics bin or the paper bin?

  Her mind was going. No question about it. She remembered the "fortune" she'd made up at the Chinese restaurant — that her daughter would take care of her when she was old and dotty and wanted to wear her panties on her head. At the rate she was going, that might be next week.

  She waited up, half watching television, half napping, playing (and losing) a few games of solitaire on her laptop until Katie and Mike had both come home. Then she went upstairs and took a long, soaky bath. When she got out, she was shocked to discover that it was only ten o'clock. It seemed like the middle of the night. Would this day never end?

  While she was soaking, she'd thought of some other things that had to be done tomorrow and went back downstairs to fetch her list. Note: Call Marty. Her sister Marty was living in Tupelo this year. Unlike Jane, who had vowed not to move out of the neighborhood, let alone move around the world once she no longer had to, Marty and her husband couldn't stop moving. "It's the only way I get my closets and drawers cleaned out," Marty told her.

  Jane had long since given up putting Marty's addresses and phone numbers into her book in ink. Just pencil. But wherever Marty went, it was never Chicago. They hadn't laid eyes on each other for at least five years. Marty and her jerk of a husband also always seemed to find someone to impose themselves on at holidays, so Jane had to call her the day before to pass along her good wishes.

  Note: Call Uncle Jim. He was a lifelong friend of her parents who had retired from the army and was a tough old Chicago cop now. Though he was no relation in blood, he was dear to her and she always had him over for holidays and any other time she could snag him. She needed to make sure he knew what time to come for Christmas dinner. Had she wrapped his prese
nt yet? She ran back downstairs to check. Yes, the big red foil package. It was a fine leather briefcase. He'd rumble about it, say she'd better start watching how she threw away her money, claim that if the punks on the street didn't steal it, the punks in his office would. But he'd treasure it anyway.

  It was only 10:20. Jane was still too wound up from the long day to sleep. But if she got in bed and was ready to sleep, maybe it would creep up on her. She called to the cats, who insisted on sleeping in her bed, gathered up the coded messages, turned off the television and downstairs lights, and made her way slowly up the stairs, tripping over Max and Meow and dropping her pencil.

  Mike had his stereo booming out something awful. She tapped on his door, opened it, and asked him to turn it down. "I have to drown out Willard," he said. The big dog was sound asleep in the middle of the floor, his snoring almost as loud as the music.

  “Make sure you send him outside one more time before you go to bed," she said. "Unless you want a cleaning job in the morning.”

  Katie was, naturally, on the phone. Getting her a line of her own was among the smartest things Jane had ever done. Katie made a "wait, wait" gesture and ended her conversation. "Mom, I was just thinking, since you have to have the pipes fixed in that bathroom, why don't you redecorate it? It's kinda ratty-looking. We could go out and look at wallpaper and sinks and stuff after Christmas while I'm out of school."

  “I think that's a great idea. I'll get a bid from Bruce Pargeter when he comes back tomorrow.”

  Todd was already asleep when she peeked in his room. How could he sleep through Mike's music!

  She went to her own room and the cats made a beeline for the bed. The Johnsons had turned off their Christmas lights and music, so she could have her curtains open again. It had been disconcerting these last few days to wake up in a darkened room.