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  A Quiche Before Dying

  ( Jane Jeffry - 3 )

  Jill Churchill

  With the kids packed off on their summer road trips, it's an ideal time for Jane Jeffry to pursue other interests, so the harried suburban mom enrolls in a writing course at the community college. But when an obnoxious aged classmate keels over dead after sampling a tasty treat from a pot luck student buffet, Jane realizes there's a culinary killer among the local would-be literati. The pen may be mightier than the sword. . .but poison beats them both. And before the both. And before the demise of a very disagreeable old biddy can be written off, amateur sleuth Jane intends to find out who's responsible -- and cook the culprit's goose in his or her own creative juices.

  Jill Churchill

  A Quiche Before Dying

  1

  “Stop! Murderer!" Jane Jeffry shouted.

  The rotund gray tabby cat abandoned his slink through the vegetable garden, drew himself up with flabby dignity, gave one longing glance at the robin Jane had scared away, and stalked off. As he passed a zucchini plant, a sleek orange cat leaped out of the greenery and tackled him. "Oh, no!" Jane cried as they rolled, happily thrashing in mock battle, into a row of frothy carrot foliage. She jumped up from the patio chair and waded into the fray. Willard, a shambling yellow dog, roused from his nap on the patio, came galloping in, barking happily and trampling fledgling crops with his saucer-sized paws. He always got excited when he thought the cats were in trouble with Jane.

  “Stop it! All of you!" Jane shouted.

  “What is this? Feeding time at the zoo?" her neighbor Shelley said from across the fence.

  “To think they were all little and cute once," Jane said, scooping up a cat in each arm. They went as limp as rag dolls, except for the occasional halfhearted swipe at each other. "They should come with warning labels, like cigarettes. Caution: This ball of fluff will destroy your home and garden. Shut up, Willard! I had no idea I needed to put up a ten-foot electrified fence just to protect a few veggies.”

  “The yard's looking nice," Shelley said.

  Jane looked around proudly. Her late husband hadn't approved of gardens. They were, in his view, a nuisance that might draw him into their upkeep. But this spring, the second after his death in a car accident, Jane had gone wild planting. In the rock-hard area where the children's long-abandoned swing sets used to be, she'd planted vegetables. Nothing too difficult this year: radishes, carrots, tomatoes, and three zucchini plants that were threatening to take over the world. There were also some cucumber plants next to the back fence that had run over into the undeveloped land behind her house and were, as far as she knew, producing great crops for the benefit of the field mice. Next year she planned to tackle the mysteries of cauliflowers, peas, and asparagus.

  She'd also taken a tentative stab at flower gardening around the edges of the yard. Again, she'd started with the tried and true: lots of marigolds, some astonishingly ugly coleus, and a lot of vivid red geraniums that made up for the coleus. There were also the good old standbys alyssum, salvia, and a very puny peony that had put forth only two flowers this year, but might do better next spring.

  “You know, we never stayed in one place long enough to have a real garden when I was growing up," Jane said to Shelley. "Every time my mother planted something, the State Department sent my father somewhere else. Want a cup of coffee?"

  “I'd love it. Denise is having a hair crisis I'd like to escape from."

  “Come on around. I'll bring it out to you." Jane put down the cats, who raced her and each other to the door. They persisted in the greedy but naive belief that she might forget that they'd been fed, and feed them again. They were always disappointed. Jane found the cans of cat food so repulsive that it was all she could do to open them once a day. She ignored their entreaties and took a mug of coffee back to the patio. "What's the crisis?" she asked, handing Shelley the mug.

  “Oh, you know ... slumber party, haircutting at four A.M., tears, hysterics. I wouldn't be fourteen again for anything."

  “How bad is it, really?"

  “Pretty awful. She has my aggressively straight hair that goes spiky if it's too short." Jane found this hard to believe. She'd never seen so much as a wisp of Shelley's dark cap of hair out of place ... but she liked her anyway.

  “I told her it would grow out," Shelley said. "Worst thing I could have said. It meant I didn't understand. That I didn't care about her at all. That I was a terrible mother. I tell you, if every woman had to spend one week with a teenage girl at the beginning of her marriage, the birth rate would drop to zero."

  “I've always felt that way about Cub Scout pack meetings.”

  Shelley shuddered. "How are you and Katie doing on your own?" Jane's younger son, Todd, had gone on a trip with his paternal grandmother to Disney World, and her older son was on a tour of colleges with his best friend and the friend's father. She and her daughter were by themselves.

  Jane sighed. "I was really looking forward to this time, thinking without the boys around, Katie and I could just be girly-girly together. We've never been alone together. But I've hardly seen her. She sleeps late, goes to her job at the pool all afternoon and early evening, then goes out with her friends until the last second before her deadline. All of those activities require that she talk on the phone half the night. I see less of her now than during the school year."

  “Count your blessings," Shelley said, but with a smile to show she really didn't mean it.

  “I wanted to be closer to my daughter than I was to my mother," Jane went on. "But maybe it's not possible. An innate hormonal disharmony or something."

  “I thought you got along well with your mother," Shelley said.

  “Oh, I get along with her. Nobody doesn't get along with my mother. I think it's a federal law. But—"

  “It's just because she's coming to visit," Shelley said. "I get the same way when my mother's coming. It's that funny shift in roles. It's your house, where you're nominally in charge, but your mother is always your mother. Dads make great guests—I guess it's because men of that generation are used to being treated like guests in their own homes. But mothers are always noticing the way you're doing your job. Are your bathrooms clean? Are the kids well behaved? Are your dishes stacked where a good daughter should stack them? After all, we are a measure of how well they did their job. When does your mother get here?"

  “Late this afternoon."

  “Do you want me to go to the airport with you? It's such a long, boring drive."

  “Thanks, Shelley, but we don't go for her. She's got a thing about getting herself around."

  “Don't you know how lucky you are? I wish my mom felt that way. When she visits, she sees it as a challenge to find places for me to take her to. It's as if the stewardess whispers to her as she gets off the plane, 'Your daughter is dying to turn her life inside out for you. Do her a favor and think of as many things as you can for her to do.' “

  Jane looked at Shelley and grinned. "That's what Katie and Denise think of us, too. We're squashed between generations!"

  “Somebody once told me we always like our grandparents because they are our enemies' enemies."

  “How true!"

  “So what are you and your mother doing while she's here?" Shelley asked.

  “Didn't I tell you? We're taking a class. I sent her a clipping about Mike's band performance from that local shopping paper. There was a thing on the opposite side about a free class at the community center in writing your own life history. It meets five nights in a row, then it's done. Missy Harris is the teacher."

  “Poor Missy. How'd they rope her into that?" Missy was a local writer of romance novels.

  “Money, my de
ars," a voice said from the side of the house. Missy came around, lugging an armload of books and folders. "Don't you know better than to talk about people outdoors?" Missy was tall, angular, and rather homely. She walked with a long, manly stride and said of herself that she looked like John Cleese in drag. The description wasn't far wrong.

  Jane took her feet off a patio chair and helped Missy put down her belongings. Missy collapsed in the vacated chair. "Coffee?" Jane asked.

  “No, thanks. These are your assignments for class. Yours and your mother's copies. I notice that you didn't turn anything in, Jane.”

  Jane explained to Shelley, "We were supposed to write a first chapter to be copied to the rest of the class before the first meeting. We're all supposed to read and critique each other's."

  “I think you can learn a lot about your own writing by studying the flaws and virtues in other people's," Missy said. "So why don't I have anything from you, Jane?"

  “Missy, I'm not really taking the class; just paying for it so I can go with my mother. What are these two books? Don't tell me somebody already wrote a whole book?"

  “Exactly. It's a self-published autobiography of Agnes Pryce."

  “Agnes Pryce is in this class!" Jane groaned. Seeing Shelley's puzzled expression, she said, "Shelley, you know who she is—that terrible old woman who's always writing letters to the editor and trying to start petitions—Mrs. General Pryce."

  “Oh! Mrs. General. Of course. She's the hateful one who's forever pestering the city council and the school board to impose a full-time eight-o'clock curfew for everybody under twenty-one. Anybody who objects is made to look like a neglectful parent who really wants their children out drinking and having sex all night," Shelley said. "She's a first-class bitch."

  “She's a career military wife who really gets into the concept of martial law," Jane said to Missy. "And she hates kids."

  “That's obvious from her book. Actually, I think she hates everybody—except herself," Missy said. "The whole thing is one long, masturbatory—is that a word?—account of her making everybody she’s ever run across do the right thing whether they want to or not. Right according to her, naturally."

  “If she's already written a whole autobiography, why is she taking a class in how to do it?" Shelley asked.

  “Just to show off," Missy said. "Her nose is out of joint because I was asked to teach this class instead of her. I think she's laying on a campaign to wrest control from me. She's going to be unpleasantly surprised at how difficult that proves to be." Missy grinned with anticipation.

  Shelley sat forward. "Is it too late to get into this class?"

  “You want to come?" Missy said. "Just bring twenty dollars and I'll give you a form to fill in."

  “You want to write an autobiography?" Jane asked. "You're as boring as I am."

  “I know I am. But my mother's been after me for years to organize a trunkful of diaries and pictures of our family. She dumped it on me years ago when she sold the house and moved into an apartment. A collective biography would be pretty much the same rules, wouldn't it, Missy?"

  “Sure. Come along. Basement. City Hall. Seven-thirty to nine-thirty—unless I bump off Mrs. General by eight. In that case, class would probably get out early."

  “What else have we got here?" Jane asked, shuffling through the folders.

  “There's something from your mother, of course. Then a nice piece from Grady Wells."

  “I'll bet he's not happy to be stuck with Mrs. General." Grady Wells was fortyish, a short, florid-faced, and good-natured bachelor who served in the largely honorary position of mayor of their city. At least it was honorary in pay, which was a hundred dollars a year. For that piddling sum he conducted the city council meetings, attended important civic functions like the opening of the new dry cleaner's, and put up with the troublemakers like Mrs. Pryce. In real life, he was the president of a small company that made playing cards, dice, poker chips, and accessories like bridge score pads. He was a cheerful individual, appropriate to his work.

  “He doesn't know yet," Missy said. "I'm on my way down to his office to give him his stack of manuscripts."

  “Grady will be fun to have in the group. Who else is there?" Jane asked.

  “Ruth Rogers and her sister are coming. You know, the ladies who live at the end of the block with the fantastic gardens? I haven't seen anything from them yet, but Ruth told me they intend to write a joint autobiography. Very interesting concept. They were separated as infants and raised apart. Ruth was in a well-run, compassionate orphanage for a while, then adopted by a nice family. Her sister went to a series of foster homes, most of which were pretty dismal, I believe. They just located each other two years or so ago and want to write a book with sort of alternating chapters about their lives. It could work—if they can write well enough. All too often the people with the most interesting lives are deadly dull writers. And sometimes vice versa. They've turned in a rough outline, but no actual writing, so I didn't copy it to the rest of you."

  “I like Ruth," Jane said, "but she's one Mrs. General will smash under her heel with no trouble."

  “I don't know about that," Shelley said. "There's a tough core deep in that fluffiness. Don't you remember that incident at the pool six or seven years ago?"

  “Oh, yes! Ruth was sitting there with her umbrella and sun hat and books and cute little beach slippers and all."

  “I don't remember this. What happened?" Missy asked.

  “A kid got in trouble in the deep end of the pool, and before the lifeguards even knew what was happening, Ruth leaped from her vast nest of paraphernalia, flung herself in, and rescued the kid. Really took over. Grady wanted to strike some kind of hero medal for her, but she wouldn't have it."

  “What's her sister like?" Shelley asked Missy. "I don't know. .I haven't met her yet."

  “Shelly, you know her," Jane said. "Remember the block party last fall? She's the one who made all those fantastic pastries. We all got the recipe for them in Christmas cards."

  “Oh, yes. Fiftyish, real frail-looking?"

  “Right. Is there anyone else in the class?" Jane asked Missy.

  “A couple others, but I'll let them introduce themselves in their writing," she said, patting the stack of folders. "I've got to run. See you tomorrow night.”

  Shelley had been flipping through Mrs. General's book. She waved good-bye to Missy and said, "What a loathsome woman Mrs. Pryce is! This whole chapter is about how she raised her children. Listen to this: 'I knew that their childish resentment of my firmness, though painful for a loving mother to behold, was temporary and that they would grow up to honor and venerate those high principles I was endeavoring to instill in them from their earliest days.' "

  “Ugh!" Jane said. "Imagine having a mother who thought that way. They must despise her, and they probably need a live-in shrink. Maybe we ought to loan our daughters to her for a little while—they might learn to appreciate us."

  “Daughters!" Shelley said, leaping up. "I'd forgotten for a minute. I should be home offering platitudes and having them flung back in my face. See you at seven-thirty." She started around the side of the house and stopped in her tracks, looking down. "Jane, I'm sorry to tell you this, but I think your cats have blundered into a chipmunk nest."

  “Oh, no!"

  2

  Jane rescued one chipmunk and buried another, then she took the cats inside over their yowling protestations. "This is sheer bloodlust and very unbecoming in house cats. We aren't in the jungle, you know," she told them as she dumped them on the kitchen floor. They raced back to the door, pressing their little triangular noses to the crack. She told herself not to be so upset; it was the nature of cats to catch and torture small, cute animals. But then, it was Jane's nature to try to stop them.

  She set the pile of folders and the two copies of Mrs. General Pryce's book on the kitchen table and yelled up at her daughter, "Katie, are you up? You've got to be at work at noon!"

  “I know that, M
other!" Katie screamed down the steps. "I've got tons of time.”

  Jane refilled her coffee cup and sat down at the kitchen table to start sorting through the class materials. The chapters were in pairs, one each for her and her mother. She set her mother's chapters and Mrs. Pryce's book on the counter and started pawing through her own. Even though she didn't intend to write anything, she wanted to give her full attention to critiquing the others.

  Missy had enclosed a sheet of instructions on vio lent yellow paper that couldn't be missed. It said, "We will discuss these on the last night of class. I suggest that you take notes as you are reading. Remember, writing is a process of tearing off little bits of one's soul and putting them on paper. Writing an autobiography is even more personal. In this class we will not make criticisms of the CONTENT of the material. We will only make very kind, constructive comments on the MANNER in which it is presented. You should consider such things as grammar, style (word choice), and organization (overall and sentence structure).”

  Jane wondered if Missy had written this warning before or after reading Mrs. Pryce's book. Considering what Jane already knew of the lady and that little bit that Shelley had read, it seemed the logical comment on Pryce's work would be, "Change your life while there's still time." But there might not be time. People said Mrs. Pryce was not only the meanest, but probably the oldest, person around.

  Jane was about to read her mother's piece first, but forced herself to put it aside and skim the others. Reading Cecily's first might upset her. Cecily was, even as Jane was sitting at the table, in the air someplace on her way for a visit. No point in starting the visit without her. Not that Jane wasn't looking forward to seeing her mother, but she wasn't sure what she would find in her mother's manuscript.

  One of the manuscripts was presented on light pink paper and typed with script type. The name at the top of the page was Desiree Loftus. Jane smiled. Desiree was one of her favorite neighborhood weirdos. A woman well into her sixties, if not seventies, Desiree had the energy and aggressive outrageousness of a girl of twenty. She dressed in a style that could best be described as "demented flapper/artist," all flowing scarves, spangled headbands, feathers, chunky jewelry, and long cigarette holders. She was still a very pretty woman, with long, elegant hands (usually smudged with artist's oils) and a fall of chestnut hair that looked as if it were still naturally that color, in spite of her age.