Read Online Murder in the Collective by Barbara Wilson - Free Book Online

And lost them.
    “They must be feeling so bad,” said Zee quietly. “To lose everything. What will they do?”
    “Well, I hate to say it,” said Ray, “but at least we don’t have to worry about the merger question anymore.”
    He looked at me somewhat defiantly, but also in apparent innocence that these words might be taken wrongly.
    No one contradicted him. No one seemed to be worried, or to find it odd that B. Violet had been destroyed just after a meeting to discuss a merger with us. Clearly they all thought it was an inside job, internal sabotage, either by Fran or by Margaret and Anna.
    Well, wasn’t that what I thought myself?
    Elena called later to say there’d been no word from Fran. She was still at Fran’s, having written a long letter, and was preparing to go back home to be there when her kids got home from school.
    “I don’t think you can do anything more, Elena,” I tried to assure her.
    “I think it would be better if I got angry,” she said. “I’m starting to feel like a fool.”
    “Save it for when she turns up,” I said. “You have a right to be anxious now. Just don’t let it get you down.”
    Hadley also called later and was to the point. “How’d you like to buy a light table, cheap? With a new top it’d be fine….That’s about all that’s working here. The rest of the stuff is junk. They even ripped up our accounts books.”
    “You don’t think it was someone who owed you money, do you?”
    “I’m sure we could have worked out some other payment plan,” she said in her long drawl, then she turned business-like. “If you’re free tonight I’d like to talk to you a little more about all this, get your ideas and bounce some theories around. I’d love to rule out the possibility that either of our collectives was involved, especially ours.”
    “I don’t think anything can be ruled out until Fran turns up.”
    “The more I think about it, the more I think that Fran couldn’t possibly have done it.”
    “Even though her car keys were there?”
    “I’m sure there’s an explanation.”
    “How about Margaret? Did you notice her onion breath?”
    “Let’s discuss it over dinner tonight. We’ll hash it all out.”
    “In that case I recommend a good hashhouse…Ever been to the Doghouse Restaurant?”
    “No. I’ve seen it though. Over by Seattle Center?”
    “Yeah. Bring your ten-gallon hat, Tex.”

8
    T HE DOGHOUSE RESTAURANT ( Max. Cap. 250) had been around since before WWII and hadn’t changed much in decor, menu or service since then. It had big soft booths you could lose yourself in and capable older waitresses wearing black skirts and vests and white shirts. The cocktail lounge had framed portraits of various canines all over the walls and Dick Dickerson nightly on the organ. It was probably the last restaurant in Seattle to still have plastic plants, toothpicks holding together the sandwiches, paperwrapped straws served with drinks, and Worcestershire, A-1 Steak Sauce and catsup on the table, every table. Both the placemats and a giant mural over the counter (with its towers of pie racks and constantly filled coffee cups, its smokers and its newspaper readers) displayed the motto “All Roads Lead to the Doghouse.” In one corner of the picture was a harridan with a rolling pin; in the other a sad-eyed pooch in the doghouse; and in between a hilly course strewn with signs that read “Matrimony,” “Blonds,” “Private Secretaries,” and “Boozers.”
    Hadley was waiting for me, without a cowboy hat but still recognizable behind the tall menu, with her graying hair and slightly furrowed brow. No beauty certainly, but a solid sort of person. Dependable. Or so I needed to believe.
    “Hey there, Pam,” she said, looking up, looking pleased. “This is quite the place.”
    “Our parents used to bring us here on Sundays sometimes—as a treat.”
    “They were nice, I bet. Your parents.” She said it factually, in a way that caught me in the