The Class Menagerie

traffic, she could
    have assumed they had lots and lots of money. As they, might. Has she ever talked about her house? How she lives?“
    Jane and Shelley exchanged questioning looks. “Not around me,“ Shelley said.
    “Me neither,“ Jane added. “The only time I heard her mention her home was something about having to build a ramp to the porch to accommodate a wheelchair. But she didn’t indicate anything about the size of the house.“
    “You’ve found nothing on Crispy or Mimi?“ Shelley asked Mel.
    “Lots of divorces in the first case. Nothing about Mimi except a huge number of parking tickets, which isn’t unusual in a college town.“
    Jane’s mind immediately went to Mike. Did this mean she was going to have to budget for parking tickets when he went away to school next year? Who would have thought?
    “How about Kathy?“ Shelley prodded..
    Mel shrugged. “Nothing. Pillars of Oklahoma society. Wild kids in some trouble. One driving without a license charge. Destruction of property after a drinking party. Charges dropped as all the parents made restitution. I don’t think you can even embarrass a Southerner with that kind of thing. Lots of them consider it the norm.“
    “Who’s that leave? Only Beth,“ Jane said.
    “She’s easy to find out about, but there’s nothing questionable,“ Mel said. “Highly respected judge. A list of civic involvements as long as your arm. All at one remove, it seems.“
    “What do you mean?“ Jane asked.
    “Just that she serves on advisory boards, rather than getting out into the trenches. But that’s not so strange in her position. No debts, no marriages or divorces, lives modestly, doesn’t drink or smoke. Employs a housekeeper, a gardener, and several law clerks.“
    “It sounds like you’ve gone beyond the basics on her,“ Jane said suspiciously.
    “Only because it seemed if blackmail were the trigger, she was a logical one to blackmail. But if anybody found out something to her disadvantage, they’ve got better investigators than we have,“ Mel said.
    “It didn’t seem that Lila was terribly skilled at investigating, just good enough to scratch the surface,“ Jane said.
    “We’d know better about that if we had her notebook,“ Mel said sourly.
    . “Mel, I told you—“
    “I’m not criticizing. Just saying it might have been helpful.“
    “Or maybe not. If Crispy’s .telling the truth, there wasn’t anything valuable in it.“
    “ ‘If is the operative word. Do you think she’s lying?“ he directed this question at Shelley.
    “You mean, is she capable of lying?“ she replied. “Probably. I didn’t know her well in high school and I certainly don’t know her well now. But why would she need to? If she’d already read the contents, why wouldn’t she have been willing to turn the notebook over?“
    “Maybe it had something detrimental to her in it.“ Jane said.
    “She could have just torn that page out, if that were the case,“ Shelley said.
    “But that would have been obvious, if she’d turned it over to Mel with one page missing.“
    “She could have said it was missing when she found the notebook and while I might not have believed her, I wouldn’t have been able to prove otherwise,“ Mel said.
    “Let’s assume somebody did take it from her,“ Jane said. “Where could they have hidden it?“
    “It would be easy to hide something in a big, old house like that,“ Shelley said.
    “But we found the pen set easily,“ Jane said.
    “We were meant to,“ Shelley reminded her. “It was just lying there in an otherwise empty wastebasket. If somebody had really meant to hide it, we might never have found it.“
    “Why haven’t you gotten a search warrant to look for the notebook?“ Jane asked Mel.
    Mel sighed. “Because they aren’t that easy to get, even in a murder case. You see, the crime scene team may define the crime scene as broadly as they want at first. It could include the entire house, the whole block, for that matter. And we can keep the scene sealed for as long as we need to. The law gives us a lot of latitude. If we’d known about this notebook at the time, we could have searched anybody or anyplace for it.
    “But once the team leaves the area, going back to search puts you in a legal swamp. The defense attorney, when it gets to trial, makes mincemeat of the evidence when you’ve had to go back for it. That’s why we have to be so thorough to start with. Add it’s why judges are very