Mel VanDyne grabbed Jane's wrist and dragged her into the living room. Two sofas faced each other in front of the fireplace. Van-Dyne crouched behind the farthest one and yanked Jane down beside him. "Not a word! Don't even breathe!" he said.
“But you have to know someth—"
“Shut up!”
Jane caught her breath. Someone had opened the kitchen door. She started to peek over the top of the sofa, but VanDyne grabbed her hair with one hand and put the other over her mouth. She subsided.
The sound of high heels on the kitchen floor.The refrigerator door opening.The rattle of a dish lid. The refrigerator door closing.
Jane was sitting cross-legged on the floor, facing the back of the sofa and wishing she could see. Was her theory right? It had to be. It was the right dishwasher and the wrong dishes.
There was a long silence. The outside door should have opened by now if it was just somebody innocently delivering food and then leaving. The footsteps started again, across the kitchen floor toward the living room. When they hit carpet, they turned into soft scuffs. Jane froze.
This was it. This was the murderer! Suddenly Jane was very, very sorry she'd come back. There was almost nowhere in the world she wouldn't rather be. Jane couldn't hear the footsteps anymore. Was she walking to the stairway now, going up to try again to kill Edith? Beside her, she felt Detective VanDyne stiffen, bunching his muscles as if to spring.
She closed her eyes for a moment. Suddenly the sofa moved a little, as if the killer had decided to sit down for a minute and think about what to do next. Horrified, Jane glanced at Van-Dyne. He was looking up. She followed his gaze and found herself looking into a familiar face.
“What the fuck are you two doing back there?" Suzie Williams asked.
Twenty-four
"You have the right to remain silent—”
“No! Stop!" Jane exclaimed.
“—If you give up that right—"
“She's not the one! Stop saying all that stuff!" Jane grabbed VanDyne's arm.
He pulled away. "Mrs. Jeffry, you are interfer-ing
“Please listen. She's not the murderer. I swear it. But if we stand around making all this noise, we might scare off the person who is.”
Again the men filled the room. The vacuum cleaner stopped.
“Have I interrupted something?" Suzie asked, throwing a dazzling smile at the one who'd put the gun in Jane's face. He puffed up his chest and smiled back.
“Mrs. Jeffry, I think you've gone crazy!" Van-Dyne snapped, his professional manner crumbling. "If you don't get out of here right this minute—"
“May I come in?" Shelley said from the basement door. Her clothes were a mess, and there were little green stick-tights spangling her hair.
“Oh, shit!" VanDyne said.
A voice from the top of the stairs said urgently, "Here comes another one, Mel."
“Look, there isn't time to explain, but it all makes complete sense," Jane said quickly. "Just trust me."
“Trust you? You?"
“Please. Just until whoever this is has come and gone. I'll tell you the whole thing and you'll see I'm right. I promise. If you don't agree, I'll sneak back out and not say another word.”
VanDyne stared at her for a long moment, then at Suzie, who was smiling seductively. He looked like he half believed Jane and half wanted to shake her teeth loose.
Everyone stood, petrified, waiting for his decision. Finally he said, through gritted teeth, "It's only a career. What the hell!”
Swiftly, the man in the "Tit for Tat" shirt abandoned his study of Suzie and all but tackled Shelley, shoving her ahead of himself back down the basement stairs. Jane grabbed Suzie's hand and ran around behind the sofa. Mel Van-Dyne was just behind them. They crouched down, VanDyne between them. With the addition of Suzie's gorgeous but substantial presence, it was a very tight squeeze, and in spite of the emotion of the moment, Jane couldn't help but notice how very nice he smelled.
“If it's Robbie, you can't arrest her!" Jane whispered to him.
“Shhh—"
“But you've got to listen. There's no hospital in Oakview, don't you see? And the plastic wrap on the top of Suzie's bowl wasn't even dented.""Be quiet!”
The house fell silent as the kitchen door opened. Again, there was the soft click of footsteps, then the refrigerator door opened. Jane could hear the sound of a dish being removed from the middle shelf and being set on the counter while the larger bowl was put in place. Yes, yes. She'd been right. That's how it had happened before — impossibly happened. A klunk. The heavy bowl, then Suzie's put back in. Jane was thinking of what the teacher had told the blind kids: See with your ears!
Jane held her breath. Mel VanDyne, crouched between them with a protective arm over each—was it protective, or was he just keeping them in place? — was so tense, she could almost feel the electricity of his nerves.
The refrigerator door closed and the footsteps, surprisingly firm — no hesitating, no reconsidering — went across the living room and up the stairs. Mel VanDyne was smiling as he rose, silent and lithe as a cat. He put a finger to his lips and gestured to them to stay put. Suzie and Jane peered over the top of the sofa as he moved across the room. "That's a man!" Suzie whispered.
Suddenly there was the sound of struggle upstairs. Shouts. A woman's scream. Uncle Jim leaped from the closet and headed for the stairs. The "Tit for Tat" man sprang from the basement door and followed. There was a terrible thump, as if someone had thrown the vacuum cleaner, still humming, at a wall.
“God!" Suzie whispered. Her normal high coloring had turned to the yellow-white of parchment. Jane felt sick. Not since the week before had she been truly conscious of the shock of real violence. Most of the time since then, this had been a mental problem. A puzzle of sorts.Very serious, very personal and emotional — God, yes. But not physical.
Jane saw Shelley emerge from the basement and start toward them. She shouldn't do that. Not until it was over. Jane rose to gesture her back, but Shelley was looking toward the stairway and the sounds of her house being torn up. Jane didn't want to shout at her. Even with all the noise upstairs, she might be heard. If she messed this up now, her uncle and Mel Van-Dyne would never get over it. She waved her arms, hoping to get Shelley's attention, but Shelley had stopped in the middle of the room, her eyes and ears locked in horror on the stairway. Jane crept around the end of the sofa and headed for her.
She'd almost reached Shelley when there was a pounding on the stairs, more shouting, bodieshurtling down. Jane whirled just as Mary Ellen Revere, on a dead run with Mel VanDyne only inches behind her, raised her arm in its cast and swung it at Jane's head.
Jane ducked, and Mary Ellen, her fierce swing unstopped, spun around and into VanDyne's arms. She struggled with insane strength for a moment, then suddenly seemed to crumple with exhaustion. Within seconds three men, including Uncle Jim, had hold of her, and VanDyne was barking into a walkie-talkie he'd taken out of his jacket pocket.
Behind them, a man in a Happy Helper uniform was coming down the stairs. His wig had gone askew and the stuffing in his shirt had shifted and he had one "breast" down at his waist. He was rubbing his throat. The "Tit for Tat" man was gallantly helping Suzie up from her position behind the sofa. Jane could hear sirens in the distance.
Mary Ellen's face, as she raised her head and looked at Jane, was flushed. There were stark, white marks around her lips and nose. "You bitch! You knew all along, didn't you? I should have realized you couldn't be as dumb as you always act.”
Jane felt seared by the venom in her voice. She turned away, shaking.
Edith was being led down the steps by a uniformed officer. She shook off his arm and shambled over to Mary Ellen. There was both hate and arrogance in her voice. "You think she's stupid! I never had it so easy as with you. If you ever get out of the clink again, you better not keep a scrapbook about your escape."
“Scrapbook?" Jane said. "Scrapbook! Of course. I thought she was cutting coup
ons, but she was adding newspaper articles about the murder to it.”
A siren whooped to a stop in front of the house.
“Did you know all along?" Suzie asked her twenty minutes later when Mary Ellen and Edith had been taken away. Uncle Jim had gone along to get her booked. Mel VanDyne had stayed back with two officers who were filling out forms and putting things into little plastic bags. VanDyne had spent most of the intervening time on the phone, talking in an incomprehensible verbal shorthand. The man in the Happy Helper uniform was waiting for someone to bring his own clothes to him. Shelley had made him an ice pack for his throat.
“No, of course I didn't know all along," Jane replied. "But I see why Mary Ellen thought so. That morning, before it all happened, I went over there and said something about how I'd never had any bones broken, but I once pretended I did and made myself a plaster cast."
“Which is exactly what she'd done," Shelley added.
“So that's what tipped you off?" Suzie asked.
“Oh, no, that didn't occur to me until I was driving back here. What made me realize it had to be her was dropping a bowl. Two bowls, actually. When Shelley and I cleaned out the refrigerator, I lost my grip on that big ceramic bowl of hers and dumped potato salad all over the kitchen. We should have both realized that if it was that hard to keep hold of the thing with two good hands, it would be absolutely impossible to keep a grip on it with one. It was heavy and slippery."
“And then there was the way it was in the refrigerator," Shelley said. "She put it in at the bottom of the stack of dishes because it was the biggest and heaviest — and probably to make it seem like it had gotten there first, even though she said she'd come right after you, Suzie. That meant she had to take the other things that had come first out, slide hers clear in, and put theothers back. She couldn't have done it with her arm the way she claimed it was."
“I still don't really get it," Suzie said. "I had a broken arm once and I got used to doing all sorts of things with it. I used the cast almost like a tool. Pushing things around with it. Balancing things on it—”
Jane took the last crumpled cigarette out of the pack in her purse, and was irritated to notice that she was still shaking so badly she could hardly light it. "But that's when you got used to it. She was claiming to have only broken it the day before. And when I was over there that morning, she was doing a convincing job of acting like it was so excruciatingly painful that she couldn't so much as lift a recipe card with that hand. Besides, she went too far in making the story convincing, and told me how a man at the grocery store had been so nice and drove her to the OakviewCommunityHospital to have her arm set. There isn't a hospital in Oakview."
“Also, the bowl had a plate for a lid," Shelley said. "It didn't even fit tightly, and the bowl had to be kept perfectly level or it slid off."
“What was that you were trying to tell the divine detective about my bowl?" Suzie asked.
“Again, she got carried away with her alibi. She said you had just left when she came over, but your bowl was on top of hers. She probably didn't know which thing you brought. But if she'd moved yours with one hand, she'd have had to stick her thumb through the plastic wrap.”
Suzie made a few experimental motions with her hands, trying to get the feel of what Jane was saying, then nodded her comprehension.
“And then there was the dishwasher," Jane said.
“What dishwasher?" Suzie asked.
“The killer had apparently turned on the dishwasher to make it appear the cleaning lady had been killed only moments before Shelley got home. An alibi of sorts, to make it look like the people who brought their food early were in the clear. Of course, with her dish at the bottom of the stack, Mary Ellen looked like she'd come very early, and she said she did."
“But that could have been anyone."
“No, only someone who knew how to work the timer gadget. You don't have one of those, I don't, and Shelley doesn't even know how to work hers. But when I went to Mary Ellen's that morning, I noticed that she had the same kind. Well, I don't mean I noticed then, but I remembered later noticing what a complicated-looking control panel it had."
“She took an awful chance—" Suzie said.
“There must have been an awful need. Imagine planning something like that. She must have started thinking about it when Shelley told all of us she was going to be gone, but Edith would be here."
“But if anyone had seen her carrying the potato salad in both hands, it would have wrecked an alibi she'd gone to a lot of trouble to set up," Suzie said.
“And the chances were good that somebody would. She took a big risk. You know howsnoopy everybody in this neighborhood is," Jane said.
“Do I ever!" Suzie said. "There are women around here who come right into your house and ask if you're being blackmailed.”
Shelley got up and went to the kitchen. "The coffee's ready. Who wants some? Jane, I could give it to you in a big cup and maybe you could drown yourself."
“I'd like some, thanks, ma'am," the man in the Happy Helper uniform said. He'd managed to straighten out his bosom.
“I still don't see how she knew about your snooping," Shelley said.
“My snooping? You were in on it, as I recall," Jane said. She explained to Suzie, who was unaccountably blushing. "She stabbed a note, warning me to mind my own business, in my bed. Why are you that color, Suzie?"
“I guess I better confess. I told her. She called just after you left my house and I was still laughing my ass off about your clumsy attempts at detection. I guess we're even. You went looking for gossip and I kept busy spreading it. So, how did you and Shelley eliminate each other as suspects?"
“We never suspected each other for a minute," Jane declared.
“Come off it!"
“Never!" Jane insisted.
Shelley was smiling. "How did you know it wasn't me, Jane? I could have been lying about the airport and sneaked back across the field, like we did a while ago. You must have at least wondered, didn't you?”
Jane was afraid she might be blushing too. Shelley was expressing a thought that had crossed her mind. "Well, only occasionally. But in the end, I knew you wouldn't risk messing your house up. If you were going to kill somebody, you'd do it where you wouldn't have to clean up afterwards.”
Shelley laughed. "And I knew it wasn't you because you couldn't sneak up on somebody without talking."
“So how did you find out what she was being blackmailed about?" Suzie asked.
“I didn't," Jane answered. She was smiling now too, relieved in a funny way that Shelley had briefly suspected her. It made her feel less guilty about thinking she or Suzie might have been a killer. "I didn't even think of trying to find out if Mary Ellen was being blackmailed. The broken-arm business had me so fooled I didn't even consider her. Besides, I'd already found out more than I wanted to about — about some other things. Isn't it strange? I thought we had to know what the blackmail was about, when all we needed to know was right in Shelley's refrigerator. Still, I wonder…"
“Edith was telling the truth about a jailbreak," a voice behind Jane said. VanDyne had come into the room on that silent tread. He came around and sat down next to Jane. She'd have been flattered except that it was the only seat available. "We've run her through the computer. She'd been a bank teller in California, and spent two years in jail for embezzling. She was sentenced to three, but let herself out early. Yourcleaning lady was the only thing between her and going back to jail."
“So what was the catalyst?" Jane asked.
“I thought you were the one with all the answers," he said. His tone was light, with only the tiniest glimmer of sarcasm coming through.
Jane gave him a level look for a long moment, then said, "I don't know for sure. Maybe it was simply the first opportunity she had that would leave her in the clear. She couldn't very well kill the woman in her own house and not have her past looked into. But killing her here, on a day when half the neighborhood was due to pass throu
gh, was perfect. I just wish I'd caught on sooner about the scrapbook."
“A stupid thing to do, but human just the same," VanDyne mused. "It was her fifteen minutes of fame."
“Still, I wish I'd realized it then. I wouldn't have been forced to crawl through that field and risk my life—!"
“If I recall correctly, I told you that you were not to come back here under any circumstances," VanDyne said.
“Yes, but if I hadn't, you'd have arrested the wrong person and wouldn't have caught Mary Ellen at all."
“If it weren't for your butting in, we wouldn't have been conducting this comedy of errors at all. And sure, we'd have gotten her. It was just a matter of time before the computer would have spit out the information about her in the normal course of the investigation—"
“But you wouldn't have caught her in the act of trying it again! That was all our idea—"
“I'll say! And if you ask me—"
“I've got to get back to work," Suzie said, cutting the squabble short. "You'll confirm to my boss why I took so long, won't you?" she asked VanDyne, batting her eyes so effectively that VanDyne dropped his dispute with Jane and gave her his full attention.
Suzie had been gone only a minute when there was a knock on the door, and Shelley let in a man in a police uniform. He had a bundle of clothing for Edith's double and a big, aromatic paper bag with a grease stain on the bottom. "Here's your lunch," he said to Mel VanDyne.
“That's Chinese carryout!" Jane said.
“Right you are. My reward," VanDyne said, starting to take little cartons out of the bag. "You want some?”
Jane was famished, but Suzie's mention of the time had reminded her of her own responsibilities. "Thanks, but I've got to go pick the kids up from school.”
Shelley went to the door with her. "You'll come right back, won't you?”
Jane looked over Shelley's shoulder into the living room. Mel VanDyne smiled his dimpled smile and waved at her with a pair of chopsticks.
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