Jenny reached over and squeezed her stepmother’s hand. “Couldn’t you have just come?”
“Barged in here and said, ‘How do you do, I’m your stepmother?’ I don’t have that kind of nerve, Jenny. There was too much at risk. You looked enough like your father that I hoped I could arouse your interest without making you suspicious of me by using his own method.” She smiled. “The wrapping came off a present James had sent me from here the week before he died. It was a pink plush kangaroo with a bottle of aspirin and a lovely gold pillbox set with pearls tucked into the pouch. I could have brought the kangaroo instead, I suppose, but it wouldn’t have done the trick as well, would it?”
Jenny shook her head. “No, the jacket was—convincing. But if you knew it was a fake, why did you let me go through that business about trying it on Greg Bauer?”
“Mere corroborative detail, as Pooh-Bah would say, designed to lend credence to a pretty thin story. But you can see now why the jacket couldn’t be young MacRae’s. Or Jack Firbelle’s, for that matter. I suppose we might as well get rid of it. Maybe you’d as soon get rid of me, too, now that you know how I’ve tricked you.”
Jenny shoved back her chair and ran around the table. “How can you think that? You can’t run out on me. I’m your daughter!”
All of a sudden they were having a real, satisfying weep together, Jenny’s head pressed against her stepmother’s shoulder, and Harriet’s cheek resting on the thick black hair that felt so much like Jason Cirak’s. After a while, the older woman picked up a fresh paper napkin and wiped away her tears. “Well, this isn’t getting much done.”
“It is so,” Jenny snuffled. “It’s the most important thing that ever happened.”
Harriet gave her another squeeze. “I stand corrected, Jenny, my own. I’ve wanted this for so long. I never dreamed it would happen this way.”
Jenny took another napkin and mopped at the face she’d inherited from Jason Cirak along with his money and his wife. “What difference does it make how? The big thing is, it’s happened.”
16
They were calming their emotions and practicing their mother-daughter relationship by washing the dishes together when Beth arrived with another bunch of chrysanthemums and a note from Aunt Marguerite. Mrs. Firbelle hoped Jenny and her aunt would drop over at seven that evening for a simple family dinner.
She’s not my aunt, Jenny wanted to answer. She’s my stepmother; and I’m not Jenny Plummer but Jenny Cirak. And I don’t want to come to your house because I don’t like the way it feels over there.
But she couldn’t. She didn’t dare go back to being Jenny Cirak until she’d found out who or what had killed her father. And she must go to the Firbelles’ because if she let herself be scared away, she’d never learn what she had to know. She sat down at the desk and wrote a polite acceptance on a piece of the late Jason Cirak’s writing paper.
“There you are, Beth, and thanks so much for coming. I suppose you’ll be off to the rummage sale pretty soon.”
“Oh yes. I’ll just take your note back to Aunt Marguerite, then run right over to the church. We’re having a chowder luncheon, and that will mean a lot of extra work. I don’t suppose you two would care to attend? It’s only a dollar fifty per person.”
“At that price, we can’t afford to miss it. What do you say, Aunt Harriet?”
“Sounds great to me. Have you any tickets with you, Beth?”
“No, but I’ll make sure they save a couple for you at the door. We’re hoping for a big turnout. We’ll be serving from half-past eleven till two o’clock. We hope some of the husbands will come since it’s Saturday. Getting the men to participate is always a problem.”
“Your cousin Jack will be there, I suppose?” Jenny said.
“Yes, he’s going to set up the chairs and so forth. Jack’s not a bad helper if you prod him hard enough,” Beth admitted. “I’ll be looking for you, then.”
“We’ll probably drop in sometime around noon.”
“And in the meantime,” Harriet suggested after Beth had left her with her note, “I move we give this joint a real scrubdown. I’m itching to get at those corners nobody could clean while the rooms were so full of junk. James would never throw out a stick, of course. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d lugged in half the stuff himself. James had a positive passion for clutter.”
“I do love it when you run on about Father that way,” Jenny said. “You make him sound so human.”
“Why not? He was.” Harriet made a little sound, halfway between a chuckle and a sigh. “I’m going to talk about him a lot, Jenny, partly because I want you to know him as he was, and partly because it makes me feel better. I’ve never had anybody before to whom I could really talk about James.”
She gave her stepdaughter a quick hug, then grabbed the new vacuum cleaner they’d bought on their shopping expedition and attacked the grubby floors with the zest of a ten-year-old.
The hard work did them both good and didn’t hurt the carriage house, either. By half-past twelve they’d gotten themselves showered and changed and left the spic-and-span house.
“Let’s walk,” Jenny suggested. “My lungs need the air. I’ll bet we inhaled dust that hadn’t been disturbed for fifty years.”
“Longer than that. I’m game.” Harriet fell into stride, her long legs making quick work of the not-very-well-tended sidewalk.
“The question now,” said Jenny, as if she were picking up a suspended conversation, “is what clues we have to Father’s death? Without the jacket, that is.”
“None at all,” said Harriet Compton. “And that’s what worries me. We don’t know what we’re looking for, or why. All we can do is keep our eyes and ears open. I worry about you here, Jenny. We have to know what happened, before we can be sure you’re safe.”
“But no one knows he was my father.”
“Doesn’t matter. It could have been that casual prowler, who might return—might even have been the person you saw the other night. Or this house might hold something someone wants and is willing to murder for. Though, whoever it was seems to have made no attempt to find anything the night James was killed.”
“Maybe Beth and Jack came too soon after.”
“No, I think not. Beth said the body was stiff. But something else could have scared the killer off.”
Jenny shuddered. She hadn’t really considered herself in danger, though she’d been afraid the night she saw the prowler. After, she’d assumed it was Lawrence MacRae. But maybe not!
As they neared the church, they met quite a number of women and children, plus a fair sprinkling of men. “Beth’s getting her turnout,” Harriet observed, changing the subject. “She’s a good organizer.”
“Then why doesn’t she get out and organize herself a job?” said Jenny.
“Maybe Aunt Whoozis thinks it would be demeaning. Anyway, running a church social once a year and putting in a steady nine-to-five fifty weeks in a row are two very different kettles of fish. Speaking of fish, I hope they haven’t run out of chowder. It smells divine, and I’m starving.”
They had nothing to worry about. Their tickets were at the door as promised, and Jack Firbelle was on the qui vive to escort them to places of honor beside the minister’s wife, apologizing because his mother couldn’t be there to bestow the yet greater luster of her presence. She was probably at home deciding whether that impromptu little dinner should have five or six courses, Jenny thought nastily.
The chowder was excellent, even though it had been made Rhode Island style. Fish chowder with tomatoes in it would have sent Aunt Martha Plummer into a swoon and Uncle Fred raging from the hall, which made Jenny enjoy it all the more. The crackers were crisply toasted, the apple pie homemade, there was real cream for the coffee. The Gileses and some of the people Jenny had met at their party were present. So were Elspeth Gillespie and Larry MacRae. They all made a point of coming over to say hello and to hope the new neighbors were having a good time. They were, until the fight
broke out.
Pamela and Greg Bauer were sitting at the next table with another youngish couple and the plump woman Jenny remembered as Cousin Daisy. There were several children in their party, and while the parents dawdled over their coffee, the youngsters got up and began skylarking around the tables. Since no church social is complete without a troop of boys and girls milling about, nobody paid much attention to them until the oldest Bauer, a boy about twelve years old who’d inherited his father’s burly build and didn’t yet know how to handle it, came nose-to-nose with a teenage girl carrying a loaded tray. The amateur waitress was nervous, young Bauer was clumsy, and Bill Giles had the bad luck to be sitting where the chowder landed.
For a man his age, Bill could move fast. He was out of his chair and attacking the miscreant almost before the chowder stopped dripping.
“You young punk!”
The Bauer boy began to stammer out an apology, but Giles refused to listen. He slapped the youngster hard, then began shaking him savagely.
“Hey, cut that out!”
Greg Bauer tried to intervene. “Lay off the kid, Bill. It was an accident. He didn’t mean to do it.”
“You want a punch in the mouth?” Giles hurled the son halfway across the table and turned on the father.
Greg was almost twice Bill’s size and probably twenty years younger. The situation should have been absurd. But there was nothing funny about this blind, senseless rage. Even when Lawrence MacRae got Giles in an arm-lock and wrenched him away, he kept threshing blows at the target he could no longer reach.
“Sue,” screamed Greg’s wife Pamela, “can’t you stop him?”
“I don’t dare,” Sue moaned. “If I interfere, he only gets worse.”
“What do you mean?” said Harriet Compton. “Does he often act like this?”
“I never know what will set him off.” Sue was crying now. “He’s like a wild animal when he gets mad. I’m scared of him.”
“Answer me. How often does it happen? Is this something new, or has he always been this bad?”
“It’s—just lately. He was always so good-natured. Oh, I’m so ashamed!”
“Don’t be an idiot. Can’t you see the man is sick?”
Harriet took command. “Larry, you and Greg get him out to your wagon. Don’t let go of him for one second. Mr. Firbelle, stand by to help if they need you. Knock him cold if you can’t control him any other way, but for God’s sake don’t hit too hard.”
“I’ll drive,” said Jenny. “Larry’s got his hands full. Where’s the nearest mental hospital?”
“You’re not taking him there!” shrieked Bill’s wife.
“Sue, you’ve got to understand that your husband is ill.”
“Then take him to a doctor. Let me take him to Dr. O’Hare. He’s just down the street.”
“Very well, if you insist.”
Jenny knew better than to waste time arguing with a hysterical woman. Sue was beside herself now, and her loud sobs were only driving her husband to greater fury.
“Come along if you must, but for goodness’ sake try to control yourself.” Harriet Compton took one of Sue’s arms, the minister’s wife took the other. Together they marched her out of the room.
Beth Firbelle was cowering by the door, her air of efficiency completely shattered by this ugly turn of affairs. Jenny stopped for a second to speak to her.
“Beth, get a mop and clean up that mess over there. Carry on as though nothing had happened.”
“That’s right, Beth. You’ve worked so hard. We mustn’t let this spoil your sale.” Jack Firbelle showed an unexpected streak of compassion by slipping his arm around his cousin’s shoulders. “Come on, I’ll help.”
By now several other men were volunteering their services to Larry and Greg, so Jack was probably of more use at the sale anyway. Luckily Bill had turned sullen by the time they got him into the car, only muttering threats and curses and making an occasional attempt to wrench away from his captors. Better still, Dr. O’Hare was at home, though none too happy about being dragged away from his lunch. He took one look at the patient, barked a few questions at Sue, laid her out in lavender for not having had sense enough to call him sooner, and pumped a tranquilizer into Bill’s arm.
“There, that ought to keep him quiet till you get him to the hospital. No sense in my coming, he needs a neurological specialist. I’ll phone to let them know he’s on his way. Sue, you get yourself home to bed. Take one of these capsules and lie down.”
“I ought to stay with Bill. He’s my husband, after all,” she sobbed.
“You can’t do him any good by wailing all over him, and it’s not going to help you any, either. Greg, take care of Sue. Get Pamela to stay with her till she quiets down. Larry should be able to manage Bill with that dose he’s got inside him, if these two ladies don’t mind going along to drive the car.”
“We’ll manage,” said Harriet Compton. “Go with Greg, Sue. We’ll let you know as soon as there’s anything to report.”
“But what am I going to tell the neighbors?”
“Tell them your husband’s had a seizure and has gone to the hospital for treatment,” roared Dr. O’Hare. “For the cat’s sake, Sue, this isn’t the dark ages. It’s no more disgraceful to have something wrong with your head than with your foot. Offhand, I’d say Bill’s got some hardening of the arteries that’s affecting the blood supply to the brain, but we’ll know better after they’ve run an EEG on him. Now beat it, all of you, and let me eat my lunch.”
Greg Bauer helped Larry MacRae get Bill back into the station wagon, then they dropped Sue at her house and drove to the church so Greg could pick up his car and his wife. At last Jenny turned out on the Providence road.
It was a silent ride. Jenny had never handled such a large car before and had to concentrate on her driving. MacRae and Miss Compton had their hands full with Giles, whom even the massive tranquilizing shot had not fully subdued. They were all relieved when the impressive sprawl of the mental hospital loomed into sight; gladder still when the formalities were over, their troublesome charge was in capable hands, and they were at last free to head back to Meldrum.
17
“I move we stop for coffee.”
Harriet Compton’s words were almost the first any of them had spoken since they’d left Bill at the hospital. “I don’t know about you two, but I feel the need.”
“So do I.”
Jenny had gratefully turned the wheel of the big wagon over to Larry for the return drive. She was huddled down beside him now, very small inside her new suede coat, the one she’d wondered if she could ever bring herself to wear again after she’d seen the bloodstains on that other suede jacket, which was still hanging in her hall closet but would never give her the horrors again.
MacRae glanced down at her and grinned. “I like you better without your hair.”
“Aunt Harriet made me put that wig in the rummage sale,” Jenny admitted. “It was supposed to be a disguise.”
“All it did was accentuate your resemblance to your father, by making you look older.”
“Well, how was I to know what my father looked like?”
“And how was I to know you didn’t know? Come on, I’ll buy the coffee.”
He turned in at the next coffee shop they came to and helped them out of the wagon. Jenny noticed how tired he looked.
“You must be exhausted, Larry. You were sweet to take all this trouble for Bill Giles.”
He shrugged. “Oh, I’m everybody’s errand boy when I’m in Meldrum. That’s what comes of not having a steady job. People think you’ve got all the time in the world just because you don’t have to turn up at an office every day.”
“I daresay if some of your neighbors had to follow you around when you’re on assignment, they’d think twice about interfering with your leisure,” Harriet Compton observed. “You must wish you’d been anywhere but at that chowder luncheon this noon.”
“You can say that again.” He sigh
ed. “I always did think Sue Giles had the brains of a hen, but how she could have been stupid enough to let that situation go on is beyond me. Bill might have done some real damage to the Bauer kid, slinging him around like that. What if he’d banged his head on the corner of the table, or slashed an artery on a broken dish? Bill could have killed somebody in one of those blind rages.”
A sickening thought flashed through Jenny’s mind. “Maybe he did,” she whispered.
“Jenny, what do you mean?”
“Aunt Harriet, do you remember my telling you I thought Sue was scared about something that day she was over having tea with us? What if it’s because she either thinks or knows it was her husband who killed my father?”
“That doesn’t make sense,” MacRae argued. “I didn’t mean—”
“Oh, yes, you did. Why doesn’t it make sense? Did it make any sense for Bill to go after that poor kid the way he did? Did it make any sense for him to attack Greg, who could have wiped him out with one good swing, when Greg was only trying to protect his own child from getting beaten up for no good reason? Why even talk about sense when a man’s in that state? If Bill’s all that mentally disturbed, he could have gone wild and killed my father over some foolish thing.”
MacRae stirred the coffee the waitress had shoved in front of them. “Like what, for instance?”
“How do I know? Maybe a cribbage game.”
MacRae quit stirring. “Why did you say that?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t the faintest idea of whether Bill Giles has ever played cribbage in his life. My father used to, that’s all.”
The photographer grunted and shook his head. “Bill plays cribbage down at the fire station four or five nights every week, and he always gets sore as a boil if he loses.”
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