“I think so, too, but I promised it for the bazaar."
“Then buy it yourself.”
She looked at him. "You mean, pay for the yarn, do all that work, and pay to buy it besides?"
“You did that last year with that wreath thing."
“Last year—" She stopped herself from saying: Last year your father was alive, and I wasn't worried about money. "I guess I did, didn't I? You ready to go? Is Todd on his way down?”
This was one of the horrible mornings when Jane drove all three kids' car pools to school. Just as there were occasional days when she got off scot-free, there were many more when she felt she was driving every child in the country and ought to just buy a school bus and be done with it. She tried to arrange it so these days fell, like this one did, on Fridays. While it was true that the kids were hyper on Fridays, thereby increasing the risk of permanent injury to the driver's nervous system, they were at least happy-hyper, which was far nicer than Monday mornings when they all acted like she was driving them up to the front door of the guillotine.
She got Mike and his crowd of friends delivered to the high school, Katie and her car pool (not friends—a purely geographical arrangement made by Jane and the other mothers, which Katie mentioned critically nearly every morning) to the junior high, and Todd and his bunch to the grade school. Then she came home and collapsed at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and the last few minutes of the Today show.
After watching about ninety seconds of a feature on a woman who was the mother of six adopted children (three with severe disabilities), who worked as a madly successful criminal lawyer and had invented (in her spare time, they said—what spare time?) some sort of toy that was supposed to rival the Hula Hoop, Jane flipped the television off in disgust. That sort of programming ought to be censored before impressionable young girls saw it and thought such a life was actually possible and/or required of them.
“I wonder what happens on the days when four of the kids are sick and a trial is supposed to start. . . ." she said aloud to Willard, who thumped his tail happily in response. "Probably uses some of that toy money to call in a squadron of babysitters.”
As she opened pet food cans, she dialed Shelley's number. "What time are we supposed to go to Fiona's to start setting up?"
“Ten."
“Will you have time before then to show me how to finish the afghan?”
Shelley turned up a few minutes later, gave Jane her instructions, and sat down to watch her work. "Have you been thinking about last night?"
“I've been trying not to. Oh, Shelley, I finally understand that phrase about being of two minds. Every time somebody starts going on about how much Phyllis thought of me, I feel like I ought to dash out and start interrogating people myself because of this tremendous emotional debt I didn't even know I had. Did you notice that even Chet knew my kids' names? That's how much she talked about me. But then I pull myself together and realize there could be a hundred explanations for all this that I know nothing about. I mean, what do I really know about Phyllis's life? Nothing. Chet could have some deadly enemy who killed Phyllis to get at him. For that matter, Bobby probably has perfectly awful chums in the city who were just waiting for him to get back, and one of them might have killed Phyllis by mistake. The worst is, I don't really believe the police will ever unravel it. I talked to Uncle Jim last night—”
She proceeded to tell Shelley about the conversation.
“So the evidence all points to Chet?" Shelley said when she was done.
“No, just the circumstances. There isn't any evidence to speak of. And I wouldn't think much more is likely to turn up, unless someone has a violent attack of conscience and confesses," Jane said.
“So you still don't think it's Chet?"
“I don't want to think so. Didn't you see how devastated he was by it all?"
“I did. And I also saw how he pulled himself out of it in seconds to confront Bobby. It was almost like watching a multiple personality kick in."
“Kinda spooky, wasn't it?"
“That's putting it mildly. I think the one person most capable of violence, from what we saw last night, is John Wagner. If his father hadn't stopped him, I think he'd have reduced Bobby to a grease spot without a second thought," Shelley said.
“Could you blame him?"
“Not a bit."
“But I still can't imagine anybody working up that kind of animosity toward Phyllis. Poor Phyllis. What do you think?"
“I think we better get over to Fiona's and concentrate on getting the bazaar set up.”
Jane bundled up the afghan so Willard wouldn't sleep on it and sighed. "Did I actually volunteer for this, or is it all just a nightmare?"
“Both.”
Jane went to her kitchen radio and tuned in an FM station that played Christmas music. "Why turn that on? We're leaving," Shelley said.
“Partly so it's playing when I get home, and partly—I know this sounds dumb—so that the sound will soak into the house."
“Do you think if you create enough atmosphere, a tree, complete with decorations, will appear in your living room?”
Jane laughed. "Anything's possible." -
The nightmare qualities of the Christmas craft bazaar became more apparent when they got to Fiona's. The rental company that was supposed to deliver the folding display tables at eight hadn't arrived yet. "I've called three times already," Fiona said, her usual English calm, if not shattered, at least crumbling around the edges. "They swear they're on the way and we're the first delivery."
“Then there's nothing we can do?" Jane asked. She had hopes that she could escape and go home to get in a few more frantic minutes of crocheting.
“Wrong!" Shelley exclaimed. "We can start pricing. It's the worst job of all."
“There are degrees of worseness in this?" Jane asked.
Fiona laughed. She had a delightful, bubblylaugh that broke the tension. "Let's get it over with."
“Fiona, you really don't have to help," Jane assured her. "When you offered your house, we swore you wouldn't have to do anything else."
“Jane, have you gone mad?" Shelley asked. "If you start turning down offers to help, I'll just have to slap some sense back into you. Let's start with ..." She looked around the room full of boxes, and her shoulders sagged. "... with the pillows. They were purchased; we just have to figure out the markup. No personalities involved.”
Jane soon discovered what the remark about personalities meant. Many of the volunteers who had provided sale items had affixed a suggested price. These prices were almost universally inflated beyond reason. Someone had sent over a box of flower paintings done on wooden shingles. While not great art by any means, they weren't bad, and Jane felt she could probably find some out of the way wall in her house where one might fit nicely—until she noticed the note saying they should be priced at forty dollars each.
“Forty dollars!" she exclaimed, clutching at her heart. "I was thinking seven or eight.”
Shelley, her head buried in a box, emerged. "Oh, those. That's easy. The woman who does those always comes first thing in the morning to see if we've marked them right. As soon as she goes, we mark them down to something reasonable. She's never caught on yet. She makes them every year, and they go like hotcakes at five dollars."
“What about these?" Jane had opened a dress box full of little wreaths. They were green yarn crocheted in a sort of ruffle on a curtain rod ring. With the addition of bright red sequins and a tiny satin bow, they made nice little ornaments. But a note in the box said: "I saw these for sale in New York last year for fifteen dollars. I think ten would be reasonable, don't you?”
Shelley came over to look at the wreaths and then at the signature on the note. "That's a bit tricky. She's a big contributor to the church, and we don't want to piss her off.”
Fiona looked over her shoulder. "Oh, she's out of town. When she brought the box over she mentioned that she was going to see her son in Hawaii for the holidays and was leaving today."
“Terrific. They'll really move at two dollars."
“Isn't that a truck I hear?" Fiona exclaimed.
It took until noon to get the tables in and arranged. The women, including Suzie Williams, who had arrived just behind the rental company truck, then set about making a rough arrangement. Suzie favored logic and order. "Put all the pillows and quilts in one room, all the food stuff in another—"
“I'm not sure," Shelley said. "If a person on a diet sees a room full of food, she might just give it all a miss. Same with people who don't like 'loving hands from home' art. You want to take them by surprise."