“To see if we could learn anything, of course.'
“Did we?' Shelley asked with disgust. 'Anything we wanted to know?”
Jane thought for a minute. 'Only that he wasn't great chums with Stonecipher—'
“The man's never been chums with anyone. Who could stand him for more than five minutes?'
“—and that he didn't seem to know who Emma Weyrich was.”
Shelley waved this away, still furious. 'Come on, Jane, if you thought you could get away with pretending you didn't even know her, wouldn't you? Not you, of course, but if you were he?'
“That's a hideous thought. Being him,' Jane said.
1 5
Shelley arrived at six-thirty for her ride in Mike's truck. Mike had to show them how everything worked, as if they weren't capable of figuring it out themselves. 'Where are we going?' Shelley asked when they pulled out of the driveway.
“There are a couple houses over in the fancy new subdivision just to the west open today. If it's not too late, I thought we might go gawk,' Jane replied.
“Thinking of moving?' Shelley asked with a laugh.
“No way on earth. But I like to torture myself with the idea of clean closets and new kitchens. No, the only way I'd leave my house is on a gurney. You know, I cleaned out the upstairs hall closet last week. Took every single thing out, threw half of it away, and the half I kept wouldn't fit back in. What bizarre law of physics makes closets that way?'
“I don't know. But I've experienced it myself. Things seem to fluff up just by being taken out and handled. Somebody's probably got a million-dollar government grant to study it as we speak.”
They stopped at a light, and a car full of teenagers pulled up next to them, admiring the truck and laughing hysterically at the incongruity of the middle-aged passengers. 'Feel a little silly?' Shelley asked Jane.
“Wait until we get to the show house and the realtor runs around turning off lights and locking the doors,' Jane said with a grin.
They were too late and doors were already locked and lights off when they arrived, so they contented themselves with driving around looking at the outsides of the new homes and imagining what wonders might be within.
“I've been thinking all afternoon about that old jerk Hanlon,' Shelley confessed as they stopped in front of an enormous house with elaborate landscaping. 'Imagine still holding a grudge against Roosevelt more than half a century later. That's world-class rancor. I want to know what you were grinning about like a Cheshire cat while he was ranting.”
Jane told her about her vision of neighbors meeting to think up rumors to upset him. 'An abandoned hunting lodge, way out in the country, I think,' she said, giggling.
Shelley laughed. 'A special knock and a password. Like 'New Deal.' '
“ 'Long live the NRA,' ' Jane suggested with a laugh.
“I hate to admit it, but as much as I'd like to see Foster Hanlon blamed for almost anything,' Shelley said, 'I can't believe he was responsible for Emma's death. Or even the business of pushing the rack over on Stonecipher. Both of those events were messy. And Hanlon's too fastidious to be involved in anything messy.”
Jane had been studying the lawn of the house they were parked in front of while Shelley talked. 'And they both took a bit of strength. Not a lot, but he seems so frail. No, I think if he were going to kill someone, he'd just talk to them until they had a stroke out of sheer frustration.'
“Interesting, though, that he made no bones about not liking Stonecipher.'
“Oh, he speaks his mind, all right. I think he's so used to people being offended by what he says that it would never cross his mind that he might actually endanger himself with his opinions. Imagine going through life with people looking shocked or offended or edging away from you every time you expressed one of your opinions. Wouldn't you catch on eventually that your opinions were pretty nasty?'
“I don't think people like him care,' Shelley said. 'They're so convinced that they're right. There's a sort of reforming zeal that appears to motivate them. He probably imagines that they are shocked when he speaks because they'd never thought about it from his view and are going to go home and change their ways, thanks to him.'
“But he must not have any friends at all.'
“Oh, I'm sure he does. Other awful people who agree with him that the world is going to hell in a handbasket and if people would only listen to them, everything would be okay. It would only take a couple others like that to make you feel you were part of a very special, select group. In fact, their very exclusivity probably appeals to them.”
Jane sighed. 'I guess so. But it's so depressing. Shelley, how would you ever mow this lawn? Look at the slope of it.'
“If you could afford to live here, you could afford gardeners. Or a flock of sheep, for that matter. Hey! Let's start a rumor that we're going to get sheep to do our lawns!' She rummaged in her purse for a piece of gum, then started to put the wrapper in the ashtray. 'No, I can't be the first to sully a pristine ashtray.'
“There's a paper bag on the floor,' Jane said. 'See what's in that.”
Shelley picked it up and looked. 'Trash. Good.' She popped the gum wrapper in. 'Isn't that nice that he's keeping it so clean?'
'I give it a week,' Jane said.
They headed back home, where Mike met them in the driveway. He must have been watching for them from the front window. 'How'd you like it? Doesn't it drive great?' he said, and tried casually to look at the odometer to see how far they'd gone.
“Great, Mike. Has a lot of power out on the highway,' Jane said. 'It doesn't even shimmy until you get up to about a hundred and ten miles an hour.”
He rolled his eyes. 'Yeah, sure, Mom. Like you've ever gone over fifty-five.'
“What are you doing here?' Jane asked. 'I thought you and Scott were double-dating.'
“Yeah, but I asked him to pick me up last so I could see what you thought of the truck.'
“So you could see when I brought it back, you mean,' Jane said, smiling. Then to Shelley: 'That low, rumbling sound you hear is the generations rolling over.'
“Hey, Mom, you won't care if I put the truck in the garage and leave the station wagon out, will you?' Mike asked, polishing off an invisible spot On the hood with his shirt tail.
“Oh, no. Not at all. About sixteen more raindrops and the station wagon will become one hundred percent rust and just be an orange spot on the driveway. Maybe I could park it over the pothole and the nondegradable bits will fill in the hole.'
“Does that mean no?' Mike asked.
“That's what it means. If you'd clean out the other half of the garage, you could park it there.'
“Mom! The other half of the garage is full of junk.'
“Yes, and you now have the ideal vehicle for taking it all to the dump,' Jane said. 'Shelley, can you come in?'
“After I tell Paul I'm home.”
Jane went inside, carrying Mike's small paper sack of trash. The phone was ringing. She reached for it seconds before Katie raced into the kitchen and skidded to a stop.
“Janey, have you had dinner?' Mel asked. 'Not exactly. Want to come over for a sandwich? I pillaged the grocery store.'
“I thought you'd never ask. Five minutes,' he said.
He and Shelley arrived at the same time. Jane had dragged out sandwich stuff, to which Mel applied himself as if he hadn't eaten in days. The women waited as patiently as they could for him to finish eating, telling him about their visit with Foster Hanlon.
The minute he swallowed his last bite of sandwich, Jane said, 'So how's the investigation of Emma's death going?'
“Got any cookies?' he asked. She produced 190 two different packages of store-bought pastries. 'A nightmare,' he said, picking an oatmeal-raisin cookie and getting up to pour himself a glass of milk. 'There was an
