Merry Market Murder(51)

“Did she say who she was hired by?” Sam asked.

“See, I asked the same question, but she wouldn’t tell me. I thought it was sneaky, but I’m not sure if I’m supposed to still be showing up here, so who am I to question what anyone is doing? I have her card inside. You want it?”

“Yes, thanks.”

The now-familiar quack of a goose pulled our attention across to the other side of the property.

“That’s Batman,” I said to Sam. “What’s he doing?” I said to Gellie.

She shook her head. “I have no idea. Stupid animal just likes to run and hear himself talk. I hope he hasn’t stolen something again.”

I wondered who’d take care of Batman when Gellie wasn’t around. She read my mind.

“I’ll make sure he doesn’t get forgotten. I’ve been feeding him, and I will until someone tells me to go away.”

It was evident that she liked him more than she wanted to let on.

Gellie looked at Sam. “You think you should tell me to go away?”

“No, ma’am, in fact, I’m glad you’ve stuck around. It would be sad to see this place quickly fall apart because no one paid attention to it.”

“Good. Well then, you two want to come in? I’ll get the card and you can look around the place? Oh, don’t give me that surprised look. I wasn’t born yesterday. I know you’re a cop, and you’re looking very cop-like. You’re probably truly friendly, too, but you want to take a look around the place, don’t you?”

Sam smiled. “Yes, I do.”

“You too, huh?” she said to me.

“Yes.”

“Come on in.”

From the outside, the house looked like it should be the focal point of famous artists’ paintings. From the inside, it was almost as perfect as a house could get. Each room on the first floor was comfortably and traditionally furnished. Each space was big enough not to feel crowded and yet not so big that a person felt lost. Even though the space wasn’t open, the rooms flowed nicely. I’d been so focused on the kitchen the day before that I hadn’t really noticed everything else.

“Did Reggie have an office in the house?” Sam asked Gellie after she gave him the Realtor’s card.

“Yes, upstairs. The other officers looked around up there, but go ahead and do whatever you need to do. I hope you find a clue to the killer.”

Sam’s main intention had been to take a close look at things like paperwork in drawers and other things cops look for to give them clues, so after Gellie’s first floor tour, he and I took the stairs up to the second floor.

The office was one of the longer rooms, located at the back of the house. French doors led to a small balcony, which overlooked a stretch of South Carolina countryside that was mostly hidden from the rest of the world. It was pristine and almost untouched, and I hoped it stayed that way for a long time.

In the short few minutes I’d known Reggie, I hadn’t thought he leaned toward sophisticated tastes that included tobacco pipes and rich, dark woodwork, but his office told me differently.

The floor and wall-to-wall bookshelves were crafted from a dark cherrywood that shone as though Gellie had just dusted and oiled everything in sight. The large desk matched the other woodwork, and the two leather chairs and couch were tanned and subtle against their background. A small, glass-topped table flanked one of the chairs. Atop it sat a pipe and a bag of tobacco, both seemingly unused, even though a rich tobacco scent hung in the air.

“I wonder if the new owners would let me rent just this room from them,” I said.

Sam, all business, was peering into the desk’s drawers. “You could ask.”

“I wouldn’t get any work done. I’d just sit here, read, and sniff.”

Sam didn’t respond, so I looked up.

“Find anything?” I asked as I joined him.

“Not a thing. The file drawer is empty. Completely.”

We looked through the other drawers and found only a few pens, pencils, and one unused notebook.

“No computer, no files, no fax machine. Nothing,” I said.

“I’m beginning to think he had an office somewhere else. Let’s ask Gellie if she knows.”

Sam determined there wasn’t anything else to see in the office, so we continued the rest of the tour.

“This house is comfortable but not lived in, not really,” Sam commented as we looked into a seemingly unused bathroom. “It’s obvious that Reggie spent time in his bedroom and the family room and kitchen downstairs, but everywhere else is so . . . not touched. Even the pipe scent in the office isn’t smoky; it’s more tobacco than smoke. He didn’t spend a lot of time in there.”