“But what does this do to her motive — or Tony Belton's? If she was divorcing her husband anyway, why would she need to kill him?"

“I can think of a lot of good reasons," Shelley said, perusing the inside of Jane's refrigerator. "Starting with the obvious ones Suzie mentioned. Oh, you're doing a turkey breast for dinner. Good idea."

“The whole meal is Mike's favorites. We're having Thanksgiving in June tonight. What are you looking for? The cream's already out." Shelley sat down, casting a quick, longing look at the coffeemaker, which was burbling along at its own slow pace. "Okay, Rhonda filed for divorce, told her husband, and he said the dreaded words—'No money.' They argued about it all day and the flames burst out again while they were in the deli. Suddenly it crossed her mind that she'd come out a lot better as a widow than as a divorcee.”

Jane considered it. "Yeah, maybe. But could she possibly be naive enough to think he'd just open his checkbook and say, 'Go in peace, my child'? I don't think so. She's not stupid and she knew him well. As smart as she is, she'd probably changed all their bank accounts to her name only before she ever told him about the divorce."

“But there might not have been much free cash to convert to her name," Shelley said. "If all their assets were in stocks or bonds or something, it wouldn't be possible for her to latch on to much of it. And from what we know about Stonecipher, he seems the compulsive type who'd stash his money away pretty carefully in blue-chip investments the minute it came in."

“The thing wrong with this is that it goes back to planning. In the first place, I can't imagine Rhonda letting go of the source of her funds. She had to know that divorcing him was really going to cut into her budget. So she'd be better off financially if he were dead.

If we suppose that she's capable of murder, why didn't she make a good plan to start with and kill him off?”