"Robin, this is Roe Teagarden."

  He gave me an appreciative smile but he was with Lizanne, so I realistically built nothing on that.

  "I thought Robin Crusoe was a pseudonym," Bankston murmured in my ear.

  "I did too," I whispered, "but apparently not." "Poor guy, his parents must have been nuts," Bankston said with a snigger, until he remembered from my raised eyebrows that he was talking to a woman named Aurora Teagarden.

  "I met Robin when he came in to get his utilities turned on," Lizanne was telling John Queensland. John was saying all the proper things to Robin Crusoe, glad to have such a well-known name in our little town, hope you stay a while, ta-dah ta-dah ta-dah. John edged Robin over to meet Sally Allison who was chatting with our newest member, a police officer named Arthur Smith. If Robin was built tail and lanky, Arthur was short and solid, with coarse curly pale hair and the flat confrontive stare of the bull who knows he has nothing to fear because he is the toughest male on the farm.

  "You're lucky to have met such a well-known writer," I said enviously to Lizanne. I still wanted to tell someone about the phone call, but Lizanne was hardly the person.

  She sure didn't know who Julia Wallace was. And she didn't know who Robin Crusoe was either, as it turned out.

  "Writer?" she said indifferently. "I'm kind of bored."

  I stared at her incredulously. Bored by Robin Crusoe? One afternoon when I'd been at the Power and Light Company paying my bill, she'd told me, "I don't know what it is, but even when I pretty much like a man, after I date him a while, he gets to seem kind of tiresome. I just can't be bothered to act interested anymore, and then finally I tell him I don't want to go out anymore. They always get upset," she'd added, with a philosophical shake of her shining dark hair. Lovely Lizanne had never been married, and lived in a tiny apartment close to her job, and went home to her parents' house for lunch every day.

  Robin Crusoe, desirable writer, was striking out with Lizanne even now. She looked—sleepy.

  He reappeared at her side.

  "Where do you live in Lawrenceton?" I asked, because the newcomer seemed dolefully aware he wasn't making the grade with our local siren. "Parson Road. A townhouse. I'm camping there until my furniture comes, which it should do tomorrow. The rent here is so much less for a nicer place than I could find anywhere in the city close to the college." Suddenly I felt quite cheerful. I said, "I'm your landlady," but after we'd talked about the coincidence for a moment, a glance at my watch unsettled me. John Queensland was making a significant face at me over Arthur Smith's shoulder. Since he was president, he had to open the meeting, and he was ready to start.

  I glanced around, counting heads. Jane Engle and LeMaster Cane had come in on each other's heels and were chatting while preparing their coffee cups. Jane was a retired school librarian who substituted at both the school and the public libraries, a surprisingly sophisticated spinster who specialized in Victorian murders. She wore her silver hair in a chignon, and never never wore slacks. Jane looked sweet and fragile as aged lace, but after thirty years of school children she was tough as a marine sergeant. Jane's idol was Madeleine Smith, the highly sexed young Scottish poisoner, which sometimes made me wonder about Jane's past. LeMaster was our only black member, a stout middle-aged bearded man with huge brown eyes who owned a dry cleaning business. LeMaster was most interested in the racially motivated murders of the sixties and early seventies, the Zebra murders in San Francisco and the Jones-Piagentini shooting in New York, for example.

  Sally's son Perry Allison had come in too, and had taken a seat without speaking to anyone. Perry had not actually joined Real Murders, but he had come to the past two meetings, to my dismay. I saw quite enough of him at work. Perry showed a rather unnerving knowledge of modern serial murderers like the Hillside Stranglers and the Green River killer, in which the motivation was clearly sexual.

  Gifford Doakes was standing by himself. Unless Gifford brought his friend Reynaldo, this was a pretty common situation, since Gifford was openly interested in massacres—St. Valentine's Day, the Holocaust, it didn't make any difference to Gifford Doakes. He liked piled bodies. Most of us were involved in Real Murders for reasons that would probably bear the light of day; gosh, who doesn't read the articles about murders in the newspaper? But Gifford was another story. Maybe he'd joined our club with the idea that we swapped some sickening sort of bloody pornography, and he was only sticking with the club in the hope that soon we'd trust him enough to share with him. When he brought Reynaldo, we didn't know how to treat him. Was Reynaldo a guest, or Gifford's date? A shade of difference there, and one which had us all a little anxious, especially John Queensland, who felt it his duty as president to speak to everyone in the club.

  And Mamie Wright wasn't anywhere in the room.

  If Mamie had been here long enough to set up the chairs and make the coffee, and her car was still in the parking lot, then she must be here somewhere. Though I didn't like Mamie, her non-appearance was beginning to seem so strange that I felt obliged to pin down her whereabouts.

  Just as I reached the door, Mamie's husband Gerald came in. He had his briefcase under his arm and he looked angry. Because he looked so irate, and because I felt stupid for being uneasy, I did a strange thing; though I was searching for his wife, I let him pass without speaking.

  The hall seemed very quiet after the heavy door shut off the hum of conversation. The white-with-speckles linoleum and beige paint almost sparkled with cleanliness under the harsh fluorescent lights. I was praying the phone wouldn't ring again as I looked at the four doors on the other side of the hall. With a fleeting, absurd image of "The Lady or the Tiger" I went to my right to open the door to the small conference room. Sally had told me she'd already been in the room, but just to temporarily park the tray of cookies, so I checked the room carefully. Since there was practically nothing to examine except a table and chairs, that took seconds.

  I opened the next door in the hall, the women's room, even though Sally had also been in there. Since there were only two stalls, she'd have been pretty sure to know of Mamie's presence. But I bent over to look under the doors. No feet. I opened both doors. Nothing.

  I didn't quite have the guts to check the adjoining men's room, but since Arthur Smith entered it while I hesitated, I figured I'd hear about it soon if Mamie was in there.

  I moved on, and out of all the glaring beigeness I caught a little glimpse of something different, so I looked down at the base of the door and saw a smear. It was red-brown.

  The separate sources of my uneasiness suddenly coalesced into horror. I was holding my breath when my hand reached out to open that door to the last room, the little kitchen used for fixing the refreshments ... ... and saw an empty turquoise shoe upright on its ridiculous high heel, right inside the door.

  And then I saw the blood spattered everywhere on the shining beige enamel of the stove and refrigerator.

  And the raincoat.

  Finally I made myself look at Mamie. She was so dead. Her head was the wrong shape entirely. Her dyed black hair was matted with clots of her blood. I thought, the human body is supposed to be ninety percent water, not ninety percent blood. Then my ears were buzzing and I felt very weak, and though I knew I was alone in the hall, I felt the presence of something horrible in that kitchen, something to dread. And it was not poor Mamie Wright. I heard a door swoosh shut in the hall. I heard Arthur Smith's voice say, "Miss Teagarden? Anything wrong?"

  "It's Mamie," I whispered, though I'd intended a normal voice. "It's Mrs. Wright." I ruined the effect of all this formality by simply folding onto the floor. My knees seemed to have turned to faulty hinges. He was behind me in an instant. He half-bent to help me up but was frozen by what he saw over my head.

  "Are you sure that's Mamie Wright?" he asked.

  The working part of my brain told me Arthur Smith was quite right to ask. Perhaps coming on this unsuspicious, I would have wondered too. Her eye—oh my God, her eye.

  "She's missing from the big room, but her car is outside. And that's her shoe."

  I managed to say this with my fingers pressed to my mouth. When Mamie had first worn them, I'd thought those shoes the most poisonous footwear I'd ever seen. I hate turquoise anyway. I let myself enjoy thinking about hating turquoise. It was a lot more pleasing than thinking about what was right in front of me.

  The policeman stepped over me very carefully and squatted with even more care by the body. He put his fingers against her neck. I felt bile rise up in my throat—no pulse, of course. How ridiculous! Mamie was so dead. "Can you stand up?" he asked after a moment. He dusted his fingers together as he rose.

  "If you help."

  Without further ado, Arthur Smith hauled me to my feet and out the doorway in one motion. He was very strong. He kept one arm around me while he shut the door. He leaned me against that door. Deep blue eyes looked at me consideringly. "You're very light," he said. "You'll be all right for a few seconds. I'm going to use the phone right here on the wall."

  "Okay." My voice sounded weird; light, tinny. I'd always wondered if I could keep my head if I found a body, and here I was, keeping my head, I told myself insanely as I watched him go down the hall to the pay phone. I was glad he didn't have to leave my sight. I might not be so level if I were standing in that hall alone, with a body behind me.

  While Arthur muttered into the phone I kept my eyes on the door to the large room across the hall where John Queensland must be itching to open the meeting. I thought about what I'd just seen. I wasn't thinking about Mamie being dead, about the reality and finality of her death. I was thinking about the scene that had been staged, starring Mamie Wright as the corpse. The casting of the corpse had been deliberate, but the role of the finder of the body had by chance been taken by me. The whole thing was a scene deliberately staged by someone, and suddenly I knew what had been biting at me underneath the horror. I thought faster than I'd ever thought before. I didn't feel sick anymore. Arthur crossed the hall to the door of the large room and pushed it open just enough to insert his head in the gap. I could hear him address the other members of the club.

  "Uh, folks, folks?" The voices stilled. "There's been an accident," he said with no emphasis. "I'm going to have to ask you all to stay in this room for a little while, until we can get things under control out here." The situation, as far as I could see, was completely under control.

  "Where's Roe Teagarden?" John Queensland's voice demanded.

  Good old John. I'd have to tell Mother about that, she'd be touched.

  "She's fine. I'll be back with you in a minute."

  Gerald Wright's thin voice. "Where's my wife, Mr. Smith?" "I'll get back with all of you in a few minutes," repeated the policeman firmly, and shut the door behind him. He stood lost in thought. I wondered if this detective had ever been the first on the scene of a murder investigation. He seemed to be ticking steps off mentally, from the way he was waggling his fingers and staring into space.

  I waited. Then my legs started trembling and I thought I might fold again.

  "Arthur," I said sharply. "Detective Smith."

  He jumped; he'd forgotten me. He took my arm solicitously. I whacked at him with my free hand out of sheer aggravation. "I'm not trying to get you to help me, I want to tell you something!" He steered me into a chair in the little conference room and put on a waiting face.

  "I was supposed to lecture tonight on the Wallace case, you remember? William Herbert Wallace and his wife, Julia, England, 1931?" He nodded his curly pale head and I could see he was a million miles away. I felt like slapping him again. I knew I sounded like an idiot, but I was coming to the point. "I don't know how much you remember about the Wallace case—if you don't know anything, I can fill you in later." I waved my hands to show that was inconsequential, here came the real meat. "What I want to tell you, what's important, is that Mamie Wright's been killed exactly like Julia Wallace. She's been arranged."

  Bingo! That blue gaze was almost frighteningly intense now. I felt like a bug impaled on a pin. This was not a lightweight man. "Point out a few comparisons before the lab guys get here, so I can have them photographed."

  I blew out a breath of relief. "The raincoat under Mamie. It hasn't rained here in days. A raincoat was found under Julia Wallace. And Mamie's been placed by the little oven. Mrs. Wallace was found by a gas fire. She was bludgeoned to death. Like Mamie, I think. Mr. Wallace was an insurance salesman. So is Gerald Wright. I'll bet there's more I haven't thought of yet. Mamie's about the same age as Julia Wallace. ... There are just so many parallels I don't think I could've imagined them."

  Arthur stared at me thoughtfully for a few long seconds. "Are there any photographs of the Wallace murder scene?" he asked. The xeroxed pictures would have come in handy now, I thought.

  "Yes, I've seen one, there may be more."

  "Was the husband, Wallace, arrested?"

  "Yes, and convicted. But later the sentence was overturned somehow or other, and he was freed."

  "Okay. Come with me."

  "One more thing," I said urgently. "The phone rang when I got here tonight and it was someone asking for Julia Wallace."

  Chapter 3

  The silent hall was not silent anymore. As we left the conference room, the law came in the back door. It was represented by a heavy-set man in a plaid jacket who was taller and older than Arthur, and two men in uniform. As I stood back against the wall, temporarily forgotten, Arthur led them down the hall and opened the door to the kitchen. They crowded around the door looking in. They were all silent for a moment. The youngest man in uniform winced and then wrenched his face straight. The other uniformed man shook his head once and then stared in at Mamie with a disgusted expression. What disgusted him, I wondered? The mess that had been made with the body of a human being? The waste of a life? The fact that someone living in the town he had to protect had seen fit to do this terrible thing?

  I realized the man in the plaid jacket was the sergeant of detectives; I'd seen his picture in the paper when he'd arrested a drug pusher. Now he pursed his mouth briefly and said "Damn," with little expression. Arthur began telling them things, going swiftly and in a low voice. I could tell what point in his narrative he'd reached when their heads swung towards me simultaneously. I didn't know whether to nod or what. I just stared back at them and felt a thousand years old. Their faces turned back to Arthur and he continued his briefing.

  The two men in uniform left the building while Arthur and the sergeant continued their discussion. Arthur seemed to be enumerating things, while the sergeant nodded his head in approval and occasionally interjected some comment. Arthur had a little notebook out and was jotting in it as they spoke. Another memory about the sergeant stirred.

  His name was Jack Burns. He'd bought his house from my mother. He was married to a school teacher and had two kids in college. Now Jack Burns gave Arthur a sharp nod, as clear as a starting gun. Arthur went to the door to the meeting room and pushed it open.

  "Mr. Wright, could you come here for a minute, please?" Detective Arthur Smith asked, in a voice so devoid of expression that it was a warning in itself. Gerald Wright came into the hall hesitantly. No one in the big room could fail to know by now that something was drastically wrong, and I wondered what they'd been saying. Gerald took a step toward me, but Arthur took his arm quite firmly and guided Gerald into the little conference room. I knew he was about to tell Gerald that his wife was dead, and I found myself wondering how Gerald would take it. Then I was ashamed.

  At moments I understood in decent human terms what had happened to a woman I knew, and at moments I seemed to be thinking of Mamie's death as one of our club's study cases.

  "Miss Teagarden," said Jack Burns's good-old-boy drawl, "you must be Aida Teagarden's child."

  Well, I had a father, too: but he'd committed the dreadful sin of coming in from foreign parts (Texas) to work on our local Georgia paper, marrying my mother, begetting me, and then leaving and divorcing Lawrenceton's own Aida Brattle Teagarden. I said, "Yes."

  "I'm mighty sorry you had to see something like that," Jack Burns said, shaking his heavy head mournfully.

  It was almost like a burlesque of regret, it was laid on so heavily; was he being sarcastic? I looked down, and for once said nothing. I didn't need this right now; I was shaken and confused.

  "It just seems so strange to me that a sweet young woman like you would come to a club like this," Jack Burns went on slowly, his tone expressing stunned bewilderment. "Could you just kind of clarify for me what the purpose of this—organization—is ?"

  I had to answer a direct question. But why was he asking me? His own detective belonged to the same club. I wished this middle-aged man with his plaid suit and his cowboy boots would melt through the floor. As slightly as I knew Arthur, I wanted him back. This man was scarey. I pushed my glasses back up my nose with shaking fingers.

  "We meet once a month," I said in an uneven voice. "And we talk about a famous murder case, usually a pretty old one."

  The sergeant apparently gave this deep thought. "Talk about it—?" he inquired gently.

  "Ah... sometimes just learn about it, who was killed and how and why and by whom." Our members favored different "W's."

  I was most interested in the victim.

  "Or sometimes," I stumbled on, "depending on the case, we decide if the police arrested the right person. Or if the murder was unsolved, we talk about who may have been guilty. Sometimes we watch a movie."

  "Movie?" Raised beetly brows, a gentle inquiring shake of the head. "Like ‘The Thin Blue Line.' Or a fictionalized movie based on a real case. ‘In Cold Blood'..."

  "But not ever," he asked delicately, "what you would call a—snuff movie?" "Oh my God," I said sickly. "Oh my God, no." In my naiveté, I said, "How could you think that?"

  "Well, Miss Teagarden, this here is a real murder, and we have to ask real questions." And his face was not nice at all.

  Our club had offended something in Jack Burns. How would Arthur fare, a policeman who was actually a member? But it seemed he would be working on the investigation in some capacity.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17