“I'm sorry. I don't know. But, by damn, I'm going to find out. We're all in danger until we know who it was and why. If someone could come in your house, murder someone, and leave right under our noses, it could happen again."
“But why would it happen again? Why did it happen this time? I just keep asking myself the same questions over and over."
“All right. Let's get organized about this. I read a lot of mystery books and I know all about motives. I'll make a list and then we'll cross them off one by one. Whichever one's left has to be the right answer."
“Somehow, I don't think it's quite that easy," Shelley disagreed. You make it sound like a computer course."
“You'll see," Jane assured her, getting out the notepad and a stub of pencil. "Since it didn't look like robbery, let's assume for the moment that somebody meant to kill her. Now, what are the reasons for murder. Greed. That's usual."
“I doubt that a cleaning lady had a vast fortune for someone to inherit, otherwise she'd own the company. And she didn't seem to be wearing a strand of emeralds or anything that I noticed."
“True, but it might have been greed for something in your house."
“But I told you, nothing was taken."
“Still, it might have been that the murderer meant to take something and just didn't get it. Suppose he'd gone in and determined to kill anybody who was there and then rob the place, and just as he killed her, he heard you coming in?”
She was immediately sorry she'd suggested it.
Shelley hugged herself. "Could I have actually been in the house with the killer? No, Jane. That doesn't work. If he didn't mind killing her, he wouldn't have minded killing me. And how would he have gotten away? If he'd jumped from a second-story window, he'd have been bound to hurt himself, and the police checked all around the house for signs of things like that. If he didn't go out the window, he'd had to have come downstairs, and I could see the stairway from the time I came in the kitchen. I wasn't looking at it, but I would have certainly noticed anyone coming down."
“Okay, cross off greed. It was just a suggestion. Reasons for murder. Greed, fear—"
“Fear of what?That woman? Would you be afraid of her?"
“Not physically. But what if she knew something the killer was afraid she'd tell?"
“Jane, you met that woman. She didn't strike me as knowing how to tell time, much less dangerous secrets. Besides, the question I asked earlier applies — why kill her at my house? Why not at her own, or on the street?"
“I don't know about the where-to-kill-her part, but think some more about the why. Just suppose that she'd been cleaning some office, though. You said she was a substitute and went all sorts of places. Suppose she learned something about a company take-over, or—"
“Happy Helpers doesn't do businesses. Only domestic jobs. I tried to get them for Paul's office."
“Some people do their business at home. Mary Ellen Revere, for instance."
“With a broken arm she can't even use? She strangles her?"
“Of course not. I didn't mean her. I was just making an example of somebody around here who has a business at home." Jane sighed. "Now who's shooting down ideas? All right.Cross off fear. What else is a motive for murder? Well, there's mercy killing, but this obviously wasn't a method of putting a loved one out of her misery. What about revenge?”
The phone rang and Jane answered somewhat impatiently. It was Laura Stapler, inviting Shelley and her and the kids to spend the night at their house. Jane had a momentary vision of being cooped up in the Staplers' house like survivors of a nuclear attack. "'That's sweet of you, Laura, but Shelley's staying here and I think we'll be fine."
“You do have the house locked up tightly, don't you? And be sure to draw the blinds. My husband could put a rush order through and have an alarm system installed for you tomorrow if you'd like. Normally it takes a week or so, but under the circumstances—"
“That's very thoughtful, but I really can't afford it."
“We could arrange for financing, thirty six months at fifteen percent."
“Laura, no, thank you!" Jane said firmly.
Sensing she'd gone too far or in the wrong direction, Laura tried to reemphasize her concern for Jane's safety without selling anything. Jane hung up after listening long enough to convince Laura that she wasn't offended. "What ghouls! Where were we? Oh, yes, revenge.""For what?"
“Who knows? Maybe Mrs. Thurgood did some awful thing to somebody and they got back at her by strangling her.”
Shelley tapped her immaculately manicured fingernails on the table, considering. "It's certainly possible. Without knowing anything about her, there's no reason to mark it off the motive list, but my instincts tell me otherwise."
“I know what you mean. Somehow she seemed too — too bland to have ever done something awful.”
The phone rang and Jane answered, afraid that Laura had thought of another safety device to peddle. A can of Mace or something. But it was Detective VanDyne. She handed the phone to Shelley and cleaned up the dinner table while Shelley talked — or rather, listened. Except for the occasional "uh-huh" or "I see," it would have seemed she was on hold.
Finally, she hung up and came back to the table. Jane poured them each coffee from a fresh pot. It was after eight, so she'd switched over to decaf.
“He wants to leave a man in the house overnight.”
"Well, he didn't say so in so many words, but the gist of it was that he has absolutely no motives or suspects yet."
“Greed, fear, mercy, revenge?Nothing?" She wondered why, with so many motives available, he hadn't found one he liked.
“No, he told me he'd spent the evening interviewing her coworkers. It seems she's a childless widow who's only lived in the area for two months and has been on welfare most of that time. Some private agency for indigent widows. Before she came here, she drove a paper route in a little farm community in Montana and taught Sunday school."
“Nobody would want or need to kill somebody like that," Jane said.
“But somebody did," Shelley reminded her.
SIX
Jane hardly slept all night. Dreams of vacuum cleaners run amok and red MGs coming out of dishwashers haunted her. At one point, a vacuum cleaner cord turned into a boa constrictor and wound itself around her. An army of identical women in blue uniforms marched in the house and changed everything and it wasn't her house anymore. When she woke before the alarm, sweating and exhausted, she could smell coffee. Shelley was already in the kitchen, puttering around silently. She had on faded jeans and a baggy pink cotton shirt that was wrinkled just enough to be trendy without looking sloppy. But for the first time Jane could remember, her friend looked tired and worried.
“Paul called from the airport," she said as she poured Jane a cup of coffee.
“I didn't hear the phone." Apparently she'd slept more soundly than she realized.
“I got it on the first ring. He got some sort of middle-of-the-night milk flight and is on his way now, after about sixteen stopovers."
“You don't have to go to the airport, do you?”
“No, he left a company car there.”
Jane took a cautious sip. Shelley's coffee had a reputation for burning the bottom out of cups. Steve used to say you had to use a blowtorch to cool it. But this time it wasn't bad. Jane dragged out a package of grocery-store donuts and offered Shelley one. They sat together in companionable silence for a few minutes, and finally Shelley sighed and brushed the donut crumbs into a neat pile in the center of her paper napkin. "So, what are you doing today?"
“Whatever you need me to do."
“I don't think I need anything, but that's sweet of you. It's all over now, or at least I hope to God it is. Don't you drive your blind children this morning?”
One of Jane's volunteer activities was to take a group of blind children from the high school to a weekly session in special techniques in daily living. "Not until Friday."
“This is Friday."