Grime and Punishment

this is Jane Jeffry, Shelley Nowack's next-door neighbor.'

“I know who you are, Mrs. Jeffry.”

Jane didn't preen, but she smiled. 'I've figured out the murder. Well, I haven't exactly figured out who did it, but—'

“That's the end result we like.”

Jane bristled at this, but went on. 'It had to do with uniforms. You see, one of the boys at the baseball game got hurt, and my friend Suzie thought it was her son because they all look alike in the uniforms, and that got me thinking—”

„

“—that the regular cleaning lady was the intended victim?'

“Oh.' Jane was crushed. 'You'd thought of that?'

“It's a natural thing to wonder when there doesn't appear to be any motive. It doesn't appear to be the case, but I'd be interested in hearing what supporting evidence you have for your assumption.'

“Supporting evidence—? Oh, I see. Well, they looked alike. Not close up, but from the back, and when you vacuum, you usually have your back to the door.'

“How interesting.Hmmm. I didn't know, of course, that the two women were similar, and that vacuuming thing is interesting. Only a housewife would think of it.”

Jane had been considering telling him about Shelley's pearls. After all, Shelley had, at one point, asked her to do so. But his tone changed her mind. She considered just calling him a condescending bastard and hanging up; Suzie would have recommended it, she was sure. But she rejected that course as well. VanDyne wasn't going to find out anything more from her, but she might want to learn something from him.

“Well, thanks for listening,' she said with venomous sweetness. 'If there's ever anything else you want to know about housework, I'm your woman. Just call — I'll be in the kitchen trying to decide which paper towel is more absorbent.'

“Say, you're not mad, are you?”

Furious, insulted, pissed as hell

“No, I'm not mad, Detective VanDyne. Good-bye.”

She really should have turned Suzie loose on him.

Ten

On three out of every four Sundays they all ' went to church. On the fourth the kids went, and Jane stayed home to get ready for dinner. She didn't usually need the time, but the occasional quiet Sunday morning alone was a blessing itself. This monthly family dinner had been another tradition Steve had started and she had continued — with a few alterations and under considerable pressure from her mother-in-law Thelma.

It was by no means the only hold she still had on Jane, but she used it to the hilt, as if Jane and the kids might escape her iron circle of influence if she didn't show up monthly to tighten up the 'ties that bind.”

These family dinners would have been unbearable if Thelma hadn't been diluted by the other guests. Steve's brother Ted and his wife Dixie Lee usually came along too. Ted was a quiet, pleasant man; not a thrilling conversationalist by any means, but amiable, and a neutralizing influence on his mother's antics. His wife Dixie Lee was an Oklahoma girl, hardly into her twenties, with a sweet disposition and an accentlike warm molasses. To Jane's delight, Thelma disapproved of her even more heartily than she disapproved of Jane.

“She'd expected Ted to stay home with her forever,' Jane had explained to Shelley two years ago when Ted fell for Dixie Lee. She had been hired to demonstrate a new line of beauty products in the family's main drugstore, and Ted was instantly smitten. 'Steve had escaped from Thelma's clutches when I — a scarlet woman if there ever was one — snared him. But this girl! Half Ted's age and too nice — or too dumb — to even notice Thelma's digs? It's too much for Thelma. She's about to go berserk.”

After all this time, Thelma was still fuming and casting barbed remarks at Dixie Lee, and Dixie Lee was still blissfully unaware of them. Ted shared her attitude. If he had any idea of what his mother felt, he didn't let on. Nor did he seem the slightest bit influenced by her unceasing attempts to denigrate his wife.

After Steve died, Jane had added a guest to the dinner roster: her honorary Uncle Jim, her father's life-long best friend. An ex-Army officer, he'd finished his twenty years and gone to work for the Chicago police department. Assigned to the most lawless part of the inner city, he was the happiest he'd ever been. Life among the pimps and pushers suited him right down to the ground.

“All I ever did in the Army was push papers around and go to drills for events that never happened,' he explained. 'In this job things are always happening, and from time to time I actually manage to do something worthwhile.”

Thelma hated his intrusion into the family circle with a fervor that sometimes approached frenzy. The first time Jim had joined them, last February, she'd attacked Jane for inviting him.

“After all, my dear, he associates with such unacceptable people. One would hardly think he was a good influence on the children.'

“He's associated with my parents for forty years!' Jane shot back. 'I don't have them near me, but I must have him.'

“But Jane, dear, we're your family now.'

“Thelma, you make it sound like I'm a Middle-Eastern camel trader's daughter who's left her tribe for her husband's.'

“Rather a vulgar analogy, don't you think?”

“What's vulgar? The Middle East? Camels? Tribes?'

“Dear, you're just upset. We all understand. Steve's demise has been a devastating blow to all of us. I fear my own health has been permanently damaged by the distress. Now, let's don't talk about this anymore.”

That was as close as she ever came to admitting she'd lost a round. She hadn't given up her campaign to have sole ownership of Jane and the kids, but she didn't bring it up directly after that. Every month she sat across the table from Uncle Jim and glared her disapproval. He, bless his heart, found it amusing, and would occasionally wink at her just to see her blush with fury. Jane hoped he'd leave off this month, however. The day was just too nice for conflict.

When the kids got back from church, Jane was sitting on the patio, hypnotically scratching Willard's ears and quietly enjoying the smell of newly cut grass from the several lawns nearby. It would probably be the last Sunday for it. By next month, people would have stopped mowing for the winter, and there would begin to be the smell of burning leaves in the air. She'd observed that no amount of modern suburban restrictions seemed able to stop people from indulging in the primitive need to stand around a big outdoor fire on the first cool days.

Then, next spring, there would be the odors of fertilizer, and weed killer, and good brown earth returning from the winter sleep. Jane had always liked that best, but had missed it last spring. She'd still been grieving too deeply to take much notice of anything outside herself and the immediate concerns of getting from day to day without letting the kids know how upset she was. Next spring, however, she'd make up for it. Maybe a nice garden — Steve had never approved of gardens. He was a lawn man, taking inordinate pride in an unbroken spread of lush green.

The one thing Steve had hated about the house was the field behind it. The developers had apparently intended one more street between Jane's and the main drag, but had run out of money — or enthusiasm — before the last street was completed. The field had remained a field, much to the delight of Max and Meow, who spent all their free time out hunting. Steve, however, had despised the weeds that grew there and were perpetually trying to invade his precious lawn.

Jane got up and strolled around the yard, considering.

Gardens had always appealed to her need for permanence. A garden meant you were going to stay someplace. You planted leathery little brown bulbs in the fall and didn't see the results till spring. Then you put tiny seeds in the ground that wouldn't bear fruit until fall. You had to stick around in the meantime. A garden said to fate, 'You can't get rid of me!”

Yes, she'd have a garden! Daffodils and tulips and pussy willows — were there such things anymore? She hadn't seen one since she was child. And forsythia. Great, cascading forsythia bushes along the whole west fence.