“It's weird to be dating at all,' Jane said.
“I know! When Charles and I were separated, I dated a bit and it was strange. My ice cream's melting. I guess I better run along. Nice visiting with you.' On this almost hysterically chirpy note, she wheeled her cart away hurriedly.
Shelley said, 'Do you suppose she thought she was being subtle?'
“Did you see her hands?' Jane asked. 'She was clutching the handle of the grocery cart so hard I expected it to crumple.'
“The only thing her questions didn't tell us was which color folder was hers,' Shelley said.
“Poor LeAnne,' Jane said. 'She probably had one an inch thick. Think of all the dirt she must have dished about Charles during the divorce.'
“But Jane, could anybody as pathetically unsubtle as LeAnne commit an actual murder and manage to even get out of the room without giving herself away? After the performance we just saw, I can imagine her running out in the hallway and looking for people totell, 'You haven't seen me here, have you?' “
Jane laughed. 'There would have to be a huge amount of evidence to convince me she could carry it off. Still, for as silly as she was just being, there's more to her than that. Just look at the dedication and determination it's taken for them to pull themselves out of bankruptcy and get a whole new business started? Not to mention the intelligence it takes. It can't be all Charles's doing.'
“Sure it could,' Shelley said, picking up the cream cheese she'd come in for and moving toward the checkout. 'And maybe that's what she's afraid of. That Charles was the one Emma had an appointment with.”
Jane fell silent while Shelley made her purchase. Once they were back in the car, she said, 'You could be right, you know. I hardly know Charles, do you?”
Shelley shrugged. 'No. Paul had some dealings with him years ago when Charles was still with that investment company or mortgage company, whatever it was.' Shelley's husband, Paul, was, among other things, the owner of a chain of Greek fast-food restaurants that he'd started from scratch.
“What did Paul think of him?'
“He said Charles was bright and ambitious enough, but didn't seem to think he was spectacular in any way. A nice guy. I'll ask him again, but I doubt he'll have much more to add. It was about the land for one of the restaurant franchises and I think they met only once or twice over some routine details. Not a situation where you'd get to know someone intimately.”
Jane nodded. 'Shelley, would Paul have any special insights into the deli's business?'
“He might, but it doesn't seem to have anything much to do with the deli anymore, does it?'
“I don't think so, but who knows? Conrad and Sarah have led a pretty strange life and Stonecipher might have known something about them, too.'
“How could he? They only came back here recently and as soon as they did, they started the deli and he started his zoning war. It's not likely they ever considered being clients of his.'
“True. But maybe he dug up something about their past when he was trying to shut them down. Drugs or something? They lived a pretty hippie-dippy life for a long time according to Grace. Maybe they didn't pay their taxes or something like that.'
“Yes, but if he had anything on them, wouldn't he have used it to apply pressure on them before the deli could open?' Shelley asked.
“I guess you're right. He really did pull out all the stops to try to keep them from open? Shelley started the van. 'I feel like a rat in a maze that hasn't any opening. Every time I think about this, I end up at the same dead end.'
“Which is?'
“Stonecipher's death,' Shelley said, backing out ruthlessly and ignoring the uproar of honking this caused. 'It's too coincidental that both Stonecipher and Emma would die under suspicious circumstances without there being a connection. But why would anybody want to make a natural death look like a murder?”
14
They'd gone only two blocks when Jane noticed a car at the side of the street. The hood was up and an older man was looking into the engine. 'Hold it, Shelley,' Jane said. 'Isn't that Foster Hanlon? Let's stop and help. We might pry something interesting out of him.'
“I'd like to pry the old bastard's guts out of him,' Shelley said.
“Come on, Shelley. You can stand a few minutes. Keep in mind that he was with Stonecipher at the deli. Right on his heels.”
Grumbling, Shelley pulled over and backed up, and the two of them got out of the van. Hanlon was a small, wiry man who could have been anywhere from sixty to eighty years old. He had thinning yellow-white hair; a stiff, erect carriage that was almost military; and a face that was a road map of fine wrinkles. He was dressed in a dark three-piece suit with a white shirt so heavily starched it probably crackled when he moved.
“Mr. Hanlon, have you got engine problems?' Jane asked.
He straightened up so quickly that he bumped his head on the hood. 'Oh, yes. Well, I think so. I'm sorry to admit that not only do I know very little about cars, but I don't even know who you are.”
It was, on the surface, a reasonable, inoffensive sentence, but Jane found it obnoxious. She was tempted to say, 'Oh, we're just a couple neighborhood muggers, stopped to beat and rob you.' Shelley's grim expression hinted that she was thinking along the same lines.
“I'm Jane Jeffry and this is Shelley Nowack. Do you need—'
“Jeffry. Jeffry? Oh, yes. The house with the driveway that needs repairing,' Hanlon said. 'And Mrs. Nowack is next door. You could use a bit of paint on the trim around your windows, Mrs. Nowack.'
“And you—' Shelley began.
Jane elbowed her and said, 'I don't know anything about engines either, but we'd be glad to give you a lift to a service station.
“I — well, what I really need is a lift home. I've got groceries in the car that are melting. If you wouldn't really mind.'
“Not at all,' Jane said. 'We'll just help you put them in the back of the van.”
He had a surprising number of grocery sacks, including one holding two bags of ice that were already beginning to drip. 'Mrs. Nowack, you are aware of the speed limit here, aren't you?' he said as Shelley took off like a rocket.
She slammed on the brakes, flinging him forward. 'Oh, I must have forgotten for a moment,' she said sweetly. 'You didn't get hurt, did you?”
The rest of the way, he acted like a demented tour guide. 'There's an example of neglect,' he said. 'Perfectly sound house but the cracks in the foundation are just being patched instead of getting to the real problem. And over there. That yard is a disgrace. There are more dandelions than grass. No excuse for it. Causes grief for all the neighbors who keep their lawns nice. It's not that much trouble. Just mowing, seeding, fertilizing, weed killer, occasional de-thatching — the neighborhood association has a nice pamphlet on proper lawn care for anybody who needs it. I keep a stack of them in the car and drop them off to people when I see their lawns suffering neglect.'
“I wonder,' Shelley said dreamily, 'if anybody has done studies on a possible connec? tion between neighborhood associations and the neo-Nazi movement?”
This remark seemed to genuinely puzzle him and he was quiet for a bit.
Jane leaned forward on the pretense of finding something on the radio and whispered to Shelley, 'We're trying to find out about a murder, not commit one!”
His house was just what Jane would have expected. It was an oversized Cape Cod, immaculately kept. The windows gleamed as if polished only moments before. The paint almost looked as if it were still wet. The lawn was lush jade-green and still showed the tidy diagonal mowing marks. You could have eaten off the driveway. A row of neat forsythia bushes bordered both sides of the lot separating him from his neighbors. They'd been trimmed into
