Free Blood Will Tell by Jean Lorrah

the car and began to work her way out of the parking lot.
    “Oh, Honey,” said her mother as if she had just thought of it, “do you still have my food processor?"
    “Of course I do.” What did she think—that Brandy had sold it? She had borrowed it to shred carrots for a cake for the Humane Society bake sale, and had been intending to get the bulky thing off her counter ever since. Why hadn't she put it in the car on her way out today?
    “I need to make coleslaw for the Women's Circle potluck. Why don't we just stop and pick it up?"
    Which was, of course, why her mother hadn't mentioned it when she called; now there was no way to keep her out of the apartment. At least the place was clean. As there was no choice, Brandy said, “Sure, Mom,” as cheerfully as she could manage.
    Melody Mather helped to carry in Brandy's groceries, while Brandy toted the awkward food processor down to the car. Now she'll snoop to see that I'm living right. But she had washed three days’ worth of dishes, scrubbed the bathroom, and made up the bed before her mother called. For once the surprise raid did not find Brandy's home in chaos.
    By the time she wedged the food processor into the trunk, surrounded by grocery bags so it wouldn't bounce around and break, Brandy came back to her apartment to find half her groceries put away and her mother trying to shoo Sylvester, her black-and-white cat, off the counter.
    “My goodness, Sweetheart, no wonder you bought out the store. You didn't have a thing to eat in the house!” She opened a can of cat food and put it down on the floor. Sylvester glared balefully at her, but finally gave in and jumped down to get the tuna treat.
    It was useless for Brandy to protest that there had been a frozen dinner, a couple of eggs, and two or three cans of soup in the house. And dry food for Sylvester. To her mother's way of thinking, that was nothing.
    “Do you want the steaks in the freezer or the refrigerator, Dear?"
    If they were for herself, one would go in the freezer, and one in the refrigerator. “And you wonder where I get my talent as a detective, Mom?” Brandy took the meat from her mother's hands and defiantly put it in the meat keeper.
    Melody Mather wasn't fazed. She put the potatoes and carrots into the vegetable bin, then turned to the last two sacks, handing Brandy one containing cleanser, toilet paper, shower soap, and laundry detergent. “You know where these things go."
    By the time Brandy had put those in her utility closet, the last sack had been emptied, and everything put away except two items. The tampons and condoms sat side by side on the kitchen counter. Melody Mather's patented interrogation method.
    All through Brandy's childhood, whenever her mother found something she thought her daughter shouldn't have, such as the $73.00 Brandy had laboriously saved up in a shoebox one and two dollars at a time, or the copy of Playgirl magazine she had once hidden under her mattress, she laid the item out in some conspicuous place and never said a word, just hovered and watched Brandy's reaction. Eventually Brandy was compelled to talk.
    It wasn't even all bad. The money was for a bike she wanted. Once her mother accepted that Brandy hadn't stolen the money, and wasn't involved in drugs or anything else illegal, they had actually had a productive talk in which her mother explained why she didn't want Brandy riding a bicycle on Cleveland's dangerous streets.
    The Playgirl incident, however, had been embarrassing and acrimonious. She had been fifteen and full of civics-class notions of freedom of speech and the press, as well as the right to privacy. Unable to answer her arguments, her mother had fallen back on the right of a parent to decide what her child could read, and finally on the old accusations that her daughter was so irresponsible that she had let her own brother get killed.
    That was the first time Brandy had come out at the end of an argument believing her mother wrong,