"I'm sorry."
"Since the two deaths occurred so close together and right now, I think we have to assume that something in particular precipitated them. Nobody around here is a drooling maniac, so you have an otherwise normal person who has to do something terrible immediately for some reason."
"To keep the sale from going through, maybe," Jane said, nodding. "Or to make sure it does go through. The great problem is Doris. I can't imagine that there's any way that Doris's death would make the slightest difference either way."
"Unless Doris's death was suicide."
"Come on!"
"I know it seems absurd, but it is possible. Jane, we don't know anything whatsoever of her background. For all we know, she could have lived half her life in mental institutions. It's not likely, but it could be that the humiliation of that debate drove her over the edge. On the other hand, we know absolutely that Bill's death was a murder. So let's deal with him for a minute. A handful of people had a stake in the sale of the resort. Joanna again — Bill's death allows her to avoid Florida."
"It also makes her a widow."
Shelley shrugged. "Maybe she wanted to be a widow. A rich widow. Just because she crochets the ugliest afghans west of the Piedmont doesn't mean she might not have simply snapped and said to herself, "I can't stand another day with this man!" Wives have felt that way before. And Pete has any number of possible motives here, too. Bill and Joanna have no children. He and Tenny are their logical heirs. That makes them both suspects."
"But Joanna's still alive. And she's sure to inherit everything."
"According to Tenny, I remind you. Even if she does inherit everything, either Pete or Tenny might have thought they could put something over on her that they couldn't put over on Bill, who could apparently hang onto his money extraordinarily well."
"Are we still just thinking about thinking, or may I speculate?"
"Not yet. If the sale of the resort is the reason for Bill's death, we also have to consider HawkHunter."
"Oh, good. I like him as a suspect."
"Jane!"
"I didn't mean that quite as smart-alecky as it sounded. Sorry. But he is the sort of person who thrives on rousing people's emotions. A catalyst type. Maybe not directly responsible, but the person who makes other people act. Like goading Pete into punching him. Maybe he goaded Pete into killing his uncle. Think about him for a minute while I refill our coffee."
"No more for me, thanks."
When Jane got back, Shelley was deep in thought. "I don't know about HawkHunter. I see what you mean about goading people, but what about a motive of his own?"
"He's a fanatic," Jane said.
"But lots of people are fanatics about one thing or another. That doesn't make them murderers."
"What I meant is, this sale touched on his fanaticism. The tribal graves up on the hill. He could have really believed that the graves were safe from desecration only as long as Bill owned the land, because Bill respected the tribe — oops. I just proved he wouldn't murder Bill, didn't I? No, let me think. Bill was set on selling the land. Maybe HawkHunter learned from Joanna's friends in the tribe that she probably wouldn't want to sell out and leave if Bill died first. How's that?"
Shelley shook her head. "It's still just a matter of time. Joanna won't live forever. Someday the land will be sold. If not now, then later."
"But it might have been time he needed. Maybe he felt that if he only had another six months or whatever, he could prove the graves were up there. Or prove there was something illegal about the original land grant."
Shelley nodded, but without enthusiasm. "I guess that's possible."
The phone rang. "Hi, Mel," Jane said after she'd answered it.
"Are we going to dinner and the big dance? Or is it canceled because of Bill's death?"
"Oh, I'm sure Joanna has insisted that it not be canceled. Have you managed to learn anything more?"
"A few useless bits and pieces. We'll talk about it at dinner, okay? Can you be ready in fifteen minutes?"
"Sure," she said, glancing in a nearby mirror at her nap-crumpled hair and thinking, No way!
"Say, Janey, I hate to mention this, but I'm starting to wonder if this thin air is doing something to Mike's brain. When he came in this afternoon, he suddenly burst into laughter for no reason at all, then wouldn't explain it."
"What were you doing when he came in?" Jane asked, suspicious.
"Just looking around on the floor of the closet for a missing sock. Why?"
"You weren't humming anything, were you?" She giggled. "Never mind. I'll explain later."
She hung up. "Shelley, talk fast. Mel's on his way over. Girls!" she yelled down the hallway. "We're leaving in a few minutes. Get ready."
"Okay," Shelley said, garnering up cups and saucers and setting them in the sink. "The third possibility, which I mention only for form's sake, is that the death or deaths have nothing to do with anything we know about."
"A ripe field of inquiry," Jane said. "Are we finally through getting ready to think?"
"I believe so."
"So when do we do the real thinking?"
"Oh," Shelley said airily, "we'll let our collective subconscious work on that while we eat dinner. First dibs on the bathroom."
Chapter 17
Mel and the boys arrived shortly, and while they all waited with varying degrees of impatience for Katie and Denise to get ready, the boys took Willard outside for a run in the snow. "Poor old Willard," Jane said. "He knows how to pee downwind in a Chicago gale, but he can't figure out how to manage with snow up to his shoulders."
"That's one of the many things I've always admired about Willard," Mel said. "That peeing-downwind trick."
"What did you learn from the sheriff?" Jane asked, ignoring the sarcasm.
"Nothing of any real use," Mel admitted. "There's no question, of course, of finding footprints. For one thing, it had snowed lightly after the snowman was built, and that pretty well obliterated any marks. And by the time you, half the skiers, and all the police had stumbled around, there was no hope left."
"I wouldn't think snow would hold footprints anyway. Up here in the mountains, it's so powdery that the least wind must make it move around like sand," Shelley said. "What else?"
"Plinkbarrel, or whatever his damned name is, says there were wool fibers in the snow that had been packed around the body. From mittens, he speculated. They didn't match anything the victim was wearing."
"Ah! That sounds helpful," Jane said.
Mel shook his head. " 'Fraid not. The sheriff, or more likely one of his minions, checked out the stuff in that lost-and-found room and discovered the mittens there. Still damp. And the insides of fuzzy wool mittens won't hold fingerprints, I'm sorry to say."
Jane thought for a minute. "Doesn't that imply premeditation? I mean, a deliberate plan to murder him, not just a momentary rage? Before murdering Bill, somebody took the mittens that couldn't be traced to himself or herself and then returned them later."