Murder in C Major Read online

  “Don’t worry about it, Nancy. Tell me about people. It feels so strange to be back in a place I was sure I’d never forget and not to see a soul I know. Even the elm trees have disappeared, and the old school. What’s the same?”

  “Everything. It’s the same old town, only older. Miss Duffy still lives on Beech Street. She’d be tickled pink to see you.”

  “And people our age?”

  “They’re mostly long gone. Gilbert Snarr is still here, running his dad’s funeral home, and Bob Peterson works at the paper.”

  “I’ll bet you’re the only person I’ll know, except for Miss Duffy. I’ll have to find her.”

  “Oh, and Evelyn. Did you see her checking you out at the symphony break?”

  “Evelyn?”

  “You remember Evelyn Gustafson.” It wasn’t a question. Joan began to remember that it almost never was with Nancy, not a real one.

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Oh, you can’t have forgotten her. Anything she did was always better and more important than our affairs. She wore ballet slippers and crinolines to school, and she could fast dance when the rest of us were trying to figure out the box step. Made me green. Evelyn married Sam Wade from Fish Creek—well, maybe you didn’t know Sam.

  “Anyway, Evelyn and Sam had a thing going even in junior high. She was unbearable when he gave her his high school class ring. Don’t you remember? One day she’d wrap it with blue angora yarn, and the next day it was all tape and nail polish. Anything for an excuse to wave it at the rest of us.”

  “Mmm.” Joan smothered a yawn.

  “I knew it would come back to you. She was so smug, even then. When he was training for a chance at the Olympics, she was just like all the girls in the Charles Atlas ad, hanging around the guy with the beautiful muscles, only she had the inside track. And you should have heard her when he went away to school where he could swim outdoors all year long under some famous coach. I think maybe it’s the high school Mark Spitz went to. Of course, he came here to Indiana for college before he won all those golds. Isn’t he a dentist or something? I hear he’s never swum again since. Anyway, Sam didn’t last long. He dropped it, just like that, I never heard why, and went into the army or the marines, I forget which, and then to IU on the GI Bill. When he came back with a law degree, Evelyn wasn’t worth speaking to—much too good for the rest of us.

  “After a while, though, wills and contracts and such weren’t exciting enough. It got them into the country club, though, and that’s Evelyn’s meat. And now that he’s in politics, she’s busy helping him by helping us.”

  “You lost me back at the wills and contracts.”

  “Sorry. Sam got himself elected county prosecutor and now he has his eye on a seat in Congress. Then on to bigger and better things, at least if you listen to Evelyn. She doesn’t say all that, of course. But she manages to make him sound important at the same time she’s putting down not only the job he has now, but the one he’s going to run for next.”

  “What did you mean about helping us?”

  “She’s got herself in solid with the symphony. It doesn’t matter who really licked the stamps. It always ends up looking as if Evelyn did it single-handed. You watch—at break time, she’s right in there handing out all the cookies someone else baked. Didn’t you recognize her tonight?”

  “Not really,” Joan said, stifling another yawn. “People have changed a lot since the sixth grade. I don’t think I really remember them at all.”

  “Well, of course not. Silly of me. Sam was Giddy then.”

  “She sounds like the giddy one.”

  “No, his name was Giddy—short for Gideon. I think he started using his middle name when he decided to be a lawyer. It always embarrassed Evelyn. But I suppose she was right. Who’d want a giddy lawyer? These days I notice she has him using all three—like William Howard Taft or Norman Vincent Peale. You remember how she was.”

  “No, Nancy, I don’t,” Joan said firmly. “Most all of that must have happened after I left. I seem to have blocked Evelyn out of my life.”

  “Well, you can’t miss her. Here we all are at our grubbiest and there she is with every hair in place. She’ll fall all over you if she thinks you can do Sam some good.”

  “Who, me? I’ll probably never even meet the man.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that. You’re sitting next to him.”

  “I don’t think so,” Joan answered, puzzled. “The man I’m next to introduced himself and that wasn’t his name. It was something to do with beer glasses.”

  “Beer glasses?”

  “I should never have said that out loud. I’m learning so many new names right now—addresses, phone numbers—and my old memory system isn’t working. He’s bald, has a nice smile.”

  “John Hocking!”

  “So much for that system.”

  “I didn’t mean John. Sam’s the oboe on your right.”

  “That awful man who chewed out the bassist for living? Harold somebody?”

  “No, Harold’s the bass. Runs Aqua Heaven. We bought our saltwater tank from him. Sam plays second oboe. The boor is George Petris. He sits first, and he’s just bad news. Although some women manage to find him charming, how I don’t know. His wife stuck it out almost twenty years before she couldn’t take any more of his playing around, and I don’t mean oboe. And last year he stole his own son’s best girl. For a while it looked as if Lisa might actually end up as stepmother to her old boyfriend. But George dumped her and she took off sometime last winter—just left town. She’s back now, but she not only won’t speak to George—she won’t give the time of day to any man. You can imagine what people are saying. The sad part is that I think those kids really cared about each other. And Daniel is all right. His mother’s influence, I suppose.”

  “You don’t like the man.”

  “You guessed it. Anyway, Sam’s not like George at all, thank goodness. One of him is enough. Besides, Sam’s much too good a politician to be rude unintentionally.”

  “I’ll look next week. Tonight went by in a blur.” Blurrier by the minute. She felt herself droop with sudden fatigue. Even Nancy noticed.

  “Joan, you’re tired and I’m just running on. I do remember how it feels. The last sabbatical Art took was the longest year I’ve ever spent. Never seeing people I knew, not even at the grocery store, just wore me out. I’d never survive in a big city. But I’ll bet that after a while some of the faces on the street here will begin to ring a bell for you. And I’ll be happy to tell you about people. It really helps if you know their backgrounds, don’t you think?”

  Joan ducked it. “Nancy, you’re right, I am tired. I’ll see you next week.”

  The chatter followed her out to the car. She started the motor and waved, pretending not to have heard the beginning of still another long story.

  Soon, however, she would be wishing she could remember exactly what Nancy had told her about George Petris and his affairs.

  3

  Joan struggled to match the oboe’s ever more insistent A, but she couldn’t budge the peg. Pushing with all her strength, she felt it suddenly give. The string snapped in her face, the bridge flew into a dark corner, the sound post collapsed, and the oboe rose to an unbearable wail. With her hand resisting her efforts to loosen the other strings and relieve the tension on the viola’s now unsupported belly, she screamed aloud, “Stop it! I can’t!”

  Sudden silence. Blessed relief.

  Then a voice in her ear.

  “Mom, are you okay?”

  Lethargy.

  “Mom, wake up.”

  She opened her eyes. “Andrew. I was having a nightmare.”

  “Really. You were yelping.”

  Already the panic had faded. She worked to remember. “I couldn’t tune my viola.”

  “That’s a nightmare?”

  “Silly, isn’t it? But that oboe kept screaming at me.” Probably the nasty one. George What-sis.

  “Uh, Mom, I
think I’m your oboe. I put the toast in the broken side of the toaster, and the smoke alarm blew while I was scrambling eggs. It took me a minute to climb up there and shut it off. I didn’t think anyone could sleep through that, not even you.”

  “I wasn’t exactly sleeping.”

  “Sorry. But you were really out of it. How late did you come home last night?”

  “Hey, who’s the parent around here?”

  Andrew beetled his brows and reached down for his deepest baritone. “How late?”

  “Very late. I met an old friend, and we talked our heads off. Or rather, she talked and I listened.”

  “Some excuse.”

  “No excuse. But I learned a couple of things.”

  “Like?”

  “Oh, mostly that almost no one I used to know is still here. Except my teacher.”

  “From sixth grade?”

  “Back in the Dark Ages. Miss Duffy’s probably one of the reasons I think of Oliver as home. She was a born teacher, Andrew.”

  “I could use one of those.”

  “Oh, that’s another thing I learned. My friend is Nancy Van Allen. Her husband teaches chemistry at the college.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “Smart enough to go to bed on time. He didn’t sit in on all our talk. Nice enough, as far as I could tell.”

  “Well, Haynes won’t be, if I’m late for school again. You want some cold eggs?”

  “Andrew, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I can get something later. I’ll see you at suppertime. Bye, Mom.”

  Grateful for the how-manyeth time that this echo of his father was very much his own person, she got up to watch him bicycle off, curly head bent and long legs pumping.

  She was certainly wide awake now. Cold eggs held no appeal, but the morning paper might get her moving. She scuffled into the slippers that had been a stopgap a year ago, wrapped her robe around her warmly on the way downstairs, put the teakettle on, and retrieved the Courier from behind the bushes. Again.

  Brushing the dew-laden cobweb from her eyebrow, she plunged into the “help wanted” section. Waded in was closer to it. The bottom was so near the surface that a real dive would have flattened her. “Loving person to care for four active children in my home.” “Experienced legal secretary 80 wpm.” “L.P.N. for busy physician’s office.” “Couple to live in residential treatment center for troubled youth.”

  One advantage to being unemployed—you didn’t have to rush breakfast. With a feeling of total self-indulgence, she scraped Andrew’s eggs into the garbage and then took her time over a muffin and the funnies. After a quick call to the employment agency yielded no more leads, she set herself free for the day.

  The phone book listed three Duffys—only one on Beech Street. What did M. E. stand for? She must have known once, but it wouldn’t come.

  “Miss Duffy? This is Joan Zimmerman. I was a pupil of yours years ago. I don’t know if you’ll remember … How very nice of you to say so. No, I’m not visiting. I’ll be living here for a few years, I think. Could I come by to see you? Why, yes, I could easily be there at ten, if I don’t get lost.”

  She didn’t. Already she had learned that in a town the size of Oliver, she could save her gasoline money. Walking gave her time to get her bearings. And there was something even simpler. The last time she had lived there, driving hadn’t been one of her options. No wonder everything looked more familiar from the sidewalk.

  Halfway down a long block she recognized Miss Duffy standing on the front porch of the little house she had occupied for so many years. Feet solidly planted, she conveyed by her very posture the calm that had always given her control over rambunctious children. She had never shouted, never sent anyone to the office, never called the principal. Her snapping eyes and that steady calm had done it, plus a quick, quiet wit that stopped just short of scolding.

  Miss Duffy must have spotted her, but she just waited on the porch. It fits, Joan thought. On the other hand, how would she know me? I’ve changed far more than she has.

  “Hello,” she called, turning onto the little brick path to the house. “It’s me, Joan.”

  “Come here, Joan. Let me look at you. I’m so glad you called.”

  Joan returned her hug warmly.

  She had visited the house on children’s errands: selling Girl Scout cookies, trick-or-treating, looking for a yard to rake or a walk to shovel to augment an allowance too skimpy for a movie ticket and popcorn. Today she was welcomed as an adult. And with Margaret Duffy—the “Margaret” came easily as soon as she was invited to use it—she felt like one. The feeling that this was a person who cared about her hadn’t changed at all. Yet Margaret Duffy’s kind of caring didn’t hover; it sat back and waited.

  Somewhat to her own surprise, Joan found herself explaining about Ken’s death, Andrew’s interest in Oliver College, her decision to move to the little house her parents had bought years ago for the retirement they’d never been able to enjoy, and her search for a job.

  “What have you done?” Margaret asked, hands folded over her ample lap, little feet crossed in the trim shoes.

  “A motley assortment of things. Research assistant jobs before the children were born. A lot of volunteer work after that. Playing in the orchestra for fun, when we lived where there was one. I’m doing that here, too. And then when I had to support us, I learned about the difference between jobs that sound good and the ones that pay. You find out who your friends are when you show up in the A&P as a checker. Some of Ken’s former parishioners thought it was beneath the dignity of their minister’s widow. They didn’t offer to pay the bills, you understand—just fussed at me about finding something ‘more suitable.’ I don’t think they’d have been bothered if I’d taken a part-time job in the library and starved.”

  “Did you put them to the test?” The eyes had their old familiar gleam.

  “It crossed my mind a time or two. For one thing, my feet hurt. But finally, one of Ken’s ministerial colleagues offered me a job in his church. The congregation is big enough to pay almost a living wage to the church secretary—administrative assistant, really—and they wanted someone who wouldn’t carry gossip back to the members. Gossip bores me silly; he may have known that. And I suppose he thought I’d know enough about the inner workings of that situation to do a good job. He was right. It didn’t occur to me that he might have any other motive, and I’m not even sure he did. I thought it would be fine. For a while, it was.”

  “But you’re here.”

  “I never expected to leave. I really did like the work. It wasn’t very hard, but it took an organized mind and all the diplomacy I could command to keep the nursery school out of the hair of the Tuesday morning circle meeting, and the choir director from coming to blows with the Boy Scouts.”

  “Mm-hmm.” Still, Margaret Duffy didn’t push it.

  “But I’m here,” Joan said wryly. “And with no job at all. It doesn’t make sense, does it?”

  “Do you want me to ask you why?”

  “No. Yes. I don’t know.” And then it came rushing out, all that she had kept bottled up for months. How the minister, an old friend whose marriage had always seemed solid, had pursued her. How his attentions, at first no more than flattering, had become intolerable, until the day she had fended him off with the letter opener from the engraved desk set presented to him by the last confirmation class.

  “I went home in the middle of the day, shaking. I was scared and angry—I don’t think I’ve ever been so angry in my life.”

  “What did you do about it?” There was the old Miss Duffy calm.

  “At first I was too upset to do anything. I paced. I must have gone up and down the stairs a dozen times in half an hour. I told myself I was making a mountain out of a molehill. I didn’t tell anyone about it, not even Andrew. Least of all Andrew. Finally I thought I had it all under control. Then, the next morning, when I tried to go to work, I found I couldn’t leave the house. I simply couldn’t t
urn the doorknob. And I realized that no matter what he did the next time, I wasn’t sure what I would do if I went near him—and that letter opener. So I resigned, and we moved.”

  “You left town without telling anyone?” Margaret spoke gently, but Joan found it difficult to respond.

  “I ran. I’m not proud of that. But Margaret, that man is almost a saint in the eyes of his congregation. He’s had community awards galore. No one would believe my word against his. Oh, I was angry enough to want to punish him, but it wouldn’t have worked that way. The whole town would have been convinced that I was a sex-starved widow, making it up because I really wanted it to be true. And there was no way I could stay in town and not be thrown together with him—and his wife.”

  “You may be right.”

  “Right or wrong, I’m looking for a job here. I have to hang onto what’s left of Ken’s insurance money for Andrew’s college tuition. I was counting on Social Security for some of that, but the new rules will cut him off on his eighteenth birthday.”

  “There aren’t many jobs here,” Margaret said. “Students do a lot of them. Do you have trouble because of your age?”

  “My age?” A new worry she didn’t even want to consider.

  “It’s the kind of thing you hear a lot at the Senior Citizens’ Center. You know, Joan …” She paused. “Why don’t you apply for the job at the center?”

  “Is one open?”

  “The board’s been looking for a week now. The director resigned suddenly, and she’s given us no notice at all. We need an acting director within the week. No one who is assisting is willing or appropriate for the job, and I think you’d bring something to it that those children can’t.”

  “Now you’re discriminating on account of age.”

  “Not entirely, but I can’t think of a better place to do it.”

  “I don’t quite know what to say.”

  “How do you feel about spending time with old people?”

  “Just old, or old and sick?”

  “Just old. Well, we all have more creaks and leaks than we once did, but the people who come to the center are in fairly good health, at least when they come. Some of us are as sharp as we ever were and some aren’t.” She smiled. “Some weren’t all that sharp to begin with, of course.”