Grime and Punishment

doors to move in.'

“Thelma? Don't you do it. The old bitch would chew you up and spit you out in a week. I'll call you tomorrow with whatever I find out about your nosy cleaning lady. And, speaking of nosy—'

“What?'

“Don't go interfering in this, Janey.'

“What do you mean?'

“All this talk about what you and your friend Shelley have figured out, and the business about VanDyne not being willing to tell you anything — that kind of butting in could be dangerous too. All you need to know is how to be careful and keep yourself out of any possible danger. Ignorance can be, and often is, safety.'

“Then I ought to be about the most secure person in the world, Uncle Jim. There's hardly anything I don't know less than I should about. Keep an eye on that sauce or you'll have to shovel it off the floor of the car.”

She smiled and waved as he drove off, but when she went in the house, she grimly checked that the doors were all locked. She'd have to make sure the kids all had keys tomorrow and impress upon them, without being too scary, that they had to keep the house safe.

Twelve

There was neither band practice nor cheer leader practice on Monday mornings, a small kindness Jane was sure the school board was unaware of or they would have promptly corrected it. She was able to get up at the usual time and still make a big breakfast. The kids were dumbfounded.

“You don't mean we have to eat all this, do you?' Katie's nose wrinkled.

“Why not?'

“I couldn't walk around with all this stuff in my stomach. I'd feel like a balloon.”

Mike's reaction was cautious curiosity. 'What's this stuff?'

“An omelet with bacon and sliced onions and peppers.'

“In the morning? God, Mom! If I blew into my tuba with that kinda breath, I'd never get rid of the smell. Nothing personal, Mom, but it looks like barf, besides. Sorry.”

It was Todd who put it all into perspective. He silently studied the omelet, the orange juice, the English muffins, the Canadian bacon, and said, 'What's wrong, Mom?”

That was, of course, why she'd done it. She knew they weren't breakfast-eaters. Back in her 'good mother' stage she'd cooked a hundred breakfasts that were rejected. She'd only done it today because she was scared. She had a sudden sense of how short life can be and how unexpectedly it can end. Now that she thought about it, the last time she'd gone on a breakfast binge was in the month after Steve died. What was it in her that fended off death and destruction with breakfasts? Send them to heaven on a full stomach? Good nutrition fends off the grim reaper?

When she had them on their way, she phoned Shelley. 'Wanna come have four breakfasts with me?'

“Love to, but I can't. I've got to jump in the shower, then I've got a dozen errands to do. Want to ride along for the first round?'

“Sure. I'll eat a barfy omelet while you're showering.”

Katie was right about starting the day like a balloon. By the time Jane heard Shelley in her driveway, she felt like she could have just tucked in her arms and legs and rolled across to the Nowacks'.

“What are we shopping for?' she asked, hoisting herself into Shelley's minivan.

“Shopping center to return some bath towels.”

As soon as they got out of the subdivision and onto a main road, Jane said, 'Shelley, I've been thinking about that woman getting killed…'

“What about it?' Shelley said, frowning andbraking as a little green sports car cut viciously in front of her. 'Silly jerk. Doesn't he know if I hit him in this thing I'm all right, but he's catmeat?'

“Two things. First, I realized something when I went to the Little League game. I sat by Suzie Williams —'

“Learn any new words?' Shelley said, grinning.

“Not this time. Listen. A bunch of the kids ran into each other and one of them came limping off the field and Suzie thought it was her little boy. She got clear down the bleachers before she realized it was another kid. She came back and said something about all of them looking alike in their uniforms.”

She paused, letting the thought soak in to Shelley's traffic-fuddled brain. She was easing the minivan into a parking place near the main entrance to the shopping center. They didn't talk until they were inside. 'Damn! I thought Marshall Fields was at this end. We've got to walk clear down the mall,' Shelley said.

They set out briskly, passing an endless number of shoe stores. 'Have you ever noticed that nobody's ever actually buying shoes in these places?' Jane mused. Eyes on the shop window they were passing, she collided with a solid bank of elderly men taking their daily health-walk. Shelley stood aside while Jane extricated herself from canes and walkers and apologized. She had no sooner gotten free when, from the other direction, four women outfitted in stylish jogging suits and wearing fanatically determined expressions nearly ran her down.

“When did the mall become a running track?' Jane complained. 'What happened to leisurely strolling?”

Shelley made no comment. She'd apparently been brooding over what Jane had been saying in the car. 'So you figure whoever killed Ramona meant to kill Edith and mistook her?' she asked, resuming her quick pace. 'But Jane, they don't look that much alike.”

Jane tried to answer without panting. 'But you vacuum with your back to the doorway.”

No explanation was necessary, Shelley accepted this and went on. 'But why? So what if it was supposed to be Edith instead of Ramona? That doesn't get you any closer to knowing who or why. Have you told Detective VanDyne about this idea?”

They'd come to an escalator, and Jane was able to get her breath for a moment. 'Oh, I have. I'll tell you how charming he was about vacuuming backwards later. As a matter of fact, the idea had occurred to him as well.'

“And did he think it was meant to be Edith?”

“He didn't share his thoughts,' Jane replied archly.

Shelley arched an eyebrow, but didn't ask for an elaboration. They reached the other end of the mall, and Jane occupied herself studying all the pretty linens on sale while Shelley managed her towel return. Jane had been witness to some of Shelley's transactions before, and it wasn't always a pretty sight. What Shelley wanted, she got, no matter how many broken bodies were left behind in the process.

The thought made her uneasy. It wasn't thatshe suspected her friend of having anything to do with the murder of the cleaning lady. Shelley could no more kill someone than she could. But still. . her mind kept involuntarily coming back to her, and she kept shaking off her suspicions as fast as they formed.

“There. All taken care of,' Shelley announced. 'Where next?' Jane asked as they returned at breakneck pace to the van.

“The feed store, for birdseed.'

“Feed store? You've got to be kidding? Are there such things around here?' Someone had parked so close to the minivan that Jane could hardly open the door and squeeze in.

“Not on every corner, but I found one. It's not far.'

“Why don't you just buy birdseed at the grocery store?'

“That junk? That's for people who don't know birds. I have a special combination I mix myself. Are you in? Good. Now, you were saying about VanDyne?…' She pulled into traffic.

Jane told her about the conversation she'd had with him, but finished by saying, 'Forget about him for a minute. I want to tell you why somebody wanted to kill Edith.' The idea was only partially developed in her own mind, but she needed to hear herself say it before she'd know whether it had any merit. 'Remember the talk we had on the phone about my desk drawer being meddled with? Well, I think that's the other part of the story. I think Edith had gone snooping in it. You see, we were trying to figure out who would want to steal anything in it.

What we didn't consider was somebody wanting to steal information.”

They'd reached a dilapidated shopping center in a suburb that looked like it had once been a little outlying town before Chicago oozed out and engulfed it. Shelley circled around a dry cleaner of questionable hygiene and went down an alley. There, looking like a scrap of country town, was a clapboard building that had big bags of