Fear of Frying (15 page)

“So did Sam Two kill Sam One?" Shelley asked.

“I think he must have," Jane said thoughtfully. "Sam Two was wearing the same clothes when he was found as Sam One was at the campfire dinner. He must have taken them off the body.”

Shelley shuddered elaborately. "Yuck. Do you think Marge knows?"

“That he's a different person or that he killed her real husband?"

“Either one. Or—!"

“She was in on it!" Jane exclaimed. "Is that possible? Marge? Mild, quiet, scaredy-cat Marge a murderer?"

“Maybe Marge isn't what she seems," Shelley said. "And maybe Sam One wasn't either. Suppose their marriage had been really awful, much worse than it looked to outsiders. She discovers that Sam One has a twin — or maybe Sam Two did the discovering. Anyway, it could be to her advantage and his to bump off Sam One. Marge gets out of a terrible marriage. Sam Two gets to step into his twin's extremely well heeled shoes. And they're bound to each other by the crime. Neither can rat on the other without revealing their own part in the plot."

“And they go off happily into the sunset," Jane said. "Holding hands and making a couple of neigh-hors look like fools for imagining they found a corpse."

“From what we saw of them today, it's a very satisfactory bond," Shelley said, pouring them each a cup of coffee. "They couldn't keep their hands off each other this morning.”

She thought for a moment. "But, Jane, there could be another explanation for that. Suppose there aren't two Sams. Just the same one. He had some sort of physical and mental crisis and it brought them together. You know, pouring out of true hearts and all that like Eileen suggested. A renewal of the love they must have had when they married. A second honeymoon, so to speak."

“But how do you account for the dead body we saw — and we both
know
it was dead — and the fact that Sam suddenly became left-handed?”

Shelley nodded. "I'm not crazy about the idea of Marge conspiring to murder her husband, though.' She really seems to be such a basically nice, if downtrodden, woman. That scenario — physical and emotional crisis and so forth — couldn't Marge have been taken in by it, too?" She eyed the doughnuts for a moment, broke off a dainty piece of one and tasted it, then made a face.

“Marge is the one person who would know they aren't the same person," Jane said. "It would be hard to have a heart-to-heart talk about your marriage if the other person hadn't been part of it."

“Which is the reason for the amnesia," Shelley said. "If this guy is Sam Two, he could be telling her that he's the same old Sam, can't remember specifics, but has the vague sense that he's treated her badly all these years, has seen the light, and they're going to get a fresh start. Maybe even emphasize that he doesn't want to remember. That he wants to court her all over again, be young lovers."

“Would you buy that?" Jane asked. She broke off another bit of the doughnut and nibbled.

“Not on your life. But then, I'm not timid, shy, obedient Marge."

“I'll say! Yipes! This doughnut tastes as ghastly as it looks." She got up and threw the rest of it in the wastebasket. "Still, I don't believe Marge could be unaware that this is a different man. He looks the same to the rest of us, but without being too graphic—"

“Go ahead, be graphic," Shelley urged.

“I don't even need to. Different things happen to identical twins. Broken bones, scars, moles in different places. I'd imagine they develop different tastes—"

“Is this the graphic part?"

“Shelley, I'm serious. We all have things we like or dislike intensely for irrational reasons. Nature versus nurture and all that. Like me hating lima beans because I ate too many of them once and threw up at a school play. I wasn't born hating them.”

Shelley was staring off into space. "I saw a television show about this."

“About lima beans or throwing up?”

Shelley rolled her eyes. "No, about twins. Wait, let me think for a minute. I think it was on one of those science and documentary stations. Some scientists or social workers had located a bunch of identical twins who had been raised apart from each other, without even knowing they had a twin. When they really dug into their very separate lives, they discovered that all of them were remarkably similar. They had the same sort of jobs—"

“I remember that, too! There was lots of stuff they had in common. They liked the same kind of music and colors and had even given their kids the same names."

“I wonder if Sam Two sings," Shelley said.

“I wouldn't be surprised," Jane said. "But, Shelley, if we're right about this, how in the world would we prove it? How could we ever get anyone else, particularly a backwoods sheriff, to believe it?"

“Marge would have to confirm it."

“If she's in on it, a coconspirator, there's no way she'd confirm it," Jane said. "And if, like you prefer to believe, she wasn't in on it and she just wants or needs to believe that this is the same man, it comes to the same thing. She's in love with this person, whoever he is. She's not going to help us put him — and maybe herself — in jail for murder."

“What about fingerprints?" Shelley asked. "Do identical twins have the same fingerprints?"

“I have no idea, but even if they don't, there's the problem of getting them," Jane said irritably. "Sam One's are surely all over his house, and we could grab a drinking glass or something that Sam Two has touched. But we can't get in their house. We don't know how to take fingerprints, and the sheriff has no cause to believe us and probably would need the fingerprint equivalent of a search warrant."

“So what do we do?" Shelley asked.

“I don't know. But at least we have a theory now.

A line of thought to pursue. We shouldn't be sitting here by ourselves, speculating. We should be hanging out with Marge and seeing what we can find out."

“Right. But we only have until tomorrow. We're supposed to have an extended meeting tonight—"

“Liz's orders?" Jane asked.

“Who else? And then we're all leaving tomorrow."

“Then we better hotfoot it to the lodge and find out where they are."

“Probably in their cabin. In bed," Shelley said. "And if you think I'm—"

“If they're not around, we'll chat with Eileen and John. They know Sam well, too. Wait one minute, will you, while I check my E-mail.”

Jane booted up the laptop and found Mel's response to her earlier note to him about the dead body that reappeared alive. It was a one-word reply. "Twins."

“Rats!" Jane said. "He wasn't even here and he figured it out before I did!”

The rain had let up again and there were even patchy bursts of sunlight from time to time. But as they approached the lodge, it appeared that there was a problem. A line of departing cars was stopped in the drive. The sheriff's deputy was directing those with drivers to back up and park.

Edna Titus was standing on the porch, watching and looking worried.

“What's going on?" Jane asked as she and Shelley joined her.

"The bridge has gone out," Edna said. "The creek came up and washed it away, I think."

“Bridge?" Shelley asked. "Oh, the one we crossed just after turning off the main road. Isn't there another road out?"

“There's an old logging road," Edna said. "But it takes a pretty sturdy four-wheel-drive even in dry weather."

“You mean—" Jane had started to say, we're stuck here, but that didn't seem polite. "You mean you're stuck with all these people staying here?"

“No, most of them are locals. The sheriff's put in a call for people around the lake with boats to come fetch them and take them home. They'll have to come back for their cars later.”

Shelley cleared her throat. "Uh. . I don't think any of the people with boats are going to take us back to Chicago."

“Well, no, I guess not," Edna said, clearly preoccupied with her own concerns. "But there's a daily bus to Chicago.”

Shelley pulled Jane aside. "I don't like this.”

“I don't like buses, period," Jane said.

“That's not what I meant. Jane, it's just occurred to me that we're miles from anywhere, stranded with one or more people who are murderers."

“You're right," Jane said quietly. "There is a great deal not to like about this.”

"I'm willing to reconsider the bus idea," Jane said, heading for the front desk in the lobby. There was, in fact, one remaining brochure about the bus schedule, and she learned that it belched out of the nearest town at two o'clock every afternoon. Today's means of escape had long gone.

“Jane, I want to get out of here, too, but think about it," Shelley said. "We'd have to haul most of our stuff in and out of a boat, beg a stranger to take us to the bus station, and find our way home from downtown Chicago at the other end of the trip. Then we'd still have to drive back up here in your lousy station wagon to pick up my van when the bridge is fixed, and drive back home separately. Not a good option."

“Better than staying here, though," Jane said. "Not if we stick together. From now on, we're attached at the hip."

“Swell," Jane said.

“I want to take a look at this logging trail," Shelley said. "Maybe the van could make it through.”

"Right," Jane said sarcastically. "Or maybe, since a van is really a big empty box on wheels, it would slide down an embankment into the lake."

“Still, I want to take a look at it.”

Eileen Claypool came into the lodge, looking around. When she spotted Jane and Shelley, she came over to them. "You haven't seen John, have you?”

Jane shook her head. "Nope. Is he missing?"

“Not exactly, I just wanted to tell him about this bridge going out. I don't like being stranded here. Benson has his staff out trying to hunt down all the local people to get them across the lake before it starts getting dark.”

Jane was glancing around the dining room. "It's odd. None of our group seems to be here except for the three of us. Wonder where they all are."

“Marge is in her cabin," Eileen said. "I just stopped by there."

“And Sam?" Jane asked, barely managing to repress the urge to call him Sam Two.

“She didn't know. I thought maybe Sam and John had both come down here."

“Let's have a cup of coffee and see if they turn up," Shelley suggested.

“How's Sam doing?" Jane asked when they were seated at one of the dining room tables. By craning her neck, she could see a bunch of people heading for the boat dock. Not one of them looked the least bit happy to be going home by water.

“Fine, I guess," Eileen replied. "Marge said he feels okay physically, not even a headache, and is recovering nicely from the amnesia."

“I can't imagine why he didn't go home or to a hospital," Shelley said. "I certainly would have."

“That's because you don't have their parents," Eileen said, stirring two spoons of sugar into her coffee. "This is the first time in years we've all managed to get away from them. Believe me, it's like being sprung from prison. John and Sam both have to face going back and trying to get that dreadful house fixed up enough to sell it and get them into a nursing home. This is the only break they get before that project, which is going to be hideous."

“The parents don't want to go, I take it," Shelley said.

“God, no! That awful house is literally falling down around them, and they have it on the market for half again as much as it's worth. They think they're going to come live with either Sam and Marge or us. They're wrong! The house is disgusting. The carpeting is thirty-five years old and worn clear down to the backing in spots. The roof leaks buckets every time there's a mist. The plumbing is unthinkable. They're. . frugal, let us say. . about flushing unnecessarily and wasting water.”

Jane and Shelley shuddered.

“Sam's tried to get cleaning people in," Eileen went on, "just to make it sanitary before they start their very own cholera outbreak, but the parents are obsessed with people spying on them and won't let the cleaners in the house. The parents think Marge and I should be full-time maids, nurses, and watchdogs. Fat chance."

“Where is this house? Close to you?"

“Oh, no. It's in a little town north of us called Spring Oak. So every time we're summoned to take care of some imaginary crisis, it's at least an hour round trip."

“How awful for all of you," Shelley said. "I guess I wouldn't have given up a precious second of my only vacation either."

“In spite of it all, Sam certainly seems to have benefited from this trip," Jane said.

Shelley cast her a warning look, which Jane ignored.

“Oh, he has," Eileen said. "It's made him a new man." She said this without the slightest hint of irony. "Who knows — if he'd gotten away more often these last few years, he might have been a much happier, nicer person."