The Merchant of Menace

irritation at the same time, but Mel managed it. He went to the kitchen phone and dialed his office. “Harry? Try the word ‘guardian’ on that disk. Just a hunch.“ He winked at Jane. “Right. I’ll wait. A foreign language? What language? Find someone who recognizes it. Okay, I’ll call back.”
    He hung up and stared at Jane. “Why didn’t you tell me that part?“
    “You didn’t give me the chance. I sent a piece of it to my father though. He’ll know. Stay here. I’ll show you the printout of the files.“
    “The printout of the files,“ Mel groaned. “Are you setting up your own annex to the police department?“
    “I might, if I had the extra space,“ Jane said over her shoulder as she went to the living room to fetch her papers.
    Mel studied the sheets. “Looks Eastern European to me. But then I don’t know anything except enough Spanish to order a dinner and a few obscene French phrases.“
    “Oops, your toast’s gone cold. I forgot it.“ Jane put in two more slices while Mel continued to peruse the papers she’d handed him.
    “Have you remembered anything else Ginger said when she was talking to you last night?“ Mel asked.
    “I told you the whole thing then. She wanted to interview me, I said no. She asked if the police had found the disk and I told her no again. I didn’t think I should have told anyone and wasn’t positive it was the right disk anyway. I feel bad about that now.“
    “Why? You did exactly the right thing,“ Mel said.
    “But she was probably over in the Johnsons’ yard looking for it when she was attacked. If she’d known it had been found, nothing would have happened to her.“
    “You can’t know that, Jane. Someone may have been following and watching her and would have cornered her somewhere eventually.“
    “Was there any physical evidence in the John-sons’ yard? A bloody glove or anything like that?”
    Mel frowned. “There is one odd thing. Footprints, we think.“
    “You think?“
    “It’s hard to tell. We must have stepped on every inch of the snow yesterday while we were raking it up. The whole yard is footprints. But there are a couple strange ones near where Ginger was.“
    “Strange in what way? Big, little? Pigeon-toed?“
    “Big. And more rectangular than most shoes.“
    “Something foreign? Ethnic boots of some sort? Aren’t traditional Japanese shoes sort of rectangular? Is there a sole pattern?“
    “Not much. This is such a light, dry snow that it just packs into the pattern after a step or two. One of my men thinks he can see a row of diamond shapes in one of the prints, but I think he has too good an imagination.“
    “But you think these weird shoe prints belong to her attacker?“
    “They could. Or somebody could have just been prowling around earlier.”
    Bruce Pargeter came up from the basement with an assortment of tools bulging out of a large, beat-up toolbox. “You’re all done, Mrs. Jeffry. Try running the water in the guest bathroom. Let it run for a while.”
    Mel excused himself from plumbing matters and left. Jane noticed that he took her printouts of Lance’s computer disk with him. No matter, she could print them out again. Mel hadn’t thought to ask her to turn over her copy.
    “Bruce, give me a bill right away and let’s sit down and talk about redoing that bathroom,“ Jane said, back in fully domestic mode.
    After Bruce had outlined his ideas for redoing the bathroom, which all sounded good, especially considering that Jane had no ideas of her own in the matter, he left. She’d considered trying to keep him there and chat about the murder and the attack on Ginger, but had an eerie feeling that she shouldn’t. It was as if she’d had her quota of good luck in finding things out and if she pushed it any harder, she might get in trouble of some sort. She didn’t want to know more about it—she wanted the police to solve it and let her occupy her mind with celebrating the holidays.
    She checked the computer for return E-mail from her father, but there was nothing but a spam ad from somebody called “HotChick“ saying if the recipient of the note would send $29.95 to a post office box address, a complete guide to curing impotence would be forthcoming.
    Jane hit the delete button. She used to send irate responses to junk like this, but it was fruitless.
    She wrapped the last of the presents, prepared a new grocery list, and hit the mall. By the time she got home, she was nearly asleep on her