Bell, Book, and Scandal

'You will show me the contract!' Shelley exclaimed.

'Not until I understand the rules well enough to explain them. Oh, Shelley, I may not ever see one at all, you know.'

The conference was to start on Thursday, and the Monday before, Jane set out for the grocery store early with a long list of things her two remaining children living at home could eat while she was gone. Shelley was just coming home from some errands.

'You're not letting your mother-in-law take care of them this time?' Shelley asked.

BELL, BOOK, AND SCANDAL 7

'Thelma's got a conflict. She's going to her younger sister's house in Saratoga because the sister's husband is having very serious surgery and wants someone from the family with her in the waiting room. Besides, Katie and Todd are, I hate to admit, fairly responsible and should be able to take care of themselves.'

'Right. But you're going to be calling them to check every five minutes, aren't you?'

Jane grabbed her purse and pulled out a cell phone. 'I finally caved to technology,' she said. 'Isn't it darling? So very tiny.'

'You didn't invite me to help you shop for it,' Shelley complained. 'I could have advised you.'

'It was on sale for twenty-two dollars at the department store, and I'd seen another just like it for a hundred. How could I go wrong?'

'Twenty-two dollars!' Shelley almost screamed.

It was the same kind of cell phone Shelley had, and her reaction led Jane to suspect that Shelley had paid the full hundred for hers.

'I've made the kids memorize my number. They're to call me or leave a message every time they step foot out of the house.'

'So much for you trusting them,' Shelley said. 'Did you buy them their own phones at this sale?'

'I regret to say I did. I figured they'd be a whole lot happier about the rules if they had their own phones. But I made sure that they can't call long distance on them, and when their free min-

utes run out, the phone doesn't work anymore until the next billing month starts.'

'Good Lord! I didn't know you could do that! I've been afraid to let my kids have one for fear they'd run up huge bills. You remember when Denise stupidly called that psychic hot line and I got a bill for a hundred and seventy-five dollars?'

'Of course I remember. You tore through the phone company like Sherman through Atlanta to remove the charge. Anyway, I'll see how well the kids respond to the plan. And I'll hunt down any suspicious numbers when I receive the bills.'

When Jane got into her ancient, disreputable old brown station wagon to go to the grocery store, it wouldn't start. She called Triple A and they sent a guy out right away.

'I'm sorry to say, Mrs. Jeffry, that this is beyond fixing unless you want to put thousands of dollars into it to get it running again. Where do you want it towed?'

Jane was crushed to have lost her old familiar wheels. On the other hand, it was a relief. She'd driven the big wallowing station wagon for too many years already. It embarrassed her to be seen in it. It had once been brown but had faded to a motley tan. The carpets were stained with Kool-Aid. There'd been a crack creeping across the windshield for the last several months. She'd known for a long time that she ought to rid herself of it while it still got her around.

'I certainly don't want to put money into the poor thing. And I have no idea where to tow it

to,' she said.

'May I make a suggestion?'

'Suggest away, please!'

'There are lots of charities that will take a car off your hands and you receive a tax break for the donation at the blue-book rate.'

'It's certainly not worth the blue-book rate. And it doesn't even run. How would I deliver it to them even if they were foolish enough to want it?'

'They'd have it towed at their own expense,' he said with a big grin.

'What charities?' she asked.

'I'm not sure. I'd guess the Salvation Army. But it's a guess. I had a customer who donated a dead clunker that was worse than this one to the Kidney Foundation. Got a computer? Look on the Internet for places that take them.'

Two

Jane gave up on shopping and cruised the Internet. At noon, she heard a truck fall into the hole at the end of her driveway. She apologized to the driver of the tow truck.

'Never mind. I should have seen it and straddled it,' he said. 'Is this the car we're taking away?' He said this as if it were among the worst he'd hauled off for a long time.

'Poor old car,' Jane said. 'It's gotten me through becoming a widow, driving the car pools for a hundred years, hauling birdseed, groceries, and assorted misbehaving children. I'm afraid of what its fate will be. It's served me well.'

The tow truck driver looked at her as if she were slightly mad.

Shelley, having heard the noise, came to her kitchen door in her jeans with an apron over a T-shirt. She looked out for a second, then disappeared.

By the time the station wagon was gone, Shelley had reappeared looking as if she'd just come

from a beauty shop and stopped off at a very expensive dress shop.

'Why are you dressed so well?' Jane asked. 'Because this is what I wore last night to one of Paul's dinners for his employees. It was the clos-

est thing at hand. Where's your car going? What's wrong with it now?'

'Nearly everything's wrong with it. I'm donating it to a charity'

'What? Somebody wants that car?'

Jane felt herself very nearly tearing up. 'I think

they're probably having it gutted and crushed. So they can sell the metal as scrap.'

'Jane, it's a vehicle. Not a person.'

'I know that, Shelley. I'm also having a new

driveway put in and acquiring a new friend.' 'A new friend?'

'A Jeep. You're too dressed up to go with me. Change your clothes to 'business casual' as they're calling it in the ads on television. We have an appointment to buy the car this afternoon at

two-thirty. Would you drive me? I have no wheels of my own.'

'A Jeep? Good idea. One of those really big ones, right?'