The Class Menagerie jj-4 (16 page)

Jane set down a tray and two cups of steaming cocoa. She'd even put little marshmallows in the cups. "In that case, I'll be ready with my cabinets full of previously forbidden foods. Shelley, to get back to the subject at hand — this morning Mel was asking me about the practical jokes and he did something interesting that we ought to try."

"What's that?"

"He made a list of the jokes and then went through it over and over, looking at them each time in a different way. Like, were they harmful? Who was the.victim? Could they have a meaning? Did they require advance preparation?"

"Uh-huh. And did it lead him to any. conclusion?"

"Not that I know of. Not then. But it's an interesting way of looking at things."

"Okay…?"

"So, let's do the same thing with the murder. We

need to think about this in an organized, logical way."

"All right. Where do we start?" Shelley took an extremely unladylike bite of a cracker she'd slathered with a great deal of cheese.

"Well, how about this — if we agree that Lila was killed because she was blackmailing someone—"

"Do we know that?"

Jane thought for a minute. "No, actually we don't
know
it. It just seems extremely likely."

"Likely isn't certain."

"No, but why else would somebody kill her?"

"Oh, any number of reasons, starting with the fact that she was an all-round obnoxious bitch."

"Yes, but there are a lot of those in the world, and most of them are still alive and kicking."

"Unfortunately," Shelley said with a grin.

"Okay, we can come back later to reexamine our basic premise. But for now, let's pretend that we
know
Lila was killed because she was blackmailing someone."

"Okay by me. Lead on, Sherlock." Shelley took a careful sip of her cocoa and closed her eyes appreciatively for a moment. "You have a great skill with premixed foodstuffs, Jane."

"All right. Let's look at our list of suspects," Jane went on.

"Who's on the list?"

"The Ewe Lambs," Jane said uneasily.

"And who else?"

"I don't know. Shelley, you know perfectly well it has to be one of them."

"No, I don't and neither do you."

Jane knew when she was on thin ice. "You might be right. But since we don't know who the other suspects may be, let's just talk about the ones we do know."

Shelley nodded grudgingly.

"So, let's consider first who had the opportunity."

"Anybody, I'd say. It depends on when she was killed, doesn't it? I mean, she was out in the carriage house and found after everybody was locked in. But maybe she was killed before that. Before ten-thirty."

"Then it would have to have been between nine-thirty and ten-thirty. Right?"

"She and whoever it was couldn't have gone out the kitchen door between those times, could they?" Shelley asked.

"I don't think so. Somebody or other was in the kitchen all the time. But there are doors all over the house."

"I don't think this is getting us anywhere, Jane. It needn't have taken more than a few minutes to smack her with a paint can — isn't that what somebody said happened? — and smother her. And it's not messy like stabbing or something. The murderer wouldn't have had to sneak inside and wash blood off her clothes or

anything like that. Just slip quietly back in the door she'd left by and pick up where she left off as if she'd just been to the bathroom or something."

"Hmmm—"

"By the way, Mel was back this afternoon questioning everybody again. Exact movements and times. I actually felt sort of sorry for him."

"Did he seem depressed when he got done?"

"Very. Understandably. Most of us, in our normal lives, could give a pretty good account of what we did and when. We're tied to household schedules or office schedules or whatever. But this was meant as a vacation. Everybody I know turns their mental clocks off when they're on a trip. I certainly do."

"Not only that, he's got a couple of hours of night to consider," Jane said. "When the only reasonable answer to 'where were you?' is 'in bed.' Even though it might not have been true of one of them."

"Jane, this method of yours doesn't seem to be doing us any more good than it did Mel."

"Then let's try looking at it another way. Who has the most to lose? From Lila's blackmail."

"Since we don't know what she was blackmailing each of them about—"

"No, assume for a moment that she had something truly horrendous on each of them. Who had the most to lose?"

"Everybody, I'd say. If she.knew.something really awful, awful enough to send them to prison, for example, it could be anyone."

"But I doubt that it was anything like that. The one we know about, Kathy and her secret wealth, was merely embarrassing. The rest were probably variations on that sort of thing. Unless you assume that somebody
did
have something really terrible in her

background. Gave away national military secrets or robbed a bank or the like."

"Well, I'd say probably Beth, then. She's the one whose reputation is most important to her life. But I simply cannot imagine Beth ever doing anything that would even slightly endanger her reputation."

"But it's pretty widely assumed that old Ted killed himself because she broke up with him. That could be considered a blot," Jane said.

"As you say, 'widely assumed.' It's no secret. And as you yourself reported, some of them tend to believe— or want to believe — that it was just a drunken accident that had nothing to do with her."

"Yeah… well, maybe some legal decision that she ruled on, but had some involvement with the participants that she didn't admit?"

"Can you really imagine that? She's the most self-controlled person I've ever known. I think she stands outside herself constantly saying, 'Is there any way this could be misinterpreted and if so, I won't do it.' Especially with her career, which is her life."

"You're right. Well, what about Kathy then? Suppose there was more to it than just having a lot of money. Suppose she'd been doing inside trading?"

"I think you have to be a stockbroker to be guilty of inside trading."

"I just meant that as an example. Suppose she'd been doing some kind of hanky-panky with manipulating stocks. She's certainly bright enough."

Shelley got up and poured them each another cup of cocoa. "Okay, I'll buy that. But how would Lila know?"

Jane shrugged. "I've no idea. But Lila was pretty smart, too, and she had run a detective agency. What a bizarre job that was for somebody so prim and

proper. Anyway, she knew where and how to look for information about people."

"What about the others then? Like Crispy? What would Crispy have to lose? Her life and many marriages are not only an open book, they're a book she forces on everybody who gets within shouting range."

"Bigamy?" Jane suggested.

Shelley shook her head. "They don't stone people or lock them up for that anymore. It's just a civil thing a bunch of expensive lawyers would sort out."

"What if she's not rich at all? Maybe she's dirt-poor and just putting on a show? The opposite of Kathy's act?"

"What good would it do you to blackmail a poor person?"

Jane laughed. "Good point. I'm better with imagination than logic."

"Let it loose on Pooky then," Shelley said. They'd finished the crackers and she was licking her finger and prodding bits of crumbs out of the package they'd been in.

"Pooky — okay, here goes. She won that gigantic lawsuit against the guy who wrecked her face, right? Suppose Lila knew that the guy actually hadn't done it wrong, but Pooky herself did something that made it go bad? Like they say you can't smoke after you have a face-lift or the scars won't heal right."

"I hardly think they mean you'll end up looking like Pooky if you take a drag."

Jane was getting impatient, but tried to hide it. "Shelley, it was just an example. What 'if — ah, what if she'd gone home with relatively harmless goop on her face and washed it off with something that caused a chemical reaction? If Lila knew that and threatened

to tell, Pooky's suit might have been reversed and she'd have to give the money back."

"You picture Lila spying through her bathroom window at exactly the right moment."

"Shelley, you're not playing this game right. I don't know how she'd know, but suppose she did?"

"I'll give you a real weak maybe on that one. What about Mimi?"

"Oh, Mimi's easy. Immigration authorities. What if there'd been something fishy when her parents brought the whole family to this country? Lila might have known something that would cause all of them to be in danger of being shipped back to China. As happy as Mimi is with her heritage, I don't think she's champing at the bit to go back. And she's married to a Soong. There might be something political in that."

"Like being married to a Smith. I'll give you that this one's possible. Not likely, but possible. But again, why would Mimi kill her? Wouldn't she just traipse off to a lawyer and ask him to fix things?"

"Not if it weren't fixable. Who did we leave out?"

"Avalon."

"Drugs," Jane said quickly. "Lila seemed to be hinting that Avalon had experimented with drugs in high school. But what if she meant recently? What if she meant trafficking?"

Shelley burst into laughter. "All run through a crafts boutique in the Ozarks? Jane, I adore you!"

Jane tried to be miffed, but grinned in spite of herself. "Okay, but keep in mind that you're laughing because it's so unlikely. What better cover than the most unlikely one? Tell me that!".

"Yes, yes, but it's like trying to picture Noriega with overalls and a corncob pipe."

They were still laughing when they heard a light tap on the kitchen door. They looked at each other, slightly alarmed. The kitchen clock said quarter of eleven.

"Probably one of Mike's friends," Jane said.

• She went to the door and pulled aside the curtain

before opening it. "Mel? What are you doing here?"

"I hope it's not too late. I saw your lights were on."

"Come in. Shelley and I were just pigging out."

He looked a bit disappointed at the mention of Shelley, but said, "Hello, Mrs. Nowack."

They hadn't much liked each other from the time they'd met and it was Shelley who'd insisted on being
Mrs.
Nowack.

"Come in, Detective VanDyne," she said. "And tell us all you know."

It wasn't a request, it was an order.

19

Shelley must have seen Jane's back stiffen, because she quickly said, "If you don't mind telling us, that is. And I think maybe we should be Mel and Shelley to each other. For Jane's sake, if nothing else."

Mel glanced at Jane, who gave him a "don't you dare be sarcastic" look.

"I think that's a good idea, Shelley," he said politely.

Mel sat down at the kitchen table across from Shelley and they made excruciatingly courteous small talk while Jane searched frantically through her cabinets and refrigerator to find other snacks. Hoping they couldn't see what she was doing, she sliced a tiny spot of mold off the end of a nice rectangle of sharp cheddar cheese. She dumped some Wheat Thins that were so stale she could practically bend them onto a cookie sheet and popped it into the oven.

"Jane was telling me about discussing the practical jokes with you and the method you used of looking at them in different ways," Shelley said, sounding rather formal. "We were trying it out on the murder, but Jane's imagination ran amok and we ended up with Colombian drug kings in the hills of Arkansas."

"Oh?" he said, not laughing.

Shelley recounted the theories they'd been discussing. Jane thought Shelley was trying to give him, if not information, at least a facsimile of facts, in order to persuade him to share information in return. A hopeless cause. Mel would tell them exactly as much as he wanted to and no more.

"But we started with two assumptions that I question," Shelley finished up. "The first was that Lila was killed because she was blackmailing someone and the second was that it was one of the Ewe Lambs who did it." There was query in her tone.

"On the second point, I think you can assume that," he said to Shelley's obvious displeasure. "The lab people have crawled over the house and found evidence that someone put a rock in the opening of the utility room door to hold it open. The door must have struck the rock pretty hard and there's a clear match between the door and a decorative rock."

"But—"

He put up a hand to stop her. "The door was only installed a week earlier. Edgar and Gordon had no reason to ever prop it open before your people arrived. They had the key to it, remember. So it appears that somebody went out after lockup and needed to be sure she could get back in without being detected doing so."

"There isn't an alarm that would go off?" Jane asked.

"There will be when they've got the place ready to open officially, but since you needed the space before that, there were several things undone."

Jane rescued the crackers, which were beginning to smell a little singed.

"So that means she was killed between ten-thirty when Edgar locked up and twelve-thirty or whenever the boys saw her body," Shelley said in a defeated voice. "And it means that somebody staying
in
the bed and breakfast did it."

"Probably," Mel said.

"What do you mean, probably?" Shelley demanded. "I thought that was your whole point."

"No, you're leaping to conclusions. Probably the right ones, I'll admit. All that
this proves
is that somebody went outside after ten-thirty, somebody who came back, threw or kicked the rock back into the garden, and let the door close and lock. Now, Lila obviously went out, but she didn't come back. But somebody else, in theory, could have gone out to meet her, found her already dead, and come back in."

"— or gone out for some other reason entirely," Jane put in. "Maybe didn't even go to the carriage house."

Mel nodded. " — and couldn't afford to admit it the next morning. Although I can't see why anybody would need to sneak out for any other reason. We're not talking about kids with a curfew."