“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 emphatically to Helen Purdy.
“I hope she went to Jesus,” wailed Helen, and began crying again.
“I hope so, too,” I whispered from my heart, ignoring 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.
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 interior 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.
“Terry doesn’t always have a solid sense of occasion,” Franklin said, enjoying my expression.
Franklin and Terry Sternholtz were certainly the odd pair of the Lawrenceton realty community. Franklin was sophisticated, smooth, a charmer. Everything about him was planned, immaculate, controlled, genial. And here Terry came, covered dish in her hand, her chin-length red hair permed and tossed into fashionable disarray. Terry Sternholtz said just about anything that entered her head, and since she was well-read, an amazing number of things did. She nodded 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 trailing across her neck, and her dark eyes were smoldering. 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, nee Purdy.
“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 exercise 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 remember 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 remember 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 Anderton 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 Realty to move his own car, or return from taking his own car home to get Tonia Lee’s. It seemed almost certain 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.
“Considering the occasion…”
“Sure, sure. It’s terrible what happened to Tonia Lee. All us females are going to have to be more careful-right, Eileen?” Eileen had just appeared at Terry’s elbow, looking especially impressive in a black-and-white suit and huge black earrings.
“I’m glad we took that self-defense course,” Eileen said.
“When was this?” I asked.
“Oh, a year ago, I guess. We drove into Atlanta to take it. And we practice the moves the woman taught us. But I guess, if Tonia let herself be tied up like that, she wouldn’t have had a chance anyway.” Terry shook her head.
Franklin looked startled. He must not have heard that titillating fact. Even worse, Donnie Greenhouse was standing very close, with his back to us, talking to a woman whose hair and glasses were exactly the same gray- blue. But Donnie didn’t turn around, so apparently he hadn’t heard Terry. She, too, had spotted Donnie and was making a horrified face at us to show she realized her gaffe. Eileen gave her the reproving look you give a close friend, the one that says, “You blockhead, you did it again, but I love you anyway.”
Eileen and Terry were apparently closer than I’d realized.
Now that I considered it, I believed it was Terry who’d answered the phone at Eileen’s when I’d called this morning. Eileen was at least ten or more years older than Terry, but they had a lot in common, it seemed. They worked for competing real estate firms, but they were the only single female real estate dealers in Lawrenceton. Well, there was Idella, but she hadn’t been divorced very long.
I’d always assumed (along with everyone else in Lawrenceton) that Terry and Franklin were lovers, at least occasionally, because with Franklin’s reputation it was impossible to believe he could share an office with a woman and not try to seduce her, and it was assumed in Lawrenceton (especially by the male population) that almost all of his seduction attempts were successful. But the way Franklin and Terry were standing, the way they spoke to each other, didn’t add up to an intimate relationship. If I’d had to pick a pair of lovers out of our little group, it would have been Eileen and Terry.
This was an idea I had to adjust to. I had no problem with it. I just had to adjust.
Donnie Greenhouse joined our little circle, and my attention was claimed by his doleful face and his strangely exultant eyes. Somewhere behind those pale compressed lips lurked a grin of triumph. I realized I would rather
