tortuous cubes of precisely the same size.
“Let me take this ice inside for you,' Jane said. She was determined they wouldn't just drop him off and go on their way. Shelley understood and sulkily picked through the bags in the back of the van for the lightest one.
The inside of the house matched the outside. It wasn't stark, in fact there were a lot of pictures, ornaments, and furniture, but everything was so clean, fresh, and geometric that it seemed unreal, as if it had been created on a computer. The sofa in the living room was precisely positioned in front of the empty, spotless fireplace in which there had obviously never been anything so sloppy and uncontrolled as a fire. Two matching chairs sat at exact right angles. A stack of
Jane wondered if there was a wife who went along with this and had the vague recollection of having heard that Foster Hanlon was a widower. She took the bags of ice to the sink, punched a hole in the bottom of each to drain out the melted water, and opened the freezer door. There, not surprisingly, banks of frozen vegetable packages were neatly stacked. She was afraid to look too closely for fear of finding that they were actually in alphabetical order.
“Go ahead and call the service station,' Shelley said. 'We can put this away for you,' she added with a gleam in her eye.
Hanlon looked disconcerted by this upheaval in his tidy life, as well he should. The moment he left the kitchen, Shelley set a package of cereal in with the canned goods and added a package of paper napkins before closing the door with satisfaction. It would take him all day to get everything back the way he wanted it.
When he was through phoning, Jane and Shelley had everything put away. Somewhere. 'They're picking me up in about ten minutes,' he said.
“Oh, good,' Jane said cheerfully. She settled in at the kitchen table with a vacuous expression. 'It's been an unusual week for you, hasn't it? For all of us, really.'
“Has it? In what way?' he asked, reluctantly sitting down across from her. Shelley took the chair between them.
“Well, with Robert Stonecipher's death and then Emma's.'
“Emma?' he asked.
“Emma Weyrich. His assistant,' Jane said. 'Hadn't you heard?'
“No, I'm sorry, but I don't even recognize the name,' he said.
“Surely you knew her,' Shelley said. 'She came to the deli with you and Mr. Stonecipher.'
“I went to the deli opening on my own,' he said firmly. 'Oh, that athletic young woman. Is that who you mean? What happened to her?'
“She was murdered,' Jane said. Surely someone as nosy as he must know this. 'Oh?' he asked. 'Where?'
“In her apartment,' Jane said, curious why he'd asked the question.
“Oh, well — an apartment resident,' he said. 'I've never approved of apartments in goodresidential areas. It brings in the aimless, irresponsible element of society. When you aren't a property owner, your interest in the welfare of the community is seriously diminished.”
Jane and Shelley gawked at him. Jane was the first to recover. And to steer the conversation in a different, potentially more useful direction. 'I don't see how you could not know who she was. After all, she was Stone- cipher's assistant. You and he must have worked pretty closely together on the zoning.' She fumbled for a word other than 'outrage' and could only come up with 'thing.'
“I wouldn't say we worked together. We had a common interest in that particular problem, naturally, as should the whole neighborhood,' he said, apparently offended. 'But Mr. Stonecipher and I were certainly not close friends or frequent companions.”
Shelley raised an eyebrow. 'So you didn't like him much?'
“No, I didn't say that,' he said carefully. 'It was merely that we had only a few, very specific things in common. Like the problem of the deli. Unfortunately, he had a most unpleasant personality.'
“Did he?' Jane asked. 'I hardly knew him at all. What was he like?'
“Very opinionated—' Foster Hanlon said.
Jane nudged Shelley with her knee to keep her from exploding.
“—and unwilling to listen to other views,' Hanlon went on. 'In fact, I had rather strong words with him over his proposal to put in bicycle lanes. He felt strongly about it, of course, but was blind to the fact that it would have been terribly expensive to widen the roads and repave them. It would have meant condemning a few feet of property along the entire length of the routes he proposed. The way the city code is drawn up in regard to benefit districts, it would have raised taxes so that the very people who were losing their land would have ended up paying for the loss.”
Shelley said, 'I presume this street was one of the ones he wanted to widen.'
“Yes, but that's not the point!' he said defensively.
“He lost that battle, didn't he?' Jane said.
This soothed Hanlon. 'Yes, I'm glad to say he did. But I believe it was only a temporary setback. He would have brought it up again, I feel certain. Do you know, I heard he was planning to propose that the city council be increased in number and was going to try to get some of his adherents on. Sort of like' — he lowered his voice as if uttering an obscenity—'Roosevelt trying to pack the Supreme Court.'
“How interesting,' Jane said. 'Where did you hear that?”
He replied warily. 'I don't recall exactly. Several people mentioned it to me.”
Jane had a sudden bizarre vision of groups of neighbors holding secret meetings in a deserted farmhouse at night to think up false rumors to pass along to Foster Hanlon just to drive him crazy. Driving dark cars and wearing trenchcoats. Meeting by candlelight with the windows covered. Speaking in whispers. The image tickled her and she couldn't help but smile.
Hanlon glared at her. 'You find this amusing?'
“No, no. I'm sorry. I was thinking about something else entirely,' Jane said. 'So you didn't come to the deli opening with Mr. Stonecipher?'
“No, I didn't.' He kept glancing at his watch nervously, hoping for someone to rescue him, Jane assumed.
“Why did you go at all?' Shelley asked. He drew himself up. 'It was, I believe, a public event. I was as entitled to come as anyone else.'
“Of course. But why did you want to go?' Shelley persisted.
“To see if the zoning regulations and health codes were being observed,' he said. He seemed proud, rather than ashamed, of him? self. 'This dreadful intrusion of a retail business in a residential neighborhood could be catastrophic to our property values. Yours and mine! And they're not even respectable people.'
“Who's not respectable? What do you mean by that,' Jane said, her amusement fading.
“The Bakers. They're hippies. That's what I mean. Oh, yes. They started out here, but they didn't absorb any of the family values of the community.'
“Excuse me?' Shelley said.
Anybody else would have backed off at her tone, but Hanlon plowed on. 'They're just fly-by-nights. No permanent home until they came here. You mark my words, they'll soon trash that place and trash the whole neighborhood. Pretty soon they'll start hiring blacks and Mexicans and—”
Shelley suddenly stood up and headed for the front door. 'I'm sorry, Jane. This is all I can take.”
Jane was right behind her, with Hanlon bringing up the rear, making insincere remarks of gratitude for the lift home mixed up with further warnings about property values and the shortsightedness of people who made no effort to protect their investments.
The two women leaped into the van and sped off.
“I feel like I need to soak in a vat of disinfectant,' Shelley said when she pulled into her driveway. 'I've already thought of at least sixteen really nasty things to say to him and I'd like to drive straight back there and say them all.'
“And none of them would make the slightest difference,' Jane said sadly.
“No. A bigot is a bigot is a bigot. Ugh! What a thoroughly, bone-deep nasty person he is. Why did you make us do that?'
