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“And you’re checking up on the children while their mama’s away?”
There was also no doubt Eileen wasn’t happy with the idea of the boss’s daughter “checking up.” “Just wanted to see that the building was still standing,” I said lightly. “But I do have a realty ques- tion to ask.”
Mackie Knight, a young black realtor Mother had just taken on, came in just then with clients, a pair of newlyweds I recognized since their picture had been in the paper the same day Mother and John’s had been. The couple looked a little dazed, and were ar- guing in a weary way between a house on Macree and a house on Littleton. Safely ahead of them, Mackie rolled his eyes at us as they passed through. “He’s working out good,” Eileen said absently. “The younger couples don’t mind having a black real- tor, and the black clients love it. Now, you said you had a realty question?”
“Yes, I do. What are houses in the area right around the junior high selling for?”
Patty and Eileen snapped to attention. This was Business.
“How many bedrooms?”
“Ah—two.”
“Square footage?”
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“Maybe fourteen hundred.”
“A house on Honor in that area just sold,” Eileen said promptly. “Just a minute and I’ll look that up.” She marched back to her desk, her high heels mak- ing little thumps on the carpet. I followed her through the unobtrusively attractive gray and blue halls to her office, second in size only to Mother’s. It had proba- bly been the second best bedroom. Mother had what had been the master bedroom, and the kitchen had the copying machine and a little snack area. The other rooms were much smaller and occupied by Mother’s lesser minions. Eileen’s desk was aggres- sively busy, papers everywhere, but they were in sepa- rate stacks, and she doubtless was capable of juggling many balls at a time.
“Honor, Honor,” she muttered. She must have been looking up the price of the little house Arthur and Lynn had bought. Her ringed fingers flipped ex- pertly through a stack of listings. “Here we go,” she murmured. “Fifty-three,” she said more loudly. “Are you interested in buying or selling?” I could tell Eileen was no longer concerned with my blue jeans and messy braid.
“Maybe selling. I inherited the house right across the street from that house you’re looking at now.” I nodded at the listing sheet.
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“Really,” Eileen said, staring. “You? Inherited?” “Yes.”
“And you may want to sell the house instead of liv- ing in it?”
“Yes.”
“Is the house paid for by the previous owner? The owner doesn’t owe any money on it, I mean?” “No, it’s paid for.” I thought I remembered Bubba Sewell telling me that. Yes, I did. Jane had been pay- ing on the house until her mother died, when she’d had the cash to complete buying it in one whack. “You have a completely free house and you don’t want it? I would’ve thought a two bedroom was just the right size for you. Not that I wouldn’t love to list it for you,” Eileen said, recalled to her senses. A frail, pretty woman in her late thirties stuck her head in. “Eileen, I’m off to show the Youngman house, if you’ve got the key handy,” she said with a teasing smile.
“Idella! I can’t believe I did it again!” Eileen hit her forehead with the heel of her hand, but very lightly so as not to smear her makeup.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know you had company,” the woman continued.
“Idella, this is Aurora Teagarden, Aida’s daughter,” Eileen said, rummaging through her purse. “Aurora, ~ 176 ~
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you may not know Idella Yates yet? She came in with us earlier this year.”
While Idella and I exchanged nice-to-meet-you’s, Eileen kept up with her search. Finally she unearthed a key with a large label attached. “Idella, I’m sorry,” Eileen boomed. “I don’t know why I don’t remember to put the keys back on the keyboard. That seems to be one thing I cannot remember. We’re supposed to put them back on the main keyboard, that Patty watches, every time we use a key to show a house,” Eileen ex- plained to me. “But for some reason, I just cannot get it through my head.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Idella said sweetly, and with a nod to me she left to go show the house. She did glance at her watch rather pointedly as she left, letting Eileen know that, if she was late to meet her client, Eileen was the one to blame.
Eileen sat staring after Idella with a curiously un- easy look on her face. Eileen’s face was only used to positive emotions, emerging full-blown. Something like “uneasy” sat very oddly on her strong features. “There’s something funny about that woman,” Eileen said abruptly and dismissively. Her face fell back into more familiar lines. “Now, about that house—do you know things like how old the roof is, whether it’s on city water, how old the house itself is? ~ 177 ~
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Though I think all the houses in that area were built about nineteen fifty-five or so. Maybe some in the early sixties.”
“If I make up my mind definitely, I’ll get all that in- formation,” I promised, wondering how on earth I’d find out about the roof. I might have to go through every one of Jane’s receipts, unless perhaps one of her neighbors might remember the roofing crew. Roofing crews usually made their presence felt. A vagrant thought crossed my mind. What if one of the houses was older than it appeared, or had been built on the site of a much older home? Maybe there was a basement or a tunnel under one of the houses where the body had been until it had been tossed into the weeds at the end of the street?
Admittedly this was a pretty stupid idea, and when I asked Eileen about it she dismissed it as it deserved. “Oh, no,” she said briskly, beginning to shake her head before I even finished my sentence. “What a strange no- tion, Roe. That area is much too low for basements, and there wasn’t anything there before the junior high was built. It was timberland.”
Eileen insisted on walking me out of the office. I decided it was because I was a potential client, rather than because I was Aurora Teagarden. Eileen was not a toady.
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“Now, when is your mother coming back?” she asked.
“Oh, soon, sometime this week. She wasn’t defi- nite. She just didn’t want to call in to the office; maybe she was scared if she talked to one of you she’d just get to talking about work. She was just using me as a mes- senger to you all.” All of the other offices that I passed were busy or showed signs of work in progress. Phones were ringing, papers were being copied, briefcases were being packed with paperwork.
For the first time in my life, I wondered how much money my mother had. Now that I didn’t need it any- more, I was finally curious. Money was something we never talked about. She had enough for her, and did her kind of thing—expensive clothes, a very luxurious car (she said it impressed clients), and some good jew- elry. She didn’t play any sport; for exercise she had installed a treadmill in one of the bedrooms of her house. But she sold a lot of real estate, and I assumed she got a percentage from the sales of the realtors she employed. I was very fuzzy on how that worked, be- cause I’d just never thought it was my business. In a moment I was not too proud of, I wondered if she’d made a new will now that John and she had married. I frowned at myself in the rearview mirror as I sat at a stoplight.
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Of course, John already had plenty of money of his own, and he had two sons . . .
I shook my head impatiently, trying to shake those bad thoughts loose. I tried to excuse myself by rea- soning that it was really no wonder that I was will- and death-conscious lately, or for that matter that I was more than usually interested in money matters. But I wasn’t happy with myself, so I was quicker to be displeased when I pulled into the driveway of the house on Honor to find Bubba Sewell waiting for me. It was as if I’d conjured him up by thinking about him.
“Hello,” I said cautiously as I got out of the car. He got out of his and strode over to me. “I took a chance on finding you here. I called the library and found out you were off today.” “Yes, I don’t work every day,” I said unnecessarily. “I came to check on the kittens.”
“Kittens.” His heavy eyebrows flew up behind his glasses.
“Madeleine came back. She had kittens in the closet in Jane’s room.”
“Have Parnell and Leah been over here?” he asked. “Have they given you much trouble?”
“I think Parnell feels we’re even now that I have four kittens to find homes for,” I said. ~ 180 ~
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Bubba laughed, but he didn’t sound like he meant it.
“Listen,” he began, “the county bar association dinner-dance is next weekend and I wondered if you would go with me?”
I was so surprised I almost gaped at him. Not only was he reportedly dating my beautiful friend Lizanne, but also I could have sworn that Bubba Sewell was not the least bit interested in me as a woman. And though my dating schedule was certainly not heavy, I had learned long ago that it was better to be home alone with a good book and a bag of potato chips than it was to be out on a date with someone who left you cold.
“I’m sorry, Bubba,” I said. I was not accustomed enough to turning down dates to be good at it. “I’m just very busy right now. But thank you for asking me.”
He looked away, embarrassed. “Okay. Maybe some other time.”
I smiled as noncommittally as I could.
“Is everything going—all right?” he asked sud- denly.
How much did he know?
“You read about the bones found around the dead end sign?” It had been below the report about ~ 181 ~
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Bubba’s run for representative: city workers find bones. It had been a very short story; I expected a much fuller account in the next morning’s paper. Maybe, I suddenly thought, now that the law had the bones, there would be more information on the sex and age of the skeleton included in the next story. The few paragraphs this morning had stated that the bones were going to a pathologist for examination. I swam out of my thoughts to find Bubba Sewell eyeing me with some apprehension.
“The bones?” he prompted. “A skeleton?” “Well, there wasn’t a skull,” I murmured. “Was that in the paper?” he asked sharply. I’d made a mistake; as a matter of fact, the skeleton’s skull-lessness had not been mentioned in the story. “Gosh, Bubba,” I said coolly. “I just don’t know.” We stared at each other for a minute.
“Gotta be going,” I said finally. “The cats are wait- ing.”
“Oh, sure.” He tucked his mouth in and then re- laxed it. “Well . . . if you really need me, you know where I am. By the way, had you heard I’m running for office?”
“Yes. I’d heard that, sure had.” And we looked at each other for a second more. Then I marched up the sidewalk and unlocked the front door. Madeleine ~ 182 ~
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slithered out instantly and headed for the soft dirt around the bushes. Her litter box was only a backup system: she preferred to go out-of-doors. Bubba Sewell was gone by the time I locked the front door behind me. ~ 183 ~
Chapter Ten
A
Irattled around restlessly in the “new” house for a few hours. It was mine, all mine, but somehow I didn’t feel too cheerful about that anymore. Actually, I preferred my town house, a soulless rental. It had more room, I was used to it, I liked having an upstairs I didn’t have to clean if company was coming. Could I stand living across the street from Arthur and Lynn? Next door to the unpredictable Marcia Rideout? Jane’s books were already cramming the bookcases. Where would I put mine? But if I sold this house and bought a bigger one, probably the yard would be big- ger, and I hadn’t ever taken care of one . . . If Tor- rance hadn’t mowed the yard for me, I wouldn’t know how to cope. Maybe the yard crew that did the lawn at the town houses?
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I maundered on in my head, opening the kitchen cabinets and shutting them, trying to decide which pots and pans were duplicates of mine so I could take them to the local Baptist church, which kept a room of household goods for families who got burned out or suffered some equal disaster. I finally chose some in a lackadaisical way and carried them out to the car loose; I was out of boxes. I was treading water emo- tionally, unable to settle on any one task or course of action.
I wanted to quit my job.
I was scared to. Jane’s money seemed too good to be true. Somehow, I feared it might be taken away from me.
I wanted to throw the skull in the lake. I was also scared of whoever had reduced the skull to its present state.
I wanted to sell Jane’s house because I didn’t par- ticularly care for it. I wanted to live in it because it was safely mine.
I wanted Aubrey Scott to adore me; surely a minis- ter would have a specially beautiful wedding? I did not want to marry Aubrey Scott because being a min- ister’s wife took a lot more internal fortitude than I had. A proper minister’s wife would have marched out of the house with that skull and gone straight to ~ 185 ~
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the police station without a second thought. But Aubrey seemed too serious a man to date without the prospect of the relationship evolving in that direction. I did run the pots and pans to the Baptist church, where I was thanked so earnestly that it was soothing, and made me think better of my poor character. On the way back to the new house, I stopped at Jane’s bank on impulse. I had the key with me, surely? Yes, here it was in my purse. I went in hesitantly, sud- denly thinking that the bank might present difficulties about letting me see the safe deposit box. But it wasn’t too difficult. I had to explain to three people, but then one of them remembered Bubba Sewell coming by, and that made everything all right. Accompanied by a woman in a sober business suit, I got Jane’s safe de- posit box. Something about those vaults where they’re kept makes me feel that there’s going to be a dreadful secret inside. All those locked boxes, the heavy door, the attendant! I went into the little room that held only a table and a single chair, shut the door. Then I opened the box, telling myself firmly that nothing dreadful could be in a box so small. Nothing dreadful, but a good deal that was beautiful. When I saw the contents of the long metal box, I let my breath out in a single sigh. Who would ever have imagined that Jane would want these things?
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There was a pin shaped like a bow, made out of garnets with the center knot done in diamonds. There were garnet and diamond earrings to match. There was a slim gold chain with a single emerald on it, and a pearl necklace and bracelet. There were a few rings, none of them spectacular or probably extremely valu- able, but all of them expensive and very pretty. I felt I had opened the treasure chest in the pirate’s cave. And these were mine now! I could not attach any sentiment to them, because I’d never seen Jane wear them— perhaps the pearls, yes; she’d worn the pearls to a wedding we’d both attended. Nothing else rang any bells. I tried on the rings. They were only a little loose. Jane and I both had small fingers. I was trying to imag- ine what I could wear the bow pin and earrings to; they’d look great on a winter white suit, I decided. But as I held the pieces and touched them, I knew that de- spite Bubba Sewell’s saying there was nothing else in the safe deposit box, I was disappointed that there was no letter from Jane.
After I’d driven back to the house, despite an hour spent watching Madeleine and her kittens, I still could not ground myself. I ended up throwing myself on the couch and turning on CNN, while reading some of my favorite passages from Jane’s copy of Donald Rumbe- low’s book on Jack the Ripper. She had marked her ~ 187 ~