The House of Seven Mabels jj-13

by Jill Churchill

  "Nope," Jane said, imitating Carl Stringfield.

  "Okay," Shelley said.

  "Wasn't the conversation with Thomasina interesting?" Jane said, changing the subject.

  "Interesting, yes. But I can't see that it helps us figure out what's going on. I wish you hadn't veered off on those pathetic little girls."

  "I had to before you said they were pathetic." Jane was laughing. "I couldn't help thinking of Fantasia when she said she and her husband taught the girls to dance. The pink elephants in tutus doing the ballet."

  Shelley didn't think it was funny at all. "Can you imagine Sandra making a pass at her?"

  "Hard to picture," Jane said. "But Thomasina nipped it in the bud, as you'd expect her to do. I'll bet she was more vulgar at the time than she let on to us."

  "Maybe someone didn't tell Sandra off," Shelley said. "And that sort of unprofessional behavior on a job site might have truly upset another member of the crew."

  "Have you anyone in mind?"

  "Only Bitsy. I wonder if that's the real reason Bitsy fired her."

  "You're not going to ask Bitsy that, are you?"

  "I might."

  "We've struck out on Thomasina. Her problem with Sandra was taken care of by telling her off and getting on with the job," Jane said. "And we got nothing from Carl. I still think our best suspects are Bitsy's ex-husband and Joe Budley."

  "Both out of range for chatting up," Shelley said.

  "Unfortunately," Jane agreed.

  Shelley thought for a while and said, "Maybe I should talk to Paul about this."

  "What does he know about renovations, feminism, or divorce?"

  "Practically nothing. But he knows tons of people who know lots of other people. In fact, his attorney is a wealth of financial gossip. Paul never considers opening another restaurant without getting the whole history of the property he's considering and everybody who has owned or leased it. The attorney has an assistant who researches the history of any lawsuits or code violations."

  "Would Paul be willing to find out about Neville Burnside and Joe Budley for us?"

  "I'll ask. He doesn't like what he's heard about this renovation project anyway and may enjoy digging up some interesting dirt."

  "Have you heard anything from Bitsy about this elusive contract we were supposed to have seen by now?"

  "Not a peep. I called her early this morning to ask. She just fluttered around about how busy her lawyer was and how she couldn't catch up with him and thought he might be out of town on some kind of lecture tour to a law school."

  "I don't believe that."

  "Neither do I. But given the contract Sandra had drawn up and my new version, the lawyer has a lot to weed through," Shelley said.

  "So what are you doing with the rest of your day, besides tackling your husband about Burn-side and Budley?"

  "Having a strongly worded talk with a caterer who's trying to charge me half again as much for the table service for a dinner Paul's giving for his employees. The caterer we've used for the last two years went out of business when an employee passed along hepatitis. Contagious diseases can kill a successful catering business. This new one is giving me an outrageous bid and the event is in two weeks. I don't have time to interview others. I'll just have to beat this one into submission."

  "Shelley, sometimes you amaze me with the specialized information you have at your fingertips. I know absolutely nothing about catering and you seem to know everything about it. This is fascinating."

  "Not really. It's simply that Paul insists on these dinners three or four times a year and I agree it's good for his business. A nice perk. And we couldn't possibly serve them the Greek fast food that they're up to their elbows in every day. He used to have an employee plan the dinners until I butted in and comparison-shopped and realized she was taking us to the cleaners and getting big kickbacks. That's how I got stuck with the job."

  "But there's nothing you enjoy more than butting heads with people trying to rip you off, and you know it," Jane said.

  Shelley grinned. "It's one of my best skills. So are you working on your book today, since we're not getting anywhere with Bitsy and her elusive attorney?"

  "Yes. I've thought of a new twist for the plot I'm really excited about. Want to hear about it?"

  "No. I'll wait until the book is in the stores. You don't want to drain away a good idea recounting it to someone else."

  Jane had awakened in a rage the previous night when the cats decided to sharpen their claws on her bedspread. Before drifting off to sleep, she'd realized why she'd dawdled on getting the novel finished. Priscilla had gone soft and comfy. She'd gotten boring. Her life was going too well.

  The essence of fiction, Jane thought, was conflict, the more the better.

  So how about if a previously unknown older, illegitimate half-brother showed up with documentation claiming to prove Priscilla's beloved home was really his?

  She loved the idea. Priscilla would have something dear to her to fight for. Priscilla loved her house on the cliff overlooking a surly sea more than she'd ever loved anything else.

  Supposing the documents were true but the person presenting them wasn't who he said he was? A real illegitimate brother had once existed and this man had seized his papers.

  Maybe it was a bit trite, but Jane was fired up.

  What would Priscilla do? Would she find out the man was a fraud? If so, would she feel compelled to find her real half-brother? Not if she had any sense. Maybe she could find out about him without his knowing.

  Priscilla could hire someone to hunt him down. An honorable and necessarily devilishly good-looking man she imagines for a while she might have fallen in love with but later finds out that he's in on the fraud. Or maybe not. Maybe he's already married. Maybe he's not married, but has a terminal disease and… Or maybe Priscilla's doctor has mistakenly told her she's the one with the terminal condition?

  So many intriguing avenues of busy plot to whip into shape.

  And a lot more fun than trying to pry the truth out of the workers at the renovation. In her novel, she herself was in control. She'd know the truth, even if Priscilla didn't.

  But who could guess which, in real life, if any of the workers or their ex-relatives was responsible for the vandalism and very probably Sandra's death?

  Twenty-seven

  It was four days before Shelley came over to Jane's house at lunchtime to tell her what Paul had found out. Jane had practically forgotten what Shelley was talking about. She'd been completely immersed in her novel all weekend and Monday, and hadn't even taken the time to shower or comb her hair on Tuesday morning.

  "Here's the deal," Shelley said. "There may be more, but I wanted to share what Paul's attorney's assistant has already dragged up. Budley is first. He's had lots of lawsuits and small-claims-court records. But most of them, the assistant says, are just nutcases trying to get out of paying him."

  "Oh?" Jane said, once she'd recognized what Shelley was all het up about.

  "I don't smell coffee," Shelley said. "You're going to need it to pay attention."

  Jane started a big pot of coffee, and Shelley graciously waited until Jane had knocked back half a cup.

  "As an example" — Shelley took up her story— "Budley was doing a big job putting in a basement media room and had it almost done. There was a horrific storm that sent water gushing through where the basement windows had been sealed. He had to redo the base woodwork and carpets and didn't meet his deadline. Are you listening, Jane?"

  "I am."

  "Budley invoked the Acts of God clause and got his money. Apparently he'd had the sealed windows inspected by the city code guy who approved Dudley's work."

  "Did the city code guy get in trouble in turn?"

  "Nope, the clients tried to go after him but failed to get a judgment. The code guy had made extensive notes of his visit. He'd told the people they had to fill in around the foundation where water collected to get approval. They didn't do it.


  "Another lawsuit the assistant cited was when some artsy-fartsy client had six old French doors he'd picked up at a garage sale that he wanted installed so his guests and family could look out over the patio and garden. As soon as it turned cold, the doors shrank and the glass in them shattered. Budley had apparently learned a lesson on keeping paperwork from the media room fiasco and was able to produce copies of letters that he'd by sent registered mail, telling the man the doors weren't the right size and wouldn't survive a cold Chicago winter. The man hadn't agreed to shave

  them down to size because he said they'd be out of proportion. Budley kept that letter from the client as well."

  "Clearly not his fault."

  "Right. I remember the time Paul had two inches of mirror put in around the ceiling of our study to reflect the lights. When it got cold, the molding and walls shrank and the mirrors all cracked."

  "You never told me about that. I guess you replaced them? I've always admired the way the light bounces around in the study."

  "Now you know how to do that. Leave a bit of room."

  Shelley returned to the subject she'd started first. "The assistant still had other suits to examine and we'll see what turns up. My own opinion, for what it's worth, is that Budley's probably competent but is so offensive and tactless that he annoys people into finding fault with his work."

  "You'd feel that way, too. I've never seen you as mad as when he called us 'girls.' I was afraid you were having a stroke."

  "No, I save strokes for dealing with the IRS," Shelley said with a laugh.

  "Anything on Neville Burnside yet?"

  "Do you have any more of those icky granola bars?"

  "I bought two more boxes of them. Don't pretend you don't like them."

  Shelley munched down two of them while Jane, who was sick of them, made two ham sandwiches.

  Shelley looked at her watch. "It is way past time for lunch. Thanks. Anyway, the attorney's assistant hasn't even gotten to him yet," she said while slathering mustard on the sandwich. "She's still following up on Joe Budley."

  "Is this costing Paul wads of money?"

  Shelley laughed. "Considering the size of the annual retainer Paul pays this attorney and the fact that he admitted he didn't have anything for his legal assistant to do this week, he's glad to do it gratis. Or so he says. He told Paul all the material will go in a file and someday when someone else asks about Budley, he'll just dig out the file and impress the hell out of them with his quick work."

  "Good thinking."

  "Paul is often stunned by the speed of his research into property. Now we know how he does it. He keeps files on everybody he's ever checked out. Are you going to tell Mel we're doing this?"

  "Hmm. I hadn't thought of that. I think it would be best if we waited until we have all the information."

  "That's a good idea. Paul's attorney might already have a file on Neville Burnside and will knock our socks off again with his promptness."

  "The one time we met him, I thought he was a very nasty man. Most of the people I know who

  are divorced, no matter what kind of settlement is imposed on them, get over it and go on with their lives."

  "Maybe it's too soon for him. I think he's so angry that he could have done all the vandalizing. But not in person. He'd be too obvious if anyone saw him lurking around. Maybe he hired one of Bitsy's discontented workers to do the sabotage."

  "That's an interesting theory," Jane said. "But it would have cost him too much. I do think it's likely that others have inquired about him or brought suits against him. This attorney Paul uses sounds like more of a detective than a lawyer."

  "That's why Paul pays the big bucks. The guy loves to get the dirt on people. I guess it's an instinct."

  "One we also share," Jane said.

  "Bite your tongue," Shelley said with a laugh. "Oh, I forgot to tell you something else. I finally met the plumber."

  "I'd forgotten there has to be a plumber. Why haven't we come across him yet?"

  "It's a she, Jane," Shelley said. "Introduced herself as Hank. I can't imagine what that's short for. For some reason she wasn't on the list of workers and phone numbers Bitsy gave me."

  "She must have been one of the earliest to work once the walls were down in that section. Doesn't plumbing have to come first?"

  "I have no idea. But if you think back, the first time we looked at the renovated part there were pipes stubbed out in the bathrooms and in the kitchen."

  "Count on you to notice that. I didn't. So did you talk to Hank?"

  "To my sorrow, I did. She said right out that Sandy Anderson was a cross between Eleanor Roosevelt and Mother Teresa."

  "What an odd combination," Jane said. "I don't get the connection."

  Shelley said, "I think I do. How much do you know about Eleanor Roosevelt?"

  "Not as much as I'd like. Why?"

  "Some recent scholars have suggested that after Eleanor found out about Lucy Mercer having an affair with Franklin, Eleanor and her longtime women friends became, let us say, much closer friends."

  "You mean lesbians? Oh, now I get it.'7

  "Hank went on haranguing about their feminist group and how it would never have gotten off the ground if it hadn't been for wonderful Sandy. She was both a hard and a tenderhearted person. Always so supportive of everyone in the group. She called Sandra a good example of 'tough love' and actually got a bit teary about her dying."

  "No! I can't imagine that," Jane exclaimed.

  "But she recovered quickly. She demanded that I go back to the Merchandise Mart and present my recommendations on the swirly hot tub thing

  that they're putting in the master bath. Told me in no uncertain terms to be sure to consider only the ones that are left-handed."

  "Left-handed? What does that mean?"

  "I think it means they hook into the plumbing at the end she's stubbed out, instead of having to be installed with the back of it the wrong way around."

  "What did you tell her?"

  "That we weren't yet under contract and were still waiting for a better one. She went ballistic. How dare I argue about the contract? Sandra, or Sandy, as she insisted on calling her, could never be wrong about anything. She thought it was a wonderful contract."

  "Did you tell her…?"

  "You bet I did. I told her that everyone else on the job that I'd talked to had slashed through theirs and gotten it changed. That really knocked her for a loop. Later I saw her go out to her truck. When I was leaving, Hank was sitting there behind the steering wheel, flipping pages of what looked like her contract."

  "If she's telling the truth, she's certainly not a suspect in Sandra's death."

  "Jane, we don't really know if anybody has told us the truth."

  "I guess that's true. But Henrietta and Jacqueline were quite frank with us. And so were Eva-line and Thomasina. Even Bitsy's inclined to spill her guts at every opportunity."

  "I hate to admit this," Shelley said, "but I'm starting to feel sorry for Bitsy. I know Sandra was her own-free-will choice of contractor, but so many things have gone wrong on the project. Bitsy has to be thinking it's her fault."

  Shelley opened the foil on a third granola bar.

  "Maybe so." Jane said. "But she's still plowing along with it."

  "If I were she, God forbid, I'd have taken my loss by now and turned it back over to the township to tear down."

  "I'm so glad to hear you say that," Jane said.

  "I know. You should just back out."

  "I can't do that to you."

  "Sure you can. You're so excited suddenly about your book. That's what you're meant to be putting your brains to work on. I can do the decorating myself. Or find someone else who has the skills and interest. But only if Bitsy antes up what I think is fair."

  Jane knew Shelley wholeheartedly believed what she was saying. But the book had already taken her years and she would hate to disappoint her best friend.

  Twenty-eight

  Wednesday mornin
g jane got a call from Evaline. "Carl and I will be finishing up our work by noon, if not earlier. And I have some good news to tell you and Shelley. I'd like to celebrate. Could you two come to dinner at my apartment?"

  "I'll have to check with Shelley. But it sounds like a good idea to me. Can you give me a hint about your good news?"

  Evaline laughed. "No. I have to save it for tonight. Would seven be too late?"

  "That's fine. I can feed my kids at six. I'll get back to you."

  Jane caught Shelley just as she was leaving for another fight with the caterer.

  "I'll either have it sorted out or will be interviewing someone else I've heard about long before then. I can make it. Did she tell you what the good news is?"

  "She's saving it for dinner."

  "I have got to run. I'll pick you up at quarter to seven."

  Jane spent another day at the computer with Priscilla and wished she hadn't committed to the dinner. She'd rather have continued her work while she was on a roll. But she'd promised Eva-line they'd be there.

  "How'd the meeting with the caterer go?" Jane asked as she got into Shelley's minivan.

  "I won. I never really doubted that I would. Where are we going?"

  Jane gave her Evaline's address, and they arrived just on time.

  The apartment was on the first floor. Evaline greeted them at the door before they even knocked. "I saw you pull up. I'm running the tiniest bit late. I forgot to start the beans on time. Come in."

  Her apartment was tiny but well-kept. It must have come already furnished, Jane guessed. The pictures on the walls of the living room seemed somewhat generic, not a reflection of what little they knew of Evaline. The furniture was cheap but clean and comfortable. Evaline, dressed in a short khaki skirt and a flowered shirt, asked them what they wanted to drink. "I have iced tea, sodas, or beer. And I even bought Shelley some bottled water and a six-pack of RC Cola for you, Jane."

  She was back in a moment with their drinks. She sat down beside Shelley on the sofa. "I heard from the patent attorney yesterday. He has a guy in the patent office he's worked with for a long time," she

  said. "He called him and asked if he could hurry it through and the guy said he would."