Aurora 03 - Three Bedrooms, One Corpse (3 page)

“Episcopalians have a reputation for being generally liberal,” Martin Bartell remarked out of the blue.

“I know, but Aubrey is an exception if that really is true,” Mother said, and my heart sank.

“He is a wonderful man— I’ve come to know him since I married my present husband, who is a cradle Episcopalian—but Aubrey is very conservative.”

I felt my cheeks turn red in the cold room. I ran a nervous hand under the hair at my neck, loosening the strands that had gotten tucked in my jacket collar, and tilted my head back a little to shake it straight.

Thinking about Tonia Lee Greenhouse was preferable to feeling like a parakeet that is extremely excited at the prospect of being eaten by the cat.

I thought about the loathsome way Tonia had been positioned, a parody of seductiveness. I thought about the leather thongs on Tonia’s wrists. Had she been tied to the ornate wooden headboard? Old Mr. and Mrs. Anderton must be turning in their graves. I thought about Tonia Lee in life— tall, thin, with teased dark hair and bright makeup, a woman who was rumored to be often unfaithful to her husband, Donnie. I wondered if Donnie had just gotten tired of Tonia Lee’s ways, if he’d followed her to her appointment and taken care of her after the client had left. I wondered if Tonia had been overcome by passion for her client and had bedded him here in the invitingly luxurious master bedroom, or if she’d had an assignation with someone she’d been seeing for a while. Maybe the house-showing had been a fictitious cover to let her romp in one of the prettiest houses in Lawrenceton.

“Mackie brought her the key yesterday,” I said suddenly.

“What?” asked my mother with reproof in her voice. I had no idea what they’d been talking about.

“Yesterday about five o’clock, while I was waiting for you in the reception room, Tonia Lee called your office and asked for the key. She said she’d been held up—if anyone was getting off work, she’d be really obliged if they could drop it off here; she’d meet them. I handed the phone to Mackie Knight. He was leaving just then, and he said he’d do it.”

“We’ll have to tell the police. Maybe Mackie was the last one to see her alive—or maybe he saw the man she was going to show the house to!”

Then Jack Burns was in the doorway, and I sighed.

Detective Sergeant Jack Burns was a frightening man, and he really couldn’t stand me. If he could ever arrest me for anything, he’d just love to do it. Luckily for me, I’m very law-abiding, and since I had come to know Jack Burns, I’d made sure I got my car inspected right on the dot, that I parallel-parked perfectly, and that I didn’t even jaywalk.

“If it isn’t Miss Teagarden,” he said with a terrifying affability. “I declare, young woman, you get prettier every time I see you. And I always do seem to see you when I come to a murder scene, don’t I?”

“Hello, Jack,” said my mother with a distinct edge to her voice.

“Mrs. Teagarden—no, Mrs. Queensland now, isn’t it? I haven’t seen you since your wedding; congratulations. And these must be our new residents? Hope you don’t feel like running back north after today. Lawrenceton used to be such a quiet town, but the city is reaching out to us here, and I guess in a few years we’ll have a crime rate like Atlanta’s.”

Mother introduced her clients.

“Guess you won’t want this house after today,” Jack Burns said genially. “Ole Tonia Lee looked pretty bad. I’m sure sorry you all ran into this, you being new and all.”

“This could have happened anywhere,” Martin said. “I’m beginning to think being a real estate agent is a hazardous occupation, like being a convenience-store clerk.”

“It certainly does seem so,” Jack Burns agreed. He was wearing a hideous suit, but I’ll give him this much credit—I don’t think he cared a damn about what he wore or what people thought about it.

“Now, Mr. Bartell, I believe you touched the deceased?” he continued.

“Yes, I walked over to make sure she was dead.”

“Did you touch anything on the bed?”

“No.”

“On the table by the bed?”

“Nothing in the bedroom,” Martin said very definitely, “but the woman’s neck.”

“You notice it was bruised?”

“Yes.”

“You know she was strangled?”

“It looked like it to me.”

“You have much experience with this kind of thing?”

“I was in Vietnam. I’ve had more experience with wounds. But I have seen one case of strangulation before, and this looked similar.”

“What about you, Mrs. Lampton? You go in the room?”

“No,” Barby said quietly. “I stayed on the landing outside. When Miss Teagarden opened the doors, of course I saw the poor woman right away. Then my brother told me to go downstairs.

He knows I don’t have a strong stomach, so of course it was better for me to go.”

“And you, Mrs.—Queensland?”

“I came up the stairs just after Aurora opened the bedroom doors. I actually saw her swing them open from downstairs after I started up.” Mother explained about the Thompsons and her delegation of me to open the house for the Bartells. “Excuse me, Mr. Bartell and Mrs. Lampton.”

“You’re his sister,” Jack Burns said, as if trying to get that point quite clear. He swung his baleful gaze on poor Barby Lampton.

“Yes, I am,” she said angrily, stung by the doubt in his voice. “I just got divorced, my only child’s in college, I sold my own home as part of the divorce settlement, and my brother invited me to help him house-hunt down here out of sheer kindness.”

“Of course, I see,” said Jack Burns with disbelief written on every crease in his heavy cheeks.

Martin Bartell’s hair might be white, but his eyebrows were still dark. Now they were drawn together ominously.

“When was the last time you saw Mrs. Greenhouse, Roe?” Jack Burns had switched his questioning abruptly to me.

“I haven’t seen Tonia Lee to speak to in weeks, and then it was only a casual conversation at the beauty parlor.” Tonia Lee had been having a dye job and a cut, and I’d been having one of my rare trims. She had tried the whole time to find out how much money Jane Engle had left me.

“Mr. Bartell, had you contacted Mrs. Greenhouse about looking at any homes?” Jack Burns shot the question at the Pan-Am Agra manager as though he would enjoy beating the answer out of him. What a charmer.

I could see Martin taking a deep breath. “Mrs. Queensland here is the only realtor I have contacted in Lawrenceton,” he said firmly. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, Sergeant, my sister has had enough for this morning, and so have I. I have to get back to work.”

Without waiting for an answer, he got up and put his arm around his sister, who had risen even faster.

“Of course,” Burns said smoothly. “I’m so sorry I’ve been holding you all up! You just go on, now. But please, folks, keep everything you saw at the scene of the murder to yourselves. That would help us out a whole bunch.”

“I think we’ll be going, too,” my mother said coldly. “You know where we’ll be if you need us again.”

Jack Burns just nodded, ran a beefy hand over his thinning no-color hair, and stood with narrowed eyes watching us leave. “Mrs. Queensland!” he called when Mother was almost out the door. “What about keys to this house?”

“Oh, yes, I forgot...” And Mother turned back to tell him about Mackie Knight and the key, and I walked out into the fresh chill of the day, away from the thing in the bedroom upstairs and the fear of Jack Burns.

And right into Martin Bartell.

Over his shoulder I saw Barby was in the front seat of the Mercedes and buckled up already.

She was dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. She’d waited until she was outside to shed a few tears; I admired her control. I felt a sympathetic tear trickle down my own face. One way or another, the morning had been a dreadful strain.

I was looking at a silk tie in a shade of golden olive, with a white stripe and a thin sort of red one.

He wiped the tear from my face with his handkerchief, carefully not touching me with his fingers.

“Am I imagining this?” he asked very quietly.

I shook my head, still not meeting his eyes.

“We have to talk later.”

I couldn’t speak, for once in my life. I was terrified of seeing him again; and I would rather have shaved my head than not see him again.

“How old
are
you? You’re so tiny.”

“I’m thirty,” I said, and finally looked up at him.

He said after a moment, “I’ll call you.”

I nodded, and walked quickly over to my car and got in. I had to sit for a moment so I could stop shivering. Somehow I had his handkerchief clutched in my hand. Oh, that was just great!

Maybe he had an old high school letter jacket I could wear? I was mad at my hormones, upset about the awful death of Tonia Lee Greenhouse, and horrified at my own perfidy toward Aubrey Scott.

There was knock on my window that made me jump.

My mother was bending, gesturing for me to roll the window down. “I’ve never met Jack Burns in his professional capacity before,” she was saying furiously, “and I pray I never do again. You told me he was like that, Aurora, but I couldn’t quite credit it! Why, when I sold him and his wife that house, he was just so polite and nice!”

“Mom, I’m going to go to my place.”

“Why, sure, Aurora. Are you okay? And poor Donnie Greenhouse ... I wonder if they’ve called him yet.”

“Mother, what you have to worry about, right now, is how that key got back on your key board. Someone at Select Realty put it there. The police are going to be all over your office asking questions just as quick as quick can be.”

“You definitely have a mind for crime,” Mother said disapprovingly, but she was thinking fast. “It’s that club you were in, I expect.”

“No. I was in Real Murders because I think that way, I don’t think that way because I was in the club,” I said mildly. But she wasn’t listening.

“Before I go back,” said Mother suddenly, “I was thinking I should ask Martin Bartell and his sister—I can’t believe a woman that age is answering to ‘Barby’—” This from a woman with a name like Aida. “—I should get them over to the house for dinner tomorrow night. Why don’t you and Aubrey come?”

“Oh,” I said limply, horrified at the prospect. How was I going to excuse myself—“Mom, this guy I just met, well, if we see each other again, we just may have at it on the floor”?

My mother, usually so sharp, did not pick up on my turmoil. Of course, she had a few more things on her mind.

“I know you have to ask Aubrey first, so just give me a call. I really think I should make some gesture to try to make up to them—”

“For showing them a house with a dead realtor in it?”

“Exactly.”

Suddenly my mother realized that the Anderton house was going to be impossible to move, at least for a while, and she closed her eyes. I could see it in her face, I could read her mind.

“It’ll sell sooner or later,” I said. “It was too big for Mr. Bartell anyway.”

“True,” she said faintly. “The house on Ivy Avenue would be more appropriate. But if the sister is going to live with him, the separate bedroom suites would have been great.”

“See you later,” I said, starting my car.

“I’ll call you,” she told me.

And I had no doubt she would.

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.