“But something happened to him that gave him that temporary amnesia. Maybe the same thing just jarred him out of his stiffness.”
Jane didn't respond. She just looked at Shelley smugly.
“Furthermore, there are just the two brothers. Sam and John," Shelley said.
“Eileen said Sam was adopted, remember? How the parents had given up having a child, adopted Sam, and then along came John," Jane reminded her. "Sam could well have been a twin and they only adopted one of them. Adoptions used to be a lot different in regard to siblings being kept together."
“Golly!" Shelley said. "She did say that. Maybe you're right. If so, what do we do about it? Tell the sheriff?"
“I don't think Sheriff Taylor would believe us for a minute," Jane said. "I'm not entirely certain I believe it yet. Let's don't do anything right away. Let me get my laptop back from Allison, then we can go back to the cabin and figure this out in a careful, rational manner."
“I'll meet you at the cabin.”
Allison already had Jane's laptop neatly tucked back in its carrying case. "Easier even than I expected," she said as she handed it to Jane. "A corrupt file. I deleted it and replaced it from my system.”
Jane gushed her gratitude, but Allison wouldn't have it. "It was nothing, really."
“Oh, on another subject entirely," Jane said, "youtold me Benson once worked for the Claypools. You don't happen to know if there were any other siblings besides John and Sam, do you?”
Allison shrugged. "Not that I ever heard of, but we weren't social friends. Why do you ask?"
“Just wondering if there wasn't a brother or sister to help them out with their parents," Jane lied. "It seems a shame they can't take more family trips together.”
Allison looked at her oddly, and Jane, not wishing to further compound an already flimsy story, thanked her again and hurried away. The dining room was filling up again with people stopping by for a snack between classes. Jane grabbed a couple suspiciously healthy-looking doughnuts and two apples. The parking lot was emptying as some of the local people headed home early to start dinner or pick up children from school.
When Jane got back to the cabin, Shelley had coffee made and looked sneeringly at Jane's food offering. "What on earth are these? Oat bran doughnuts?"
“They might not be as bad as they look. There wasn't much choice."
“I think some governmental agency ought to make food producers fess up that things labeled bran are really low-grade sawdust."
“So what do you think of my theory?" Jane slipped off her wet boots and poncho and sat down cross-legged on her bed.
“I think it's loony," Shelley said. "But so far, it's the only one we've been able to imagine that would explain the same man being both dead and alive. But if Sam One, for lack of a better designation, is still dead, where is he?"
“Anywhere," Jane said. "You could hide a six-bedroom mansion with an Olympic-size swimming pool in these woods. Hiding a body would be a snap."
“So did Sam Two kill Sam One?" Shelley asked.
“I think he must have," Jane said thoughtfully. "Sam Two was wearing the same clothes when he was found as Sam One was at the campfire dinner. He must have taken them off the body.”
Shelley shuddered elaborately. "Yuck. Do you think Marge knows?"
“That he's a different person or that he killed her real husband?"
“Either one. Or—!"
“She was in on it!" Jane exclaimed. "Is that possible? Marge? Mild, quiet, scaredy-cat Marge a murderer?"
“Maybe Marge isn't what she seems," Shelley said. "And maybe Sam One wasn't either. Suppose their marriage had been really awful, much worse than it looked to outsiders. She discovers that Sam One has a twin — or maybe Sam Two did the discovering. Anyway, it could be to her advantage and his to bump off Sam One. Marge gets out of a terrible marriage. Sam Two gets to step into his twin's extremely well heeled shoes. And they're bound to each other by the crime. Neither can rat on the other without revealing their own part in the plot."
“And they go off happily into the sunset," Jane said. "Holding hands and making a couple of neigh-hors look like fools for imagining they found a corpse."
“From what we saw of them today, it's a very satisfactory bond," Shelley said, pouring them each a cup of coffee. "They couldn't keep their hands off each other this morning.”
She thought for a moment. "But, Jane, there could be another explanation for that. Suppose there aren't two Sams. Just the same one. He had some sort of physical and mental crisis and it brought them together. You know, pouring out of true hearts and all that like Eileen suggested. A renewal of the love they must have had when they married. A second honeymoon, so to speak."
“But how do you account for the dead body we saw — and we both know it was dead — and the fact that Sam suddenly became left-handed?”
Shelley nodded. "I'm not crazy about the idea of Marge conspiring to murder her husband, though.' She really seems to be such a basically nice, if downtrodden, woman. That scenario — physical and emotional crisis and so forth — couldn't Marge have been taken in by it, too?" She eyed the doughnuts for a moment, broke off a dainty piece of one and tasted it, then made a face.
“Marge is the one person who would know they aren't the same person," Jane said. "It would be hard to have a heart-to-heart talk about your marriage if the other person hadn't been part of it."
“Which is the reason for the amnesia," Shelley said. "If this guy is Sam Two, he could be telling her that he's the same old Sam, can't remember specifics, but has the vague sense that he's treated her badly all these years, has seen the light, and they're going to get a fresh start. Maybe even emphasize that he doesn't want to remember. That he wants to court her all over again, be young lovers."
“Would you buy that?" Jane asked. She broke off another bit of the doughnut and nibbled.
“Not on your life. But then, I'm not timid, shy, obedient Marge."
“I'll say! Yipes! This doughnut tastes as ghastly as it looks." She got up and threw the rest of it in the wastebasket. "Still, I don't believe Marge could be unaware that this is a different man. He looks the same to the rest of us, but without being too graphic—"
“Go ahead, be graphic," Shelley urged.
“I don't even need to. Different things happen to identical twins. Broken bones, scars, moles in different places. I'd imagine they develop different tastes—"
“Is this the graphic part?"
“Shelley, I'm serious. We all have things we like or dislike intensely for irrational reasons. Nature versus nurture and all that. Like me hating lima beans because I ate too many of them once and threw up at a school play. I wasn't born hating them.”
Shelley was staring off into space. "I saw a television show about this."
“About lima beans or throwing up?”
Shelley rolled her eyes. "No, about twins. Wait, let me think for a minute. I think it was on one of those science and documentary stations. Some scientists or social workers had located a bunch of identical twins who had been raised apart from each other, without even knowing they had a twin. When they really dug into their very separate lives, they discovered that all of them were remarkably similar. They had the same sort of jobs—"