Shelley sank back into her chair. "That was a lie, wasn't it? About Edgar wanting to talk to me?"
"Sure. So, how's it going?" Jane asked quietly.
"No firearms have been discharged — yet. That's about the best you can say for it. I must be getting credit in heaven for this, mustn't I?"
"I wouldn't count on it," Crispy said from across the room. She had miraculous hearing. She flipped off the television and came to sit with them. "Sorry I didn't rescue you myself," she told Shelley. "And I'm sorry about Kathy. I was really looking forward to seeing her. All that social consciousness was endearing in high school, but so tiresome now."
As she sat down, carefully adjusting her short skirt and silk-clad legs, Avalon drifted into the room carrying a small leather purse with a long, woven strap. She held it awkwardly, as if it weren't hers.
"What's the matter, Avalon?" Crispy asked.
"It's my purse. It's all full of someone else's stuff."
"Whose?" ';
"I don't know."
She extended the bag to Crispy, who wasn't shy about snooping. She pulled out a billfold and flipped it open. "Pooky," she said. "God, if my driver's license looked like that, I'd give up driving for good. Poor old Pooky."
Jane went to the kitchen door. Beth had joined the kitchen crowd, Mimi had disappeared, and Pooky was standing at the butcher block workstation flipping through a magazine. "Pooky, where's your purse?" Jane asked her.
"Upstairs, I think."
"Would you mind getting it?"
In a few minutes Pooky came in looking spooked. "It's full of your things. Knitting stuff," she said to Avalon. "How did that happen? Where are my things?"
Crispy upended Avalon's purse on the coffee table. Beads, fabric scraps, little wads of yarns, and tiny scissors fell out. "Recognize anything?"
They sorted out their belongings while Jane and Shelley exchanged puzzled, and slightly alarmed looks. "One of your Ewe Lambs is a practical joker," Jane said quietly.
"I don't like this, Jane."
"What's not to like?" Jane said. "You're in a house, full of women on the brink of menopause, some of whom appear to have come here for the single purpose of tormenting each other, and there's a wolf in sheep's clothing in the bunch."
"Will you stop the puns?"
"I'll try, but they're pretty hard to avoid."
As Jane was helping Edgar clear the table after dinner, he called for everybody's attention. "Ladies, I'll be locking the house up like Fort Knox on the dot of ten-thirty. If you're going out after that, let me know now, and I'll give you a key. Otherwise, you'll have to wake up the whole house to get back in. And I'm a pretty cranky housemother if I have to come down all those stairs after I've gone to bed."
"How peculiar," Lila mused out loud. "To secure a house that doesn't even have locks on the bedroom doors."
Edgar drew himself up, offended. "We were not due to open until next month. The locksmith couldn't get here in time for your visit."
"What difference does it make?" Crispy demanded of Lila. "We were originally supposed to stay at
Shelley's house and she probably doesn't have locks on the bedroom doors either."
"Is anybody going out?" Kathy asked. She'd actually put on a bra under a shapeless tent of a dress for dinner. Her idea of dressing up, Jane supposed.
They glanced around at each other, nobody admitting to having any plans to go out.
Jane, picking up dessert plates, smiled to herself. She was the only one who would have the privilege of leaving tonight.
Or so she thought.
Shelley hit Jane with the bad news just before eight o'clock. "I have yet another favor to ask."
"Hit me," Jane invited.
"Somehow Paul's mother managed to track him down in Singapore — God knows how she does it! — and told him she was having chest pains. As if he could do anything about it from there."
"Oh, no. Is she all right?"
"Of course she's all right. They took her to the emergency room, she threw up some sardines or whatever ghastly thing she'd eaten, and they sent her home. But Paul's frantic. His sister Constanza is staying at my house and just called to say he's calling me" back at three in the morning to see how she is."
"Can't Constanza just tell him she's okay?"
"Yes, and I'm sure she has. But Constanza is well-known in the family as the kind of overbearing busybody who keeps things from people for what she considers Their Own Good. I know he's calling back because he doesn't know whether to believe her or not. I have to be at home when he calls, Jane, and I promised Edgar I'd stay here tonight to keep an eye on the Ewe Lambs."
"Why? They're grown women."
"But I'm the hostess. I think Edgar has horrific visions of somebody wanting a tampon in the middle
of the night or something."
"So you need me to stay in your place?"
"Would you? Could you? I'll take your kids to my
house… for the next couple of years if you'd like."
"No, they can stay alone. Mike's there and respon-
sible. But I'll have to go home first and put out any
family forest fires that have broken out during the
evening."
Edgar insisted on walking Jane to her car and seeing that she was safely locked in before she left. She rolled the window down an inch and said, '"Dinner was wonderful, Edgar. I'll be back in twenty or thirty minutes. You'll survive this visitation."
He laughed. "I know I will. I once catered a convention of farm equipment salesmen. After that, life's easy."
Jane went home and was astonished to discover that the kids had cleaned up the kitchen after dinner. Her sixth grade son Todd had even gone to bed without being told. A worrisome thing. She went into his room, scuffling her feet gingerly to avoid stepping on Legos in her bare feet, and felt his forehead. No fever.
Katie was on the upstairs hall phone, which was strictly forbidden after ten, and quickly hung up when Jane glared at her. She flounced off to her room. Jane followed her and inquired if there had been any messages for her during the evening, even though she knew it would have been impossible for Mel to get through Katie's talkfest. Out of self-defense, Jane was going to have to get Katie her own phone line. She explained to Katie that she was going back to the bed and breakfast, but would return early to help get everybody off to school.
Jane's son Mike was sitting in a nest of paperwork on the living room sofa with MTV blaring in the background. Jane turned the sound down. "What's all this, college stuff again?"
"Geez, Mom, if you knew enough to fill in all these application forms and scholarship requests, you wouldn't need to go to college. How about I just go to plumbing school?"
"College first. Then plumbing school for postgraduate work."
"What am I going to do about letters of recommendation?"
"What do you mean? You've got several good ones. Your band teacher, the manager of the grocery store where you worked last summer, your uncle—"
"Yeah, but they aren't anybody important. Scott's got one from his uncle who's a state senator. My uncle's just a pharmacist. Don't we know anybody important? Maybe Grumps knows some big deal in the State Department?"
"Your grandfather knows everybody in the State Department, but they don't know you."
"So? All I need is their stationery," he said with a grin.
Jane laughed. "You'll do fine with what you've got, honey. With your test scores and your grades, any college would be nuts to pass you up."
"Aw, that's Mom Talk."
"That's what I'm for," Jane said. She explained the revised plan for the night. "You better get to bed."
Jane helped him get his papers straightened up, then let Willard the Cowardly Dog out one more time before she went up the steps with Willard panting at her heels and Max and Meow weaving around her feet. The cats loved it when Jane went up to bed, apparently