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"Nobody's murdered for no reason," Jane said. "We'll list motives, then we'll cross them off one by one. Whichever one's left has to be the right answer."

"Somehow I don't think it's quite that easy," Shelley disagreed.

"You'll see," Jane assured her, getting out a notepad and a pencil.

"Since it didn't look like robbery, let's assume for the moment that somebody meant to kill her. Now, what are the reasons for murder. Greed?"

"I doubt a cleaning lady had a fortune for someone to inherit, otherwise she'd own the company. She wasn't wearing a strand of emeralds."

"True, but it might have been greed for something in your house."

"But nothing was taken."

"Still, it might have been that the murderer wanted to take something and just didn't get it. Suppose he'd gone in and determined to kill anybody who was there and then rob the place, and just as he killed her, he heard you coming in?" Jane was immediately sorry she'd suggested it.

Shelley hugged herself. "Could I have been in the house with the killer? No. That doesn't work. If he didn't mind killing her, he wouldn't have minded killing me.

"Okay, cross off greed," Jane said, licking her stub of pencil. Reasons for murder. Greed, fear—"

"Fear of what? That woman? Would you be afraid of her?"

"Not physically. But what if she knew something the killer was afraid she'd tell?"

"Jane, you met that woman. She didn't know how to tell time, much less dangerous secrets. Besides, why kill her at my house? Why not at her own, or on the street?"

"I don't know about the where-to-kill-her part, but think some more about the why. Suppose she'd been cleaning an office, though. Suppose she learned something about a company take-over, or—"

"Happy Helpers only do domestic jobs. I tried to get them for Paul's office."

"Some people do their business at home. Mary Ellen Revere, for instance."

"With a broken arm she can't even use? She strangles her?"

"No. I was just making an example of somebody around here who has a business at home." Jane sighed. "Now who's shooting down ideas? All right. Cross off fear. What else is a motive? There's mercy killing, but this wasn't a method of putting a loved one out of her misery. What about revenge?"

"For what?"

"Who knows? Maybe Mrs. Thurgood did some awful thing to somebody and they got back at her by strangling her."

Shelley tapped her immaculately manicured fingernails on the table, considering. "It's certainly possible. Without knowing anything about her, there's no reason to mark it off the motive list, but my instincts tell me otherwise."

"I know what you mean. Somehow she seemed too bland to have ever done something awful."

The phone rang and Jane answered. It was Detective VanDyne. She handed the phone to Shelley. Finally, Shelly hung up and came back to the table. Jane poured them each coffee from a fresh pot. It was after eight, so she'd switched over to decaf.

"He wants to leave a man in the house overnight. He didn't say so, but the gist of it was that he had no motives or suspects yet."

Greed, fear, mercy, revenge? Nothing? Jane wondered why, with so many motives available, he hadn't found one he liked.

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