Three Bedrooms, One Corpse(12)

Not enough pecans. Not enough coconut for Ger- man chocolate pie. (Yes, pie. I never make the cake.) Not any cream cheese for cheesecake. I turned my search to the cabinets. Ha! There was a can of pump- kin that must have come out of Jane’s cupboard. I would make a pumpkin pie. I took off my navy blue sweater and put on my old red apron. After tying back my hair, which tends to fly into batter or get caught in dough, I set to work. After I cleaned up and ate my lunch—granola and yogurt and fruit—the pie was ready to go to Donnie Greenhouse’s.

Tonia Lee and Donnie’s modest home was sur- rounded by cars. I recognized Franklin Farrell’s Lin- coln parked right in front, and several more cars looked familiar, though I am not much of a one for re- membering cars. Franklin Farrell’s was the only pow- der blue Lincoln in Lawrenceton, and had been the subject of much comment since he’d bought it. Donnie Greenhouse was right inside the door. He looked white and stunned and yet somehow—exalted.

72

~ Charlaine Harris ~

He took my hand, the one that wasn’t balancing the pie, and pressed it with both of his.

“You are so kind to come, Roe,” he said with dole- ful pleasure. “Please sign the guest book.” Donnie had been handsome when Tonia Lee had married him seventeen years before. I remembered when they’d eloped; it had been the talk of the town, the high-school-graduation-night elopement that had been “so romantic” to Tonia Lee’s foolish mother and “goddamned stupid” to Donnie’s more realistic father, the high school football coach. Tonia Lee seemed to have worn Donnie thin. He’d been a husky football player when they’d married; now he was bony and looked undernourished in every way. Tonia Lee’s horri- ble death had given Donnie a stature he’d lacked for a long time, but it was not an attractive sight. I was glad to get my hand back, murmur the correct words of condolence, and escape to put the pie in the kitchen, which was already full of more homemade food than Donnie had eaten in the past six months, I’d have been willing to bet.

The cramped little kitchen, which had probably been ideal for Tonia Lee, a minimalist cook, was full of Tonia’s mom’s church buddies, who seemed to be mostly large ladies in polyester dresses. I looked in vain for Mrs. Purdy herself and asked a couple of the ladies, who suggested I try the bathroom.

This seemed a bit odd, but I made my way through the crowd to the hall bathroom. Sure enough, the door was open and Helen Purdy was seated on the (closed) toilet, dissolved in tears, with a couple of ladies com- forting her.

~ Three Bedrooms, One Corpse ~

7 3

“Mrs. Purdy?” I said tentatively.

“Oh, come in, Roe,” said the stouter of the two at- tendants, whom I now recognized as Lillian Schmidt, my former co-worker at the library. “Helen has cried so hard she’s gotten herself pretty sick, so just in case, we came in here.”

Oh, great. I made my face stick to its sympathetic lines and nervously approached Helen Purdy. “You saw her,” Helen said pitifully, her plain face soggy with grief. “How did she look, Aurora?” A vision of Tonia Lee’s obscenely bare bosom flashed through my head. “She looked very”—I paused for inspiration—“peaceful.” The bulging eyes of the dead woman, staring blankly out from her posed body, looked at me again. “At rest,” I said, and nodded em- phatically to Helen Purdy.

“I hope she went to Jesus,” wailed Helen, and began crying again.

“I hope so, too,” I whispered from my heart, ignor- ing the wave of doubt that washed unbidden through my mind.

“She never could find peace on earth, maybe she can find it in heaven.”

Then Helen just seemed to faint, and I backed hastily out of the little bathroom so Lillian and her companion could work over her.

I saw one of the local doctor’s nurses in the family room and told her quietly that Helen had collapsed. She hurried to the bathroom, and feeling that I’d done the best I could, I looked around for someone to talk to. I couldn’t leave yet—I hadn’t been there quite long enough, my inner social clock told me.

74

~ Charlaine Harris ~

I spied Franklin Farrell’s head of thick gray hair over the heads crowding the room, and “excuse me’d” over to him. Franklin, a spectacularly tan and handsome man, had been selling real estate since coming to Lawrenceton thirty or more years before. “Roe Teagarden,” Franklin said as I reached his side, giving every appearance of great pleasure. “I’m glad to see you, even though I’m sorry it’s here, on such a sad occasion.”

“I’m sorry it’s here, too,” I said grimly. I told him about Helen.

He shook his handsome head. “She has always been wrapped up in Tonia Lee,” he said. “Tonia Lee was Helen’s only child, you know.”

“And Donnie’s only wife.”

He looked taken aback. “Well, yes, but as we all know . . .” Here he realized that bringing up Tonia Lee’s infidelities would hardly be proper. “I know.”

“I brought a fruit salad with Jezebel sauce,” he said, to change the subject. Franklin was one of the few single men in town who didn’t mind confessing that he cooked for himself and did it well. His home was also definitely decorated, and beautifully so. Despite his flair for inte- rior design, and his penchant for cooking something other than barbecue, no one had ever accused Franklin of being effeminate. Too many well-known cars had been parked overnight in the vicinity of his house. “I brought a pumpkin pie.”

“Terry’s bringing marinated mushrooms.” I tried not to gape. It was hard to picture Donnie and Helen Purdy appreciating marinated mushrooms.

~ Three Bedrooms, One Corpse ~

7 5

“Terry doesn’t always have a solid sense of occa- sion,” Franklin said, enjoying my expression. Franklin and Terry Sternholtz were certainly the odd pair of the Lawrenceton realty community. Frank- lin was sophisticated, smooth, a charmer. Everything about him was planned, immaculate, controlled, ge- nial. And here Terry came, covered dish in her hand, her chin-length red hair permed and tossed into fash- ionable disarray. Terry Sternholtz said just about any- thing that entered her head, and since she was well-read, an amazing number of things did. She nod- ded at her boss, grinned at me, and mouthed “Let me get this to the kitchen” before being swallowed by the crowd. Terry had freckles and an open, all-American face.

In sharp contrast, I found myself staring at a picture of Tonia Lee that hung over the fireplace. It had been taken at one of those instant-glamour photography places that dot suburban malls. Tonia was elaborately made-up, her hair sexily tousled and softer than her normal teased style. She had a black feather boa trail- ing across her neck, and her dark eyes were smolder- ing. It was quite a production, and to have hung it over her fireplace where she could view it constantly meant Tonia Lee had been very pleased with it. “She was quite a woman,” Franklin said, following my gaze. “Couldn’t sell real estate worth a damn, but she was determined her personal life was going to be memorable.”

That was a strange but appropriate epitaph for the misguided and horribly dead Tonia Lee Greenhouse, née Purdy.

76

~ Charlaine Harris ~

“You go out running every evening right after work, don’t you?” I asked him.

“Yes, almost always, unless it’s raining or below freezing,” Franklin said agreeably. “Why?” “So you must have been out Wednesday evening.” “I guess so. Yes, it hasn’t rained this week, so I must have run.”

“Did you see Mackie Knight?”

He thought. “So often I see the same people who ex- ercise at the same time I do, and I’m not sure if I did see Mackie that evening or not. I don’t always, because I vary my route. There are two I like, and I pretty much alternate them. Mackie seems to pick his at random. I remember it was Wednesday when I saw Terry and Eileen; they walk together most evenings. But I remem- ber only because Terry congratulated me again on a sale I’d made that day. I saw Donnie, riding his bike, that new ten-speed . . . I’m sorry, Roe, I just can’t re- member about Mackie specifically. How come?” I told him about Mackie’s questioning by the police. “I can’t believe they’re so sure another car wasn’t there!” Franklin looked very skeptical. “Someone must have shut their eyes for a minute or two, either the woman across the street or the couple behind the An- derton house. And it seems pretty strange to me that both doors were watched that very night.” I shrugged. But I thought of what the killer had had to do—move Tonia Lee’s car to the rear of Greenhouse Realty, then get home on foot. If the killer’s car had been at the house, too, he’d either have had to go all the way back to the Anderton house from Greenhouse Re- alty to move his own car, or return from taking his

~ Three Bedrooms, One Corpse ~

7 7

own car home to get Tonia Lee’s. It seemed almost cer- tain someone would have noticed the other car. I was thinking of the killer as “he” because of Tonia Lee’s nudity.

Terry Sternholtz returned while I was still thinking it through.

“You look awful grim, Roe,” she said.