Aurora 03 - Three Bedrooms, One Corpse (12 page)

“Roe, are you asleep?” My face flushed when I heard Martin’s voice. He’d probably called while I was in the shower. “I’m calling from work, sweetheart. I can hardly wait until tomorrow night. I can’t make it to Atlanta that night since I have a meeting early Tuesday morning, but we can at least go to the Carriage House.” That being Lawrenceton’s best restaurant. “I want to see you again,” he said simply. “You made me very happy.”

I was pretty damn happy myself.

I called Eileen back to make an appointment for two o’clock, then decided to treat myself to lunch somewhere. On impulse, I punched the number of my reporter friend, Sally Allison, and we arranged to meet at the local Beef ‘N More.

Thirty minutes later we were settled opposite each other, after waiting in line through the Sunday church crowd. Sally was working on a hamburger and a salad, and I had virtuously opted for the salad bar only, though I could certainly get enough calories from what was spread up and down its length.

Sally was older than I by more than twelve years, but we’re good friends. She was a Sally who wouldn’t tolerate a nickname. Sally had bronze hair, never out of place, and she bought expensive clothes and ran them into the ground. She was wearing a black suit I’d seen on her countless times, and it still looked good. For once, she had some news to impart before she started digging for more.

“Paul’s working today. He and I got married last weekend,” she said casually, and the cellophane package of crackers I was trying to open exploded. I hastily began to gather up the crumbs.

“You married your first husband’s brother?”

“You know we’ve been dating for a long time.”

“Well, yes, but I didn’t know it was going to result in a marriage!”

“He’s great.”

We chatted away. I was dying to know what the first Mr. Allison thought of this new situation, but was aware I really must not ask.

The third time Sally was explaining to me how wonderful Paul was (she knew I’d heard while dating Arthur Smith that Paul had never been popular with his fellow detectives), I was sufficiently bored and skeptical to look around me. To my surprise, I spied Donnie Greenhouse eating lunch with Idella. They were sitting in one of the few places in the steak house where you could talk without being overheard. Donnie was leaning over the table, talking earnestly and quickly to Idella, whose delicate coloring was showing unbecoming blotches of stress. Idella was shaking her head from side to side.

What an odd couple! It was a little strange to see Donnie out in public, even though I dismissed that reaction on my part as uncharitable. But with Idella?

“They certainly look put out with each other,” Sally said. She’d followed my gaze. “I don’t think this is a widower on the rebound, do you?”

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.

“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 hounding me about it.”

I waited expectantly. I was so curious I finally prodded 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 Tonia Lee was killed.”

“How could he possibly think that?”

But Idella was through confiding, and when someone 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 today, 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 eyebrows 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 repeat 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 rumor. 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 homing signal, Martin immediately turned and scanned the crowd, finding me quickly. He excused himself from 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 proferred 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 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 married, 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 tomorrow.”

We computed tips and gathered our purses. My shoulder blades itched, and I looked behind me. Martin, 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.

I HAD AGREED to meet Eileen at the office, and it was close enough to the time for me to head that way. There were several cars parked outside; Sunday was often 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 minutes 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 exclusively 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 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 deadend 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 dramatically. 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 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 everything 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 unexpected 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. McCann 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 tot’d 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.”

“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 booming voice. “Ben, you ready to go out with me yet?”

“The minute Leda lets me off the rope,” the man answered 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!”