The Class Menagerie

'Ransacked! Well, my cleaning skills aren't too

good, but they're not that bad. Besides, I didn't ever get to your room,' Jane assured her. 'What's missing?'

'It's this antique pen thingie. It's very valuable. One of the guys in our class saw it when he was in my town and he didn't buy it, but then he saw my address in the roster and asked me to bring it to him at the reunion. He sent them a check and I just picked it up. I guess he didn't trust the mail. The price tag was still taped to the bottom. It cost five thousand dollars and now it's missing. I don't know what to do!' She burst into tears, which pulled her poor face in odd directions and made her look not quite human.

'This is going too far!' Mimi said, showing real anger for the first time. 'The only people who have left this house today are Jane and Crispy and they couldn't have sneaked it out without the other one noticing.' She glanced at Jane. 'Not that either of you would steal anything. So it's got to be in this house someplace and we're going to find it. Everybody is going to help!'

The 'antique pen thingie' turned up, unharmed, in an otherwise empty wastebasket in the utility room, but not before Pooky had full-fledged hysterics and the rest of the searchers came to harsh words several times. Shelley had called a short meeting to deliver a fierce little lecture on the stupidity of playing these jokes and everybody agreed, even though it was obvious that one of them was, in fact, the perpetrator.

Edgar had taken three aspirins and gone upstairs to take a nap to kill his headache. He expressed the opinion that he'd rather kill himself, just at the moment. It was a remark that didn't go over very well. Jane soothed as many ruffled feathers as she could and then had gone from room to room collecting glasses, dishes, and dirty ashtrays. She'd just finished washing them when the phone rang. She lunged for it before it could disturb Edgar's much-needed rest.

'Bed and breakfast,' she answered.

'Jane? I'm glad you answered.'

'Mel?'

'Can you get away for a few minutes? I'm coming over there. But I want to talk to you before I come in.'

Jane glanced at her watch and quickly reviewed her schedule. She was due to drive a car pool in fifteen minutes, then she was free until five, when she was coming back to help with dinner. Then she was off again to attend Back-To-School night. 'I'm only free for a few minutes if you get here right away.'

'I'm just down the street and what I have to tell you will only take a minute.'

Jane dashed to let Shelley know she was leaving. She found her friend in the library, slamming folders around and trying to organize the notes of her aborted morning meeting. 'Why did you let me do this!' Shelley said coldly.

'Stars in your crown. The Goddess of Entertaining is looking down on you even as we speak and giving you full credit. I'm off. See you at five.'

Mel was parked at the far end of the drive by the gates. Jane got in his little red MG and said, 'So?'

He took a deep breath. 'There were two people in the carriage house. Two different sets of fingerprints.'

'Can you identify them?'

'We don't need to. They turned themselves in an hour ago.'

'Mel! That's wonderful! It's over. You've solved it. Why do you look like last night's pizza?'

'The beer and cigarettes belonged to two thirteen-year-old boys who'd sneaked out of their houses for a big thrill. They each had a beer and a cigarette and were starting to feel kind of sick before their eyes adjusted to the dark and they realized they were sitting a few feet from a dead body.'

'Oh….'

'They came to the station with their parents. They heard about it on the noon news.'

'And you believe them?'

Mel sighed. 'Jane, one of the poor kids wet his pants right there in my office he was so scared. The mothers were in hysterics. One of the fathers started crying. It was awful! And it's the God's truth, I'd swear to it. I've met a lot of guilty people and a few innocent ones and I'd stake my reputation on the fact that they're innocent. They were terrified. The one kept saying he'd never seen a dead body before, even when his grandmother died. I turned them over to a psychologist. The whole gang of them. Parents, everybody. The lab will do tests on their clothes and so forth, but there's no doubt in my mind.'

Jane looked back at the house. She saw a curtain on the third floor twitch. Edgar — or Gordon — watching. 'When were they there?'

'About midnight, they think.'

'So she was dead by then.'

Mel nodded.

'And—?'

He looked straight at her. 'And it looks like we're going to have to know a whole lot more about the people staying here.'

Jane knew perfectly well what he meant, but she needed to hear him say it. 'You don't really think one of those women killed her?'

'Probably,' he said bluntly. 'I need to know about them.'

Jane glanced at her watch. 'I don't know much, but there isn't time to tell you what I do know. I have to pick up kids at school.'

He took her hand, but it was an absentminded gesture, not an affectionate one. 'I didn't mean right now. We've got people doing background checks. What I need to know now is the schedule for this meeting. Nobody thinks they're leaving soon, do they?'

'No. The actual reunion starts tomorrow. Mel, I have to leave. What are you going to do?'

'I'm going to explain this to the owners and guests, give official warnings about not leaving, and set up a watch on the house.'

'Mel—'

'Yes?'

'Well, it's just odd…. of all the women attending the meeting, the only one nasty enough to imagine casting as a murderer was the one who got killed. They're nice women, Mel.'

'One of them'snot.'

11

Jane ran her car pool on autopilot while her mind leaped around the facts and impressions jumbling in her mind. She'd have to organize her recollections before she passed them on to Mel. One thing seemed clear: Lila was a blackmailer. And if she'd tried it out on Kathy, she'd probably tried it out on others. All those nasty little digs she'd made the evening before were probably references to threats she'd already made or was paving the way to make later. The story she'd told suggesting that Avalon had experimented with drugs in high school was probably such an attempt. What else had she said? There had been a remark to Pooky about having a real understanding of the psychology of teenaged boys. What had that been about? Pooky had looked either stricken or confused by it, with the oddities of her facial expression, it was hard to tell which.

'Mom! You forgot to let off Jason,' her son Todd said as they pulled into their own driveway.

'Oh, no I didn't,' Jane said with a laugh. 'I just like Jason so much I wanted to bring him home with us.' She backed out and headed for Jason's house. Todd was looking mortally embarrassed by his mother's feeble joke.

When they got home the second time, there was a crisis. Mike had spilled a glass of orange juice all over a stack of his college applications and they had to dash back to school and beat the doors down to get in to acquire duplicates. Back home yet again, Jane had to cope with Katie, whose snit with her friend Jenny had escalated to nasty phone calls and hanging up on each other.

'I'm going to tell everybody everything I know about Jenny!' Katie exclaimed. 'Like about how she had to go to the doctor because she wet the bed—'

Jane's patience, already at low ebb, disappeared entirely. 'No, you're not!' she said. 'You're going to behave like a lady. Those 'are friendship secrets and if the friendship dies, the secrets die with it.'

Katie looked stunned at this outburst.

'Katie, I mean it. You'll regret it the rest of your life if you tell Jenny's secrets. Other people might like