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, too."
“The fact is, she didn't want to take the responsibility for ratting on her sister, so she dumped the moral dilemma in Jane's lap," Shelly said, cutting another paper-thin slice of pie. "What about the name, though? How did Maxine Harbinger get to be Naomi Smith?" She glanced at VanDyne.
“Maxine was her first name, like Ruth tried to claim it was hers, but some foster parent along the line didn't like it and called her by her middle name, Naomi. It stuck. She married briefly and got the Smith," he replied.
Thelma shook her head. "The woman set out tohave her sister's crime revealed and then tried to claim that she herself was the murderer? I think she must have been insane."
“No," Shelley said. "She was very canny. I think she believed that Jane would keep quiet about the clues once she figured them out. That way, Ruth would have eased her own conscience by 'telling' someone, but Naomi wouldn't suffer the consequences. When it didn't turn out that way, she was horrified by what she'd done and wanted to protect Naomi. It wasn't such a bad plan, actually. Jane might well have felt so sorry for Naomi that she might have kept it to herself. And without her insight, the police would never have figured it out."
“Oh, I wouldn't be so sure of that," Mel said firmly. "We were on the track already."