Grime and Punishment

group of extremely aggressive-looking women were presenting their theory that the society of the United States was rotten to the core. Their proof was that as members of a Communist-lesbian support group, they’d been denied the right to adopt children. Phil Donahue was weaving in and around the audience, attempting to make those who expressed even the mildest disagreement look like right-wing fanatics who might have been out burning crosses that very week.
    Jane flipped the TV off, brooding. It was amazing what some people were eager to tell about themselves, eager to the point of wanting to share it with a national audience. She rather suspected that if she herself were a lesbian, a Communist, or someone who’d been passed over as unfit to be an adoptive parent, she’d probably want to keep the whole thing as quiet as possible. To be all three and want to tell the world about it amazed her.
    Which brought her right back to the subject she was trying to avoid—Ramona Thurgood’s murder. If she and Shelley were right in their reasoning, then someone they knew had a deep, dark secret. Not a secret to share with the public, but something so awful that she was willing to actually kill another human being to keep it quiet.
    That one mental statement was crammed with considerations with which Jane was hardly prepared to cope. The fact that a woman could commit murder, for starters. Even though the news was filled with reports of women who killed, Jane could never quite bring herself to believe it. Murder was, to her, a strictly male activity. Being a mother, she was convinced that any mother could and would do anything to protect her children, but not necessarily herself. Very rarely herself. Stretching her imagination, she could just barely conceive of a few women she’d known commissioning a murder. Wanting it done so badly they’d have it done secondhand. That, of course, raised the question of how one found somebody to commit murder for you, but that didn’t seem to be the point here.
    Besides, what secret could be so dark and dangerous and compelling? After all, these were people she knew. Of course, everybody had something they didn’t want others to know about—well, everybody except the people who wanted to be on Phil Donahue’s show. Even though Jane’s life abroad had prepared her for many things, she wasn’t at all prepared to picture her neighbors, who belonged to the PTA, as people capable of having done something so awful that they might turn to murder.
    A knock at the kitchen door startled her. She suddenly remembered that, in spite of her resolve, she had failed to lock it. Uncle Jim was right. She had ridiculously careless habits. Peering through the curtains, she saw with relief that it was Shelley.
    “Come in. I thought you had errands to do.“
    “I do, but I couldn’t do them for thinking about all this,“ Shelley admitted. “I was supposed to pick up the dog, but I just couldn’t face having him hang on my pant cuffs. I’m going to leave him at the kennel till the kids get home. Jane, I want this settled so the kids can come home. I miss them, but I won’t have them back until I know we’re all safe—at least from whoever killed that woman. Jane, I’ve got to get all that stuff out of the refrigerator and the dishes back to people. Come help me clean it out, will you?“
    “Sure. Let me get my keys.“ As she was reaching for her purse, the phone rang and she grabbed it. “Hello?“
    “Mrs. Jeffry? This is Karen from the Specialty Siding Company. We have a crew in your neighborhood giving estimates this week. You do own your own home there at—“
    “Do you?“
    “Do I what?“
    “Do you own your own home?”
    There was the usual baffled silence at the other end of the line. Jane smiled smugly. It always worked.
    “I—well, that is to say, I don’t quite understand—“
    “You’re trying to tell me it’s none of my business, aren’t you?“ Jane interrupted warmly. “Well, it’s none of your business either. Goodbye.“
    “Roofing and siding?“ Shelley asked. “That’s clever. I usually just lie and tell them I rent.”
    “That works?“
    “Yup. They only want to talk to somebody who can commit their very own thousands of dollars to covering up the outside of the house. I like yours better. It gets closer to the heart of why those calls make me so mad.“
    “Do you suppose most people tell them the truth without a fight?“ Jane asked as they went