A Farewell to Yarns

stay out of this. I'll keep you informed of everything I can find out, but in return, you keep your distance. Somebody didn't much mind killing her and probably wouldn't mind getting you out of the way if you butt in.'

“Okay—' she said, hoping that didn't count as a promise. 'Thanks, Uncle Jim.”

The kids started coming home a few minutes later. Jane listened to Mike's story about the band director nearly having a breakdown at band practice and felt a deep sympathy with the man. She listened to Katie's half hour account of the fashion show and then helped Todd with his math homework. When they'd all gone to bed, she treated herself to a cigarette and a Coke, then checked for the third time that all the doors were locked before she settled down to watch It's a Wonderful Life on the late movie and crochet like crazy until midnight.

Seventeen  

'Hey, Mom, that's pretty,' Katie deigned to  comment as she destroyed the living room looking for her missing social studies book the next morning. 'Is it done?”

Jane studied the afghan spread across the back of the sofa. The twelve oversized granny squares were all done and put together. It actually looked as if someone who  knew how to crochet had made them, she thought proudly. 'No, it gets about four rows of solid stuff around the entire outside edge, but I don't know how to do the corners.'

“Good-O, Mom. I think we ought to keep it,' Mike said, joining Jane as she and Katie admired the work.

“I think so, too, but I promised it for the bazaar.'

“Then buy it yourself.”

She looked at him. 'You mean, pay for the yarn, do all that work, and pay to buy it besides?'

“You did that last year with that wreath thing.'

“Last year—' She stopped herself from saying: Last year your father was alive, and I wasn't worried about money. 'I guess I did, didn't I? You ready to go? Is Todd on his way down?”

This was one of the horrible mornings when Jane drove all three kids' car pools to school. Just as there were occasional days when she got off scot-free, there were many more when she felt she was driving every child in the country and ought to just buy a school bus and be done with it. She tried to arrange it so these days fell, like this one did, on Fridays. While it was true that the kids were hyper on Fridays, thereby increasing the risk of permanent injury to the driver's nervous system, they were at least happy-hyper, which was far nicer than Monday mornings when they all acted like she was driving them up to the front door of the guillotine.

She got Mike and his crowd of friends delivered to the high school, Katie and her car pool (not friends—a purely geographical arrangement made by Jane and the other mothers, which Katie mentioned critically nearly every morning) to the junior high, and Todd and his bunch to the grade school. Then she came home and collapsed at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and the last few minutes of the Today show.

After watching about ninety seconds of a feature on a woman who was the mother of six adopted children (three with severe disabilities), who worked as a madly successful criminal lawyer and had invented (in her spare time, they said—what spare time?) some sort of toy that was supposed to rival the Hula Hoop, Jane flipped the television off in disgust. That sort of programming ought to be censored before impressionable young girls saw it and thought such a life was actually possible and/or required of them.

“I wonder what happens on the days when four of the kids are sick and a trial is supposed to start. . . .' she said aloud to Willard, who thumped his tail happily in response. 'Probably uses some of that toy money to call in a squadron of babysitters.”

As she opened pet food cans, she dialed Shelley's number. 'What time are we supposed to go to Fiona's to start setting up?'

“Ten.'

“Will you have time before then to show me how to finish the afghan?”

Shelley turned up a few minutes later, gave Jane her instructions, and sat down to watch her work. 'Have you been thinking about last night?'

“I've been trying not to. Oh, Shelley, I finally understand that phrase about being of two minds. Every time somebody starts going on about how much Phyllis thought of me, I feel like I ought to dash out and start interrogating people myself because of this tremendous emotional debt I didn't even know I had. Did you notice that even Chet knew my kids' names? That's how much she talked about me. But then I pull myself together and realize there could be a hundred explanations for all this that I know nothing about. I mean, what do I really know about Phyllis's life? Nothing. Chet could have some deadly enemy who killed Phyllis to get at him. For that matter, Bobby probably has perfectly awful chums in the city who were just waiting for him to get back, and one of them might have killed Phyllis by mistake. The worst is, I don't really believe the police will ever unravel it. I talked to Uncle Jim last night—”

She proceeded to tell Shelley about the conversation.

“So the evidence all points to Chet?' Shelley said when she was done.

“No, just the circumstances. There isn't any evidence to speak of. And I wouldn't think much more is likely to turn up, unless someone has a violent attack of conscience and confesses,' Jane said.

“So you still don't think it's Chet?'

“I don't want to think so. Didn't you see how devastated he was by it all?'

“I did. And I also saw how he pulled himself out of it in seconds to confront Bobby. It was almost like watching a multiple personality kick in.'

“Kinda spooky, wasn't it?'

“That's putting it mildly. I think the one person most capable of violence, from what we saw last night, is John Wagner. If his father hadn't stopped him, I think he'd have reduced Bobby to a grease spot without a second thought,' Shelley said.

“Could you blame him?'

“Not a bit.'

“But I still can't imagine anybody working up that kind of animosity toward Phyllis. Poor Phyllis. What do you think?'

“I think we better get over to Fiona's and concentrate on getting the bazaar set up.”

Jane bundled up the afghan so Willard wouldn't sleep on it and sighed. 'Did I actually volunteer for this, or is it all just a nightmare?'

“Both.”

Jane went to her kitchen radio and tuned in an FM station that played Christmas music. 'Why turn that on? We're leaving,' Shelley said.

“Partly so it's playing when I get home, and partly—I know this sounds dumb—so that the sound will soak into the house.'

“Do you think if you create enough atmosphere, a tree, complete with decorations, will appear in your living room?”

Jane laughed. 'Anything's possible.' -

The nightmare qualities of the Christmas craft bazaar became more apparent when they got to Fiona's. The rental company that was supposed to deliver the folding display tables at eight hadn't arrived yet. 'I've called three times already,' Fiona said, her usual English calm, if not shattered, at least crumbling around the edges. 'They swear they're on the way and we're the first delivery.'

“Then there's nothing we can do?' Jane asked. She had hopes that she could escape and go home to get in a few more frantic minutes of crocheting.

“Wrong!' Shelley exclaimed. 'We can start pricing. It's the worst job of all.'

“There are degrees of worseness in this?' Jane asked.

Fiona laughed. She had a delightful, bubblylaugh that broke the tension. 'Let's get it over with.'

“Fiona, you really don't have to help,' Jane assured her. 'When you offered your house, we swore you wouldn't have to do anything else.'

“Jane, have you gone mad?' Shelley asked. 'If you start turning down offers to help, I'll just have to slap some sense back into you. Let's start with ...' She looked around the room full of boxes, and her shoulders sagged. '... with the pillows. They were purchased; we just have to figure out the markup. No personalities involved.”

Jane soon discovered what the remark about personalities meant. Many of the volunteers who had provided