other notes. Jane also had only one book on Julia Wallace, and there again I found no message. Theodore Durrant, Thompson-Bywater, Sam Sheppard, Reginald Christie, Crippen...! shook Jane's entire true-crime library with no results.
I went through her fictional crime, heavy on women writers; Margery Allingham, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Agatha Christie... the older school of mysteries. And Jane had an unexpected shelf of sword-and-sorcery science fiction, too. I didn't bother with those, at least initially; Jane would not have expected me to look there.
But in the end I went through those as well. After two hours, I had shaken, riffled, and otherwise disturbed every volume on the shelves, only a trace of common sense preventing me from flinging them on the floor as I finished. I'd even read all the envelopes in the letter rack on the kitchen wall, the kind you buy at a handcraft fair; all the letters seemed to be from charities or old friends, and I stuffed them irritably back in the rack to go through at a later date.
Jane had left me no other messages. I had the money, the house, the cat (plus kittens), the skull, and the note that said I didn't do it. A peremptory knock on the front door made me jump. I'd been sitting on the floor so lost in the doldrums I hadn't heard anyone approach. I scrambled up and looked through the peephole, then flung the door open. The woman outside was as well-groomed as Marcia Rideout, as cool as a cucumber; she was not sweating in the heat. She was five inches taller than me. She looked like Lauren Bacall. "Mother!" I said happily, and gave her a brief hug. She undoubtedly loved me, but she didn't like her clothes wrinkled.
"Aurora," she murmured, and gave my hair a stroke.
"When did you get back? Come in!"
"I got in really late last night," she explained, coming into the room and staring around her. "I tried to call you this morning after we got up, but you weren't home. You weren't at the library. So after a while, I decided I'd phone in to the office, and Eileen told me about the house. Who is this woman who left you the house?"
"How's John?"
"No, don't put me off. You know I'll tell you all about the trip later."
"Jane Engle. John knows - John knew her, too. She was in Real Murders with us." "At least that's disbanded now," Mother said with some relief. It would have been hard for Mother to send John off to a monthly meeting of a club she considered only just on the good side of obscenity. "Yes. Well, Jane and I were friends through the club, and she never married, so when she died, she left me - her estate."
"Her estate," my mother repeated. Her voice was beginning to get a decided edge.
"And just what, if you don't mind my asking, does that estate consist of ?" I could tell her or I could stonewall her. If I didn't tell her, she'd just pull strings until she found out, and she had a bunch of strings to pull. "This Jane Engle was the daughter of Mrs. John Elgar Engle," I said. "The Mrs. Engle who lived in that gorgeous mansion on Ridgemont? The one that sold for eight hundred and fifty thousand because it needed renovation?" Trust Mother to know her real estate.
"Yes, Jane was the daughter of that Mrs. Engle."
"There was a son, wasn't there?"
"Yes, but he died."
"That was only ten or fifteen years ago. She couldn't have spent all that money, living here." Mother had sized up the house instantly. "I think this house was almost paid for when old Mrs. Engle died," I said.
"So you got this house," Mother said, "and...?" "And five hundred and fifty thousand dollars," I said baldly. "Thereabouts. And some jewelry."
Mother's mouth dropped open. It was the first time in my life I think I'd ever astonished my mother. She's not a money-grubbing person, but she has a great respect for cash and property, and it is the way she measures her own success as a professional. She sat down rather abruptly on the couch and automatically crossed her elegant legs in their designer sportswear. She will go so far as to wear slacks on vacation, to pool parties, and on days she doesn't work; she would rather be mugged than wear shorts.
"And of course I now have the cat and her kittens," I continued maliciously.
"The cat," Mother repeated in