Grime and Punishment jj-1

by Jill Churchill

  Jane hung up, shaking her head in wonder.

  The last call was Joyce Greenway. "I'm so worried about you and the children staying in the house alone."

  “We're not alone. There is a whole mob of us."

  “I mean without a man to protect you. Won't you please come stay with us until this is over?”

  I'm sick to death of Joyce's well-meant sympathy, Jane thought, but managed to put a smile in her voice. "That's really nice of you, Joyce. But we're really just fine.”

  Finally, at ten, the phone stopped ringing and Jane was able to settle in to watching an old Katharine Hepburn movie, until Mike got home and bored her with a detailed account of the school football game. She slept soundly that night — no dreams of murder, no dreams at all.

  Jane tried to sneak out in the morning to pick Katie and Todd up, but at the first muted jingle of car keys, Mike appeared. "I'll drive!" he said blearily.

  “I thought you were still asleep. In fact, I still think you are." She gave him a light punch on the arm and he collapsed against the counter.

  “Just give me a sec, Mom. I'll be ready.”

  The pickups were completed without incident. Todd gave an enthusiastic but exceedingly tedious rundown of Elliot's new acquisitions, with strong suggestions as to which of the same he needed for Christmas. Jane listened patiently, knowing he'd be tired of them by then and have a new list. Then, by February, he'd start compiling yet another. Mike graciously made no critical older-brother comments about the length or content of Todd's accounting.

  Katie's fingernails were hideous, and she was positively thrilled with them. "I think they make my hands look so thin — don't you, Mom?”

  Jane thought they looked more like a medical condition than a beauty aid, but took note of the "Mom" instead of "Mother" and was effusive in her compliments. Again Mike said nothing. He made a perfectly repulsive noise through his nose, but didn't actually speak.

  By the time they pulled in the drive, Jane was thoroughly mellowed by how nice and familyish they were being. They had a late-morning snack that was a cross between breakfast and lunch, then Jane took Todd to his last baseball game of the season.

  “You don't need to stay, Mom," he offered. "I always stay. Aren't you pitching?"

  “Only the first inning. The coach said since we don't have any chance of the championship, he's gonna let everybody pitch."

  “Well, I'll probably stay anyway.""You don't need to," he insisted.

  The problem was suddenly clear. They were having a big picnic after the game, and Todd didn't want his freedom to enjoy himself hampered by her presence. Since it was already arranged that another mother would bring the car pool home, he'd counted on attending as a "bachelor," so to speak.

  “Okay, I'll just watch your inning.”

  He smiled. "Thanks, Mom-Old-Thing.”

  When they reached the field, he and the three boys they'd picked up fled and Jane hung back, checking out who was there. There were mothers one never got near at these games, women who made George Steinbrenner look like Heidi. Happily, she spotted Suzie Williams and picked her way up the bleachers to join her.

  Suzie was one of her favorite people. She was a big divorcée who would have been called "handsome" in an earlier age. She had long, platinum-blond hair and a gorgeous complexion. Her cheeks were always naturally pink, and her eyes were glacial-blue. She looked like an earthy Swedish queen who'd been hitting the smorgasbord a little too heavily.

  She saw Jane coming and put down the blood-and-guts paperback novel she'd been reading. "Good God, it's Jane Jeffry, font of murderous gossip. I imagine you're being driven mad by nosy neighbors callously invading your privacy and peace of mind? Most people are so insensitive."

  “What do you want to know?"

  “Everything!Every bloody detail!”

  Jane gave her account by rote. She'd told it so many times it hardly seemed real anymore. The one thing she didn't mention was the missing pearls. That was, unfortunately, Shelley's secret, and Jane felt bound to honor it, even if she disapproved.

  “Shelley might have talked to the police again by now and found out something more, but she wasn't home when I came out. She and Paul are staying at a hotel."

  “Hiding from the killer?"

  “No, I think they're having an orgy."

  “If I could get my hands on Paul Nowack, I'd have an orgy too. Ever seen him in swimming trunks? Oh, to die for—! Anyhow, who do you think killed her?"

  “I haven't any idea."

  “Too bad it wasn't the regular one that got knocked off. Edith, isn't that her name?"

  “Why? What's the matter with Edith?"

  “I don't know. I just didn't like her. I just had her once, and by the end of a day having her mooch around looking like she had a cob up her ass, I wanted to bang my head on the wall — or hers. Depressing bitch. Kept giving me these searching looks, like she was waiting for me to say something to take offense at. I probably obliged. I generally do."

  “That's weird, Suzie. People have such different opinions of her. Dorothy Wallenberg didn't like her because she didn't clean very well—"

  “Dorothy said that? The woman who had the patio party and didn't notice there was dog shit under the grill?"

  “—and Robbie Jones thinks she's wonderful.”

  “Jesus God. You could eat out of Robbie's toi‑ lets! I had a salad there once that tasted sorta funny, and after a while I realized it was soap. When she washes lettuce, she really washes lettuce. And this cleaning woman meets her standards? Have you ever had her clean for you? Edith, I mean?"

  “Yesterday. I felt like you did. She got me down. What's more—”

  She was interrupted by a cheer from the parents around them as the two teams of little boys ran onto the field. "Cute little bastards, aren't they?" Suzie said affectionately.

  After the requisite amount of fumbling around, the game got under way. Todd's team, which Suzie's son Bob was on as well, was in red and white, and were as crisp and noisy as firecrackers as they went to bat. There were a great many balls called and walks made and steals attempted, but at the end of the inning, only one run scored. Jane stayed on, thoroughly enjoying Suzie's vulgar commentary on the game, the parents, and life in general.

  At the bottom half of the third inning, one kid on the other team made a long, high drive. The entire outfield ran for it, all looking up. A collision was inevitable. Three of them crashed together behind second base. The parents fell momentarily silent as the heap of children was sorted out. One of them was led from the field, limping ostentatiously.

  “That's my Bob, the klutz," Suzie said, hoisting herself up and getting ready to go comfort him. She'd made it down three rows, stepping on purses and fingers with judicious abandon, when she stopped, shaded her eyes, and turned around and came back up. She sat down. "Wasn't Bob at all. It's that Jonnell kid. They all look alike in those uniforms.”

  The game resumed and so did Suzie. "We had the Jonnell family to a barbecue one night last summer, and I swear, the kid has the foulest mouth I've ever heard. And his mother! I saw her come within a hair of punching out the coach when he put the kid on the bench for it. Some people — Jane? Earth calling Jane? Are you there?”

  Jane turned to her, eyes wide. "Could that be it? The uniforms?"

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Grabbing her arm, Jane leaned forward. "You said it was a shame it wasn't Edith killed instead of the other woman."

  “I didn't really mean—"

  “Shut up, Suzie. Listen. Nobody had any reason to kill the other woman, but there might be a reason to kill Edith. I don't know what, but suppose there was."

  “Okay, what if there was?"

  “Edith was supposed to be at Shelley's, and a woman in a Happy Helper uniform gets out of a Happy Helper van at the right house. They even looked alike, in a superficial way. Matter of fact, when Edith turned up at my house yesterday, it gave me a scare. I thought she was the other woma
n from a distance. They were both middle-sized, kinda hippy—"

  “So who isn't?"

  “—and they both had frizzy blond hair."

  “So why didn't the killer notice they weren't the same person when he got up close?”

  That stopped Jane for a minute. She leaned back, thinking. "Because — because he must have come up behind her. Don't you usually vacuum with your back to the doorway?"

  “I never thought about it, but yes. I start with the corners and back myself out."

  “So the cleaning woman would have been working with her back to the door, with the noise of the vacuum cleaner covering any sound an attacker might have made. He just had to pick up a loose loop of the cord, throw it over her head and — twist," she finished with a shiver. The memory of the dead Ramona Thur-good assaulted her, turning the mental exercise back into the real and very terrible event it was.

  “He might not have ever seen her face," Suzie agreed. "You know, I think you may have something there, but you still have one problem: why would anyone kill Edith, assuming she was the intended victim? She's a distasteful sort, but if we went around killing people for that, it would be a pretty sparsely populated planet." She glanced around her and added, "I can think of a few who could be the first to go."

  “I don't know — but I'm going to call that detective and tell him my idea. He gave me a number when he questioned me. In case I remembered anybody else who'd come to Shelley's that day."

  “This detective — is he good-looking?”

  “Oh, I don't know

  “Bullshit. That means he is. Why don't you go see him instead of calling? You could take a divorced friend along for moral support."

  “I want him to pay attention to what I'm say‑ ing, not to the gorgeous blonde drooling down his shirt front."

  “Cruel, cruel.”

  Impatient to call the detective, Jane stopped at a pay phone a block from the ball field. "Detective VanDyne, this is Jane Jeffry, Shelley Nowack's next-door neighbor."

  “I know who you are, Mrs. Jeffry.”

  Jane didn't preen, but she smiled. "I've figured out the murder. Well, I haven't exactly figured out who did it, but—"

  “That's the end result we like.”

  Jane bristled at this, but went on. "It had to do with uniforms. You see, one of the boys at the baseball game got hurt, and my friend Suzie thought it was her son because they all look alike in the uniforms, and that got me thinking—”

  „

  “—that the regular cleaning lady was the intended victim?"

  “Oh." Jane was crushed. "You'd thought of that?"

  “It's a natural thing to wonder when there doesn't appear to be any motive. It doesn't appear to be the case, but I'd be interested in hearing what supporting evidence you have for your assumption."

  “Supporting evidence—? Oh, I see. Well, they looked alike. Not close up, but from the back, and when you vacuum, you usually have your back to the door."

  “How interesting.Hmmm. I didn't know, of course, that the two women were similar, and that vacuuming thing is interesting. Only a housewife would think of it.”

  Jane had been considering telling him about Shelley's pearls. After all, Shelley had, at one point, asked her to do so. But his tone changed her mind. She considered just calling him a condescending bastard and hanging up; Suzie would have recommended it, she was sure. But she rejected that course as well. VanDyne wasn't going to find out anything more from her, but she might want to learn something from him.

  “Well, thanks for listening," she said with venomous sweetness. "If there's ever anything else you want to know about housework, I'm your woman. Just call — I'll be in the kitchen trying to decide which paper towel is more absorbent."

  “Say, you're not mad, are you?”

  Furious, insulted, pissed as hell

  “No, I'm not mad, Detective VanDyne. Good-bye.”

  She really should have turned Suzie loose on him.

  Ten

  On three out of every four Sundays they all ' went to church. On the fourth the kids went, and Jane stayed home to get ready for dinner. She didn't usually need the time, but the occasional quiet Sunday morning alone was a blessing itself. This monthly family dinner had been another tradition Steve had started and she had continued — with a few alterations and under considerable pressure from her mother-in-law Thelma.

  It was by no means the only hold she still had on Jane, but she used it to the hilt, as if Jane and the kids might escape her iron circle of influence if she didn't show up monthly to tighten up the "ties that bind.”

  These family dinners would have been unbearable if Thelma hadn't been diluted by the other guests. Steve's brother Ted and his wife Dixie Lee usually came along too. Ted was a quiet, pleasant man; not a thrilling conversationalist by any means, but amiable, and a neutralizing influence on his mother's antics. His wife Dixie Lee was an Oklahoma girl, hardly into her twenties, with a sweet disposition and an accentlike warm molasses. To Jane's delight, Thelma disapproved of her even more heartily than she disapproved of Jane.

  “She'd expected Ted to stay home with her forever," Jane had explained to Shelley two years ago when Ted fell for Dixie Lee. She had been hired to demonstrate a new line of beauty products in the family's main drugstore, and Ted was instantly smitten. "Steve had escaped from Thelma's clutches when I — a scarlet woman if there ever was one — snared him. But this girl! Half Ted's age and too nice — or too dumb — to even notice Thelma's digs? It's too much for Thelma. She's about to go berserk.”

  After all this time, Thelma was still fuming and casting barbed remarks at Dixie Lee, and Dixie Lee was still blissfully unaware of them. Ted shared her attitude. If he had any idea of what his mother felt, he didn't let on. Nor did he seem the slightest bit influenced by her unceasing attempts to denigrate his wife.

  After Steve died, Jane had added a guest to the dinner roster: her honorary Uncle Jim, her father's life-long best friend. An ex-Army officer, he'd finished his twenty years and gone to work for the Chicago police department. Assigned to the most lawless part of the inner city, he was the happiest he'd ever been. Life among the pimps and pushers suited him right down to the ground.

  “All I ever did in the Army was push papers around and go to drills for events that never happened," he explained. "In this job things are always happening, and from time to time I actually manage to do something worthwhile.”

  Thelma hated his intrusion into the family circle with a fervor that sometimes approached frenzy. The first time Jim had joined them, last February, she'd attacked Jane for inviting him.

  “After all, my dear, he associates with such unacceptable people. One would hardly think he was a good influence on the children."

  “He's associated with my parents for forty years!" Jane shot back. "I don't have them near me, but I must have him."

  “But Jane, dear, we're your family now."

  “Thelma, you make it sound like I'm a Middle-Eastern camel trader's daughter who's left her tribe for her husband's."

  “Rather a vulgar analogy, don't you think?”

  “What's vulgar? The Middle East? Camels? Tribes?"

  “Dear, you're just upset. We all understand. Steve's demise has been a devastating blow to all of us. I fear my own health has been permanently damaged by the distress. Now, let's don't talk about this anymore.”

  That was as close as she ever came to admitting she'd lost a round. She hadn't given up her campaign to have sole ownership of Jane and the kids, but she didn't bring it up directly after that. Every month she sat across the table from Uncle Jim and glared her disapproval. He, bless his heart, found it amusing, and would occasionally wink at her just to see her blush with fury. Jane hoped he'd leave off this month, however. The day was just too nice for conflict.

  When the kids got back from church, Jane was sitting on the patio, hypnotically scratching Willard's ears and quietly enjoying the smell of newly cut grass from the several lawns nearby. It w
ould probably be the last Sunday for it. By next month, people would have stopped mowing for the winter, and there would begin to be the smell of burning leaves in the air. She'd observed that no amount of modern suburban restrictions seemed able to stop people from indulging in the primitive need to stand around a big outdoor fire on the first cool days.

  Then, next spring, there would be the odors of fertilizer, and weed killer, and good brown earth returning from the winter sleep. Jane had always liked that best, but had missed it last spring. She'd still been grieving too deeply to take much notice of anything outside herself and the immediate concerns of getting from day to day without letting the kids know how upset she was. Next spring, however, she'd make up for it. Maybe a nice garden — Steve had never approved of gardens. He was a lawn man, taking inordinate pride in an unbroken spread of lush green.

  The one thing Steve had hated about the house was the field behind it. The developers had apparently intended one more street between Jane's and the main drag, but had run out of money — or enthusiasm — before the last street was completed. The field had remained a field, much to the delight of Max and Meow, who spent all their free time out hunting. Steve, however, had despised the weeds that grew there and were perpetually trying to invade his precious lawn.

  Jane got up and strolled around the yard, considering.

  Gardens had always appealed to her need for permanence. A garden meant you were going to stay someplace. You planted leathery little brown bulbs in the fall and didn't see the results till spring. Then you put tiny seeds in the ground that wouldn't bear fruit until fall. You had to stick around in the meantime. A garden said to fate, "You can't get rid of me!”