The Class Menagerie

'How'd Mimi react?'

'Bored to death.'

'What about Crispy? Did she go after her?'

'Not that I know of. Oh, yes. Lila made some rather cruel little digs about how enamored of Dead Ted Crispy had once been.'

'Dead Ted?' Mel asked.

'Ted lived in this house when they were in high school. He committed suicide in the carriage house. It seems like they all had crushes on him back then. Mel, you haven't said how Lila was killed.'

'Knocked out with a paint can, then smothered,' he said calmly.

'Fingerprints?'

He shook his head. 'The wire handle on the can had been wiped clean. A hell of a weapon, actually. You could hold the thing by the handle and get a good swing going in a dark place before the victim even saw it coming. And rags don't take fingerprints at all well.'

'Come on, Mel. Tell me more of what you know.'

'Very little yet. We better get inside. You're shivering and I've got to take Edgar's official statement.'

'Mel, what about the practical jokes? What have they got to do with the murder? Are they just meant as a distraction? Or spite? Or what?'

'Hell if I know,' he said. 'Yet.'

15

Jane let Mel go ahead and stood in the driveway a moment, still puzzling over what they'd talked about. It took a crazy to kill somebody. That was obvious. It also took something of a crazy to keep pulling these stupid jokes. It had to be the same person, unless one assumed that two of them were completely around the bend. That seemed impossible odds. Two out of seven. Two out of six, really. Lila couldn't have been either the murderer or the Joker.

Lila!

Jane remembered the notebook again. She'd meant to tell Mel a moment ago, but hadn't wanted to get sidetracked.

She hurried inside, but he was in the library with Edgar. Astonishingly, Mimi and Pooky were hunched in front of the television set, each with a Nintendo controller in her hand. They were competing loudly with each other in a shoot-'em-up game. 'I got you! I got you!' Pooky crowed.

'I've got two lives left and three bottles of magic potion. I'll get you yet!' Mimi said, sitting farther forward and executing a complex maneuver that involved both hands and a lot of body English.

'Could you pause the game?' Jane asked. When they had, she said, 'I'm going back to work. When Detective VanDyne's through, would you keep him here and let me know?' She started to say that there was something important she'd forgotten to tell him, then thought better of it. 'I need to talk to him about some plans we made for next week.'

'Next week? You're dating him?' Pooky asked. 'Wow! He's really good-looking! Oh, so that's why you've been talking to him so much! It's nothing to do with us; it's that he's your boyfriend.'

Jane realized she was blushing and stammering. 'I've got to finish up the rooms,' she said.

'I'll help,' Pooky said.

'No, you're having fun. I'm almost done anyway.'

Jane made a break for it before Pooky could argue.

Beth was in her room, sitting in the grandmother chair by the window, reading through a stack of paperwork. There was a hint of the earlier horrible smell, but whether it came from Beth herself or just lingered in the room was impossible to say.

'No rest for the wicked?' Jane asked, gesturing toward the pile of work Beth was sorting through.

'More like no rest for the perpetually understaffed and underfunded.'

'Are you all right now?'

Beth smiled and Jane could see for a moment what a very pretty girl she must have been. 'I'm fine, thanks. I made a real fool of myself this morning. I'm so embarrassed. I normally don't overreact that way.'

'Anybody would have. That was a horrible thing to do to you. Do you have any idea who—?'

'Absolutely none in the world,' Beth said.

Jane had suspected that Beth would be too discreet to make guesses or get involved in gossip of any sort, but was disappointed to find that she'd been right.

'Do you know what it was? The smell?' Beth asked. Her voice was actually a bit trembly.

'Some kind of fish bait smell, I think. Harmless.'

'Harmless…' Beth mused. 'I didn't know…'

'Didn't know what?'

'That anybody disliked me that much.' A'definite crack in the last word.

'You shouldn't get your feelings hurt,' Jane assured her. 'I'm sure it wasn't personal any more than any of the other tricks. Maybe you're the only one who had that roll-on kind of deodorant along that the liquid could be added to. I'm sure that's it.'

Beth smiled. 'You're a nice person to say that. I hope you're right.' Then she sniffed slightly, sat up straighter, and started sorting her papers. Obviously she wasn't accustomed to talking about her feelings to anyone and it made her very uncomfortable.

'Will I disturb you if I tidy up a little?' Jane asked. The room obviously couldn't be tidier, but she was supposed to change the sheets and towels.

'Not in the least. I still can't get over how generous it is of you to help Shelley. She's fortunate to have such a good friend.' Unlike Pooky, it didn't occur to Beth to help out.

'I'm fortunate, too. I've had some bad times I wouldn't have gotten through without Shelley.'

'Oh? I'm sorry to hear that.'

There was invitation in her tone, but Jane didn't accept it. Jane knew how to encourage people to talk and recognized when the ploy was being used on her. 'It's such a pity about Lila, isn't it?' She started stripping the bed.

'Nobody should come to a violent end,' Beth said tactfully.

'What was she like as a girl? With the rest of you, I think I can guess what you must have been

like, but not with her.' Jane was determined to prod information or genuine opinion out of Beth, just for the challenge of the thing. Her brief confession of having her feelings hurt proved it could be done.

'Lila as a girl….' Beth said, 'Smart, certainly. A bit snobbish, but she did come from a very old, respected family. I believe she was ambitious, but without any specific focus of ambition, if you know what I mean.'

'I think so. But most of us are like that. You're an exception.'

'Me?'

'The others say you knew you wanted to be a lawyer even in high school.' Jane shook out a fresh sheet and started making the bed.

'1 suppose that's true. It's all so long ago — another life, almost. Another person.'

'You feel you've changed so much?' Jane asked, surprised. From what the others had said, Beth seemed to have changed the least.

'Of course! Everybody does. Why, look at yourself. Try to remember how you felt about yourself, your parents, and your friends when you were eighteen. You probably don't feel the same way about any of them anymore.'

'That's true. But I'm inclined to think people stay the same more than they change.'

'Basic character traits, you mean? Maybe. And some, like Kathy, try desperately to stay the same.'

Jane felt dizzy from the circular conversation. Beth wasn't going to let down her guard again. It probably only happened every ten years or so. Maybe shock tactics—

'It must be very difficult for you, staying here where Ted died.'

There was a shocked, offended silence. Then surprisingly, Beth answered. 'Not as much as I thought it would be. Teenage suicide can be devastating to everybody involved. It was horrible at the time, but as I got older, I realized it really had nothing to do with me. Suicide is always the sole responsibility of the person who commits it. It's characteristic of human nature that we wish to blame others for our problems, but in the end, our problems, or