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and listening to Eileen Norris, who had come in with Terry, announcing to the room at large that the single ladies had just decided to come together. I raised my eyebrows very slightly, and Arthur looked down, flushing red.
I knew then that Lizanne was right. Martin was un- der suspicion. Perhaps I hadn’t been quite sure Lizanne had gotten the true word before, but I knew it now. “Are you all right?” Martin asked me.
“I’m all right. I need to—” I started to say “talk to you later,” but what an irritating thing that is to do to someone. “I’m fine,” I said clearly. “Do you like this salad?”
“Too much vinegar in the dressing,” he said criti- cally, but his sharp look told me he knew something was in the wind.
Somehow I did the right things through the meal, but when Bubba got up to make his address about new legislation for the real estate industry, I was able to tune out completely. In fact, it was hard to keep my eyes aimed in the right direction. I gnawed at my problem, poked at my fear, which was like a monster with many faces; I was afraid of Martin’s getting arrested, afraid of losing him, afraid of what it would do to his job and self- esteem to be questioned at the police station; and maybe afraid he was guilty.
My eyes traveled across the faces around the Car- riage House’s elaborate wine-and-cream banquet room. All these faces, almost all familiar. One of these people was most probably the person the police really wanted, if I could just make them see it.
The murderer was a Realtor, or connected with re-
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alty in some way—someone who’d known how to get the key replaced.
The murderer had been able to arrive at the Anderton house without a car and had been part of the scenery while doing so—someone who ordinarily walked or jogged or biked in the evening.
The murderer had to be someone Idella Yates trusted, someone she’d been willing to risk a lot for, since it seemed pretty certain Idella had replaced the key.
I looked at Mackie’s dark neck as he turned his face politely to the speaker. His date beyond him was pick- ing at her nails, though she, too, was keeping a courte- ous face turned in the right direction. Across the room, Eileen was dabbing her lips with her napkin. Beside her, Terry, in a dark blue dress with big fake diamond buttons, was listening to Bubba with a skeptical lift to one corner of her mouth. Mark Russell and his wife were sitting with the practiced posture of those who listen to many speakers; his partner, Jamie Dietrich, a lanky man with a huge Adam’s apple, stifled a yawn. Patty was all attention, though her date was doing some- thing surreptitious under the tablecloth that brought a tiny secret smile to her face. Even young Debbie Lin- coln, more beads woven into her hair than I would have thought possible, was turned to Bubba and trying to pay attention, though her date was openly, elabo- rately bored. Conspicuously alone, Donnie Greenhouse had deliberately left an empty chair beside him to re- mind people that he was a brand-new widower. Some- how I’d known he wouldn’t miss an opportunity to star in a public drama, even if he had to point it out himself.
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Close to Lizanne, my mother inclined her head re- gally to one side, her resemblance to Lauren Bacall es- pecially pronounced. John was resting his arm on the back of her chair. John looked ready to go home. Across the table from Martin, Miss Glitter appeared riveted. Franklin was listening with slightly drawn mouth, his long, thin hands arranging and rearranging his cloth napkin.
He pleated it, unpleated it. I returned my eyes to Mackie’s neck, prepared to plunge back into my fears and my dreadful burden of love. Then my attention shot back to Franklin. He pleated, unpleated. Then he folded the napkin into neat triangles, triangles that got smaller and smaller but never less neat. His long white fingers smoothed the napkin out. Then he pleated it. Then again, the triangles. Meticulously neat triangles. Where had I—?
His eyes began to turn toward me, and I instantly looked forward, my heart thumping.
Through no great feat of ratiocination, I, Aurora Teagarden, had solved a mystery.
Franklin Farrell was the murderer.
He was folding and refolding his napkin in the same curious way Tonia Lee’s clothing had been treated. It was as unmistakable as a fingerprint.
Franklin Farrell.
Chapter Fifteen
A
Icouldn’t jump up and scream and point to him. I had to force myself back down in my seat. I gripped my hands together, willing them to be still. Charming, handsome Franklin, who’d had so many conquests they must have become boring and routine by now. Franklin, with a house we all entered only once a year for his annual party, a house that could be full of things stolen from homes he was showing. Franklin could have had Tonia Lee just by crook- ing his finger, and his legendary charm could have persuaded lonely and shy Idella to do something she must have known was incredibly suspicious. How had he persuaded her to return the key to the key board, or to give him a ride from Greenhouse Realty to his house? He must have told her that he had ar- rived at the Anderton house to find Tonia Lee already dead—though what explanation he could have given ~ 2 0 9 ~
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her for going to the Anderton house at all I couldn’t imagine.
Maybe he’d told Idella that putting back the key would lessen the chances of his being suspected of something he hadn’t done, but Idella couldn’t stand up to the heavy secret she carried, the guilt she felt. I re- membered her crying in the bathroom of Beef ’N More, the day of her death. And Franklin, of course, could tell Idella was cracking. Even if she couldn’t face the fact that Franklin was almost certainly the mur- derer, she would feel terribly conscious that she had lied to the police. And to her employer. ìRoe? Roe? Are you all right?”
“What?” I jumped.
Martin was leaning toward me, his incredible light brown eyes full of concern. His innocent light brown eyes, I thought with a swelling heart.
“Um, as a matter of fact, Martin, I don’t feel too well.” People were getting up, chatting. Time to go. “Let’s get you home, then.”
Martin retrieved our coats while I sat at the table, afraid to look up for fear I’d meet Franklin’s eyes. He and his date were still sitting across from me. “Let’s leave, honey,” she was saying.
“Want to stop at The Pub for a drink?” he asked, his voice warm and inviting as a crackling fire on a freez- ing night.
“Sure. Then we’ll see after that,” she said teasingly. There wouldn’t be much to see, I thought. It was al- ready a case of my-place-or-yours. And, my mind
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raced, I was willing to bet it would be hers. Franklin probably still had the vases from the Anderton place in his house. Somewhere. He’d be afraid to sell them in Atlanta, surely, with the case still so fresh. On the other hand, I argued with myself, keeping the vases in his house would be so dangerous! His car would be an even riskier place, though . . .
I slipped into my coat without even thinking about Martin, who was holding it for me.
How could I get the police to search Franklin’s house?
Martin’s arm was around me. “Are you going to make it to the car?” he asked, concerned. “Martin, I’m thinking,” I told him. He looked at me oddly.
“Honey, I’m going to get the car. I’m worried about you. I’ll bring it around as quickly as I can.” I nodded absently, and was only vaguely aware when he left.
“It was so nice to meet you,” a voice at my elbow said with routine courtesy.
I looked up at Miss Glitter. “Enjoyed it,” I said au- tomatically. I tried not to look at Franklin, standing at her elbow. Terry Sternholtz and Eileen came up, Terry looking very pretty in the dark blue, her curly red locks tamed into a striking hairdo. It felt strange to realize that Terry had dressed up as much for her date with Eileen as I had for my date with Martin. “I’ll be late Monday,” Terry told her boss. “I have an early appointment with the Stanfords.” “I’ll be in Atlanta all day,” Franklin said casually. “I’ll see you Tuesday.”
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But as Eileen, Franklin, and his date walked away, I gripped Terry’s arm. I must not have been gentle; she looked surprised as she asked me what I wanted. “Terry. Do you remember saying, when we were at the Greenhouses’, that a self-defense course wouldn’t have helped Tonia Lee? Because she had been tied up?” Terry groped in her memory. “Sure,” she said fi- nally. “I remember. So?”
“Do you by any chance remember who told you To- nia Lee had been tied?”
“Oh. Yeah, it was Franklin, next morning at the of- fice. I get sick at grisly stuff like that, but Franklin gets into it.”
“Thanks, Terry. I was just curious.” Terry looked at me doubtfully, but then Eileen called her impatiently from the door, and she left, giving me a suspicious glance.
Donnie Greenhouse’s stupidity had maybe saved his life. He’d heard Terry make the comment about Tonia Lee’s being tied and realized its significance long before I did—well, maybe he wasn’t so dumb after all. He’d probably been plotting some elaborate revenge against Terry, never thinking to ask her where she’d gotten that damning piece of information. All the time, it had been secondhand.