Three Bedrooms, One Corpse, page 4
“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?”
Chapter Three
That question had to be asked and answered sooner rather than later, and I stuck my neck out to ask it because I was very interested in the answer.
But you would have thought I was a policeman with a rubber hose, one who was furthermore holding their kids as hostages.
“We have to find out,” my mother said. “Someone in this office got that key and put it back on the key board. No one here knew I was going to show the Anderton house this morning. I didn’t know it myself until last night, when Mr. Bartell called me at home. So it was likely the body wouldn’t be found for a long time-how often do we show the Anderton house? Maybe one client in ten can afford a house like that.”
For the first time Debbie Lincoln opened her mouth. “Someone,” she offered softly, “could have come in when Patty and me were both gone from the reception area.”
Patty shot her a look. “We’re never supposed to both be gone from the reception area. But there was a period of maybe five minutes this morning when both Debbie and I were not there,” she admitted. “While Debbie was in the back copying the sheet for the Blanding house, I had to visit the ladies’ room.”
“I walked through while no one was there,” Eileen said immediately. “And I didn’t see anyone coming in from outside.”
“So that narrows the time someone could have come in by a few more seconds,” I observed.
Mother said, “It would have to be someone who knew our system and could find the right hook for the Anderton key very quickly.”
“Every realtor in town knows where our key board is, and that we label every hook alphabetically,” Mackie said.
“So you’re saying whoever returned the key is another realtor, or one of you,” I pointed out. “Though I think anyone coming into the office could figure out the key board in seconds. But it does make more sense for a realtor to have returned it, to have realized not having the key on the board would have alerted us much sooner than the key being there. It’s just bad luck for whoever killed Tonia Lee that Martin Bartell wanted to see some big houses this morning, and that he called Mother at home last night after the office was closed.”
Again I was aware of my lack of popularity as the people around the table realized they’d just been boxed in.
“All right,” said Patty defensively and illogically, “where is Tonia Lee’s car? Why wasn’t it at the Anderton house this morning?”
That was another interesting question. And one I hadn’t thought of… nor had anyone else in the room.
“It’s parked behind Greenhouse Realty,” said a new voice from the door. “And wiped clean of fingerprints.”
My old buddy Lynn Liggett Smith, making another of her silent entrances.
“Your daughter-in-law told me to come on back,” she told my mother, who had a particularly nasty gleam in her eye. I didn’t think Melinda would be asked to answer the phones anymore.
Lynn was a tall, slim woman with short brown hair very attractively styled. She wore little or no makeup, always pumps or flats, and plain solid-color suits with bright blouses. Lynn was brave and smart, and sometimes I regretted that because of Arthur we would never be good friends. Lynn was also the only detective specifically designated “homicide” at the Lawrenceton police department; she’d served on the Atlanta police force before taking what she thought would be a lower-stress job. She hadn’t counted on Detective Sergeant Jack Burns.
“When did you find her car?” Mother was scrambling to regain her composure.
“This afternoon. Mr. Greenhouse knew it was there this morning, but he didn’t think that was important, because he thought Mrs. Greenhouse had driven off in someone else’s car. He just plain didn’t know where Mrs. Greenhouse was, and when she didn’t come home last night, he thought she was just spending the night with someone else. I gather it’s common knowledge she was prone to do that sort of thing.” Lynn had made a little pun, and she gave me the ghost of a smile.
“But today Mr. Knight has told us that Mrs. Greenhouse’s car was in the driveway of the Anderton house last night, so she got there under her own steam. Someone, presumably the murderer, drove that car to Greenhouse Realty and left it there out of sight of the street.” Lynn cocked her head and scanned our faces.
The absence of the car would have been noticed by Donnie Greenhouse, just as the absence of the key would have been noticed at our office, sooner or later.
But the murderer had had bad luck, no doubt about it.
“So,” Lynn continued, “who put the key back?”
“My daughter brought that up, too,” Mother said smoothly. “We have decided that at one point this morning, early, someone could have entered the reception area without being seen.”
“How long a time would this one point have lasted?”
“Five minutes. Or less,” Patty Cloud said reluctantly.
“No one wants to ‘fess up, I guess,” Lynn said hopefully.
Silence.
“Well, I’ll need to talk to each of you separately,” she said. “If you all have finished your meeting, perhaps I could just stay in here? I’ll start with you, Mrs. Tea- No, Mrs. Queensland. That okay?”
“Of course,” Mother said. “Back to your work, the rest of you. But don’t leave until the detective has a chance to talk to you. Rearrange your appointments.”
Beside me Idella Yates sighed. She picked up her briefcase and pushed back her chair. I turned to make some remark and suddenly realized Idella had been crying silently, something I have never mastered. I caught her eye as she dabbed at her cheeks with a handkerchief.
“Stupid,” she said bitterly. Feeling rather puzzled, I watched her leave the room. If Idella and Tonia Lee had been friends, it would have surprised me considerably. And Idella’s reaction seemed a little extreme otherwise.
I made my own exit wondering where I would wait for my turn with Lynn. My mother’s office, I decided, and started down the hall.
A young woman was standing in the reception area. I vaguely recognized her as I went through on my way to the left-hand corridor that led to Mother’s office.
“Miss Teagarden?” she said hesitantly. I turned and smiled with equal uncertainty.
“I believe I met you at the church last week,” she said, holding out a slim hand. I jogged my memory.
“Oh, of course,” I said, none too soon. “Mrs. Kaye.”
“Emily,” she said, smiling.
