A Knife to Remember (7 page)

While Jane and Mike waited, a red MG came tearing down the street and lurched to a stop. Mel Van Dyne leaped out. "Jane! Mike! Are you all right? I heard the call at the station. What's going on?" His usual cool sophistication, while not missing, was distinctly frayed around the edges.

“Somebody wrecked my kitchen. Probably a good cook, furious at the outrages I perpetrate there." She laughed nervously. There was the beginning of a sob somewhere in the laugh. "Two officers are inside now."

“What about the rest of the house?" Mel asked, putting a hand on her arm as if to physically keep her from flying off.

“We didn't stick around to look," Mike replied.A KNIFE TO REMEMBER 63

“Good thinking, Mike. Not many people have the sense to think of that in a crisis.”

One of the officers came out. "Charlie's double-checking, but it seems to be empty."

“So when did this happen?" Mel asked.

Jane took a deep breath. "Mike and I came in by the back door about an hour ago. I didn't lock the back door—"

“Jane, I've warned you—" Mel began. His hand tightened on her arm.

“I was upset! I forgot!" she was nearly shouting. She took a deep breath. "Sorry. Anyway, Mike went back out the front door and I went upstairs and took a long shower, then dried my hair. I couldn't have heard anything going on downstairs. Mike came back about five or ten minutes ago and discovered the kitchen had been ransacked.”

The other officer came outside. "It's clean, Mel."

“Clean? Hardly clean," Jane said, then wished she hadn't spoken. She was sounding a tad hysterical.

“I'll carry on from here. Thanks," Mel told them.

When they'd left, Mel escorted Jane and Mike back into the house through the kitchen door. "Jeez, what a mess!"

“It's mainly the wastebasket trash, I think," Jane said, getting the broom and dustpan from the closet.

“No, hold up on that," Mel said. "Is there anything missing?"

“Mel, how would I know? And what would anybody want to steal from a
kitchen,
for heaven's sake?"

“You don't keep valuables in here, do you?"

“Not unless you count the antique meat loaf in the fridge. I'm thinking about donating it to the Smithsonian."

“Very funny, Jane," Mel said sourly. "Who have you offended lately who'd want to vandalize your house?"

“Only my mother-in-law. And don't dare ask!" "Mike, you didn't see anybody leaving the house when you came in, did you?"

“No, but I came in the front. If they went out the back, I wouldn't have seen them anyway."

“I guess I'm going to have to ask that mob in your backyard then," Mel said, sighing.

“Backyard! Willard! I forgot to bring him in!" Jane said.

“I'll go get him," Mike volunteered.

When the back door closed behind him, Mel put his hands on her shoulders. "What's really going on here, Janey?”

He'd taken to calling her Janey in private since she accepted his invitation for a weekend together in New York and from him, she liked it. She let herself lean into an embrace. "Oh, Mel. It's a mess and I can't start explaining right now because Mike will be back in a minute. But I've got a problem and I don't know if I ought to leave home this weekend. Actually, it's Mike's problem now and I have to see if he's worked it out before I can decide."

“Are you saying Mike may have made this mess?"

“Oh, no! Not at all. This has nothing to do with the kitchen."

“Okay, Janey. We'll talk about it whenever you want. In the meantime, please keep your doors locked all the time. With all those people roaming around back there, you've seen how easy it is for somebody to slip in here. I'll go out and talk to their security people in a minute and tell them to keep a special eye on your house.”

There was a commotion at the back door and Willard came shooting in and headed for the basement door. Jane opened it and he hurtled down the steps to safety. Mike came in, followed by Maisie, who was holding onto Butch Kowalski's arm. She was keeping his hand in the air and had a towel wrapped around it.

“What's happened?" Jane asked. Butch looked as white as death.

“Jane, I'm sorry to barge in on you this — what on earth?" She looked around the kitchen. "Long story," Jane said.

Maisie nodded. "Okay. Butch cut his hand and I need to wash off the blood and see if it's serious or not.”

Jane grabbed the broom again and made a quick, brutal swipe through the center of the room to the sink. As Maisie eased away the towel and started carefully running warm water over Butch's hand, Jane got the clean rag bag off the back of the basement door and handed Maisie a wad of cloth.

Butch was wavering, looking as though he might faint any moment, and Mel went around to stand by to catch him if he did. Finally, Maisie said, "All right, Butch my boy. It's not half as bad as I was afraid. No real damage. Just a lot of blood.

I'm going to wrap this for a few minutes until the bleeding stops, then I think I can fix you up fine with a few butterfly bandages. I don't think you even need stitches."

“Thanks," Butch said weakly.

“Come sit down here," Mel said, leading him to the kitchen table.

“Thanks. Who are you?" Butch asked. He sounded woozy.

“Mel Van Dyne. Friend of Mrs. Jeffry. Now sit down.”

Maisie left to get her first aid kit and Mike helped Jane get the rest of the trash back into the wastebasket and close up the drawers and cabinets. Mel sat at the table, keeping a close eye on Butch.

Maisie came back with her kit. "You don't have a cold pack of some kind, do you, Jane?"

“Yes, in the basement freezer. Mike, would you—”

Butch suddenly came alive. "God! I'm supposed to be helping Jake with something! Could somebody find him and tell him where I am?"

“Who's Jake?" Mel asked.

“He's the property master. I work for him and he's gonna be mad as hell that I'm missing without telling him why!" Butch sounded ready to cry.

“Jane, open that kit, would you?" Maisie asked. "I'll find him for you," Mel said. "What's his name again?"

“Jake Elder. He'll be in the props truck, two houses up the street," Butch said.

With Jane's help, Maisie got Butch's bleeding stopped. He had a nasty gash on his palm, but Maisie disinfected and dried the area thoroughly and "sutured" it with a tidy line of butterfly bandages. "How did you do this?" she asked him.

“I'm not sure. Jake sent me ahead to get the firewood stuff together and I was hurrying. I started to run up the metal steps to the truck and my foot slipped. I reached out and grabbed something to catch myself and came away with this. There musta been something ragged on the handrail of the steps."

“I'm going to splint your wrist, just so you don't accidentally move your hand around and pull those bandages loose," Maisie said.

Maisie was just finishing this when Mel came back inside. "This Jake. . he's got long hair? Dark red? Wearing a blue shirt?" he said briskly to Butch.

“Uh-huh. That's him.”

Mel reached for Jane's phone, dialed, and, while waiting for an answer, said, "I'm sorry to tell you, he's dead.”

There was a collective gasp from Maisie, Butch, and Jane.

“Murdered," Mel added.

9

“I go away to do my library volunteer stint for three hours and when I come back all hell has broken loose!" Shelley exclaimed.

“And you don't yet know the half of it," Jane said.

They were sitting at Jane's back window again, but this time the activity outside was different. The property truck, just barely visible from their perspective two doors up the street, had been roped off with yellow plastic ribbon and police cars mingled with the movie vehicles. But, remarkably, the movie set was still busy. A scene was being filmed at the farthest end of the area from the police business.

A uniformed police officer and a police secretary had taken over Jane's hastily tidied kitchen and were questioning people one by one on their movements for the afternoon. Shelley and Jane had eavesdropped for a while, but the questions and answers were exceedingly dull routine ones and Jane assumed Mel was questioning the "important" players, because the officer in the kitchen was working his way through the listof extras and the most minor of the technical workers, getting names, addresses, accounts of movements. As almost nobody had paid attention to the time, he must have been getting frustrated. But he kept patiently plodding through his list.

“I assume you told Mel about overhearing the blackmailing conversation," Shelley said. "What did he say about that?"

“ 'Just the facts, ma'am.' You know how stuffy and efficient he gets when he's on duty. He wanted to know where I was standing, when it happened, how loud the voices were, whether I recognized who was speaking, that kind of thing. I think he was already mad at me before this happened."

“Why?"

“Because I threatened to back out on our weekend away."

“After buying all that new underwear? Why? Did Thelma scare you?"

“No, it's got nothing to do with Thelma.”

Jane explained about the lunch in her yard and Lynette Harwell's devastating bit of information about her affair with Jane's late husband. "Poor Mike just unraveled. He stormed out of the house, hurling accusations at me. When he got back, he'd calmed down some, but you could tell he was crushed. Then, before we could even thrash it out, he mentioned what happened to the kitchen.”

Shelley held up her hands. "Kitchen? Hold it! What are you talking about? Has this unhinged you completely?"

“I just hadn't gotten to that part yet. Somebody came in while I was showering and trashed my kitchen."

“Probably trying to find your recipe for cheese bread to destroy it before you destroyed the world with it," Shelley said with a smile, which faded quickly. "You aren't serious, are you?"

“ 'Fraid so. Drawers jerked out and rummaged through, cabinets partly emptied. A few broken dishes. There were trash and pots and pans all over the floor and counters and flour everyplace. I managed to just sweep everything into the guest bathroom and close the door on it before the police took over the kitchen. That's why Mel was here. Mike called the police and so we were sitting here with Mel when Butch came in with his hand gashed—”

Shelley's mouth dropped open. "Butch? Who in the world is Butch?"

“Jake's assistant. A really nice kid. About twenty, New Jersey accent, no neck. He'd cut his hand pretty badly and Maisie brought him in here to wash it off and fix him up. He got all panicked that Jake would be mad at him for leaving his job, so Mel volunteered to pass the message along to Jake for him. Mel was going to go out back anyway and ask people if anyone had seen somebody coming in my house. Anyhow, Mel found Jake's body in the props truck.”

Shelley shivered. "God, that's awful! How was he killed?"

“I don't know. Mel didn't say."

“So, while I was frittering away my time at the library, you unearthed a nasty family secret," shesaid, ticking off her fingers, "had your house vandalized, invited in a guest with a bloody hand, and sent another visitor out to discover a dead body? Jane, sometimes you amaze me."

“But I had nothing to do with any of it, except that I live here. It's not as if I pried the information out of Harwell — God knows I didn't want to hear about her and Steve — or went out searching for somebody to wreck my kitchen!"

“Mel's not going to see it that way," Shelley warned. "Especially if you're backing out on the romantic weekend."

“I don't know that I am yet. I still haven't had a chance to talk to Mike. I just don't want him to feel that I'm abandoning him at a bad time in his life. For him, this must be like losing his father all over again. First Steve died, and now even Mike's memory of him has to be drastically revised. That's tough, especially when you're still so young. Shelley, I told him about Steve leaving us the night he died. I didn't want him to ever know, but I heard myself telling him and I was appalled."

“Jane, he's a tough kid. He'll survive it and I've always thought you should have told him. He was bound to find out sooner or later. Better that it came from you. Where are your kids anyway?"

“As soon as Katie and Todd got home from school, Mike took my side about them not going out in the yard. Of course, he's just afraid they'll somehow find out what he learned. He took Todd to a movie, after getting into a screaming match with Katie. She's in the back bedroom watching out the window — and no doubt plotting revenge on Mike and me both. I could have used her help cleaning up the kitchen. It was an unholy mess, but I didn't want to have one more thing to fight about. With anybody.”

Both women fell silent for a while, watching the activities outside and thinking.

In the kitchen, the police officer questioned a hippy-dippy individual who was expounding on why she never wore a watch and couldn't possibly tell him what time anybody did anything because time was an artificial concept that had caused most of the misery in the world and ought to be outlawed so that the fascist pigs couldn't try to trip people up by asking about it. To his credit, the officer just went on to the next question without any comment.

“Oh, Jane — what a lot you have to sort out," Shelley said quietly.

Jane sighed. "Oh, I don't know. The police have to sort out Jake's murder, and Mike has to sort himself out. All I have to do is stand by and be available if needed. In both cases.”

Shelley nodded. "But aren't you curious? About Jake?"

“Madly!" Jane said, relieved to be talking about the one aspect of the hectic afternoon that least involved her. "I'm still trying to figure out whether the blackmailer I overheard was Jake. I'm inclined to think so, but I know that's partly because Maisie suggested it was the kind of nasty thing he'd do, and partly because he's dead and it would be a good motive. But I really had no
good
reason tothink so. It might not have even been a man speaking. Maybe a woman with a low voice."