A Quiche Before Dying

“That's what I mean. If he was discharged for some other reason entirely, he couldn't fight the slander with the truth, because it would be embarrassing, too.'

“But she didn't even say it outright, like she did with Grady and the embezzling accusation. Shelley, I don't think we can give him more than a two.'

“A two! With an arsenal in his back room?'

“She was poisoned, not blown up. I'll give him a three, if it will make you happy. Now, who else? Ruth and Naomi.'

“One at a time. Naomi: Pryce was rude to her about her illness.”

They looked at each other, trying to think of anything else. 'She collects cookbooks,' Shelley added.

“Cookbooks tell you how to feed people, not how to poison them,' Jane pointed out.

“Okay. Right. What if the blood disease she has is AIDS and she doesn't want anyone to know? You know how weird people are about AIDS. She could be a lot more sensitive to that sort of 'get away, you're contagious' talk than she let on. Don't look at me like that. I'm just theorizing.'

“Two, tops,' Jane said, writing the number down. 'Then Neufield has to be more than a three.' 'What about Ruth?'

“No motive except secondhand on her sister's behalf. A one at the most.'

“Don't be hasty. She's a very strong-minded woman. Takes action when it's called for.'

“So do we, and it doesn't mean we're murderers.' 'Who's left? The maid.”

Jane put her pencil down. 'She's a real unknown, isn't she? She could have tons of motives we'd never guess. Do you think maybe that's why they're keeping her in the hospital so long? A sort of subtle house arrest?'

“What's VanDyne told you about her?'

“Not much. And for all his apparent openness, he can keep confidences. He knew all about Grady's wife and didn't say anything about her. He might know all kinds of things about the maid.'

“I think we have to give her a ten with a question mark.”

Jane looked at the list again. 'Well, on the theory that it's the least likely person, it has to be Ruth or Naomi.'

“Or you, me, or your mother. We're all zeros,' Shelley pointed out. 'Not even on the list, in fact.' 'Good point.”

Headlights swept the room as Jane's station wagon turned in to the driveway. Shelley glanced at her watch. 'My God! Paul will think I've been kidnapped.' She hopped up and headed for the door, setting the empty juice glasses in the sink as she went. Jane stuffed her notes in the kitchen junk drawer.

Shelley opened the door and turned back. 'Jane, you didn't tell me a thing about your date with VanDyne.”

Jane grinned. 'I didn't, did I?”

1 9

 Jane stayed up late that night talking with her mother and daughter. Not about the murder, but about practically everything else. At one point, Cecily asked Katie point-blank, 'What do you think about your mother dating?”

That led to another hour of talk, some tears, a few feeble jokes, and a final understanding that Jane Jeffry wasn't entirely over the hill, and might as well go out with men occasionally—so long as those men knew that Steve Jeffry had been a saint.

Jane repressed the urge to remind Katie how she'd felt about her dad when he'd forbidden her to wear lipstick, or to go to the mall with her girlfriends. Shortly before his death, they'd nearly come to blows over whether she could wear jeans with the knees deliberately torn out. But then, maybe Katie would eventually forget about her tiffs with me as well, Jane told herself.

“I'm glad you got that out in the open, Mom,' Jane said to Cecily as they climbed the stairs shortly before one o'clock.

“There's a lot you learn as a mother,' Cecily said, yawning. 'And there's a few things you don't understand until you're a grandmother. Like the benefits of just wading in and thrashing it out. I wish I'd done that when you were at home.''It's too late now,' Jane said with a smile. 'And not necessary anymore, I hope.'

“I'm glad you waded right in.”

Cecily stopped midstep and took a deep breath. 'Darling, I've learned something about myself lately. I'm a better grandmother than I was a mother.'

“You were a wonderful mother. You still are.'

“No. You're a much better mother than I was. You're always here for the children. I wasn't. I'm proud of you. I guess I should have said that a lot sooner. Good night, chickie.”

Jane hugged her, her eyes brimming with tears. 'You haven't called me chickie in ages. I kinda like it.”

Jane couldn't get to sleep for an hour. In a couple sentences, her mother had wiped out years of hidden resentments. Somehow, the fact that Cecily knew she'd failed, if only in a very small way, eliminated Jane's grudge about it. It shouldn't have been that simple, but it was. Maybe all she'd been waiting for was an apology. Now she found herself wondering whatever had given her the idea that her mother had to be perfect? Yes, Jane and her sister had missed a few things, but they'd had so many wonderful benefits that other children missed. And if her mother had been a little too devoted to her husband, why, maybe that was Jane's problem of perception. If she'd loved Steve as much as her mother loved her father, Jane would still have a husband. Maybe her own less than perfect marriage had colored her views with a little jealousy.

Her mind kept going over the talk with Katie, too, thinking of a dozen things she could have said better, and finally she came back, inevitably, to her earlier conversation with Shelley about Mrs. Pryce's death.

She went back over that discussion, too, with no more result than the first time. The artificial deadline she'd formed in her own mind was looming before her. Tomorrow night would be the last class. She wanted desperately to figure it out by then, before everybody scattered and went on to other interests. No doubt Mel was right—patient police work would provide the solution sooner or later. It was the 'later' that worried Jane. The more time passed, the more chance there was of someone else coming to harm.

She finally fell asleep and had nightmares. A long line of trucks was driving up and delivering flowers. Masses of flowers, suffocating tons of flowers. They covered the windows like a colorful avalanche. The weight was making the windowpanes break, and flowers were cascading in. Jane kept trying to sweep them up, but couldn't. The scent of them started to choke her. She tried to hide the children in the little birdcage, certain for some reason that they'd be safe in there.

She woke up at nine, sweating and distressed. The cats were sitting on the end of the bed, looking at her. Willard was on the floor beside her, snoring. She showered quickly, then checked on her mother and Katie. Both were still sound asleep. Pulling on culottes and one of Mike's T-shirts that had gotten mixed up with her laundry, she went downstairs with the cats wreathing their way between her feet and meowing piteously. She fed them and Willard and started the coffee maker.

Somehow, these repellent domestic chores were comforting. She wondered if men felt the same way about mowing the lawn. Fat chance. Thinking of men made her think of Mel. And that made her think about what she looked like. What if he dropped byand she looked as if she'd been left out in the rain all night? She ran a comb through her hair, fluffed it up a little—no point in going the whole hot roller route—and put on makeup. She glanced in the mirror when she was through. Not terrific, but not downright scary, either.

Still no sounds from upstairs. She rummaged in the junk drawer and pulled out her notes that she'd made the night before with Shelley. She went back, suspect by suspect, but had no new insights. At the bottom of the last page, she'd doodled the words 'wolf bane.' She'd meant to look it up, but more pressing matters had intervened.

She put away the notes, took down the dictionary from where it sat next to the cookbooks, and hunted. It took her a while to discover it was 'wolfsbane.' But the dictionary wasn't much help, except to say it was a plant and give its botanical name. Well, at least it was a plant, she thought, not a disease or a hairstyle or something equally useless.

Putting the dictionary back, she took down a fat, battered garden encyclopedia she'd found at a garage sale a couple months earlier. Under Wolfsbane she found, 'A popular name for Aconitum lycoctonum. See Monkshood.”