Grime and Punishment jj-1

by Jill Churchill

  “I don't like hotels, and I don't mind in the least staying in the house as long as he's home, so I'll talk him out of this tomorrow, but.. dinner out and a night alone will be nice," she added in a husky whisper. "I've got a beautiful nightgown that Suzie talked me into buying months ago—"

  “Have you told him?"

  “No."

  “Or the police?"

  “Detective VanDyne called, but they don't seem to know anything. Either they're blundering around in the dark or they're just not telling us about their leads. Gotta go! Paul's rattling the car keys. I'll be back tomorrow afternoon. Talk to you then.”

  As Jane was speaking, Edith was putting on her sweater and changing from the carpet slippers she wore to work in to more attractive shoes. The light blue van was already parked at the curb. Jane hadn't had a chance to really look over the house, but planned to do so before the kids could start messing it up again. She handed Edith a five-dollar bill. The Happy Helper people would bill her for Edith's services by mail, but it was customary to give an extra tip.

  Before she could escape to a quiet place to think over all Shelley had said, Katie reminded her that they hadn't gotten their allowances the day before, due to the upheaval next door.

  “But I have to have my money today. Jenny and I are going shopping tonight."

  “With whom?"

  “Oh, Mother!"

  “Don't 'oh, Mother' me. You know I don't approve of teenagers aimlessly cruising the mall."

  “Mother, that's so old-fashioned. Nobody else's mother—"

  “You know what I'm going to say to that, no matter where the sentence is going, don't you?"

  “I know. That you don't care what anybody else's mother does," she said in a singsong imitation of Jane's refrain. "Anyway, Jenny's mom is going with us. She's getting some fabric, and Jenny is going to buy some false fingernails.”

  In other words, the whole dispute was theoretical, Jane thought. Sort of like testing a locked door at intervals just in case it might be unlocked. She remembered doing the same thing herself. She also remembered fake fingernails. She had put some on just before going to bed once when she was about that age and woke up with them all stuck in her hair. No point in telling Katie that. She'd find out for herself. Every generation has to reinvent the wheel.

  Jane went back down to the basement office. The kids weren't the only ones who needed money. The five she had given Edith had been the last money in her billfold. Normally, she got their allowances and cash for groceries every Thursday morning, but this hadn't exactly been a normal week. She had a carry-around checkbook for emergency expenses, but regular bills and this weekly cash withdrawal were always written from the money market checkbook she kept locked in the desk. Steve had started the system, and she'd stuck with it out of habit.

  She pulled open the middle drawer and reached under it for the little magnetic box stuck on the underside. Again, a policy of Steve's she'd stayed with for no other reason than the fact that they'd always done it that way. From the box, she removed the key to the deep bottom right drawer. But the key wouldn't go in. That was odd.

  She leaned over to see what the problem was. The little vertical slot was horizontal. The drawer was already unlocked. She must have failed to lock it last Friday. No, that wasn't right. She remembered how annoyed she'd been because she'd broken her best fingernail when she had flipped the key back up last week. Had she opened it since then? She thought not; except for that hour earlier in the afternoon, she hadn't even been in the office.

  Her suspicions growing, Jane studied the drawer contents before lifting out the checkbook. All her really valuable papers were in the safe-deposit box at the bank — the abstract on the house, copies of income tax forms, birth certificates, wills. This drawer was a second-stringvaluables storage area — the kids' report cards, some family pictures, receipts for major purchases, warranties on the appliances, some foreign money she'd collected in her childhood, an envelope with the kids' baby teeth, and, of course, the money market checkbook.

  It was a hodgepodge drawer without any particular system, but she only tidied it up about once a year, so she had a sort of petrified vision of what it should all look like. And it didn't look right. She couldn't have said what was out of order, as there was no order, but she had a strong sense that it had been rearranged.

  Bending down, she studied the lock. There was a fresh-looking scratch at the side of the keyhole. The key itself had a rounded end, so she couldn't have made it herself. She took out the checkbook. Nothing was missing. Rummaging in the drawer again, she found everything that should have been there. She wrote the check she needed and returned everything to the drawer, then locked it carefully and put the key back in the little magnetic box.

  “If I were going to pick a lock…" she said to herself as she looked through the things in the top middle drawer. It didn't take long to find the perfect tool (or so she assumed, having had little experience with lock-picking since her sister had given up keeping a locked diary twenty-five years ago); a miniature screwdriver in a glasses-repair kit. She unscrewed the top of the kit and shook the contents out in her hand.

  Tiny screws and a little magnifying glass tumbled out, but no screwdriver. That she was sure she had not lost. Her favorite sunglasses kept losing screws, and she guarded the little kit as if it were made of gold.

  She closed the drawer and sat back in the comfortable old chair. The only person who'd been in the room, besides herself, was Edith. She tried to recall whether there had been any hint of guilt in Edith's manner when she caught her in the room. Not guilt, but a bit of defensiveness, maybe, in that critical remark about mildew and spiders. Jane closed her eyes and tried to recall whether she'd heard the drawer close. No, but then it was a wooden drawer on runners and it closed silently, unless you shoved it hard enough to slam.

  There was also the fact that Jane was certain she'd specifically told Edith not to go in the office. She'd assumed Edith just hadn't paid attention — but if you were looking for something valuable, wouldn't you look in the one room you were told not to go in? Not having criminal inclinations much beyond snooping in sisters' diaries, Jane was straining with the effort to imagine what a criminal would think.

  But was Edith a criminal? Nothing valuable was missing. If she didn't steal anything, what was she doing? Probably getting ready to steal something when Jane interrupted. Or possibly she just didn't find Jane's treasures worth stealing. Jane smiled wryly. That was vaguely insulting, in a funny way.

  Still, if she was a thief..

  Closing up the office, Jane did a quick survey of the house. Edith had carried only a small purse, so she couldn't have taken anything big. The little silver matchbox was in the living room; it had even been polished, though the cleaning woman had left some polishing gunk in the cracks. The antique coloisonné cigarette jar was in place, as were all the coins in Steve's framed collection in the hallway. The silver was safely locked in its drawer in the china cabinet. Todd's piggy bank was intact and obviously full. Her own jewelry was all in the box on her dressing table…

  She spent half an hour doing a mental inventory before deciding that nothing was gone. She thought about it all the way to the bank and back, and then, sitting down at the kitchen table with a fresh cup of coffee, Jane brooded. The woman had had hours alone in the house while Jane was with the blind kids. She could have taken any number of things, if she'd wanted. So why wasn't anything gone? Feeling that she might have misjudged, Jane still was at a loss to explain the unlocked desk drawer. There was no question in her mind that the lock had been picked and the contents pawed through.

  So what would explain it? Think logically, she told herself. Like yesterday, when she and Shelley were discussing reasons for murder. And was there any connection between the missing pearls and the missing screwdriver? How could there be? Rummaging in her purse for the scrap of paper with Shelley's hotel number on it, she dialed.

  “Shelley, are you doing anything?"

/>   “My nails. Paul is taking me downtown for dinner. He's in the other room in the suite right now making some business calls.”

  The other room of the suite… Jane didn't comment on how the Nowacks spent a night away from home. The last time she and Steve had spent a night alone together it had been in a Holiday Inn room, next to the elevator shaft.

  “Shelley, I understand you can't talk about the pearls, but I want to discuss something odd with you. Just to sort out my own thoughts."She explained about the unlocked desk drawer and her suspicions. Throughout, Shelley made no comment. There was only the occasional whhh as she blew on her nails.

  “You think Edith did it, then?" Shelley asked when Jane was through with her recital.

  “I think so, yes. But for some reason, I don't want to believe it — or there's something wrong with the assumption. I just want to eliminate all the other possibilities."

  “Hmmm, I guess you have to consider that someone else might have gone through the desk drawer."

  “But who?The kids?"

  “Not very likely suspects, I agree," Shelley said.

  “Mike's too moral and upright. I'd never dream of accusing him of that to his face — it isn't what teenagers want to be called — but it's true. He's always the one who makes me go back and fess up when I accidentally get too much change from a clerk."

  “There speaks a proud mother," Shelley said with a laugh.

  “No, it's not that I have any illusions about his faults; he has plenty, including his cavalier attitude toward my mental health and wellbeing when in a car. But he utterly lacks any sneakiness. If he wanted to look in the drawer, he'd have just asked for the key — and I'd have given it to him, and he knows it."

  “One down and two to go. Eliminate Katie. Whhh—" Shelley said, blowing on another nail.

  “Katie? Katie can be sneaky. It goes with the age and gender."

  “Doesn't it just!"

  “I think the urge to experiment with the truth to see just how far it can be bent is part of the growing-up process. But Katie wouldn't have broken into the drawer — she's already stripped me of all my valuables. If she thought there was anything she might want in there, she'd have just nagged until I gave it to her. That's how she got the little pearl pinkie ring away from me."

  “The one she lost in the swimming pool?"

  “That's the one."

  “All right, what about Todd? Whhh—"

  “He's very good at mechanical things, and sheer curiosity might have made him pick the lock just to see what was in there, except he was the one who helped me last time I cleaned out the drawer. Back in March, when he had the chicken pox. He was driving me crazy, fetching things for him, so I made him help. He knows everything that's in it, and found most of it real boring. All he liked was some Mexican coins I had in there, and I gave them to him. So he had no reason to get into it."

  “What about you? Couldn't you have gone through it and just forgotten about it?”

  No, Jane thought. A year or two ago it might have been possible. When the kids were smaller and she was more harried and hadn't adjusted to the maternal necessities of balancing five schedules in her head — then, it might have been possible. But since last winter, this quiet little office had become a special haven, and she simply didn't allow the rush of daily life to interfere. It was a little like self-hypnosis; she'd conditioned herself to the state that the very act of stepping in the door served to make her think calmly. She could picture herself doing any sort of loony, scatterbrained thing almost anywhere but here.

  “I'm certain I didn't leave it unlocked or mess up the drawer, and even if I had, why is the eyeglasses screwdriver missing?"

  “Whhh — So, if it wasn't one of you — and temporarily assuming it wasn't the obvious Edith, just for fairness — who else could it have been? Who else came in the house? What about the kids' friends? You haven't had that Stringer child in, have you?"

  “Lord, no! Didn't they put him away for the Brinks robbery in fifth grade?"

  “No, I think they may have moved to Cleveland."

  “Same thing. There are armies of kids through here all the time, but very few since last week because of school starting. Besides, they're in the kitchen pillaging the refrigerator or in the living room with the video games when they visit. None of the kids' friends would be caught dead in the basement family room."

  “Not wishing to speak ill of the dead — Jane, now that Steve's gone, why don't you give up calling that a 'family room' and just refer to it as the dank, hideous cave it is?"

  “Steve worked so hard on it—"

  “Yes, and if he'd been a carpenter or electrician — or better yet, a foundation specialist — instead of a pharmacist, it might have turned out nicely. But that's beside the point. You feel certain it wasn't a kid who got into the desk drawer?"

  “Shelley, it seemed too — I don't know how to put it — too cunning and careful to be the act of a kid. Someone looked for a good tool without any obvious rummaging in the center drawer. And they didn't root around violently in the other drawer either. The disturbance was subtle; I probably wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't been suspicious to begin with because the lock was wrong. It's like with your pearls. Somebody seemed to know exactly where to go without messing anything else up."

  “Bad subject."

  “I know you can't talk about it at your end. I was just mentioning it.”

  Shelley went on as if jewelry had never been mentioned. "Well, I think you've pretty well cleared all the other possible suspects, unless you've had any service people in lately. Had anything repaired in the basement?"

  “Nobody."

  “Then I think you're stuck with assuming it was Edith."

  “But why? She didn't steal anything.”

  “Maybe she was just checking out what there was to steal later on, when you're used to her being around."

  “I don't know — I'm reluctant to believe badly of her. But I think I'm going to fire her anyway, because she depresses the hell out of me."

  “Don't worry, Jane. There are plenty of people who will be delighted to sign up for her. Her customers speak so highly of her."

  “Not everybody." Jane repeated Dorothy Wallenberg's remarks.

  “That's funny. Dorothy's not real fussy. I dropped an earring between her sofa cushions at a party once, and when I reached down, I found an Easter egg. It was a Christmas party. I wouldn't think she'd demand perfection. Do you know what? I think we've both gone a little nutty because of the murder. A week ago we'd have never had a conversation this long over something so trivial."

  “Who are you trying to kid? We once spent a whole hour analyzing Mary Ellen Revere's makeup. Remember?”

  Shelley laughed. "Paul's through with his calls. Gotta go — whhh — I'll think of you over my shrimp salad and raspberry torte."

  “What kind of thing is that to say to a friend who's planning hot dogs and baked beans for dinner?”

  When she'd hung up, Jane went to the window and looked out at Shelley's house. The red MG was there again. Poor Detective VanDynehe was probably bored and hungry. Maybe she could make a decent dinner and invite him over. She glanced in the refrigerator. There were possibilities there. But as she closed the door, she caught sight of her reflection in the microwave door.

  “Katie!" she called up the stairs. "Buy me some of those fingernails while you're out, would you? And some mascara and blusher…”

  Nine

  Jane had planned to spend a quiet evening Y with the kids, but it didn't work out that way. Todd got an invitation to spend the night with Elliot Wallenberg, an invitation he was dying to accept because of Elliot's new toys from his birthday earlier in the week. Katie was asked to sleep over with Jenny after their shopping trip. Jenny, a chunky girl who ate like part of a starving nation, had spent the night with the Jeffrys a half dozen times over the summer, and Jane felt it would help even the score.

  Mike's marching band was playing at the first football game o
f the season. Both the musicians and the athletes had been practicing since weeks before school started and were chomping at the bit. He was going out for pizza afterwards with a friend whose parents had rashly bought him a car for his birthday. Mike was making noises as if he was expecting the same bounty to befall him. Jane had tried to make him understand that she could hardly afford to keep her station wagon running now that he was on the insurance. Another vehicle wasn't possible. Of course, there was always the possibility that Thelma would step into the breach, checkbook in hand. The thought made Jane mad, but she could never figure out quite why.

  Their departure left Jane alone and at the mercy of the phone. Everyone seemed to feel it was tacky to call Shelley and ask for the gruesome details of the murder. A few had no such delicate feelings, but simply couldn't reach her. They all called Jane. By ten o'clock her mouth felt cottony from talking, and her brain was stewed from repeating the few things she did know over and over. There was really so little to say, so little known.

  Each caller seemed to have a theory of her own. The vagrant maniac was a popular theme, possibly because that meant they were safe — how many vagrant maniacs are there, after all? And a vagrant maniac doesn't hang around the neighborhood. He moves on to Dubuque, or Fargo.

  A woman from the next block who was active in the John Birch Society was certain it was a Communist plot. Her theory had something to do with oppressed workers, though Jane refrained from pointing out that accusing the 'commies' of killing one of the oppressed hardly made sense.

  Another neighbor, having read in the paper that the victim had previously lived in Montana, figured it all had to do with a survivalist group from which Ramona Thurgood had very likely escaped with some kind of secret information.

  “But she had a newspaper route and taught Sunday school," Jane protested to this one. "Survivalists don't do things like that."

  “Jane, dear, you're too, too naïve. They have people in every walk of life. That's what's so insidious. Why, all you have to do is watch the children's cartoons to see that they've infiltrated the toy industry. The cartoons themselves are rife with violence, and then the commercials are for toy soldiers and tanks. Who do you suppose provided the money to make "Rambo"? They're poisoning the minds of a whole generation. It's pitiful. I suspect we may someday regard this poor woman, who died trying to warn us of their plans, as a genuine heroine.”