Grime and Punishment: A Jane Jeffry Mystery (16 page)

Murder was forgotten while they cleaned up and disposed of the rest of the food. Shelley washed the dishes and Jane behaved herself while she dried them and stacked them up.

“Let's go ahead and take them back," Shelley said. "If we don't, everybody will come here and talk to me endlessly about the whole thing. I'm sick of it."

“You better not get too sick of it, not with that man suspecting us.”

Shelley just rolled her eyes at this. "Take Mary Ellen's bowl back while I put the rest of them in the car.”

Tucking the heavy, slippery bowl firmly under her arm, Jane went across the street and rang Mary Ellen's doorbell. She answered it a moment later. Today she was in a charcoal jogging suit that set off the blond in her hair beautifully. Didn't she ever look bad?

“Jane, come in.”

Jane walked through to the kitchen and set the bowl down carefully. "I'm sorry, the plate on top got broken. It was my fault. I'll get you a new one.”

Mary Ellen smiled. "You can't. And I don't want you to. It was just a grocery-store giveaway. You know, you buy ten dollars' worth of stuff and get the plate for a quarter. I'm glad to see the end of it. Sit down, will you?"

“Thanks, but I can't. Shelley and I are taking all the dishes back."

“What's happening, Jane? I saw that man in the red car over there a while ago. Do they know who did it yet? I haven't seen anything more in the paper about it, and I didn't like to bother Shelley by asking questions. I know she must be awfully upset."

“They don't seem to know much," Jane said. She wasn't sure whether the theory of it being the wrong victim was supposed to be a secret or not. Probably not, or VanDyne wouldn't have told her, but still… "Did he come talk to you?"

“The detective? Yes. He seemed to expect to find that I spent the whole day with my nose glued to the front window, spying on the neighbors. He was disappointed, I think, at how little I knew about everybody's comings and goings."

“You didn't see anything or anybody unusual that day?"

“No. I work in the den all day, and that window faces the side yard. Unless I'm passing through the living room to do laundry or something, I never see what's going on in the street.”

Jane started back toward the front door. "How's your arm?"

“Feeling better. The doctor gave me some stuff for pain, and I'm getting used to it and don't bash it into the furniture so often now."

“Do you need me to take you to the store or anything?"

“It's nice of you to offer, but Ed's been real good about helping out. He's even been cooking." She wrinkled her nose, indicating wordlessly that the intent might be noble but the results questionable.

“How long do you have to keep the cast on?" Mary Ellen looked surprised. "I have no idea. I didn't even think to ask.”

There was a
beep
in front. Shelley was honking for Jane to get a move on. "Gotta run, Mary Ellen. I'm really sorry about the plate. Are you sure—"

“Positive.”

As Jane climbed into the minivan, they saw Suzie Williams come up the street and pull into her driveway. "What's she doing home?”

Jane glanced at her watch. It was only five before eleven. "Maybe an early lunch hour. Let's find out. We can get rid of one more dish.”

Suzie came to the door scowling, but bright- ened when she saw them. "Let me guess! You're the committee for public decency, come to straighten me out."

“You probably need it," Jane said. "What are you doing home at this time of day?”

Suzie motioned them in and headed for the kitchen with Jane and Shelley in her wake. "I'm taking the rest of the day off. Cramps. I'm so sick of this filthy female plumbing. Cramps, at my age! It's all so goddamn useless. I mean, what the hell good is a uterus anyway when you're through having kids? Ovaries are okay, but a womb? It's just a damn nuisance. If hysterectomies weren't so expensive, I'd buy myself one. Coffee? Coke?"

“You're not that old," Shelley said.

“I'll be thirty-eight next month, kiddo, and if I got pregnant now, I'd shoot some guy in the balls and then put the gun in my mouth. Jesus God, have you forgotten how miserable babies are? Remember sterilizers, diapers, colic, unexplained fevers in the middle of the night that scare the shit out of you and disappear by the time the doctor's on the case?”

Suzie and Shelley chatted for a few minutes of the almost forgotten horrors — and joys of babies. Jane was quiet, trying to observe Suzie and her house as if she were a stranger. She'd known Suzie for years and liked her outspoken, vulgar way of expressing herself and the energy she brought to anything she did or talked about. But what did she
really
know about her?

She glanced around the kitchen, looking for clues to the secret Suzie. She had nice enough things, selected with taste, but all a bit old and worn. The ornaments on the shelf over the tiny kitchen desk were all obviously school projects of Bob's. Some pictures he'd drawn, a lopsided ceramic sugar bowl, nothing that really said anything about Suzie herself. Jane couldn't remember seeing any family pictures, just school pictures of the boy displayed with pride.

Suzie rarely mentioned her ex-husband, and when she did it was in scathing terms. Jane seemed to recall that he'd left her for another woman—"A thin little bitch," as buxom Suzie put it. It was apparently some time ago, because Suzie had lived in the neighborhood since her son was in preschool. There must have been a decent divorce settlement for Suzie to have bought the house and furnished it nicely, but probably not much alimony; she made it clear that she wasn't working to "fulfill" herself, but to keep their roof over their heads. And the furniture and carpets, while clean and neat, were beginning to show age. Bob didn't spend summers with his father like so many of the kids of divorced parents in the neighborhood, so there must not be any contact with him.

Jane searched her memory. Where was Suzie from? Somewhere in the South, she thought. For her first few years here she'd carried on hideously about the winters. "I never thought I'd see the day when I'd go trudging around ass-deep in the snow!" she said the first time they'd met. So why
had
she come here?

“I'm asking you for the last time what you want to drink!" Suzie said, shaking Jane's arm.

“Oh! Sorry. A Coke, I think. Wasn't that one of the choices?"

“Sure, but it's full of sugar and caffeine. Do you care?"

“I wouldn't want it any other way," Jane said fervently.

“A woman after my own heart. I don't know why caffeine's suddenly got such a bad rep. First they take away our Dexedrine, then they go after caffeine. It's not fair. How's a girl to get through the day?"

“Suzie, where are you from?" Jane asked. "Texas, why?"

“I just wondered. You don't have an accent."

“Southern accents don't take on Swedes, didn't you know? Try to picture Mrs. Olson saying 'Haf sum coffee — y'awl.' I can do it if I need to." She drew herself up, tossed her long, platinum hair, and assumed a sleepy, southern-belle look. "Ah doan know what y'awl city folks mean 'bout accents. I tawk just 'bout like my daddy. Sheeeet. It's a three-syllable word in the South, shit. She-eee-it.”

Shelley choked on her drink.

“Where are you from, Jane?" Suzie asked, politely ignoring Shelley.

“Everywhere. My father was a civil servant with a genius for languages. He was also very handsome and had a good family background. So everytime anybody needed a highly presentable translator, he was it. We lived almost anywhere there had ever been an embassy. What about your folks?"

“No idea," she said breezily. "They dropped me off at an orphanage when I was two. I was raised in foster homes."

“Oh, I'm sorry.”

Suzie sat down and leaned her arms on the table. "Why? It wasn't your fault, and it wasn't so bad. Foster parents have gotten a bad rep too. Most of mine were nice.”

Jane had the feeling she'd said something very tactless, but couldn't tell quite what it was. Suzie and Shelley were both sipping their drinks and staring at her, as if eager to see which foot she'd put in her mouth next.

“Suzie, was Edith blackmailing you?" Shelley gasped.

Suzie just stared at her for an extraordinarily long moment, then chuckled. "That's so goddamn unsubtle I can't believe you said it! Like something out of Monty Python. Jane, you're priceless."

“Well, was she?"

“Hell, no! What for? No, wait — let me see if I can figure this out. You think I'm a Libyan spy in disguise, this is a blond wig, and I asked the cleaning lady to dust a basement full of bombs!" She shrieked with delight. "Or maybe I'm a mass murderer who slaughtered an entire Texastown and came here to hide out. Edith found my shotgun with forty-seven notches on the handle.”

Even though she was the butt of the joke, Jane found herself joining Suzie's infectious laughter. "Actually, I had you pegged for hijacking a truckload of pomegranates—"

“And Edith found her with juice running down her chin and her bra stuffed with seeds," Shelley put in.

They tossed off progressively sillier ideas for a few minutes, and Suzie finally said, "Bless your sneaky little heart, Jane, you've made me almost forget my cramps. Will you both stay for lunch? It's getting to be that time.”

Shelley stood up, wiping her eyes. "Thanks, no, Suzie. I want to get as many of these dishes back as I can.”

Suzie walked them to the door, still giggling. But as they started to walk away, she grew serious. "Jane, do you really think that's what the murder was about? Edith blackmailing someone? Is that what your cocky, handsome detective thinks?"

“Who knows what he thinks? He interviewed you, I hear."

“Yes, but he didn't get anywhere," she said with a lecherous look. "I didn't reveal any neighborhood secrets."

“Do you really know any?"

“Sure, so do you, if you stop and think about it. Quiet little abortions before it was legal, affairs, questionable incomes, that sort of thing. But if we know them, they're not exactly secrets anyway. But Jane, there's something you ought to think about while you're on this little private quest for the truth

“What?"

“Nobody's ever had the balls to try a thing like blackmail on me. Partly because I don't have anything nasty enough for it to work. But if it had been true — if she had been blackmailing me and you'd asked me — Jane, I'd have said exactly the same thing to you as I did.”

Sixteen

“Who do you think you are — Miss Marple?" Shelley demanded when they got back in the car. She was obviously torn between anger and amusement.

“Well, somebody has to get to the bottom of this, and I don't have much faith in our friend Detective VanDyne, do you?"

“It is his job, you know."

“I know that, and he's probably pretty good at it, but this has to do with private things. Do you think anybody's going to tell him — a man, a cop, an outsider — what they were being blackmailed about?”

Shelley fished her keys out of her purse, started the engine, and backed out of Suzie's driveway at a much higher speed than was usual for her. "Probably not. No more than they're going to tell you."

“Yes, they will.”

Shelley stopped at the corner and looked at her for a long moment before driving on. "Like Suzie did, huh?"

“I'll admit I struck out on that one. But I've learned a valuable lesson, and I never for a mo- ment suspected Suzie anyway. It was a sort of trial run, you see."

“Oh, sure. If you don't suspect her, who do you suspect?"

“Actually, I think it may have been Robbie Jones." She glanced at Shelley. "You do too, don't you?”

Shelley cleared her face of the slight smile that had been starting at the corners of her mouth. "That's not fair of either of us, Jane. She's just homely and dull. That's no reason to suspect her of murder, for God's sake."

“Shelley, if anybody's going to be suspected, it might as well be her — and I'm not going by her looks. The fact is, she's more the type than any of us. She's a superb organizer. A cold-blooded organizer, you might say. And murdering that cleaning lady took a cool head and good planning. Also, I keep thinking of that time we were having some kind of meeting and somebody mentioned how odd it was that her daughter didn't have her beautiful red hair. Remember?"

“Vaguely. She said something about her taking after her father. So what?"

“Then Suzie said she saw no resemblance to Harry, and Robbie said, no, her daughter's father was her first husband. Not the daughter's husband, Robbie's."

“Oh, yes, I remember there was a stir about that later. Nobody knew she'd been married before, and Suzie was carrying on about how she couldn't find a man to marry and Robbie had found two and it proved life wasn't fair."

“Right. But remember how Robbie clammedup after that, and nobody could get her to say another word about the first husband?"

“Yes, but none of that means a damn thing. We know lots of people who made a bad first marriage and just don't like to talk about it. Before I met Paul, I was engaged to a man once that I'd sooner die than admit I knew. I could have married him, and I certainly wouldn't want to talk about it. So what?"

“The marriage isn't what matters here, it's her secretiveness."

“Pretty thin, Jane."

“I know it is. But Shelley, think about it. What do we know about her? Almost nothing. Most of our friends have mentioned all sorts of things about their past at one time or another, but except for that one time, what has Robbie
ever
said about her life?"

“Nothing that I can remember, but when have we expressed an interest? Be honest, Jane. I've always assumed that she's always been as dull as she is now and there was nothing worth asking about or even listening to. That's our fault, not hers.”

Jane lapsed into silence for a few minutes, and finally said, "I know you're right. But I still think if any of us could have done it, it would be her."