When she returned, loaded down with groceries, there was a light flashing on the answering machine. "I wouldn't miss it for the world," Mel said. "Six-thirty?"

"We still don't know what happened to her," he said when they'd finished what he said was a fabulous meal. They'd eaten in the kitchen with Katie and Todd, but had gone outside to sit under the patio table umbrella for a glass of wine for dessert for Jane, a beer for Mel, who'd mellowed considerably since she'd last spoken with him.

"There's no clear sign of her being pushed down the stairs, but it wouldn't take an enormous force that would leave bruises," he said taking a sip of his beer. "This is good."

"Are you going to continue investigating?"

"We have to. The missing purse is one reason. Apparently nobody working at the site ever once saw Sandra without it. A bag with a long strap hung over her opposite shoulder so it couldn't be dropped or stolen."

"Even I noticed that. The first time we met her, Shelley and I stashed our purses between us. When I asked if Sandra wanted to put hers there as well, she acted like I'd spit in her glass."

"I sort of wish you had. That would have kept you out of this," Mel said with a laugh.

"And no sign of it in the house somewhere?"

"Nope. But the primary reason to treat it as a crime is that she was so heartily disliked by

everyone on the project. Nobody has anything good to say about her. They're all very frank about it. She seems to have gone out of her way to offend people working on the house. Maybe one of them had a stronger motive than the criticism of her that they've voiced."

"Do you know yet when she died?"