Lloyd was sitting down next to the television with a plate of food on his knees. His wife was fussing over him and trying to conceal a smile. He looked like he'd been hit between the eyes with a brick. Shelley must have laid some pretty brutal truths on him. Shelley herself was calmly serving herself from a casserole of scalloped potatoes and chatting with Avalon and Edgar. Much as Attila the Hun must have done after a day of looting and pillaging, Jane thought to herself.
Mrs. Moffat had been turned loose from the glare of police attention and seemed enormously relieved. She was sitting on the sofa next to Trey, playing
pat-a-cake with the baby and making syrupy cooihg noises. Pooky was sitting on the other side of Mrs. Moffat, laughing. Pooky's new friend was standing over her, his hand on her shoulder. Jane was drawn to this pleasant circle. She sat down in the chair at right angles to the sofa.
She had it. She knew somewhere deep in her subconscious all this made sense. If she could just pull out the right pieces and make them fit together.
"Is he headed for the ministry, too?" Pooky's friend asked Trey.
"If he wants," Trey said, putting his arm around his cute little wife and smiling idiotically at the baby. "Or the law, or medicine. My only responsibility will be to see that he gets into the best college that money or bribery can buy!" He laughed uproariously.
"What did you say?" Jane asked, sitting forward so suddenly she nearly upset the coffee table with her knee.
"Oh, it was just a joke, Mrs. Jeffry!" Trey said, alarmed that she might have taken him seriously. It seemed he'd just realized that ministers shouldn't make jokes about indulging in illegal activities.
"Yes. I know. The best college…"
"Are you all right?" Trey asked her.
"Yes, fine. Fine. I just — Pooky, what was Ted's father's first name?"
'Ted's dad? The judge? I have no idea. No, let me think — Samuel, maybe. Or Steven. No, it was Samuel. Why?"
"S. Francisco—" Jane muttered.
If she'd only paid closer attention to something her son Mike had said, she'd have figured it out long ago.
// she was right___
If Lila was right.
JIM
Jane fished the folded paper out of her pocket, excused herself, and went to the kitchen. Fortunately, nobody was there but Hector, who was sitting on a chair, stretching his neck to look at the counter. Jane reached for the phone and punched in the California telephone number that had the star next to it. After four endless rings, a machine picked up. "This is the admissions office of Stanford University. Our office hours are — "
Jane hung up the phone. Hector said, "Brbrbreow!" She scratched his ears absently. Yes. Not a hospital. "Admissions" didn't mean a hospital. It meant a college. And "S. Francisco" didn't mean San Francisco, it meant Samuel Francisco, the judge who hadn't approved of Beth dating her son, but had inexplicably given her a glowing recommendation that had eliminated the final hurdle to her getting a full scholarship.
Or so Lila had told someone.
Jane paced for a moment and suddenly stopped in her tracks, her mind dashing in sixteen directions at once. Calm down, she told herself, closing her eyes. One thing at a time.
The recommendation was a forgery, just as Mike had jokingly suggested for himself days ago. Ted, still enamored of Beth, had probably stolen some of his father's stationery for her and might have supplied something with Judge Francisco's signature. And Beth had sailed into college on a full scholarship. Not that she hadn't deserved it, but a judge who had gotten an education predicated in part on a forged document would not only fail to get to the Supreme Court, she'd probably be disbarred. But there wasn't any way to prove it. Judge Francisco was dead now. Still, there were handwriting analysts who could prove the case
without him. Even if it were never proved, the scandal would destroy her life's work.
Jane had to tell Mel tight away.
She turned and found herself face-to-face with Beth.
"I think we better go outside," Beth said calmly.
She had one of Edgar's carving knives in her hand and touched the tip of the blade to Jane's sweater.
"You forged the recommendation, didn't you? That's what all this has been about!"
"Is that what was on those little yellow papers you were carrying around? Crispy was stupid to tear them out and leave them around for a busybody like you to find. Hand them over."
"I don't have them."
"Then let's go outside and you can tell me where you put them." Her voice was eerily calm.
If she gets me outside, I'm dead, Jane thought. / have to stop her inside. But how? An idea skittered through her brain and she latched onto it. It wasn't a good idea, but it was the only one she had.
Hector, unaware of the danger, was stropping himself against Jane's legs.
"You could have," she stopped. Coughed. " — have paid her off, (cough, cough) you know. Even if you didn't, it would have ruined your career, but you (cough) wouldn't have gone to jail (cough, cough, cough) for forging the recommendation."
"Pay her off for the rest of my life? Let's go outside and discuss this in the carriage house. Now!" She pressed the knife through the sweater and into Jane's skin just beneath her breastbone.
Jane gritted her teeth. The carriage house!
It wasn't just forgery, she realized. It was more. Far more! Had Lila figured that out? Or had Beth only feared that she would eventually?
Faking the cough wasn't so hard now. She could hardly breathe for fear. "When you broke up (cough, cough, cough) with Ted, he was humiliated and threatened (cough) to tell his father, didn't he? (cough, cough) You couldn't afford (cough) to have that happen. You're the one who started the car (cough, cough) after he fell into bed (cough) dead drunk. You killed Ted."
"Why, you're smarter than you look. Now, move!"
"Wait! I'll (cough, cough) tell you where the notes are. Just let me (cough) get a (cough, cough, cough) drink of water. It's that cat (cough). I'm allergic. Please."
"Make it fast!"
Still hacking and coughing, Jane cracked the refrigerator door, shoving Hector out of the way with her foot at the same time. The door opened toward Beth. Jane glanced inside and gasped in horror.
Instinctively, Beth leaned forward to see what Jane was looking at, and as she did so, Jane jerked the door open with all her might. It swung around, hitting Beth squarely in the face.
The knife clattered to the floor as Beth fell backward, her hands to her face. Blood was pouring from her nose and she was making a gurgling, screaming sound as she hit the floor and started scrambling for the knife.
Jane dived for the floor, too, and got to the knife first. Beth swung at her, blood splattering everywhere.
Doors flew open and the room was suddenly full of horrified witnesses. Shelley did a running long jump over Beth to reach Jane.
"My God! Jane is this your blood?" she asked, squatting down on the floor next to her.
Jane took a deep, trembling breath and hung onto
Shelley. "I don't know. I don't think so." Mel had pushed through the crowd and was holding Beth's arm and mechanically advising her of her rights, but he was looking intently at Jane.
Jane looked at Beth, whose face was twisted with
fury and despair. "In a way, it's Ted's blood…."
25
"Not the cream puffs again," Jane groaned. "I've probably gained a ton this week. No, Edgar. Set them a little closer to me, would you?"
It was Sunday evening. The bed and breakfast was Ewe Lamb-less, except for Shelley. Edgar, who should have been taking a well-deserved rest, had insisted on serving a big dinner to Jane and her family, Shelley and her children, and Mel. The meal consisted almost entirely of leftovers from the night before, but Edgar's leftovers were better that Jane's first-timers, as she told him.
Dinner was over now and the children were in the living room with the Nintendo. Edgar was not only a superior cook, he also had a better selection of game
s than Jane did. There were several she intended to try before the day was over.
Mel had left the dining room between dinner and dessert and now came back. "Crispy's been taken off life-support," he said.
"No! Who gave that order?" Jane asked.
"Calm down. It doesn't mean what you think. She's off because she's breathing on her own. The doctor says she must either have enormous determination to live or a cast iron brain. They think she may even regain consciousness." He popped a mini-cream puff in his mouth and practically swallowed it whole. "I don't suppose there's any hope that you made this, Jane?"
"Afraid not."
"That's too bad. The odd thing is," he went on, "there are not one but two of Crispy's ex-husbands pacing the hall driving the nurses crazy. How did they find out? And why did they contact each other?"
"They probably have a support group," Shelley said. "With a 1-800 number."
"I don't suppose Beth's admitted anything?" Jane asked.
"She hasn't uttered a syllable except to remind us that it's our responsibility to build a case and she won't contribute to our efforts," Mel said. "But that's all right. We've identified fibers from the rags in the carriage house on the clothing Beth was wearing the night she killed Lila. That proves she was at the murder site and actually came in contact with the fabric Lila's body was covered up with. If Crispy does wake up, we'll have her testimony as well. I don't know that we'll ever prove Beth's role in Ted Francisco's death. It's too long ago and the physical evidence is ancient. But we'll certainly nail her on Lila's. She's also got splinters in her palm that will match with the branch she used as a club, but the legal eagles are having a row about the legality of removing them."
"Jane, remember when you were talking about us being wrong in our assessment of somebody?" Shelley asked. "Did you ever remember what it was?"
"Oh, yes. As Beth was ruining my sweater with that knife. It was her self-control. Legendary, almost. Everybody, including us, kept saying how she never lost her cool in her.life. But I saw her go entirely to pieces."
Z IU — … — -.
"The deodorant!" Edgar said, crinkling his nose in remembrance of the smell.
"Right. She was running around in the upstairs hall, practically naked, having hysterics. I'm not sure that even I would have gone that nuts. So there was a gaping hole in her legendary self-possession."
"You think she just went berserk when she killed Lila?" Shelley asked.
"Maybe. It was a very violent act, hitting her with the paint can. And hitting Crispy with that stick."
"What was Mrs. Morgan doing letting herself be caught alone with a killer?" Gordon asked. So far he'd been silent throughout dinner and their discussion.
"We don't know," Shelley said. "Maybe she just went there early to meet Jane and Beth caught up with her."
"But it still doesn't make sense. The place had two doors. Why didn't she just run like hell?" Shelley asked.
"Possibly because she'd made the same leap I did from the fake recommendation to Bern's killing Ted to keep it secret. Crispy loved Ted," Jane said. "Not just a crush like the rest of the Ewe Lambs, but real love, I think. In fact, I would guess that deep down inside, she still loves him and may have cast off all those husbands for the simple reason that none of them were Ted. Imagine, all these years she's probably beaten herself up over his 'suicide.' Thinking that if she'd been a better friend, she could have seen it coming, or talked him out of it, or something. People do that when somebody they love takes his own life."
Shelley nodded. "And if she figured out that Beth had killed him—"
"She'd have been so furious that she might have thrown caution to the winds. Maybe she forgot or ignored the threat to herself in her eagerness to tell Beth what a vile person she was."
"But keeping the notebook was so stupid," Edgar said. "Why didn't she just turn it over to the police?"
Shelley spoke up. "My guess would be because she wanted to have the leisure to ferret out what it all meant first. It probably didn't occur to her that there was a copier right in the house. She'd only been in the library for our meeting and she sat with her back to it."
"It still doesn't make sense," Gordon put in. "Why would she need to figure it out herself? The police were already working on the case."
"I think it was partly because she honestly believed she was smarter than the police," Jane said.
"A trait shared by a number of people," Mel said.
Jane ignored his sarcasm. "I think it was mainly because she was basically an extraordinarily snoopy person. She wanted to know what Lila had on people. She might or might not have ever used the information to humiliate them, but she just had to know."
"Like my sister-in-law, Constanza," Shelley said.
"Exactly. Mel? Do you know yet what the notes about Mimi meant?"
"Yes, that was an easy one. Her first child is institutionalized. He's severely retarded."
"Was^Lila trying to hold that over her?"
"She might have intended to, but she never got around to it or she didn't get her facts lined up in time," Mel said. "She would have been unpleasantly surprised if she had. Mrs. Soong was very open about it. She said she doesn't bring it up because it upsets other people, who don't know what to say to her, but it's never been a secret."
Edgar pushed the cream puff tray closer to Jane,
who snatched another one. Edgar asked, "I know you and Shelley had the notes Lila had made, but how did you guess what the ones on Beth meant?"
Much as Jane was enjoying the chance to show off her cleverness, she wished they'd quit asking questions so she could apply herself seriously to the cream puffs. "I heard Trey Moffat make a joke about bribery being a means of getting his baby into a good college."
"I certainly wouldn't have made that leap of logic," Edgar said.
"That's because you're not deep in the agony of getting a kid into college. Just the other day my son Mike was bemoaning the fact that he didn't have anybody important and influential to write him a recommendation and he said, as a joke, that he didn't need to know them, all he needed was some of their stationery. Both Trey Moffat and my son are highly honorable people, but even they recognize that it may 'take less than honorable means to get into a good school.
"Then I remembered a conversation with Mimi. She'd said Lila mentioned that Beth had gotten a great college recommendation letter from Judge Francisco. Mimi was surprised by that, saying that the Franciscos hadn't really approved of Beth."
"I didn't know about a letter of recommendation. Not at the time," Shelley said.
"No, none of you would have. Beth wasn't a brag-ger and she was very close with information about herself. She wouldn't have told any of you about the letter then, even if it had been legitimate. So, I reasoned that if Lila knew about it, she had to have found out by herself as part of her blackmail campaign preparation. Then the notes she'd made about Beth made sense."
"I guess so," Edgar admitted. "But why the silly
practical jokes? Why would someone like Beth play such stupid tricks?"
"Only two of them were her doing. And they weren't jokes at all."
Mel looked at her with surprise. They'd talked about the murder the night before, but not the practical jokes. "What do you mean?"
"This is just a guess, mind you, but Beth was worried about that picture Avalon drew."
"The picture she gave me?" Edgar asked uneasily.
"Avalon said she did it the night Ted died. And it was full of little secret figures. I think Beth was terrified that she was in the picture someplace. That Avalon might have seen her leaving after she started Ted's car. Avalon said she heard the car start and ran away. But what if she hadn't gone immediately? So Beth wanted to find and destroy the picture."
"That's why she searched Avalon's room!" Shelley said. "But why did she wait so long to do it?"
"Because she searched Pooky's room first. Remember how determined Pooky was to have the picture? I was surprised when Edg
ar showed it to me. I assumed Avalon had caved in and given it to Pooky. Beth probably made the same assumption. So she tore up Pooky's room looking for it."
"And stole the antique?" Mel said doubtfully.
"Just to make it look like it was part of the spate of jokes. Keep in mind that she 'hid' it where we could hardly keep from finding it."
"And by the time she got to Avalon's room, she was getting frantic enough not to bother," Shelley said.
"Probably."
Gordon got up and started stacking plates to take to the kitchen.
"And which of the Ewe Lambs did the other jokes?" Mel asked. He still looked skeptical.
"Gordon, don't take those dishes just yet," Jane said. "Come back. You'll find this interesting."
"You think so?" he asked with a smile.
Jane spoke to Shelley. "Who in your high school class was a practical joker?"
"Why — nobody that I know of."
"You're sure? What about Gloria Kevitch?"
"Gloria who? Oh, yes. I do remember. She was always in trouble over something. How do you know her name?"
Edgar mumbled an exclamation and looked at Gordon. So did Mel.
"Is this another Ewe Lamb we're talking about?" Mel asked.
"No, she wasn't a Ewe Lamb," Shelley said.
"She's the girl the high school yearbook was dedicated to," Jane explained. "Mimi said Gloria Kevitch had applied to be a Ewe Lamb but was turned down. Later on, she died in a car accident. Maybe a suicide, maybe an accident."
"Jane, you've lost your mind," Shelley said. "What on earth could all this possibly have to do with what happened here? Unless you're suggesting that poor little Gloria has come back to haunt the Ewe Lambs. I don't believe you'll ever convince me of that!" she added with a laugh.
"Oh, but she did haunt you. Didn't she, Gordon?"
He was sitting next to Edgar now, drawing patterns on the tablecloth with his fork. He finally looked up at Jane. "You're kind of spooky yourself," he said. "How did you know?"
"I brought in your mail and sorted it into piles."
Gordon nodded. "And something came to me as Kevitch. I see."
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