A Quiche Before Dying (16 page)

Grady’s house was a small ranch style with a lush lawn and fresh paint. It was shaded by big elm trees that had somehow survived the blight, and all around the house were riots of flowers that grew in the shade. It was a very friendly, comfortable-looking house, like Grady himself. She rang the bell, mentally running over her excuse for calling while she waited.

The door opened a crack, and Grady’s round, pink face appeared. “Ah, Jane...“

“Your office told me you were at home for lunch.“

“ Ah—yes. Well—would you like to come in?”

It wasn’t a warm welcome, but she couldn’t be choosy. “Thanks, Grady.”

As he opened the door, she realized he was in a bathrobe. His legs and feet were bare. In the middle of the day? He noticed her look and said, “Spill. I spilled some paint on myself. Ran home to change clothes. Ah—sit down, won’t you?”

He was a nervous wreck.

So much the better.

Jane sat down on the sofa by a picture window that had curtains pulled across it. “Grady, I just was wondering what you make of this whole thing with Mrs.

Pryce. As mayor, I’m sure you’re as concerned as I am that it be solved quickly and with as little publicity as possible.“

“Ah—yes, of course.“ He was fumbling with a drawer in the end table. “Cigarette?“ he said.

Jane wasn’t sure whether it was an offer or a desperate plea. “Thanks, Grady, I have my own. Would you like one?”

She reached for her purse.

And picked up the wrong one.

Lying next to her purse on the sofa was a very distinctive moss green leather handbag.

Jane looked up and felt herself blushing for the second time in an hour. Grady was undressed in the middle of the day, and Missy’s purse was on his sofa Jane stood up so suddenly that he stepped backward in alarm. “I left my cigarettes at home. I’ve got to go, Grady. Good-bye. No, don’t see me out.”

16

“In the middle of the day!“ Jane exclaimed for the fifth time in as many minutes.

Shelley patted her shoulder and laughed. “Sit down. You’ll get over it.”

Jane threw herself into one of Shelley’s kitchen chairs and fished around in her purse for the cigarette that provoked the revelation. “Missy and Grady. I can’t believe it,“ she said, puffing furiously once she’d gotten the stale, battered object lighted. She’d been telling herself she was on the very brink of quitting for almost a year.

“Why not?“ Shelley asked, sitting down across from her.

“Well, for one thing, she’s a good six inches taller than he is.”

Shelley laughed. “Jane, it doesn’t matter when you’re horizontal. Height is a purely vertical consideration.“

“You know what I mean. It’s the middle of the day that really gets me. They’re grown-ups, not horny kids.”

Shelley reached over and patted her hand. “Jane, you really have been widowed too long. You’re either obsessed with sex or appalled by it.“

“I’m not appalled. Only hugely surprised. Grady and Missy! I had no idea!”

“Jane, people sometimes conduct perfectly happy affairs for years without anybody else knowing. Why do you think they should have let you in on it?“

“Years. My God! The secretary said he always goes home for lunch on Thursdays. Do you suppose...?“ She grinned. “Oh, I hope so. But in the daylight?“

“Didn’t you ever make love in the daytime?“

“Oh, sure. But that was Steve,“ Jane said dismissively. “The stretch marks and wrinkles were his fault, so they didn’t bother me. But an affair—an affair is different. I thought you had to have a gorgeous young body for an affair.“

“There speaks the voice of inexperience,“ Shelley said. “Jane, get your mind out of Grady’s bedroom and think about what this might mean. Do you think maybe Missy was upset on Grady’s behalf about Mrs. Pryce’s accusations? You told me Ruth was madder about the insult to her sister than Naomi herself was. What if it was like that with Missy and Grady?“

“Missy as a murderer? Impossible.“

“But it’s no more impossible to imagine than anybody else in the class.“

“True. Except for Bob Neufield. He hates us, and probably with good cause. We should never have gone over there.“

“Just like you shouldn’t have gone to Grady’s?“ Shelley asked.

“Yes. It didn’t stop me, did it? I’ve got to go home and stay out of trouble,“ she said, rising.

When she got in the house, the first thing she heard was the tapping of her typewriter. Cecily called from the living room, “I’ll give this up if you want to use it.“

“No. What are you doing?“

“I just remembered something that happened once that I wanted to jot down for my book. In spite of everything, I’m glad we took this class.”

Jane almost told her mother that she was thinking about turning Priscilla’s story into a book, but the idea was still too outrageous and fragile to share with anybody but Missy. Not that her mother would denigrate the idea, but there might be a fleeting moment of incredulity in her face, and Jane couldn’t face it. “I’m going to work on my short story upstairs then,“ she said. “Remind me to tell you later what happened to the wine I was going to buy you for dinner.”

An hour and several pages later, Jane came down to the kitchen to find a snack. The doorbell rang while she was trawling in the refrigerator. She opened the door. “Hi, Jane,“ Missy said. “Are we still speaking?“

“Oh, Missy, of course we are. Let’s sit outside.”

Missy threw the green purse down on the patio table and sank into a chair with a sigh. “I’m sorry I caused you to be embarrassed.“

“Oh, no, Missy. It was my fault, not yours. I had no business at Grady’s.“ Jane picked up the little bamboo birdcage and set it inside the back door, partly because she couldn’t quite meet Missy’s eyes yet.

“Poor Grady,“ Missy said with a smile. “He’s such a dear conservative prude. You scared the daylights out of him, you know. I told him not to go to the door, but he’s so superresponsible. It drives him nearly crazy when I let a phone ring without answering it.”

Jane sat down across from her. “Missy—why Grady, if you don’t mind my asking?”

Missy smiled. “Because he’s a delightful pink teddy bear of a man. More important, I’m a big, homely woman, and he adores me.“

“Of course he does!“ Jane said sincerely. “How could he not?“

“I imagine you’ve told Shelley.“

“ ‘Fraid so. I was so stunned. Why haven’t you gotten married? Oh, I forgot. You’ve got a husband.“

“Not anymore. He finally found someone else and divorced me about six months ago. No, the problem is Grady’s wife.“

“Grady has a wife? I didn’t know that. Where is she? I’ve never met her.“

“You don’t hang around nursing homes. They were in a car accident the first year they were married. She suffered enormous brain damage. She’s been in a coma ever since.“

“I had no idea.“

“No, and I hope you won’t blab it. For all his outgoing personality, Grady’s a terribly private person. He can’t afford to divorce her. The bulk of her bills are paid by some insurance policy that would be canceled if they weren’t married. It would take virtually every penny he makes to care for her. I’ve told him many times we could live on my money, but he’s an old-fashioned frump who won’t hear of it. That’s part of the reason he’s so careful about our relationship. The insurance company would, needless to say, love to unload him. He’s afraid if we lived together or even made our arrangement official or public, they’d claim common-law marriage, bigamy, anything to cut off the benefits.“

“They couldn’t do that, could they?“

“They’ve already tried a couple of other stunts almost as nasty. He’s had to drag them to court twice already. So now you know.“

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snoop—well, it’s exactly what I meant to do, but I was just wondering if he had any connection to Mrs. Pryce.”

Missy sighed. “Actually...”

She stopped and looked hard at Jane as if making an appraisal, then said, “His wife is her great-niece. Mrs. Pryce never made the connection; Wells is a common name, and none of the family had any more to do with Mrs. Pryce than they had to. And since the community doesn’t know about his wife, he didn’t bring it to her attention. And before you ask, yes, the police know. Grady told your detective everything. Well, everything except about me, that is.”

Jane sat back for a long moment. “You’ll be glad to hear that Mel didn’t breathe a hint of this to me. Can I tell Shelley? She won’t say anything to anyone else. She’s very happy you and Grady have each other, by the way.“

“Just so long as she understands not to talk to anyone else.”

They were quiet for a long moment, then Jane said, “It isn’t an important connection, is it? Mel told me the money all goes to the grandchildren. Grady wouldn’t benefit.“

“Not a red cent. Jane, Grady had nothing to do with this murder.“

“I believe you.“ And it was true. At least, she believed that Missy believed in his innocence. Jane herself wanted to think about it a little more before she checked Grady off her private list of suspects. She’d already drawn a light mental pencil line through his name, and nothing would make her happier than to dismiss him entirely. Unfortunately, she’d already penciled off everybody but Bob Neufield, and she had the strong feeling that, much as she’d like to cast him as a villain, he wasn’t one.

“Jane, if we’ve hashed this over enough, I’d like to know if you’ve been working more on Priscilla’s story. That’s what I really came over about.”

Jane started to tell Missy about the wolf idea, but Missy stopped her. “Bit of advice, Jane: Don’t talk about an idea until it’s already written. You’ll use up all your fire on the telling, and the writing will be boring when you get to it.“

“Oh—yes, I see. You’re probably right. Well, yes, as you can see, I’m still working on it. Missy, do you really think I might end up with a published book? It seems impossible.”

Missy chose her words with care. “I think you might end up with a
publishable
book. Whether it will get published is another thing. See, Jane, successful writing is made up of forty-nine percent discipline, and forty-nine percent talent, and two percent dumb luck.“

“I don’t even think I’ve got the discipline or the talent I need, let alone the luck.“

“But those can both be nurtured and practiced and developed. The luck can’t be.“

“Don’t you think I might do better to write a romance?“

“Good heaven’s, no! Everybody thinks a romance is the easiest thing in the world to do, and it’s one of the hardest to do well. Besides—the romance business is difficult.“

“Why?“

“Because most of the romance editors are very young, very New Yorky. They think that anything west of the Hudson River is wilderness and that the typical reader is some hillbilly congenital idiot who has to move her lips to read. Consequently they tend to hold the writer down to Dick-and-Jane level. I once had an editor insist I remove a reference to Charles Dickens. She said the readers wouldn’t have heard of him and they’d think he was a character in the book they’d missed. I’m not sure
she
knew who he was.”

Jane laughed. “It can’t all be that bad.“

“No, some of the editors are very good, but you don’t always get lucky enough to work with them.“ Missy had cheered up considerably. “There are a few other things you should know, if you’re thinking of getting into this business. There are things that people will say to you that crush you the first six times or so, until you realize they’re standard.“

“Like what?“

“Like people who say, ‘What name do you write under?’ the implication being that they’ve never heard of you. I always tell them I write as Stephen King. Some of them get the joke. Some are more direct. ‘Oh, you’re a writer? I’ve never heard of you.’ Or friends who will come up out of the blue and say to you, very pleasantly, ‘I’ve never read one of your books.’ I can’t imagine what they expect you to say to that. And these aren’t even the ghouls, Jane. These are people trying to be nice and just not realizing how insulting and nasty they’re being. But the worst, and most common, is this one: ‘You’re a writer? I always meant to write a book—if I just had the time.’ I’m always tempted to say, ‘Yes, and I’ve always meant to be a brain surgeon if I could just find time to try the surgery.’ “

“Missy—I don’t mean to pry into your business, but can you make money writing?“

“Yes, but you can’t count on it. It’s feast or famine. The nice thing is, there’s not much cost. It’s not like opening a shop where you have to pay rent and purchase a huge amount of stock and pay employees and buy a delivery truck. All you really need is a typewriter and paper and your imagination, although I’d strongly recommend a word processor. You’re thinking about this seriously, aren’t you?“

“Semiseriously,“ Jane admitted.

She got up, gave Jane a hug, and said, “Most of the time I think writing is the best job in the world. You get to stay home, wear whatever you want, and smoke without anybody complaining. And I better get back to work.”

Jane walked to the car with her. As Missy got in, she said, “Look at your front porch. Flowers, I bet.”