Later on Lila made a point of bringing up the gossip about Bern's possible Supreme Court appointment. "Think of the scrutiny, Beth," she said. "Every aspect of your life under a public microscope. We'll all watch the hearings and I bet we learn things about you we never knew."
But Beth wasn't playing. "I doubt it," she said with a bored smile. "I'm not that interesting."
"None of us are," Kathy said with a laugh.
"Oh, I don't know. I'll bet anybody who turned a spotlight on you would learn some fascinating things," Lila said to her.
Kathy blushed and blustered and left the room.
When Lila turned her malevolent attention to Mimi, she failed utterly. "Soong…" she said 'as if talking to herself. "Rather a famous Chinese name for an American to have."
"Isn't it?" Mimi answered. To the questioning looks of the others, she said, "There were three Soong sisters in China. One married Sun Yat-sen, one married
Chiang Kai-shek and the other… I've forgotten what the other one did. No relation to my husband though. It's a very common name."
"I'm surprised that somebody so 'aggressively' American would marry anyone of Chinese descent," Lila went on.
Mimi just laughed and turned to Jane to explain. "Lila, in her subtle way, is referring to the fact that I once wanted to be Doris Day and Sandra Dee all in one. I wish you could have seen me — oh, I forgot! I brought yearbooks."
She had dashed off to get them while Jane wandered into the kitchen where Edgar and Gordon were playing gin rummy at the table. Kathy was there, too, leaning into the gigantic open refrigerator, her oversized derriere sticking out obstructing traffic. "Has anybody killed her yet?" she asked as Jane edged around her.
"Who? Lila? Not yet."
Pooky had followed Jane through the door. "Then I'll volunteer." She squeezed around Jane and Kathy and headed for the back door. "She just got through reminding everybody in the living room that I'm a year older than the rest of you because I was held back that year I had mono and missed so much school!"
"Poor thing. Sick and stupid," Kathy muttered into the refrigerator.
Fortunately Pooky didn't hear this. She asked Edgar, "May I go outside? I just want some fresh air."
"Sure," Edgar replied, laying out his cards smugly. "I won't lock up for another hour yet."
"I only want to go out for a few minutes. I always take a walk before going to bed. It helps me sleep," Pooky said, making a hair-tossing gesture which failed because her stiff, thin hair had no "toss" left in it.
Max interrupted Jane's thoughts by walking across her seeking a warm corner to curl into. It took her a second to realize it wasn't her own Max, it was Hector. She sat up and gave him a chin chuck. He settled into the crook of her knees. Jane adjusted to make room for him. If only she could fall asleep like he could. Maybe it had to do with being able to purr…'.
Her last thoughts were of the school yearbook Mimi brought out. Mimi's senior photo was hysterical. She actually had a platinum blond flip hairdo and raccoon makeup designed to disguise her Oriental eyes. Which it didn't. "Pooky did my hair. It took so much bleach her ringers peeled for a week," Mimi said, giggling. "I don't know why my mother didn't just drown me and spare herself the misery of having me around."
Jane fell asleep smiling.
At first she dreamed she heard the light tapping, then gradually awoke to realize it was somebody at her door. She stumbled over and opened it. Beth Vaughn was standing in the hallway wearing a sensible tailored robe. "Jane, I'm awfully sorry to wake you up," she whispered. "But I have a problem. Can you hear it?"
Jane stepped into the hallway. A faint ding-ding-ding was sounding someplace. "What's that?" she asked stupidly.
"I don't know. I think it's a smoke alarm, but there's no smoke and it's not loud enough. I can't find it."
As they padded toward Beth's room, Avalon's door opened. Her red hair was in wild disarray. "What's that bell?" she asked.
"We don't know," Jane replied. "We're trying to find it"
By the time they located the source of the sound, half the Ewe Lambs were up and roaming the hallway. It turned out to be a cheap alarm clock stuck into the glass bowl of the overhead light fixture in Beth's bedroom. Beth, a little taller than the rest, climbed a chair and retrieved it. "Who in the world would have put it there and set it to go off?" she asked.
"Pretty damned inconsiderate trick if you ask me," Kathy groused. "I'm going back to bed."
Nobody was in much of a mood to discuss the alarm clock. "Let's all go back to bed," Jane said, taking the alarm clock from Beth.
Jane found it hard to get back to sleep. She had nearly dropped off when someone sat down on her bed.
She bolted upright, barely containing a scream.'
But it was only Hector. "Geez, Hector, you scared the stuffing out of me," she said, petting him. Then she realized that the last time she'd seen him he was in the hallway getting underfoot. She was sure she'd shut him out of her room when she went back to bed, but here he was. Maybe he'd pushed the door open. But no, she could see in the dim, reflected glow i of the moon that her door was tightly closed. How elid he get in here?
It was a mild night and the window was open, but she was on the second floor. Curious, she got up and looked out. Yes, there were sturdy vines outside. Hector could have climbed them. But that presupposed he was starting from outdoors and she knew he had been indoors. Still, he might have some other means of leaving the house. It was a big, old place and might well have some other cat-sized escape routes. Still, it was strange and a little alarming.
And in that frame of mind, she settled back into
bed and could hear a thousand suspicious sounds. The creaking in the hallway sounded like a furtive tread on the old stairs, the clattering of leaves outside the window being stirred by a breeze sounded like little creatures scrabbling around. Little red-eyed creatures, she thought and shuddered. She had just managed to clear this scary thought from her mind when she heard another ding-ding-ding. By the time she got to her door this time, Mimi was standing outside it, hand raised to knock. Mimi still looked cool and serene and her hair wasn't even mussed, but she was cranky. "I'm sorry," she said curtly. "Would you help me find the damned thing before it wakes everybody again?"
This time the clock was in Mimi's bathroom cabinet.
And the one that went off at four o'clock was between the mattresses in Kathy's room.
The next alarm clock that went off was Jane's own that she'd brought from home. She fumbled for it, turned it off, then looked blearily around the room, for the moment not remembering where she was. She got dressed quietly and quickly, and crept downstairs to let herself out. It was just seven when she got home.
When she got back to the bed and breakfast an hour and a half later, the back door to the kitchen stood open. "Edgar? I'm sorry I'm late. Katie lost her lunch ticket and missed her car pool—"
Edgar was sitting at the kitchen table reading the paper. "No hurry. We had a long night here as you well know."
Jane poured herself a cup of his miracle coffee and sat down. "So you heard the commotion."
"I stayed out of it, but couldn't help but hear the noise and eavesdrop."
"Edgar, I don't get it. I just don't have the mind-set for practical jokes. I can't think them up. I don't think they're funny. At least these seem harmless. Nobody can get hurt when an alarm goes off. That's not like exploding cigars or something. So everybody's sleeping in?"
"Not everybody. Shelley's in the living room. She got here about ten minutes ago. And somebody else went through here and had coffee while I was back upstairs. Left a coffee cup in the sink."
Gordon stumbled into the room in jeans and a sweatshirt, his hair rumpled and sheet-creases on his cheek. "My God, what was that? An old-fashioned slumber party? Or did I imagine noises all night?"
Edgar explained. "Crazy," Gordon mumbled, pouring himself a gigantic mug of coffee.
"You're not working today?" Jane asked him when
he finally raised his face from the mug.
"Not at the salt mines. I told Edgar I'd hang around in case he needed me."
"The only assistance I need now is getting breakfast into these women. It would help if they got up. Jane, you want to see if you can stir them?"
Jane obediently went up the front stairs. Before she even reached the second floor, she could hear somebody tapping on a door and saying something. But there wasn't anybody in the hallway. She went along and discovered that the sound was coming from the apricot room, which was assigned to Avalon.
"Avalon?" she said to the closed door.
"Thank God! Get me out of here. The doorknob came off in my hand."
Jane looked down and sure enough, there was just a hole where the post of the old-fashioned doorknob should have been. Someone had removed the outer
knob so that the inner knob simply pulled out when Avalon.tried to open the door. Jane fetched Edgar, who instructed her to reinsert the post so he could turn it with pliers from the outside. But by the time this was completed, they discovered that Pooky's and Beth's doors had also been rigged and they had to be rescued.
It was a cranky flock of Ewe Lambs that finally started drifting down to the aroma of coffee and, bacon. "This is a nightmare, Jane," Shelley said from where she hunched in the living room pretending to watch the morning news. "Edgar told me about last night and the clocks. I'm sorry you were stuck with that."
"It's okay. It wasn't your fault. Did Paul call?"
"He did. And was reassured, but I couldn't get back to sleep. And there are still days of this ahead before it's over!"
"Yes, but look at it this way: one whole day of it is behind you. And I found all the missing doorknobs in the flour canister. So that problem's taken care of."
"I hate chirpy people," Shelley said.
"Oh? I thought you'd prefer chirping to baa-ing," Jane said, making a dreadful sheep noise. She went back to the kitchen smiling. This was a rare treat, seeing Shelley, at her wit's end. Shelley never lost control of herself or a situation and here she was more tired and rattled than Jane herself.
Jane helped Edgar fix English muffins that were toasted with a rich cheddar cheese topping, shirred eggs with mushrooms and minced basil from a pot on the windowsill, and an arrangement of kiwi and strawberry slices. At least, she tried to help him. Mainly she got in his way, oohing and aahing and taking mental note of the ingredients.
By the time the breakfast was ready, Shelley had gotten a grip on herself. "Ladies, we need to get breakfast over and begin our meeting," she was saying as she shooed them toward the dining room. "We really have a lot of business to work out if we're going to contribute to the fund-raising effort."
Jane took in the tray of fruit and said, "Who's missing?"
They all glanced around at each other. "Where's Lila?" Beth asked. "She's not locked in her room, too, is she?"
Shelley went up to see and came down perplexed. "She's not there. It doesn't look like her bed's been slept in."
"Or maybe she made it herself," Jane said, hoping some of the others would follow this example and save her some maid duties. -_:
"Maybe she went out running," Crispy said. "Didn't she mention — jogging?" She shuddered as she said the word.
"Well, if she did, she better be back by the time we start the meeting," Shelley said firmly. Crispy and Avalon looked at her with surprise. Just as Jane had never seen Shelley out of control, these women must not have seen her in control.
But Lila hadn't turned up by nine-thirty when the meeting was supposed to start. Shelley went back upstairs when it was proposed that Lila might have actually left and gone home. But her belongings were still there. They all seemed to feel they ought to be concerned about Lila, but were relieved to have her out of their hair.
Shelley marched them all to the library while Jane collected her cleaning supplies and went upstairs. The first room she tackled was Avalon's, which was surprisingly neat considering Avalon's untidy appearance. When she got to the bathroom, she realized she'd forgotten to bring along toilet paper and the roll in Avalon's bathroom needed replacing.
Jane went back downstairs to the supply closet, discovered there was only one roll left there and headed out to the carriage house where the huge carton was stored. She pulled open the small door set into the big garage door and stepped into the gloom. Edgar had turned on a light when they were here before. Where was the switch? She fumbled along the adjacent wall for a moment before she found it.
When the light came on, she noticed two things right away that shouldn't have been there. Against the far wall there was a six-pack of beer with two cans opened and cigarettes scattered next to it. But her attention to this was short-lived when she noticed the pile of curtains and draperies that were being turned into cleaning rags.
There was a woman's hand protruding from them.
Her heart pounding in her throat, Jane stood rooted for a second, unable to breathe or even think. Then, leaden-footed, she went forward and gingerly removed some of the rags.
It was, as she expected, Lila. And she was very dead.
Jane hadn't anticipated seeing Mel VanDyne until the following Tuesday, but his was the face she saw when she removed the cold compress from her eyes. She was sitting in Edgar's kitchen, where she had very nearly fainted after telling him what was in the carriage house. Edgar had pushed her into a chair, shoved her head between her knees, and gone to look for himself, reappearing seconds later to dial the police. Then, while they waited the few minutes it took the law to arrive, he'd made her an ice pack and insisted that she slouch back in the chair and apply it to her eyes. "My mother believed in this as a cure for any shock," he said, his own voice trembling a little. "Hold still!"
In quick succession, three sirens wailed to a stop in the drive, half a dozen car doors slammed. Edgar went out the kitchen door to show the police to the scene. Shelley's control over her meeting had apparently evaporated, because within moments, the kitchen was full of women asking what was happening. Jane stayed hidden behind her cold compress, thinking like mad.
Finally Shelley said to her, "Jane, what's this about?"
"Lila's out there. Dead," Jane mumbled.
A shocked silence.
The kitchen door opened and Mel said, "Jane… Mrs. Jeffry?"
Uh-oh, Jane thought. He's calling me Mrs. Jeffry. Not a good sign. She removed the compress. "Yes?"
"I understand you found the body?"
"I'm afraid so."
"Is there someplace we can speak privately?"
"Use the library," Shelley said.
"Ah, Mrs. Nowack, you're here too," Mel said blandly.
"As a matter of fact, I am, Detective VanDyne."
They were always nasty-polite to each other Jane had first met Mel when Shelley's cleaning lady had met a bad end in Shelley's guest room. They had "taken exception" to each other, to put it mildly, then and didn't seem to be able to get over it. Jane led the way to the library amid a hum of speculation from the Ewe Lambs, and closed the door.
Mel closed the door and then grabbed Jane by the shoulders. He looked as if he was debating between shaking her hard and hugging her. Finally he just released her, sighed, and sat down in one of the leather sofas. "So, Jane, what the hell are you doing finding bodies?" he said with forced calm.
"It's not as if I meant to, Mel. I'd have been thrilled if somebody else had found her."
"And so would I! I hate that you were here at all where somebody's been killed. Try to be very precise and tell me what's going on here," he said, taking out a notebook and clicking a nice gold pen. Jane found herself thinking it looked like the kind of pen people only had as gifts and wondered who gave it to him.
"Okay, Shelley went to a high school here that had a big fire and since the high school reunion is taking place this weekend, she invited some of the women in a do-gooder club they had in school to come early and plan fund-raising."
He wrote for a moment and glanced up at h
er, smiling. "That was concise! Now, what have you got to do with it?"
Jane explained how she'd been roped into helping Edgar and being Shelley's "date." This wasn't quite as concise, but she managed it fairly well.
"Who's the one in the carriage house? What do you know about her?" Mel asked.
"She's just one of them. A nasty one, actually. She was being very unpleasant yesterday."
"Is that when they all came?"
"Yes, at various times during the day."
"When did you last see her? The victim?"
"You say 'victim' as in murder? She didn't die of natural causes, then?"
He didn't even respond to this except to cock his eyebrow.
"I see," Jane said. "Let me think… I don't know exactly when I last saw her. She was at dinner. She was making nasty cracks to people off and on all evening. But everybody was milling around. Going upstairs for things, talking in the library and the living room. Coming in and out of the kitchen. I was mostly in the kitchen and only saw the people who came through there."
'Try to pin down the last time you're sure you saw her," Mel insisted, not sympathetic to Jane's excuses.
"Okay. Dinner for sure. That was at seven. I came in the kitchen just after Lila had been trying to goad Mimi Soong about something. That's the last time I actually saw her."
"When was that?"
"I have no idea. I wasn't paying any attention to the time. Oh, wait. Pooky came in a little bit after that and Lila had been harassing her and Pooky said
she wanted to go outside for some air and Edgar said he wasn't going to lock up for an hour yet, so it must have been about nine-thirty because he locked up at ten-thirty, just after I got back."
Mel had been staring at her intently. "Pooky?" he said, pronouncing it very carefully.. "That's somebody's name?"
"A nickname, I think. A couple of them go by nicknames. Lila was actually Delilah, I think."
"All right, give me a rundown on who's attending this thing, who was in the house last night."
The Class Menagerie jj-4 Page 5
