The House of Seven Mabels

smugly.

'I'll reluctantly give you that one.'

'Will you also give me the two women who were throwing up in the front yard?'

'No.'

'Okay. Then we come to my favorite. Bitsy's ex-husband, Neville.'

'Put him down,' Shelley said. 'He's got the best motive to wreck Bitsy's project. A man scorned, and thinking it's really his hard-earned

money that's funding this project. Now, are we done with this chart?'

'We've hardly begun,' Jane said.

Shelley put her head down on the kitchen table and pretended to weep.

Twenty-four

Next are the people doing the sheetrock. Carl Stringfield.'

'We know nothing about him. We've only been introduced to him once,' Shelley countered.

'So he's blank for now. But we need to speak to him. Or find out about him from Evaline. She's next on the list, and we know a lot about her.'

'She did term papers for other people,' Shelley huffed. 'I don't know if that's illegal, but it's immoral.'

'We've been through that already. But she's one of the brightest, most competent, and most imaginative of any of them — as far as we know.'

'But what would be her motive? You're back to what we said about Jacqueline and Henry. She's landed a job she's good at and being paid for. Besides, she and Carl are victims, too. Someone wrecked their work and they had to do it again.'

'Okay, okay. You're right again. But we have to list them. And now another of my favorites. Joe Budley.'

'That jerk,' Shelley said. 'Yes, put him down. But as much as I dislike him, I don't think he's responsible for the things that have happened since he took the job as contractor. There's nothing in it for him. Quite the contrary. If what we've heard is true, he has a deadline and a budget he has to adhere to.'

'But he could have been the one who planted the shrimp and niggled with the wiring before Sandra died. He might even be the one who killed Sandra. Didn't Thomasina say he really wanted that job before Bitsy got tangled up with Sandra?'

'That's true, I guess. But you can't imagine he'd sabotage himself.' Shelley got up from her kitchen table and started to unload the dishwasher.

'We're back to having two or more suspects,' Jane said, feeling discouraged.

'I find that hard to imagine,' Shelley said, stacking plates. 'My money's still on Bitsy's ex-husband.'

'I guess the last on the list is Thomasina, the electrician. Suppose she herself accidentally made the wiring error that resulted in Jacqueline being knocked out?'

'Interesting question,' Shelley admitted, almost dropping a handful of spoons. 'She might have. Maybe her generosity about paying Jacqueline's medical costs was more than to make sure it didn't go on her record with the insurance com-

pany. If she'd wired something wrong, it could ruin her reputation. Jane, you don't imagine it could be anything else but a careless mistake at the worst, do you? What could Thomasina have against Jacqueline?'

Jane said, 'That's another thing we have to figure out. And you didn't ask her what she thought of Bitsy and Sandra, either, when you spoke to her, did you?'

'No. I didn't get a chance. She was already off and running about Joe Dudley being the one who wanted the job badly enough to show up Sandra.'

'We'll have to talk to Thomasina again.' Jane made a mark by Thomasina's name like the one next to Carl Stringfield's name.

'Are we through with this chart yet?' Shelley asked impatiently. All the contents of the dishwasher had been neatly put away, and she sat back down across from Jane.

'For now. But now we need to get the events in order. Don't you dare sprawl over the table again. I promise you this is worthwhile, or will be.'

'Wouldn't you rather be working on your book about Priscilla?' Shelley asked hopefully.

'I would. But suppose Bitsy caves in on the contract you drew up and we have to commit to doing the decorating before the police find out who's doing these things? We don't want to put ourselves in danger of becoming two more victims.'

'Aren't we in more danger snooping into people's lives?'

Jane scoffed. 'Shelley, people love talking about themselves to strangers. At least, most people do. Everybody has gripes they want to get off their chests. It helps them show off their admirable traits.'

'Hmm,' Shelley said. 'Not everyone feels that way, though. Neither you nor I like sharing our personal lives with strangers. And how do we untangle those who are telling the truth from those who are lying through their teeth?'

'Instinct?' Jane suggested. 'It's worked for us before.'

'You're just trying to get me to forget this other chart you have in mind,' Shelley said.

'No, I'm not. The other chart is pure fact. No speculation yet. Just a list of what's happened in chronological order before we start getting the timeline wrong.' She flipped to the next page and wrote 'shrimp.'

'You already have it wrong,' Shelley said with a laugh. 'The shrimp episode was just the first thing we knew about. Jacqueline getting shocked happened before we even heard from Bitsy. And Thomasina's toolbox was stolen before we were involved as well. We only heard about it later.'

'You're right,' Jane said, amending her list. 'So what was next?'

'Sandra's death, of course. Then the bomb scare with the toolbox, I think.'

'Are we sure it wasn't Thomasina's toolbox coming back?'

'Yes, I forgot to mention that Mel told me so. Thomasina's was a big yellow plastic one. This one was steel.'

'That didn't necessarily involve breaking in, then,' Shelley said. 'Someone could have easily taken it in to work and put it in the basement. There's nothing much going on on the ground floor or in the kitchen yet.'

'And then there was the wrecked Sheetrock soon after,' Jane said.

'The return of the purse and the wrecked concrete on the sunporch were apparently the same night a few days later. Or was it the next day?' Shelley pondered. 'I've already lost track of how long we've been on this job.'

'Those two things had to be done by the same person, don't you imagine?' Jane asked. 'Sneaking into the house with the purse. Probably through the coal chute. Then salting the concrete on the way out, or the other way around. I can't quite imagine two people discovering the coal chute and also being there the same night without running into each other.'

'But the person who salted the concrete didn't necessarily know about the secret opening behind the bushes. All he or she had to do was go around the back at the other end of the house and dump the salt,' Shelley commented. 'And bringing back the purse makes no sense at all.'

'Maybe it did,' Jane replied. 'It was the main thing the police were concentrating on when San-

dra died. The mystery of what became of the purse she always wore strapped across her shoulder so firmly. Everybody noticed that.'

'But why bring it back at all? What was the point of that?'

'I don't know. It's the weirdest part of the whole scenario. Maybe whoever took it was nervous about disposing of it, and thought it would take the heat off if the police got it back intact, with everything that was in it. For all the person knew, the police have some kind of arrangement with the city to hold and examine the trash that suspects put out.'

'Pretty thin theory,' Shelley complained.

'Got a better one?' Jane asked.

'Not right now,' Shelley admitted.

Jane thought a moment, then wrote down the fire in the Dumpster. 'So what do all these have in common?'

'Nothing that I can see,' Shelley said.

'Not one single thing, but maybe two tilings. The toolbox didn't really have a bomb in it. Nobody was in