The House of Seven Mabels

obnoxious, who locked up the place was a good thing. And if Shelley could get a good enough contract out of Bitsy, it would be a nice extra income just from shopping—something that was fun to do with Shelley.
    And since Sandra was gone, the feminist overtones that had irritated nearly everyone had died down.
    She went inside, tidied herself up, and took a glass of iced tea outside to sit at the patio table and consider how much nicer the yard looked. Mind still wandering, she came back to Sandra. Mel hadn’t told her anything more about the investigation. She wondered if, in the end, it would be considered an accident.
    The missing purse, however, seemed to belie that. Even Jane, who didn’t pay as much attention to habits like that, had noticed that Sandra was never without it. Maybe she had simply uncharacteristically set it down for a moment somewhere and it went out to the Dumpster with other debris. She wondered if the police at the scene of the crime had emptied the Dumpster searching for it.
    Still, it was odd that Sandra had even gone anywhere near the basement. It would be hard to negotiate the steps in high heels, which she had been wearing that day. The steps were steep and narrow, and the light wasn’t good. Jane tried to remember if there had been handrails and didn’t think there were, but when Shelley had turned on the light and they saw the body, she hadn’t studied much else.
    If it wasn’t an accident, someone had pushed her.
    Probably someone working in the house. Or maybe not. But it would be risky for an outsider to come in without being noticed, when people were up and down the stairs, in and out of all the rooms, all the time. And if there was such a person, it was unlikely that he or she would just happen to come across Sandra alone at the head of the basement steps with the door open. If it was deliberate, it seemed more likely to be one of the workers rather than Bitsy’s nasty ex-husband, or the new contractor snooping around a job he had wanted and wasn’t hired for.
    Shelley, looking as if she’d never gotten her fingernails dirty in her whole life, came through the gate to the backyard as Jane was pondering.
    “It looks better,“ she said, looking around Jane’s backyard. “And you look a lot better, too. I want you to see my backyard after lunch. I’m starving.“
    They went to their favorite Italian restaurant and sat in a secluded booth. They were rather late to lunch and were almost the last customers to come in.
    “I was brooding over Sandra’s death while I weeded,“ Jane said. “Do you know if they went through the Dumpster in case she’d put her purse down somewhere for once?“
    “I have no idea. I assume they did,“ Shelley said. “It would be a good place to dispose of anything you didn’t want to ever be seen again.“
    “Not necessarily,“ Jane said. “Uncle Jim took a load of stuff in a rented trailer to the city dump once and invited me to go along.“
    “And you went? Of your own free will?“ Shelley hooted.
    “It was interesting. Of course, the smell was horrible, but there was this vast hole in the ground with a lot of enormous earthmoving equipment shoving the garbage over the ledge. A solid flock of seagulls looking for food. There were people there snatching up stuff others had dumped off. Tacky furniture, books, beat-up storage bins, and stuff like that. Unless the purse was concealed thoroughly in a sturdy bag and strongly taped up, someone could have picked it up at the dump.“
    Shelley mused for a while. “But she was never without it. I imagine someone told Mel that.“
    “He knows and I told him about her being so snotty about the purse at that first luncheon. But it wouldn’t hurt to remind him, I guess. I’ll try to run him down when I get home.“
    “Why not now? I have my cell phone,“ Shelley said, fishing in her huge purse.
    “That’s your best toy, isn’t it?“
    “It’s come in handy.“
    Mel was out of the office and didn’t answer his own cell phone number, so Jane left the message.
    “I was also wondering, if it wasn’t an accident, how someone from outside the project could have come in without being noticed,“ Jane said.
    “Good question,“ Shelley said. “The workers are always roaming around the whole place. If they’re not looking for some tool that’s been misplaced, they’re gawking at what’s going on elsewhere. But nothing much is going on in the kitchen right now, and it’s sort of