A Farewell to Yarns (15 page)

Apparently it didn't faze Bobby. He shrugged elaborately. "I got no idea. It's not here. She provably put it in the mail or something. It'll turn up, and believe me, you'll be eating your own shit when it does."

“Just what's that supposed to mean?" John asked. His face was flushed and blotched with fury. Jane was half afraid he was about to have a stroke.

“Figure it out yourself," Bobby said. Was it a bluff, or did he know what the will contained? Jane wondered. For that matter, was the whole story a bluff? She suspected it was. Phyllis wasn't the sort to even think about things like w i l l s — u n l e s s , o f c o u r s e , a g r e e d y s o n r e minded her.

“Oh, I'll figure it out," Chet was saying. "And first thing in the morning, I'll also figure out about this house. You better start your packing, boy, because you're going to be out of it. I curse the day I ever went looking for you. Phyllis would be alive today if I hadn't. I can never absolve myself of that.”

The gentle emotions in his last words broke the spell Jane had been under. Barely able to get her breath, she rose quickly. "I have to go home. Shelley, help me finish the packing, will you?”

The two of them fled up the stairs. Raised voices followed them. Jane was cursing herself.

They should have gotten out of the house. What misguided, ingrained sense of courtesy and obligation had made them rush to finish this ap palling job? As they flung the last of Phyllis's belongings into the suitcases with little care, Shelley said in a trembling voice, "Dear God, if they're going to kill each other, let us get out of here first.”

As she spoke, there was the sound of the front door slamming. For a moment Jane thought it was a gunshot, and she clung to Shelley's arm But seconds later there was the sound of the Jaguar starting up. "They must have run him out for the time being. Shelley, I'm so sorry I got us into the middle of this."

“Don't you be sorry. It was my fault for asking you to do this," John Wagner said from the doorway.

-

“I was glad to do what little I could," Jane said, snapping shut the latch on the suitcase. John picked it and the other largest one up. Jane took the smaller ones, and Shelley went to the closet and took out Phyllis's mink jacket and purse.

John looked at the small, flat purse for a second, then set the cases down and took it from Shelley. He opened it and peered in. Jane was quite close and could see as well as he that there was no "blue folder thing" in it.

Still shaky and frantic to get awa y, they hauled everything downstairs and left it by the front door where John Wagner could easily take it to his car later. Chet, deflated, was still sitting at the dining room table with his head in his hands. He pulled himself together with a visible effort and insisted once again that Jane take Phyllis's things. And again, she demurred. "You'll let me know about the funeral, won't you?" she asked him as she edged toward the doorway.

“We'll be making the arrangements in the morning. Give me your address, and I'll come

“I won't be home most of tomorrow. I'll be at the house next door to here—" She gestured toward the Howards' house. "There's a church bazaar I'm helping set up.”

After a few more awkward parting remarks, Jane and Shelley made their escape. They practically ran to the car and didn't even talk on the way home. There was too much to say but no way to say it.

Though the evening had seemed to last for ever, it was only eight when Jane got home. She called Uncle Jim back.

“I didn't find out much, but Janey, if you're this Chet's friend, you're not gonna like this. Just a minute—" She could hear him rattling papers and could picture him fitting his bifocals on the end of his nose.

“Apparently his wife had left him and had come to Chicago to stay with a friend—you. Incidentally, that's the only mention of you I found. VanDyne was pulling your leg about you being a suspect. The husband flew in yesterday afternoon, called his office without mentioning where he was calling from, registered under the name Chester Weber at a hotel downtown. He rented a car, which he took out around midnight. It has enough miles on it to have gone to the house where his wife was staying and back, plus half a dozen miles. The lot is unattended after midnight, so nobody knows when he got back.”

Jane gulped, thinking about the two Chets she'd seen that night; one a broken husband and the other a ruthless businessman. "Still, none of that is proof, is it?"

“No, that's why he's not in jail. He claims he was distraught over his wife's departure. That he didn't think she'd really leave, but when she did, he followed her here with the intention of patching things up. Once he got to Chicago, he says he had second thoughts, decided to wait a few days and see if she'd come looking for him. That's why he says he used the false name and didn't tell his people where he was—to make her wonder and stew a bit if she did try to get in touch with him."

“Where did he go when he went out so late?"

“That depends on your viewpoint. The investigators think he went to bump off his wife. He says he couldn't sleep and just went for an aimless drive."

“That could be true, Uncle Jim."

“Sure it could."

“What about the murder weapon?"

“A kitchen knife from a set the victim had delivered with a bunch of other kitchen stuff that afternoon. No prints."

“Could a killer have counted on a weapon being handy?"

“No, not unless he lived in the house or was visiting when the stuff came. If not, he probably had something of his own along in case there wasn't something sharp handy."

“What about footprints," Jane asked. "There's a little snow on the ground.”

Jane could hear Uncle Jim shuffling some papers. "Let's see. Prints. A muddle of them going back and forth through the side yard from the house next door—"

“Yes, that was Albert Howard showing her the house."

“—a set coming to the front door, which were discovered to have gone clear down the block, door to door. Salesman or mail carrier or somebody. Another set of two children cutting across the backyard and peeping in a window. Win dow undamaged. And one set from the house on the other side that wandered around and got close but not clear up to the house."

“That's Mr. Finch, snooping."

“It looks like that's all he did, unless he could spring over a bush ten feet from the house. Your VanDyne had a few critical remarks about him in the report but no suggestions that he was responsible. A regular herd of prints run from the driveway to the front door. Presumably the people who moved all the furniture and whatnot in, plus the woman herself and her son. There's no sorting them out."

“Did Chet know where Phyllis was staying?"

“I didn't think to ask that. I would think he did or could have known. He called in to his office late in the afternoon, after she'd given orders to buy it."

“It still wouldn't be proof of his guilt. UncleJim, what's going to happen with all this conjecture?"

“T hey're either going to solve it, or they won't. It's that simple."

“You mean they might
never
figure out who did it?"

“Not quite. See, Janey, knowing who did it and accumulating enough verifiable evidence to bring to trial is a different matter. That would take a confession if nothing else turns up in the way of proof of guilt."

“But Phyllis can't go unavenged. She didn't deserve to be murdered."

“Lots of people don't deserve it, but it hap pens. Listen, Janey, you leave the avenging part to the police. You stay out of this. I'll keep you informed of everything I can find out, but in return, you keep your distance. Somebody didn't much mind killing her and probably wouldn't mind getting you out of the way if you butt in."

“Okay—" she said, hoping that didn't count as a promise. "Thanks, Uncle Jim.”

The kids started coming home a few minutes later. Jane listened to Mike's story about the band director nearly having a breakdown at band practice and felt a deep sympathy with the man. She listened to Katie's half hour account of the fashion show and then helped Todd with his math homework. When they'd all gone to bed, she treated herself to a cigarette and a Coke, then checked for the third time that all the doors were locked before she settled down to watch
It's a Wonderful Life
on the late movie and crochet like crazy until midnight.
Seventeen

"Hey, Mom, that's pretty,"
Katie
deigned to comment as she destroyed the living room looking for her missing social studies book the next morning. "Is it done?”

Jane studied the afghan spread across the back of the sofa. The twelve oversized granny squares were all done and put together. It actually looked as if someone who knew how to crochet had made them, she thought proudly. " N o , i t ge t s a b o ut fo ur r o ws o f s o l i d s t u ff around the entire outside edge, but I don't know how to do the corners."

“Good-O, Mom. I think we ought to keep it," Mike said, joining Jane as she and Katie admired the work.

“I think so, too, but I promised it for the bazaar."

“Then buy it yourself.”

She looked at him. "You mean, pay for the ya r n , d o a l l t h a t wo r k , a n d p a y t o b u y i t besides?"

“You did that last year with that wreath thing."

“Last year—" She stopped herself from saying: Last year your father was alive, and I wasn't worried about money. "I guess I did, didn't I? You ready to go? Is Todd on his way down?”

This was one of the horrible mornings when Jane drove all three kids' car pools to school. Just as there were occasional days when she got off scot-free, there were many more when she felt she was driving every child in the country and ought to just buy a school bus and be done with it. She tried to arrange it so these days fell, like this one did, on Fridays. While it was true that the kids were hyper on Fridays, thereby increasing the risk of permanent injury to the driver's nervous system, they were at least happy-hyper, which was far nicer than Monday mornings when they all acted like she was driving them up to the front door of the guillotine. She got Mike and his crowd of friends delivered to the high school, Katie and her car pool (not friends—a purely geographical arrangement made by Jane and the other mothers, which Katie mentioned critically nearly every morning) to the junior high, and Todd and his bunch to the grade school. Then she came home and collapsed at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and the last few minutes of the
Today
show.

After watching about ninety seconds of a feature on a woman who was the mother of six adopted children (three with severe disabilities), who worked as a madly successful criminal lawyer and had invented (in her spare time, they said—what spare time?) some sort of toy that was supposed to rival the Hula Hoop, Jane flipped the television off in disgust. That sort of programming ought to be censored before impressionable young girls saw it and thought such a life was actually possible and/or re quired of them.

“I wonder what happens on the days when four of the kids are sick and a trial is supposed to star t. . . ." she said alo ud to W illard, who thumped his tail happily in response.

"Probably uses some of that toy money to call in a squadron of babysitters.”

As she opened pet food cans, she dialed Shelley's number. "What time are we supposed to go to Fiona's to start setting up?"

“Ten."

“Will you have time before then to show me how to finish the afghan?”

Shelley turned up a few minutes later, gave Jane her instructions, and sat down to watch her wo r k. " Ha ve yo u b ee n t hi nki ng abo ut l a st night?"

“I've been trying not to. Oh, Shelley, I finally understand that phrase about being of two minds. Every time somebod y starts going on about how much Phyllis thought of me, I feel like I ought to dash out and start interrogating people myself because of this tremendous emotional debt I didn't even know I had. Did you notice that even Chet knew my kids'

names?
That's
how much she talked about me. But then I pull myself together and realize there could be a hundred explanations for all this that I know nothing about. I mean, what do I really know about Phyllis's life? Nothing. Chet could have some deadly enemy who killed Phyllis to get at him. For that matter, Bobby probably has perfectly awful chums in the city who were just waiting for him to get back, and one of them might have killed Phyllis by mistake. The worst is, I don't really believe the police will ever un ravel it. I talked to Uncle Jim last night—”

She proceeded to tell Shelley about the conversation.

“So the evidence all points to Chet?" Shelley said when she was done.

“No, just the circumstances. There isn't any evidence to speak of. And I wouldn't think much more is likely to turn up, unless someone has a violent attack of conscience and confesses," Jane said.

“So you still don't think it's Chet?"

“I don't want to think so. Didn't you see how devastated he was by it all?"

“I did. And I also saw how he pulled himself out of it in seconds to confront Bobby. It was almost like watching a mul tiple personality kick in."

“Kinda spooky, wasn't it?"

“That's putting it mildly. I think the one person most capable of violence, from what we saw last night, is John Wagner. If his father hadn't stopped him, I think he'd have reduced Bobby to a grease spot without a second thought," Shelley said.

“Could you blame him?"

“Not a bit."

“But I still can't imagine anybody working up that kind of animosity toward Phyllis. Poor Phyllis. What do you think?"

“I think we better get over to Fiona's and concentrate on getting the bazaar set up.”

Jane bundled up the afghan so Willard wouldn't sleep on it and sighed. "Did I actually volunteer for this, or is it all just a nightmare?"

“Both.”

Jane went to her kitchen radio and tuned in an FM station that played Christmas music. "Why turn that on? We're leaving," Shelley said.

“Partly so it's playing when I get home, and partly—I know this sounds dumb—so that the sound will soak into the house."