Jill Churchill - A Midsummer Night's Scream

Jones had risen hurriedly and opened the front gate. "Let me fill you in. I know Sven slightly. I know his sister better. She's homebound. She lost her lower legs several years ago to diabetes. I check on them from time to time."

"How's she taking the news?"

"Badly. She's dependent on him to cook for her. She's a single woman. We'll need Meals on Wheels and someone to clean and shop for her."

"Can she dress herself, get in the shower and bed by herself?"

"I'm not sure. You need to talk to her." "Come in with me, then."

Hilda Turner was in her chair in the living room, which was spotless. Mel guessed this had probably been their parents' home. The wallpaper and carpet spoke of age. There were pictures of family members on side tables. She'd obviously been crying. Apparently Officer Jones had brought her a box of tissues and a wastebasket.

"I'm Detective VanDyne, Miss Turner. I'm sorry about your brother."

"Someone from the hospital told me a little bit about what happened to him. But not much. Could you tell me more?"

"He has broken bones in his skull and they've injured his brain. I don't know how seriously. The bones have been removed. He's still not conscious. I have to be honest with you — he could recover but not be entirely 'there,' if you know what I mean."

She looked a little confused.

Mel was forced to be blunt. "He might have permanent brain damage."

She started crying again, then made a bitter laughing noise. "What a pair we'll make."

"I'm going to get social services to visit you," Mel said. "They'll take care of you until we know more about your brother's condition."

She pulled herself together and said with dignity, "I'm not going on welfare."

"You will need help for at least a while. And it's not charity. It's what you pay taxes for. While I'm here, could I take a look at your brother's room? I don't know very much about him and it might help me find out who did this to him."

"Nobody but me knew him. He was terribly shy. Yes, you may look in his room if it would be useful." She pointed the way.

Jane spent Monday morning working on her book. She was enjoying writing this one much more than the first one, because she'd planned ahead instead of sitting down at random intervals and winging it over a long period of years. That technique had caused her an enormous amount of tedious rewriting. There had been times she hadn't even looked or thought about the book for weeks. Then she had to reread it all over again just to remember what she'd already done.

Of course, that time, she didn't know she needed to turn it into a murder mystery until she'd attended a mystery conference nearby and had the good luck to meet an encouraging successful writer, and an editor who urged her to send in the final draft.

She realized to her surprise that she'd spent several hours on it so far today. She also knew she had nothing to feed the kids or herself that evening. Even if she and Mel ended up going out for the good dinner they'd planned, she'd still have to leave something for the kids to eat. Or hand out a wad of money for Mike or Katie to get take-out. She hated going to the closest grocery store over the noon hour. There was a breakfast and lunch place next to it and parking places were at a premium.

Parking turned out not to be quite as horrible as she'd expected, and she came home loaded down with bread, sliced ham, premade tuna

salad, several boxes of frozen mac and cheese, salad, and a really good, gummy iced chocolate fudge cake. That would last them for at least a couple of days.

She was on a countdown to school's starting. Katie would be in her first year of college, albeit close to home at the junior college for the first year. She had chosen it because it had several culinary classes. She'd still be living at home, but she could practice making dinners. Mike would go back for his third year of college, out of town, and Todd would become a sophomore in high school.

She loved her kids. She'd done a good job of raising them herself after her husband was killed on an icy overpass while leaving her to marry someone else. She seldom even thought about him anymore. After the first horrible months of grief and fury, she realized he'd freed her to live her own life, however inadvertently.

His life insurance included a rider that had paid off the mortgage on the house she loved. And due to her having given his family's pharmacy her small inheritance from a spinster great-aunt early in their marriage, he'd written in his will that she would forever earn his one-third share of the pharmacy profits. His widowed mother and his younger brother Ted received the other shares.

She realized much later that he'd been smartand canny about financial matters. It was morals that took him away.

The pharmacy had thrived and now had branches all over Chicago and far into the suburbs. Her share had allowed her to be a stay-at-home mom. This could have changed if he'd lived to marry the other woman. With years of parsimony and good investment advice, she'd put away enough to be able to get all three kids through college and finally, a year or two ago, had become financially secure enough to pamper herself a bit.

She was, she had to admit, proud of herself. And now that she believed that she'd eventually be published, she was prouder still.

Struggling inside with the groceries, then disposing of a few things that were past their prime in order to make room in the freezer, fridge, and pantry, she managed to clear the decks and go back to her needlepoint as a nice break. She realized, as she was getting out her threads to do the next section of her sampler, that she hadn't really thought about her deceased husband for years, and wondered why he'd come to mind today. She probably wouldn't think of him again for a good long time.

With luck, perhaps never.

Fourteen

As Mel was looking around Sven's room, which he wasn't surprised to find extremely clean, Officer Jones was conversing with Sven's sister. Mel couldn't hear what they were saying, except that Hilda was doing most of the talking.

The bedroom, besides being tidy, was revealing in other ways, too. It must have been his room when he was a boy. The wallpaper still had faded cowboys and horses. Even the single bed looked vaguely bunkhouse. It was probably the house both Sven and Hilda grew up in. Long ago paid off.

Sven was a serious jigsaw puzzle fan. There was a card table set up near the window with a half-done thousand-piece picture of a cathedral. The entire bottom of his closet was triple stacked with puzzle boxes, leaving only enough room for his shirts and trousers to hang above. His shoes were on a rack on the back of the closet door. They all looked as clean as if they were brand new.

So much for Jane's theory of blackmail, which he had briefly considered himself. This was a shy, retiring, compulsively neat man with a shoe and jigsaw puzzle obsession. And he didn't like working with people watching him. Mel simply couldn't imagine such a timid man repeatedly approaching strangers and firmly demanding that they pay him for what he knew they'd done that was worth keeping secret. From what little Mel knew of him, Sven would be hard-pressed to work out the details of how to repeatedly receive the cash from someone.

Out of idle curiosity, Mel pulled out a loafer, its sole facing out. The shoe didn't look as if it had ever been worn. Something fell out of it that astonished him. He put the shoe and the object back. Next, he went to the upright chest that presumably held sweaters, socks, and underwear. He found more of what he'd seen in the loafers.

He was aware that although he'd been given permission to look at the room by the janitor's next of kin, he'd need a warrant to do more searching. He closed the dresser drawers and the closet door and went back to the living room. "I see that your brother really likes hard jigsaw puzzles, Miss Turner."