Part 3 (2/2)
”You think whoever killed Mamie took her purse and deliberately planted it under Melanie's car seat,” I said slowly.
”Oh, yes.” I could picture Jane standing in her tiny house full of her mother's furniture, Jane's silver chignon gleaming amid bookcases full of gory death.”But Melanie and Gerald Clark could have had something going,” I protested weakly. ”Melanie could really have done it.”
”Aurora, you know she's absolutely head over heels about Bankston Waites. The little house she rents is just down the street from mine and I can't help but notice his car is there a great deal.” Jane tactfully didn't specify whether that included overnight.
”Her car is here a lot too,” I admitted.
”So,” Jane said persuasively, ”I am sure that this candy thing is another old murder case revisited, and maybe the police will find the poison in another club member's kitchen!”
”Maybe,” I said slowly. ”Then none of us are safe.”
”No,” Jane said. ”Not really.”
”Who could have it in for us that bad?”
”My dear, I haven't the slightest. But you can bet I'll be thinking about it, and I'm going to start looking for a case like yours right this moment.” ”Thanks, Jane,” I said, and I hung up with much to think about, myself.I had nothing special to do that night, as my Sat.u.r.day nights had tended to run the past couple of years. Right after I ate my Sat.u.r.day splurge of pizza and salad, I remembered my resolution to call Amina in Houston.Miraculously, she was in. Amina hadn't been in on a Sat.u.r.day night in twelve years, and she was going out later, she said immediately, but her date was a department store manager who worked late on Sat.u.r.day.”How is Houston?” I asked wistfully.
”Oh, it's great! So much to do! And everyone at work is so friendly.” Amina was a first-rate legal secretary.
People almost always were friendly to Amina. She was a slender brown-eyed freckle-faced extrovert almost exactly my age, and I'd grown up with her and remained best friends with her through college. Amina had married and divorced childlessly, the only interruption in her long, exhaustive dating career. She was not really pretty, but she was irresistible-a laughing, chattering live wire, never at a loss for a word. She had a great talent for enjoying life and for maximizing every a.s.set she'd been born with or acquired (her hair was not exactly naturally blond). My mother should have had Amina for a daughter, I thought suddenly.
After Amina finished telling me about her job, I dropped my bombsh.e.l.l.”You found a body! Oh, yick! Who was it?” Amina shrieked. ”Are you okay? Are you having bad dreams? Was the chocolate really poisoned?” Amina being my best friend, I told her the truth. ”I don't know yet if the chocolate was poisoned. Yes, I'm having bad dreams, but this is really exciting at the same time.”
”Are you safe, do you think?” she asked anxiously. ”Do you want to come stay with me until this is all over? I can't believe this is happening to you! You're so nice!”
”Well, nice or not,” I retorted grimly, ”it's happening. Thanks for asking me, Amina, and I will come to see you soon. But I have to stay here for now. I don't think I'm in any more danger. This was my turn to be targeted, I guess, and I came out okay.” I skipped my speculation with Arthur that maybe the killer would go on killing, and Jane Engle's conjecture that maybe we would all be drawn in, and cut right to Amina's area of expertise.
”I have a situation here,” I began, and at once had her undivided attention. The nuances and dosey-does between the s.e.xes were Amina's bread and b.u.t.ter. I hadn't had anything like this to tell Amina since we were in high school. It was hard to credit that grown people still engaged in all this-foreplay.”So,” Amina said when I'd finished. ”Arthur is a little resentful that this Robin spent the afternoon at your place, and Robin's trying to decide whether he likes you well enough to keep up the beginning of your relations.h.i.+p in view of Arthur's slight proprietary air. Though Arthur is not the proprietor of anything yet, right?”
”Right.”
”And you haven't actually had a date with either of these bozos, right?”
”Right.”
”But Robin has asked you to lunch in the city for Monday.”
”Uh-huh.”
”And you're supposed to meet him at the cla.s.sroom.”
”Yep.”
”And Lizanne has definitely discarded this Robin.” Amina and Lizanne had always had a curious relations.h.i.+p.
Amina operated on personality and Lizanne on looks, but they'd both run through the male population of Lawrence-ton and surrounding towns at an amazing rate.”Lizanne formally bequeathed him to me,” I told Amina.”She's not greedy,” Amina conceded. ”If she doesn't want 'em, she lets 'em know, and she lets 'em go.Now, if you're going to meet him at the university, you realize he's going to be sitting in a cla.s.sroom full of little chickies just panting to hop in bed with a famous writer. He's not ugly, right?” ”He's not conventionally handsome,” I said. ”He has charm.” ”Well, don't wear one of those blouse and skirt combinations you're always wearing to work!”
”What do you suggest I wear?” I inquired coldly.”Listen, you called me for advice,” Amina reminded me. ”Okay, I'm giving it to you. You've had an awful time. Nothing makes you feel better than a few new clothes, and you can afford it. So go to my mom's shop tomorrow when it opens, and get something new. Maybe a cla.s.sic town 'n country type dress. Stick to little earrings, since you're so short, and maybe a few gold chains.” (A few? I was lucky to have one my mother had given me for Christmas. Amina's boyfriends gave her gold chains for every occasion, in whatever length or thickness they could afford. She probably had twenty.) ”That should be fine for a casual lunch in the city,” Amina concluded.
”You think he'll notice me as a woman, not just a fellow murder buff?”
”If you want him to notice you as a woman, just l.u.s.t after him.”
”Huh?”
”I don't mean lick your lips or pant. Keep conversation normal. Don't do anything obvious. You have to keep it so you don't lose anything if he decides he's not interested.” Amina was as interested in saving face as any j.a.panese.”So what do I do?”
”Just l.u.s.t. Keep everything going like normal, but sort of concentrate on the area below your waist and above your knees, right? And send out waves. You can do it. It's like the Kegel exercise. You can't show anyone how to do it, but if you describe it to a woman, she can pick it up.” ”I'll try,” I said doubtfully.
”Don't worry, it'll come naturally,” Amina told me. ”I have to hang up, the doorbell is ringing. Call me again and tell me how it goes, okay? The only thing wrong with Houston is that you aren't here.”
”I miss you,” I said.
”Yeah, and I miss you, but you needed me to leave,” Amina said, and then she did hang up.
And after a moment's disbelief, I knew she was right. Her departure had freed me from the role of the most popular woman's best friend, a role that required I not attempt to make the most of myself because even the best of me could not compete with Amina. I almost had to be the intellectual drab one.I was sitting thinking about what Amina had said when the phone rang while my hand was still resting on it. I jumped a mile.
”It's me again,” Amina said rapidly. ”Listen, Franklin is waiting for me in the living room, but I ran back here to my other phone to tell you this. You said Perry Allison was in that club with you? You watch out for Perry. When he was in college with me, he and I took a lot of the same courses our freshman year. But he would have these mood swings. He'd be hyper-excited and follow me around just jabbering, then he'd be all quiet and sullen and just stare at me. Finally the college called his mother.”
”Poor Sally,” I said involuntarily.
”She came and got him and I think committed him, not just because of me but because he was skipping cla.s.ses and no one would room with him because his habits got so strange.”
”I think he's beginning to repeat that pattern, Amina. He's still holding together at the library, but I see Sally looking worried these days.” ”You just watch out for him. He never hurt anyone that I know of, though he made a bunch of people nervous. But if he's involved in this murder thing, you watch out!”
”Thanks, Amina.”
”Sure, 'bye now.”
And she was gone, again to enjoy herself with Franklin.
Chapter 7 .
Sunday dawned warm and rainy. A breeze swooped over the fence and rustled my rose trees. It was not a morning to eat breakfast on the patio. I fried bacon and ate my bakery sweet roll while listening to a local radio broadcast. The mayoral candidates were answering questions on this morning's talk show. The election promised more interest than the usual Democratic shoo-in, since not only was there a Republican candidate who actually had a slim chance, there was a candidate from the-gasp-Communist Party! Of course, this was the candidate whose campaign Benjamin Greer was managing. Poor miserable Benjamin, hoping that the Communist Party and politics would be his salvation. Of course the Communist, Morrison Pettigrue, was one of the New People, one of those who'd fled the city but wanted to stay close to it.
At least this would be a unifying election for Lawrenceton. None of the candidates was black, which always made for a tense campaign and a divisive one.The Republican and Democrat were having the time of their political lives, giving sane, sober answers to ba.n.a.l questions, and thoroughly enjoying Pettigrue's fiery responses that sometimes bordered on the irrational.Bless his heart, I thought sadly, not only is he a Communist but he's also very unappealing. I'd made a point of looking for Pettigrue's campaign posters on the way back from the grocery store the day before. They said nothing about the Communist Party (just ”Elect Morrison Pettigrue, the People's Choice, for Mayor”) and they showed him to be a grim-featured swarthy man who had obviously suffered badly from acne.
I listened while I ate breakfast, but then I switched to some country and western music for my dishwas.h.i.+ng. Domestic ch.o.r.es always went faster when you could sing about drinkin' and cheatin'.
It was such a nice little morning I decided to go to church. I often did. I sometimes enjoyed it and felt better for going, but I felt no spiritual compulsion. I went because I hoped I'd ”catch it,” like deliberately exposing myself to the chicken pox. Sometimes I even wore a hat and gloves, though that was bordering on parody and gloves were not so easy to find anymore. It wasn't a hat-and-gloves day, today, too dark and rainy, and I wasn't in a role-playing mood, anyway.
As I pulled into the Presbyterian parking lot, I wondered if I'd see Melanie Clark, who sometimes attended. Had she been arrested? I couldn't believe stolid Melanie truly was in danger of being charged with Mamie Wright's murder. The only possible motive anyone could attribute to Melanie was an affair with Gerald Wright. Someone... some murderer, I reminded myself... was playing an awful joke on Melanie.
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