Jill Churchill - The Class Menagerie

PROLOGUE

The woman glanced once again at the invitation, then folded the sheet and tapped it thoughtfully against the palm of her hand while she stared out the window.

A class reunion. Good God!

At first, her impulse had been to wad it up and throw it away without even reading beyond the heading:

"COME TO THE AID OF YOUR OLD SCHOOL!!!"

And even now, she thought that throwing it away was probably the best thing to do. " ~~~'

Still-In one way, it would be interesting, on a purely intellectual level, to see how they'd all turned out. Had the bright ones used their brains? Had the ambitious ones made anything of themselves? Had the beautiful ones kept their looks? What about the dumb girls, 'the painfully shy ones? Not much question there. Losers went on losing.

But mild curiosity wasn't reason enough to risk going. What if her presence aroused their old curiosities? Made them ask questions, put suspicions together? They were all, without knowing it, so dangerous to her.

1

She couldn't help that happening. But if she were there — if she saw conversations and thoughts going in the wrong direction — she could head them off. Change the subject. Create a diversion. Whatever was necessary.

She opened the sheet back up and read carefully. The club members were to go in early and stay with Shelley Nowack.

Who the hell was Shelley Nowack? Oh, yes. That drippy, shy girl.

"I'll do anything, Jane. Anything you ask. I'll give you your next ten perms without bitching a bit. I'll give your name and take your Pap tests. I'll drive your car pools for a year. Name your price," Shelley Nowack said.

Jane Jeffry stared across the kitchen table at her neighbor. "Shelley, you have to tell me what the favor ' is before I can name a price. This sounds enormous. ' You want me to adopt your children? Or are you i trying to beat me into being president of the PTA? ' If that's it, there's not a favor in the world you could I offer." '

"Worse!" Shelley said miserably.

"Nothing's worse!" Jane exclaimed. "Except maybe driving for a junior high field trip. And if that's it, the answer's absolutely no — not for anything."

"It's nothing to do with kids." Shelley ran her ringers through her short cap of neat black hair. This was serious. Jane had never seen Shelley allow a hair out of place. Moreover, Jane's big orange cat Meow had jumped into Shelley's lap and Shelley, who loathed cats, was absentmindedly stroking its fur.

"Let me explain from the beginning. It's not really my fault. Well, it is, of course. But I mean—"

"Shelley, you normally have the disciplined sang

froid of an old-fashioned Mother Superior. It's scary seeing you this way. Get on with it!"

"Yes. Yes, of course!" Shelley said, apparently giving herself a mental slap. "All right. It's like this. You know about this class reunion of mine that's coming up next weekend?" She was still petting Meow.

"Yeah, the weird one that's being held in September instead of spring like everybody else's."

"I explained that to you. The school had a terrible fire and the reunion's being held early so we can get some alumni fund-raising efforts started."

"Uh-huh. Go on."

"Well, there was a girl's club in my school. We did charitable things. Volunteered to decorate for school dances, collected for the United Way, managed phone committees on snow days, that sort of thing. It was quite an honor to be invited to join."

"Why does this sound so harmless and sweet?" Jane asked.

"I was lulled into complacency, too. See, I started thinking about this old club and decided it would be a good idea for the members of the club to meet early and take on the leadership of the fund-raising project to rebuild the school. Appropriate, really."

"Makes sense to me — so far," Jane said warily.

"Here comes the hideous part. I sent out invitations to everybody. I had an old roster of the club that I'd kept updated…"

"Of. course you had," Jane said. She couldn't even find her current address book half the time, let alone keep old rosters updated, but she and Shelley were cut from a different cloth. Jane's was usually unraveling at the edges.

"I told them we should meet early," Shelley went on. "The reunion actually starts on Friday. It's a three-

day deal. And I said we should meet on Wednesday and Thursday before everyone else gets here—"

"We're talking about Wednesday and Thursday of next week, right?"

"Yes. Well, Jane, I thought there'd only be two or three of them available. On our tenth reunion there were only a couple from the club. So—" she drew a deep breath and plunged forward, "so I invited them to stay at my house."

Jane looked at her, perplexed. "And?"

"And I called the class president, Trey Moffat, this morning to see how many beds I need to make up and the son of a bitch casually mentioned that seven of my club members have agreed to come. Seven, Jane! That's an absolute swarm of women! I only sent them all a note as a courtesy and asked them to make suggestions by mail in advance if they wanted. Doesn't anybody these days know an insincere invitation when they see one? What's the world coming to?"

"Seven? Where will you put them all? Oh — you need extra space and you want me to bed some of them down in rows in my basement. By the way, you have a cat on your lap."

"I what? Oh, ick!" Shelley said, dislodging Meow as though he carried a fatal virus. "No, I don't want you to keep them. That crossed my mind, but between us we don't have room for seven and it isn't fair to invite people to your house then make them rough it that way. I've made other arrangements." She was frantically brushing orange fur off her black slacks.

"Good. So where does the favor come in?"

"Well, it's this way — you know Edgar North and Gordon Kane?"

"The men who bought the old Judge Francisco mansion? I've met them. Edgar gave me a recipe for—"

"Those are the ones. They're turning the mansion into a bed and breakfast. They've finally nagged the zoning board into agreeing and the place is almost ready to open for business. So I'm going to open it with my crowd. I'm paying for all of them, so nobody ought to be able to object."

Jane poured herself some more coffee and silently waved the pot in front of Shelley, who nodded. "Shelley, I must be getting awfully dim, but I still don't see a favor looming on the horizon. Sounds to me like you've got everything under control — as usual."

"This is it, Jane — Edgar and Gordon haven't got a staff. They hadn't really planned on opening for a couple weeks—"

Jane's eyes opened very wide. "Oh! I get it! You.

want me to skivvy!"

"Only breakfast preparation and clean up. And maybe help change bedding. Do a tad of vacuuming. See, Edgar doesn't want to hire anyone in a desperate hurry just to satisfy my need. He wants to take the time to get just the right person. Naturally, Edgar will do most of the work in the kitchen. He just needs you around to help out a little bit."

"Well, housework isn't my favorite thing, but I do make a mean scrambled egg. Sure, I'll help. It would only be a couple of hours for a couple of days. I'd say two perms ought to about even it out. Shelley, what a build up. This isn't nearly as bad as you made me think."

"That isn't the real favor," Shelley said.

Jane sat her coffee cup down. "Oh?"

, "No, the real favor is, I want you to hang around

the rest of the time. To attend with me."

"Go to your class reunion! You've lost your mind. I didn't even go to my own!"