The House of Seven Mabels (14 page)

Shelley brought it down. "It's a little damp, I'm afraid. I'll leave you alone until after Mel's gone. Is it okay if I tell Bitsy you agree with me about the size of the sunporch?"

"1
do agree. If she's going to replace it, she should do it right or not do it."

Mel was impressed with lunch in spite of his saying it was a girly choice. But awfully good and filling. "Sorry I've been such a crank for the last week, Janey. Having to cover the rock concert and then this damned house the next day put me over the edge."

"I understand. How'd you get away today?"

"I delegated."

"You
delegated?" Jane said with a laugh. "I thought you didn't believe in ever doing that."

"I don't, but I'm giving it a try. Comes from getting older and more tired, I guess. Go out to the living room and put your bad foot back up. Shouldn't you have it X-rayed again?"

"I'll see what a day off it does before I put myself through that again. I don't ever want to be in a cast for the rest of my life."

Mel graciously loaded the dishwasher for her. Of course she'd have to redo it when he was gone. There was something genetic about men

that didn't let them understand why glassware really should go on the top rack. Her late husband had once gone through a brief spell when she was pregnant with Todd when he was trying to be helpfully domestic and cracked several pieces of her favorite glassware from the drying process. She'd never let Mike load it, and Todd could do so only with Katie's supervision.

When Mel was through, he came and sat at the far end of the sofa and massaged her good foot. The massage made even the bad one feel better.

Since he was mellowed out by lunch and delegating, she asked, "Have you found out anything about Sandra's background?"

"A little bit. It was hard to trace her. The name change wasn't official. She'd just decided to take back her mother's maiden name."

"Shelley and I had the impression that she had been married. When we met her the first time, Bitsy said something about her once being Mrs. Somebody. They seemed to make a joke of it. So she was once married?"

"Yes. To a man who severely abused her, to the point that she was hospitalized several times. Makes you understand why she became such a rabid feminist, I have to admit."

"Do you know where he is? Could he have found her and killed her?"

"No. He's serving a life sentence for murdering his third wife and their two-year-old child. He beat them to death two years ago."

Jane suddenly hurt all over.

The phone rang, and Mel looked at Jane's shocked face and said, "I'll get it for you."

"Yes," he said when he answered. "This is Van-Dyne."

A moment of silence and then he said, "Hell. I'm just a short distance away. I'll be there in a few minutes."

"What is it, Mel?" Jane called to him.

"I left your number at the office. It seems that they've found an unknown toolbox at that damned house and somebody thinks there's a bomb in it."

Mel was standing with the others who'd been evacuated from the house and neighboring homes to the parking lot of a church down the street. It had turned into an unusually hot day, and the neighbors wanted to go home. The mothers with babies had commandeered the only shade available under an old maple tree at the far end of the parking area.

"Mr. Budley," Mel said, "it seems to me that the last time we spoke, you were explaining how well you'd sealed up the house. Now there's a toolbox in the basement that no one recognizes. How do you explain this? Who has the keys?"

"I can't explain it except that it could have been there for days and your people missed it."

"My 'people' don't miss things," Mel said firmly.

"As for the keys, all the doors that can be locked are keyed
the
same. Only the owner and I have copies," Budley said. He was insisting on taking the high ground on this matter.

Budley walked away, and Mel realized that the

young woman who worked on the Sheetrock had been waiting to speak to him.

"Detective VanDyne," Evaline said. "I'm sorry to tell you this, but there's something else you should know that I didn't hear Joe Budley mention. Whoever got in the house also took a hammer to the Sheetrock upstairs. Bashed it pretty badly. We can probably patch a few of the dents, but several sheets will have to be replaced."

"How do you know it was the same person?" Mel asked.

"I guess I don't," Evaline said with a shrug. "I just assumed that since the house has been locked up, but somebody found a way in."

As they were speaking, the bomb squad started drifting out of the house. One had a plastic bag that was obviously heavy. The two others were taking off their protective clothing and hoods.

Mel abandoned Evaline and hurried to meet them.

"It's okay, Mel," the man carrying the bag said, lifting his mask. "It did look like a bomb, but it's just a bunch of junk stuck together with a clock attached that doesn't even work. No explosives. You can give the box to the fingerprint people," he added, handing Mel the bag.

"How did it get in there? Do you have any idea?"

"That paneling on the back wall conceals the door to-an old coal chute. It was ajar when we went down there. I don't think you could have seen it if it had been closed. You better fingerprint

it as well," the man replied as he struggled out of his modern armor. His clothing under it was drenched with sweat.

That eased Mel's mind. He'd looked over every inch of the basement and hadn't noticed anything odd about the paneling except that it was cheap and ugly. If he himself hadn't noticed, he could hardly go back to the station and tear holes in the other investigators of the basement.

He went back and reassured the crowd that they could go home now and that it hadn't been a bomb, only a fake one. But he made a point of snagging Joe Budley. "Mr. Budley, you can let your workers back in, but not anywhere near the basement or the backyard."

"But we need to get the footings in for the sun-porch today or we'll be a whole day late."

"That's at the other end of the house, right?"

"It is."

"Then we'll let them work. But there will be a police tape at the north end that you're responsible for making sure they don't cross. By the way, I'm wondering why you didn't tell me about the damage to the Sheetrock."

"What damage?"

"Evaline told me someone had taken a hammer to it."

"Why didn't anyone tell
me
this?" Budley exclaimed.

"You didn't know?" Mel said, not believing him.

"I hadn't yet been upstairs today. I was working with the guys who are replacing the sun-porch. Why didn't Evaline or Carl tell me?"

"Maybe they hoped you wouldn't find out."

"I'd have known when they billed me for fixing it. I'm going to have a talk with them."

"You're going to have to shut down the work upstairs until I get my staff back. And Evaline and Carl have probably already destroyed the evidence by fixing it."

This, unfortunately, made Dudley smile.

Mel walked around the back of the house, keeping a safe distance so he wouldn't disturb any footprints. He guessed that the coal chute must have once come out where there were now some very old shrubs. He made some phone calls and was told that the photographer from the police department who'd taken the photos at the scene of Sandra's death revealed something interesting.

"Mel, Phil here," the photographer said. "I thought you should know. When I developed the pictures, I saw something strange that wasn't visible in the gloom down there but showed up in the flash."

"I bet I know what it was. A piece of that dreadful paneling that looked slightly different?"

"How'd you guess?"

"It's covering an old coal chute. The bomb squad boys said it was ajar. I've sealed off where it must exit and I'm having the toolbox brought in for prints."

"What do you bet there aren't any? Is everything in it new?"

"I haven't looked in the bag yet. I don't want anything to contaminate it, but I'd bet the same. I'll bring it in as soon as the fingerprint group gets here. And you might mention that the scene-of-the-crime group should bring along some big lop-pers to cut down some ugly old shrubs and take them away to test for fibers."

He called back to the station and told his assistants about the Sheetrock and that they would have to come back. That news wasn't received well.

Mel was sweating nearly as much as the bomb squad person had and wanted nothing more than to go home and shower, but he stuck it out, without ever letting go of the bag containing the toolbox until everyone he'd called up had arrived and had their instructions. His arm was sore from the weight of the contents.

When he had it stowed in the trunk of his car, he called Jane and assured her he hadn't been in any danger because the bomb was a fake. "Now go back to your sofa and put your foot back up," he said, still in police mode.

"Yes, sir," she replied.

"Please
put your foot back up," he added, realizing how sharply he'd spoken.

Jane didn't mention that she hadn't been on the sofa anyway. She was propped up in bed changing channels on the television to distract herself.

Or had been until Shelley snatched the control from her hand and turned it off a moment before Mel called.

"What?" Shelley said the minute Jane hung up.

"The bomb was a fake. That's all he said."

"So what was the
'yes,
sir' about?"

"He told me in his police voice to put my foot up," Jane said with a smile.

"Jane, I don't get this. It turns our theories inside out. I really thought all this stuff like the rotten shrimp and the other vandalism was to persecute Sandra."

Jane nodded. "So did I, I suppose. So why this fake bomb scare? Why not a real bomb? And to what purpose?"

"That gets us back to Bitsy's ex-husband, persecuting her, I'd guess."

"I don't know if that's true. If he had the kind of connections to hire someone sleazy, he'd have them plant a real bomb, wouldn't he?"

"Who could tell?" Shelley said. "Except for Sandra's death, which could — barely could, I should say — be an accident, nobody's been hurt seriously by any of this. Even Jacqueline wouldn't have been knocked out except that she jumped back from the plug, fell, and hit her head."

Before leaving the scene, Mel went upstairs to survey the damage to the Sheetrock. Sure enough, most of it was already contaminated by

Carl and Evaline's having patched up most of the damage. Dudley was standing in the middle of the room, arms crossed and glaring around the room. "You'd have thought they'd of had the sense to tell me about this. I wish I'd never taken on this job."

"I wish I hadn't been assigned to it," Mel admitted.

As he was approaching his car, the scene-of-the-crime crew showed up again. Mel left instructions as to where a coal chute must have come out. "It's concealed with a nasty bank of prickly shrubs you're going to have to cut down. But look carefully for anything fresh that's snagged in them."

By the time Mel got back to the station, he had a call from the head of the group. "We found mostly animal fur. But there were a few bits of plain white cottony paper. The sort of stuff you'd find in those outfits that painters sometimes wear. Available at almost any hardware store. The lab will have to confirm this, of course. No fingerprints inside or out."

"I guess I should be thanking you for this information, but I can't bring myself to do so. Sounds to me like we're striking out again."

A day
staying off her foot
made jane a new
woman. She'd gone out to the garage and found one of the old crutches so she could move around a little without touching her right foot to the floor. By evening, she could honestly report to Shelley and Mel that she didn't need to go back to the hospital to have it X-rayed again.

Mel dropped by to check on her after dinner and asked if there was any kind of dessert around.

"Just grocery-store cookies. But even Shelley says they're edible. Finish them off before I have to."

He sat down with a glass of milk, polished off the last three cookies, and sighed. "I'm sick to death of that house of Bitsy's. It's been three weeks."

"It hasn't," Jane said with a laugh.

"Okay. Maybe a week, but it seems like a lot longer. And there's still no irrefutable evidence of a serious crime."

"Not even Sandra's death?"

"Except for her missing purse, there's nothing solid to make anyone think it was murder. It could have just been an accident."

"It's more than the purse, Mel. She was disliked by nearly everyone working for her. And who knows how many other people she's crossed paths with who had even better reason to hate her."

"But Jane, the world's full of obnoxious people who irritate the hell out of everyone and nobody murders them. They just get older and more obnoxious. I have an eighty-four-year-old great-uncle who's a living example."

"Didn't the bomb scare count as a crime?" Jane asked.

"Only marginally. It wasn't a real bomb. If we knew who did it and were in England, we could get him or her for 'wasting police time.' The rest of it could count merely as damaging pranks. Even that would be cause only for a lawsuit, not a criminal conviction."

"It wasn't Thomasina's missing toolbox, I assume?"

"No. Hers was a big yellow plastic one," Mel said. "The one in the basement was steel."

Jane brushed the cookie crumbs onto a napkin she wadded up to throw away later. "The thing I don't understand is why the pranks have continued beyond Sandra's death — whatever the cause of it. I assumed they were all aimed at discrediting her, but now it looks as if Bitsy's the target."