Free Confession Is Murder by Peg Cochran

around in the refrigerator.
    “A minute ago you had a stomachache.”
    “I don’t anymore, and now I’m hungry.”
    And now I have a stomachache, Lucille thought as she poured cake batter into a pan and slid it into the oven.

Chapter 5
     
     
    Lucille carried the cake out to the car and put it down on the hood while she fished her keys out of her purse.
    She transferred the cake to the passenger seat, plugged in Little Richard, and put the car in gear. She was feeling jittery and hit the gas a little too hard. The car blasted backward, and the cake nearly slid off its perch. Lucille put out a hand to steady it.
    Mrs. Espoza was out front again, dragging a rake across her scraggly lawn, and looked up as Lucille shot past. Lucille waved and then glanced at her own property. She’d have to do some raking herself. Usually Frank did it, but that was all changed now. She could hardly ask him to come over and help under the circumstances. She sighed. Flo thought she was being stupid and stubborn, but she couldn’t help it. She was still hurting too much. She couldn’t even bring herself to think about the possibility that the separation might be permanent.
    And now there was all this stuff with Bernadette to worry about. Sometimes it seemed like it was just one thing after another.
    Connie lived a couple of blocks away on Elmwood Avenue. She and Joseph had bought their small Cape Cod right after they married. Joseph kept up the outside real nice and had recently spent a month of Sundays on a ladder, slapping on a fresh coat of beige paint. It made Lucille sad when she thought about it. She wished Frankie had found the time to give their house a bit of a touch-up, too—the paint was starting to peel real bad in the back where the sun hit it.
    Connie’s walk was swept perfectly clean, Lucille noticed. She just never found the time to do that sort of thing herself, what with cooking and shopping and keeping up the inside of the house. If Bernadette would learn to pick up after herself and at least put her dishes in the dishwasher, it would help, but Lucille wasn’t holding her breath.
    She pressed the bell and waited. She could hear a musical chime echoing somewhere deep inside the house. No answer. She rang again and waited several minutes, then smacked herself on the forehead. Sheesh! Here she had forgotten that Wednesday was Connie’s day at the beauty parlor, so of course she wasn’t home. She was probably out running errands before her appointment at the Clip and Curl.
    Wednesday already, Lucille thought as she got back into her car. A whole week gone by since Joseph’s death. It was hard to believe. She glanced at her watch. Maybe she ought to go see that neighbor of Angela’s, seeing as how she was only a couple of blocks away. She could always catch up with Connie afterward at the beauty parlor.
    Lucille crawled down the street, her foot on the brake, looking for the neighbor Angela had told her about. The problem was, did Angela mean the neighbor to the right of her if you were facing her house, or to the right if you were looking out from inside? Because it made a big difference.
    All the houses were old but well maintained—starched lace curtains in this window, a pot of bright yellow zinnias on that doorstep. There was Angela’s house in the middle of the block. She had a large pumpkin by her front door with the face drawn on in colored markers. Lucille didn’t bother with pumpkins anymore—not now that Bernadette was all grown up. Somehow she just never had the time.
    Too bad she hadn’t thought to call Angela at work before she left. And she didn’t have one of them cell phones like everyone else carried around. She couldn’t see the point of the extra expense. Flo had suggested telling the neighbor she was doing a survey about how people liked JoFra’s services. That seemed to make the most sense. She had a pad of paper and a pen in the glove compartment she could take along with her to make it