Grime and Punishment jj-1

by Jill Churchill

  “Did you lock the door?"

  “Jane, I've been combing my brain to remember. I just don't know. I pulled it shut. If you had the button turned, it locked. Did you?”

  Jane put her arm over her eyes and sighed. "I have no idea. No idea.”

  The doorbell rang and Jane tried to get up. She was so emotionally exhausted that her legs wouldn't even move right. She was almost woozy, like coming out of ether in the dentist's office.

  Shelley jumped up. "Stay there. I'll let him in.

  Jane heard the door opening and Shelley's soft tones. Then there was the creaking of the third step as her friend took Van Dyne upstairs to see the knife and note. Absurdly, she was wishing the underwear she'd strewn around the bed was lacy stuff, not practical, white cotton.

  She heard them come downstairs and go from door to door, checking the locks. Apparently the knife had changed Detective VanDyne's mind about her, because when he and Shelley came back into the living room a few minutes later, he was pleasant and polite. "I'd like to have a man from the lab over. May I use your phone?"

  “Ask him to come in a plain car, not a police car," Shelley said. "Jane doesn't want her children frightened."

  “Of course.”

  He was back in a moment. Jane managed topull herself upright. "When did this happen?" he asked.

  “I found it about three-thirty. I had been gone from about two or two-thirty."

  “It wasn't there before that?”

  Jane struggled to think back. "I don't remember if I was in that room anytime today after I got dressed. I don't think so."

  “No hurry. Just think it out step by step. Talk it through if that helps."

  “All right. I got the kids off to school and left to ride with Shelley to get birdseed around quarter of nine."

  “Did you lock the house? I don't see any obvious evidence of forced entry."

  “Yes, that time I locked up. I'm sure of it.”

  “When did you get back?”

  Jane looked at Shelley and shrugged. "Around nine-thirty or ten?" Shelley nodded. Jane went on. "I came inside, and a few minutes later Shelley came over. We went over to her house, and you called.”

  VanDyne flipped a page of the small notebook he was writing in. "That was at 10:08. Did you lock up the house then?"

  “I don't know. I think so. You came over when?"

  “Twenty minutes later."

  “I didn't go back home after that for a while. When you left, we cleaned up the kitchen and put all the borrowed dishes in Shelley's minivan to take back. We went to Suzie Williams's house first—"

  “You drove next door?"

  “We didn't mean to, exactly. But yes. She was just getting home as we were leaving. We stayed a few minutes, and then we went to see Robbie Jones.”

  VanDyne looked up from his note-taking, an eyebrow lifted. "You weren't, by any chance, trying to do my job for me, were you?"

  “Whatever do you mean?" Jane asked, sounding even to herself like Miss America being asked if she were a virgin.

  “I mean, it's odd that you happened to be visiting with the very people I'm questioning.”

  Jane slipped off her sneaker and started massaging her foot as if she had a sudden cramp.

  Shelley said, "Jane, I think we better tell him."

  “What kind of friend are you?" Jane asked. She was joking, but embarrassed. "All right. We were trying to find out if and why they were being blackmailed by that awful Edith."

  “And were they?"

  “Oh, yes. At least two of them were. Suzie says not and I believe her. But Robbie and Joyce—" Jane stopped. She could feel the hateful tears filling her eyes again. She wasn't going to break down and make a bleary-eyed, blubbering fool of herself in front of him. Bad enough that he now knew she wore boring white underwear.

  “I don't mean to upset you. We know about Mrs. Jones. Robbie. But not about Mrs. Greenway.”

  Shelley sat forward, as if to speak, but Jane put up a hand to stop her. "My husband, my late husband—" She paused, taking a deep breath. "My late husband was leaving me for Joyce Greenway the night he — became my late husband.”

  There, she'd said it.

  He had the good grace to look surprised. "I am sorry I had to know that, Mrs. Jeffry. Jane. Off the record, I've also got to tell you I find it hard to believe."

  “Oh, it's true enough. She admitted—"

  “No, what I meant was, I've interviewed you and I've interviewed her and I can't imagine—”

  Jane felt herself blushing. Actually blushing.Oh, well, he'll probably think it's a hot flash. "Will you be able to tell anything about the person who did this from the paper the note was on? I've read that the police can trace paper—"

  “It was the back of your electric bill."

  “She could have at least used a brand of paper only made in Singapore between March and July of the year she was there with her brother—"

  “She?Singapore? What?"

  “I was just thinking about mystery books. It always turns on something like that." Now she was back on familiar ground, he was scowling at her again. It was oddly comforting. "We only talked to Suzie Williams, Robbie Jones, and Joyce Greenway. It had to be one of them."

  “Or somebody they talked to about your — questioning," he said.

  “You mean snooping. I guess that's true, but I'm pretty sure neither Robbie nor Joyce would have gotten right on the phone to talk to somebody else about it.”

  He leaned back and studied her for a long moment. She felt like a used car about to get its tires kicked. "You think you know who did this, don't you?"

  “It doesn't matter what I think. I've had ample proof today of the general failure of my perceptions."

  “Still, I'd like to know your opinion.”

  Shelley nodded her encouragement, and Jane said, "For what it's worth, I'm certain it's Robbie Jones. Suzie Williams was pretty much amused by my questions. Joyce Greenway — well, she was as upset as I was by my knowing. Not that I'd like to give her public credit for having a conscience, but I think she probably went home and just kept crying. But Robbie was furious. She screamed at us to get out of her house and kept on screaming. I've never seen anybody look at me with such hatred."

  “And all these women were home all day?"

  “No, Suzie was just coming home from work early, and Joyce doesn't have a job. Robbie said she was leaving for work in nine minutes, but that was when we got there. She might have changed her mind."

  “I'll check on it." The doorbell rang. "That must be my man from the lab. I'll get it." He went to answer the door, talked for a minute with the newcomer, and sent him up the stairs.

  When he came back, Jane said, "He won't be long, will he? I don't want the kids to know what danger they're in. What danger I've put them in."

  “You didn't mean to. And, frankly, you were able to find out at least one thing that we might have never known. Now, you need to decide where you're going to go."

  “Go? Why should I go anywhere? Oh, you mean in case Ro — the person who did thiscomes back. I see. Do I have to go? I'd have to explain it all to the kids and—"

  “Don't you have some relatives you can stay with?"

  “Only my mother-in-law — and I'd ' rather move into a kennel of rabid dogs."

  “Well, I could ask the county if they can spare an officer to stay here, but they're pretty short-staffed as it is, and I don't know how long it would be."

  “What about your Uncle Jim?" Shelley asked. "He's offered, but it's so far out of his way, and if it's going to be for long—"

  “I hope it won't be any time at all," VanDyne said. "But I can't make any promises."

  “You mean this could just drag on forever? What are you going to do to solve it?”

  “Everything we can.”

  The man from the lab came downstairs just then and handed VanDyne a note. He read it and said to Shelley and Jane, "Mrs. Jones came to work in a disturbed state today and left after a half hour.”<
br />
  He made no further comment then, but simply rose and tucked his notebook into his jacket pocket. Jane stood too, and walked to the front door with him and the lab man, who was carrying a plastic bag.

  The lab man went to his car, but VanDyne paused. "Mrs. Jeffry, Mrs. Nowack — in the normal course of such an investigation, I wouldn't have told you that. But you have created an abnormal situation by conducting your own research. I don't need to point out the danger and tell you to stop, do I?"

  “Of course not. I'm reformed. From now on I mind only my own business," Jane said fervently.

  That sounded familiar. Hadn't she said the same thing to Uncle Jim just this morning? This time she meant it.

  Twenty

  Uncle Jim was furious. "You went around tell- ing those women you knew they were being blackmailed? Oh, Jane, Jane, Jane. Your parents didn't raise a dummy! Why in the world did you do a thing like that?" His voice crackled over the telephone wire.

  He'd never spoken to her that way, she'd never felt she deserved it as much as she did now.

  With no attempt to defend herself, she said, "Will you come stay with us for a day or two? Just the nights, Uncle Jim. I'll feed you fantastically well to make up for the inconvenience I know I'm putting you to.”

  He heard the fright in her voice. "Of course I will, Janey.”

  He was there within the hour. She met him at the door with a whispered warning. "I haven't told the kids why you're here or anything about the threat. I don't want them to know. Shut up, Willard!" The dog, knowing the guest and sure he was no intruder, was making much of acting the fierce watchdog.

  “Right. Are they here now?"

  “Just Todd. He's out in the backyard, trying to make a paper airplane fly. Mike and Katie ought to be back pretty soon. They're eating out. Let me get you settled. I have a tuna casserole in the oven for us. You do like that, don't you?"

  “As long as it's never been frozen in a little tray.”

  Once she had him installed in the tiny room that served as a sewing room and emergency guest room, he sat down on the edge of the narrow bed and she took a chair by the window. Todd was still out back, and had flown half a dozen sheets of notebook paper into the field behind the house where they fluttered around like confused ghosts.

  “Janey, I've been thinking about what you told me. Answer a few things for me — what about the doors? Were any of them forced?"

  “Not that anyone can tell. But the last time I left the house, I'm not sure the kitchen door got locked. I wasn't that last to leave. Shelley was, and we were all upset about something else."

  “Something else?”

  Jane paused a moment, then launched into a full account of her hideous conversation with Joyce Greenway. Uncle Jim took out a pipe and accessories and made a busy production of preparing to smoke it while she talked. It was a little easier this time. While telling Detective VanDyne, she'd feared seeing his contempt. But with Uncle Jim, she dreaded his pity. As she spoke, she recognized with another part of her mind that she was really sick and tired of pity. She'd had a lifetime quota since Steve died.

  “The funny thing is, in the first month or soafter he died, I was almost obsessed with finding out who it was. It seemed important and somehow necessary to discover. Then I sort of lost interest. No, that wasn't it. I just assumed it was someone I didn't know anyway, so what was the point?”

  Jim waited until she got this out of her system, then quietly asked, "Would you think this woman would kill to keep you from finding out about her and Steve?"

  “I'd love to suspect her, but no, I don't think she would have. The revelation won't change her life. It was merely something she felt guilty and embarrassed about, not threatened. She more or less admitted she was paying the blackmail just to assuage her conscience."

  “Threatened is the operative word, I think."

  “What do you mean?"

  “Well, the business of the knife in the bed — it's clearly a threat."

  “I'll say!"

  “The point is, it could have been for real.”

  Jane got up and found him an ashtray. Sitting back down in the straight chair by the window, she said, "You mean it's somebody who doesn't really want to kill me? Just shut me up and make me stop meddling?"

  “It's possible. If this woman could slip in and out of the house in the daytime when you're gone without notice, she could certainly do it at night, or when you were home, and put the knife into you instead of the mattress. What about keys? Do any of your neighbors have keys to the house?”

  Jane looked down at her hands. How was she going to break this to him? Might as well just dump the whole truth in his lap. "Nearly everybody. For a while after Steve died, I was handing them out like free samples at the grocery store. Shelley went to the hardware store and got me a half dozen of them."

  “Good God!"

  “Uncle Jim, people were coming in and out, helping. Bringing food, taking care of the pets, staying with the kids while I was seeing funeral directors and lawyers and police. But we all have keys to each other's houses. You know, somebody has to go to a teacher conference, but gives a neighbor a key to let in the plumber or cable television people or whatever. We all do it all the time. We have to, or we'd be slaves to our houses.”

  It was obvious he was appalled at such a system. "Didn't any of them give them back?"

  “I don't remember. Probably not. And I didn't think to ask for them. There was no reason to think it was dangerous to have keys out with my — my friends. Oh, Uncle Jim, I want more than anything to go back to the wandering-maniac theory…"

  “Sure you do, but this maniac could hardly know you'd spent the day out picking your neighbors' lives apart, could he?”

  She was spared answering his accusation by the sound of bounding footsteps on the stairs. "Hey, Mom," Mike yelled. "Is that Uncle Jim's car in front?"

  “Right here, son."

  “Hey, neat! What are you doing here?" Mike asked with a grin.

  Jim got up and took the boy in an affectionate headlock that made Jane cringe. "Just camping out for a couple days. My apartment's being painted and the stink drove me out. I've got tomorrow off work too, so I thought I'd see how this driving of yours is coming along. I'll take you to school — uughffl”

  Mike was pummeling him in the stomach in a half-hearted attempt to break his grip. "Got-char he mumbled into Jim's armpit.

  “Think you can beat the old man? I'll show you a thing or two, you skinny kid! You need to put some muscle on those bones.”

  Jane left them wrestling their way around the room and went down to check on the casserole. The sounds of scuffling followed her. Mike needed a grown man in his life, she thought. He never talked about missing his dad, but he must. Wasn't that kind of rough-and-ready male camaraderie important to a boy of his age?

  She turned off the oven and suddenly remembered that she had a chair problem. The kitchen table had five chairs, but after Steve died, she'd put one of them in the basement so they weren't reminded at every meal of his absence. She had to find the missing chair. Of course, they could eat in the dining room, but that seemed too formal, and besides, tuna casserole wasn't "company" food.

  Katie came in, bubbling with enthusiasm for hair-frosting. "I think it would look great on me, Mom. I'm sure it would make me look taller, and it only costs sixty dollars. If you'd give me fifty, I could—"

  “Uncle Jim's visiting while his apartment's being painted," Jane interrupted. "I know you've had dinner, but I want you to sit with us anyway. You want to set the table or find the extra chair?”

  Katie considered it carefully, then grinned. "What's easier?"

  “It's a toss-up."

  “Then I'll get the chair. It'll be neat having Uncle Jim stay here. I'm going to ask him what he thinks of frosted hair. I bet he'll agree with me.”

  Over dinner — which Mike ate as if he'd fasted for a week Jim told the kids stories about their grandfather as a boy. Some of them were new to Jane,
and she had a suspicion he was making them up for the sake of entertainment, but it didn't matter. Funny family stories were a perfect antidote to the distress and horror she'd felt for the last few days. Jane cleared the table and started the dishwasher. She gave Max and Meow the leftover casserole, and treated Willard to a glob of raw hamburger so he'd leave the cats alone to eat.

  Jim and Todd adjourned to the living room,where the older man helped the boy with his math homework. When Jane was through in the kitchen, she was surprised to discover that Mike and Katie had both brought their books in and were working in the same room. Katie seldom got that far from the phone when she was home.

  “Janey, you look beat," Uncle Jim said, looking up from the problem he and Todd were solving. "Why don't you go on to bed? The kids and I will finish here and lock up for the night.”

  She eagerly took him up on the offer. Upstairs, she straightened up her bedroom, then stripped the wounded bed and remade it with fresh sheets. Soon enough she'd have to figure out what to do about the hole in the mattress, but not tonight. She got out her most treasured, expensive bath oil and took a long, hot soak. She tried not to think, but it was impossible to completely clear her mind. This peaceful, domestic evening had relaxed some of her tensions, but she could feel new ones coiling.

  It was awfully nice to have a man in the house again. Aside from all the frightening events that had brought him here, it was comforting to know that, for once, another responsible adult was going to make sure the kids went to bed at a decent hour, lock up the house, and make sure Willard went out one last time. Jane hadn't fully realized the burden she'd been carrying as the only adult in the family until she'd gotten this brief opportunity to lay down a few of those tasks.

  She wasn't the only one who appreciated Uncle Jim's presence. The kids were obviously thrilled to have him. Sunday visits were a different matter — on Sundays he was a guest, her guest. Tonight he belonged here, belonged to them.

  Those children need a father, a voice inside her said.

  “Damn you, Steve!" she said out loud to the bathroom she'd shared with him until a few months ago. "What gave you the right to do this to us?”