A Quiche Before Dying jj-3

by Jill Churchill

  “Like what?"

  “Well . . . like her calling Desiree a drunk. Suppose she had some idea that Desiree had done something awful when she was drinking. Running over a kid or something. Not that she did. But Mrs. Pryce didn't seem to care much for the truth of her accusations.”

  Shelley took up this line of reasoning. "Or her accusations against Grady."

  “Grady?" Missy said. "Why Grady? He'd never doanything wrong. He's about the most honest person I've ever met."

  “I'm being theoretical," Shelley said patiently. "She'd already started flinging mud at Grady in class about the city's funds. Suppose he was afraid she'd start proclaiming it from the housetops?"

  “But Grady wouldn't embezzle from anybody."

  “That's not the point. I'm sure he wouldn't, but that wouldn't stop her from telling people so. I just mean these things as examples. You know that a false accusation can do as much harm to a person's reputation as a true one. People say where there's smoke, there's fire, and before you know it, the accepted wisdom is that the victim was guilty but just didn't get caught."

  “How depressing," Missy said. "Still, I can't imagine Grady Wells as a murderer, and you'll never convince me."

  “I wasn't trying to," Shelley said. "I really only meant him as a 'for instance.' Jane, you're being awfully quiet. Are you listening to your hormones again?"

  “Huh? Oh, no. I was thinking about the maid. The assumption is that she accidentally or purposely got poisoned by the same person who killed Mrs. Pryce. But what if that person was herself? She could have taken just enough of the poison to get sick, but not die, in order to make everybody think exactly what they are thinking."

  “She couldn't have counted on us turning up in time to save her, though."

  “So what if we hadn't? There was nothing to keep her from going to the phone and calling for help the minute she thought she was getting in real trouble.

  For all we knew, she was picking the phone up when we got there."

  “But, Jane, unless she was secretly a registered pharmacist, how would she get a deadly poison or know how much was a lethal dose?" Shelley asked.

  “I don't know. But we don't know what the poison was. Maybe it's something common for some other use or is common wherever she comes from."

  “I don't buy it, but anything's possible," Shelley said. "What's her motive?"

  “Motive?" Jane exclaimed. "She was a slave to the dreadful woman. What better motive? Working for Pryce must have been like working for the emotional equivalent of Charles Manson. Think about it: It would be unimaginably horrible actually living with the woman. If you got to the point that you couldn't stand it anymore, you would always know that there'd be a world of other suspects. At any given point in Pryce's life, she could be counted on to have mortally offended at least two or three people within the last week." Jane was really warming to this theory. "If I wanted to kill her, I'd have picked a time and place just like last night—a bunch of her victims all together in her own house. Everybody bringing food that could be poisoned—"

  “So you really think the maid did it?" Missy asked.

  Jane thought for a minute. "No," she answered, deflated. "I don't, actually. The other side of the coin is that the maid is nearly as old and dotty as Pryce. And now she's out of a job. I'm sure the old harridan didn't make any provisions for her—probably hasn't even been paying her Social Security—and the maid must have known it. Killing Mrs. Pryce would be like killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. The goosemight be evil and the eggs tin, but it was better than being old and destitute in a foreign country." "Scratch the maid," Shelley said.

  “What about my theory about Bob Neufield?" Missy asked. She explained to Shelley about her certainty that Neufield was military and might have been discharged for homosexuality.

  “Do they do that anymore?" Shelley asked.

  “I don't know about now, but he's been living here for ten years or so, I think, and they certainly did then.”

  Shelley twirled her mint sprig around and mused, "How would she know about it? Pryce, I mean."

  “Army, my dear. I imagine the upper echelons are like any other profession—clubby and gossipy. At least writing is that way. I know incredibly personal things about writers I've never met. If Neufield had been high enough ranking, she would have known. For all we know, she was responsible for him being thrown out—if he was."

  “Oh—" Jane said.

  “Was that the sound of a light going on?" Shelley asked.

  “I'm not sure. I sort of flipped through that nasty book of hers, and it seems there was something about leading a drive to have somebody discharged. I didn't really read it, the whole book was so nasty—”

  Missy looked horrified. "You know what this could mean, don't you?”

  Shelley nodded. "It means we really should read the foul book. I'd rather be a Cub Scout den mother for a year."

  “Somebody better give VanDyne a copy," Jane said. "And don't look at me. I won't do it. If I haven't already wrecked my chances with him, that would do it. And we really have to read it, too. Do you have an extra copy, Missy?"

  “Extra copy? I must have twenty. She unloaded a whole box of them on me. I guess she thought I'd like to set up a little bookstore and sell them out of the trunk of my car. But I can't read the whole damned thing. I've got a book due in a month, and it would infect my style. I'd be afraid my heroine would turn into a hateful prig. You and Shelley be in charge of searching it for clues."

  “I don't know if it'll help anyway," Shelley said. "Except for Bob Neufield, who could she have run into before she lived here?"

  “Almost anybody," Jane answered. "My mother knew her. And there are probably others in the class who have lived someplace other than here. I know Desiree lived all over the world as a girl. Anybody could have known her before." She picked a gnat out of her iced tea.

  “But she'd have known them, too. She seemed to remember your mom."

  “Not until Mother reminded her," Jane pointed out. "Pryce was a very self-absorbed person. And the military's like the State Department. You meet a huge number of people in your life, and you have to have a real gift to remember very many of them."

  “You mother seems to," Missy said.

  “She's one of the gifted ones. That's why she's such an asset to my father's work. I suspect their postings nowadays have as much to do with her skills as his."

  “Oh? What else is she good at?" Missy asked. "Everything," Jane said sourly.

  “Aha. Do I detect a case of PMS?"

  “What's PMS have to do with it?" Jane asked.

  “Perfect Mother Syndrome," Missy answered. "I suffered from it for years. When I was growing up, my school friends would come to my house to see my mother—not me. She was so damned perfect. Understanding, funny, beautiful—”

  Jane nodded. "And knowing it was stupid because you knew you ought to be grateful because everyone else your age hated their mothers?"

  “Absolutely—”

  Shelley cleared her throat and, in her best president-of-the-PTA voice, said, "Ladies, I believe we're wandering from the point—somebody in our neighborhood, in the class Missy intends to continue, is a murderer. Or have you both forgotten?"

  “Yes, yes. You're right," Missy admitted. "But we've eliminated Grady and Bob Neufield and the maid. I assume we're eliminating ourselves and Jane's mother."

  “We certainly are!" Jane said emphatically.

  “So who does that leave? Desiree Loftus and the biblical sisters, or whatever Desiree calls them." -

  “Pretty slim pickings," Shelley said. "Desiree is outrageous but good-hearted, and Ruth and Naomi—well, I'm always surprised that they do all that gardening; I can't picture either of them having the heart to kill the insect pests."

  “As for Desiree, Pryce really hated her, but she seemed to take it as a great joke," Jane said. "She told me once that she took a certain pride in who disliked her. She seemed to get a kick out of goading Mrs. P
ryce."

  “I don't know," Shelley said. "That remark about her drinking seemed to set her back a bit. Only for a moment, but it might have hit a sensitive nerve."

  “Does she really drink, or is she just eccentric?" Missy asked.

  “Oh, I think she drinks," Jane said. "She distills stuff in her basement. Or ferments it or something. At least she's given it a shot. I was collecting for a charity one day and she invited me in to see. Naomi Smith had told her how to make a foul concoction of nasturtium buds or something, and she wanted me to try it out. It was supposed to be wine, but it was like drinking Lysol with suspicious bits of sludge in it."

  “Then she could make poison in her basement, couldn't she?" Shelley asked.

  “I don't think so. She didn't seem to have a grip on how to make anything," Jane said. "It was probably just one of her passing enthusiasms. Remember when she tried to build her own solar panels on her roof? The city stopped her because they were afraid all that gravel was going to avalanche off and kill somebody."

  “Then there was the time she decided to have a southwest garden," Missy reminded them. "She had all her grass scraped off and put in rocks and cacti. Nobody could convince her that the first freeze was going to turn the cacti to mush. It must have cost her the earth to have the sodden things and all the boulders hauled off and the grass put back."

  “Money ..." Jane said. "Maybe it's about money. Mrs. Pryce's murder. Most crimes are, I think. Do you think maybe there's something terribly valuable in all that junk in her house, and maybe her children wanted to inherit it? There were some really nice things in with the junk. Her family has waited a long time already. Maybe they just got tired of biding their time." Jane shifted her chair to get out of the sun, which was becoming uncomfortably warm. Theyreally should go inside, but Jane hated being cooped up indoors.

  “Jane, I hate to be the one to point out the obvious, but none of her children are in our class," Shelley said.

  “That we know of," Jane said. "Her children would be in their sixties, and her grandchildren maybe in their forties. She could have a grandchild she doesn't even know by sight. She was probably on terrible terms with her family. It wouldn't be surprising if she were estranged from all of them. She never mentioned family. Did you notice that there were no pictures of people in her house? I think that's what made it all so depressing. There was nothing human there. Just stuff.”

  Missy started gathering up her purse and car keys and sunglasses. "I think what we've done today is significant. It appears that we've proved that nobody could have killed her, and the whole episode was just a particularly revolting illusion.”

  Jane laughed. "I love it when you talk like a writer.”

  As Missy was getting up, Denise Nowack came out into her backyard, wearing a big picture hat that not only concealed her hair, but muffled her voice. "Mom!" she yelled. "There's a man on the phone saying will Mrs. Jeffry please go in her house and answer her phone?”

  1 0

  “Jane? It's Mel. Sorry I left so abruptly."

  “Have you slept since yesterday?" she asked, then mentally chided herself for automatically going into her mother mode. He was a grown man, and if he didn't get enough rest, it was his problem.

  “A little. Could you have lunch with me?" Jane smiled. "Business or pleasure?"

  “Business, I'm afraid.”

  The smile faded.

  “Then we want to talk quietly. How about coming here?" As she spoke, she was frantically taking a mental inventory of the fridge. She'd have to make a flying trip to the grocery store.

  “Quietly? At your house? Jane, that's like trying to have a cozy chat in the middle of a four-alarm fire.”

  He probably lives in a hermetically sealed, professionally soundproofed luxury apartment—with white carpets and a doorman to keep away unwanted visitors, she thought. We're worlds apart. "Okay, whatever you say. Noon?"

  “That's fine. I'll pick you up.”

  Shelley came to the kitchen door a minute later. "I accidentally went home with your glass. Here. It was VanDyne calling, wasn't it?"

  “Yes, asking me to lunch. As a suspect, I think."

  “Jane, the police don't ask suspects to lunch. God! Your hair. What can we do to it by lunchtime?"

  “Nothing. Shelley, I've made a grown-up decision. If Mel VanDyne's interested in me at all, it's as an example of a species: Housewifius Domesticus. I might as well look the part. It's what I am."

  “That's pitiful-sounding."

  “No, it's the truth. We don't have a thing in common."

  “He's a man and you're a woman. That's enough." "He's a quintessential yuppie and I'm a happy frump with stretch marks."

  “You know what you need?"

  “What?" Jane asked suspiciously. "A night on the town? My boobs jacked up? A new perm?" "A job.”

  Jane sat down at the kitchen table and motioned Shelley to join her. "That's the last thing I expected you to say. You interest me strangely," she said. "Explain."

  “Well, we're a dying breed—mothers who are just mothers. Look at this neighborhood. Every year it gets quieter during the day. Everybody's off doing something that makes them feel like more than just a housewife."

  “You're right about all that, but none of it has to do with why I need a job. I need the money."

  “Jane—is there something I can help with?”

  Jane smiled. "No. Thanks, Shelley, but it's not that I'm desperate. I can pay for insurance and food and school clothes and all the necessities. I'm really lucky that way. Most single mothers haven't got it so good. But it's the extras that really aren't so extra. My car's falling to bits; my clothes are all ratty and out of fashion. Even the bath towels are getting shot.

  I priced some new ones last week, and they cost the earth. Mike needs a new tuba; his was about sixth-hand and we got it cheap, meaning to get him a good one if he kept up with his playing."

  “You've got that money your friend left in her will."

  “Yes, and I'm keeping it for myself like you told me I had to. I wouldn't dare defy one of your edicts. But I don't want to just spend it on stuff like towels. I want to use it for something important—I just don't know what that is yet."

  “Investing in a business of your own?"

  “Something like that. But what would I do? Mothering's what I do pretty well, and without a father, my kids deserve a full-time mother. I don't want to be like my mom."

  “What's wrong with being perfect?" Shelley asked with a grin.

  Jane sighed. "My mother was a perfect wife, not a perfect mother."

  “I thought they usually went together."

  “Yes, usually. I could only say this to a real friend.... My mother has always adored my father. They didn't need my sister and me to make a family. They are a family all by themselves. All the time I was growing up, we did what was best for his career, even though it meant we never stayed anywhere long enough to feel at home. My sister and I never went two years in a row to the same school, or even in the same country. I resented that. And I never realized how much until I was grown."

  “But that was because of what he did for a living, Jane. Would you have rather your mother stayed behind somewhere with you?"

  “God, no. I just never felt like I came first with her. If I got sick and there was an important embassy party, she'd get a nurse to stay with me, but she'd go to the party because it was important to my father's career."

  “Hiring a nurse isn't exactly neglectful," Shelley said softly.

  “Oh, Shelley, I don't mean I was neglected. I know that in most ways I was very lucky. You can't tell me anything sensible I haven't told myself. See, you're sitting here talking to 'Jane Jeffry, semi-intelligent adult.' But the person who's doing this whining is little Janie Grant, a selfish child who wants, just once, to have her mommy's full attention. That's why I feel so strongly that I can't take on anything that would take my attention away from my kids. I don't want to be like her."

  “I unders
tand. I think you could do with a shrink, but I do understand. But what about all those hours of the year that the kids are at school and don't need your attention or even want it?"

  “You know that time is busy. You do what I do with it—cook, clean, run car pools, do civic stuff. I've got my blind kids I drive once a week—"

  “But your own kids can learn to help cook, you could hire help to clean if you had extra income, Mike can drive now and could take up part of the car-pooling if you'd let Thelma get him a car like she keeps threatening. If you had a part-time job, or a job at home, you could still do a lot of your other things. Jane, it wouldn't hurt them a bit to be more responsible at home."

  “You've thought about this a lot, haven't you?" Jane asked.

  “On my own behalf, I assure you."

  “You're going to work?"

  “I'm thinking about helping Paul with the franchises in some way." Shelley's husband was a type-A second-generation Pole who owned a chain of Greek fast-food restaurants.

  “But you've got a built-in employer who won't care if you've got to stay home with somebody with measles or take off a day to work on the PTA carnival."

  “Yes, but so have you, come to that. There's Steve's family's pharmacies. You've worked there before.”

  Jane held up her forefingers in a cross shape. "Work for Thelma? Have you gone completely insane? It's bad enough having her for a mother-in-law."

  “Maybe you're right."

  “In any case, my job right now involves getting Katie up and moving. Thanks for listening to my selfish whimpering."

  “What are friends for?" Shelley said.

  Mel VanDyne showed up on the dot of one with a picnic lunch in paper sacks from a chic catering shop. They drove a few blocks to a city park and staked out a picnic table as far as possible from a raucous softball game. He took four bottled wine coolers from a little insulated bag.

  “Where's the rest of your family?" he asked politely as he unwrapped pricey little crustless sandwiches and individual plastic cups of pasta salad.