(3T)Three Bedrooms, One Corpse Page 10

  There sure wasn’t anything loverlike in their posture or in the way they were looking at each other. Suddenly Idella sprang up, grabbed her purse, and headed for the women’s room. Donnie scowled after her. I thought Idella was crying.

  Sally and I exchanged glances.

  “I guess I better go check,” I said. “There’s a fine line between showing concern and butting in, and this situation is right on it.”

  The two-stall salmon-and-tan women’s room was empty except for Idella. She was indeed crying, shut in one of the booths.

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  “Idella,” I said gently. “It’s Roe. I’m holding the door shut so no one else can come in.” And I braced my back against the door.

  “Thanks,” she sobbed. “I’ll straighten up in a minute.”

  And sure enough, she pulled herself together and emerged from the booth, though not until I’d had time to decipher the last batch of graffiti through a layer of tan paint. Showing some wear and tear, Idella ran some cold water on a paper towel and held it over her eyes. “It’s going to ruin my makeup,” she said, “but at least my eyes won’t be so puffy.”

  It was oddly difficult to talk to her with her eyes covered like that, in this bleak room with the smell of industrial disinfectant clogging my nostrils. “Idella, are you all right?”

  “Oh . . . yes, I’ll be okay.” She didn’t sound as though she were certain. “Donnie just has some crazy idea in his head, and he won’t let it go, and he’s hound- ing me about it.”

  I waited expectantly. I was so curious I finally prod- ded her. “He surely doesn’t think you had anything to do with Tonia Lee’s death?”

  “He thinks I know who did do it,” Idella said wearily. “That’s just ridiculous, of course.” She stared bleakly into the mirror; she looked even more haggard under the harsh light, her dead-grass hair a limp mess around her pale face. “He says he saw my car pulling out of the Greenhouse Realty parking lot the night To- nia Lee was killed.”

  “How could he possibly think that?”

  But Idella was through confiding, and when someone

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  pushed behind me hard enough to make the door move a little, she seized the chance to go back to her table. “Thanks,” she said quickly. “I’ll see you later.” I moved away from the door to let her out, and she shouldered her way past the door-pusher, who turned out to be Terry Sternholtz.

  She gave us a very peculiar look; she knew I’d been holding the door shut. I wondered if she’d been out there long.

  “Idella seemed upset,” Terry said casually as she pulled open one of the stalls. She looked very bright to- day, her bouncing red hair contrasting cheerfully with a kelly green suit.

  “Some upset she had,” I said dismissively, and went back to my table. Sally was waiting, and raised her eye- brows expectantly as I slid into my chair. “I don’t know,” I said to answer Sally’s unspoken query. “She wouldn’t really say.” I didn’t want to re- peat the conversation. It seemed evident Idella was in trouble of some kind, and she had always been so nice to me I didn’t want to compound it by starting a ru- mor. Sally looked at me sideways, to show me she knew I was evading her. “I don’t know why you think I tell everyone everything I know,” she said with more than a little pique in her voice. It looked as if we’d have our own little quarrel.

  Just then the group of Pan-Am Agra executives came in for their campaign kick-off lunch, among them Martin. It was just like seeing the boy who’d given you your first kiss the night before. As if I’d had on a hom- ing signal, Martin immediately turned and scanned the crowd, finding me quickly. He excused himself from

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  his companions and left the line to come over. My face felt hot. Sally’s back was to him, and she was saying “You look like you just swallowed a fish, Roe,” when he came up, bent over, and gave me a kiss that was just short enough not to be vulgar. Then we beamed at each other.

  “This is my friend Sally Allison, Martin,” I said abruptly, suddenly aware of Sally’s interested face. “Hello,” he said politely, and shook Sally’s pro- ferred hand.

  “Aren’t you the new plant manager of Pan-Am Agra?” she asked. “I think Jack Forrest did a business- page article on you.”

  “I saw it. It was well written,” Martin said. “More than I can say for some of the stories written about me. What time tomorrow night, Roe?”

  “Seven?” I said at random.

  “I’ll be there at seven.” He kissed me again very quickly, nodded to Sally, and rejoined his group, who were watching with great attention.

  “You certainly got branded in public,” Sally said dryly.

  “Huh?” I had my face turned down to my plate. “ ‘Property of Martin Bartell. Do Not Touch.’ ” “Sally, I don’t want to look like we’re talking about him,” I hissed. I looked at her sternly. “Just talk about something else for a while.”

  “Okay,” she said agreeably. “Is he going to ask you to the prom?”

  “Sally!”

  “Oh, all right. Donnie left in a snit as soon as Idella emerged from the women’s room and hot-footed it out

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  the door. Donnie looked right sullen. What did she tell you?”

  “That Donnie thought . . . oh, Sally!”

  “Just curious, just curious! Since when are you and Martin Bartell an item?”

  “Very recently.” Like last night.

  “Well, isn’t life on the up-and-up for us? I get mar- ried, and you get a sweetie.”

  I rolled my eyes. Thinking of Martin as a “sweetie” was like thinking of a Great Dane as a precious bundle of fur.

  “He was in Vietnam, wasn’t he?” Sally asked. “Yes.”

  “I think he brought home some medals. He wouldn’t talk about it to Jack, but one of the other Pan-Am Agra execs told Jack that Bartell came out of the war with a bit of glory.”

  “When was the story in the paper?” I hadn’t seen it. “Soon after he arrived, at least six weeks ago.” “Can you send me a copy, Sally?”

  “Sure. I’ll track it down when I go to the office to- morrow.”

  We computed tips and gathered our purses. My shoulder blades itched, and I looked behind me. Mar- tin, surrounded by his employees, was sitting at one of the larger round tables, watching me, smiling a little. He looked hungry.

  I floated out to my car.

  Chapter Eight

  A

  had agreed to meet Eileen at the office, and it was Iclose enough to the time for me to head that way. There were several cars parked outside; Sunday was of- ten a busy day at Select Realty.

  The first person I saw was Idella, who said “Hi, Roe!” as brightly as if I hadn’t seen her boo-hooing in the women’s room at a restaurant not forty-five min- utes before.

  “Hello, Idella,” I said obligingly.

  “I just got an offer on your house on Honor. Mrs. Kaye is offering three thousand less than your asking price, plus she wants the microwave and the appliances to stay.”

  We went to Idella’s little office, decorated exclu- sively with pictures of her two children, together and separate, the boy about ten and very heavyset, the girl perhaps seven and thin, with lank blond hair. I ~ 110 ~

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  sat in one of her client chairs and considered for a moment.

  “Tell her—her offer needs to be up by a thousand, and she can have everything but the washer and dryer.” Mine came with the townhouse, and I’d need a set when I moved.

  “What about the freezer in the carport toolshed?” Idella asked. “It’s not spelled out here whether she is including that under appliances or not.” “I don’t really care that much about the freezer. If she wants it, she can have it.”

  “Okay. I’ll take your counteroffer over to her aunt’s
house right now.”

  Idella was obviously determined not to refer to the scene at Beef ’N More. Of course, I wanted to know what it was about, but in all decency I would have to wait until she felt like confiding in me. “I’m really pleased about this offer,” I told her, and she smiled.

  “It was an easy sell, the right person at the right time,” she said dismissively. “She needs a small decent house in good shape, you have a small decent house in good shape; the dead-end street location and the price are right.”

  The phone rang while Idella gathered papers. She picked up with one hand while her other kept busy. “Idella Yates speaking,” she said pleasantly. The first words of her caller changed Idella’s demeanor dramati- cally. Her free hand stilled, she sat up straighter, the smile vanished from her face. “I’ll have to talk later,” she said swiftly. “Yes, I have to see you . . . well . . .” She closed her eyes in thought. “Okay,” she said finally. She hung

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  up and sat very still for a moment. The cheer, the bustle, had seeped right out of her. I didn’t know whether to say anything or not, so I settled for looking concerned, as I certainly was.

  Idella decided to stonewall. “I think I’ve got every- thing here,” she said in a dreadful simulation of her previous cheerful efficiency.

  “If you need help, you know you can count on me and my mother,” I told her, and left her office for Eileen’s. Just as Eileen got up to go, she received an unex- pected call from an out-of-town client who’d decided to make an offer on a house he’d seen the week before. The house was listed with Today’s Homes, but the client had been referred to Eileen personally, so she had shown it along with a lot of Select Realty listings. It took Eileen some time to hammer out the client’s offer, assure the client that she’d call Today’s Homes that very second, then hang up and immediately lift the phone to dial. I had fished my book out of my purse several minutes before and was reading contentedly. “Franklin? Eileen. Listen, that Mr. and Mrs. Mc- Cann I showed the Nordstrom house to last week, they just called . . . Yep, they want to make an offer . . . I know, I know, but here it is . . .” As Eileen relayed the offer to Franklin, I became immersed in my book. I was almost through with the Catherine Aird. Finally Eileen was ready to set out. I told her the good news about the probable sale of my own house as we got into her car.

  “Does Idella seem okay to you?” I asked cautiously. “Lately, no.”

  “I think something’s wrong.”

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  “What? Anything we can do something about?” “Well—no.”

  “If we don’t know, and she doesn’t ask for help, seems like we aren’t wanted,” Eileen said, giving me a straight look.

  I nodded glumly.

  At the first house, the owners were on their way out as we pulled up to the curb. Eileen had cleared the showing with them first, of course, and she went up to talk to them while I surveyed the yard, which badly needed raking.

  “How are the two of you?” Eileen said in her boom- ing voice. “Ben, you ready to go out with me yet?” “The minute Leda lets me off the rope,” the man an- swered with equally heavy good humor. “You better get out your dancing shoes.”

  “Haven’t you found Mr. Right yet, Eileen?” the woman asked.

  “No, honey, I still haven’t found anyone who’s man enough for me!”

  They chuckled their way through some more faintly bawdy dialogue, and then the couple pulled off in their car while Eileen unlocked the front door. “What?” Eileen said sharply.

  I hadn’t known anything was showing on my face. “Why do you do that, Eileen?” I asked as neutrally as I could. “Is that really you?”

  “No, of course not,” she said crisply. “But how many houses am I going to sell in this small town if Terry and I go out in public holding hands, Roe? How would we make a living here? It’s a bit easier for Terry in some ways . . . Franklin actually wanted someone

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  working for him who was immune to his charm. He didn’t want to fall into bedding an employee. But still, if everyone knew . . . and the people who do know have to be able to pretend not to.”

  I could see her point, though it was depressing. “So here is the Mays’ house,” Eileen said, resuming her Realtor’s mantle with a warning rattle. “We have— three bedrooms, two baths, a family room, a small for- mal living room . . . mmmm . . . a walk-in closet off the master bedroom . . .”

  And we strolled through the Mays’ house, which was dark and gloomy, even in the kitchen. I could tell within two minutes I would never buy this house, but this seemed to be a day for pretense. I was pretending I might, Eileen was pretending the preceding conversa- tion hadn’t taken place. Idella had been pretending she wasn’t upset by the phone call in her office. My lack of sleep began to catch up with me by the hall bathroom, which I viewed dutifully, opening the linen closet and yawning into it, noting the hideous towels the Mays had wisely put away.

  “Are you with me today, Roe?”

  “What? Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t sleep too well last night.”

  “Do you even want to go see this other house?” “Yes, I promise I’ll pay attention. I just don’t like this one, Eileen.”

  “Just say so. There’s no point in our spending time in a house you don’t want.”

  I nodded obediently.

  We were short on conversation and long on silence

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  as we drove to our next destination. Lost in daydreams, I barely noticed when Eileen began to leave town. Just a mile east out of Lawrenceton, we came to a house almost in the middle of a field. It had a long gravel driveway. It was a two-story brick house, and the brick had been painted white to set off the green shutters and a green front door. There was a screened-in porch. The second story was smaller than the first. There was a sep- arate wide two-car garage to the left rear, with a covered walk from a door in the side of the garage to the house. There was a second story to the garage, with a flight of stairs also covered, leading up to it.

  The sun was beginning to set over the fields. It was much later than I’d thought.

  “Eileen,” I said in amazement, “isn’t this—” “The Julius house,” she finished.

  “It’s for sale?”

  “Has been for years.”

  “And you’re showing it to me?”

  She smiled. “You might like it.”

  I took a deep breath and got out of the car. The fields around the house were bare for the winter, and the yard was bleached and dead. The huge evergreen bushes that lined the property were still deep green, and the holly around the foundation needed trimming. “The heirs have kept it going all this time,” I said in amazement.

  “Just one heir. Mrs. Julius’s mother. She wanted to turn the electricity off, of course, but the house would just have rotted. There’s been surprisingly little vandal- ism, for the reputation it has.”

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  “Well. Let’s go in.”

  This was turning out to be an unexpectedly interest- ing day. Eileen led the way, keys in hand, up the four front steps with their wrought-iron railing painted black, badly needing a touch-up now. We went in the screen door and crossed the porch to the front door. “How old is it, Eileen?”

  “Forty years,” she said. “At least. But before the Juliuses disappeared, they had the whole house rewired . . . they had a new roof put on . . . a new fur- nace installed. That was . . . let me check the sheet . . . yes, six years ago.”

  “And they had the extra story put on the garage?” “Yes, it was a mother-in-law apartment. Mrs. Julius’s mother lived there. But of course you remember.” The disappearance of the Julius family had been the sensation of the decade in Lawrenceton. Though they had some family in town, few other people had had a chance to get to know them, so al
most everyone had been able to enjoy the unmitigated thrill of the mystery and drama of their vanishing. T. C. and Hope Julius, both in their early forties, and Charity Julius, fifteen, had been gone when Mrs. Julius’s mother came over for breakfast, as was her invariable habit, one Saturday morning. After calling for a while, the older woman had searched through the house. After she’d waited un- easily for an hour, and finally checked to see that their vehicles were still there, she’d called the police. Who of course had at first been skeptical.

  But as the day progressed, and the family car and pickup truck remained parked in the garage, and no

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  member of the Julius family called or returned, the po- lice became as uneasy as Mrs. Julius’s mother. The family hadn’t gone bike riding, or hiking, hadn’t ac- cepted an invitation from another family. They never came back, and no one ever found them. Eileen pushed open the front door, and I stepped in. I don’t know what I’d expected, but there was nothing eerie about the house. The cold sunshine poured through the windows, and instead of sensing ghostly presences of the unfound Julius family, I felt peace.

  “There’s one bedroom downstairs,” Eileen read, “and two upstairs, plus a room up there used for an of- fice or a sewing room . . . of course, that could be a bedroom, too. And there’s an attic, with a boarded floor. Very small. Access through a trapdoor in the up- stairs hall.”

  We were in the family room, a large room with many windows. The pale carpet smelled mildewy. The double doors into the dining room were glass-paned. The dining room had a wood floor and a built-in hutch and a big window with a view of the side yard and the garage. After that came the kitchen, which had an eat- in area and many, many cabinets. Lots of counter space. The linoleum was a sort of burnished orange, and the wallpaper was cream with a tiny pattern of the same color. The kitchen curtains were cream with a ruffle of the burnished orange. There was a walk-in pantry that had apparently been converted into a washer-dryer closet.