“What about Edna? What if she outlives both of you?" Jane asked bluntly.
“Oh, she's entirely likely to. She is, in her own words, a tough old bird. Edna also has quite a nest egg of her own. She inherited from a spinster aunt who was a whiz at investing. And Edna's no slouch at it herself. That's the only thing she's interested in on the computer. She buys and sells stocks through it. I guess that's really another reason we aren't as upset as we might be. If both Benson and I truly became infirm, we could give this place to a nature reserve and live on Edna's money. She'd like nothing better. She keeps begging us to let her buy something in Chicago and move back."
“And you won't consider it?"
“Not now. Probably not ever, if we can help it. Edna's marvelous and wouldn't lord it over us that we were financially dependent on her, but we don't want that. And it all comes back, in the end, to the fact that we love it here. And we love our independence, even if we have to fight Edna for it," she added with a grin. "So are you interested in seeing the stock program?”
The discussion was clearly over.
“Actually, I'd rather see what kind of games you've got," Jane said.
“A woman after my own heart," Allison said. "Most of them are shareware. I'll make you copies and you can mail checks to the creators of the ones you like. I've got a great graph program, too. Do you knit or needlepoint?"
“Both. Badly.”
Allison laughed. "Well, I can help you make absolutely beautiful charts. What you do with the actual work is your own problem.”
Two hours passed like minutes. Jane went away with a dozen disks with new games and a promise from Allison that if Jane would bring her laptop back later in the day, she'd see if she could figure out a few problems Jane was having with it.
“I have to take a nap after lunch," Allison said, "but anytime after two would be fine.”
Jane went down to the dining room, where people were just beginning to drift in for lunch. Seeing no sign of Shelley, she decided to take her disks back to the cabin before she lost them. It was starting to drizzle and there was, once again, the faint, distant rumble of thunder. So much for bird-watching.
Shelley was in the cabin, changing her sneakers for boots.
“Make anything naughty out of leather?" Jane asked.
“Not unless you consider an eyeglass case naughty," Shelley said. "It was fun, though. The guy teaching it had all sorts of neat stuff to show us. I fell in love with a zippered notebook. I figure by the time I took lessons, bought all the materials and tools, and wasted half of them learning how to do this, I could have a really great notebook like it for just under two thousand dollars."
“Sounds like a bargain to me," Jane said, taking. a towel to her hair, which had gotten damp on the walk back.
“Yeah, so I bought his for ninety," Shelley said. "Take a look."
“Wow, that is neat," Jane said. The notebook, a deep reddish brown leather, had a deeply incised paisleylike pattern all over it. "What are you going to keep in it?"
“You sure know how to ruin a good mood," Shelley said. "I have no idea. Important papers of some kind. Of course, if they're really important, it means I'd have to keep the notebook in the safe and not enjoy it."
“Then keep something really trivial in it.”
"Nothing in my life is trivial, Jane. You know that. So what did you and Allison do?" Shelley asked, fondling her new notebook lovingly.
“Lots of computer things. She gave me a bunch of games to try out. And she's going to dink around with the laptop this afternoon to see if she can't kill that weird error message I keep getting. She's really good at this computer stuff. She's good at a lot of stuff, come to think of it. She's got a quilt set up in their big living room upstairs. Reds and greens. Really vivid, with what looks like thousands of little squares that form interlocking rectangles. She told me something interesting about this property, too.”
Jane outlined the main points of the environmentalists' actions and the results.
Shelley was making little yelps of outrage as Jane spoke. "That's outrageous! It can't be legal! Why, I'd fight that tooth and nail.”
Jane nodded. "You certainly would. And you'd probably win. But they aren't going to fight it. It's too expensive. They'd have to bring it to a countywide vote and promote their view pretty much by themselves. They don't have the money, and Allison's health wouldn't permit campaigning. Or they could flaunt the law and spend the rest of their lives and a fortune watching it grind through the courts. Besides, they don't mind that much."
“What? They can't improve their business and their investment's been rendered valueless and they don't mind? Nobody with the cash to have bought this in the first place can be that laid-back."
“They are. Allison says they have no children to consider. And Edna seems to be pretty well off on her own. And they don't consider their investment useless. They want to live here until they die.”
Shelley shook her head. "I don't believe it. I think they've just decided this is the official line they're taking with us."
“Allison was perfectly sincere, Shelley. I'd bet my bottle of Giorgio on it."
“Maybe so, but we haven't heard Benson's version. He's a very bright, ambitious guy in spite of his aging-hippie appearance. Look at the effort he's put into this sales job on us."
“That's true."
“And nobody gave him this place to start with. He must have paid plenty for it. Or maybe his mother paid," Shelley said.
“I don't think so. Allison made clear that Edna kept offering to move them to Chicago and support them, and Allison said they wouldn't consider it."
“Where do you suppose he did get the money?" Shelley said. "He lived close to us once, didn't he say? And they were going to buy one of those houses that was supposed to go up behind our block. Those were to have been very expensive. Wonder what he did for a living."
“You've got me there. I'll see if I can find a chance to ask Allison. So I've been hiding from the group this morning. Are we still batty outcasts?"
“Nobody's said a single word to me about bodies, alive or dead," Shelley said.
“And have you thought of any new explanation?”
“I toyed with an international spy ring," Shelley said. "But it didn't work out. Couldn't figure out why anybody'd need to fake a dead car dealer. Then I considered a big drug cartel transporting drugs inside the works of new cars, but that wouldn't account for the dead car dealer coming back to life. I can't come up with any explanation that makes the least bit of sense.”
Jane put the damp towel back in the bathroom. When she came out, Shelley was standing by the glass doors overlooking the creek. "Look at this, Jane. Isn't that water getting closer to us? I don't like that."
“Hmm. Maybe. But it's still a long way below us. Don't worry. Your spiffy notebook isn't going to be washed away in a raging torrent."
“You know what I'm wondering?"
“I can guess. The same thing I am," Jane said. "Could all this stuff about the zoning restrictions have anything to do with our finding what was definitely a dead body?"
“Exactly. Or, even more likely, the environmentalists."
“How so?"
“They're trying to make the point of how much political power they can wield by ruining Benson's business. And he hasn't kept what he's doing a secret. He's invited half the county to come to these classes and demonstrations. Looks like it could be a very successful bid for the school to send their kids here and profit him considerably. That would wreck their plans, wouldn't it?"
“Okay. ."
“So what could be more discouraging to potential `investors,' which we are in a way, than to have one of us killed off?"
“So the victim was to be whoever was the last to leave, not Sam Claypool specifically?"
“Could be," Shelley muttered. "But—”