Gayle Trent (8 page)

I was tryin’ to think of something clever to say, but she beat me to the punch. “You must be Jim’s house frau,” she said. “Funny, but you bear a striking resemblance to my dear friend Myrtle.”

“Oh,” I said, forcing a chuckle, “I’m far from being the hired help. I do what I do because I enjoy it . . . and so does Jim.” I stepped back from the door. “Won’t you come in?”

The angry hiss of water on a stove eye let me know that the spaghetti was boiling over again, so I hurried to the kitchen to blow into the pot some more. This time, after stirring it, I cut the heat down.

I was surprised to find that Tansie had followed me into the kitchen rather than gone hunting after Jim like a beagle on a rabbit’s trail.

“So, how is he?” she asked.

“He’s got a broke ankle,” I replied.

She rolled her eyes. “I know that—Bettie told me that. How is the poor dear?”

“I reckon he’ll live.”

“You don’t sound very sympathetic. I suppose it’s because you know he and I are seeing each other and you’re afraid of getting dumped.”

I opened the jar of spaghetti sauce I had sittin’ on the counter. “I am sympathetic to Jim or else I wouldn’t be here, and I don’t think I’d go around telling people the two of you are seeing each other if I were you. He told me that when he couldn’t reach me the other night, he called you and had you meet him at Smiddy’s. He said he hates to dine alone.”

Tansie was carryin’ that new Louis Vuitton pocketbook she’d bought at Marcia’s, and she slammed it down on the counter. “Are you intimating that Jim asked me to dinner merely because you were unavailable?”

“No, I’m not intimating a thing. I’m flat out tellin’ you—you were second fiddle.”

She gasped. “You don’t honestly believe that?”

I took a spoon out of the dish drainer. “I know it for a fact; Jim told me so himself.” I turned and began spooning spaghetti sauce into the bottom of the casserole dish.

Tansie must not have appreciated my turning away from her in the midst of what she probably considered an important conversation, so she grabbed me by the shoulder. When she did, a spoonful of spaghetti sauce flung itself right at her. I say it flung itself because it was an accident—truly, it was—and one of Tansie’s own making. If she hadn’t grabbed me like that, it wouldn’t have happened. I was just puttin’ together a casserole, for pity’s sake.

Anyway, she had on this light blue crepe-y shirt, and that sauce spattered all over it. Not only that, it got on Jim’s nice linen tablecloth. I hated that. It was a lovely tablecloth.

“Now, look what you made me do,” I said.

Tansie started to ball up her fist; and I thought if she slugged me, she’d better get ready—they hit back where I come from.

She looked at my spaghetti spoon and then down at her shirt and apparently decided not to tangle with me anymore today. Instead, she flounced out of the kitchen to go find the bathroom.

I drained the spaghetti, got the cheese out of the refrigerator and finished fixing the spaghetti casserole.

By the time Tansie emerged from the bathroom with wet splotches all over her crepe-y shirt, the tuna casserole was done. I took it out and put the spaghetti casserole into the oven.

“I thought Jim might like this tuna casserole for lunch,” I said. “Have you eaten?”

“Yes, thank you. I believe I’ll go speak to Jim and then be on my way.”

“He’s in the den . . . down the hall and to your right.”

She nodded.

Suddenly, I felt bad for Tansie and wished I hadn’t rubbed it in her face about her bein’ second fiddle. After all, she didn’t even suspect Jim of bein’ a killer.

She came back and stuck her head in the kitchen. “He’s asleep,” she said. “The dog is, too. I’ll just give Jim a call later.”

“I need to go, too,” I said, “as soon as the spaghetti casserole is done. If he’s not awake by then, I’ll leave him a note and let him know you stopped by.” Feeling magnanimous, I decided to smooth over her feelings. “He really does like you.” Boy, did she ruin my magnanimous gesture.

“Of course. I know he likes me,” she said.

It took everything in me not to jeer, “Second fiddle! Second fiddle!”

She went on out; and after getting the other casserole out of the oven, cleaning up my mess, and making sure everything was off, I collected Matlock and we left, too. I did leave the note for Jim, since he was still asleep. I told him I’d prepared two casseroles and that they were in the fridge. I added that Tansie Miller stopped by for a second but had to hurry on her way. (I didn’t want him to think she’d helped with the cooking!) I added that a bit of spaghetti sauce spilled onto his tablecloth and that I was taking it to have it cleaned.

Wanting to have that stain treated as soon as possible, I went by a dry cleaner’s near Jim’s house instead of taking it all the way back home to my own dry cleaner. Fortunately, they had a drive-through, so I didn’t have to worry about leaving Matlock in the car.

I handed the tablecloth to the girl at the window. “Hi,” I said. “I got spaghetti sauce on this tablecloth, and since it’s white linen, I’d like to get it treated as soon as possible. Do you think you’ll be able to get to it pretty soon?”

“We should,” she said. “We aren’t that busy. Do you have an account with us?”

“No, actually, I live out of town. My friend Jim Adams suffered a broken ankle yesterday, and I went by his house to make him a couple of casseroles. I can pay the cleaning bill up front if you need for me to.”

“That won’t be necessary.” She half-grinned. “Did you say Jim Adams?”

“Yes, why?”

“Mr. Adams is a regular customer, and he’s brought in some pretty strange things in his time.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, I don’t really know,” she said. “Maybe our manager will be around when you come back to pick this up. He’s our authority on Mr. Jim.” She looked like she was about to burst out laughing.

“I hope he is here,” I said. “I’d like to talk to him. Can you tell me when this’ll be ready?”

“It should be ready tomorrow,” she said.

“Will your manager be here tomorrow?”

“No, he’s out today and tomorrow.”

“Then I’ll see you on Thursday.”

“Okay,” she said brightly.

I pulled away from the window wondering just what kind of strange things Jim had brought to the dry cleaners. I’m sure dry cleaners see a lot of weird things, so it must really be unusual to have caused Jim to be the subject of such gossip there. So what had he brought them? Bloodstained garments? But that wouldn’t be funny. Unless he’d made up some outlandish story to explain them away. I shivered, wondering what I would learn on Thursday.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Before starting home, I went by the dog pound and gave them a twenty-dollar donation. The same animal control officer was there, and he was pleased as punch to see Matlock again.

“Hey, buddy! You’re livin’ large now, aintcha?” He scratched Matlock behind the ears. “You’re doing great with him, Ms. Crumb. I’m awfully glad you brought him by.”

“I’m a widow,” I said, “and I don’t believe I’d realized how lonely I’d been until I took him home.” I gave a little laugh. “It’s nice to have somebody to talk to all the time.”

The dogcatcher laughed, too. “I know what you mean. I talk to critters all day long.”

“When I was in here last, we spoke about Flora Adams,” I said. “Didn’t you tell me that she never adopted any of the dogs?”

“Nope, she never did. I always figured she already had one or two of her own, or else she felt like she couldn’t take care of a pet by herself.”

“But she wasn’t by herself. She had a husband.”

He shrugged. “I didn’t know her that well. We didn’t talk much. She basically brought ham every Friday, socialized with the animals and left.”

“Still, that was an awfully kind thing to do.”

“Oh, yeah,” he agreed. “She’s bound to have been an excellent person. Did they ever find out what happened to her?”

“No,” I said. “They never did.”

As soon as I got home, I called Sunny. I had a lot on my mind and needed her to help me sort it out.

“Hi, Meem,” she said. “What’s up?”

“Meem? That’s new.”

She giggled. “I know. I’m feeling silly.”

“Somebody must’ve had a good day.”

“I did. You know Bobby who sits behind me in math class?”

For the next ten minutes, she chattered on about this “dreamy guy” who “so rocks” and who “totally talked” to her about “that garbage” they had for lunch today. To me, she sounded like somebody had sped up her record to seventy-eight . . . and if you know what that means, then you’re closer to my age than you are to Sunny’s. But that’s neither here nor there.

Finally, she squealed, “Isn’t that great?!”

“That is so kickin’,” I said, feeling pretty hip.

“Oh, Mimi, you can be so passé!”

There went my hip.

“But that’s okay,” she continued. “What went on with you today?”

I told her about Jim, and she thought Tansie and the spaghetti sauce incident was a real hoot. Then I said, “Well, you’ll be happy to note that your fund-raising efforts were not in vain. I went by the dog pound and gave ‘em twenty bucks.”

“You so totally went in the hole, didn’t you?”

“Totally. Anyway, I talked to the dogcatcher again. Don’t you think it’s odd that Jim and Flora didn’t have any pets of their own when they both like dogs so good?”

“Maybe their dog died or something.”

“Maybe. When I asked the dogcatcher wonder why Flora never adopted a dog, though, he said that maybe she didn’t think she could take care of one by herself.”

“By herself?”

“Yeah. I told him she was married, and he said he never talked with her much.”

“They never did anything much together, did they?” Sunny asked. “Jim and Flora, I mean. Gee, the neighbors never even saw them together. How weird is that?”

“I think it’s real weird. In fact, I’d like to dig in their family history a little bit . . . or at least, into his.”

“You mean, like trace his family tree or something?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I believe I read somewhere that wife-killing—bein’ crazy and that kind of thing—runs in families. Think about it. Jim seems perfectly nice, and apparently, Flora was nice, too.”

“So you think maybe Jim is a good person but that he’s a crazy wife-killer once removed or something because it’s in his genes?”

“You never know.”

“And you want me to go online and see what I can find?” she asked.

“Actually, I’d like you to show me how to do it.”

“No way!”

“Yes . . . way. You’ve got plenty of your own work to do, and—”

“Cool. Can you come on over?”

“I’ll be there in about an hour.”

I wanted to be sure to get Matlock squared away so he’d be okay on his own awhile. I didn’t dare take him back to Faye’s house.

* * *

Faye hadn’t got home yet when I arrived. I was glad. It would give Sunny and me a chance to work in peace for a while. I didn’t relish the thought of explaining the whole Jim and Flora thing to Faye, and I was hoping I could avoid that.

Sunny answered the door and took me to her room. I love Sunny’s room. Everything in it is puffy and pastel. She has a canopy bed covered in flower pillows, and there’s a butterfly throw rug on the floor. I’d have given my eyeteeth for a room like Sunny’s when I was a little girl. Her computer sat on a white desk and was adorned with glittery stickers. Stuffed animals peeked at me from all directions.

“I went ahead and got you onto a genealogy site,” she said.

“All you have to do is put ‘Adams’ in the search box and hit the ‘enter’ key.”

“All I have to do is put what where and click what?”

Sunny rolled her eyes, typed “Adams” into a white box, clicked a button, and a whole slew of stuff about Adamses filled the computer screen.

“To look at these,” Sunny said, “use this thing called a mouse to click on the link. Like this.” She clicked on a section of blue text and more stuff came up. “If that’s not what you’re looking for, hit this button to go back. Got it?”

“Maybe.” I sat down at the desk.

“Well, I’ll be right here if you need me.” She took a stack of textbooks out of her denim backpack and sprawled out onto the plush pink-carpeted floor.

“Can I do a search for wife-killing Adamses?” I asked.

She laughed. “How about adding the word ‘deaths’ after ‘Adams’ in the search box?”

“Okay.” I tried that, and you’d be surprised at how many Adamses have died throughout history, not to mention America’s first and sixth Presidents. Oh, well, it’s a common surname. And “James Adams” is a common whole name. I know because I added “James” to that “Adams” and “deaths” search hoping to narrow things down. It didn’t help much.

Finally after scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and scrolling, something stood out. It was the death of Delia Adams, survived by her husband James Adams and son James Adams, Jr. The date sounded about right in accordance with when Jim would have been a child, so I clicked the link to read more about it.