"Maggie, I don't think we're looking at a serial killer here," Saint Just told her.
"Hilda was seventy-eight. Her son said her heart just gave out," Maureen said. "We W.B.B.s collected for a lovely flower arrangement."
"Seventy-eight? Bodkin was what—Alex?"
"Sixty-something. Sixty-three? Clearly a man of eclectic tastes."
"Clearly an immoral son of a—Maureen, how could you have done this? I saw the photograph of Bodkin in the newspaper. He wasn't exactly George Clooney. More like George Burns. I don't get it. What was the big attraction?"
Maureen was now wringing her hands together, clearly agitated. Saint Just knew he wouldn't have asked that particular question of the poor woman, had he been in charge of the ... the inquisition? But, clearly, this last inquiry of Maggie's had been purely a female reaction.
"He ... he was kind," Maureen said at last. "He understood women. He opened car doors. He knew no woman should live without a dishwasher or an adequately-sized hot water heater. He ... um ... he complimented us. And he ... and he ... in bed, you understand? He knew just how to ... well, John? John seems to think I should, but that he should never have to—you know, like on his birthday? Must I do this, Maggie?"
Maggie looked at the meatball she'd speared, and then put it down on her plate again. "No, you don't have to say anything else, Reenie. Really, I think I've—we've—heard enough." She looked at Saint Just, her expression pained. "More than enough. Alex?"
"Are you handing the questions over to me, Maggie?" Saint Just asked her, watching as she pulled out her nicotine inhaler, had the cylinder nearly to her lips, and then quickly stuck it back in her pocket, blushing.
Ah, the modern American woman. What a delight they all were.
"No, never mind, I can do this. Reenie—we need a list of names. All the members of your little club."
"Why? I can't do that. Nobody knows about the club."
Maggie pulled a face. "We've already been through this part. They know, Reenie. They talk about it at Mack and Manco's over a pepperoni slice. We need suspects. Women scorned are great suspects. So give us the names."
"But my name would be on that list! You'd turn me in to the cops, Maggie? Your own sister?"
Maggie looked at Saint Just, who decided—cravenly, he knew—that he really wasn't a part of this decision.
"And nobody from W.B.B. would have killed Walter. We loved him."
"O-kay," Maggie said, motioning for Saint Just to move so that she could slide out of her seat. She grabbed at her walker and pulled herself to her feet. "They loved him? I'm outta here, Alex. She's all yours. There are just some things sisters don't need to know, you know? I think that last asinine statement just about tops the list."
Saint Just waited until Maggie's clomp-clomps with the walker could no longer be heard, and then crossed to the refrigerator to take out the bottle of wine he'd opened earlier for dinner.
He retrieved two glasses from the dishwasher (his increasing domesticity amazed even him), and poured himself and Maureen each a generous measure of the zinfandel. He placed one in front of her before sitting down with his own glass.
"Thank you," she said, grabbing the glass and downing half its contents. "I've shocked her, haven't I? I'm her baby sister. I'm supposed to still be playing with dolls, or something."
"Maggie will be fine, don't worry about her," Saint Just said reassuringly. "But I will admit to being confused. I thought you said, earlier, that your small organization is in the way of support for each other. Mr. Bodkin hurt all of you, correct? And you joined together, companions in your misery?"
"I did sort of say that, didn't I?" Maureen's smile was unexpectedly wicked, her eyes shone, and Saint Just at last saw the physical resemblance between Maggie and her sister. "That was a big fib. Maggie wouldn't understand. We liked Walter. All of us. He made us feel special, and important. And pretty. Oh, we all knew that Walter was using us—he thought he was using us—but we really didn't mind, not all that much. Because we were using him, too."
"Amazing. Utterly amazing," Saint Just said quietly, thinking about his varied and quite substantial romantic exploits in his Saint Just Mysteries. All the women he had bedded. And left. Perhaps Maggie would understand. But he doubted that. Maggie wrote fiction ... she didn't want to live a fiction.
If he, today, tomorrow, in twenty years, had so much as the glimmer of a notion of behaving with other women as he did in their books, he felt one hundred percent certain his now evolving, mortal remains would be found somewhere, with Maggie's hands still clutched convulsively about his neck.
"Alex? What's wrong? You're looking at me funny. You think I'm crazy, don't you? You think we're all crazy. Not hating Walter for what he did to us? And maybe we are, but we're all better for it, you know? Well, except for me, once I found out that Mom—you know."
Saint Just took another sip of wine, for his throat had gone slightly dry. "Your mother, Maureen. How did she feel about Mr. Bodkin? Was she as forgiving, as ... grateful to him?"
"Mom? She never said. I mean, not about what it was like when Walter was paying attention to her. I don't think she was proud of what happened. When ... the day she came to me, warned me away from Walter, and then found out that I'd already—you know? She was pretty upset that day. Said how dared he go from mother to daughter. What a bastard he was. Like that, you know? Said she'd kill—oh! She didn't mean that," Maureen went on quickly. "She said it. But she didn't really mean it."
"No, no, of course not," Saint Just assured her. "Maggie and I have already eliminated your mother from our list of suspects."
"But not me? Not the other girls? I didn't kill Walter. I couldn't!"
Saint Just heard the clump-clump of the walker as Maggie returned, and suppressed a relieved sigh. He'd faced down angry men intent on killing him. Stood toe-to-toe with deadly weapons unsheathed, without a blink. But this conversation? Clearly there were some things gentlemen, at least those of his particular, Regency Era sensibilities were better off not knowing.
"I heard that," Maggie said, clomping to the table to stand looking down at her sister. "You're something else, you know that, Reenie? You go out and have yourself an affair, and then go all wacky-wacko when you find out your own mother got there first. You start popping pills, you let yourself go, you turn into this timid little mouse who belongs to a club filled with other idiots like yourself—you have covered-dish suppers, for the love of heaven. But, no, we know you didn't kill Bodkin."
Maureen sagged against the cushions in relief. "Thank you, sis. So you don't still want the list?"
Maggie rolled her eyes as she sat down beside Saint Just. "Yes, I do still want the list. You may say everyone else felt like you do, not really angry with Bodkin. But what if you're wrong, Reenie? What if one of them was just faking it? We won't give the list to the police, I promise. But Alex and I have to talk to these women. You see that, don't you? The police may not have all that much on Dad, but they might have enough. Juries are weird. The only way we can be sure to clear him, keep this business about you and Mom and Bodkin out of it, is to find the real killer. Fast."
"Well, put, Maggie," Saint Just said approvingly. "Although I believe we'd probably be better served to look to the husbands, if there are any. Swinging a bowling ball with enough force to crush a man's skull like that is probably beyond the strength of many women."
"Not Pete. She's a plumber, she's strong as an ox," Maureen said idly, and then blanched. "Do you guys think—"