Jane had the rest of the roll of quarters along and fed them into the parking meter and then went back to the shop.
"Here's the suit I'm wearing," she told Madelyn. "I
hope you can match the color. And we're shorter on time than I thought. The wedding is only three weeks from now, instead of six weeks."
The milliner held up the dress and said, "I think I already have a good match. I'll hunt through the greens and we'll take a look."
She returned ten minutes later with a length of perfectly matching matte silk fabric. "I usually use this as liner but I'll line it with something a little sturdier."
"How do I make sure it doesn't slip right off my head?" Jane asked
The milliner picked up another beret and turned it inside out. "There are three little combs that hold it. Let me show you right now how to use them."
She put Jane in front of the three-way mirrors and showed her how to adjust the combs so they wouldn't slip, or make her hair look odd.
Next Shelley tried out the black one she'd chosen. She looked fabulous in it.
"I can have this green one done by the end of the week," she said.
"I'll be back on Friday then,"Jane said. "What time do you open?"
"At nine, but wait until ten or you'll never get a parking place. There are so many deliveries to shops around here that you'd have to park blocks away."
This time Shelley had driven and refused to wait to see if someone pulled into the place they'd vacated and the meter showed another five hours.
"When we pick up my hat and dress, we're almost done." "Except for dealing with Addie. Didn't she say she'd get back to you about the dates?"
"I'm keeping a close eye on the caller ID. Mel is going to have to deal with her from here on out."
"But will he?"
"He's been coping with her bossiness all his life. He must know by now how to control her."
Chapter
NINETEEN
W
ith almost everything Jane needed to do for the weddings done, she was eager to get back to Sally's story. She wasn't going to actually write another scene until she'd made her list of twenty or thirty things that might or might not happen in the story. She enjoyed this process. They were in no particular order, and could be deleted or added to whenever she thought up something new.
This had been suggested to her at the mystery conference she and Shelley had attended. A well-known writer who had befriended Jane had mentioned it. "That way you never sit down at the computer and say to yourself, `Where on earth do I go in the next chapter? You have many choices.'"
Jane, following this excellent idea, sat down to think and make notes. In no time at all, she had thirteen good suggestions of scenes and clues, and characterizations. She'd think about them and add more later as her mind threw out new plot twists.
One important scene was calling out to her though.
Maud comes back, walks into Sally's room, and tries to smother Sally with a pillow. Maud doesn't even notice that Sally's eyes are open. Sally swings her right arm and smacks Maud right in the nose. Maud screams. Lacy, who is napping on the cot, tosses away the pillow and grabs a towel, and rubs the blood off of Sally's hand. And a good thing that she does. A moment later, the doctor arrives for his routine afternoon visit, bursting into the room.
"What's going on here?"
Maud, her fingers bloody, pinching her nose shut, is screaming and pointing at Sally. "That woman hit me! She's broken my nose."
The doctor hands Maud a small towel and says, "You foolish woman. Sally can't even move her fingers. You're making this up."
"I did it," Lacy says. "I saw her trying to smother Sally and I ran around the bed and hit her in the nose."
The doctor looks at Lacy and asks, "Why don't you have blood on your hand then?"
"Because I wiped it off," Lacy says, showing him the towel.
Jane could hardly wait to write and expand this scene. But she didn't want to write it now. She'd just jot it down
and save it for later. It would have to be more dramatic after she'd brooded over it.
Meanwhile, she reverted to her chronology book. She liked to make the story brisk and not take months or years. She paper-clipped the notes in order and put them in her filing drawer with her other research.
While she was doing this, the phone rang. She recognized Addie's cell phone number and just let it ring. When it quit, she called up the stairway to Todd, "If the phone rings again, don't answer it."
"Why not?"
"Because it's Mel's mother, trying to harass me about her extravagant ideas for the wedding. I want Mel to calm her down before I speak to her."
"Good on you, Mom," he said in what he thought was a cockney accent and wasn't convincing.
The phone did ring again. And one more time. This time Addie left a message. "Jane, where are you? I've already called three times. Call me back immediately."
"Immediately? I left a phone message for her yesterday," she said as Todd came back down the stairs.
"What's for lunch?" he asked.
"Burger King?"
Later that afternoon, she called Mel. "Have you talked to your mother?"
"Should I have?"
"I think so. I called her and told her the wedding wasin three weeks instead of six and she cut me off, saying that was `unacceptable' and that she'd get back to me when she wasn't with a client. The ball is in your court now."
"Okay," he said in a dismal voice.
"How's the search for Miss Welbourne's children going?" she asked now that this was sorted out.
"Not well. Both newspapers I contacted said they wanted to put the pictures in the big Sunday edition that everybody has time to read, and the next issue was already too full to place it well."
"I'm sorry to hear that, but you can use some of your free time to call your mother now."
"What am I supposed to say?"
"That the date is set in stone. Four hundred guests is set in the same stone. I do all the flowers, she does the food, and we want the invitations to say no gifts are to be sent. And the charities they can contribute to."
"Is that really a good idea?" Mel said. "Somebody might give us something really nice. Like one of those really fancy outside grills."
"What we'll get is fourteen salad spinners, or eighteen sets of drinking glasses that don't match or four china soup tureens. You've seen my kitchen shelves. They're already crammed with what I use and need."
Mel gave up. "I have seen your kitchen shelves and if it were me, I'd give half of the things away. I see your point."
"We'll buy our own grill after the wedding though. I promise. And you get to choose it."
Jane assumed that Mel would corner his mother and Jane would deal with all of the flowers, and get on with life. Her agent had recommended that she set up a website and rent a post office box for fan mail. "You don't want fans, however nice they might be, to know where you live."
Jane had rented the post office box, but not yet tended to a website. She'd have to call Ted for suggestions of someone to do it for her. The Jeffry Pharmacy chain had a terrific website and she was pretty sure Ted hadn't done it himself.
Without fear, she could call him now that there was no chance of Thelma answering Ted's office phone. She'd call him later today.
All that remained of planning the wedding was picking up her hat, and getting the notice made up for the invitations that Jane and Mel didn't want gifts, just charitable donations. She'd recently priced business cards, but hadn't bought them yet, pending the website address. The owner of the place, however, had given her a reasonable price. She'd stop back today to buy the enclosures for the wedding announcements, send half to Addie and keep her half.