Jill Churchill - The House of Seven Mabels

Jane didn't much like this idea, but since Shelley had endured her list making with fairly good grace, she felt obligated to give it a try. She got the kids off to school and packed herself a lunch. A ham sandwich, a couple of boiled eggs left over from the batch Shelley had made for her meal

with Mel. A rather stale pack of Fritos, and a cold soda.

She put the soda and eggs in a plastic container filled with ice and stuffed it into a paper bag. When Shelley pulled out of her garage and honked, Jane felt quite silly carrying a packed lunch. When she got into the minivan, she saw that Shelley had her own lunch in a big blue and white designer thermal bag.

"You packed that just to shame me."

"I packed it so you wouldn't be alone with Carl. Two people to question him are better than one. Besides, I left plenty of space for your lunch as well."

To their surprise, there was no law enforcement presence that morning. Everybody was hard at work, except Thomasina. She was loading her equipment into the back of a pristine white enclosed trailer attached to her truck. The back door was open, and Jane was fascinated as she peered in. It had a place for everything. Hooks for vast loops of different-size wires, bins for sockets of various configurations, drawers for screws and hooks for tools.

"Boy, would I like one of these," Jane exclaimed as they watched Thomasina putting everything away. "Just think how organized I could be."

Shelley looked at Jane and asked, "What do you have to haul around?"

"The very things you complain about. Dry cleaning, birdseed, loose receipts, the kids' book reports."

"Jane, that doesn't make sense," Shelley grouched. "Those aren't things you need to cart around. You buy them or pick them up, but you don't bring them into the house or garage and put them where they belong. It's not as if you're using them to do jobs away from home."

Jane ignored her and addressed Thomasina. "Why are you packing up? You haven't quit the job, have you?"

"No, but I've completed my work on the first side and nobody's ready for anything else yet. The other side of the upstairs isn't even cleared out, and Bitsy's not sure what appliances she needs in the kitchen and where they'll be placed." She paused and double-checked a notebook she pulled out of her back pocket against the content of the bins in the truck.

Nodding to herself, she went on. "I've got another couple of small jobs to do in the meantime. Wiring a screened porch for some people who want to enclose it for a garden room. Replacing a fuse box for another client who has been nagging me for a week." She slammed the back door of the trailer closed and locked it.

"Do you have to go this minute?" Shelley asked. "I have a couple of questions I want to ask you about Sandra."

"What kind of questions?" Thomasina asked suspiciously.

"What you thought of her," Shelley replied.

"That she didn't know what she was doing,"

Thomasina said bluntly. "She hired experts and wanted to meddle in things. Then there was all that feminist crap."

"You don't go along with that?" Jane asked.

"No, I don't. I'm a married woman with twin daughters. I don't want a contractor, male or female, wanting to keep touching me."

Jane and Shelley exchanged surprised glances, and Shelley asked, "Touching you?"

"Nothing really vulgar at first, just too chummy," Thomasina said, leaning against the trailer, which rocked slightly under her significant weight. "Wanting to lock arms when we walked around looking at where sockets would be placed. Pats on the shoulder for finishing a section of wall. Then one pat on the butt, which was when I told her off and to keep her hands to herself."

Jane was interested in Thomasina's verbal lashing of Sandra and wished she'd been present to hear it, but she was more taken by the concept of this supremely unattractive woman having a husband and children. "How old are your girls?" she asked.

Shelley gave Jane The Look.

Thomasina pulled a wallet from another pocket and showed them a family picture. "This was taken a year ago when they were seven."

Her husband was a good four inches shorter than she and weighed at least fifty pounds less. He was fairly handsome. But it was the girls who were astonishing. Very pretty, but heavily made up.

"We had that picture taken to celebrate the day

they won in their division," Thomasina said proudly. "Twins between five and ten years old. It's not a big category, but people think all twins are cute, just because they're twins. Of course they don't have to be identical, but the fraternal ones never even place. Don't know why their parents bother."

"Beauty pageants?" Shelley asked, concealing her distaste with amazing restraint.

"They love it. Little girls all like dressing up. And there's good money in it if they're attractive, spirited, and talented."

"What are their talents?" Jane asked.

"They dance," Thomasina said proudly. "My husband Walt and I taught them."

Jane's mental image of Thomasina and Walt dancing made her smile. "How nice. What kind of dancing do they do?"

"Tap and ballet both."

"How nice," Jane said. It was the only thing she could think to say, and she figured it was time to close the conversation before Shelley broke down and exposed her views of child beauty queens or asked if Thomasina was the ballet teacher, which would have sent Jane into hysterics.

Jane went on hurriedly, "We shouldn't be keeping you from getting on with your other jobs, though. Your time is obviously too valuable to waste on us."

Thomasina put away the wallet, checked her watch, and shook both their hands. "Hope you

ladies are still around when I come back. I'll bring newer pictures of my girls to show you." With that, she hopped into the truck and roared off.

For a long moment both Jane and Shelley were silent.

"Who would have thought?" Shelley wondered.

"I just hope the Sheetrocker doesn't surprise us as much," Jane said.

They trapped Carl Stringfield having his lunch. It put theirs to shame. He had two warm pieces of bruschetta, a corned beef sandwich that looked as if the bread was baked from scratch, a salad with dried cranberries, and a piece of pumpkin pie.

He looked confused and slightly alarmed when Shelley sat down on one side of him and Jane on the other side.

"What a wonderful lunch you have," Shelley said. "Does your wife do this kind of thing every day?"

"What wife?"

"You fix all this yourself?"

"No, I have a neighbor taking a culinary class at the junior college and he makes it for me for practice. I have to write a report."

"So you're not married?" Shelley asked. "You must have a lot of free time for hobbies, I guess."

"I do a little fly fishing when I get the chance," he admitted.

A hard thing to comment on, Jane thought.

But Shelley took up the conversation. "Do you make your own flies?"

"Nope."

Shelley kept on. "Any other hobbies?"

He scratched his head. "Can't think of any."

"How do you like working with Evaline?"

"It's okay."

Shelley sighed, but continued the questioning. "Have you worked with her before?"

"Nope."

"I bet you'd like to, though. Her special paste must make the work go much faster."

"Hadn't given it any thought."

Jane had already finished her sandwich and munched her gummy Fritos before Shelley gave up.

"It surely has been interesting talking to you," she said with apparent sincerity. "I guess we should leave you to your lunch."

"Okay."

"Oh," Shelley said, "one more thing. What did you think of Sandra?"

"Not much," he said.

"Could you elaborate?"

"Not really."

Twenty-six

When Shelley and jane were on their way home, Shelley said, "That's the most aggressively boring person I've ever spoken to. No wonder he's not married. There would be no way to live with him unless you were in a coma."