The Merchant of Menace

need. I’ll make enough for everyone and Pet and I will eat the leftovers. Is five-thirty too early?“
    “Well, that sounded chummy,“ Shelley said when Jane had hung up.
    “It was Sam Dwyer inviting me and the kids to dinner,“ Jane said. “Nice break from cooking for me.“
    “A date with Sam Dwyer,“ Shelley mused. “Date! Shelley, bite your tongue. It isn’t a date!“
    “Sounds like one to me.”
    Jane shook her head. “No, nobody invites you to bring three kids on a date.“
    “I think Sam’s got the hots for you.”
    Jane blushed. “Don’t be goofy. He must have just decided it’s time to get to know some of his neighbors and he started with us because I had the cookie party.“
    “No, it’s more than that. I couldn’t get him to talk to me at all and Suzie struck out, too. I think he likes you. A nice widow for the nice widower.“
    “Wrong, wrong, wrong!”
    But when Shelley had gone, she found herself thinking, Do I have a date with Sam Dwyer? I don’t believe Mel’s going to like that much.

Nineteen

    Katie and Mike had other plans for dinner, or at least Katie claimed she did, but Jane insisted that Todd come along with her to the Dwyers’. If she didn’t take along at least one child, she was afraid the dinner would qualify as A Date, notwithstanding Pet’s presence. Shelley’s joking about it had struck Jane seriously. Was Sam Dwyer interested in her? Shelley had raised a valid point. He’d been unwilling to talk to anyone else, but came to a party at her house and engaged her in pleasant conversation. Was he undergoing some change, thinking he needed a social life for Pet’s sake, or had he really found Jane interesting?
    If so, she’d have to nip it in the bud. She liked her life just like it was, with Mel a big part of it. But as she watched the police searching the yard next door from her bedroom window, her thoughts wandered into dangerous territory. Sam Dwyer seemed like a nice enough guy. What if he turned out to be nicer and more interesting than she knew? What if she found herself attracted to him?
    No, don’t consider it, she told herself. She was just being neurotic. “Borrowing trouble“ as her mother would have put it.
    The sky had grown overcast again and it was starting to get dark already by four. The police were stopping work for the day, returning lawn rakes, shaking their heads in irritation.
    “You didn’t find the disk?“ Jane asked, when Mel came to the door.
    “No, and I don’t think it’s there. Any coffee left?”
    Jane poured him a big cup and sat down with him at the kitchen table. “I’ve got to talk fast, Mel. The kids and I are invited out to an early dinner at a neighbor’s, but there were a couple things I wanted to run by you.“ Well, the kids were all invited, and Sam Dwyer was a neighbor, so it wasn’t a lie.
    “Been snooping?“
    “Just keeping our eyes and ears open,“ she said huffily. “I presume you know that Sharon Wilhite is Lance King’s ex-wife?“
    “She told us that.”
    Jane quickly ran through the high points of what Sharon had told her and Shelley. “Does that match what she told you?“
    “As if scripted,“ he said wryly.
    “Does that mean you don’t believe her?“
    “Not necessarily. But I’m having a little trouble figuring out why she’d come to your house when there was the least chance he’d be here. If I were she, I’d have avoided it like the plague.“
    “Did you ask her that?“ Jane said.
    Mel nodded. “She said she’d heard he was coming, then heard he wasn’t, so she figured there was no danger of running into him. Maybe she trusts in gossip more than I do.“
    “She doesn’t strike me as a Pollyanna type,“ Jane said. She glanced at her watch. She needed to move this conversation along so that she didn’t have to discuss just which neighbor had invited her to dinner. “The other thing Shelley and I learned was about the Johnsons.”
    He said, “I can’t tell you anything about them.“
    “Yes, but I can. They’re sociologists or ‘cultural historians’ or something. They faked the hillbilly act to spy on the neighborhood for a new book they’re writing.”
    Mel nodded.
    “You knew? And you weren’t going to tell me?“
    “Not until King’s murder is sorted out. I should have known you’d pry it out of them yourself.“
    “I didn’t pry it out of them. It fell in my lap. Or rather, my front hall. A box of copies of their newest book was delivered here and