you were really mending books with me all morning-I just decided last night that was ridiculous. Enough is enough.”
For once we agreed on something. “Thanks, Lillian,” I said.
I felt a little better as I drove home. I took another route so I didn’t have to pass the Buckleys’ house. Over lunch I watched the news and saw Benjamin having his minutes of fame.
I was off Thursday afternoon since I was scheduled to work Thursday night. I’d been wise to make the effort to go to work in the morning, I found once I was home alone. Though I liked work, usually I liked my time off even more. Today was an exception. After I’d changed into jeans and sneakers, I couldn’t settle on any one project. I did a little laundry, a little reading. I tried a new hairdo, but tore it apart before I was half through. Then my hair was tangled, and I had to brush it through so much to get out the snarls that it crackled around my head in a brown cloud of electric waves. I looked like I’d been contacted by Mars.
I called the hospital to see if I could visit Lizanne, but the nurse on her wing said Lizanne was only receiving visits from family. Then I thought of ordering flowers for the funeral, and called Sally Allison at the newspaper to find out when it would be. For the first time, the receptionist at the
“What can I do for you, Roe?” she asked briskly. I felt she was only talking to me because I was still semi- newsworthy at the moment. I had been hot yesterday, but I was cooling off. The lack of excitement in Sally’s voice was like a shot of adrenaline to me.
“I just wanted to know when the Buckleys’ funeral would be, Sally.”
“Well, the bodies have gone for autopsy, and I don’t know when they’ll be released. So according to Lizanne’s aunt, they just haven’t been able to make any firm funeral plans yet.”
“Oh. Well…”
“Listen, while I’ve got you on the line… one of the cops said you were on the scene yesterday.” I knew Sally had seen the picture of me with Lizanne in the city paper. She was getting too full of herself. “You want to tell me what happened while you were there?” she asked coaxingly. “Is it true that Arnie was dismembered?”
“I wonder if you’re really the right person to have on this story, Sally,” I said after a long pause during which I thought furiously.
Sally gasped as if her pet sheep had turned and bitten her.
“After all, you’re in the club, and I guess we’re all really involved, somehow or other, right?” And Sally had a son who was also a member, who could not exactly be called normal.
“I think I can keep my objectivity,” Sally said coldly. “And I don’t think being a member of Real Murders means you’re automatically-involved.”
At least she wasn’t asking me questions anymore.
My doorbell rang.
“I’ve got to go, Sally,” I said gently. And hung up.
I felt mildly ashamed of myself as I went to the door. Sally was doing her job. But I had a hard time accepting her switch from friend to reporter, my changing role from friend to source. It seemed like lately people “doing their jobs” meant I got my life turned around.
I did remember to check my security spy hole. My visitor was Arthur. He looked as ghastly as I had earlier. The lines in his face looked deeper, making him appear at least ten years older.
“Have you had anything to eat?” I asked.
“No,” he admitted, after some thought. “Not since five this morning. That’s when I got up and went down to the station.” I pulled out a chair at my kitchen table and he sat down automatically.
It’s hard to perform like Hannah Housewife when you’ve had no warning, but I microwaved a frozen ham and cheese sandwich, poured some potato chips out of a bag, and scraped together a rather depressing salad. However, Arthur seemed glad to see the plate, and ate it all after a silent prayer.
“Eat in peace,” I said and busied myself making coffee and wiping down the kitchen counter. It was an oddly domestic little interval. I felt more myself, less hunted, than I had since stopping to help Lizanne. It was possible work tonight would be entirely normal. And I would come home and sleep, hours and hours, in a clean nightgown.
After he ate, Arthur looked better. When I came to remove his empty plate, he took my wrist and pulled me into his lap, and kissed me. It was long, thorough, and intense. I really liked it very much. But maybe this was a little too fast for me. When by silent mutual accord we unclenched, I wiggled off his lap and tried to slow down my breathing.
“I just wanted to do something I would
“Quite all right,” I said a little unsteadily, and poured him a cup of coffee while gesturing him to the couch. I sat a careful but not marked distance away.
“It’s not going well?” I asked tentatively.
“Oh, it’s going, now that I’ve got the Ratkill thing behind me. Of course our fingerprint guy had to go all over my car, and now I’ve got to get all that stuff off. I’m sure it won’t turn up anything. Melanie Clark’s car was clean as a whistle. We’ve completed the Buckley house search, and a neighborhood canvass to see if anyone saw anything. The only thing the house search turned up was a long hair, which may just be one of Lizanne’s… we have to get a sample from her for comparison. And that’s for your ears only. The murder weapon hasn’t turned up yet, but it was a hatchet or something like that, of course.”
“You’re really not a suspect?”
“Well, if I ever was, I’m not now. While the Buckleys were being murdered I was going door to door with another detective asking questions about the Wright murder. And come to think of it, right before the last meeting, when Mamie Wright was done in, I was booking a DWI at the station. I drove to the meeting directly from there. And Lynn was able to swear for me that the Ratkill hadn’t been in the car all morning while we were riding around knocking on doors.”
“Good,” I said. “Someone’s got to be out of the running.”
“And thank God it’s me, since the department needs every warm body it can get on this one. I’ve got to go.” He heaved himself to his feet, looking tired again.
“Arthur… what about me? Does anyone think I did it?”
“No, honey. Not since Pettigrue, anyway. His old house had one of those claw-footed tubs, way off the floor, and he was a tall man, maybe six-three. You couldn’t have gotten him in that tub alone, no way. And around Lawrenceton enough people would know if you were steadily seeing some guy who’d help you move the body. No, I think Pettigrue definitely let you off the hook in just about everyone’s mind.”
It was unnerving to think that my name had been spoken by men and women I didn’t know, men and women who seriously considered I might have killed people in brutal and bloody ways. But all in all, after I’d talked to Arthur, I felt much better.
I saw him off with a light squeeze of his hand, and sat down to think a little. It was about time I thought instead of felt. I had crammed more feelings into the past week than I had in a year, I estimated.
The hair the police had found was probably brown, since it might be Lizanne’s and hers was a rich chestnut. Who else could have shed that hair?
Well, I was a member of Real Murders who had long brown hair. Luckily for me, I’d been repairing books with Lillian Schmidt all morning. Melanie Clark had medium-length dull brown hair, and Sally, though her hair was shorter and lighter, could also be a contender. (Wouldn’t it be something if Sally had committed all these murders so she could report them? A dazzling idea. Then I told myself to get back on the track.) Jane Engle’s hair was definitely gray… then I thought of Gifford Doakes, whose hair was long and smoothly moussed into a pageboy or sometimes gathered in a ponytail, to John Queensland’s disgust. Gifford was a scarey person, and he was so interested in massacres… and his friend Reynaldo would probably do anything Gifford wanted.
But surely someone as flamboyant as Gifford would have been noticed going into the Buckleys’ house?
Well, discarding the possible clue of the hair for the moment, how had the murderer gotten in and left? A neighbor had seen Lizanne enter, too soon before I’d arrived to have done everything that had been done to the Buckleys. So someone was in a position to view the front of the Buckley house at least part of the morning. I considered other approaches and tried to imagine an aerial view of the lot, but I am not good at geography at all, much less aerial geography.
I sat a while longer and thought some more, and found myself wandering to the patio gate several times to see
