Silence of the Hams

Patsy didn't take offense. 'Best I can do. Would you prefer tea? I boil water well and you could drop the tea bag into the cup your? The sludgy coffee was removed, Shelley reluctantly put the kitten back in its box, and thethree women applied themselves to cookies and Earl Grey tea. 'Strangely impersonal funeral this morning, wasn't it?' Patsy said. 'I felt sorry for Tony Belton.'

“Me, too,' Jane said. 'He didn't seem pleased at the way Rhonda latched on to him. What do you suppose the nature of their relationship really is?'

“I don't know. I've only seen Tony at the office when I went in to pick up paperwork,' Patsy said. 'I've always thought he was a nice young man. I wonder what Rhonda has in store for him.'

“What do you mean?' Shelley asked.

“Just that I assume her interest in him is self-interest, because she's that kind of person. He's handsome, young, and apparently pretty pliable judging from the fact that he sat up front with the family even though he and they were obviously unhappy about it,' Patsy said. 'But does she plan to marry him or does she think she can profit from him financially?'

“How would she do that?' Jane asked.

“I'm not sure, but Rhonda never lets a penny go without making it scream for mercy. Depending on what kind of partnership agreement Stonecipher and Tony had, she might stand to profit from stringing him along.'

“Might they both have profited from her husband's death?' Jane asked.

Patsy shrugged. 'I guess it's possible. But I only handled the client billing. How the money was distributed once it came in is anybody's guess.'

“But Emma would have known,' Jane said. 'Are you thinking they conspired to bump her off?' Patsy asked bluntly.

“Not thinking, exactly, just wondering. After all, somebody did kill her.'

“Isn't that odd?' Patsy said. 'If you divide people into potential victims and potential perpetrators, I'd have put her firmly on the perpetrator side. I didn't have many dealings with her, but I had the feeling she had a strong instinct for the main chance.'

“But she was victimized by Stonecipher, apparently, and for a long time,' Shelley said.

“Yes, but that was sex,' Patsy said. 'Whole different category. How are the police getting along with their investigation of her death? The article in the paper this morning was awfully vague.'

“Badly,' Jane said. 'There were two other things going on at the apartment building at the same time. A party and a garage sale. Apparently half the town was in and out all afternoon. They need someone like you to organize all the information,' she added with a smile.

“I hear she was blackmailing people,' Patsy said.

“Where did you hear that?' Jane said, surprised.

“Oh, here and there,' Patsy said with a smile. 'I have my sources. Actually, the police must have been asking people about some kind of file folders. File folders contain information and information is a saleable commodity. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to make the connection.”

Shelley had been quiet. Now she said, 'I was surprised to see Grace Axton at the funeral this morning. You'd think as much grief as Stonecipher had given them, she'd have just been glad he was gone.'

“Grace feels strongly about appearances and manners,' Patsy said. 'Some Puritan strain in her. Most of us would have thought we should show up and then thought up excuses not to. But Grace doesn't give herself excuses. She's a tough lady. Tougher with herself than anyone else. At least since her divorce, which was about the same time we met in an accounting class. She had to be strong to get out of that marriage in the first place, and then make a life and profession for herself. I really admire her.'

“How long ago was the divorce?' Shelley asked.

“Oh, a good ten years ago, I think. Maybe only eight or nine. And she was just starting out with her accounting business when Sarah went to pieces. She had to drop everything. Grace's ex-husband had disappeared and wasn't making the house payments like the settlement ordered. Grace gave up the house, her fledgling business, and everything to go to her sister. That's how she ended up living with her grandmother when it was all over. But I never once heard her complain.'

“Poor Grace. And poor Sarah,' Jane said. 'I can't imagine having only the one child and never even getting to take it home.”

Patsy looked at her curiously. 'What do you mean, never take it home?'

“Wasn't it born with brain damage? That's what Grace said.”

Patsy shook her head. 'I think you misunderstood. The baby was born normal. He was a year old when he died.'

“Oh. I guess I did.'

“I misunderstood, too,' Shelley added. 'But now that I think about it, Grace just said they had a child who was severely brain damaged. She didn't say it was born that way. What happened to the child?'

“It drowned in the bathtub,' Patsy said. 'Well, didn't quite drown. Sarah had forgotten and left something on the stove, smelled it burning, and dashed to turn off the burner. She was only gone a few seconds, but it was long enough. The paramedics did their job too well. It would have been better if they hadn'trevived — oh, well. Not for me to say, I guess. Anyway, the baby never regained consciousness, was on life support. It must have been horrible. About the only thing in its little brain that didn't die was whatever triggered convulsions.”

Jane was appalled. 'Oh, that's so much worse than I imagined. And it goes a long way toward explaining why Sarah is still unbalanced. It wasn't just fate, it was her fault. How unutterably awful.'

“I'm sorry. I guess I shouldn't have told you,' Patsy said. 'It's horrible even knowing, but it does explain Sarah's condition. And Grace's concern.”

Shelley stood up and came around to the cat's box. 'I need to cuddle a kitten,' she said.

“We all need to,' Patsy said with a smile. 'Shelley, you know you've fallen in love with them. Why don't you just admit it to yourself?'

“No way,' Shelley said, stroking the mother cat. 'I don't like cats. Never have. What's her name?'

“Abby,' Patsy said. 'Not very original.'

“Don't feel bad. Shelley's got a French poodle named Frenchie,' Jane said. 'She may be my best friend, but I have to say she's not good at names. I've always been sort of amazed that she didn't name her children Boy and Girl.”

18.

“You know you're going to cave in,' Jane said as they drove home.

“No, I'm not,' Shelley said. 'Those kittens just cast a temporary spell over me. Now that I'm away from them, I'll get over it in no time.”

But she still had a dreamy, goofy look on her face.

Jane glanced at her watch. 'There's supposed to be a soccer practice at four. I imagine it's canceled.' 'Why?'

“Won't Tony Belton still be tied up with funeral stuff? You don't suppose Rhonda will let go of him so he can coach a bunch of little boys,' Jane said.

They pulled into Jane's driveway. Shelley said, 'There's a calling committee. If it's been canceled somebody will have told us.”

But neither of them had a message on her answering machine. And since it was beginning to cloud up, they decided to drive the boys to the practice later and stick around to remove them if it rained. Jane had an hour to kill, looked around the kitchen — which appeared to have been the site of a food explosion — and decided it could wait to be cleaned up. She went to the basement with the intention of getting a little writing done and ended up playing solitaire on the computer while her mind churned over Emma's death.

By the time Shelley knocked on the door upstairs, Jane had done nothing but further confuse and frustrate herself. They rounded up their boys and Suzie Williams's son and went to pick up the other two in their car pool and delivered them to the soccer field behind the high school. Summer vacation was still new enough that the boys were hyper and the trip seemed much longer than it really was. Tony Belton was already out on the field, demonstrating various techniques to the early birds.

“I'm surprised he doesn't have a glamorous middle-aged widow still hanging on his arm,' Shelley said.