As soon as Jake Weller left, Cynthia questioned her husband about the candidate filing papers Weller handed him.
"Jake's not standing for election next August. He thinks I should file. No dice." End of conversation, except Dean noticed Cynthia fold the papers and put them aside.
For the balance of the afternoon, Dean felt pangs of guilt for summarily deciding not to even consider seeking the position of sheriff without so much as discussing it with his wife. Was he being unfair, taking the easy way out? Content with a no-sweat life made up of V-necks and corduroys and flannel shirts and music no one else listened to anymore? His season was passing like tomatoes still green when the frost hits, unable to fulfill what they've been straining to achieve through the long hot summer. But the tomato, a berry grown out of its natural proportion by the fiddling of man, at least knew redness was its ultimate goal. What was Dean's goal? Dean vacillated between the contentment of inactivity and the frustration of trying to change the unchangeable. Was he Dorvad the lazy mate as Gladys so fictionalized him? He planned to discuss it with Cynthia but other matters interrupted.
Later that evening, Fred came down to the kitchen as Martha was finishing drying the dishes. As she scooted off to do homework, he plunked down at the table, looking perplexed.
"What's the matter?" Cynthia asked.
"One of them bundles says it's Mrs. Shipton's stuff but all it has in it is the white dress."
"So?" Dean said.
"So where's the pen?" They didn't answer. "And where's her... unmentionables?"
"Her underwear?" Cynthia asked with a smile. Fred shook his head yes. "Maybe her personal effects are in another bag."
"Nope. That was all there was. And I looked again in her other stuff, the things she left in her room. No pen. No underwear either-least not Annie's." Fred assumed his senior detective mode. "As you remember," he said, "I questioned the fountain pen before, earlier in this here investigation. You thought it went to the hospital, in a pocket of the white dress. It didn't. The dress doesn't even have a pocket. So where is it? They sure didn't cremate the woman, naked as the day she was born, holding on to a fountain pen!"
"Let's chalk up another light-finger souvenir to Claire," Dean suggested. But Fred wasn't buying.
"Why would Edith put the white dress back on but no underwear?" he asked.
"Modesty?" Cynthia offered.
"She didn't demonstrate any modesty when she came to your room," Fred pointed out, reopening a road Dean preferred to detour. "Nor when she paraded up the stairs and gave the business to Claire Quincy."