Jeffery Deaver - Ice Cold

And Judith saw the Lord Baltimore diaper service truck parked in the carport behind the Delaney house, despite the fact that the Delaneys had no children.

“They do shirts,” Frances Delaney said one July morning as Judith headed out again for a walk, thinking she might do a little marketing, or even have an ice cream cone at High’s for lunch. She always left by way of the street, then returned via the alley, her bag of groceries a cover of sorts, a legitimate reason for being in the alley. It would be natural, with a bag of groceries, to want to enter the house through the kitchen door.

“Excuse me?”

Frances Delaney was on her knees in her front yard, tending to a small flower bed. The men did the lawns, the women did the flowers. Judith did not have a green thumb, perhaps because her own mother did not, so her lawn was just lawn.

“Lord Baltimore Diaper Service,” Frances said, rising to her feet, brushing off her knees. She was wearing short shorts and a halter that left a strip of her midriff bare. A good outfit for tanning if the sun ever came out again; Judith just didn’t feel comfortable in such clothes since she married. She thought the whole point of being a wife was to look polished, grown-up. To look as if you had some place to go, even if it was only High’s Dairy Store. She was wearing Bernardo sandals and a hot-pink shift that she had made from a remnant at Jo-Ann Fabrics, a coordinating scarf over her hair, which she would wash and set later today in the loose straight style that Patrick liked. “They do shirts, too.”

“You send your husband’s shirts out?”

“Jack’s fussy in his way.”

Judith thought about Mr. Delaney. Jack . He had come to her home for Friday night supper in a Banlon shirt. He wore his hair very short, even shorter than Patrick wore his, practically a crew cut. He had picked his teeth at the table and touched his wife a lot, stroking her, patting her. He reminded Judith of the fairy tale in which a Chinese emperor kept a nightingale to sing for him.

“His work shirts,” Frances Delaney continued. “They’re particular at Social Security. Always looking for something to hold against a man, Jack says. He liked the Army better, he says. The rules were clear. He even liked Germany when we were stationed there.”

“Is that where you met? Germany?”

Frances laughed as if the idea were absurd, meeting someone in Germany. “Anyway, he likes his shirts just so, and I like Jack to be happy.”

“Isn’t that expensive? Sending out shirts?”

“Jack doesn’t know I send his shirts out. He just knows that they’re ironed and starched to his standards, which are very high.” She smiled shyly. She looked like a gypsy to Judith, but Patrick said Frances Delaney was pure black Irish—dark hair, blue eyes so pale that they were barely there. But there was something in her voice, a suggestion of an accent that had been vanquished, or was being kept in place through strict discipline.

“Where did you go to high school?” she asked Frances. It was usually the first thing Baltimoreans asked of one another.

“All over,” she said.

“Army brat?”

“Of a sort. My father’s work took us to Asia and Europe.”

That probably explained her accent, although it wasn’t so much an accent as a complete absence of accent, unusual here in Edmondson Heights, where almost everyone, except Judith, spoke with the exaggerated o ’s and extra r ’s that marked what people called a Baltimore accent.

Judith knew she shouldn’t ask more questions, that part of being a good neighbor was to respect all the little boundaries—the cheap white pickets that people placed down the middle of their shared lawns, the invisible lines dividing the parking pads, the shouts and sounds heard through the paper-thin walls late at night.

Yet she pressed, curious: “Don’t you get an allowance? Doesn’t he go over the checkbook?”

“I’m clever with money. I economize on the groceries—I’m a good cook, if I do say so myself. No one’s ever left my table unhappy.” Was Frances Delaney suggesting that she had left Judith’s table unhappy? That was so unfair. It wasn’t Judith’s fault that she forgot most Catholics didn’t eat meat on Fridays. “And I use what’s left over for the laundry. What he doesn’t know won’t hurt me.” She clapped a hand to her mouth. “I mean what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him . I always get that wrong. Would you like to come in for a Tab?”

“Sure,” Judith said.

Over the next two weeks, she stopped at Frances Delaney’s house almost daily, enjoying Tab or Fresca and, sometimes, a white wine that was quite unlike anything Judith had ever tasted. They talked about everything and nothing. They complained, in the self-deprecating code that was allowed, about their husbands’ foibles. Silent, oblivious Patrick. Gabby, grabby Jack. They watched the Watergate hearings and made fun of Sam Ervin’s eyebrows, talked about Mo Dean’s style, which Judith admired but Frances thought drab.

“If my husband had that kind of job, I’d look better than that,” said Frances, who almost always wore cut-offs and halter tops. “She looks dowdy to me.”

“I worked in politics,” Judith confided in Frances. “I thought I was going to change the world.”

“The world never changes,” Frances said, smoking a Virginia Slim. Judith yearned to join her, but she had worked too hard to give it up.

“That’s what I found out.”

Inside the Delaney house, she saw enough evidence of money to believe that Frances Delaney did have a household budget with considerable fat in it. The appliances were new, unusual in this block of renters. The dining room set could have come straight from the grand prize package on The Newlywed Game . Mahogany, shiny. Tacky, but expensive, and Frances seemed to loathe it, too, neglecting to use coasters beneath their sweating glasses. The television set was color and huge, a Magnavox with a stereo built in.

“Do you own or rent?” Judith asked one day.

“Own.” Frances made a face. “It was his mother’s house. She died, left it to us, so we moved here. We could afford something nicer, but he says there’s no point in moving until we outgrow it.”

“So you’re going to have a family?”

“Of course.” She looked—insulted, that was it. As if Judith had given offense. “Why wouldn’t we? Jack’s only forty-two.”

“My oldest brother is forty,” Judith said, a peace offering. “I’m the youngest of five, the only girl. I grew up in Pikesville.”

“Pikesville. Isn’t that all Jews?”

“Yes,” Judith said, thinking it the most tactful way to reply. If she knew anything about her new friend, it was that she was delicate and sensitive, not at all like her coarse, belligerent husband. She would appreciate the chance to avoid hurting Judith’s feelings.

“Wow. How did you stand it?”

Judith thought very hard about what to say next.

“Hasn’t it been the worst summer?”

“Yes, but it’s a blessing in a way,” Frances said. “These houses get so hot, you have no idea. The second floor is usually unbearable during the day.” Frances stuck out her bottom lip and blew a few errant tendrils from her face. “You know, I suppose we should have you over to dinner, in return. I should have thought of that sooner.”

“Oh, please—don’t worry about that.”

A rumbling noise from the carport. From where they sat, in the dining room, Judith could see a white truck pulling to a stop. The Lord Baltimore diaper truck.

“I should go.”

Frances didn’t protest. “Friday night,” she said, not rising from her chair. She dangled a hand between her thigh absentmindedly, then across her collarbone, caressing herself. Judith left behind a half-full can of Tab, desperate to be out of the house before the Lord Baltimore Diaper Service driver crossed the threshold.