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thought I had Mother’s ear and that she’d actually listen to me.  He looked crushed when I told him that Mother had made a point of never listening to anything I said.  Anyway, he made me so uncomfortable with this anger he was displaying that I decided not to call him back to do the yard work.  I don’t really want someone with a temper hanging out around Noah,” said Joan.
    Myrtle said, “Makes sense to me.”  She was still thinking back to the big bag of overflowing trash that had been on the Whitlows’ front porch.
    “Do you know any yardmen who could help me out?” asked Joan.
    Myrtle laughed.  “I like you too much to foist my Dusty on you.  And Miles still manages to do his own yard somehow.”
    “Dusty isn’t all that bad,” said Miles.  “At least he’s not as bad as Puddin.”
    “Yes, Dusty’s wife, Puddin, cleans my house for me.  Although cleaning is an exaggeration.  She never actually accomplishes more than pushing the dust from one side of a table to another.  But Dusty does a fair job on the yard when he actually comes.  It’s hard to get him to come over, though.  When you call him, he yowls that it’s too wet to mow, even if it hasn’t rained in months.”
    “Sounds like a problem I don’t need,” said Joan with a grimace.  “I’ll keep looking out for somebody.”
    Myrtle was trying to figure out how to get off the yardmen conversation and back to the murder when Joan suddenly looked penitent.  “Oh, shoot.  I completely forgot to make sure you’re doing all right, Miss Myrtle.  I hear that you were actually the person who discovered the body.” She said it very matter-of-factly, looking steadily at Myrtle behind those thick lenses.
    Myrtle’s eyes widened over the use of the word body instead of mother .  “Yes, I’m afraid I did.  Along with Miles and your father, of course.  It was quite a shock.  But I’m so glad that you weren’t the one to discover her, Joan.  We saw you arrive there, but knew you’d left.”
    Joan flushed.  “I didn’t behave very well that night.  Mother and I have never been close.  She never really understood me.  She thought I should have been the Magnolia Queen, snagged the perfect, wealthy husband, and started being some kind of society matron.  Instead, I married a plumber for love. The love didn’t last for very long.”  She shrugged.  “I was a huge disappointment to her.”
    Myrtle wanted to pooh-pooh that statement, but she knew it wouldn’t ring true.  “But you did come to your mother’s party when she asked you to.  And I know she was proud as punch of Noah.”
    “I didn’t want to go, though.  I had a million things to do at home, instead.  I had to cut out construction paper shapes for my preschool kids the next day, do laundry, clean the kitchen—and run errands, too.  I was out of bread, and Noah and I always pack sandwiches for lunch.  But this time Mother really pushed me to come.  I went, but I decided to take advantage of the fact that I had someone to watch Noah for me and I ran off to at least get the stuff I needed from the store,” said Joan.
    “And you never made it back to the drop-in?” asked Myrtle.
    “Well, I had refrigerated items, so I ran back home to put those things away.  While I was there, I thought I could get started cutting out the shapes for preschool and doing the housework.  I know it was bad of me, but Mother made me so angry.  The next thing I knew, someone from the police was at my door, telling me about Mother’s death,” Joan shrugged, looking away. 
    Miles gave Myrtle a quick glance that told her he was thinking the same thing she was—Joan was keeping a secret.
     

Chapter Seven
     
    The next morning, Myrtle picked up the phone and called Sloan Jones, her editor at the Bradley Bugle .  It was time to find out more about this reporter he’d been talking about at the drop-in.
    “ Bugle ,” drawled Sloan, sounding as if he might be munching