Real Murders Part 7

Chapter 13 .

I had a bad night.

I dreamed that men with cameras were coming into the bathroom while I was dressing and that one of them was the murderer. I swam up from a deep sleep to find rain was patting lightly against my bedroom window. I slept again.When finally I woke up groggy I peered out the upstairs windows from behind my curtains to make sure no one was lying in wait for me. All the cars in the parking lot belonged there. No one was parked out front. There was a large unmistakable sign at the entrance to the parking lot. I padded down the stairs to get my coffee, but took it back up to my room. Mug in hand, I watched Robin leave for work in the city. I saw Bankston go out and get his papers, Teentsy's car pulled out. She must have needed something for breakfast, for she was back within ten minutes. The shower the night before had not amounted to much, not like the rain of two nights ago; the little puddles were already gone.By the time Teentsy returned, I'd worked up enough courage to get my own papers.They were having a screaming field day. There was a picture of Arthur, a picture of Mamie and Gerald at their wedding, a picture of the Buckleys and Lizanne when the Buckleys had celebrated their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, and a picture of Morrison Pettigrue taken when he'd announced he was running for mayor, with Benjamin beaming in the background like a proud father.At least no one seemed to believe that Melanie and Arthur were guilty of anything but being the b.u.t.t of ghastly practical jokes. I wondered where the hatchet that had killed the Buckleys would turn up, or the knife that had killed Morrison Pettigrue. How could the murderer sustain such a frenzy of activity?Surely there must be an enormous output of physical and emotional energy involved. Surely he must stop.

I managed to dab on some makeup so I wouldn't look like I was going to keel over and yanked my hair back into a ponytail. I pulled on a red turtleneck and navy blue skirt and cardigan. I looked like h.e.l.l on wheels.My only goal was to get to the library without anyone noticing me, and find out if there was any chance of putting in a normal day's work. To my utter relief, there were no strange cars in the library parking lot. The interest in me seemed to have ebbed. The day began to look possible.

I found out at work that Benjamin Greer had called a press conference that morning to announce another candidate would run for the Communist Party in the Lawrenceton mayoral election. The candidate proved to be Benjamin himself, who seemed to be the only other Communist resident of Lawrenceton. I didn't believe for a minute that Benjamin had any coherent political philosophy. He was getting as much publicity as he could while the attention of the media was still on our town. I wondered what would happen to Benjamin after the election. Would butchering at the grocery store ever be enough again?Lillian Schmidt told me about Benjamin, and altogether covered herself with unexpected glory that morning. She worked side by side with me as though nothing at all had happened, with the exception of describing his press conference. I wanted to ask her why she was being so decent, but couldn't think of a way to phrase it that wasn't offensive. (Why are you being nice to me, when we don't like each other much? Why is a tactless person like you suddenly being the soul of tact?) I was pulling on my sweater to leave for lunch, when Lillian said, "I know you don't have anything to do with this mess, and I don't think it's fair that all this has happened to you. That policeman coming to ask me yesterday if you were really mending books with me all morning-I just decided last night that was ridiculous. Enough is enough."

For once we agreed on something. "Thanks, Lillian," I said.I felt a little better as I drove home. I took another route so I didn't have to pa.s.s the Buckleys' house. Over lunch I watched the news and saw Benjamin having his minutes of fame.

I was off Thursday afternoon since I was scheduled to work Thursday night. I'd been wise to make the effort to go to work in the morning, I found once I was home alone. Though I liked work, usually I liked my time off even more. Today was an exception. After I'd changed into jeans and sneakers, I couldn't settle on any one project. I did a little laundry, a little reading. I tried a new hairdo, but tore it apart before I was half through. Then my hair was tangled, and I had to brush it through so much to get out the snarls that it crackled around my head in a brown cloud of electric waves. I looked like I'd been contacted by Mars.

I called the hospital to see if I could visit Lizanne, but the nurse on her wing said Lizanne was only receiving visits from family. Then I thought of ordering flowers for the funeral, and called Sally Allison at the newspaper to find out when it would be. For the first time, the receptionist at the Sentinel asked my name before ringing Sally. She was riding the crest of the story, that was clear.

"What can I do for you, Roe?" she asked briskly. I felt she was only talking to me because I was still semi-newsworthy at the moment. I had been hot yesterday, but I was cooling off. The lack of excitement in Sally's voice was like a shot of adrenaline to me.

"I just wanted to know when the Buckleys' funeral would be, Sally." "Well, the bodies have gone for autopsy, and I don't know when they'll be released. So according to Lizanne's aunt, they just haven't been able to make any firm funeral plans yet."

"Oh. Well..."

"Listen, while I've got you on the line ... one of the cops said you were on the scene yesterday." I knew Sally had seen the picture of me with Lizanne in the city paper. She was getting too full of herself. "You want to tell me what happened while you were there?" she asked coaxingly. "Is it true that Arnie was dismembered?"

"I wonder if you're really the right person to have on this story, Sally," I said after a long pause during which I thought furiously.Sally gasped as if her pet sheep had turned and bitten her."After all, you're in the club, and I guess we're all really involved, somehow or other, right?" And Sally had a son who was also a member, who could not exactly be called normal.

"I think I can keep my objectivity," Sally said coldly. "And I don't think being a member of Real Murders means you're automatically-involved." At least she wasn't asking me questions anymore.

My doorbell rang.

"I've got to go, Sally," I said gently. And hung up.

I felt mildly ashamed of myself as I went to the door. Sally was doing her job.But I had a hard time accepting her switch from friend to reporter, my changing role from friend to source. It seemed like lately people "doing their jobs" meant I got my life turned around.

I did remember to check my security spy hole. My visitor was Arthur. He looked as ghastly as I had earlier. The lines in his face looked deeper, making him appear at least ten years older.

"Have you had anything to eat?" I asked.

"No," he admitted, after some thought. "Not since five this morning. That's when I got up and went down to the station." I pulled out a chair at my kitchen table and he sat down automatically.

It's hard to perform like Hannah Housewife when you've had no warning, but I microwaved a frozen ham and cheese sandwich, poured some potato chips out of a bag, and sc.r.a.ped together a rather depressing salad. However, Arthur seemed glad to see the plate, and ate it all after a silent prayer."Eat in peace," I said and busied myself making coffee and wiping down the kitchen counter. It was an oddly domestic little interval. I felt more myself, less hunted, than I had since stopping to help Lizanne. It was possible work tonight would be entirely normal. And I would come home and sleep, hours and hours, in a clean nightgown.

After he ate, Arthur looked better. When I came to remove his empty plate, he took my wrist and pulled me into his lap, and kissed me. It was long, thorough, and intense. I really liked it very much. But maybe this was a little too fast for me. When by silent mutual accord we unclenched, I wiggled off his lap and tried to slow down my breathing.

"I just wanted to do something I would enjoy," he said."Quite all right," I said a little unsteadily, and poured him a cup of coffee while gesturing him to the couch. I sat a careful but not marked distance away."It's not going well?" I asked tentatively.

"Oh, it's going, now that I've got the Ratkill thing behind me. Of course our fingerprint guy had to go all over my car, and now I've got to get all that stuff off. I'm sure it won't turn up anything. Melanie Clark's car was clean as a whistle. We've completed the Buckley house search, and a neighborhood canva.s.s to see if anyone saw anything. The only thing the house search turned up was a long hair, which may just be one of Lizanne's ... we have to get a sample from her for comparison. And that's for your ears only. The murder weapon hasn't turned up yet, but it was a hatchet or something like that, of course." "You're really not a suspect?"

"Well, if I ever was, I'm not now. While the Buckleys were being murdered I was going door to door with another detective asking questions about the Wright murder. And come to think of it, right before the last meeting, when Mamie Wright was done in, I was booking a DWI at the station. I drove to the meeting directly from there. And Lynn was able to swear for me that the Ratkill hadn't been in the car all morning while we were riding around knocking on doors." "Good," I said. "Someone's got to be out of the running." "And thank G.o.d it's me, since the department needs every warm body it can get on this one. I've got to go." He heaved himself to his feet, looking tired again."Arthur ... what about me? Does anyone think I did it?" "No, honey. Not since Pettigrue, anyway. His old house had one of those claw-footed tubs, way off the floor, and he was a tall man, maybe six-three. You couldn't have gotten him in that tub alone, no way. And around Lawrenceton enough people would know if you were steadily seeing some guy who'd help you move the body. No, I think Pettigrue definitely let you off the hook in just about everyone's mind."

It was unnerving to think that my name had been spoken by men and women I didn't know, men and women who seriously considered I might have killed people in brutal and b.l.o.o.d.y ways. But all in all, after I'd talked to Arthur, I felt much better.

I saw him off with a light squeeze of his hand, and sat down to think a little.It was about time I thought instead of felt. I had crammed more feelings into the past week than I had in a year, I estimated.The hair the police had found was probably brown, since it might be Lizanne's and hers was a rich chestnut. Who else could have shed that hair?Well, I was a member of Real Murders who had long brown hair. Luckily for me, I'd been repairing books with Lillian Schmidt all morning. Melanie Clark had medium-length dull brown hair, and Sally, though her hair was shorter and lighter, could also be a contender. (Wouldn't it be something if Sally had committed all these murders so she could report them? A dazzling idea. Then I told myself to get back on the track.) Jane Engle's hair was definitely gray...then I thought of Gifford Doakes, whose hair was long and smoothly moussed into a pageboy or sometimes gathered in a ponytail, to John Queensland's disgust.Gifford was a scarey person, and he was so interested in ma.s.sacres ... and his friend Reynaldo would probably do anything Gifford wanted.But surely someone as flamboyant as Gifford would have been noticed going into the Buckleys' house?

Well, discarding the possible clue of the hair for the moment, how had the murderer gotten in and left? A neighbor had seen Lizanne enter, too soon before I'd arrived to have done everything that had been done to the Buckleys. So someone was in a position to view the front of the Buckley house at least part of the morning. I considered other approaches and tried to imagine an aerial view of the lot, but I am not good at geography at all, much less aerial geography.

I sat a while longer and thought some more, and found myself wandering to the patio gate several times to see if Robin was home yet from the university. It was going to rain later, and the day was cooling off rapidly. The sky was a dull uniform gray.

I pulled on my jacket finally and was heading out on my own when his big car pulled in. Robin unfolded from it with an armful of papers. Why doesn't he carry a briefcase? I wondered.

"Listen, change your shoes and come with me," I suggested.He looked down his beaky nose at my feet. "Okay," he said agreeably. "Let me drop these papers inside. Someone stole my briefcase," he said over his shoulder.

I pattered after him. "Here?" I said, startled."Well, since I moved to Lawrenceton, and I'm fairly sure from here in the parking lot," he said as he unlocked his back door.I followed him in. Boxes were everywhere, and the only thing set in order was a computer table suitably laden with computer, disc drives, and printer. Robin dumped the papers and bounded upstairs, returning in a few seconds with some huge sneakers.

"What are we going to do?" he asked as he laced them up."I've been thinking. How did the murderer get into the Buckleys' house? It wasn't broken into, right? At least the papers this morning said not. So maybe the Buckleys left it unlocked and the killer just walked in and surprised them, or the killer rang the doorbell and the Buckleys let him-or her-in. But anyway, how did the killer approach the house? I just want to walk up that way and see.It had to be from the back, I think."

"So we're going to see if we can do it ourselves?" "That's what I thought." But as we were leaving Robin's I had misgivings. "Oh, maybe we better not. What if someone sees us and calls the police?" "Then we'll just tell them what we're doing," said Robin reasonably, making it sound very simple. Of course, his mother wasn't the most prominent real estate dealer in town and a society leader to boot, I reflected.But I had to go. It had been my idea.

So out of the parking lot we went, Robin striding ahead and me trailing behind, until he looked back and shortened his stride. The parking lot let out in the middle of the street that ran beside Robin's end apartment. Robin had turned right so I did, too, and at the corner we turned north to walk the two blocks up Parson to the Buckleys'. Perhaps as I'd driven past the Buckleys' on my way home to lunch the day before, the Buckleys were being slaughtered. I caught up with Robin at the next corner, s.h.i.+vering inside my light jacket. The house was on this next block.

Robin looked up the street, thinking. I looked down the side street; no houses faced the road. "Of course, the trash alley," I said, disgusted with myself."Huh?"

"This is one of the old areas, and this block hasn't been rebuilt in ages," I explained. "There's an alley between the houses facing Parson Road and the houses facing Chestnut, which runs parallel to Parson. The same with this block we're standing on. But when you get south to our block, it's been rebuilt, with our apartments for one thing, and garbage collection is on the street." Under the gray sky we crossed the side street and came to the alley entrance.I'd felt so pursued and viewed yesterday, it was almost eerie how invisible I felt now. No houses facing this side street, little traffic. When we walked down the gravelled alley, it was easy to see how the murderer had reached the house without being observed.

"And almost all these yards are fenced, which blocks the view of the alley," Robin remarked, "and of the Buckleys' back yard." The Buckleys' yard was one of the few unfenced ones. The ones on either side had five-foot privacy fences. We stopped at the very back of the yard by the garbage cans, with a clear view of the back door of the house. The yard was planted with the camellias and roses that Mrs. Buckley had loved. In their garbage can-what an eerie thought-was probably a tissue she'd blotted her lipstick with, grounds from the coffee they'd drunk on their last morning, detritus of lives that no longer existed.

Yes, their garbage was surely still there ... everyone on Parson Road had garbage pickup on Monday. They'd been killed on Wednesday. I shuddered. "Let's go," I said. My mood had changed. I wasn't Delilah Detective anymore.Robin turned slowly. "So what would you do?" he said. "If you didn't want to be observed, you'd have parked your car-where? Where we came into the alley?" "No. That's a narrow street, and someone might remember having to pull out and around to get past your car."

"What about at the north end of the alley?"

"No. There's a service station right across the street there, it's real busy." "So," said Robin, striding ahead purposefully, "we go back this way, the way we came. If you had an ax, where would you put it?" "Oh, Robin," I said nervously. "Let's just go." We were leaving the alley as un.o.bserved as we had entered, as far as I could tell, and I was glad of it."I," continued Robin, "would drop it in one of these garbage cans waiting to be emptied."

That was why Robin was a very good mystery writer."I'm sure the police have searched them," I said firmly. "I am not going to stand here and go through everyone's garbage. Then someone really would call the police." Or would they? Apparently no one had spotted us so far.We'd reached the end of the alley, at the spot we'd entered."If you wouldn't park here, you might just cross the street and go through the next alley," he said thoughtfully. "Park even farther away, be even less likely to be seen and connected."

So we slipped across the narrow street into the next alley. This one had been widened a little when some apartments had been built. Their parking was in the back, and in the construction process a drainage ditch had been put in the alley to keep the parking lots clear. There were culverts to provide entrances and exits to the lots. I thought, I would put the ax in one of the culverts. And I wondered if the police had searched this block.This alley too was silent and lifeless, and I began to have the unsettling feeling that maybe Robin and I were the only people left in Lawrenceton. The sun came out briefly and Robin took my hand, so I tried hard to feel better. But when he crouched to retie his shoe, I began looking in the ditches.Certainly the culvert right by us hadn't been disturbed. The water oak leaves that half-blocked the opening were almost smoothly aligned, pointing in the same direction, by the heavy rain of the night before last. But the next one down...someone had been in that ditch, no doubt about it. The leaves had been shoved up around the opening so forcefully that the mud underneath had been uncovered.Perhaps the police had searched, but of course none of them were as short as I was, so they weren't at an angle to see a little gleam from inside the culvert, a gleam sparked by the unexpected and short-lived suns.h.i.+ne. And their arms weren't as long as Robin's, so they couldn't have reached in and pulled out..."My briefcase?" Robin said in shock and amazement. "What's it doing here?" His fingers pried the gold-tone locks.

"Don't open it!" I shrieked, as Robin opened it, and out fell a bloodstained hatchet, to land with a thud on the packed leaves in the ditch.

Chapter 14 .

While Robin stood guard over the horrible thing in the alley, I knocked on the door of one of the apartments. I could hear a baby screaming inside, so I knew someone was awake.

The exhausted young woman who answered the door was still in her nightgown. She was trusting enough to open the door to a stranger, and tired enough to accept my need to use her telephone incuriously. The baby screamed while I looked up the number of the police station, and kept it up while I dialled and talked to the desk officer, who had some trouble understanding what I was trying to tell him. When I hung up and thanked the young woman, the baby was still crying, though it had ebbed to a whimper.

"Poor baby," I said tentatively.

"It's colic," she explained. "The doctor says the worst should be over soon." Aside from occasionally babysitting my half-brother Phillip when he was small, I knew nothing about babies. So I was glad to hear that the child had a specific complaint. By the time I thanked her and she shut the door behind me, I could hear the child starting to cry again.

I trudged back to the alley where Robin was sitting glumly, his back propped against the fence on the side opposite the apartments."Me and my great ideas," I said bitterly, plopping down beside him.

He let that pa.s.s in a gentlemanly manner.

"Cover it up," I suggested. "I can't stand it."

"How, without getting fingerprints on it? More fingerprints, that is." We solved that problem as a mist began to dampen my hair against my cheeks. I found a stick and Robin stuck it under the edge of the briefcase, lifting it and dragging it over the hatchet with its dreadful stains. We settled back against the fence, able now to hear the sirens approaching. I felt oddly calm."I wonder if I'll ever get my briefcase back," Robin said. "Someone came in our parking lot and reached in my car, and took my briefcase, so he could use it for hiding a murder weapon. I'd been thinking, Roe, when this case is all over, if it ever is, that I might try my hand at nonfiction. I'm here, I'm involved through knowing some of the people. I even met the Buckleys the very night before they were killed. I was there when you and your mother opened the chocolates. Now I'm here finding a murder weapon in my briefcase, and I'm telling you, I don't like this much anymore. I don't think I even want the d.a.m.n briefcase as a memento, now that I think of it." But after sitting for a moment in silence, he murmured, "Wait till I tell my agent." The surface of his gla.s.ses began to be speckled with tiny drops of moisture. I took my own off and wiped them with a Kleenex. "I've got to admire your lack of fear, Robin," I said.

"Lack of fear?"

"You think they're not going to want to ask you a few questions?" I said pointedly.

He had only seconds to absorb this and look dismayed before an unmarked car pulled in the alley, with a patrol car right behind it. For some reason, we stood up.

And G.o.d bless me, who should emerge from the unmarked car but my friend Lynn Liggett, and she was mad as a wet hen.

"You're everywhere!" she said to me. "I know you didn't do these murders, but I swear every time I turn around you're right in front of me!" She shook her head, as if trying to shake me out of it. Then words seemed to fail her. Her glance fell on the overturned open briefcase, with the handle of the hatchet protruding slightly from underneath.

"Who covered it up?" she said next. After we told her, and she lifted the briefcase from the b.l.o.o.d.y hatchet with the same stick, all her attention was on the murder weapon.

Yet another car appeared behind the patrol car. My heart sank even deeper as Jack Burns heaved himself out and strolled towards us. His body language said he was out for a casual amble in a pleasant neighborhood but his dark eyes snapped with anger and menace.

He stopped at the patrolmen, apparently the ones who had conducted the original alley search the day before and blistered them up and down in language I had only seen in print. Robin and I watched with interest as they began to search the alley for anything that might have been left by the murderer. I was willing to bet that if he'd left any other trace in the alley, this time it would be found.

People began to emerge from the apartments, and the alley that had seemed so silent and deserted began to be positively crowded. I saw the curtain move at the apartment of the young mother, and hoped the baby had calmed down by now. It occurred to me that this woman was the most likely to have seen something the previous day, since she was probably up almost all the time. I started to suggest this to Detective Liggett, but I reconsidered in time to save my head from being bitten off.

The hatchet and briefcase bagged, the policewoman turned back to us.

"Did you touch the briefcase, Miss Teagarden?" she asked me directly.

I shook my head.

"So you did," she said to Robin, who nodded meekly. "You're someone else who turns up everywhere."

Finally Robin began to look worried.

"You need to go down to the station and have your fingerprints taken," Lynn said brusquely.

"I had them made the other night," Robin reminded her. "Everyone at the Real Murders meeting had his or her prints taken."

This reminder did not endear him to the detective.

"Whose idea was this stroll through the alley?" Lynn counterattacked.

We looked at each other.

"Well," I began, "I started wondering how the Buckleys' murderer had reached their house without being seen..."

"But it was definitely me that wanted to go through this alley as well as the one behind the Buckley house," Robin said manfully."Listen, you two," Lynn said with an a.s.sumed calm, "you don't seem to understand the real world very well."

Robin and I didn't care for that accusation. I felt him stiffen beside me, and I drew myself up and narrowed my eyes.

"We are the police, and we are paid too d.a.m.n little to investigate murders, but that's what we do. We don't sit and read about them, we solve them. We find clues, and we track down leads, and we knock on doors." She paused and took a deep breath. I had found several flaws in her speech so far, but I wasn't about to point out to her that Arthur read a lot about murders and that the police so far hadn't solved a thing and that the clue of the hatchet would still be in the d.a.m.n ditch if Robin and I hadn't unearthed it.

I had enough sense of self-preservation not to say those things. When Robin cleared his throat, I stepped on his toes.

I was sorry I'd stopped- him a moment later when Lynn really began questioning him. I wouldn't have stood to her questioning as well as he, and I had to admire his composure. I could see that it did look peculiar,- Robin arrives in town, the murders start. But I knew that Mamie Wright's murder had been planned before Robin came to live in Lawrenceton, and the chocolates had been sent to Mother even earlier. The officer pointed out, though, that Robin had been present at the discovery of Mamie Wright's body, having invited himself to a Real Murders meeting on his first night in town. And he'd been at my house when I'd received the chocolate box.

Lynn was certainly not the only detective who thought Robin's presence at so many key scenes was fishy. And perhaps I was not as clear and free of suspicion as Arthur had a.s.sured me, because when Jack Burns took up the questioning he was looking from Robin to me with some significance. Here, he seemed to be thinking, is someone big who could have helped this woman get Pettigrue's body in the bathtub.

"I have to go to work in an hour and a half," I said quietly to him, when I'd had all I could take.

He stopped in mid-sentence.

"Sure," he said, seeming abruptly exhausted. "Sure you do." His fuel, it seemed, had been his exasperation with his own men missing the hatchet, and he'd run out of it. I liked him a lot better all of a sudden.When Burns had taken over the role of castigator, Lynn had started knocking door to door at the apartments asking questions. Finally she reached the apartment where I'd used the phone, and the young woman, now in jeans and a sweater-she'd undoubtedly seen the police going door to door-answered in a flash. Lynn was obviously running through her list of questions, but I noticed after about the third one, she came to point like a bird dog. The young woman had said something Lynn was interested in hearing.

"Jack," Lynn yelled, "come here."

"Go home," Burns told us simply. "We know where you are if we need you." And he hurried over to Lynn.

Robin and I blew out a breath of relief simultaneously, and almost slunk out of the alley, trying as hard as we possibly could to attract no more official attention. Once we were out into the street, Robin went flying along home and dragged me with him by the hand.

When we reached our parking lot we finally stopped for breath. Robin hugged me and dropped a quick kiss on the top of my head, the most convenient spot for him. "That was really interesting," he commented, and I began laughing until my sides hurt. Robin's red eyebrows flew up, and his gla.s.ses slid down, and then he began laughing, too. I looked at my watch while I was thinking how long it had been since I'd really whooped like that, and when I saw what the time was, I told Robin I had to go change clothes. At least for a few hours, I had forgotten to be afraid about working at the library alone that night.It had not been noticed until the last moment that no one had been scheduled to take Mr. Buckley's place on the roster. None of the other librarians would now admit to having the evening free, and all the volunteers had been scheduled for other nights.

I told Robin this hurriedly, and he said, "I'm sure the police patrols have been stepped up. But maybe I'll stop in on you tonight. If you need me, call me. I'll be here." He went in his gate and I went in mine.As I pulled on the same blue skirt and red turtleneck I'd worn that morning, I was doing my best not to think of the hatchet. It had been unspeakable. On my drive to work I hoped that the library would be flooded with patrons so I wouldn't have time to think.

I was taking over the checkout desk from Jane Engle, who had been subst.i.tuting for one of the librarians whose child had the flu. Jane looked the same, with her perfectly neat gray hair, her perfectly clean wire-rimmed gla.s.ses, and her anonymous gray suit. But inside, I could see she was no longer a sophisticated and curious witness to the Lawrenceton murders, but a terrified woman. And she was glad to get out of the library. "All the others left at five, not a single patron's come in since then," she told me in a shaky voice. "And frankly, Aurora, I've been delighted. I'm scared to be alone with anyone anymore, no matter how well I think I know them."

I patted Jane on the arm awkwardly. Though at times we'd eaten lunch together, mostly on days after club meetings when we wanted to discuss the program, Jane and I had had a friendly, but never intimate, relations.h.i.+p."Other people are interested in our little club for the first time," Jane went on, "and I've had to answer a lot of questions no one ever bothered to ask me before. People think I'm a little strange for having belonged to Real Murders." Jane was definitely a woman who would hate to be thought strange.

"Well," I said hesitantly, "just because we had a different sort of hobby-." Come to think of it, maybe we were a little strange, all of us Real Murderers, as we had sometimes called ourselves laughingly.Ho-ho.

"One of us really is a murderer, you know," Jane chimed in eerily. I felt my thoughts were becoming visible in a balloon over my head. "It's gone beyond an academic interest in death and gore and psychology. I could feel it that night we met in your apartment."

"Whom do you think it is, Jane?" I said impulsively, as she tied her scarf and extracted her keys from her purse.

"I am sure it's someone in our club, of course, or possibly a near connection of some sort to a club member. I don't know if this person has always been disturbed, or if he's just now decided to play a ghastly series of tricks on his fellow members. Or maybe there is more than one murderer and they're acting together."

"It doesn't have to be someone in Real Murders, Jane, just someone who doesn't like one of us, someone who wants us to be in trouble." She was standing by the front door by then, and I wanted her to stay as much as she wanted to go.She shrugged, not willing to argue. "It's frightening to me," she said quietly, "to imagine what case I fit. I go over my books, checking out cases, to see what elderly woman living alone I resemble. What old murder victim." I stared at her with my mouth open. I was appalled to realize what Jane had been going through, because of her active and probably accurate mind.Then a mother trailing two reluctant toddlers came through the door, and Jane slipped out to go home to her waiting house, to leaf through her true crime books in search of the pattern she would fit.

Thank G.o.d other people were in the library when Gifford Doakes came in, or I might have shrieked and run. Gifford, ma.s.sacre enthusiast, had always sounded the warning bell in my brain that cautions me to pick and choose my conversation topics. Though I really didn't know too much about him, I'd always kept my distance from Gifford and limited my contact with him to the bare bones of courtesy.

You wanted to be polite to Gifford. You were a little scared not to be.I had no idea what Gifford did for a living, but he dressed like a "Miami Vice" drug lord, in extremely stylish clothes and with his long brown hair carefully arranged. I wouldn't have been surprised to see a shoulder holster under his jacket.