“What was the row about?'
“Them. I came into the middle of it and left as fast as I could, but it was about his divorce. I had the impression from what I overheard that he and Emma had been having an affair and she thought now that he was going to befree, she'd be the next Mrs. Stonecipher. He brushed her off.'
“I'd heard he had a girlfriend,' Jane said. 'It never crossed my mind that it was Emma. But it should have. So she was taking the news badly?'
“Very, very badly. Apparently he'd strung her along for years and years. It was really ugly, Jane. I don't like to run off and be a tattler myself, but I wonder if the police ought to know—?'
“I'll pass this along to Mel, but I don't think you need to worry.'
“Good. I didn't want to be one of those old biddies who look like they're out to get somebody. I've never liked Emma, but I don't want to go around sounding like I think she killed him. She was mad, but not that mad. At least, I don't think so.'
“Patsy, you were right to pass this along and I'll tell Mel about it, but I think I can assure you that it won't matter.”
Patsy gathered up the party bible and rose. 'Thanks, Jane. I'll give you a call Monday about getting together with you and Mrs. Nowack and getting the two of you on a committee.'
“Why aren't I surprised that you didn't forget that?' Jane asked.
As she watched Patsy leave, she smiled to herself. She thought she'd so cleverly guided Patsy into talking about Robert Stonecipher when, in fact, Patsy had been pulling her along on a leash. Yes, Patsy and Shelley were going to get along well.
10
'Shelley, I've got to run some errands. Ride along? I have very interesting things to tell you.'
“I'm amazed. It's only ten in the morning and you were up all night and you're still able to speak English fairly fluently?'
“I found a cot in the nurse's room at school and got a lovely three-hour nap, then came home at six in the morning and slept till nine. I'm actually pretty close to human today. If you don't count my hair,' Jane replied.
“Jane, I never consider your hair. Give me five minutes to gather up some dry cleaning I need to drop off.”
A few minutes later, Shelley, nearly buried in a pile of Paul's shirts and suits, was sitting in the passenger seat as Jane backed out of the driveway, carefully avoiding the pothole the family was affectionately starting to call the Grand Canyon.
“I have a ton of interesting stuff to tell you,' Jane said. 'But the most interesting is that Robert Stonecipher died of a heart attack a good five or ten minutes, at least, before somebody pushed that rack of hams over on him.”
Shelley whipped her head around and looked at Jane as if she were crazy. 'What? You mean this?'
“The coroner or pathologist or whoever swears to it. Mel told me last night. He'd just found out. Stonecipher wasn't murdered.'
“But somebody made it look like he had been!' Shelley said. 'I'm dumbfounded. Why would anybody do that?'
“I've been brooding on it for a while and I can think of two reasons,' Jane said. 'One sort of reasonable, one sort of goofy. If he had life insurance like my husband did, it would pay double if he died by accident. Double jeopardy — I mean, double indemnity. I always mix those up.'
“Pointing to Rhonda,' Shelley said.
Jane shrugged. 'If he had life insurance with that provision and if she were the beneficiary. But he might have other policies as well. You can have more than one life insurance policy, can't you, if you're willing to pay the premiums?'
“I don't know. I would guess you could. So he might have had one for the girlfriend you heard about. Or even one that paid to his business.'
“Oh, that's something else I learned. The girlfriend is Emma Weyrich and I have lots more about her. What I wonder is, can you insure somebody else's life with yourself as beneficiary?'
“I'm pretty sure you can,' Shelley said. 'But I don't really know a lot about insurance.'
“Then you probably won't know what else I was wondering about which is, if you can insure someone else, can you do it without their knowledge? But this is all wandering from the main point, which is that an accidental death might pay off a lot better than a heart attack.'
“Emma Weyrich,' Shelley mused. 'We should have guessed. She's not the young bimbo I had imagined, but —'
“More of an early middle-aged bimbo,' Jane agreed. 'But a health nut like he was, and an employee constantly in his company.”
Jane pulled into the parking lot of the dry cleaners. It was the Dohertys' new establishment, the one Stonecipher had been trying to shut down. Jane always patronized them because they were a nice couple who deserved all the business they could get. She was curious to know if they'd heard yet about the real cause of Stonecipher's death, but a teenage girl who was their Saturday helper was at the front counter.
When they were back in the car, Shelley said, 'So what's the goofy reason for making a natural death look unnatural?”
Jane eased into traffic and headed toward the library. 'To make Conrad look bad. To try to hurt his business by linking him to Stone-cipher's death.'
“But there's no reason to think Conrad did it just because it happened at the deli.'
“I know. But if somebody like that Foster Hanlon person found Stonecipher dead and was still steamed about losing the battle with Conrad and what he imagines is the lowering of property values, he might figure that making the deli look like a dangerous place might hurt Conrad's business enough to shut him down. It doesn't make sense, but it could be the way a nasty old thing like Hanlon would think on the spur of the moment. I admit it's pretty thin, but the fact is I was frantic about Mike working there when I thought it was a murder. Other people might avoid going there for the same reason.”
Shelley nodded. 'It's possible. Or maybe Conrad had some other enemy who'd like to see him fail. For that matter, maybe Sarah or even Grace was the target, so to speak. I can't imagine disliking either of them. The old Sarah was very well-liked and the new versionof her is as bland as a mouse. But I didn't know her well when we were young and don't know her now either. The same goes for Grace. I like her, but really don't know much about her. She mentioned a nasty divorce. Her former husband could be a real vindictive sort.'
“But since it's not murder anymore, I don't suppose we'll ever know,' Jane said.
She got out of the driver's seat, opened the back door, and gathered up her library books from the floor of the station wagon. 'You need anything here? Are you coming in?'
“No, I'm going to sit here and think. You know, Jane, instead of losing interest in this now that it's not a murder case, I find my curiosity piqued. Why risk being hauled in for an imaginary murder? I can't fathom it.'
“Me neither. If the autopsy guy hadn't been up to par and it went on the record as a murder, somebody would have been in a lot of trouble. They'd have probably been convicted of a murder they really didn't commit. It was a huge risk. I'll only be a minute. One of these is overdue and I have to pay the fine.”
When Jane came back out of the library, Shelley was standing by a trash barrel, the now-empty car ashtray in her hand. She was staring into space.
“You just can't resist cleaning up things, can you,' Jane said, jiggling her elbow.
Shelley got back into the car and fitted the ashtray into place. 'What if making his death look like murder was meant to get someone else in trouble?'
“Like how?'
“I'm not sure. The idea's still coming together.' She thought for a minute. 'Okay. How's this? If I really disliked somebody at the deli opening and in innocently wandering around, looking the place over, suppose I came across a dead Stonecipher. I might think, ah-hah! My great enemy Suzie Q is out there wearing that sweater that sheds all over the place. If I push this rack over and make it look like Stonecipher was killed and then shove some of that sweater fuzz under the rack, maybe the police will think she killed him and she'll be in a lot of trouble.'
“How would you know how the dead Stonecipher had died? Or even that he was dead, and not just in a faint?
