dead.'
Mel went down the list, ticking off names. 'Victims of the tricks were Pooky, Avalon, Beth, Mimi, Kathy, Avalon, Pooky, Beth, Crispy, Pooky, Avalon, Beth. Seems fairly evenly distributed. Do you really call these women by these silly names? I mean, to their faces?'
Jane ignored the question. 'Mimi and Kathy had the least done. Just the alarm clocks.'
'Could either one of them be doing the tricks and just included herself to avoid suspicion?'
' I PtC
'In theory. I can't imagine Mimi doing tacky, vulgar things, though. Certainly not the underwear trick. And she was really angry when the antique disappeared. She's the one who bullied everybody into forming search parties to look for it. Besides, she's just too nice to do stupid, nasty things.'
Mel cast her a questioning, if not downright doubtful, glance. Jane started to object to his suspicion of her judgment, but caught herself. Actually, what did she know about Mimi? That she seemed very pleasant, open, and honest. But then, she'd also been told by at least two of the others what a wonderful actress Mimi was. Maybe it was all an act, carefully planned and rehearsed.
'What about Kathy? Is it her kind of thing?'
'I don't think so. She's vulgar, but has no sense of humor at all, not even a bad one that would think up practical jokes. And if she were to play jokes, they'd have a point. Some kind of ecological or antinuclear reference. She's terribly intense and certainly smart enough to plan better, more politically pointed tricks if she wanted to.'
'Okay, let's examine this another way. What the point was. Trading the purse contents—'
'Sheer nuisance value,' Jane said. 'Maybe also to embarrass one or both of them by pointing out to someone else just what was in her purse. But neither of them seemed to have anything they shouldn't.'
'The alarm clocks,' Mel went on.
'Nuisance again. Or maybe, at a big stretch, to make sure somebody was awake all night? I don't know.'
'That was the night of the murder.'
'Yes, but you said she was already dead by midnight, and the clocks didn't start going off until around two in the morning.'
, 'The underwear trick?' Mel said,
'Nuisance first. Crispy didn't know it was going to be returned and had to go buy more — remind me to tell you something else about that trip to the store. The return of her lingerie was clearly meant to embarrass her and it did. She was angry and humiliated.'
'The antique?' Mel asked, then answered himself. 'That might have been a genuine theft and the person had to hide it someplace until she could retrieve it and get it out of the house.'
'I don't think so. It was 'hidden' in an empty wastebasket in the utility room. Just sitting there in the bottom, all by itself. If someone really meant to conceal it, it would have been easy to cover it up.' A little breeze had sprung up and Jane pulled her sweater closer, shivering. She pulled the collar up and sniffed it. 'Either the smell is going away or I'm getting used to it.'
'I think it's blowing away. I can't smell it either anymore.- I'll let you go inside in just a minute, Jane. You're sure nothing's missing from Avalon's room?'
'She says not. It's not like it was her home. It might take you forever at home to discern that something's missing. But when you're traveling, you only have a limited number of your belongings with you. It's fairly simple to take inventory.'
'Then the deodorant stunt. What on earth was the point of that?' Mel asked.
'I suppose to cause Beth embarrassment. Again, it worked very well. She's a very reserved, dignified person and there she was, running around in the hallway, screaming and gagging, dressed only in a towel. As practical jokes go, that one was magnificent. Maybe it was the grand finale. I hope so.'
Mel tapped his pen on the steering wheel absently. Jane wondered once again who'd given him such a nice writing implement. 'Let's turn it one more direction,' he said. 'Let's look at the geography. Three of the tricks required off-site preparation.'.
'What do you mean?'
'The nasty underwear had to be purchased someplace and brought along. So did the alarm clocks and the smelly stuff for the deodorant. All small and easily brought along. But while they took advance planning, they could have been used on anybody. Nothing was specific to any individual.'
'Yes?' It was interesting to see how his mind worked, examining the 'evidence' from different viewpoints. Interesting, but not fruitful, as far as she could tell.
'The purse switch was purely on-site,' he went on. 'And again, could have been any two people, as it didn't reveal anything pertinent to either of them. The ransacking of Avalon's room, too, could have been anybody. It accomplished nothing, except to make work for you, and probably frighten the victim a bit.'
'Uh-huh.'
'But the theft of the antique stands apart. That couldn't have been just anybody.'
'But it could. Everyone must have had something valuable along. Jewelry or credit cards or something.'
Mel nodded. 'True, I suppose. Had she mentioned this pen set or whatever it was? Before it was taken, I mean.'
'Not to me. But maybe to somebody else.'
'And I suppose it's already been mauled around by practically everybody?'
'Fingerprints, you mean? Yes, we passed it around admiring it after it was found. Sorry.'
He waved this away. 'Did these women know who else was coming to stay here?'
'I don't think so, unless some of them were in touch with each other. Shelley didn't even know until last week who was coming and she didn't send out a list or anything.'
'Do they seem to know each other? Presently?'
'I don't think so. Beth said something about having a friend in common with Kathy who kept her up on Kathy's life a bit. Avalon and Pooky might correspond. They seem to be slightly better acquainted, or maybe they just hit it off better since they got here. Of course, most of them knew about Beth's prestige. No, on the whole, I don't think they're in touch with each other. That first day, as they were arriving, they were all catching up like mad — where did you end up going to college? Are you married? Have you got children? Those kinds of questions. Now, Lila was a different matter—'
'How's that?'
'She must have researched some of them before she came. At least she did Kathy.'
'Remind me who Kathy is. The farm wife in the overalls?'
'Sort of. Wait till you see her today. She's abandoned her act.'
'Act?'
Jane explained about Kathy's pretense of being poor and idealistic and Jane's own subsequent discovery of the truth of the matter.
'And she said Lila knew and was trying to blackmail her?'
'Trying, but not getting anywhere. Kathy's whole problem is that she's come to care more for her money
than her image. She'd have faced 'unveiling' rather
than give Lila a penny.'
'Maybe___' Mel mused. 'What about the others?
Did she try it with anyone else?'
'I think she had something on Pooky, but that's just pure guess. I asked Pooky outright and she denied it, but got very upset. Oh, I'd forgotten — there was something said the first night about Pooky having been held back a grade. Apparently that's very embarrassing to her.'
'And the rest of them didn't know this?'
'I don't know. But it doesn't seem exactly black-' mail material. Lila also dropped some not very subtle' hints the first evening about Avalon and drugs. I think she was leading up to claiming Avalon had tried drugs in high school. Not exactly a revelation to ruin a life, I'd think. And she made some crack about Beth's life being placed under scrutiny if she was appointed to the Supreme Court. It sounded like a shot in the dark and didn't seem to bother Beth at all. Oh, and she tried to suggest that Mimi's husband was somehow politically questionable.'
