Grime and Punishment: A Jane Jeffry Mystery (15 page)

After a long pause, he bent and picked up a briefcase and removed a stack of papers. "Now, I'd like to go over these statements with you—"

“Statements?" Jane asked.

“From the women who came here that day. You were a witness to some of them arriving."

“I've already told you everything I know."

“Yes, but I thought going over it might help you remember more. Something insignificant you didn't think to tell us maybe? Now, I spoke to Mrs. Williams last night—”

Something about the awestruck tone in his voice when he mentioned Suzie's name made Jane and Shelley both smile. "Did you learn any new words?" Shelley asked.

“A few," he admitted. "She's quite a woman, isn't she?" There was both admiration and something like fear in the statement. "She says she's a buyer for the local branch of Marshall Fields."

“Lingerie and foundations, as I suppose she told you," Shelley said.

“Yes — ah, well, uh. Now, Mrs. Williams says she forgot to bring her dish over before she went to work, so she took an early lunch hour and ran home and then over here. She thinks that was about eleven."

“I wouldn't know," Jane said. "I was out shopping from around ten to about twelve."

“She told me Edith had cleaned her house once, but that she didn't like her. Do you know anything about that?"

“Nothing, except that's what she told me too."

“Oh, you've discussed this with her?"

“At a ball game Saturday. In fact, she's the one who first gave me the idea that it might be the wrong cleaning lady who was killed."

“She suggested that?" he asked, his eyes narrowing.

“No, she was talking about the boys in their uniforms and said all the cute little bastards looked alike in them."

“Yes, I imagine that is how she'd put it. Now, Mary Ellen Revere, your neighbor across the street. She said she came over just after that. She saw Mrs. Williams leaving and that reminded her to bring over her food.”

Jane shrugged. "I don't know."

“She says she works at home except on Wednesdays, when she goes into the city for a weekly meeting with her other investors."

“I've never known what it is she does, but I see her leaving in city clothes from time to time," Jane said. "What is it she does, exactly?"

“It's odd that you wouldn't know. All of you seem to know so much about each other."

“She doesn't have children," Shelley said. At his perplexed look, she elaborated. "Most of us know each other through our children. School things, sports, swimming pool, car pools to various activities. We only know Mary Ellen because she lives so close. When we have adult neighborhood parties we invite the Reveres, of course. They don't usually stick it out to the end, though."

“Antisocial?"

“No, but conversation eventually gets around to the kids' teachers and teams and baby-sitters and such and, naturally, that bores them."

“I see," he said, as if being instructed in some esoteric habits of a foreign country and finding them excessively tedious. "Mrs. Revere said she wasn't out of the house anytime except to bring—" he consulted his notes " — potato salad over here. Would you know anything to the contrary or anything that would confirm that?" He looked from Shelley to Jane.

“No, except that I know she wasn't feeling well. She's just broken her arm and it's very painful. I didn't ask, but I assume she can't drive, so she's probably stranded," Jane said. "I hadn't thought about that. I guess I ought to offer to take her to the store or something, but I imagine her husband's taking care of all that.”

VanDyne was looking away, waiting for her to get over this little outburst of suburban trivia. "Now, Mrs. Wallenberg says she brought a cake over and you brought it in. You confirmed that the first time we talked. Did you see her again the rest of the day?"

“Not until after — after Mrs. Thurgood was killed. I phoned her as soon as we discovered the body and came back here. She picked my son up from school and dropped him off home after dinner. Come to think of it, I didn't see her then."

“She said she was playing tennis — all day." It was clear that he found this hard to believe.

“I'm certain she was. Dorothy lives for it. She was a pro or almost a pro when she was young, and she married a man who's a sporting goods distributor. She's also a nurse, and does part-time volunteer work in a birth control clinic."

“Yes, she told me that. She said she'd had Edith clean for her once and didn't like her. Is she one of — well, you called them 'slobs'?"

“I'll say," Shelley put in. She'd been quiet for quite a while, but now she became talkative about Easter eggs in sofa cushions and elicited the dimpled smile again.

“Mrs. Jones said she brought her dish a little after noon. But you didn't see her?”

There was a note of skepticism in this that Jane found irritating. "Believe it or not, I really don't spend my days spying on Shelley's driveway. I was probably down looking at the furnace then."

“I see. Looking at the furnace. Mrs. Jones said she saw you earlier in the day."

“At the dry cleaners," Jane said curtly. Why couldn't it have been at a travel agency where she was picking up tickets for an exotic trip, or at a jeweler having a diamond necklace clasp fixed — at the very least a health club? The man would think she never went anywhere interesting. Unfortunately, it was true.

He waited to see if she'd go on. When she didn't, he said, "Let's see who else — Laura Stapler, the woman next door to Mrs. Nowack's on the other side. She says she brought her salad over around one-thirty and spoke to you?"

“I think it was a little bit before that. Ten or fifteen minutes, probably. I started the carrots at one and—" She was about to do it again, gab about telling time by carrot cookedness.

“You didn't start the carrots until that
afternoon?"
Shelley interrupted.

“I didn't see her leave, though," Jane went on hurriedly. "I was leaving when she came. She must have been the last one in the house. Let's see—" Jane got up and opened the refrigerator door. "Shelley, you haven't moved any of this since then, have you?"

“Well, I — the kids aren't home and we ate out—"

“I'm not accusing you of keeping a piggy kitchen. I just wonder if you got these potluck dishes out of order. Isn't this Laura's bowl on the top of the stack?”

She shut the door and thought a minute. "That doesn't matter. I mean, it doesn't tell us anything that's necessary to know."

“Why not? I thought it sounded good," VanDyne said, looking like he hated to admit it.

“The dishwasher was still on prewash when I came over after Shelley called. So Mrs. Thurgood must have started it just before she was killed, and everybody had come and gone before then.”

VanDyne got up and looked at the controls of the dishwasher. "Mrs. Nowack, had you set this to start in the afternoon?"

“What do you mean? Oh, yes, it
is
one of those, isn't it?"

“One of what?" Jane asked, joining him and bending over to see what he was looking at. "What in the world
are
all these buttons, Shelley?"

“It's got a thing where you can load it up and program it to start in the middle of the night."

“Why in the world would anybody want to do that?" Jane asked.

“I have no idea. It would scare the stuffing out of me if it started gushing and thrashing at four A.M., so I never bothered to learn anything but 'wash' and 'cancel.' "

“It's so you can use it at nonpeak water consumption hours," VanDyne explained. "In some parts of the country that matters."

“So—" Jane began.

“So we've been looking at this dishwasher business as proof she was alive and it isn't necessarily. You're sure you didn't set it yourself, Mrs. Nowack?"

“Not unless I did it accidentally. I don't know or care how that timer gadget works."

“Wait a minute!" Jane said. "Don't you have a pathologist or coroner or somebody who can tell when she died?"

“Yes, but he can't set a very good time in this case. You see, that's determined in large part by the temperature of the body in relation to weight, room temperature, and the stage of rigor mortis, which is also influenced by surrounding temperature. That was a guest room, which Mrs. Nowack keeps closed off with the furnace vents also closed. It was pretty chilly the night before, so the room might have been quite cool. We don't know. When Mrs. Thurgood opened the door, she let it start warming up from who knows what temperature. In addition, the body was lying in a shaft of sunlight, which also threw off the temperature calculations. The coroner puts a tentative time of death at between noon and two. So, you see, the dishwasher evidence was in contradiction to that, and now we know — or suspect why."

“You're saying whoever killed her very calmly set the dishwasher to start at a time when she — or he — had an alibi?"

“Not necessarily. It might have just been a last-minute gesture to generally confuse the issue. And it has.”

Jane sat down shakily. She hadn't adjusted to the idea of one of her neighbors killing someone, much less doing it cold-bloodedly enough to think of something like that.

“Did any of the women who brought food see the cleaning lady when they came?" Shelley asked.

“Mrs. Wallenberg didn't, of course, because she was here before Mrs. Thurgood and didn't come in anyway. Mrs. Williams says the house was quiet, and so does Mrs. Revere, who came right after her. But Mrs. Jones was here an hour after that, and she mentioned that the victim was vacuuming the living room. Mrs. Greenway heard her moving around in the study. Mrs. Stapler says she didn't see or hear anything, but she also made the point that she stayed only briefly."

“Terrified, no doubt, even though she had no way of knowing anything was wrong. She's like that," Jane said. "Her husband has a safety store, whatever that is, and she takes caution very much to heart."

“Well, I guess that pretty well covers everybody who was in and out that day," Shelley said, leaning back.

VanDyne didn't reply for a minute; then he said, very softly, "Not quite everybody.”

Jane thought for a second that he meant Shelley's alibi hadn't held up. She knew she'd come to Shelley's defense, no matter what questions she might privately entertain.

He turned his head slightly, and Jane felt his gaze on her face.

“You
were
the last person to bring a dish, weren't you, Mrs. Jeffry?”

Fifteen

"That son of a bitch actually thinks I killed your cleaning lady!"

“Now, Jane. He doesn't either. You're overreacting.”

They stood at the kitchen door, watching the red MG back out and drive away.

“Then why did he make that remark about my being the last person to bring a dish? And did you see the fishy look that went with it? The idiot was waiting for me to break down and confess, like the last scene in a Perry Mason movie!"

“Maybe he does suspect both of us," Shelley admitted. "But why shouldn't he? He doesn't know us any more than he knows the rest of them. Once you accept the premise that a perfectly respectable suburban housewife might have cold-bloodedly murdered somebody, where do you draw the line as to which one is capable of it?”

Jane sat down at the table. "It was bad enough being afraid of the killer, but now we have to be scared of the police too. They're sup- posed to look after dull, law-abiding people like us, not terrorize us."

“I know what you mean and I feel the same way, but I don't think he means to scare us. Asking questions about what you saw and heard is probably necessary information to clear you."

“This is when you start telling me about the bridge in Brooklyn you have for sale, right? Come on, Shelley!”

Shelley shrugged. "I don't see what we can do about it. As far as I'm concerned, VanDyne can suspect us all he wants. He's obviously not going to prove anything because we didn't do it. Here, help me get this stuff out of the refrigerator. That'll take your mind off him. I wonder if I ought to give the food back or not? This is Monday and it came on Thursday. No, it's probably going yucky. I think I'll run it all down the disposal and let everybody think Paul and I were pigs and ate it.”

Jane got up and started handing bowls to Shelley. The first to go was her carrot salad. "I never even got to taste it," she said sadly. "I'm still mad, Shelley. If he really just wanted to clear me, he could have said so.”

She handed over Laura's cucumber and onion salad; Shelley peeled off the plastic wrap and sniffed at the dish. "I love this stuff. What a pity to throw it out. Do you think—?"

“No, pitch it! This is the one that will really break your heart. The brisket." She set the big lidded plastic container on the counter with a thud.

“No, that I'm going to take back to Joyce. Shecan throw it out herself if she wants. Will you quit flouncing around? You're going to break something."

“Shelley, I don't think you're taking this seriously enough. If he can think
I
might have done it when I brought my salad, he's only half a step away from suspecting
you
of doing it a few minutes later. In fact, he might decide we were in on it together, or that one of us is covering for the other, and that way we'd
both
be in trouble. Accessory to murder is a prison term too. Oh, God—!”

The big bowl of potato salad slipped from her grip and hit the floor. The plate that had served as a lid bounced against the table leg and shattered; the bowl rolled sideways, flinging potato salad around the room.

“Oh, hell! How am I going to find a matching plate?" Shelley moaned, staring down at the mess. "Is the bowl broken?"

“No. And don't worry about the plate. It was my fault. Here." She handed Shelley the bowl and started scooping up globs of potato salad with a spatula and flinging them into the sink. "Give me a paper towel to get this glass.”