Silence of the Hams jj-7

by Jill Churchill

  “What do you mean, disarray?"

  “With all due respect to the dead, Robert Stonecipher was a nut case. So discontented and angry at everything. None of us can remake the world to suit ourselves and that's what he seemed to be trying to do. All those 'causes' of his! And he always took the line that it was for somebody else's own good. I think most people are like me — they want to make their own decisions about what's to their own benefit, not have some priggish holier-than-thou jerk tell them. He tried it on me. Once! Tried to slither into a discussion about how much healthier I'd be if I lost weight."

  “No!”

  Patsy smiled. "Oh, by the time I got through with him, he knew better than to ever mention it again. I have children to provide me with gratuitous personal critiques. I don't need them from others.”

  Patsy and Shelley are going to be soul mates, Jane thought.

  “And his personal relationships were just as bad, it seems," Patsy went on. "You know, I presume, that his wife had filed for divorce."

  “I saw the notice in the paper.”

  Patsy was quiet for a minute, then said, "You know, I've been wondering about something — it's pure gossip, which I don't approve of unless I'm the recipient, but since you're dating that detective, I wonder. .”

  This hesitancy was unlike her. "What's this about, Patsy?"

  “I'm only telling you this so you can pass it on to your friend the detective, you understand. I went in Stonecipher's office Thursday afternoon to pick up some checks, and he and Emma Weyrich were having a terrific row. I guess they didn't hear me come in and nobody else was around."

  “What was the row about?"

  “Them. I came into the middle of it and left as fast as I could, but it was about his divorce. I had the impression from what I overheard that he and Emma had been having an affair and she thought now that he was going to befree, she'd be the next Mrs. Stonecipher. He brushed her off."

  “I'd heard he had a girlfriend," Jane said. "It never crossed my mind that it was Emma. But it should have. So she was taking the news badly?"

  “Very, very badly. Apparently he'd strung her along for years and years. It was really ugly, Jane. I don't like to run off and be a tattler myself, but I wonder if the police ought to know—?"

  “I'll pass this along to Mel, but I don't think you need to worry."

  “Good. I didn't want to be one of those old biddies who look like they're out to get somebody. I've never liked Emma, but I don't want to go around sounding like I think she killed him. She was mad, but not that mad. At least, I don't think so."

  “Patsy, you were right to pass this along and I'll tell Mel about it, but I think I can assure you that it won't matter.”

  Patsy gathered up the party bible and rose. "Thanks, Jane. I'll give you a call Monday about getting together with you and Mrs. Nowack and getting the two of you on a committee."

  “Why aren't I surprised that you didn't forget that?" Jane asked.

  As she watched Patsy leave, she smiled to herself. She thought she'd so cleverly guided Patsy into talking about Robert Stonecipher when, in fact, Patsy had been pulling her along on a leash. Yes, Patsy and Shelley were going to get along well.

  10

  "Shelley, I've got to run some errands. Ride along? I have very interesting things to tell you."

  “I'm amazed. It's only ten in the morning and you were up all night and you're still able to speak English fairly fluently?"

  “I found a cot in the nurse's room at school and got a lovely three-hour nap, then came home at six in the morning and slept till nine. I'm actually pretty close to human today. If you don't count my hair," Jane replied.

  “Jane, I never consider your hair. Give me five minutes to gather up some dry cleaning I need to drop off.”

  A few minutes later, Shelley, nearly buried in a pile of Paul's shirts and suits, was sitting in the passenger seat as Jane backed out of the driveway, carefully avoiding the pothole the family was affectionately starting to call the Grand Canyon.

  “I have a ton of interesting stuff to tell you," Jane said. "But the most interesting is that Robert Stonecipher died of a heart attack a good five or ten minutes, at least, before somebody pushed that rack of hams over on him.”

  Shelley whipped her head around and looked at Jane as if she were crazy. "What? You mean this?"

  “The coroner or pathologist or whoever swears to it. Mel told me last night. He'd just found out. Stonecipher wasn't murdered."

  “But somebody made it look like he had been!" Shelley said. "I'm dumbfounded. Why would anybody do that?"

  “I've been brooding on it for a while and I can think of two reasons," Jane said. "One sort of reasonable, one sort of goofy. If he had life insurance like my husband did, it would pay double if he died by accident. Double jeopardy — I mean, double indemnity. I always mix those up."

  “Pointing to Rhonda," Shelley said.

  Jane shrugged. "If he had life insurance with that provision and if she were the beneficiary. But he might have other policies as well. You can have more than one life insurance policy, can't you, if you're willing to pay the premiums?"

  “I don't know. I would guess you could. So he might have had one for the girlfriend you heard about. Or even one that paid to his business."

  “Oh, that's something else I learned. The girlfriend is Emma Weyrich and I have lots more about her. What I wonder is, can you insure somebody else's life with yourself as beneficiary?"

  “I'm pretty sure you can," Shelley said. "But I don't really know a lot about insurance."

  “Then you probably won't know what else I was wondering about which is, if you can insure someone else, can you do it without their knowledge? But this is all wandering from the main point, which is that an accidental death might pay off a lot better than a heart attack."

  “Emma Weyrich," Shelley mused. "We should have guessed. She's not the young bimbo I had imagined, but—"

  “More of an early middle-aged bimbo," Jane agreed. "But a health nut like he was, and an employee constantly in his company.”

  Jane pulled into the parking lot of the dry cleaners. It was the Dohertys' new establishment, the one Stonecipher had been trying to shut down. Jane always patronized them because they were a nice couple who deserved all the business they could get. She was curious to know if they'd heard yet about the real cause of Stonecipher's death, but a teenage girl who was their Saturday helper was at the front counter.

  When they were back in the car, Shelley said, "So what's the goofy reason for making a natural death look unnatural?”

  Jane eased into traffic and headed toward the library. "To make Conrad look bad. To try to hurt his business by linking him to Stone-cipher's death."

  “But there's no reason to think Conrad did it just because it happened at the deli."

  “I know. But if somebody like that Foster Hanlon person found Stonecipher dead and was still steamed about losing the battle with Conrad and what he imagines is the lowering of property values, he might figure that making the deli look like a dangerous place might hurt Conrad's business enough to shut him down. It doesn't make sense, but it could be the way a nasty old thing like Hanlon would think on the spur of the moment. I admit it's pretty thin, but the fact is I was frantic about Mike working there when I thought it was a murder. Other people might avoid going there for the same reason.”

  Shelley nodded. "It's possible. Or maybe Conrad had some other enemy who'd like to see him fail. For that matter, maybe Sarah or even Grace was the target, so to speak. I can't imagine disliking either of them. The old Sarah was very well-liked and the new versionof her is as bland as a mouse. But I didn't know her well when we were young and don't know her now either. The same goes for Grace. I like her, but really don't know much about her. She mentioned a nasty divorce. Her former husband could be a real vindictive sort."

  “But since it's not murder anymore, I don't suppose we'll ever know," Jane said.

  She got out of the driv
er's seat, opened the back door, and gathered up her library books from the floor of the station wagon. "You need anything here? Are you coming in?"

  “No, I'm going to sit here and think. You know, Jane, instead of losing interest in this now that it's not a murder case, I find my curiosity piqued. Why risk being hauled in for an imaginary murder? I can't fathom it."

  “Me neither. If the autopsy guy hadn't been up to par and it went on the record as a murder, somebody would have been in a lot of trouble. They'd have probably been convicted of a murder they really didn't commit. It was a huge risk. I'll only be a minute. One of these is overdue and I have to pay the fine.”

  When Jane came back out of the library, Shelley was standing by a trash barrel, the now-empty car ashtray in her hand. She was staring into space.

  “You just can't resist cleaning up things, can you," Jane said, jiggling her elbow.

  Shelley got back into the car and fitted the ashtray into place. "What if making his death look like murder was meant to get someone else in trouble?"

  “Like how?"

  “I'm not sure. The idea's still coming together." She thought for a minute. "Okay. How's this? If I really disliked somebody at the deli opening and in innocently wandering around, looking the place over, suppose I came across a dead Stonecipher. I might think, ah-hah! My great enemy Suzie Q is out there wearing that sweater that sheds all over the place. If I push this rack over and make it look like Stonecipher was killed and then shove some of that sweater fuzz under the rack, maybe the police will think she killed him and she'll be in a lot of trouble."

  “How would you know how the dead Stonecipher had died? Or even that he was dead, and not just in a faint? And why would you risk being seen coming out of the storage room not only once, but twice?" Jane asked. And then she laughed. "Not to mention having to go pluck Suzie Q's sweater in full view of a crowd of people.”

  Shelley didn't look chastened. "Hmm. Guess that one won't fly. Where are we going next?"

  “Shoe repair."

  “Not the taupe heels again. Jane, why don'tyou break down and buy new shoes to replace them?"

  “Because I love those shoes. If I could get exact duplicates, I would. You know that commercial where the women are playing basketball in their high heels? I could do that in these shoes. If I ever had the desire to play basketball. Which I haven't."

  “I did that once," Shelley said.

  “Played basketball?"

  “No. Got smart when I realized I loved a green plaid blouse better than I'd ever loved a piece of clothing. I went back to the store and they still had one in the same size. I bought it, put it away in the cedar chest, and wore the first one for a couple years until it was almost in tatters. I finally threw it away, feeling terribly smug that I had a replacement. But when I got out the next one, I discovered that it had aged just as fast as the one I'd worn. I wore it twice and it fell apart in the wash. I was crushed.”

  When Jane had once again entrusted her beloved shoes to the repairman, they headed for the giant discount store where Jane intended to buy a lampshade to replace the one the cats had clawed. But the Saturday parking lot was so full they gave up. "Did you see those perfectly healthy, agile yuppies park in the handicapped place and bound out of their car?" Jane fumed.

  Shelley grinned. "My mother gets so mad about that. She had some little cards printed up that she puts under the windshield wipers of people like that. The card says: 'The handicap is mental, I assume.' "

  “We must have some of those made up!" Jane exclaimed. "If we can't shop, we'll have to eat, I guess."

  “Sad but true. Where?"

  “The new deli would be great, but we couldn't talk freely there. How about that little salad shop next to the mall?”

  When they were seated at a table at the back of the salad shop, Jane said, "I have a real treat for you. A gift from the gods. You know who Patsy Mallett is?"

  “Of course. The amazing woman who runs the graduation party."

  “Yes, the gift is from her. But I'm afraid there's a bit of a price."

  “What kind of a gift comes with a price?" Shelley said, studying the menu.

  “Most gifts, I've found," Jane commented. "Anyway, here it is—" She told Shelley the Henry-VIII-and-his-paired-ambassadors theory of committee management.

  Shelley was so stunned that she just looked blankly at the waitress when she arrived at the tail end of the explanation.

  “What'll you have?" the young woman said."I–I don't know. Anything," Shelley said.

  “She'll have the chicken Caesar, extra Parmesan," Jane said, "and I'll have the taco salad, no guacamole."

  “Jane, this is wonderful! A real forehead slapper. So that's how she accomplishes so much and keeps tabs on everything. Wow! I can't wait to try this out. I need to sit at this woman's feet—"

  “That's the payoff part. You're going to. I volunteered us to work on next year's graduation. You choose the committee. She's calling me Monday to set up a time for us to meet her and talk about it."

  “It'll be worth it. How'd she happen to tell you this?"

  “She wanted me to pass something along to Mel. About Emma Weyrich. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Quit rubbing your hands together that way about the Domineering Woman's Guide to Bossing People Around and listen to me."

  “Okay, okay. I'm with you."

  “When the graduation ceremony was over, Emma Weyrich made a point of grabbing me and saying she wanted to talk to me."

  “What about?"

  “She wouldn't say. All very hush-hush. I said I was sorry about her boss dying and she just brushed it off, which I thought was strange then. Anyway, I didn't know then‑ and I'm certain she didn't either — that Stonecipher had died of a heart attack. I thought later that she might have wanted to talk about someone she suspected of killing him. Either that, or she was trying to beat us into shaping up again. She was real rude and abrupt and told me to come to her apartment at four o'clock today, just like it was a dental appointment or something."

  “You're going?"

  “I don't think so, but I am curious. Especially after hearing what Patsy Mallett had to say."

  “Which was?”

  Jane started to explain about Patsy overhearing the fight between Emma and Stonecipher and broke off when the waitress arrived with their salads. When they were alone again a moment later, she continued, "Patsy suspected Emma, but didn't want to be a gossip," she said. "Of course Patsy didn't know either about the heart attack and I didn't say anything."

  “Do you think Emma wanted to confide about this affair in your shell-pink ear?"

  “I wondered. But it seems so unlikely. I don't even know her except for having taken that one class. We have virtually nothing in common, so why does she want to talk to me at all? And why was it all so abrupt and almost businesslike? It wasn't a case of her appealing to me for 'let's talk sometime, I need some advice.' It was very much an appointment. A summons, really."

  “That is weird," Shelley said, critically examining a piece of the chicken in her salad. "But maybe it's just her manner. I don't recall her being notable for her social grace. And according to Patsy Mallett, Emma had good reason to be pretty badly disconcerted. You know, I think she turned up in town about the same time the Stoneciphers did. She might have come along because he was moving here. Who knows how long this affair has been going on? To have her hopes of marrying him blow up in her face just when she thought she'd finally gotten what she wanted — and then to have him die the very next day — well, it would be a rare person who didn't get badly rattled."

  “True, but it still doesn't explain why she'd want to talk to me, of all people, about it. Surely she has friends of her own. I'm barely even an acquaintance. You'd think she'd even know Patsy better. She sees her every week. And if I needed advice, I'd choose Patsy over me any day."

  “I think we should find out what it was all about," Shelley said.

  Jane broke off a chunk of the taco shell her salad
came in and grinned. "Good. I like that 'we' part. You'll go with me?"

  “Sure. I'm as curious as you are. Maybe she'll tell us something interesting.”

  But when they got to Emma's apartment, they discovered that she wasn't telling anybody anything.

  She was dead.

  11

  The apartment complex was a large, modern one, laid out and landscaped with lots of trees and ferns and winding streets in an elaborate way that made it look more cozy and private than it actually was. When Jane and Shelley noticed the ambulance and police car, they assumed at first that there had probably been an accident at the pool. But as they approached the building Emma lived in and saw two suited men who were obviously official at the door of the building, they cast quick, alarmed looks at each other.

  They were stopped at the door of Building Three.

  “What's happened?" Jane asked.

  “Are you residents?" the taller man asked.

  “No, we're visiting someone who lives in this building," Shelley replied. "Emma Weyrich in 308D."

  “Would you wait here, please," the plain‑ clothes officer said firmly. He gave the other man a quick glance that clearly meant Make sure they do.

  “Is Mel VanDyne here someplace?" Jane asked. When nobody replied, she added, "Tell him Jane is here waiting to talk to him.”

  Mel appeared a minute or two later. "Funny, I'm not surprised to see you here," he said, half disgusted, more than half angry.

  “Is it Emma?" Jane asked.

  He nodded.

  “Dead?"

  “Very," he said. "A neighbor called half an hour ago. Said he found her cat out in the hallway. Took it home and found the door ajar. Went in and found her."

  “How was it done?" Shelley asked quietly.

  “A smack in the head with a small barbell-type thing. Prints wiped clean. Very tidy. No struggle. No blood. You'll have to explain yourselves, but not to me." He addressed the officer who'd fetched him. "Smith, will you take statements from these ladies? Mrs. Jeffry and Mrs. Nowack. And don't let them interview you.”

  He went back into the apartment building, and Shelley and Jane gave their statement. Jane explained that Emma, whom she knew only slightly, had approached her, setting up an appointment to meet at this address at four.