Jill Churchill - Grime and Punishment

“Who else?" Detective VanDyne asked, not to be sidetracked with carrot cooking time.

“Robbie Jones brought some dip and this wonderful crunchy thing she makes — whole wheat fingers.”

The detective's eyebrows shot up, but he resisted. "When was that?"

“I don't know. I didn't see her."

“Then how do you know she brought them?"

“Well, they're there. They didn't just materialize," Jane snapped. These quibbling interruptions were irritating

“No, I mean, how do you know she brought them, and not somebody else?"

“She always does. And the dip was in her funny, discolored Tupperware bowl. I always think I could get the stain out if I could get my hands on it. I had one like that, and soaked it overnight in—"

“Mrs. Jeffry!"

“Yes. I guess that is beside the point. But you asked."

“All right. Assuming you can tell who was there by the food, who else had been there?"

“Well, there was a pasta salad I didn't recognize. Everybody's making pasta salads these days."

“That was Suzie Williams," Shelley put in. "She lives next door on the other side of me. She called and told me she was anxious to try out a new recipe."

“And there was a potato salad in a huge orange ceramic bowl with white flecks," Jane added. "I've seen it before. Who does that belong to, Shelley?"

“Mary Ellen Revere."

“Of course. She lives across the street.”

“Is that it?”

Jane could see out the window. "Yes. ." she said slowly as she watched a gurney with a covered shape being wheeled out to the ambulance. A man in coveralls the same blue as the cleaning lady's pant suit was walking alongside.

Jane suddenly felt sick again, but it had nothing to do with the murder victim. She was thinking of Steve. He must have been taken away like that, his face covered. But it had been the middle of the night, freezing and snowing. And instead of lush, green lawn, there must have been only twisted metal, bent guardrails, ice-coated pavement, and blood everywhere. Steve's blood and the truck driver's, probably steaming in the frigid night air at first, then crystallizing on the snow.

And he'd had nobody to walk beside him.

Five

“Mrs. Jeffry, could you give me addresses for the women you've mentioned? I'll have to contact them."

“What—? Oh, yes, of course." Jane dragged herself back to the present. What was going on now was bad enough; the past was unthinkable. She got her address book out from the drawer beneath the phone and started recording the information on a notepad.

“I'll take you home anytime you're ready, Mrs. Nowack," Detective VanDyne was saying. "Do you need anyone called? Your husband—?"

“No, he's out of town. So are my children. I'll phone him later this afternoon when things — when I've calmed down. Uh — about that room — the guest room—?"

“It's all right. Death is sometimes very messy. This one wasn't," he said, correctly interpreting her concern. "Of course, we've got a photographer and a fingerprint man there still, but they'll dean up after themselves — in their fashion — when they're done. We'll have to take the vacuum cleaner to the lab for a few days to try to get some prints off the cord. It's unlikely they'llfind any full prints, though. Is there anything else you can tell me about all this? What do you know about Mrs. Thurgood?"

“Mrs. Thurgood? Who's that?”

He looked at her with some alarm. "Mrs. Thurgood is the woman who was murdered."

“Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't know that was her name. I suppose she must have told me, but—"

“She worked for you every week and you didn't know her name?"

“No. I'd never had her to my house before. She was a substitute for the woman the agency was supposed to send."

“I didn't know that," Detective VanDyne said.

“Does it matter?" Jane asked, looking up from her task of compiling names and addresses.

“Who can say?" he answered. "I don't know anything yet." He turned back to Shelley. "Are you ready to go home?"

“I'll come with you, Shelley," Jane said. She handed the list to the detective and wondered if he'd be able to read her handwriting. She hardly recognized it as her own.

“No, Jane. I'm fine now. Really. Go get your kids back from the Dragon Lady.”

Jane smiled. "Okay. But you'll come over for dinner?”

Shelley agreed and went off with her protector. Jane called her mother-in-law and made the briefest possible explanation of what had occurred. "I'll be over in a few minutes to pick up the kids."

“Oh, no need, Jane. They're happy as clams here. I've fixed a nice angel food cake. I know how Mike loves them."

“And I suppose he's wolfing it down now and spoiling his appetite for dinner?" This was one of Thelma's favorite tricks. She used to do it all the time with Steve, asking him to stop by to visit her in the late afternoon for some reason, then filling him up so he wouldn't want whatever Jane had fixed.

“Oh, were you cooking dinner tonight? I had no idea," Thelma said with a little laugh.

“I always cook dinner," Jane lied. She eyed a Kentucky Fried Chicken box from the evening before in the wastebasket. I must not lose my temper with her, she told herself. She's doing me a favor at the moment and that puts her in a position of power: "I'll be over in a few minutes.”

She then reported in to Dorothy Wallenberg. "I'm running over to pick up Todd. I appreciate your helping me out."

“Jane, what in heaven's name happened at Shelley's?"

“The cleaning lady was murdered."

“Murdered! My God! You said before that she died. I thought a heart attack or something. Murdered? Who did it?"

“Nobody knows. Please, Dorothy, don't tell Todd about it being murder yet. I want to sort of ease into it with him later. Without any warning, it would scare him to death."

“Of course it would. It scares me, and I'm worried about you being right next door. Shelley's home alone right now, too, isn't she? Thank God her children were gone. Don't worry about getting Todd. He's out playing with the kids, and I'd promised to take them all out for Burger King. Let me just bring him back to you later."

“Thanks, Dorothy. That sounds wonderful. The police ought to be gone by then and it'll be less horrible.”

As she backed out to go get Mike and Katie, the last police car pulled away. All that remained was a red MG. That had to be Detective VanDyne's. Somehow he looked like the sort of bachelor who'd have one.

When Jane got to her mother-in-law's, Thelma was greedy for details about the crisis. She was a stately, angular, blue-haired lady with a perpetually haughty look, but her usual frosty manner thawed as she exclaimed, "Murder! Good Lord, Jane. How terrible! Well, it just goes to prove what I've always said you and the children ought to move in here with me. It's not safe for you to be living alone.”

Jane gritted her teeth and took a deep breath. "Thelma, you'd have hardly been able to prevent this, and none of us were endangered anyway." This, she knew, was beside the point. Her mother-in-law had been harping for months on how they ought to move in with her. The bedrooms in her elegant condo were the size of skating rinks, but there were only two of them, and Jane sometimes had nightmares about living there and having to be Thelma's "roommate." Of course, Thelma didn't really want them there; what she was really angling for was an invitation to move in with them.

“She'd be packed in thirty seconds," Jane had said to Shelley the week before, "if I even hinted that I might agree. It would be like having Gen‑ eral Patton around the house. Slapping the troops — namely me — for their own good."

“You've got to stand firm, Jane," Shelley had advised. "She'd have you asking her permission to pee within the week."