Silence Of The Hams (16 page)

“No. A bigot is a bigot is a bigot. Ugh! What a thoroughly, bone-deep nasty person he is. Why did you make us do that?“

“To see if we could learn anything, of course.“

“Did we?“ Shelley asked with disgust. “Anything we wanted to know?”

Jane thought for a minute. “Only that he wasn’t great chums with Stonecipher—“

“The man’s never been chums with anyone. Who could stand him for more than five minutes?“

“—and that he didn’t seem to know who Emma Weyrich was.”

Shelley waved this away, still furious. “Come on, Jane, if you thought you could get away with pretending you didn’t even know her, wouldn’t you? Not you, of course, but if you were he?“

“That’s a hideous thought. Being him,“ Jane said.

15

Shelley arrived at six-thirty for her ride in Mike’s truck. Mike had to show them how everything worked, as if they weren’t capable of figuring it out themselves. “Where are we going?“ Shelley asked when they pulled out of the driveway.

“There are a couple houses over in the fancy new subdivision just to the west open today. If it’s not too late, I thought we might go gawk,“ Jane replied.

“Thinking of moving?“ Shelley asked with a laugh.

“No way on earth. But I like to torture myself with the idea of clean closets and new kitchens. No, the only way I’d leave my house is on a gurney. You know, I cleaned out the upstairs hall closet last week. Took every single thing out, threw half of it away, and the half I kept wouldn’t fit back in. What bizarre law of physics makes closets that way?“

“I don’t know. But I’ve experienced it myself. Things seem to fluff up just by being taken out and handled. Somebody’s probably got a million-dollar government grant to study it as we speak.”

They stopped at a light, and a car full of teenagers pulled up next to them, admiring the truck and laughing hysterically at the incongruity of the middle-aged passengers. “Feel a little silly?“ Shelley asked Jane.

“Wait until we get to the show house and the realtor runs around turning off lights and locking the doors,“ Jane said with a grin.

They were too late and doors were already locked and lights off when they arrived, so they contented themselves with driving around looking at the outsides of the new homes and imagining what wonders might be within.

“I’ve been thinking all afternoon about that old jerk Hanlon,“ Shelley confessed as they stopped in front of an enormous house with elaborate landscaping. “Imagine still holding a grudge against Roosevelt more than half a century later. That’s world-class rancor. I want to know what you were grinning about like a Cheshire cat while he was ranting.”

Jane told her about her vision of neighbors meeting to think up rumors to upset him. “An abandoned hunting lodge, way out in the country, I think,“ she said, giggling.

Shelley laughed. “A special knock and a password. Like ‘New Deal.’ “

“ ‘Long live the NRA,’ “ Jane suggested with a laugh.

“I hate to admit it, but as much as I’d like to see Foster Hanlon blamed for almost anything,“ Shelley said, “I can’t believe he was responsible for Emma’s death. Or even the business of pushing the rack over on Stonecipher. Both of those events were messy. And Hanlon’s too fastidious to be involved in anything messy.”

Jane had been studying the lawn of the house they were parked in front of while Shelley talked. “And they both took a bit of strength. Not a lot, but he seems so frail. No, I think if he were going to kill someone, he’d just talk to them until they had a stroke out of sheer frustration.“

“Interesting, though, that he made no bones about not liking Stonecipher.“

“Oh, he speaks his mind, all right. I think he’s so used to people being offended by what he says that it would never cross his mind that he might actually endanger himself with his opinions. Imagine going through life with people looking shocked or offended or edging away from you every time you expressed one of your opinions. Wouldn’t you catch on eventually that your opinions were pretty nasty?“

“I don’t think people like him care,“ Shelley said. “They’re so convinced that they’re right. There’s a sort of reforming zeal that appears to motivate them. He probably imagines that they are shocked when he speaks because they’d never thought about it from his view and are going to go home and change their ways, thanks to him.“

“But he must not have any friends at all.“

“Oh, I’m sure he does. Other awful people who agree with him that the world is going to hell in a handbasket and if people would only listen to them, everything would be okay. It would only take a couple others like that to make you feel you were part of a very special, select group. In fact, their very exclusivity probably appeals to them.”

Jane sighed. “I guess so. But it’s so depressing. Shelley, how would you ever mow this lawn? Look at the slope of it.“

“If you could afford to live here, you could afford gardeners. Or a flock of sheep, for that matter. Hey! Let’s start a rumor that we’re going to get sheep to do our lawns!“ She rummaged in her purse for a piece of gum, then started to put the wrapper in the ashtray. “No, I can’t be the first to sully a pristine ashtray.“

“There’s a paper bag on the floor,“ Jane said. “See what’s in that.”

Shelley picked it up and looked. “Trash. Good.“ She popped the gum wrapper in. “Isn’t that nice that he’s keeping it so clean?“

“I give it a week,“ Jane said.

They headed back home, where Mike met them in the driveway. He must have been watching for them from the front window. “How’d you like it? Doesn’t it drive great?“ he said, and tried casually to look at the odometer to see how far they’d gone.

“Great, Mike. Has a lot of power out on the highway,“ Jane said. “It doesn’t even shimmy until you get up to about a hundred and ten miles an hour.”

He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, sure, Mom. Like you’ve ever gone over fifty-five.“

“What are you doing here?“ Jane asked. “I thought you and Scott were double-dating.“

“Yeah, but I asked him to pick me up last so I could see what you thought of the truck.“

“So you could see when I brought it back, you mean,“ Jane said, smiling. Then to Shelley: “That low, rumbling sound you hear is the generations rolling over.“

“Hey, Mom, you won’t care if I put the truck in the garage and leave the station wagon out, will you?“ Mike asked, polishing off an invisible spot On the hood with his shirt tail.

“Oh, no. Not at all. About sixteen more raindrops and the station wagon will become one hundred percent rust and just be an orange spot on the driveway. Maybe I could park it over the pothole and the non-degradable bits will fill in the hole.“

“Does that mean no?“ Mike asked.

“That’s what it means. If you’d clean out the other half of the garage, you could park it there.“

“Mom! The other half of the garage is full of junk.“

“Yes, and you now have the ideal vehicle for taking it all to the dump,“ Jane said. “Shelley, can you come in?“

“After I tell Paul I’m home.”

Jane went inside, carrying Mike’s small paper sack of trash. The phone was ringing. She reached for it seconds before Katie raced into the kitchen and skidded to a stop.

“Janey, have you had dinner?“ Mel asked. “Not exactly. Want to come over for a sandwich? I pillaged the grocery store.“

“I thought you’d never ask. Five minutes,“ he said.

He and Shelley arrived at the same time. Jane had dragged out sandwich stuff, to which Mel applied himself as if he hadn’t eaten in days. The women waited as patiently as they could for him to finish eating, telling him about their visit with Foster Hanlon.

The minute he swallowed his last bite of sandwich, Jane said, “So how’s the investigation of Emma’s death going?“

“Got any cookies?“ he asked. She produced 190 two different packages of store-bought pastries. “A nightmare,“ he said, picking an oatmeal-raisin cookie and getting up to pour himself a glass of milk. “There was an open house two doors down from Weyrich’s apartment from eleven to two. Somebody’s retirement party. All sorts of people up and down the hallway. And a couple next to her on the other side had a garageless garage sale going on until three. That hallway must have looked like a couple of great ethnic migrations colliding. About all I’ve got is two more long lists of names with a few that overlap with the deli opening list and are probably pure coincidence.“

“Nobody saw anyone going into Emma’s apartment?“ Jane asked.

“Quite the contrary. A lot of them saw somebody go into her apartment—or maybe the one next door. And I can’t blame them for not being sure. The hallway’s so anonymous. The only descriptions that might help are one of a woman who sounds a lot like Rhonda Stonecipher. But she says she was home all afternoon and Tony Belton says he was with her. I guess they could both be lying.“

“She’s a type anyway,“ Shelley said. “Any well-dressed, well-groomed, rich-looking woman of the same age and coloring could be mistaken for her.“

“The other description we got of someone who actually might have gone into the apartment sounds quite a lot like your friend LeAnne Doherty,“ Mel said.

Jane sighed. “I was afraid of that.“ She and Shelley told him about their odd conversation with LeAnne at the grocery store.

“But she didn’t say she’d been there?“ Mel asked when they had stopped talking.

“She didn’t
say
anything, just asked a lot of strange questions. Like how well Jane knew you and what you’d told her,“ Shelley said. “And what you’d found in the apartment.“

“It wasn’t what she said so much as her manner,“ Jane added. “She was very nervous. White-knuckled and high-pitched. But Mel, you can’t really suspect her.“

“Why not? Because you like her?“ he asked, taking another cookie.

“No. Because she isn’t the least bit canny.“

“Jane,“ he said with impatience, “criminals can be pretty dumb. That’s one of the reasons they get caught so often. In fact, lots of times they seem to almost go out of their way to blab about the crime and make themselves look suspicious. A surprising number of them actually make scrapbooks of the clippings about the crime.“

“Mel, don’t say that. I don’t want it to be LeAnne,“ Jane admitted. “She’s a bit dim, but really nice and she’s had a hard enough time of it the last few years.”

Mel took his empty milk glass to the sink and rinsed it out. “Okay. If it makes you feel better, I’m inclined to doubt she’s the perp anyway. At least on the basis of what we know now.“

“Which is?“

“The pathology boys say their first impression is that Weyrich died between one and three. The red-haired woman who might have been your friend LeAnne was seen around noon.“

“Thank goodness!“ Jane said.

“Now, now! I knew you’d do that if I told you,“ Mel said regretfully. “It doesn’t let her off the hook. Not completely. For one thing, she might have come back. For another, the lab people are basing their preliminary findings on body temperature and it’s not all that reliable, especially under the circumstances.“

“What circumstances?“ Shelley asked.

“The apartment was air-conditioned,“ Mel said. “And it was set as cold as it can be. We have no idea if the murderer turned it down for some reason and the apartment gradually got colder and colder, or whether Weyrich always kept it cold in there. That alone could account for the missing hour. And there’s another factor—she had one of those caller identification things on her phone. She got a call at five minutes after noon that she apparently didn’t answer because there’s a dial tone on her answering machine at the same time. Maybe she saw who was calling and didn’t answer. But maybe she was already dead.”

“Who was the call from?“ Jane asked eagerly.

Mel smiled at her. “A roofing and siding company. Sorry.“

“Mel, how are you ever going to figure this out?“ Shelley asked. “It seems like such a huge, amorphous wad of information.“

“Slowly. Carefully. Bit by tiny bit,“ he said grimly. “And without any interference from you two if I can manage it.”

Jane and Shelley ignored this comment. “Do you think the two incidents are connected?“ Shelley asked. “Emma’s death and Stone-cipher’s?“

“Maybe. When two people from one small office die within a couple days of each other, one by murder and one under strange circumstances, that has to be a possibility,“ he said.

“Isn’t there physical evidence from either one?“ Jane asked. “Fibers, fingerprints, blood drops, that kind of thing?“

“Tons in Emma’s case, ninety-nine percent of which will turn out to be entirely irrelevant,“ he said. “And the same is true at the deli. But eventually it’ll fall together.”

Jane gave him A Look. “You’re not telling us everything, are you?”

He just smiled back. “Am I supposed to? How’s Mike liking his new truck?“ he asked, signifying that police confidences were over.16 Shelley called first thing in the morning. “The paper says Stonecipher’s funeral is this morning. Are we going?“

“Shelley, you know how I hate funerals. Do we have to?“

“No, but aren’t you curious to see how the grieving widow who was about to divorce the late unlamented carries it off? Her wardrobe choice alone ought to be worth the effort.“