Three Bedrooms, One Corpse

FRIDAY MORNING I woke with that blank feeling I'd had lately. Nothing specific to do, nowhere particular to go. No one expected me anywhere.



Even though library funding cuts had meant I'd only been part-time, my work hours had shaped my week. I had an increasingly strong feeling I wouldn't be throwing my lot in with Mother's at Select Realty, so I wouldn't be studying for my real estate license.



Lying in bed drowsily was not such a pleasure if it wasn't illicit, even with Madeleine's heavy warm body curled up against my leg. Before, I'd used this time to map out my day. Now the time lay like a wasteland before me. I didn't want to think about the dinner party tonight, didn't want to feel again the alternating apprehension and attraction Martin Bartell aroused in me.



So I scolded myself out of bed, down the stairs, and popped an exercise video into the VCR after switching on the coffeepot. I stretched and bent and hopped around obediently, grudging every necessary minute of it. Madeleine watched this new part of my morning routine with appalled fascination.



Now that I was thirty, calories were no longer burning themselves off quite so easily. Three times a week my mother, clad in gorgeous exercise clothes, went to the newly opened Athletic Club and did aerobics. Mackie Knight, Franklin Farrell, and Donnie Greenhouse, plus a host of other Lawrencetonians, ran or biked every evening. I'd seen Franklin's cohort, Terry Sternholtz, out "power walking" with Eileen. My mother's new husband was a golfer. Almost everyone I knew did something to keep her muscles in working order and her body in the proper shape. So I'd succumbed to the necessity myself, but with little grace and less enthusiasm.



At least I felt I'd earned my coffee and toast, and my shower was a real pleasure afterward. While I was drying my hair, I decided that today I'd start looking at houses seriously. I needed a project, and finding a house I really liked would do. Jane's books and the few things from her house I'd wanted to keep were stacked in odd places around the town-house, and I was beginning to feel claustrophobic. Mother had hinted heavily that Jane's dining room set would be welcome in her third bedroom for a short time only.



Of course, I'd have to go through Select Realty, and I didn't think I ought to have Mother showing me around. Eileen, Idella, or Mackie? Mackie could use the vote of confidence, I reflected, standing bent at the waist with my hair hanging down so I could dry the bottom layer. But though I didn't have anything against Mackie, I never had been too crazy about him, either. I didn't think it was because he was black or because he was male. I just wasn't that comfortable with him. On the other hand, Eileen was smart and sometimes funny, but too bossy. Idella was sweet and could leave you alone when you needed to think, but she was no fun at all.



After a moment's consideration, I chose Eileen. I phoned the office.



Patty said she wasn't in.



I looked up Eileen's home number and punched it with an impatient finger.



"Hello?"



"May I speak to Eileen, please?"



"May I tell her who's calling?"



"Roe Teagarden." Who the hell was this? Eileen's personal home secretary? On the other hand, it wasn't exactly my business.



Eileen finally came on the line.



"Hi, Eileen. I've decided to start moving on finding a house of my own. Can you show me some, pretty soon?"



"Sure! What are you looking for?"



Oh. Well, four walls and a roof ... I began speaking as I thought. "I want at least three bedrooms, because I need a room for a library. I want a kitchen with some counter space." The townhouse was definitely deficient in that department. "I want a large master bedroom with a very large closet." For all my new clothes. "I want at least two bathrooms." Why not? One could always be kept pretty for company. "And not lots of traffic." For Madeleine, who was weaving around my ankles, rumbling her rough purr.



"What price range do you have in mind?"



I was still talking to an investment banker about what I would have to live on if I didn't use any of Jane's capital. But I could buy the house outright and then invest the rest, or I could put the money from the sale of Jane's house down on the new place ... I let all this swirl around in my head, and then an answer popped to the top of my brain, like the answer popping up to the window of a fortune-telling ball.



"Okay," Eileen said. "Seventy-five to ninety-five gives us some room. There are quite a few for sale in that range since Golfwhite closed its factory here." Golfwhite--which, logically enough, manufactured golf balls and other golfing accessories--had closed its Lawrenceton factory and moved all its people who were willing to move to the larger factory in Florida.



"I don't really need anything awfully big or important-looking," I told Eileen, assailed by sudden doubts.



"Don't worry, Roe. If you don't like it, you don't have to buy it," she said dryly. "Let's get a start tomorrow afternoon. I'll see what I can get lined up in that time."



After I'd dressed in my lime-green blouse and navy blue pants and sweater, I had nothing better to do than drop in on my old friend Susu Saxby Hunter. The house she'd inherited from her parents was in the oldest part of Lawrenceton. The house had been built in the last quarter of the previous century, and had charming high ceilings and huge windows, negligible closets, and wide halls, a feature I was especially fond of for some reason. Wide halls are a great location for bookshelves, and Susu was wasting a whole lot of prime space, in my opinion. Of course, she had other things to worry about, I found out that morning. In a house the age of hers, the heating and cooling bills were extortionate, drafts were inescapable, curtains had to be custom-made because nothing was of standard size, and all the electric wiring had had to be replaced recently. To say nothing of the antiquated toilets and tubs that Susu had just replaced.



"But you love this house, don't you?" I said, sitting across from Susu at her "country pine" kitchen table. Susu's kitchen was so heavily "country," including a pie safe in the corner (lovingly refinished and containing no pies whatsoever), that you expected a goose to walk in with a blue bow around its neck.



"Yes," she confessed, putting out her third cigarette. "My great-grandparents built it when they were first married, and then my parents inherited and they redid it, and now I'm redoing it. I guess I always will be. It's lucky Jimmy's in the hardware business! The only thing it would be better if he did is if he were a licensed electrician. Or had a fabric store. Want some more coffee?"



"Sure," I said, reflecting I'd have to view the renovated bathrooms quite soon at this rate. "How's Jimmy doing?"



Susu didn't look quite as happy as she had when discussing the house. "Roe, since we've been friends a long time, I'll tell you .. . I'm not sure how Jimmy's doing. He goes to work, and he works hard. He's really built the business up. And he goes to Rotary, and he goes to church, and he coaches little Jim's baseball team in the summer. And he goes to Bethany's piano recitals. But sometimes I have the funniest feeling ..." Her voice trailed off uncertainly, and she stared down at her smoldering cigarette.



"What, Susu?" I asked quietly, suddenly feeling a return of my high school affection for this bright, blond, plump, scared woman.



"His heart's not in it," she said simply, and then gave a little laugh. "I know that sounds stupid ..."



Actually, she sounded quite perceptive, something I'd never suspected.



"Maybe he's just having sort of an early mid-life crisis?" I suggested gently.



"Of course, you're probably right," Susu said, obviously embarrassed by her own frankness. "Come see how I decorated Bethany's room! She'll be a teenager before I know it. Roe, I expect her to tell me any day that she's started her periods!"



"Oh, no!"



And we oohed and aahed our way up the stairs to Bethany's pretty-as-a-picture room, still decorated with childish things like favorite dolls--but the dolls were sharing space with posters of sullen young men in leather. Then we viewed Little Jim's room, with its duck-laden wallpaper and masculine plaids. It seems to be the view of those who design "male" decorations that the male DNA includes a gene that requires duck-killing.



Then we moved on to Sally and Jim's room, resplendent with chintz and framed needlework, an antique cedar chest, and ruffled pillows on the beds. A picture from their wedding hung by Sally's dressing table, one of the whole carefully arranged wedding party.



"There you are, Roe, second from the end! Wasn't that a wonderful day?" Susu's pink fingernail landed on my very young face. That face, with its stiff smile, brought that day back to me all too vividly. I had known exactly how unbecoming the dreadful lavender ruffled bridesmaid's dress had been, and my unruly hair was topped with a picture hat trailing a matching lavender ribbon. My best friend, Amina, also a bridesmaid, had fared much better in that get-up because of her height and longer neck, and her smile was unreserved. Susu herself, radiant in fully deserved white, was gorgeous, and I told her so now. "That was the wedding of the year," I said, smiling a little. "You were the first of us to be married. We were so envious."



The memory of that envy, the thrill of being the first, momentarily warmed Susu's face. "Jimmy was so handsome," she said quietly.



Yes, he had been.



"Honey, I'm here for lunch," bellowed a voice from downstairs. Susu's plump face aged again. "You won't believe who's here, Jimmy!" she called gaily.



And down the stairs we tripped, stuck in a time warp between that picture-book wedding and the reality of two children and a house.



Jimmy Hunter quickly brought me back to the present. It had been a long time since I'd seen him close up, and he'd aged and coarsened. The basic goodwill that had always lain behind his character seemed to be gone now, replaced by something like confusion, laced with a dose of wondering resentment. How could Jimmy Hunter's life not be idyllic? he seemed to be wondering. What could possibly be missing? I'd always thought of him as an uncomplicated jock. I saw I would have to revise this assessment of Jimmy just as I'd had to correct my reading of his wife.



"You look great, Roe," Jimmy said heartily.



"Thanks, Jimmy. How's the hardware business?"



"Well, it keeps us in hamburger, with steak on the weekends once in a while," he said casually. "How's the realty market in Lawrenceton?"



Of course everyone in town had heard by now I'd left the library, and heard and speculated about my legacy from Jane Engle.



"Kind of upset, right now."



"You mean about Tonia Lee? That gal just didn't know when to quit, did she?"



"Oh, Jimmy," Susu protested.



"Now, sugar, you know as well as I do that Tonia Lee would cheat on her husband any time it came in her head to do it. She just did it once too often, with the wrong man at the wrong time."



As right as he might be, he said this in a very unpleasant way, a way that made me want to defend Tonia Lee Greenhouse. Jimmy was the kind of man who would say a woman deserved to get raped if she wore a low-cut blouse and tight skirt.



"She was unwise," I said levelly, "but she didn't deserve to be murdered. No one deserves to be killed for making some mistakes."



"You're right," said Jimmy, backing down instantly, though obviously not changing his opinion at all. "Well, I can see you ladies have a lot to talk about, so I'll just take myself outside to work in the toolshed. Call me when lunch is ready, Susu."



"Okay," she responded warmly. When he was out the back door and down the steps, her face seemed to fold in.



"Oh, Roe, he's always going out to that toolshed! He's redone it as a workshop, and he spends hours out there piddling with this or that. He's a good husband as far as providing goes, and he loves the kids, but I just don't feel like he really lives here half the time."



Caught unawares, I couldn't think of what to say. I patted her shoulder awkwardly, uncomfortable as usual when touching people.



"You know what he does?" Susu asked as she rummaged in the refrigerator and emerged with some leftover dishes. "He goes and looks at houses! When we have this lovely home that I don't want to give up, ever! He just makes these appointments and looks at houses!" She popped the dishes in the microwave and punched in a time setting. "I don't know how he explains to the realtors that I'm never with him--I'm sure they expect his wife to come along if he's really house-hunting. I've had people whose homes were for sale ask me how Jimmy liked their house, and I didn't know anything about it!" Susu grabbed a tissue from a crochet-covered tissue box and blotted her eyes with ferocious intensity. "It's so humiliating."



"Oh, Susu," I said with considerable distress, "I have no idea why Jimmy would do that." The microwave beeped, and Susu began pulling things out and then got two plates from the cupboard.



"I'll bet you've heard about it, though, haven't you?" She could tell my answer by my face. "Everyone has. Even Bethany came home from school asking me if it was true her daddy was peculiar."



"Maybe this house is just so much yours," I said hesitantly. I knew it was stupid to open my mouth, but I did it anyway.



"Of course it's mine," Susu said grimly. "It's been my family's and it's in my name and I love it and it's going to stay that way."



There seemed little more to say. Susu had drawn a line, and her husband was stepping over it, his fanciful house-hunting an odd symptom of a deep dissatisfaction.



Or at least that was the way I saw it. (I am as bad at practicing amateur psychology as anyone I know.) I tried to get up and leave, having turned down repeated invitations to eat with them, but Susu determinedly kept me talking, though lunch was seemingly ready. She wanted us to talk about all the other bridesmaids. These reminiscences seemed to feed her something she needed. Naturally, all of them but me were married; some had been married more than once. Or twice.



"I heard you've been dating Aubrey Scott," Susu said encouragingly.



"We've been going out for a few months."



"What's it like to date a minister? Does he want to kiss and everything?"



"He wants to kiss; I don't know about `everything.' He's got hormones, same as anyone else." I had to smile at her.



"Oooh, oooh," said Susu, shaking her head in mock horror. "Roe, you may not have gotten married, but you've dated more interesting people than any of us ever dated."



"Like who?"



"That policeman, for one. And that writer. And now a priest. Don't the Episcopalians call 'em priests like Catholics do? And remember, even when you were in high school, you dated..."



Now, I knew Susu intended this list to cheer me up, but it had exactly the opposite effect. Like looking at my closetful of bridesmaid dresses. So as soon as I could, I started the parting process. As I was getting into my car, I said as casually as I could, "Did Little Jim have a football game Wednesday evening? I thought I saw your van parked at the Youth Club field."



"What time?"



"Oh, I guess it was about five-thirty."



"Let me think. No, no, Wednesday afternoon is Bethany's Girl Scout meeting, and Little Jim has Tae Kwon Do at the same time, so Jimmy has to take him to that while I go with Bethany to Scouts. Jimmy has Wednesday afternoons off anyway--that's the afternoon the store is closed, because it's open on Saturdays. I think the older league had a game scheduled for Wednesday. There are lots of vans like ours."



"Little Jim's Tae Kwon Do is in that building in the shopping center on Fourth Street?"



"Yes, right by that carpet and linoleum place."



"Does Jimmy get to stay and watch Little Jim's class?"



"No, the teacher won't let parents stay except for special occasions. He says it distracts the boys, especially the littler ones. But the lessons are just half an hour or forty-five minutes. So Jimmy takes a book and reads in the car, or runs an errand. And it's right before supper, too, at five o'clock, so on Wednesdays I have to have leftovers or run home from Scouts and get something out of the freezer to microwave."



Susu didn't seem to think it was strange I was interested in her family's schedule, something she enjoyed detailing anyway. Like any specialist, she wanted to air her knowledge.



As I finally took my leave and drove away, I was thinking that if Jimmy Hunter had killed Tonia Lee, he'd done it on a tight time budget. Susu hadn't actually said her husband had eaten with the family on Wednesday night, but she hadn't mentioned it was different from any other Wednesday, either. So I had to decide this was inconclusive. But the odds were a little more in favor of Jimmy Hunter's being innocent. It looked as if Patty Cloud's favorite suspect had been sitting outside the Tae Kwon Do studio with a newspaper or a book, or sitting at the country pine table eating supper, at the time Tonia Lee Greenhouse had been killed.