23
J
ust to be safe, Louise had picked up a big frozen pizza to feed whatever hungry family members were at home and waiting for dinner. But she'd forgotten her Number One daughter was in the house. When she arrived, the delightful aromas from the kitchen told her Martha had dinner in progress.
Louise entered the kitchen and saw that something that had been missing was back in its place. The Paris pitcher. She turned to Martha with a questioning look.
Martha shrugged and grinned. “I bought you a new one.”
Louise gave her daughter a hug. Then she went to the stove and stuck a spoon in a saucepan to taste some golden substance gently bubbling over the heat. “Yum!” she said.
“That's freshly made butterscotch sauce,” said Martha. Her daughter was in shorts, sleeveless top and bare feet, and she had a big apron wrapped around her middle. Despite her casual attire, she looked very much in command.
This also was evident when Janie sauntered into the kitchen, also with an apron covering her shorts. Her moody expression reminded Louise of the character Ruby in the British TV series
Upstairs, Downstairs.
She gave her mother a hug and needlessly explained, “I'm helping.”
“Wonderful, darling.” Louise leaned over and looked at the alien-looking food in the frying pan.
“Chicken piccata,” said Martha.
“Chicken piccata? What a treat.”
“It's easy,” said Janie. “I watched.”
“You'd make it yourself if you knew how easy it was,” added Martha. “Dad would love it. I'll show you before I leave. By the way, he won't be home until late.”
Dinner was delicious. Afterward, since no one had plans to go out, the three of them took the opportunity to discuss the wedding. Martha pulled out her tabbed notebook. “You won't believe it, but almost everything is set.”
“And you did it all by phone?”
“Jim handled some stuff at his end. Attendants, cakeâhe ordered it from a bakery we know in Chicagoâchurch, flowers, honeymoonâJim's taken care of that, tooâinvitations, organist, phone calls to relatives, reception, soloistâ”
“You forgot âclothes,' ” said Louise, “wedding dress, et cetera.”
Martha gave her a guileless look. “It's an alphabetical list. Clothes come next: âtogs.' ”
“Oh. So, have you found some togs?”
“No.” Martha looked at her mother purposefully and then at her sister Janie, bent over her plate and finishing her butterscotch sundae. “And some people I know aren't too helpful.”
Janie looked up languidly. “I'm not about to wear some of the dresses you liked, Martha.”
Martha shrugged her bare shoulders. “We've only looked in two places. They didn't have a very good selection, and everything was outrageously priced.”
Janie looked at Louise and gave her head a little shake.
My sister has awful taste in clothes
was the message.
“And,” said Martha, “I'm not known for my taste in clothes, so Janie's suggested we go to Friendship Heights tomorrow to hit some of the shops there and tap the brains of fashion experts.”
Louise and Janie exchanged a jubilant look. Louise said, “Good idea.” She thought for a moment. Friendship Heights aroused some alarm in her mind. “Are you going to Saks?”
“Maybe,” said Martha. “I've never been there. Do you think we should?”
Louise sat well back in her chair. “I think you should stay away from Phyllis Hoffman. You know that she works there.”
Janie rushed in where her sister feared to tread. “We thought we'd go and scope her out. After all, she could be our murderess, you know.”
Martha put up a hand in a gesture that was supposed to be reassuring. “Not to worry, Ma. I'll see that our brave Janie is kept out of harm's way. The most we'd do is sail by the St. James department and see if she's still working there. I mean, maybe she isn't, since she probably inherited Peter Hoffman's money.” Louise saw her direct a dark look at her younger sister.
“Fine,” said Louise. “Just do as your father said and refrain from getting involved in this yard murder.”
“Yard murder!?!” Martha broke in loud guffaws. “Ma, you are so funny. Talk about euphemisms! That's an absolute denial of the fact that we found a dead body in
your
azalea bed in
your
backyard.” She kept on laughing until Janie began chuckling, and Louise broke into a smile herself.
“ âYard murder' is a dumb expression,” Louise admitted. “I just got so tired of saying that man's name. But enough ridicule of your mother, dear. Remember, you'll be a mother yourself one of these days, and then you'll regret treating me badly. Tell me about your lunch with Hilde.”
“Lunch with Hilde,” mulled Janie. “It sounds like a PBS play. I got tied up and missed lunch, but I would have liked to meet this girl everybody talks about.”
“We had a nice lunch and a nice talk,” said Martha. “She's a pretty serious person. She lost both of her parents in the past few years. Too bad I won't be around Sylvan Valley for long. She might make a nice friend. Of course, Elsebeth wasn't enthusiastic about her. They had a little quibble over language, but I didn't get it, being a little fuzzy on the niceties of German.”
Louise frowned. “Not a serious quibble, I hope?”
“Just a semantic argument, Ma. I know you don't want anyone to offend Elsebeth. What would you do without her?”
“I'll be around,” said Janie.
“You'll be around?” asked Martha.
“So I can get to know Hilde.”
Martha looked at her younger sister. “Jane, Hilde would not be a proper friend for you.”
“And just why not?” snapped Janie.
“For one thing, she's older. I think she's at least twenty-four, though she avoids telling me exactly how old she is. And she's Swiss. That means she's worlds more sophisticated than you are. Europeans grow up faster. They're way ahead of Americans in maturity. I mean, Hilde likes Mike Cunningham; did you know that? She thinks Charlie Hurd is too immature for her.”
“Hmm,” said Louise, “Charlie Hurd, immature?”
“He is a little immature, I agree with her on that. But I don't think a woman who enjoys an uncultured individual like Mike Cunningham is going to be any kind of a friend for you, Jane.”
Louise could see that Janie was growing angry, her blond hair thrown back from her face, her cheeks flushed with the humiliation of being categorized so thoroughly by her elder sibling. Janie said, “I hate it when youâoh, never mind!” She ran from the table.
Martha called after her. “After you get over your hissy fit, don't forget we're doing the dishes.” She looked at the figure of her retreating sister and heard the slamming bedroom door. “On second thought, Janie,” she yelled, “never mind. I'll do them alone.”
After a moment, Louise said, “You shouldn't treat her like the younger kid anymore, Martha. She has very adult feelings. She's soon going off to college. And she's in love, just like you are. Only she knows she's too young to do anything about it. Do you realize that?”
“She and Chris Radebaugh, you mean?”
“They're in love, as I said, just like you and Jim. There's not that much difference between being twenty and being almost eighteen.”
Martha stared out the big dining room windows into the woods. “I guess I haven't thought about Janie that much, period. Maybe I ought to pay better attention and listen to her. I've been so obsessed with my own life and my own wedding.”
Louise reached over and patted her daughter's hand. “That would be nice. The two of you have always been good friends. I'm sure she'll share a lot with you if you start to listen. Now let me tell you about my day. It was a humdinger.”
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By eleven o'clock, it was totally dark, and Janie knew stray neighborhood kids had headed home to their beds. The night and the neighborhood now belonged to her. For the five years they'd lived here, she'd made Sylvan Valley her nighttime dominion, prowling quietly through every backyard, block and park. Not that she was a Peeping Tom. She never lingered to stare long into uncurtained houses. First, it was to relieve her loneliness when she was a newcomer to the neighborhood. Then Chris Radebaugh became her friend, and they roamed together in the dark. Since Chris had left for college, she seldom went out at night for walks, perhaps having outgrown the need to peer into lit houses and invent stories of the lives people were leading within them.
It was sheer frustration that drove her out tonight. She had no trouble slipping out of the recreation room door without being seen by her mother and sister. Why would they notice anything since they were deep in conversation about the details of Martha's wedding? But she wouldn't come back in through the rec room. As she had done many times before when younger, she'd loosened the screen of her bedroom window and would reenter that way.
She moved soundlessly around the outside of the house and through the back woods, passing the garden where her mother had found Peter Hoffman's plastic-wrapped body four nights ago. She closed her eyes for a brief moment and sighed. What would it be like to be the daughter of a more ordinary woman who didn't constantly get involved in embarrassing situations?
As she moved skillfully down the wooded path, she thought,
More to the point, what would it be like to have an older sister who wasn't judgmental, who didn't treat me like a hothouse flower, a girl too “naive” to befriend a person like Hilde and too immature to come along and play tennis with the older neighbor guys? Heaven forbid that Mike Cunningham or his house guest even looked at her!
What irritated her most was the way Martha had practically taken over the family. Martha caught more fish on the charter boat, winning her father's frank approval. Martha was getting married. Martha was helping her fiancé in a political campaign. And Martha had become the family's self-anointed savior, the one who would save her mother from being arrested for Peter Hoffman's murder.
That was the unkindest cut of all. As the one who had personally saved her mother's skin not once but twice, Janie was crushed. The thing that hurt the most was that she'd always loved and looked up to her older sister. Until this summer. Now she realized she could live without her sister very well. Martha thought Janie had been born yesterday!
She didn't really know why she was veering toward the east end of the neighborhood. She hadn't come out tonight to snoop on prospective murderers. But this was where Phyllis Hoffman lived, in the last cul-de-sac before Sylvan Valley ended not with a bang but a whimperâa pair of empty fields.
In the family's random discussion of suspects, it struck Janie that no one had better cause to kill Peter Hoffman than that weird wife of his. Traveling through the backyards of houses, she reached the one that she'd heard belonged to the brassy-haired Phyllis. As usual, there were a number of uncurtained windows, but disappointingly no one appeared to be home.
In fact, a car was coming into the cul-de-sac. Janie dodged even deeper into the backyard and barely missed being revealed by headlights when the car nosed straight into the garage, which was a mere carport and not a genuine garage.
A little nervous over this near-miss, Janie watched the small but sturdy Phyllis unload herself and a lot of brown bags from the car and enter the front door of the house. Lights only went on in a back room, probably the kitchen. She was not about to peek at Phyllis while the woman boringly put away groceries. Janie headed for home.
She walked on the edges of front yards, avoiding streetlights as much as possible, until she got to the swim and tennis club. With its gates open and welcoming as always but dark as a dungeon, the club grounds were a handy shortcut to her home. As she passed the pool, she looked in at the big black surface of the water, bereft even of the reflection of the moon, which was hidden behind clouds. It was the place where she'd had so many good times with Chris and other friends. The tennis courts were a few hundred yards farther on and set even deeper in the woods. It was then that she felt someone was following her.
A quick look back, but no one was there. She speeded up anyway, just for good measure. Not that she intended to get paranoid. One of the rules of night prowls was that you couldn't get paranoid. After all, she had taken this path many dozens of times in her life and knew every inch of it.
Once past the tennis courts, Janie got that feeling again. This time when she glanced back, she caught a movement. Her heart felt as if it were bursting. Suddenly, the import of the body in her mother's garden struck home. A murderer was still on the loose around here. And it could be the person who was now following her down this wooded path.
With a huge twist of regret inside her chest, she begged forgiveness for being a snot to her sister, for being ungenerous and not giving Martha some slack. For rudeness to her father and mother. For ...