Twenty-two
Jane’s head pounded and it was too hot in her room. She’d slept badly, had never really fallen completely asleep. She rolled over and stared at the ceiling, pondering what to do with the burden of her terrible knowledge.
At that moment, Winky shot into the room and across the wooden floor, her feet scampering so fast they skidded on the area rug. She jumped onto the bed, landing smack in the middle of Jane’s belly, and just as quickly bounded off again, rocketing to the dresser, darting to the window, and then back to the door and out to the hallway.
“Winky!” came Florence’s voice. “Come back, my girl! I’m sorry, I will not use it again!”
Frowning, Jane got out of bed, put on her robe, and went out to the hall to see what was going on. Winky was nowhere in sight, but Florence stood at the bottom of the stairs. She wore a pretty violet dress that Jane knew was one of Florence’s church dresses. Florence belonged to the same church as Jane and Nick—St. John’s Episcopal Church on Renton Avenue—though Jane wasn’t as conscientious about attending services as Florence was.
“I’m so sorry, missus, it is all my fault. I forgot about the hand cream. I should have just thrown it out when you told me what the vet said, but I do like it, and my mother sent it to me.”
Jane was about to tell her it was all right, that she should just put the hand cream away somewhere where she wouldn’t use it accidentally, but Florence had already turned toward the kitchen. “I will throw it away right now, missus. I will do it just now.”
Watching Florence bustling across the foyer toward the kitchen, Jane abruptly stopped. “You’re going to church . . .” she said, more thinking aloud than speaking to Florence.
Florence turned, smiling. “Yes, missus.”
“And the church bazaar is today, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Florence said, her eyes wide, “and you’d better not forget that, or a certain little someone”—she tilted her head toward the family room—”will be greatly disappointed.”
“You’re going?”
“Absolutely. I have made six of my coconut cakes to donate to the bake sale.”
“How nice,” Jane said vaguely.
Florence continued to the kitchen, and Jane walked down the stairs and followed. As Jane entered the kitchen, Nick appeared from the family room. “I’m hungry. Can I have some cereal?”
“May I have some cereal.” Jane got out the Cheerios and milk. “Florence,” she said, getting down a bowl from the cupboard and pouring the cereal into it, “I meant to thank you for taking care of Nick yesterday while I was in Connecticut. Don’t let me forget to pay you extra for that.”
“Will do, missus.” Florence smiled appreciatively. Then her face grew troubled. “Have the police come any closer to finding who killed that poor woman?” Then she remembered Nick was sitting there and covered her mouth with her hand.
“Florence, it’s no big deal,” Nick said casually, his mouth full of Cheerios. Some milk ran down his chin and suddenly Winky appeared on the chair beside him. “Here, Wink, lick this off,” he said, leaning toward her, and she happily obliged, her tongue flicking his chin. He giggled.
Both women watched in horror.
Jane stepped forward. “Winky!”
The cat scampered off the chair and out of the room.
“Nicholas! Don’t you ever let me see you doing that again. And what do you mean, it’s no big deal? A person died.”
He shrugged. “I know it, Mom. I found her, remember?”
“I do remember,” she said, troubled at the memory. “All the more reason why you of all people should take this matter a little more seriously.” She realized that by the end of this speech she was yelling and that she was breathing hard. Nick stared at her, brows lowered.
“Mom, you don’t have to get so upset about it.”
“Missus?” Florence approached her. “Are you . . . all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine. I—Never mind.” Jane gave Nick a last disapproving look, then turned to Florence. “In answer to your question, yes, I’m pleased to tell you that the police have found a very important clue, something the murderer left behind at the place where the young woman was living.” She watched Florence closely as she spoke.
Florence was watching her, too. “A clue? What clue is that?”
“I really can’t say.”
“I had not heard that the police had found the place where the young woman was living,” Florence said.
“Oh, yes,” Jane said, knowing she was overstepping her authority—and betraying Greenberg’s confidence—by revealing this. “They’ve found a vital clue to the killer’s identity.”
“Really?” Florence said.
“Wow,” Nick said. “Do you know where this place is, Mom?”
“No,” Jane replied, “not exactly. But I do know that for now, everything must be left exactly as it was found, in order not to disturb the evidence.”
”Well.” Florence, looking preoccupied, grabbed her purse from the counter. “On that note, I must run to Mass. I will see you both at the bazaar, yes?”
“Yes.” Jane, smiling, watched her leave. “Nick, how would you like to play at Aaron’s this morning?”
“Okay,” he said with a shrug, and headed for the family room.
“Good.” Jane found Aaron’s number in the little directory she kept by the phone and dialed. Aaron’s mother, a consistently bouncy woman named Eloise, answered.
“How are you, Jane? Gorgeous day.”
“Yes, it is indeed. Eloise, I was wondering if you could do me a favor. There’s something I have to do this morning—kind of an emergency—and Florence has gone to church. Could Nick play with Aaron at your house?”
“Of course! We just love Nicholas. Aaron!” she hollered. “Nick’s coming over.”
“Cool!” came Aaron’s response in the background.
“Great,” Jane said. “Thanks.”
“No prob! In fact, Jane, I was planning to take Aaron to the bazaar around lunchtime and would be thrilled to take Nick, too.”
“Even better. I’m going too, after my errands. I’ll meet up with you there.”
“Perfect. Jane, I hope everything’s all right. . . .”
“Fine,” Jane assured her. “Just something I’ve got to do.”
Jane hung up, her smile vanishing, and looked around the kitchen thoughtfully. She walked to the sink and opened the cupboards on each side. Then, shaking her head, she knelt down and opened the cabinet under the sink. There she rummaged among bottles of dishwashing liquid and piles of sponges, still not finding what she was looking for. She stood up again.
“Nick,” she called. “Do you know where Florence keeps her hand cream?”
He appeared in the doorway. “The bad hand cream? She said she was going to throw it away.”
“And did she?”
“Yeah, I saw her toss it in here.” He crossed to the wastebasket and lifted off the lid. “See?” he said, pointing to the white glass jar lying atop the trash.
“Good,” she said, and smiled. “Just making sure. You know how crazy it makes poor Wink.”
He nodded, looking a little confused, and returned to the TV.
The minute he was out of sight, Jane grabbed the jar from the trash. Too late she realized that Winky was standing only a few feet away; seeing the jar, she let out a yowl and shot from the room.
Jane picked up her bag from the counter, opened it, and dropped the jar of hand cream inside. She thought for a moment, then returned to the cabinet under the sink and withdrew a pair of yellow latex dishwashing gloves. She dropped them into her bag, too, and placed the bag back on the floor by the door.
She walked into the family room. “Brush your teeth and comb your hair, sweetie, while I take a fast shower and get dressed. Then I’ll drive you to Aaron’s.”
Jane pulled up in front of Aaron’s house.
“Have fun. I’ll see you at the bazaar.”
Before closing the car door, Nick paused and peered in at her. “Mom, do you know you’re acting really weird?”
Why was she always so transparent? Or was it only with Nick? She gave him a wide-eyed smile, all innocence. “Why, what do you mean, darling?”
“Mom,” he said, looking at her shrewdly, “where are you going now?”
“I told you, to do errands.”
“What errands?”
Her patience was running out. Besides, she had to get done what she had to get done. “That’s my business,” she said, all attempts at innocence abandoned. “Now please close the door. I’d walk you up to the house, but I’m in a hurry. I won’t leave till you go in.”
“Okay!” he said, slammed the door, and ran up the front path to the house. When Eloise had opened the door and waved, Jane drove off.
Grimly determined, she drove down Oakmont Avenue and onto Packer Road, which she followed into the village center. Here she turned onto Plunkett Lane. She passed the gate to Hydrangea House and kept on going. Finally, the road ended at Hadley Pond. She stopped, grabbed her bag, and got out.
It was a beautiful warm Sunday morning, the kind of morning when people might be walking in the woods or fishing in the pond. She hoped not. She found the beginning of the path between the two pines and started along it, watching for people, listening. She saw no one, heard only the singing of the birds in the high canopy of foliage.
She still had seen no one when she reached the wall of rock, squeezed between the bushes, and stooped to enter the cave.
In the daytime it was easy to see without artificial light. Nothing appeared to have been touched since Greenberg had brought her there. With a grim sigh, she knelt and opened her bag. She withdrew the latex gloves and put them on. Then she took out Florence’s jar of hand cream, twisted open the lid, and scooped out a dollop of the white cream with two gloved fingers.
She began directly to her left, with a wax-paper wrapper that might once have contained a sandwich. Very carefully, she smeared the paper with a thin layer of hand cream. Then she replaced the wrapper exactly where she had found it.
She repeated this process with every item in the cave, moving methodically around clockwise so as not to miss anything; each item received a thin layer of hand cream and was replaced. Though Jane guessed that the whole process had taken more than twenty minutes, when she was finished she was confident she had overlooked nothing—not the Coke cans, the bits of plastic wrap and aluminum foil. The last item to which she applied the hand cream was Louise’s Irish Chain quilt. That took longer, of course, because it was large, and Jane didn’t want to miss any part of it.
This done, she took one last look around the cave, frowned at the thought of what would now undoubtedly happen, and hurried out, looking all around to make sure she was still alone before starting back along the path to her car.
At the corner of Plunkett Lane and Packer Road, Jane pulled up to a trash receptacle, got out, and discarded the gloves and the hand cream. Then she drove home.
When she entered the house, the light on the answering machine was blinking. It was Greenberg.
“Jane.” He sounded angry. “Call me. Immediately.”
She did.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.
“What do you mean?”
“Telling people we’ve found a ‘vital clue’ to the killer’s identity in the cave. We agreed you wouldn’t even tell anyone I’d shown you that cave. What vital clue? People all over town are buzzing about it.”
She smiled; it was working. “First of all, Stanley, I never said it was a cave; I said only ‘the place where the woman was living in the woods.’ Only the killer knows it’s a cave. And as for there being a vital clue, there is one—now.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
She decided simply not to answer that question.
“Jane, I don’t understand this. What,” he repeated, “do you think you’re doing?”
“Flushing out a murderer,” she said softly, then added quickly, “I’ll see you at the bazaar.”
She had no sooner hung up than the phone rang. It was Daniel.
“You going to the bazaar?” he asked brightly. “Laura and I are heading over now.”
“Good. Yes, I’m going.”
“Any word from Goddess?”
“No,” Jane answered fretfully, and told him about her meeting with Carl Hamner, Goddess’s father.
“On another front, though,” she said, “the murder of the girl in the woods may very well be close to being solved.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. Apparently the police have found a vital clue the killer left where the girl was living in the woods. Ooh, I’d better get cleaned up. See you at the church.”
She did wash her face, applied a little makeup, made sure there were no leaves in her hair, washed her hands to make sure they bore no traces of the hand cream. Then, shortly before noon, she went in search of Winky.
“There you are, Wink,” she said, finding the cat curled up in the middle of her bed. Gently she scooped her up and carried her downstairs; then, to the dismay of Winky, who never went outside, Jane carried her out to the car and deposited her on the backseat.
“Mwaaaah!” Winky protested in bafflement as Jane pulled out onto Lilac Way and down the hill, taking Grange Road to Packer and then onto Renton Avenue. Halfway down the street on the right, the church came into view. The bazaar was already bustling—rows of colorful booths with multicolored flags fluttering in the breeze, people talking and laughing as they walked up and down the aisles.
Jane drove into the church parking lot and found an empty space toward the back. Getting out, she picked up Winky and, holding her firmly so that she couldn’t run away, headed for the bazaar on the church’s front lawn. She received several surprised looks and puzzled smiles from people who had never seen her with Winky before.
“Mom!”
She turned and found Nick in front of her.
“What are you doing with Wink?”
Jane smiled. “I decided she needed some of this gorgeous air. Don’t you think she’s cooped up too much?”
He looked at her strangely. “Told you you were acting weird. Come on,” he said to Aaron, who was just behind him, and the two boys ran off together.
Then Jane noticed Eloise standing nearby, smiling her too-sweet smile. “Hello, Jane. How did your errands go?”
“Fine, thank you, Eloise. And thanks again for taking Nick.”
“No prob! He’s a complete pleasure.” Up to this point Eloise had clearly been trying to ignore Winky. Now she looked at her, puzzlement in her eyes. “Do you . . . often take your cat out like this?”
“No, this is the first time,” Jane said.
“Ah,” Eloise said, and when no more information was forthcoming she started to back away. “See you later!”
“Yes, see you!” Jane called to her, and started down one of the bazaar’s aisles, a long row of booths offering games of skill and chance, snacks and beverages, and homemade craft items.
“Okay, Wink,” Jane whispered into the cat’s mottled ear. “It’s time to catch a killer.”