Three Bedrooms, One Corpse(10)

Chapter Four

A

Friday morning I woke with that blank feeling I’d had lately. Nothing specific to do, nowhere particu- lar to go. No one expected me anywhere. Even though library funding cuts had meant I’d only been part-time, my work hours had shaped my week. I had an increasingly strong feeling I wouldn’t be throw- ing my lot in with Mother’s at Select Realty, so I wouldn’t be studying for my real estate license. Lying in bed drowsily was not such a pleasure if it wasn’t illicit, even with Madeleine’s heavy warm body curled up against my leg. Before, I’d used this time to map out my day. Now the time lay like a wasteland be- fore me. I didn’t want to think about the dinner party tonight, didn’t want to feel again the alternating appre- hension and attraction Martin Bartell aroused in me. So I scolded myself out of bed, down the stairs, and popped an exercise video into the VCR after switching ~58 ~

~ Three Bedrooms, One Corpse ~

5 9

on the coffeepot. I stretched and bent and hopped around obediently, grudging every necessary minute of it. Madeleine watched this new part of my morning routine with appalled fascination. Now that I was thirty, calories were no longer burning themselves off quite so easily. Three times a week my mother, clad in gorgeous exercise clothes, went to the newly opened Athletic Club and did aerobics. Mackie Knight, Franklin Farrell, and Donnie Greenhouse, plus a host of other Lawrencetonians, ran or biked every evening. I’d seen Franklin’s cohort, Terry Sternholtz, out “power walking” with Eileen. My mother’s new hus- band was a golfer. Almost everyone I knew did some- thing to keep her muscles in working order and her

body in the proper shape. So I’d succumbed to the ne- cessity myself, but with little grace and less enthusi- asm.

At least I felt I’d earned my coffee and toast, and my shower was a real pleasure afterward. While I was dry- ing my hair, I decided that today I’d start looking at houses seriously. I needed a project, and finding a house I really liked would do. Jane’s books and the few things from her house I’d wanted to keep were stacked in odd places around the townhouse, and I was begin- ning to feel claustrophobic. Mother had hinted heavily that Jane’s dining room set would be welcome in her third bedroom for a short time only.

Of course, I’d have to go through Select Realty, and I didn’t think I ought to have Mother showing me around. Eileen, Idella, or Mackie? Mackie could use the vote of confidence, I reflected, standing bent at the waist with my hair hanging down so I could dry the bottom layer.

60

~ Charlaine Harris ~

But though I didn’t have anything against Mackie, I never had been too crazy about him, either. I didn’t think it was because he was black or because he was male. I just wasn’t that comfortable with him. On the other hand, Eileen was smart and sometimes funny, but too bossy. Idella was sweet and could leave you alone when you needed to think, but she was no fun at all. After a moment’s consideration, I chose Eileen. I phoned the office.

Patty said she wasn’t in.

I looked up Eileen’s home number and punched it with an impatient finger.

“Hello?”

“May I speak to Eileen, please?”

“May I tell her who’s calling?”

“Roe Teagarden.” Who the hell was this? Eileen’s personal home secretary? On the other hand, it wasn’t exactly my business.

Eileen finally came on the line.

“Hi, Eileen. I’ve decided to start moving on finding a house of my own. Can you show me some, pretty soon?” “Sure! What are you looking for?”

Oh. Well, four walls and a roof . . . I began speaking as I thought. “I want at least three bedrooms, because I need a room for a library. I want a kitchen with some counter space.” The townhouse was definitely deficient in that department. “I want a large master bedroom with a very large closet.” For all my new clothes. “I want at least two bathrooms.” Why not? One could always be kept pretty for company. “And not lots of traffic.” For Madeleine, who was weaving around my ankles, rum- bling her rough purr.

~ Three Bedrooms, One Corpse ~

6 1

“What price range do you have in mind?” I was still talking to an investment banker about what I would have to live on if I didn’t use any of Jane’s capital. But I could buy the house outright and then in- vest the rest, or I could put the money from the sale of Jane’s house down on the new place . . . I let all this swirl around in my head, and then an answer popped to the top of my brain, like the answer popping up to the window of a fortune-telling ball.

“Okay,” Eileen said. “Seventy-five to ninety-five gives us some room. There are quite a few for sale in that range since Golfwhite closed its factory here.” Golfwhite—which, logically enough, manufactured golf balls and other golfing accessories—had closed its Lawrenceton factory and moved all its people who were willing to move to the larger factory in Florida. “I don’t really need anything awfully big or important-looking,” I told Eileen, assailed by sudden doubts.

“Don’t worry, Roe. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to buy it,” she said dryly. “Let’s get a start tomor- row afternoon. I’ll see what I can get lined up in that time.”

After I’d dressed in my lime green blouse and navy blue pants and sweater, I had nothing better to do than drop in on my old friend Susu Saxby Hunter. The house she’d inherited from her parents was in the old- est part of Lawrenceton. The house had been built in the last quarter of the previous century, and had charming high ceilings and huge windows, negligible

62

~ Charlaine Harris ~

closets, and wide halls, a feature I was especially fond of for some reason. Wide halls are a great location for bookshelves, and Susu was wasting a whole lot of prime space, in my opinion. Of course, she had other things to worry about, I found out that morning. In a house the age of hers, the heating and cooling bills were extortionate, drafts were inescapable, curtains had to be custom-made because nothing was of stan- dard size, and all the electric wiring had had to be re- placed recently. To say nothing of the antiquated toilets and tubs that Susu had just replaced.

“But you love this house, don’t you?” I said, sitting across from Susu at her “country pine” kitchen table. Susu’s kitchen was so heavily “country,” including a pie safe in the corner (lovingly refinished and contain- ing no pies whatsoever), that you expected a goose to walk in with a blue bow around its neck. “Yes,” she confessed, putting out her third cigarette. “My great-grandparents built it when they were first married, and then my parents inherited and they redid it, and now I’m redoing it. I guess I always will be. It’s lucky Jimmy’s in the hardware business! The only thing it would be better if he did is if he were a licensed electrician. Or had a fabric store. Want some more cof- fee?”

“Sure,” I said, reflecting I’d have to view the reno- vated bathrooms quite soon at this rate. “How’s Jimmy doing?”

Susu didn’t look quite as happy as she had when dis- cussing the house. “Roe, since we’ve been friends a long time, I’ll tell you . . . I’m not sure how Jimmy’s doing. He goes to work, and he works hard. He’s really

~ Three Bedrooms, One Corpse ~

6 3

built the business up. And he goes to Rotary, and he goes to church, and he coaches Little Jim’s baseball team in the summer. And he goes to Bethany’s piano recitals. But sometimes I have the funniest feeling . . .” Her voice trailed off uncertainly, and she stared down at her smoldering cigarette.

“What, Susu?” I asked quietly, suddenly feeling a return of my high school affection for this bright, blond, plump, scared woman.

“His heart’s not in it,” she said simply, and then gave a little laugh. “I know that sounds stupid . . .” Actually, she sounded quite perceptive, something I’d never suspected.

“Maybe he’s just having sort of an early midlife cri- sis?” I suggested gently.

“Of course, you’re probably right,” Susu said, obvi- ously embarrassed by her own frankness. “Come see how I decorated Bethany’s room! She’ll be a teenager before I know it. Roe, I expect her to tell me any day that she’s started her periods!” “Oh, no!”

And we oohed and aahed our way up the stairs to Bethany’s pretty-as-a-picture room, still decorated with childish things like favorite dolls—but the dolls were sharing space with posters of sullen young men in leather. Then we viewed Little Jim’s room, with its duck-laden wallpaper and masculine plaids. It seems to be the view of those who design “male” decorations that the male DNA includes a gene that requires duck- killing.

Then we moved on to Sally and Jim’s room, resplen- dent with chintz and framed needlework, an antique

64

~ Charlaine Harris ~

cedar chest, and ruffled pillows on the beds. A picture from their wedding hung by Sally’s dressing table, one of the whole carefully arranged wedding party. “There you are, Roe, second from the end! Wasn’t that a wonderful day?” Susu’s pink fingernail landed on my very young face. That face, with its stiff smile, brought that day back to me all too vividly. I had known exactly how unbecoming the dreadful lavender ruffled bridesmaid’s dress had been, and my unruly hair was topped with a picture hat trailing a matching lavender ribbon. My best friend, Amina, also a brides- maid, had fared much better in that get-up because of her height and longer neck, and her smile was unre- served. Susu herself, radiant in fully deserved white, was gorgeous, and I told her so now. “That was the wedding of the year,” I said, smiling a little. “You were the first of us to be married. We were so envious.”