Grime and Punishment

parents fell momentarily silent as the heap of children was sorted out. One of them was led from the field, limping ostentatiously.
    “That’s my Bob, the klutz,“ Suzie said, hoisting herself up and getting ready to go comfort him. She’d made it down three rows, stepping on purses and fingers with judicious abandon, when she stopped, shaded her eyes, and turned around and came back up. She sat down. “Wasn’t Bob at all. It’s that Jonnell kid. They all look alike in those uniforms.”
    The game resumed and so did Suzie. “We had the Jonnell family to a barbecue one night last summer, and I swear, the kid has the foulest mouth I’ve ever heard. And his mother! I saw her come within a hair of punching out the coach when he put the kid on the bench for it. Some people—Jane? Earth calling Jane? Are you there?”
    Jane turned to her, eyes wide. “Could that be it? The uniforms?“
    “What the hell are you talking about?”
    Grabbing her arm, Jane leaned forward. “You said it was a shame it wasn’t Edith killed instead of the other woman.“
    “I didn’t really mean—“
    “Shut up, Suzie. Listen. Nobody had any reason to kill the other woman, but there might be a reason to kill Edith. I don’t know what, but suppose there was.“
    “Okay, what if there was?“
    “Edith was supposed to be at Shelley’s, and a woman in a Happy Helper uniform gets out of a Happy Helper van at the right house. They even looked alike, in a superficial way. Matter of fact, when Edith turned up at my house yesterday, it gave me a scare. I thought she was the other woman from a distance. They were both middle-sized, kinda hippy—“
    “So who isn’t?“
    “—and they both had frizzy blond hair.“
    “So why didn’t the killer notice they weren’t the same person when he got up close?”
    That stopped Jane for a minute. She leaned back, thinking. “Because—because he must have come up behind her. Don’t you usually vacuum with your back to the doorway?“
    “I never thought about it, but yes. I start with the corners and back myself out.“
    “So the cleaning woman would have been working with her back to the door, with the noise of the vacuum cleaner covering any sound an attacker might have made. He just had to pick up a loose loop of the cord, throw it over her head and—twist,“ she finished with a shiver. The memory of the dead Ramona Thurgood assaulted her, turning the mental exercise back into the real and very terrible event it was.
    “He might not have ever seen her face,“ Suzie agreed. “You know, I think you may have something there, but you still have one problem: why would anyone kill Edith, assuming she was the intended victim? She’s a distasteful sort, but if we went around killing people for that, it would be a pretty sparsely populated planet.“ She glanced around her and added, “I can think of a few who could be the first to go.“
    “I don’t know—but I’m going to call that detective and tell him my idea. He gave me a number when he questioned me. In case I remembered anybody else who’d come to Shelley’s that day.“
    “This detective—is he good-looking?”
    “Oh, I don’t know
    “Bullshit. That means he is. Why don’t you go see him instead of calling? You could take a divorced friend along for moral support.“
    “I want him to pay attention to what I’m say- ing, not to the gorgeous blonde drooling down his shirt front.“
    “Cruel, cruel.”

    Impatient to call the detective, Jane stopped at a pay phone a block from the ball field. “Detective VanDyne, this is Jane Jeffry, Shelley Nowack’s next-door neighbor.“
    “I know who you are, Mrs. Jeffry.”
    Jane didn’t preen, but she smiled. “I’ve figured out the murder. Well, I haven’t exactly figured out who did it, but—“
    “That’s the end result we like.”
    Jane bristled at this, but went on. “It had to do with uniforms. You see, one of the boys at the baseball game got hurt, and my friend Suzie thought it was her son because they all look alike in the uniforms, and that got me thinking–”
    “—that the regular cleaning lady was the intended victim?“
    “Oh.“ Jane was crushed. “You’d thought of that?“
    “It’s a natural thing to wonder when there doesn’t appear to be any motive. It doesn’t appear to be the case, but I’d be interested in hearing what supporting evidence you have for your assumption.“
    “Supporting evidence—? Oh, I see. Well, they looked