Grime and Punishment: A Jane Jeffry Mystery (3 page)

“She's gone for the day, or getting ready to go if she hasn't left yet," Jane said, unwilling to admit she didn't want to face Shelley's wrath.

“Oh, yes. To have lunch with her sister or something at the airport. She told me Monday, when I was collecting for the Cancer Society. Just a minute — my buzzer's going off."

“I'll just run over and get the recipe.”

Jane peered out the kitchen window. Good. Shelley's minivan was gone. But, just in case, she sprinted across the street to Mary Ellen's house and lurked behind the tall evergreen next to the door until Mary Ellen let her in.

Mary Ellen was a real beauty. Her appearance was stereotypically southern California; very tan, streaked blond hair, a lot of makeup appliedso skillfully that it looked like nearly none, and trendy clothes. She, too, was in a tennis outfit, but it was apparent she wasn't going to play anytime soon. Her right arm was in a cast from thumb to past her elbow. "How's it feeling?" Jane asked.

“Fine, so long as I don't try to use it. And I keep banging the cast into things."

“Shelley said you fell in the grocery store parking lot?"

“Yes, but not the grocery store down the street. I'd driven clear over to Oakview because somebody told me they had a good fish market. I never did find it, so I just ran into a strange store for a pack of cigarettes. I slipped on something as I came out. A nice man who was just behind me helped me up and took me to the emergency room of the community hospital.”

Mary Ellen had put a cup and saucer in the dishwasher and pushed several buttons on
a
control panel that looked like part of NORAD as she spoke. Still using only her left hand, she was awkwardly rummaging in a recipe-card box. She tried to use her right hand to take out
a
card and winced.

“I always wanted a cast when I was a kid," Jane mused. "So people could write things on it. But I never broke a thing. I tried to make a cast once when my sister had some plaster of paris for a hobby project, but it just looked like I'd grown a limestone arm. My mother made me break it off and it took all the hair on my arm along with it. God, it hurts to remember.”

Mary Ellen looked so pale that Jane was sud- denly stricken with guilt. "Never mind the recipe. I shouldn't be bothering you."

“It's all right. Here it is," Mary Ellen said, handing her a card. "I think Shelley adds a little lemon juice and parsley to hers. Just don't lose the recipe card."

“Oh, I won't," Jane assured her, glad Shelley wasn't around to hear her making such a rash promise.

Mary Ellen walked to the door with her, and as they passed the den, Jane noticed that the computer was on and the screen was filled with some sort of graph. Mary Ellen had something to do with an investment group. Jane had never quite understood it or wanted to. All she knew was that it was extremely lucrative, and Mary Ellen did it at home most of the time, but had an office somewhere in Chicago where she went once every week or so. Steve had told her more, back when he'd been in his investment phase, but she hadn't been very interested. "So you can at least work?"

“What? Oh, yes. A little. Just with the one hand, though. It's very slow.”

The phone began to ring. "Go ahead. I'll let myself out.”

Jane hurried home, still half-afraid Shelley would catch her. Safely inside her own kitchen, she looked at the card and groaned.

Tangerine juice! Where the hell was she going to get tangerine juice?

Three

Jane
was standing at the kitchen window, mis erably contemplating where she'd find the elusive ingredient, when she heard Shelley's minivan pull back into the driveway between their houses. She must have taken the dog to the kennel and come back before going on to the airport. Thank heaven she hadn't been a minute earlier and caught Jane galloping across the street, waving a recipe card like a red flag.

Jane paced around a minute to see if Shelley would come right back out. Willard had inhaled his breakfast, and she shoved him out the back door into the fenced yard. He looked around cautiously to see if anyone was lurking there to get him. Willard, whose life's ambition was to escape into the front yard, was terrified of the back.

Going back in the kitchen, Jane found that the cats were still eyeing each other over their food bowl in a stare-off to determine who would eat first. "Get on with it, you dopes!" she said, giving them ear scritches they didn't appreciate.

Why didn't Shelley go? She didn't dare make a grocery-store run while there was a danger o Shelley catching her and asking where she was going. She found it was impossible to lie convincingly to her, even on small matters like tangerine juice. Jane would have to wait her out. It was like being in a castle under siege.

To kill the time, she occupied herself with one of her least favorite duties. She checked on the hamsters in Todd's room, which were living in precisely the kind of filth she'd imagined. "You are rats in disguise," she said to them. "You may fool children, but not mothers.”

Popping the fuzzy creatures into a shoe box, she dumped the contents of their cage into a plastic trash bag — checking carefully just what she was throwing away. Once she'd tossed out their newborns not realizing what those repulsive little pink lumps were. She'd assumed they were evidence of some nasty digestive process she was better off not knowing anything about. Todd had been crushed, and had put no credence in Jane's statement that if he'd cleaned it himself as he was supposed to it wouldn't have happened. Sooner or later Todd would run out of friends to give the frequent offspring to, and they'd have to move out and abandon the house to the little rodents.

In the meantime, she'd keep cleaning their cage occasionally. She knew she shouldn't be doing this for Todd. It really was his responsibility. But there were reasons she continued to make regular forays into the hamster den. First, he was always so pleased when he came home and discovered that his little pals had a clean house. It was a refreshing change from the usual to have someone notice her efforts. Second, Steve had always been a bear about it, insisting that Jane was absolutely not to clean the cage. He didn't consider the creatures as pets, but as a learning experience for Todd. Now that he was gone, it was a backward sort of way to assert her independence.

Max and Meow had finished their breakfast and come upstairs to help her. They took up positions on either side of the shoe box and had their heads cocked alertly, listening to the hamsters scramble around. Jane had just put the hamsters back into their cage and was watching them burrow under the clean wood shavings when the phone rang. She shooed the cats out, slammed the door, and ran down to the kitchen to answer it so she could check on whether Shelley was gone. Her minivan was still in the drive as Jane lifted the receiver.

“Jane? You sound out of breath. There's not something wrong, is there?" a male voice rumbled.

“Hiya, Uncle Jim. Not a thing. What's up?”

“I'm calling about dinner Sunday—"

“You
are
coming, aren't you?"

“If you want me."

“That's a wimpy sort of thing for a macho cop to say. Of course I want you to come. If you didn't come every month, I'd be left to the mercy of Steve's mother and brother without any protection at all.”

Uncle Jim, uncle in honorary terms only, asked, "Are they treating you all right, honey?"

“As all right as they know how. It's not their fault they drive me crazy."

“You're doing okay, then?"

“I'm fine, Uncle Jim. You haven't got around to why you're calling."

“Oh, just to warn you I might be a few minutes late. I've got to go out to the boys' detention home and take a statement from a kid who cut up his sister with a butcher knife."

“Don't try to kid me. You love nothing better than a nice hour of kicking ass at a detention home.”

He laughed, then with mock-seriousness said, "Jane! What a way for a nice girl to talk.”

Jane smiled to herself. To Uncle Jim she was still a girl. "You can't tell me a Chicago inner-city cop is shocked by my language."

“Honey, nothing shocks me anymore. Except maybe that cheese dip your motherin-law made last time I came over."

“See you Sunday then.”

As they concluded their conversation, Jane noticed Shelley get in her minivan and leave. She was looking ravishing in a rich, maroon suit with black piping and black patent accessories that were only slightly less shiny and neat than her hair.

The siege was lifted.

Jane changed from jeans and sweat shirt into tan culottes and a tan-and-white-striped sweater, took a quick swipe at her lips with a coral lipstick that Shelley had told her was her color, and headed for the closest grocery store. She got the carrots and onions, and for good measure picked up a wicked-looking paring knife, in the belief that any knife she might find in her kitchen would be too dull for the tricky business of cutting the onion as neatly as Shelley had specified. The last time she'd had a truly sharp knife Mike had used it to cut off a length of garden hose for a mysterious project. It was now good only for cutting butter — warm butter.

As she came down the dairy aisle, she spotted a plump, pimpled, and thoroughly harassed-looking young man with a tag that identified him as an assistant store manager. "Could you tell me where to find tangerine juice?" she asked.

“Tangerine juice?" He seemed deeply unhappy and slightly offended, as if she'd asked for amphetamines or hand grenades. "Have you checked the canned fruit juices?"

“Yes, mandarin orange and regular orange. No tangerine."

“Kool-Aid?"

“Nope. I looked."

“Jell-O?"

“I want to
flavor
a salad, not glue it together.”

“Let's check the gourmet section, ma'am.”

“This is proving a fruitless effort, in several senses," Jane giggled.

“You might try a health food store," he suggested, oblivious to her wit.

Jane shuddered. The only time she'd been in such an establishment, she'd seen only stuff that looked slightly less appetizing than the hamsters' food. "I don't frequent health food stores. I don't even know where one is.”

In a low voice, as if afraid of being overheard giving information to the enemy, he gave her directions to a store several miles away.

Jane checked out and decided to do her other errands first. The health food store was the other way from her house. Smoking her second cigarette as she drove, she went to the bank, the office supply to pick up some graph paper Katie had requested, and to the dry cleaners to leave the sweater with the barbeque sauce on the sleeve. After a tiff with the girl at the desk, who insisted sourly that the stain looked like blood no matter what Jane might claim, she left.

She waited while a car pulled in next to hers. "Oh, hello, Jane," the woman getting out said.

“Robbie, you've done something to your hair. It looks nice.”

Jane always went out of her way to compliment Robbie Jones, sensing that she needed it. Robbie was, to be generous, an extremely plain woman. She had a portly body and the skinniest arms and legs Jane had ever seen. In addition, she had a lantern jaw, low forehead, and a perpetually stern expression. But she had lovely auburn hair with a deep natural wave.

“I just had it trimmed a bit, that's all. Bringing in your dry cleaning?”

What else would I be doing at a dry cleaners?
Jane wondered. Poor Robbie. She couldn't help it she was the world's worst conversationalist. Just shy, Jane supposed. Still, she often wondered how she did her job; Robbie worked part-time as a psychiatric nurse. A superb if boring organizer, she could handle work schedules and budgets with devastating competence, but she was the dreariest, most depressing person in their circle.

“You're coming to Shelley's this evening, aren't you?" she asked her.

“Certainly. I've got my food in the car to drop off in a while."

“I can take it for you, if you'd like." '

“No, thank you. I've got my driving plan worked out and that would throw it completely off. I'll see you tonight.”

Jane got in the car, biting back a smile. "I must learn to like her," she said out loud as she pulled out of the parking lot. "It's the Christian thing to do.”

When she got home, she flipped on the kitchen television to catch the noon news while she fixed a sandwich and smoked another cigarette. Shelley might make fun of her meat loaf, but cold, it made the best sandwich in the world. The weather report caught her attention. A cold front was heading in their direction and would arrive later in the week. Temperatures might drop into the fifties or lower.

“Furnace—" she mumbled to herself. Every fall Steve did things to the furnace before it was turned on for the winter. But not this year. One more thing she'd have to figure out.

It was amazing how many things there were to learn when you were a single parent and a homeowner. There seemed to be hundreds of boring chores somebody else had always done and which had to be learned. What surprised her most was how many of them seemed to be seasonal. Every time she thought she had a grip on things, the weather changed, and she had to start all over with a whole new set of problems.

First it had been the snowblower. The rubber blades had worn down, and she and Mike had spent a hideous Saturday morning the previous February in a hardware store finding replacements. That was very soon after her world had caved in, and she'd made a fool of herself, breaking into tears, in public, when the hardware clerk told her how to have her husband attach the damned blades.

Then spring had come, and there'd been all the assorted jobs and implements associated with keeping a suburban yard looking decent. The lawn mower had been bad enough, but Mike had manfully assumed responsibility for it. Then the underground sprinkler system had suffered a breakdown that caused all but one of the heads to put out a pitiful mist and the remaining one to look like Old Faithful. That she'd just abandoned. She bought a rotating sprinkler head and a couple of lengths of hose. She'd always felt an underground sprinkling system was a symbol of decadence anyway. Spring had also meant having the snow tires taken off the station wagon, and she'd stupidly bought an entire new set of tires without realizing they weren't an annual purchase and the old ones were in green plastic bags in the basement.