He approached, saying, "Bitsy, dear, I was doing some business in the neighborhood and saw everyone standing outside. What's going on?" He would have been quite handsome if he hadn't been smirking.

Bitsy's face hardened. "Neville. How coincidental that you are here. Something tells me you know exactly what's going on."

The man looked genuinely surprised. Or maybe it was a good act, Jane thought.

"How would I know what you're up to? Is this a picnic of some sort?"

"Neville, go away. You're not welcome here," Bitsy said and turned her back on him.

Grinning again, he approached Jane and Shelley. "What do you ladies do? Stencil cute little designs around the tops of the rooms? I'm Bitsy's ex-husband. The man whose hard-earned money is financing this idiocy. Much against my will, I might say."

Before Shelley could draw breath to tell him off, Bitsy screamed, "Neville, leave my friends alone. If you don't get out of here this instant, I'm calling the police."

He bowed to her with mock respect and turned and slowly, arrogantly, let his driver open the door for him. "Have fun, dear," he said before it closed.

Bitsy actually stomped her feet like a child getting ready to have a tantrum.

Jane and Shelley strolled away. "She's tougher than I suspected," Jane said, chuckling. "I don't think this is the day we want to put her over the edge."

Eight

When jane and Shelley returned home, Shelley said, "I think we ought to just stay away until the stink's gone."

"Okay by me. There's no rush," Jane replied.

"It'll give me time to write up a new contract," Shelley said.

"You're starting over?"

"From scratch. It's going to be a big job to rekey the whole thing into the computer. Making it fair is only one part. Trying to figure out how to make the sentence fragments make sense is another, and the third is correcting the grammar and spelling."