The Class Menagerie jj-4 (17 page)

Jane set the tray of crackers and cheese down and sat next to Mel. "Are you telling us you think that's what happened? That somebody went out for another reason and found her?"

"No, I think it's extremely unlikely. But it
is
possible. I'm just pointing out that the physical evidence doesn't conclusively have to do with the murder."

Putting us in our imaginative places,
Jane thought.

"What about our first premise, that Lila was killed because of her blackmail attempts?" Shelley asked.

"Well, that's a matter of endless interviews and intuition, not physical facts," Mel said.

"Of course it is, but what do you think?" Shelley insisted. She was coming close to asking what she really wanted to know, which was what additional information Mel had about the suspects.

"I think — personal opinion only — that it's extremely likely, in view of the fact that she attempted extortion on at least one of the women and hinted at secret information about others. But there are a lot of reasons for murder, some of them pretty loony."

"Loony—" Jane said. "Have any of them ever been hospitalized for any mental aberrations? I mean, what if it was just a crazy act with no motive?"

Mel treated this question with the minimum respect due it. "If that's the case, we'll eventually dig far enough to discover it."

"Eventually," Shelley said. "It's a shame they all live elsewhere. It will make it harder to pursue, won't it? What other motives have you looked at?"

"Inheritance is one of the first we consider," Mel said. "But it doesn't appear that she had very much to leave anyone; so far it's just a lot of bills, and if there's anything left, it's to go to a second cousin who's been in France for the whole month and hardly seemed to remember who Lila was."

"What about revenge?" Jane asked, nibbling one of the crackers. It really did have a slightly charred taste. "What if she'd done something really nasty to one of the Ewe Lambs years ago and this was just the first time the murderer had gotten close enough to her to do her in?"

She could see from Mel's expression that he hadn't considered this, but was rejecting it as fast as he thought about it. "But if you wanted to kill her and get away with it, you'd make sure you
weren't
known to be anywhere near," he said.

Shelley said, "Listen, this is really dumb and I know it, so don't jump all over me, but — I was reading a book last week about a man who killed himself, but set it up to look like his wife had done it to revenge

himself on her for something. That's not remotely possible, is it? Lila was certainly nasty enough to want to see somebody else suffer along with her. And she was apparently at a low point in her life if she was reduced to committing extortion. And remember, the extortion attempts weren't going well for her. If this reunion was her very last attempt to hang onto her life and it blew up in her face—? After all, she did die where Ted killed himself so long ago. In the carriage house."

Jane looked uneasily at Mel, afraid he was going to dismiss Shelley's theory in terms that would put them back to
Mrs. Nowack
and
Detective VanDyne
with her smoothing feathers in the middle.

But he came through like a champ.

"It's possible and the psychology might account for a lot," he said, "but the physical evidence refutes it. She might have struck herself in the temple with the paint can hard enough to inflict a severe wound, but then she'd have had to remain conscious to wipe the fingerprints off the can, as somebody did. And then smother herself. That one's pretty hard to do. Not impossible, of course. She could have forced her own face into the rags, but then she'd have been facedown, not faceup as she was found."

Shelley smiled at him. It was the first time Jane could remember Shelley's actually smiling sincerely at Mel. "Thanks," she said. "Just to be positive— I don't suppose the boys who discovered her could have turned her over?"

"They were so traumatized by merely seeing her, I don't think you could have gotten them to touch her if you'd put guns to their heads."

They sat quietly for a moment; Shelley was gazing into her cocoa, now cold and getting a nasty skin. Jane munched another disgusting cracker.

"Aren't you going to ask me?" Mel finally said, breaking the silence.

"Ask you what?" Jane said.

"What I've learned about the Ewe Lambs — God, what a name! I can hardly stand to say it. It's like being forced to order something by a cute name in a restaurant."

"We didn't think you'd tell us," Shelley said.

Mel took a cracker, bit into it, and looked unpleasantly surprised.

"Oh, just spit it out in this napkin," Jane said.

He swallowed melodramatically and patted her thigh in a
very
friendly manner. "Ladies, you know I'm not supposed to share information with you, but in light of the fact that you were both at the bed and breakfast that night, and because you have occasionally provided me with some interesting information that helped in solving a case—"

"Helped!" Jane exclaimed. "We solved—"

He held up his hand again.

"You could be a crossing guard if you get tired of detecting," Jane said. "Okay, I'll shut up. Just tell us what you know."

"Understood that this is absolutely confidential?" he asked.

They both nodded.

"For now and forever?"

Jane laughed. "Cross our hearts and hope to die. Maybe there's a Ewe Lamb Oath we could take, too. Shelley? Like, I promise I'll never go ba-a-a-ack on my word—"

"I thought you'd gotten over that," Shelley said coldly.

"I thought I had, too. Must have just been a momentary relapse. So, we promise, Mel."

He said, "As I've told Jane before, my staff can only easily find out about people if they've had a bout with the law, either an arrest or a lawsuit—"

"And one of the Ewe Lambs has a record?"

"One has a record. And one has a lawsuit. Your Pooky."

"Oh, we know about that," Shelley said. "She sued the man who ruined her face and got a big settlement."

"That's not the suit I mean. It was a very nasty divorce proceeding that involved criminal charges. Deborah—"

"You mean Pooky?" Jane asked.

"Yes," Mel replied. "I just
can't
call a grown human being 'Pooky.' Deborah was married to a man who had adopted his previous wife's son. When Deborah married him, she also adopted the child. Reading between the lines, it appears that when she lost her looks, her husband lost interest in her, but became very interested in her money from the settlement. They divorced and it went well enough until it came to custody of the child. Since the boy wasn't genetically related to either of them, it seemed likely that Deborah would get custody. But at the last moment, her soon-to-be-ex-husband filed charges against her, claiming she'd sexually abused the boy."

"No!" Jane said, horrified. "That's impossible!"

"The judge agreed. It seems to have been a pretty blatant last-ditch effort to get at her money through the boy. The husband was trying to claim alimony, child support, and psychological damages on behalf of the child."

"What a jerk!" Shelley said. "Poor old Pooky! As if life hadn't treated her badly enough."

"As I say, the judge agreed. But he decided that the

boy should go with the adoptive father, with whom he'd lived before the marriage anyway. The husband didn't get a penny. But he did get the child."

"Yes!" Jane said suddenly. "I remember now! Lila said something about Pooky understanding the psychology of boys. I thought it was a dig about Pooky as she was in high school, implying that she slept around, but I'll bet that's what she meant. And the accusation still stands in the legal record," Jane said. "Available to anyone who knows how and where to look."

"Like Lila," Shelley said. "Poor Pooky…."

20

Mike came downstairs, said hello to Shelley and Mel, got a carton of orange juice, and went back upstairs. When he was out of earshot, Shelley spoke to Mel again. "You mentioned somebody having a record?"

He nodded. "Avalon — and Jane wasn't so far off."

"Drug kings in the Ozarks?"

"Not drug kings, but there was definitely a handoff of some kind that went on at their house. The drug squad had been following a dealer. Avalon and her husband claimed to have no knowledge of what was going on and there wasn't any proof that they were directly involved except to allow the parties into their home. Still, the foster children were all taken out of their keeping for a year. They were charged, but the charges were later dropped for lack of evidence. They got the kids back eventually. Some kids. I don't know if it was the same ones."

"So Lila could have had knowledge of this, through the legal records," Jane said.

"But why would she go after Avalon?" Shelley asked. "Supporting all those kids, she can't have much money. And she runs a little craft store and lives off in the hills someplace…."

"There are mansions in those hills these days," Mel said. "And if Lila believed that Avalon and her husband were still involved in drug traffic, she could

have assumed they had lots and lots of money. As they,

might. Has she ever talked about her house? How she

lives?"

Jane and Shelley exchanged questioning looks. "Not around me," Shelley said.

"Me neither," Jane added. "The only time I heard her mention her home was something about having to build a ramp to the porch to accommodate a wheelchair. But she didn't indicate anything about the size of the house."

"You've found nothing on Crispy or Mimi?" Shelley asked Mel.

"Lots of divorces in the first case. Nothing about Mimi except a huge number of parking tickets, which isn't unusual in a college town."

Jane's mind immediately went to Mike. Did this mean she was going to have to budget for parking tickets when he went away to school next year? Who would have thought?

"How about Kathy?" Shelley prodded..

Mel shrugged. "Nothing. Pillars of Oklahoma society. Wild kids in some trouble. One driving without a license charge. Destruction of property after a drinking party. Charges dropped as all the parents made restitution. I don't think you can even embarrass a Southerner with that kind of thing. Lots of them consider it the norm."

"Who's that leave? Only Beth," Jane said.

"She's easy to find out about, but there's nothing questionable," Mel said. "Highly respected judge. A list of civic involvements as long as your arm. All at one remove, it seems."

"What do you mean?" Jane asked.

"Just that she serves on advisory boards, rather than

getting out into the trenches. But that's not so strange in her position. No debts, no marriages or divorces, lives modestly, doesn't drink or smoke. Employs a housekeeper, a gardener, and several law clerks."

"It sounds like you've gone beyond the basics on her," Jane said suspiciously.

"Only because it seemed if blackmail were the trigger, she was a logical one to blackmail. But if anybody found out something to her disadvantage, they've got better investigators than we have," Mel said.

"It didn't seem that Lila was terribly skilled at investigating, just good enough to scratch the surface," Jane said.

"We'd know better about that if we had her note-

book," Mel said sourly.

"Mel, I told you—"

"I'm not criticizing. Just saying it might have been helpful."

"Or maybe not. If Crispy's.telling the truth, there wasn't anything valuable in it."

" 'If is the operative word. Do you think she's lying?" he directed this question at Shelley.

"You mean, is she capable of lying?" she replied. "Probably. I didn't know her well in high school and I certainly don't know her well now. But why would she need to? If she'd already read the contents, why wouldn't she have been willing to turn the notebook over?"

"Maybe it had something detrimental to her in it." Jane said.

"She could have just torn that page out, if that were the case," Shelley said.

"But that would have been obvious, if she'd turned it over to Mel with one page missing."

"She could have said it was missing when she found

the notebook and while I might not have believed her, I wouldn't have been able to prove otherwise," Mel said.

"Let's assume somebody did take it from her," Jane said. "Where could they have hidden it?"

"It would be easy to hide something in a big, old house like that," Shelley said.

"But we found the pen set easily," Jane said.

"We were meant to," Shelley reminded her. "It was just lying there in an otherwise empty wastebasket. If somebody had really meant to hide it, we might never have found it."

"Why haven't you gotten a search warrant to look for the notebook?" Jane asked Mel.

Mel sighed. "Because they aren't that easy to get, even in a murder case. You see, the crime scene team may define the crime scene as broadly as they want at first. It could include the entire house, the whole block, for that matter. And we can keep the scene sealed for as long as we need to. The law gives us a lot of latitude. If we'd known about this notebook at the time, we could have searched anybody or anyplace for it.

"But once the team leaves the area, going back to search puts you in a legal swamp. The defense attorney, when it gets to trial, makes mincemeat of the evidence when you've had to go back for it. That's why we have to be so thorough to start with. Add it's why judges are very reluctant to issue search warrants after the crime scene's been unsealed."

"Besides," Jane said wearily, "people had been in and out by the time I remembered to tell you about it. I'm really sorry."

"It might not matter," Mel said generously.

Shelley stood up and stretched. "I've got to go home."

Mel got up, too. He gestured questioningly at the refrigerator. Jane said, "Help yourself. Didn't you get dinner?".

"Not to speak of," he said, opening the refrigerator door and staring in a bewildered manner at the contents.

"Shelley, what's the plan for tomorrow?" Jane asked.

"Oh, I'm glad you asked. I'd forgotten to tell you about breakfast. You don't need to help Edgar in the morning."