Bessie shrugged. “Well, at that price, it’s out of the question. I guess we’ll just have to keep on using the old canning kettle—although it isn’t always safe for things like beans and corn. And it takes hours and hours in the hot kitchen.” But she couldn’t resist a last longing look at the canner. “If we had that at the Magnolia Manor, I’ll bet we wouldn’t have to throw out so many jars of spoiled food.”

“That’s one of the problems with the canning kettle,” Liz agreed. “Tomatoes are okay, but if the food isn’t acid enough, it doesn’t always keep. And no matter how long you boil the jars, they don’t always seal just right. When you bring a quart of green beans from the fruit cellar, it might be moldy, or worse.” She made a face.

Bessie cast a quick look over her shoulder. She and Liz were not standing in front of Mr. Musgrove’s hardware store window for the purpose of discussing what could be done with that pressure canner, interesting as it was. They were waiting for Mr. Frankie Diamond to emerge from the telephone booth on the other side of the diner.

When Liz had come back to the table from her visit to the Exchange, she had told Bessie that Verna was back there, working the switchboard. And that earlier that morning, Verna had had a long telephone conversation with Miss LaMotte’s housekeeper in Cicero. She had learned—among other things—that an attacker had slashed Miss Lake’s face and that Miss LaMotte had shot him.

Bessie stared at Liz across the table. “Shot the slasher?” she gasped incredulously. “Mercy me! Did she . . . Did she kill him?”

“Dead as a doornail,” Liz replied, picking up her glass of iced tea. “And if you ask me, he deserved it.”

Myra May had come up with their dinner plates and was standing behind them, listening. “Who shot a slasher?” she asked anxiously. “When? Where?”

“Shhh,” Liz hissed, shooting a meaningful glance at the baldheaded man at the counter. “Don’t talk so loud. We’ll tell you all about it later.”

But Bessie was sure the man hadn’t heard a word of what they’d said. The volume was turned up on the noon agricultural price reports on the radio, and the man was bent over his plate, shoveling in his mashed potatoes and gravy as fast as he could. He was obviously in a hurry to finish his dinner so that he could get back to the booth and make that telephone call.