Silence Of The Hams

would be okay. It would only take a couple others like that to make you feel you were part of a very special, select group. In fact, their very exclusivity probably appeals to them.”
    Jane sighed. “I guess so. But it’s so depressing. Shelley, how would you ever mow this lawn? Look at the slope of it.“
    “If you could afford to live here, you could afford gardeners. Or a flock of sheep, for that matter. Hey! Let’s start a rumor that we’re going to get sheep to do our lawns!“ She rummaged in her purse for a piece of gum, then started to put the wrapper in the ashtray. “No, I can’t be the first to sully a pristine ashtray.“
    “There’s a paper bag on the floor,“ Jane said. “See what’s in that.”
    Shelley picked it up and looked. “Trash. Good.“ She popped the gum wrapper in. “Isn’t that nice that he’s keeping it so clean?“
    “I give it a week,“ Jane said.
    They headed back home, where Mike met them in the driveway. He must have been watching for them from the front window. “How’d you like it? Doesn’t it drive great?“ he said, and tried casually to look at the odometer to see how far they’d gone.
    “Great, Mike. Has a lot of power out on the highway,“ Jane said. “It doesn’t even shimmy until you get up to about a hundred and ten miles an hour.”
    He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, sure, Mom. Like you’ve ever gone over fifty-five.“
    “What are you doing here?“ Jane asked. “I thought you and Scott were double-dating.“
    “Yeah, but I asked him to pick me up last so I could see what you thought of the truck.“
    “So you could see when I brought it back, you mean,“ Jane said, smiling. Then to Shelley: “That low, rumbling sound you hear is the generations rolling over.“
    “Hey, Mom, you won’t care if I put the truck in the garage and leave the station wagon out, will you?“ Mike asked, polishing off an invisible spot On the hood with his shirt tail.
    “Oh, no. Not at all. About sixteen more raindrops and the station wagon will become one hundred percent rust and just be an orange spot on the driveway. Maybe I could park it over the pothole and the non-degradable bits will fill in the hole.“
    “Does that mean no?“ Mike asked.
    “That’s what it means. If you’d clean out the other half of the garage, you could park it there.“
    “Mom! The other half of the garage is full of junk.“
    “Yes, and you now have the ideal vehicle for taking it all to the dump,“ Jane said. “Shelley, can you come in?“
    “After I tell Paul I’m home.”
    Jane went inside, carrying Mike’s small paper sack of trash. The phone was ringing. She reached for it seconds before Katie raced into the kitchen and skidded to a stop.
    “Janey, have you had dinner?“ Mel asked. “Not exactly. Want to come over for a sandwich? I pillaged the grocery store.“
    “I thought you’d never ask. Five minutes,“ he said.
    He and Shelley arrived at the same time. Jane had dragged out sandwich stuff, to which Mel applied himself as if he hadn’t eaten in days. The women waited as patiently as they could for him to finish eating, telling him about their visit with Foster Hanlon.
    The minute he swallowed his last bite of sandwich, Jane said, “So how’s the investigation of Emma’s death going?“
    “Got any cookies?“ he asked. She produced 190 two different packages of store-bought pastries. “A nightmare,“ he said, picking an oatmeal-raisin cookie and getting up to pour himself a glass of milk. “There was an open house two doors down from Weyrich’s apartment from eleven to two. Somebody’s retirement party. All sorts of people up and down the hallway. And a couple next to her on the other side had a garageless garage sale going on until three. That hallway must have looked like a couple of great ethnic migrations colliding. About all I’ve got is two more long lists of names with a few that overlap with the deli opening list and are probably pure coincidence.“
    “Nobody saw anyone going into Emma’s apartment?“ Jane asked.
    “Quite the contrary. A lot of them saw somebody go into her apartment—or maybe the one next door. And I can’t blame them for not being sure. The hallway’s so anonymous. The only descriptions that might help are one of a woman who sounds a lot like Rhonda Stonecipher. But she says she was home all afternoon and Tony Belton says he was with her. I guess they could both be lying.“
    “She’s a type anyway,“ Shelley