“I've got to get this food home before my husband comes looking for me," Patsy said, opening her car door.
“I'm sorry to have been so nosy," Jane said.
“No, the police are surely going to ask me the same things and I might as well start getting my memory in gear.”
Jane drove home so deep in thought that she almost missed her own driveway.
12
Jane had a message to call Mel when she got home. She did so and told him briefly that he needed to speak to Patsy Mallett and why. She gave him Patsy's phone number, and hearing the rush and irritation in his voice, hung up as quickly as possible.
Mike came home, showered, changed clothes, and went back out for the evening with Scott and a couple of his other pals. Katie asked to have her friend Jenny spend the night. Jenny arrived with enough luggage for a European Grand Tour, and the girls disappeared into Katie's room for the evening. Elliot and Todd took over the living room television to watch ninja movies.
Jane tidied up the kitchen and gave Willard a long pet. "Nobody's paid much attention to you lately, have they, old boy?" she said, scratching behind his ears, which he loved. Knowing, by feline radar, that there was affection being given to pets, Max and Meow appeared, wanting their fair share. Jane petted them, and in an excess of fondness, gave them each some vile kitty treats the kids had forced her to buy. The cats loved them, but would probably throw them up somewhere later. They usually did.
Jane had heard that pets lowered your blood pressure, reduced stress, and all sorts of other good things. Most of the time she didn't believe it. Willard, Max, and Meow were normally just three more children to keep tabs on, but this evening, she did find that a visit with them was pleasant and relaxing.
“At least I don't have to put you guys through college or worry that you'll marry somebody who hates me and wants to take you away to Paris to live," she said.
Willard rolled over for a tummy rub and Meow made a gagging noise.
Jane puttered. She started some laundry, changed the kitty litter, threw out nearly everything in the refrigerator, and sorted through some seed packets she'd ordered in January from a catalog and never got around to planting. She considered spending a few hours with Priscilla on the computer, but decided she'd had enough of words and of talking for one day. She wasn't so much tired as she was tired of conversation and of thinking. She needed something mindless. Like cooking.
No, nothing in the house to cook. So she cleaned off the kitchen table and got out a jigsaw puzzle.
By nine-thirty, she had the border finished and had almost completed the big building in the middle. The phone rang.
“Got plans for tomorrow morning?" Mel asked.
“How early?" she asked warily.
“Ten?"
“That's possible. I never make the kids get up for church on the first Sunday of the summer. But the pantry is bare. Don't expect breakfast."
“I'll take you out then. We've never had breakfast together. Well, except that one time—" he said with a very pleasant leer in his voice.
Jane blushed. The breakfast he referred to was a room service meal the morning of the first night they'd spent together. And halfway through it, they'd found something much more fun to do than eating. Best meal she'd ever not eaten.
“I'm not sure a public restaurant would be suitable for the way we conduct ourselves at breakfast."
“Oh, I think I can manage to keep my clothes on if you can," he said.
She laughed a bit breathlessly and then said, more seriously, "You sound tired. Get some sleep. I'll see you tomorrow."
“Janey, this is an official visit—"
“I was afraid it might be. Tomorrow.”
She drove Elliot home, dropped off the movies the boys had rented, and went home to bed and tried not to think about sex.
She would love to have invited Mel over for the night, but that would violate her own rules. She didn't believe in having an affair in the same house her kids were in. Not that they didn't know the nature of the relationship — well, Todd seemed unaware that Mel was anything more than Mom's friend. Katie understood, but doggedly pretended not to, which left her in the difficult position of having to both ignore and disapprove of the same thing. Only Mike seemed okay with it. Jane knew her attitude was stodgy and priggish, but she couldn't help it. And she suspected that Mel, while he claimed to be perplexed by her attitude, didn't truly relish the idea of making love to her in the same bed she'd shared with her husband.
In the morning, she left the still-sleeping kids a note and sat down on the front porch to wait for Mel. When he drove up, she went straight to his little red MG and hopped in. "You look great," he said.
She had a new summer dress Shelley had forced her to buy. It was an old-fashioned white eyelet fabric lined with a pale blue fabric, and had a rather naked bodice held up by spaghetti straps. "I'd look like a beached albino whale in that!" Jane had said when Shelley whipped the dress off the rack and held it up.
“No, you'll look great. Tan is out these days," Shelley had assured her. "And you can wear a nice lacy summer sweater with it if you want.”
Apparently Shelley had been right. As usual.
“Thanks, Mel. I feel like I'm going around in public in a nightgown, but Shelley assures me I'm stylish. You look good, too.”
They went to a restaurant a few miles away that specialized in fancy brunches. Jane managed to put away most of a mushroom and artichoke omelet without spilling anything on herself. Mel knocked back eggs, bacon, toast, hash browns, grilled tomatoes, an enormous sweet roll, two glasses of orange juice, and coffee. "If I ate that much, you'd have to roll me home," Jane complained.
They chatted about various harmless subjects while they ate — the graduation, Mike's new truck, and their plans for a weekend in Wisconsin later in the month. They were very careful not to talk about the recent deaths. When they left the restaurant, Mel drove to a nearby park where they could speak privately. Mel got out, removed a briefcase from the trunk of the car, and sat back down to rummage for a moment among the papers inside. He handed Jane a photocopy of a typed sheet.
“Take a look," he said.
She skimmed it quickly. "It's notes from the time I talked to Stonecipher about setting up trusts for my kids," she said, giving it back.
“And this one?" He gave her another photocopy. This was handwritten. And the sketchy phrases were about Jane's late husband — his date of death, his involvement in the family pharmacy business, his income. There were notes about Thelma, including a few rash, if not downright insulting, remarks Jane had made about her. And another about the pharmacy having difficulties with the IRS with the comment, "Fraud?" underlined.
Jane felt herself grow hot and uncomfortable. She gave the paper back to Mel, even though what she wanted to do was crumple it and throw it away.
Mel put it back in the briefcase. "The first sheet was from your file in Stonecipher's office. The official file. The second was in a folder in Emma Weyrich's bedroom.”
Jane felt leaden. "Emma's bedroom? Why did she have it?" she asked finally.
“I think she intended to talk to you about it. At your four o'clock appointment.”
Mel looked at her for a long moment. "I think she considered you blackmailable."
“Me? But why? Because I made a few cranky cracks about my mother-in-law? Or because that jerk thought the Jeffry family was cheating on their taxes? Fraud! The nerve of him. It was just a fight over allowable deductions, which the company won eventually. There was no question of fraud."
“She didn't know that. And wouldn't have until she spoke to you about it. When she approached you after the graduation ceremony, she didn't mention your husband or his family, did she?"