"I'm sure you're mistaken," Shelley huffed. "Probably neither of them has ever been to a church bake sale."
"But we've done our share of them," Jane said, tossing the paper plate into the trash.
Eleven
Mel came over Sunday morning to have a big breakfast with Jane and her kids. She'd really gone all out. It was what she called "a dining room meal." Not something to crowd around the kitchen table to eat.
There were homemade corn muffins, an egg casserole with scallions in a cheese sauce, sliced ham with a thick black-cherry sauce, and crispy baked new potatoes with rosemary, as well as orange juice for the kids and mimosas for the two adults.
Everyone was impressed and all the food was quickly gone. "That was wonderful, Mom. A long way from dorm breakfasts. You must have been down early to get all this done," Mike said.
"Nope. Most of it was made yesterday and just put in the oven at the right times to come out at the same time, fresh and hot.",
Mike had to leave right after they ate. He was working again this summer at the garden center,and Sunday was their biggest sale day of the week. Katie was going to the town pool. She'd passed her lifesaving course and was actually being paid to sit around and get a good tan. Jane didn't really approve of tans anymore.
"You must slather yourself with sunscreen," Jane said. "I'll drop in later and see if you're good and greasy."
"Oh, Mom," Katie objected, patting her mother's hand in a patronizing way.
Todd had arranged for two of his friends to come over and play games on the living room television.
"I should load the dishwasher," Jane said, "but it's such a nice day, let's finish off the mimosas on the patio."
"Are you going to use sunscreen?" Mel joked.
"No. We'll be shaded by an umbrella."
"I see that you've actually done some real gardening this summer. What kind of tree is that spindly one in the middle of the yard?" Mel asked, propping his feet on an extra chair.
"It's a bing cherry."
"I don't see any cherries on it."
"Mel, it's a baby tree. It probably won't get cherries for a couple of years. My grandmother had two of them when I was a kid. I'd visit her most summers. One time they produced so many cherries that she had to beg neighbors to come take most of them off her hands. The one require‑
ment was that the cherries had to be bagged and weighed before the neighbors left. She actually gave away seventy-eight pounds of them. And kept ten pounds for her own pies."
"Eighty-eight pounds of cherries? I've never heard of such of thing."
"Neither had she. When she realized how many flowers the trees had, she hired two neighbor boys to net them so the birds wouldn't eat the fruit. I've never had a better pie in my life than she made."
She went on, "It did get two flowers this spring, but no cherries. So, how is your investigation of Denny's death coming along?"
"So-so. Not much information has come back on Denny himself. And I still can't manage to leave a message on his parents' phone. I've asked a cop in their town to go see if they're home. They're not. And none of the neighbors know when they're coming home.
"Tazz has an excellent alibi," he went on. "She was providing costumes for a private party. It was a reunion of a bunch of former hippies. Those who could still fit in their old clothes and had kept some, wore their own," he said. "Tazz dressed the rest of them who had wisely thrown all the tie-dyed stuff away."
"Was she there all evening?"
"Only after the rehearsal. She and her assistant dropped off the clothes some of them needed earlier in the afternoon, and went back after she was through at the theater to pick them up, examine them for food stains or sweat stains, and take them back to the warehouse well after midnight. Does she really make people who rent her clothes wear those underarm things?"
"She does."
"What if it's a sleeveless dress?"
Jane said, "I didn't think to ask. What about the others? John Bunting, for example? Was he alibied by his wife?"
"No. He'd been out to a late dinner after the rehearsal with a bunch of his old Chicago pals. They were finally asked to leave at midnight when the place closed."
"Did you interview all of them?"
"Yes, all but one of them, who is out of town. Are they ever a bunch of old coots. One has to carry his oxygen with him. Another is in a wheelchair and has a young man who accompanies him with his medicines. They're all successful old men. They either started companies here in Chicago or inherited companies from their fathers."
He went on, "One is called Bootsie. His father made expensive leather shoes and kept the shoe forms in storage, carefully itemized, until the client died. He claimed he always offered them to the bereaved family as a gift after the funeral. He's still in business. And he's the healthiest of all
of them. Now he has fifty employees and they still keep the shoe forms. I'll bet each shoe brings in a fabulous profit. Handmade, hand-sewn, fitting perfectly and guaranteed to last at least fifteen years. Lots of his clients bring the shoes in after the fifteen years and want the exact duplicate.
"Another, 'The Pill,' inherited a pharmacy his father started in 1890 in the heart of the Loop. He showed me pictures of the original shop, with all the big bottles filled with colored water. At least I assume it was colored. It was a black-and-white picture."
"And the rest?" Jane asked, smiling.
"One, of course, is a lawyer. He didn't seem to have a nickname. He's retired and turned it over to his son and grandsons, but goes in every day to check out what they're doing. If I were a son or grandson of his, I'd have run away and become a cowboy or a plumber. He's the one who is out of town.
"The last one, called 'Big Buck,' is, you won't be surprised to learn, a banker. He started out as a pawnbroker and went on to found one of the biggest banks in Chicago, with branches all over the United States and most of Europe. Even a few in Asia."
"They must all be billionaires," Jane said. "You're right. I was sort of surprised that they even let Bunting hang out with them. He's not aroaring success. And even if he's been in many plays and movies, he probably isn't anywhere near their financial league. But they all went to the same private grade and prep school at the same time, and men like that keep in touch, I guess. They've known each other virtually all their lives."
"I'll bet Bunting's appeal is that he's an actor," Jane said. "They can run old black-and-white movies for their great-grandchildren and say, 'I knew him as boy and man, and still get together with him.' "
"While the great-grandchildren snicker," Mel said with a grin.
"Maybe he made good money and was investing it well," Jane commented. "That might explain his friendships with the rest of the old dears."
"I don't think so. I called my mother…"
Jane kept herself from shuddering at the memory of meeting his mother once.
"She's a big fan of old movies," he went on. "She'd actually heard of them and looked them up in some of her reference books. She thinks he got his roles simply because he was the husband of Gloria Bunting. He usually played the silent, stoic husband the heroine doesn't appreciate, and she played the wife who has, or almost has, affairs with other men but always comes back to him, repentant and loving him all the more."
"I can imagine that well," Jane confirmed. "In the few scenes I've watched them rehearse, she is the character. He's nothing compared to her. He might have been good-looking, though, when he was younger."