Jane Carter Investigates: Episode One
“You know, I’ve been doing a lot of wondering lately,” I said to
my friend Flo.
We were riding in my ancient Peerless Model 56, otherwise known as
Bouncing Betsy. Betsy was bouncing more than usual, for the pavement was bumpy
in this section of Greenville.
“Wondering what?” Florence asked.
“Wondering if maybe there isn’t something wrong with me,” I said.
“My appetite doesn’t seem to be normal.”
“Oh, why beat about the bush, Jane? Why not come right out and
admit you’re hungry again? Or maybe ‘again’ is the wrong word. I should have
said ‘still.’”
“Well, I could do with lunch. How about Ridley’s? We’re close
there now.”
“Ridley’s would suit me. They have perfectly gorgeous sandwiches.
Ham and cheese, olives, lettuce, and mayonnaise on a toasted bun—all for a
dime.”
“What, no mustard? Well, that sounds good to me. Suppose we try
it.”
I parked Bouncing Betsy by the curb and dropped two pennies into
the parking meter.
“If we’re not back here before that old machine clocks off an
hour, I’ll get a parking ticket,” I warned Flo as we started toward Ridley’s
Café. “We’ll have to work fast on those sandwiches.”
“Oh, your father knows all the policemen in town,” Florence said.
“He could get the ticket fixed.”
“He probably could fix a ticket, but he wouldn’t. You don’t know
Dad, Florence. He’ll stoop to all manner of heinous skullduggery to get a
scoop, but he draws the line at corrupting the police force.”
My father, Anthony Fielding, owns the Greenville Examiner, the largest newspaper in the city. He and I
often don’t see eye to eye, especially when it comes to the newspaper. I have
no desire to go into the newspaper business, my literary talents running more
to the mass production of vapid serials for Pittman’s
All-Story Weekly with titles like “Evangeline: The Horse Thief’s Unwilling
Fiancée” and “Marcia Makes Good: A Vamp Finds Her Soul,” written under the nom
de plume of Miss Hortencia Higgins.
My literary interests may run more to popular fiction rather than
serious journalism, but I do respect how my father—unlike so many
newspapermen—keeps to the straight and narrow when it comes to not throwing his
weight around with local government.
It was three in the afternoon, and Ridley’s was quite deserted.
Flo and I found a booth in the back and waited for a waitress to bring us a
menu.
“What are you doing the rest of the afternoon?” I asked Flo. “I
suppose your mother has marked out a list of chores for you.”
Even though Flo is a grown woman in her own right—twenty-four
years old to be precise—she still lives at home with her parents, the Reverend
Sidney Radcliff and Mrs. Radcliff. Flo’s mother takes her role as a minister’s
wife very seriously and is involved in every civic organization in the city of
Greenville. All this community-mindedness leaves very little time for Mrs.
Radcliff’s other major hobby: the dispensing of charity. When it comes to charitable
works, they inevitably fall to Flo.
Flo has a three-day-a-week job as children’s librarian at
Greenville City Library, but I keep telling her that she should apply for a
stipend from the parish, seeing as she spends almost as much time doing good
works for members of her father’s church as the Reverend Radcliff spends in
composing his weekly sermons.
“My mother is knee-deep in planning the Daughters of the American
Revolution’s annual bazaar,” said Flo, “so she hasn’t had the energy to come up
with any little jobs for me to do today.”
“How fortunate for the Daughters of the American Revolution,” I
said. “I hope she doesn’t start another.”
A waitress in a neat, starched green uniform had arrived with
water glasses and the menu cards.
“Why, Emma Brown!” I said.
“Hello, Jane. Jane Fielding?”
“Jane Carter, actually.”
“Oh, you got married.”
“And widowed.”
“Oh,” said Emma.
No one ever knows what to say after I tell them I’m a widow. I’m
only twenty-four and, outside of wartime, which is now blessedly behind us, no
one expects a young woman to be a widow.
“I didn’t know you worked here,” I said, trying to smooth over the
awkward moment.
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