Good, Clean Murder (17 page)

Jane rubbed her polish-covered
rag across the rounded belly of the hundred-year-old silver coffee pot.
Carafe?
Pot?
She couldn’t decide. She had put this one off to the last. After an
hour of polishing silver, her arms were sore, and so was her head.

Would she
consider Phoebe crazy under normal circumstances? It was hard to say with so
little information about how her issues presented. She was bi-polar. That
wasn’t easy, sure, but crazy? It seemed a little harsh. In a world where every
third person was medicated for a neurosis and on some spectrum or other, how
crazy was crazy?

Jane turned the
pot to rub polish into the finely detailed handle. These days you had to be
more than just bi-polar to be crazy. That was clearly a word Jake used to
torment his sister. Cruel, yes, but of a piece with his normal, which wasn’t so
normal, M. O. He hadn’t come clean with his own issues, but he had said crazy
ran in the family, so at the very least, she figured Jake struggled with
anxiety issues, if not being bi-polar himself. He had certainly been manic
since his parents died.

Someone needed
to keep an eye on him, just to make sure he was okay. If he was in some kind of
manic phase, when it passed, his depression could be very deep. She didn’t want
to be the one stuck with the job, but she made a mental note to talk to Marjory
just so she could be sure that someone else who cared would pay attention to
how he was dealing.

Her phone
jangled into life with the ring tone she had set up for her parents, so she set
her half-polished coffee
carafe? pot?
on the counter.

“Hey, darling,”
her mom crooned.

“Hi, mama.” Jane
spoke into the Bluetooth that she kept around her ear while she worked.

“We saw the
funeral announcement in today’s paper.” Jane’s mom’s voice had warm,
sympathetic undertones.

“Are you back
from vacation already?” Jane rubbed the polish off the round belly of the pot.
The spring sunshine from the opposite window glinted off the shiny surface.

“Didn’t we tell
you, sweetie? We didn’t go on the cruise after all. Your dad came down with
shingles. It’s been awful for the last three weeks.”

Jane scrunched
up her mouth, glad that her mom couldn’t see her. It would have been nice, back
on that night she had come to the Crawfords’ home in desperation, to know that
her parents could have helped her after all. “That’s awful, mom. How’s he
feeling now?”

“So-so. Not
perfect. But he’s good enough to come up to the funeral.”

“Oh!” Jane
stopped mid-rub. They were really coming, so she’d have to find a way to explain
her new living situation that didn’t sound as horrible as the truth without
lying. “When are you coming?”

“We’d like to
spend a little time with you, sweetie. It feels like we haven’t even heard from
you since Christmas, so we’ll be flying in on Wednesday.”

Jane rubbed the
pot hard. Wednesday. What was she going to do with her parents?

“We’re going to
get a suite by the airport. Don’t worry about trying to fit us into your little
place. In fact, if you need a mini-vacation, come stay with us. We’ll make sure
we have room for you.”

Jane put her rag
down and pressed her hand over her eyes. It was meant to be a comforting move,
but the polish on her hands made contact with her eye. The burning pain went
straight to the top of her head and sent shivers up and down her arms. Her eye
responded with a flood of tears. She opened her mouth to speak to her mom and a
groan came out.

“What’s that, Janey?”

Jane gulped a
breath. She wiped the tears away with her hand, but it was still polishy and
only aggravated the situation. She hopped away from the silver and wiped her
hand up and down her apron. She wiped her eye again, with the back of her hand.
It must have been psychosomatic this time, because it hurt as bad as the first
two hits and she was sure she hadn’t been polishing silver with the back of her
hand.

“Did I lose you,
Jane?” her mom asked.

Jane grabbed a
towel from the hooks above the sink. She soaked it under the faucet and pressed
it to her eye. She was trying to respond to her mom, but it wasn’t happening.

“Okay Janey, I
think I lost you. I’ll email you with our flight info. If you can’t make it to
the airport, just call us and I’ll give you our hotel info. Love you, baby.
Wish you had called to tell us about Bob and Pam.”

Jane’s mom ended
the call.

Jane sat down
with the rag pressed to her eye. The thought of escaping to her parents’ suite
at a posh hotel by the airport was like a fresh spring breeze, despite the
burning eyes. By hook or crook, she was going to do it.

The compress did
nothing for Jane’s burning eye. She needed to flush it out. She headed back
upstairs to her bedroom to search for saline drops.

Marjory stopped
her at the second floor landing. “Oh, Jane. Good. I have another list for you.
Come down to the office with me.”

“Just one
moment.” Jane managed a hoarse whisper. She blinked hard trying to keep her eye
watering.

“What’s wrong
with your eye? You haven’t been using drugs, have you?”

“No!” Jane’s
hackles went up. As though she would use drugs at all, much less at an
employer’s house. “Polish in my eye.” Jane choked the words out. The burning in
her eye made her want to sob instead of talk.

“How did you
manage that? Really, Jane. I expect better. You need to be in top form. We have
the funeral to get through this week. Be in my office, ASAP.”

“Yes, ma’am.”
Jane ran up the rest of the steps.

In her room, she
dug through her bathroom caddy. She found the soothing drops and breathed a
prayer of thanks. She risked taking too long and sat on the edge of her bed,
letting the drops of saline trickle into her eye to wash it clean and soothe
it.

When her parents
arrived in town, she could lay her whole dilemma at their feet and they could
help her solve it. The whole works: school, housing, boy troubles. Maybe they’d
even have an idea about who had killed Bob and Pamela.

No. Jane thought
better of asking them that. She didn’t want them to think she had gone
completely off her rocker.

She sat on her
bed until a sense of guilt washed over her. Marjory was waiting.

The mirror
showed that her eye was still bloodshot, but the pain was gone, so Jane made
her way back downstairs to the office.

Marjory handed
her a yellow folder marked ‘memorial.’ “We’ll be using the ballroom upstairs
for the memorial. You’ve got it looking all right, but the floors need to be
deep cleaned and polished. You’ll also need to rent chairs and tables.” Marjory
handed her a stack of papers held together with an alligator clip. “I’ve got
the flowers ordered, just call them and confirm delivery. Do the same thing
with the food. The numbers are all in there.”

“Yes, ma’am.” A
fleeting vision of herself on a plane to Phoenix, that afternoon, tempted Jane.

“Make a note: I
want the floors done by Wednesday. They need to be cleaned, polished, dry, and
ready to set up.”

Jane nodded. She
could agree all she wanted but she really had no idea if she could make it
happen.

“They need to be
cleaned, polished and ready to go because you need to get the chairs ordered so
that they can be set up by Wednesday.”

Jane licked her
lips. That sounded suspiciously like work that would interfere with her class,
and her parents’ arrival. “Isn’t the funeral on Saturday?”

“Yes, it is.
That’s why you need the bones in place by Wednesday. Flowers will come late
Friday and the caterers will be there on Saturday. Call Jake if you have any
questions.”

Jane rolled her
head to stretch her neck. Tension had built up in her spine while Marjory gave
directions and that last bit was about to make her snap. “Will Jake have any
idea what is going on?”

“Jake will have
the credit card. Jake is the next of kin. Make him have an idea what is going
on.”

Jane rolled her
head the opposite direction to work out the knots that Marjory was putting into
her person. However, since Marjory had brought Jake into the conversation, it
seemed as though this would be good a time to discuss her concerns for him. “I
think grief has hit Jake pretty hard. I’m kind of worried about him. Do you
think this is a good idea?”

“Yes. He can’t
keep moping around. He needs something to do to keep him out of trouble. You
saw what went on at his restaurant the other day. He’s impossible right now.”

“I don’t know
that I can make him do any of this.” Jane fluttered her stack of papers, like a
bird who tries to make himself look bigger by puffing up his feathers.

Marjory looked
up from her computer screen, a severe frown creasing her face. “You are to do
all of this, Jane, not him, but if you have any questions you can call him. It
will give him a little control over things. He’s just a boy.” Marjory shook her
head sadly. “He’s just a boy. I wouldn’t ask him to do all of this.”

Jane looked at
the papers in her hands. That was the real trouble with Jake. He was just a boy
and couldn’t do all of this. It didn’t matter that they were the same age, had
gone to the same school, and had both come from families with means. Jake had
not yet grown up.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Marjory nodded
towards the door, dismissing Jane.

Jane went
straight back to the mudroom. She had to finish the carafe or pot or whatever
that thing was and then put it all away again. She’d set herself up at the
kitchen desk to do her calling.

Jane’s legs
burned from her many trips up and down the stairs to stash the silver
collection in the ballroom where Marjory instructed her to store it until the
reception. Now she had her papers spread across the kitchen desk, the small
television turned on to drown out the quiet of the empty house, and a sandwich
made to tide her over. If she could make heads or tails of the paperwork before
lunch was over she could get to her next client with a clear conscience.

The first floor
company she called laughed at her when she asked them if they could get it all
done by Wednesday, but the second company on the list booked her in. She was
getting voice mail for the chairs and tables so she stopped, just for a moment,
to eat.

The local news
had moved from the weather report to the HLP protestors. Jane turned the sound
up.

“Activity
surrounding local hamburger giant ‘Roly Burger’ has increased overnight,” the
reporter said. “Help has organized non-violent sit-ins at three locations, but
a fourth location has been vandalized. Dirk van Nuyens is on the scene. Dirk?”

The TV moved to
a location of Roly Burger that Jane couldn’t place. The camera panned from
painted-over windows to Dirk. “The local head of HLP has decried the vandalism
as unconscionable, but local restaurateur, Jake Crawford, doesn’t buy it.
Jake?”

Dirk put the
microphone under Jake’s mouth.

Jane groaned.

“The graffiti,”
Jake said, “is clearly biological in nature, hearts, livers, all of that. It is
a shame and a blemish on an organization that claims to care about people. Our
family is in the midst of great grief right now. We fully intend on honoring my
father’s wishes, but when tragedy strikes, as it has stricken our family,
putting his plans into action takes time. To hit us right now, when we are the
weakest, is beneath them.”

“Thank you,
Jake. What are the family plans now?”

“We haven’t even
had the funeral yet, Dirk. We will take care that the city knows everything it
needs to know, as it happens.”

“Thank you,
Jake. Back to you, Anna.”

The television
switched back to Anna at the news desk. “Rose of Sharon, the head of the local
chapter of Help has issued a statement to the effect that so long as the plans
for the Roly Burger conversion are delayed her organization will continue to ‘help’
consumers make wise decisions regarding their bodies. Whether this includes
more vandalism, or just peaceful protest, we will have to see.”

Jane looked at
her tuna sandwich. Rose of Sharon would hate her for it, but the news report
made her want a cheeseburger.

HLP seemed to
thrive on publicity, and the deaths of Bob and Pamela had given their current
campaign much more television time than it would usually have garnered. It
seemed to Jane that this was at least a small motive to do away with the
Crawfords, but what evidence could she gather to make a case for her hunch?

She took a bite
of her sandwich. Like all of her other hunches, this one suffered from a sad
lack of physical evidence.

Perhaps she
should have a burger for lunch after all.

The nearest Roly
Burger was just around the corner from the Crawfords’ home. Jane was glad to
see that its location on a busy intersection had drawn a few protestors. She
parked her Rabbit far from the front door so she would have to walk past as
many protestors as possible on her way to lunch.