"Could you slow down just a tiny bit?" Jane asked.

"Sure. If you want that forty tons of frozen beef behind me to end up in my backseat."

Jane had planned to get Todd and Katie canyout for dinner so she could go out with Mel that evening, but he had to cancel their date at the last minute. "Just as I was turning in the last of my paperwork, I was told I'd drawn plainclothes duty for a rock concert," he explained. "I must have really irritated someone up the line to be stuck with this. How about tomorrow night? If I survive?"

Jane could afford to be gracious about this. After all, she'd eaten so much at lunch she couldn't have appreciated a real dinner.

So she was stuck at home, all dolled up and nowhere to go. She put her fancy suit away and donned her most disreputable baggy jeans and T-shirt that should have gone in the trash at least six months earlier.

She'd recently given in and put a television and a bookcase in her bedroom. She'd collected all her favorite read-again mysteries from all over the house and put them on the shelves. She settled into bed with Max and Meow on the bedspread and Willard the dog snoring in the corner.

For a while, she watched a bit of her favorite channel, but the thought of a woman building her own two-story deck intimidated her. She flipped to the financial news station briefly, where they were explaining why a stock she held quite a bit of for the kids' college fees had plummeted in value. Flipping the television off, she went to the bookshelf and selected an Agatha Christie book

she'd last read so long ago she was sure she wouldn't remember the ending.

That palled when the character she recalled as the murderer appeared on page seven.

She considered taking a nice long, soaky bath, but didn't want to destroy the wonder her hairdresser had created that morning quite yet. She rejected the idea of cruising the kitchen for a snack after consuming such a huge lunch. Nor did taking a brisk walk around the block appeal in spite of the nice early fall evening.