Three Bedrooms, One Corpse

An hour after I'd gotten home I began to feel like myself again. I'd huddled wrapped in an afghan, with Madeleine the cat purring in my lap (an effective tranquilizer), while I watched CNN to feed my mind on impersonal things for a while. I was in my favorite brown suede-y chair with a diet drink beside me, comfortable and nearly calm. Of course, Madeleine was getting cat hairs all over the afghan and my lovely new dress; I'd had to resist the impulse to change into blue jeans when I got home. I still felt my new clothes were costumes I was wearing, costumes I should doff when I was really being myself.



I'd had Madeleine neutered after I'd given away the last kitten, and the scar still showed through her shorter tummy hair. She had quickly adjusted to the switch from Jane's house to the townhouse, though she was still angry at not being let outside.



"A litter box will just have to do until I find a house with a yard," I told her, and she glared at me balefully.



I'd calmed down enough to think. I pushed the OFF button on the remote control.



I was horrified at what had happened to Tonia Lee, and I was trying very hard not to picture her as I'd last seen her. It was far more typical of Tonia Lee to remember her as she'd been at the beauty shop during our last conversation--her hair emerging glossy dark from the beautician's curling iron, her long oval nails perfectly polished by the manicurist, her brain trying to frame an impolite query politely, her dissatisfied face momentarily intent on extracting information from me. I was sorry she'd had such a dreadful end, but I'd never liked the little I knew of Tonia Lee Greenhouse.



Over and above being tangentially connected to her nasty death, I had a personal situation on my hands, no doubt about it. What had happened--and what was going to happen--between me and Martin Bartell?



I should call Amina, my best friend. Though she lived in Houston now, it would be worth the long-distance daytime call. I peered at the calendar across the room by the telephone in the kitchen area. Today was Thursday. The wedding had been five weeks ago... Yes, they should have gotten back from the cruise and the resort at least two weeks ago, and Amina wouldn't go back to work until Monday.



But if I called Amina, that would be validating my feeling.



So what was this feeling? Love at first sight? This didn't seem to be centered around my heart, but somewhere considerably lower.



And amazingly, he felt it, too.



That was what was so shocking--that it was mutual. After a lifetime of considering and dissecting, I was seriously in danger of being swept away by something I couldn't control.



Oh--sure I could! I slapped myself lightly on one cheek. All I had to do was never see Martin Bartell again.



That would be the honorable thing. I was dating Aubrey Scott, a fine man and a handsome one, and I should count myself lucky.



Which introduced a drearily familiar train of thought.



Where was my relationship with Aubrey going? We'd been dating for several months now, and I was sure his congregation (including my mother and her husband) expected great things. Of course, someone had told Aubrey about my involvement in the Real Murders deaths--due to my membership in a club devoted to discussing old murder cases, my half-brother Phillip and I had almost gotten killed--and we'd talked about it a little. But on the whole, other people seemed to consider our relationship suitable and unsurprising.



We found each other attractive, we were both Christians (though I was certainly not a very good one), neither of us drank more than the occasional glass of wine, and we both liked reading and popcorn and going to the movies. He enjoyed kissing me; I liked being kissed by him. We were fond of each other and respected each other.



But I would be a terrible minister's wife, inwardly if not outwardly. He must know that by now. And he wouldn't be right for me even if he was a--well, a librarian. But I hated to do anything fast and drastic. Aubrey deserved better than that. My het-up feelings for Martin Bartell might disappear as suddenly as they'd appeared. And at least half of me fervently hoped those feelings would vanish. There was something degrading about this.



Also something terribly exciting, the other half admitted.



The phone rang just as I was about to go through my whole thought cycle again.



"Roe, are you all right?" Aubrey was so concerned it hurt me.



"Yes, Aubrey, I'm fine. I guess my mother called you."



"She did, yes. She was very upset about poor Mrs. Greenhouse, and worried about you."



Maybe that wasn't exactly what Mother had been feeling, but Aubrey put the nicest interpretation on everything. Though he was certainly not naive.



"I'm all right," I said wearily. "It was just a tough morning."



"I hope the police can catch whoever did this, and do it fast," Aubrey said, "if there's someone out there preying on lone women. Are you sure you want to go into this real estate business?"



"No, actually I'm not sure," I said. "But not because of Tonia Lee Greenhouse. My mother has to carry a calculator all the time, Aubrey."



"Oh?" he said cautiously.



"She has to know all about the current interest rate, and she has to be able to figure out what someone's house payment will be if he can sell his house for X amount so he can put that down on the next house, which costs twenty thousand dollars more than the house he has ..."



"You didn't realize that was involved in house-selling?" Aubrey was trying hard to sound neutral.



"Yes, I did," I said, trying equally hard not to snap. "But I was thinking more of the house- showing part of it. I like going into people's houses and just looking." And that was the long and short of it.



"But you don't like the nuts and bolts part," Aubrey prompted, probably trying to figure out if I was nosy, childish, or just plain weird.



"So maybe it's not for me," I concluded, leaving him to judge.



"You have time to think about it. I know you want to do something--right?" My being completely at liberty, except for the nominal duty of listening to any complaints that might arise from the townhouse tenants in Mother's complex, made Aubrey very uneasy. Single women worked full- time, and for somebody other than their mothers.



"Sure." He was not the only one who found the concept of a woman of leisure unsettling.



"Did your mother mention her plan for tomorrow night to you?" Oh, damn. The dinner at her house.



"Right. Did you want to go? I guess we could tell her we had already made other plans."



But Aubrey sounded wistful. He loved the food Mother's caterer served. "Caterer" was a fancy term for Lucinda Esther, a majestic black woman who made a good living "cooking for people who are too lazy," as she put it. Lucinda also got extra mileage out of being a "character," a factor of which she was fully aware.



Oh, this was going to be awful. And yet, maybe it would clear the air in some way.



"Yes, let's go."



"Okay, honey. I'll pick you up about six-thirty."



"I'll see you then," I said absently.



"Bye."



I said good-bye and hung up. My hand stayed on the receiver.



Honey? Aubrey had never called me an endearment before. It sounded to me as if something was happening with Aubrey ... or maybe he was just feeling sentimental because I'd had a very bad experience that morning?



Suddenly I saw Tonia Lee Greenhouse as she had been in that huge bed. I saw the elegant matching night tables flanking the bed. I could see the strange color of Tonia Lee's body against the white sheets, the red of the dress folded so peculiarly at the foot of the bed. I wondered where Tonia Lee's shoes were--under the bed?



And speaking of missing things--here a thought hovered on the edge of my mind so insistently that my eyes went out of focus as I tried to pin it down. Missing things. Or something at least not included in my mental picture of the bed and surrounding floor. The night tables ...



There it was. The night tables. My mental camera zoomed in on their surfaces. I picked up the phone and punched in seven familiar numbers. "Select Realty," said Patty Cloud's On-the-Ball voice.



"Patty, this is Roe. Let me speak to my mother if she's handy, please."



"Sure, Roe," said Patty in her Warm Personal voice. "She's on another line--wait, she's off. Here you go."



"Aida Queensland," said my mother. Her new name still gave me a jolt.



"When you first listed the Anderton house," I said without preamble, "think about going in the bedroom with Mandy."



"Okay, I'm there," she said after a moment.



"Look at the night tables."



A few seconds of silence.



"Oh," she said slowly. "Oh, I see what you mean. Yes, I have to call Detective Liggett right away. The vases are missing."



"She should check the formal dining room, too. There was a crystal bowl with crystal fruit in there that cost a fortune."



"I'll call her right away."



We hung up at the same moment.



It had been years since I was at the Anderton house, but I still remembered how impressed I'd been that instead of tissues or bed lamps, Mandy's parents had Chinese vases on their bedside tables. In her charming way, Mandy had bragged about how much those vases had cost. But she had never liked them. So when I realized they were gone, I didn't for an instant think she'd had them packed up and shipped to Los Angeles. She would have left them to coax a buyer. Anyone who would have enough money to consider buying her parents' house would not want to steal vases, right?



I dumped an indignant Madeleine from my lap and moved around the room restlessly. I was standing at the window staring out at my patio, thinking I'd have to bring in my outdoor chairs and table and store them down in the basement during the coming weekend, when the phone rang. I reached out to the kitchen wall extension.



"It's me again," said my mother. "We're having a meeting this afternoon for everyone on the staff, two o'clock. You're going to need to come, too."



"Did the police question Mackie?"



"They took him to the police station."



"Oh, no."



"It turns out Detective Liggett--I mean Detective Smith--was already here when I was on the phone with you. I'm sure this all happened as a result of what I told Jack Burns, about Mackie taking Tonia Lee the key. I was only thinking of Mackie having possibly seen who was at the house with Tonia Lee. It didn't occur to me until too late that they might pick up Mackie as a suspect."



"Do you think it's because he's--?"



"Oh, I'd hate to think that. I hope our police force is not like that. But you know, being black may work in his favor, actually. Tonia Lee would never have gone to bed with Mackie. She didn't like blacks at all."



"They might just say he raped her."



There was a long pause while Mother digested this. "You know, somehow it didn't.. . well, I can't say why. And I only looked for a second. But it didn't look like a rape, did it?"



I paused in turn. Tonia completely undressed, the sheets pulled back as if two people had actually gotten in the bed together ... Mother was right, it looked like a seduction scene, not a hasty rape, even though the leather thongs might indicate force. My first thought had been consensual kinky sex. But maybe Mother and I were both factoring in Tonia Lee's known reputation for infidelity. When I suggested this to Mother, she agreed.



"Anyway, I'm sure Mackie is not involved," she said staunchly. "I like him a lot, he's a hard worker, and for the year he's been here, he's been totally honest and aboveboard. Besides... he is too smart to put the key back."



After we'd hung up, I wondered about that. Why had the Anderton house key been put back on the hook so mysteriously? That key had enabled us to enter and find the body.



I thought a number of interesting questions depended on the answer to that riddle.



The office meeting ought to be stimulating.



I ate an apple and a left-over chicken breast while flipping through Jane Engle's copy of The Murderers' Who's Who. I read the entries for some of my favorite cases and wondered if an updated edition would include our local murderous duo whose dreadful but brief career had made national headlines; or perhaps our only other claim to fame might rate an entry, the disappearance of an entire family from a house outside of Lawrenceton. That had been--what?--five or six years ago.



My familiarity with old murder cases was my mother's despair. Now, since the disbandment of the Real Murders club, I had no one to share it with. I sighed over spilt milk.



After putting my dishes in the dishwasher, I glumly mounted the stairs to get ready for the meeting. For one thing, I had to brush all the cat hairs off my skirt.



***



Mother's office building, with its soothing gray and blue carpeting and walls, peaceful prints, and comfortable chairs, exuded calm and profitable efficiency. That was Mother's essence, and she and the office designer had captured it when they renovated the building. Mother had insisted on a conference room, for staff meetings. Every Monday every realtor working for Mother had to attend this meeting. She'd planned to expand, and the room was still more than large enough for the whole staff.



I saw with interest that one of John Queensland's daughters-in-law had been brought in to answer the phones and take messages while Mother held the meeting. I knew my stepfather's sons and their wives only slightly, and as I nodded to Melinda Queensland, I tried to figure out what my relationship to her was. Stepsister-in-law? It looked to me as if I was going to be a stepaunt in a few months, but Melinda had had several miscarriages and I wasn't going to ask.



Melinda was sitting at Patty Cloud's desk, which of course was not only orderly but also decorated with a tidy plant and a picture in an expensive frame. Patty's desk faced the front door, and her underling, Debbie Lincoln, had a desk at right angles to it, in effect forming the start of the corridor down to the conference room and Idella's and Mackie's offices. In the square created by two walls and the desks, firmly screwed to the wall behind Patty, was the key board, a large pegboard striped with labeled hooks. The more popular letters of the alphabet claimed two or even three hooks. A person of even the feeblest intelligence could figure out the system in seconds, and every other agency in town had something similar.



I snapped out of my study of the key board to find that Melinda was waiting for me to acknowledge her, and her smile was growing strained as I stared at the wall behind her. I gave her a brisk nod and started down the hall to the conference room. I was in time to sit at Mother's left, a chair left vacant deliberately for me, I presumed. All the realtors expected me to inherit this business from Mother, and saw my presence in the office this week as the first step in my becoming second-in- command.



This was far from true. I had quit my job at the library on a whim, and I already regretted it more than I ever would have believed possible. (Of course, even regretting it mildly was more than I ever would have believed possible.)



Idella Yates, a frail-looking fair woman in her mid-thirties, divorced with two children, slid into the chair at the end of the table and put a briefcase on the table in front of her as if building a barrier between herself and the room. Her short straight hair was the color of dead winter grass. Eileen Norris bustled in, carrying a large stack of papers and looking abstracted. Eileen was Mother's second-in-command, the first realtor Mother had hired after she'd gone out on her own. Eileen was big, brassy, loud, and cheerful on the surface; underneath, she was a barracuda. Patty Cloud, the receptionist/secretary, groomed to a tee, had perched her bottom dead in the center of the chair next to Idella's. Patty, who was maybe all of twenty-four, baffled and irritated me far more than she should have. Patty worked hard at being perfect, and she had damned near succeeded. She was always helpful on the phone, always turned out high-quality work, never forgot anything, and never, never came to work in anything frumpy or out of style or even wrinkled. She was already studying for her realtor's license. She would probably pass at the top of her group.



Patty's underling, Debbie Lincoln, was a rather dim and cowed girl right out of high school. She was a full-figured black with hair expensively corn-rowed and decorated with beads. Debbie was quiet, punctual, and could type very well.



Other than that, I knew little about her. At the moment she was sitting quietly by Patty with her eyes on her hands, not chatting back and forth like the others.



Eileen finally got settled, and we all looked at Mother expectantly. Just as she opened her mouth, the conference room door opened and in came Mackie Knight.



His dark round face looked strained and upset, and he responded to our various exclamations with a wave of his hand. He collapsed into a chair by Eileen with obvious relief, automatically adjusting his tie and running a hand over his very short hair.



"Mackie, I thought I was going to have to send a lawyer down to the station to get you out!" "Thanks, Mrs. Queensland. You were going to be my one phone call," he said. "But they seem to believe, at least for the moment, that I didn't do it."



"What did happen yesterday?" Eileen asked.



We all leaned forward to listen.



"Well," Mackie began wearily, telling a story he'd obviously told several times already, "the phone rang here five minutes after Patty went home for the day, and I was standing out in the reception room talking to Roe, so I answered it."



Patty looked chagrined that she hadn't worked late the day before.



"It was Mrs. Greenhouse, and she said she had an appointment to meet a client to show him the Anderton house. She had forgotten to come by earlier to get the key--if anyone happened to be leaving our office soon, could they bring it by? She was worried she'd miss her client if she left to come to our office."



"She didn't name the client?" Mother asked.



"No name," Mackie said firmly. "She did say `he,' I'm almost positive."



Idella Yates, beside me, shuddered and clutched her arms as if she were feeling a chill. I think we all did; Tonia Lee, making arrangements to meet her own death.



"Anyway, this is the part the police have the most trouble with," Mackie continued. "What I did, instead of driving up and leaving the key and going on home ... I went home first, put on my jogging clothes, and went out for my run. I stuck the key in the pocket of my shorts and stopped on my run to hand it to Mrs. Greenhouse. That only made maybe seven to ten minutes' difference in the time I actually got there, and it suited me better. To tell you the honest truth, I wasn't so excited about doing her work for her. No one here would be that sloppy. When I got there, she was at the house by herself. If anyone else was there, I didn't see him. Hers was the only car. It was parked in the back, outside the kitchen, so that was the door I went to."



"Why does that seem funny to the police?" Mother asked. "It doesn't seem odd to me."



"They seem to think that I ran instead of driving my car so no one would identify my car as being in the driveway, later. They said a woman living across the street from the Anderton house, she was waiting for her daughter to get home from spending a week out of town. So she was sitting in her front room, looking out the window, and reading a book, for the best part of two hours ... the daughter had had a flat on the interstate, turns out. This woman might have missed a person on foot, but not a car."



"What about the back door?" Eileen asked.



"The people who live behind the Andertons were watching TV in their den with the curtains open, since they knew no one was in the Anderton house. They told the police that they saw Tonia Lee's car pull up when it was still daylight, but fading fast. One woman got out. They sat watching TV and eating in their den while they watched, and no other car ever pulled up. They figured someone else had come to the front door. They did see Tonia Lee's car pull out after dark, way after dark, but of course they couldn't see who was in it. They were pretty interested, someone being in the house for that long; they thought someone might really be thinking of buying."



We all mulled that over for a minute.



"I wonder why the police told you so much?" Patty asked.



Mackie shook his head. "I guess they thought they would pressure me into confessing or something. If I'd been guilty, it might have worked."



"You run every night, you've always told us that, and I've often seen you. That's not suspicious at all," my mother said staunchly. We all murmured agreement, even Patty Cloud, who was none too fond of having to do work for a black man, I'd observed. Though having Debbie working for her didn't seem to be a problem.



"Lots of people run or ride bikes in the evening," Idella said suddenly. "Donnie Greenhouse does ... Franklin Farrell does."



Franklin Farrell was another local realtor.



"I bet it was Donnie," Eileen said bluntly. "He just couldn't stand Tonia Lee screwing around anymore."



"Eileen," Mother said warningly.



"It's true, and we all know it," Eileen said.



"I'm sure she just made an appointment with someone who used a false name, and the man killed her," Idella said in so low a voice we had to strain to hear her. "It could happen to any of us."



We were all silent for a moment, staring at her.



"Except Mackie, of course," Eileen said briskly, and we all broke into laughter. "Naw, I just get framed for it," Mackie said after the last chuckle had died away. And we were all sober again.



Patty Cloud said suddenly, "I think it was the House Hunter."



"Oh," my mother said doubtingly. "Come on, Patty."



"The House Hunter," said Eileen consideringly. "It's possible."



"Who's that?" I asked. I was apparently the only one not in the know.



"The House Hunter," Idella said softly, "is what all the realtors in town call Jimmy Hunter, the owner of the hardware store. On Main, you know?"



"Susu's husband?" I asked. There were several women named Sally in Lawrenceton, so most of them went by distinguishing nicknames. "I was in their wedding," I said, as if that made it impossible for Jimmy Hunter to be peculiar.



"We all know him," Mother said dryly. "And we christened him the House Hunter because he just loves to look at houses. Without Sally with him. He's always going to buy her a house for her birthday, or some such thing. And he's got the money to actually do it, that's the only reason we put up with him."



"He's not really in the market?"



"Oh, hell no," Eileen boomed. "They're going to stay in that old house they inherited from Susu's folks till hell freezes over. He's just some mild kind of pervert. He just likes to look at houses."



"With women," Idella added.



"Yes, when we sent him out with Mackie, he didn't call us back for months," Mother said.



"He won't make appointments with Franklin, either," Idella added. "Just that Terry Sternholtz that works with him." Eileen laughed at that, and we all looked at her curiously.



"Maybe he called Greenhouse Realty instead," Mackie said quietly.



"And since the Greenhouses are hard up, Donnie sent Tonia Lee out with him, just on the off chance he might really buy something." This was Eileen's contribution.



"Let me get this straight. He doesn't make passes?" I asked.



"No." Mother shook her head emphatically. "If he did, none of us would show him a doghouse. He just likes to look through other people's homes, and he likes to have a woman who isn't his wife with him. Who knows what's going through his head?"



"How long has Jimmy been doing this?" I was fascinated with this bizarre behavior on the part of my friend's husband. "Does Susu know?"



"I don't have any idea. How would any of us tell her? On the other hand, it does seem strange that gossip hasn't informed her that her husband is house-hunting. But as far as I know, she's never said anything. You were close to Susu in high school, weren't you, Roe?"



I nodded. "But we don't see each other much nowadays." I forbore from adding that that was because Susu was always ferrying her children somewhere or involved in some PTA activity. I was having trouble picturing thick-featured Jimmy Hunter, still broad-shouldered and husky as he'd been in his football days but now definitely on the heavyweight side, wandering dreamily through houses he didn't want to buy.



"If it's not the House Hunter," Patty suggested, "maybe Tonia Lee's murder has something to do with the thefts."



This caused an even greater reaction than Patty's first suggestion. But this reaction was different. Dead silence. Everyone looked upset. Beside me, Idella rubbed her hands together, and her pale blue eyes brimmed with tears.



"Okay," I said finally, "fill me in on this. The real estate business in this town just seems to be full of secrets, these days."



Mother sighed. "It's a serious problem, not something like the House Hunter, whom we more or less treat as a joke." She paused, considering how to proceed.



"Things have been stolen from the houses for sale for the past two years," Eileen said bluntly.



Even Debbie Lincoln was roused by this. She slid her eyes sideways at Eileen.



"In houses just listed by a particular realtor? In houses that have just been shown by one realtor every time?" I asked impatiently.



"That's just the trouble," Mother said. "It's not like--say, the refrigerator vanished every time Tonia Lee showed a house. That would make it clear and easy."



"It's small things," Mackie said. "Valuable things. But not so small a client could slip them into a pocket while we were showing the home. And even though the property might be listed with one realtor, of course we let any other realtor show it--that's the way you have to be in a town this size. We all have to cooperate. We all leave a card when we show a house, whether the owner's home or not ... you know the procedure. If only we'd gotten the multiple-listing system, we could use lockboxes. None of this would have happened."



What he meant was, none of the police station routine would have happened to him, because he wouldn't have had to take a key to the Anderton house. Tonia Lee would be just as dead, presumably. Mother was in favor of paying for one of the multiple-listing services most of the Atlanta area towns used, but the smaller realtors in town--particularly the Greenhouses--had balked.



"And it was never the same people, never, any more than coincidence could explain," Mother was saying. "I don't think the houses had been shown by the same person--or to the same person--before the items were missed, any time."



"You all borrow keys back and forth," I said.



The realtors nodded.



"So anyone could have them copied and use them at his or her leisure."



Again, glum nods all around.



"So why haven't I read about this in the paper?"



Distinctly guilty looks.



"We all got together," Eileen said. "Us, Select Realty; Donnie and Tonia Lee, Greenhouse Realty; Franklin Farrell and Terry Sternholtz, Today's Homes; even the agency that deals mostly in farms, Russell & Dietrich, because we had shown some of the farmhouses."



"City people who want to say they own property in the country," Mother told me, raising her eyebrows in derision.



"And what happened at the meeting?" I asked everyone at the table.



No one seemed in any big hurry to answer.



"Nothing was settled," Idella murmured.



Eileen snorted. "That's putting it mildly."



"Lots of mutual accusations and a general clearinghouse of old grievances," Mother said. "But finally, to keep this out of the papers, we agreed to reimburse the homeowner for anything missing while the house was listed."



"That's pretty broad."



"Well, there couldn't be any signs of a break-in."



"And there never were?"



"Oh, token ones, and the police came in at first. That Detective Smith," said Mother distastefully. She was unshakable in her conviction that Arthur Smith had done me wrong and that Lynn Liggett had somehow stolen him from my arms, despite the fact that Arthur and I had broken up before he began dating Lynn. Maybe a week before, it's true. And I'd only broken up with Arthur maybe twenty seconds before he was going to break up with me, so I could salvage some dignity. But what the hell... it was all over.



"And what did he find?"



"He found," said Mother carefully, "that in his expert opinion, the break-ins were staged to cover up the fact that the thief had entered with a key. And later on, the thief didn't even pretend to break in."



"But there was no one to accuse--any of us could have been guilty or innocent," Mackie said. "As usual, they checked me out first." He wasn't disguising his bitterness.



"No one was showing any sudden affluence. No one was taking lots of trips to Atlanta to dispose of the stolen items, at least as far as he could tell. Of course, we all go to Atlanta often," Eileen said. "And I gather the Lawrenceton police force is not large enough to follow all the Lawrenceton realtors wherever they go."



Would Arthur tell me any more? I wondered. Had he, for example, staked out a house that might be robbed? Had he had any suspicions that he couldn't prove?



"As far as we know, the investigation is ongoing," Mother said with apparent disbelief. "The whole thing is still up in the air and has been for a long time, too long. We're all sick to death of watching our every move for fear it'll be misinterpreted. At least the talk about this isn't so widespread that people are afraid to list their houses, but it may come to that."



"That would really hurt business," Eileen said, and there was a reverent silence.



"So who," I asked, moving on to the vital question, "put the key back on the board?"