"The electrician is Thomasina, right? We haven't run across her yet."

"You're not going to enjoy it when you do. She's a really tough, foulmouthed woman who won't listen to what anyone else is asking or saying."

"Your prime suspect?"

"Not necessarily. But if any of them are truly mean enough to kill someone and I had to choose at random, I'd like to pick her." He downed a little more of his glass of beer before continuing. He seemed to need it.

"She went on and on about the house never being locked up," he said, glowering at the memory of his interview with her. "Or even sufficiently boarding up the downstairs windows. I got the full rundown on what valuable tools were in her toolbox that had been stolen. By the time she got to the fact that her precious wiring had been tampered with, I feared she was going to have a stroke right on the spot. Like most self-employed people, she's underinsured, and if Jacqueline had wanted to sue her for the accident, it could have gotten really ugly."

"I think we'll keep our distance from her in that case," Jane said with a smile.

A cat threw up outside.

"Excuse me for a moment," she said as she went into the garage to get a shovel to heave the remains over the back fence.

Mel was laughing out loud when she returned from this common errand. "I've never known a woman so calm about pieces of dead animals."

Jane looked surprised. "I do this a couple times a week. Most of the time inside the house. Aren't you glad you don't live here? All my kids have learned how to imitate the nasty sounds that precede a cat upchucking and sometimes do it in the middle of the night to make me think I don't dare get out of bed without turning on a light. Didn't I tell you about the time I nearly took a header in the bathroom on a mouse's head? Just like stepping on a marble, albeit a fuzzy one."