A Quiche Before Dying

All but one of us, Jane thought.

He pulled a chair over by the doorway and sat down.

Jane glanced around the room. There was the illusion of guilt on every face. They were all perplexed and alarmed.

Missy continued, her voice trembling. 'Very well. If you'll get out the manuscripts, I'd like to go over each one briefly. First, I'll give my own comments and evaluations, then I'd like to know what impressions you had as you read them.”

Everyone tried gamely to pretend that VanDynewasn't at the back of the room, watching and listening. But their responses were feeble and disjointed.

The door opened again, bumping against VanDyne's chair. He moved it, and a uniformed woman officer handed him a white envelope. He thanked her, opened the envelope, and nodded. All illusion of a normal class was abandoned. Bob Neufield slammed his briefcase shut and glared at VanDyne. Grady got up and went to the front of the room to stand behind Missy's chair. Desiree Loftus leaned back and closed her eyes. Ruth and Naomi were holding hands. Cecily laid her hand on Jane's arm. Shelley was fidgeting with the lid of her pen, making a faint, frantic clicking sound.

Mel came into the middle of the room, in the aisle between the chairs. 'I'm afraid I'm here to arrest the person whose name is on this birth certificate, the person who was born in captivity in the Philippines ... Maxine Harbinger.”

There was a moment of confused silence, quick, puzzled glances. Then Ruth Rogers stood up briskly, ruffles bouncing. 'There's no need to make a fuss, Officer. I'm Maxine Ruth Harbinger.'

“No, ma'am. You're not,' VanDyne said softly. Ruth stared at him.

“You can't save your sister,' he went on very gently. 'Not from the law—or from anything else.”

Naomi Smith slowly got up and came to stand by her sister. She was normally a sickly, pale color. Now she was as white as death. 'I'm sorry, Ruth. But you know I had to do it. I'd have happily killed her in the town square at high noon—with pride!—except I wanted to spare you. She killed our mother, Ruth. She had to be punished. You know that. It was necessary. It was right. Everything that happened to me after that was her fault. If we'd just had our mother—”

She was shaking, and near collapse. Ruth put her arm around her sister to support her and wept, 'But the maid, Naomi. You almost killed the maid. You were too young to remember her, but she helped us in the prison camp after Mother died. She protected us from the guards and smuggled food in to us. She's the only reason we survived. And you almost killed her. That wasn't right.”

Naomi was crying now, too. 'But I didn't mean to, Ruth! Nobody else should have been hurt. It was only for that evil woman that killed our mother. You know I wouldn't harm anyone else for the world.”

Ruth put both arms around her sister, in love and in physical support. Naomi was crumbling. Ruth looked over her shoulder and met Jane's eyes. 'I know, Naomi. I know. Now, let's go with the police and explain it to them.'

21

“Mom!' Katie called from the living room. 'Mike and Todd are being repulsive again! They're such dweebs!'

“It's their nature,' Jane called back from the dining room table.

“I'll help you clear this up,' Thelma said, surveying the dirty dishes and general wreckage of Sunday dinner littering the table.

“No hurry, Thelma. More coffee, Uncle Jim? Mel? Mom?”

Shelley came into the room. 'I've got my gang off to the pool. May I invite myself to dessert?' She sat down at Katie's abandoned place and helped herself to a microscopically thin wedge of strawberry pie. 'Missy just called me. She said Naomi's in the hospital and is in very bad shape. Is that true, Mel?'

“Yes, it is. She won't make it to trial. It wasn't the arrest. We handled her with kid gloves. She just hasn't long to live.' He glanced across the table at Jane.

“I'm not sure I understand yet, Jane,' Thelma said grumpily. She'd expected the dinner conversation to center around her and her recent trip, but it hadn't. 'Old Mrs. Pryce hadn't actually killed their mother, had she?'

“No, but she'd turned her in to the Japanese guards because she stole milk for her daughters,' Jane said. 'And the Japanese took care of the rest. Ruth and Naomi knew the story from other camp survivors, but they never knew the name of the woman, just that she was a general's wife. Then, when Missy handed out Mrs. Pryce's book and they saw the other side of the story, they recognized that this had to be the same person. Worse, in her book, Mrs. Pryce bragged about it, as if she'd done something noble and fine. It was too much for Naomi.'

“Naomi Smith had a horrible life,' Mel put in. 'She was passed from one family to another, sexually abused in at least two of them. She felt that if her mother had lived, none of that would have happened to her. Which was probably true.”

Thelma glared at him, offended that anyone would dare mention sex in any context at the table. 'But why was the sister leaving clues for Jane? That makes no sense at all!'

“But it did, Thelma,' Jane said. 'She knew Naomi had done it. She'd seen her reach toward Mrs. Pryce's plate and then palm a little bottle at the dinner table while everybody was looking for Grady's contact lens. When Mrs. Pryce died later that evening, Ruth was certain the bottle had contained poison. When she got home, she noticed that some of her monkshood had been picked, but there was no sign of the cut stalks anywhere. Naomi must have boiled it down—or whatever you do with it to make a concentrated poison. In their formative years in the prison camp, they both learned a lot about plants—which are edible and which are poison.'

“Why didn't she just tell the police? I would have,' Thelma said piously.

“It was her own sister, for God's sake!' Uncle Jim barked.

“Ruth not only loved her sister, she understood and probably sympathized with why she did it,' Jane said. 'And to be quite honest, I agree. But when Ruth learned that the maid had almost died, she couldn't stand it. She knew that Naomi had to be brought to justice for that horrible error. For all her surface fluffiness, Ruth's a very rigid person when it comes to morality. But she still couldn't bring herself to turn in her beloved sister.'

“That doesn't answer my question. Why give all those incomprehensible clues to Jane?' Thelma asked. She didn't add, 'of all people,' but the implication hung in the air.

“Because she couldn't drop hints to the police,' Jane explained. 'The police don't have a house she could see from her house. If she'd sent them the birdcage, they wouldn't have known which crime it referred to, even if it came with a tag attached saying `CLUE.' And I think the first one, the book, was meant for either Shelly or me. It was left in Shelley's car when Ruth knew where we were—at Bob Neufield's house because she sent me there with that library list. The cage could have gone to either of us, but the patio table appealed to her for some reason as a good place to leave it. Then, since I'd gotten that, I had to get the flowers.'

“A book, a birdcage, and flowers,' Jim Spelling mused. 'I wouldn't have put that together and made anything of it.'

“I didn't either at first,' Jane admitted. 'But you see, she was leading me along step by step. First the book that meant: 'The explanation is in here.' Then the bamboo cage, meaning: 'This is the part of the book.' The bamboo cage represented the Japanese prison camp. Then the flowers, saying: 'This is how it was done.' '

“That's the part that makes me wild,' Uncle Jim said. 'She could have killed you with those damned flowers.'

“No, not really,' Jane said. 'She knew I didn't have any children little enough to chew on flowers like a baby or toddler might. And none of us were likely to drink the water they were in. They don't exude a poisonous smell or anything. They scared me to death when I realized what they were, but they weren't really all that dangerous.'

“I thought you said the flowers came from a florist,' Thelma said. 'It's downright irresponsible for a florist to send out—'

“No, they weren't from the florist, they were only wrapped in the florist's paper. Naomi had been hospitalized a few months ago and got lots of flowers. Ruth, being a frugal person, had automatically saved the paper—just because she saved everything that might come in handy someday. That was probably a legacy of the prison camp,