Three Bedrooms, One Corpse

"MARTIN," I said later in the night, "can you go with me to the realtors' banquet Saturday night?"

"Sure," he said sleepily. He wound a strand of my hair around his finger. "Do you ever wear it up?" he asked.

"Oh, sometimes." I rolled over so it hung around his face like a curtain.

"Could you wear it up Saturday night?"

"I guess so," I said warily.

"I love your ears," he said, and demonstrated that he did.

"In that case," I said, "I will."

A thud on the foot of the bed made Martin jump.

"It's Madeleine," I said hastily.

I could feel him relax all over. "I have to get used to the cat?"

"Yes, I'm afraid so. She's old," I said consolingly. "Well, actually, middle-aged."

"Like me, huh?"

"Oh, yes, you practically have one foot in the grave," I said.

"Ooo--do that again."

So I did.

***

"I have to go out of town late this afternoon," Martin said over toast early the next morning. He had stowed some extra clothes and shaving gear in his car, so he was ready for work.

"Where to?" I tried not to feel dismayed. This relationship was so new and perilous and fragile, and I was so constantly afraid Martin did not feel what I felt, so often aware of the differences in our ages, experiences, goals.

"Back to Chicago, to report on the plant reorganization to the higher-ups. I've been cutting out a lot of deadwood, finding out the weak points in the plant management. That's what I was brought in to do."

"Not a popular job."

"No. I've made some people mad," he said matter-of-factly. "But it's going to make the plant more efficient in the long run."

"How long will you be gone?"

"Just Wednesday and Thursday. I'll fly back in Friday morning. But why don't we have lunch today? Meet me out at the Athletic Club at twelve-thirty, and we'll go from there, if that suits your plans."

"Okay. But please let me take you to lunch this time, my treat."

The look on his face had to be seen to be believed. I burst into giggles.

"You know, that's the first time a woman ever offered to take me out," he said finally. "Other men have told me it's happened to them. But never to me. A first." He tried very hard not to glance around at my apartment, so much humbler than any place he'd be used to living in since he'd climbed the business ladder.

"We don't have to go to McDonald's," I said gently.

"Sweetheart, you don't have a job--"

"Martin, I'm rich." Gosh, that word still gave me a thrill. "Maybe not what you would think of as rich, but still I have plenty of money."

"Inherited?" he asked.

"Uh-huh. From a little old lady who just wanted me to have it."

"No relation?" "None."

"You're just a lucky woman," Martin said, and proceeded to demonstrate just how lucky I was.

"You'll mess up your suit," I said after a moment.

"Damn the suit."

"You told me you have an appointment at eight-thirty."

He released me reluctantly.

"See you later," he said.

I gave him a light kiss on the cheek. "Twelve-thirty," I said.

I had an unpleasant task to face that morning. I had decided I should go see Susu. All the people who wrote in to "Ann Landers" and "Dear Abby" complained that they felt neglected when someone in the family had serious legal problems or went to jail, that people tried to act as if it hadn't happened or stayed away entirely. While Jimmy hadn't exactly been arrested, I didn't want to be a fair-weather friend to Susu, though time and circumstance had certainly created a gulf between us. So I pulled on a bright sweater and black pants, and red boots to go with the sweater. Cheerful, casual--as if it were an everyday catastrophe that had befallen the Hunter family.

It took me a second to recognize Susu when she came to the door. Her veneer was stripped away, and so much of Susu depended on that veneer. Her shoulders sagged, her eyes were red- rimmed, her clothes were--it seemed--deliberately shabby and old. She looked as if she'd reached back in her closet for the things she was saving to pull on when she painted the carport. There were dirty dishes piled up in the sink. Susu was not only genuinely a woman in the midst of a crisis, she was also acting out the part.

"Where are the kids?" I asked cautiously.

"I sent them to my sister in Atlanta." As if she'd put them in a box and taken them down to the post office.

"You're here all by yourself?"

"Not a soul has come by except our minister."

"What's the story on Jimmy?"

"He's down at our lawyer's office right now. They kept him all day yesterday. I think they may arrest him today."

"Susu, you think he did it!"

"What else can I think?"

"Well, I don't think he did it."

"You don't?" She sounded amazed.

"Susu! Of course not!"

"His fingerprints were in the Anderton house."

"So? Hasn't it occurred to you there are several ways they could have gotten there without him having been the one to kill Tonia Lee?"

"Like how, Roe? Just tell me how!"

"Maybe some other realtor showed him over the house. Maybe Tonia Lee did show him the house, and then he left and her date showed up and killed her!"

"Jimmy must have been having an affair with her, Roe. Then she threatened to tell me or the kids and he killed her. He must have just lost his temper."

"I could kick you in the rear, Susu Hunter. You are making up things you can't possibly know. You get yourself into that shower upstairs and get your nice clothes on and put on your makeup and go down to your lawyer's office and you ask him yourself."

I was probably doing exactly the wrong thing. Susu would get down there and Jimmy would say, "Yeah, I did it. And I had been having an affair with her, too."

Saint Aurora, I told myself sardonically.

But Susu was actually doing it. She went up the stairs at a pace a little brisker than her previous shamble. She was patting her hair absently, doing some damage-control evaluation.

I washed the dishes. I left them in the drainer to irritate Susu into putting them away.

She came down in thirty minutes, looking more like herself.

"When is he supposed to have done her in?" I asked.

"Well, Wednesday night."

"But he took your son to karate practice, or something, that evening, didn't he? And he was at work until then, right? After practice, he came right home to supper?" "Yes."

So much for it having been Jimmy's car Donnie had seen.

"So when did he find time to go over to the Anderton house, screw Tonia Lee, and kill her?" I asked.

"That's true," she said slowly. "I guess I was just so quick to believe he did it because he's been acting so funny lately."

"He may be going through a hard time, Susu. He may even need therapy or something. But I really don't think Jimmy ever killed anyone."

"I'd better get down there. Thanks for coming by, Roe. I just kind of gave up."

"Sure," I said, not feeling noble at all.

"Of course, if he did do it, I'll never want to see you again," she said with a tiny smile.

"I know."

She'd never been as dumb as she liked to seem.

I was getting back into my car when suddenly I realized that this was the morning of Tonia's funeral. Another unpleasant task. I looked at my watch. I had thirty minutes. I raced back to the townhouse, dashed up the stairs, tore off my clothes and pulled on my winter black dress, loose and long with a drop waist. No time to bother with a slip; no time to pull on panty hose. I rummaged through the closet and got my black boots. The dress needed a necklace or scarf or something, but there simply wasn't time, and my earrings would just have to do. I yanked on my coat and ran to the car.

The Flaming Sword of God Bible Church was a rectangular cement-block building painted white, with a parking lot of ruts and dust. A cold wind whistled straight through my clothes as I got out of my car. I pulled my coat tighter around me with one hand and held my hair out of my face with the other. I gusted into the little church along with the chilly wind. The parking area had been crowded, and the church was jammed to capacity. I'd seen a television news truck outside, parked in the rear along with the hearse, and the camera crew was in the church. I was willing to bet Donnie was responsible for that. There was no place to sit; every pew was jam-packed with solid Lawrencetonians in their winter coats. I hovered at the back, trying to spot a dark corner. My mother's basilisk glare found me anyway. Of course, she'd arrived on time, and was seated decorously in the middle of the church, along with the other members of the staff of Select Realty. They were all there except Debbie Lincoln, who presumably was manning the phone at the office.

For a moment I looked for Idella, before I remembered.

The coffin was sitting at the front of the church. I was thankful it was closed. It was covered with a pall of red carnations, and the sharp scent of the flowers carried through the chilly air. There was no organ, but a pianist was playing something subdued and doleful, maybe "Nearer, My God, to Thee." The minister entered from a door by the altar. He was a plain young acne-scarred man, with eyebrows and lashes so light they were almost invisible. He clutched a Bible, and he had on a cheap dark suit, white shirt, and black tie. There was a shifting on all the hard pews. I recognized Mrs. Purdy down at the front, wearing navy blue and pearls. Beside her, Donnie's white face stood out over a suit of unrelieved black.

"Let us bow our heads in prayer," the minister intoned. His voice was unexpectedly rich. I did so, uneasily aware that a member of the camera crew was eyeing me with speculation. I began to edge away as unobtrusively as possible. I was afraid I had been recognized. The cameras had caught me before, when the Real Murders deaths had taken place. Surely no one would approach me until the service was over. The cameraman had poked the reporter, a very young woman I recognized faintly from the very few times she'd been on the air. He was whispering in her ear, and she was staring in my direction. My name had not been in the newspaper accounts of Tonia Lee's death, thank God, at least as far as I knew.

I had a hard time concentrating on the sermon, which from the snatches I caught seemed to be a combination of "She is at peace now, whatever her life and last moments were like" and "We must forgive the erring human who has strayed so far from God ... Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord." The congregation seemed to meet this last idea with some resistance at first, but by the time the minister ended, heads were nodding in agreement. I hadn't caught the man's name, but this preacher seemed to be a man of some persuasion.

The whole thing seemed to go by quickly, what with one thing and another. The pallbearers assembled and began to carry out the coffin, with some head-nods and murmurs among them to coordinate the lifting. Everyone rose, and the piano began to mourn again. For the last time, Tonia Lee left a house of the living. The camera crew became busy filming this, and I managed to work my way down the line of pews until I was even with the one where the Select Realty crowd was situated. After allowing enough time for the coffin to be loaded into the hearse, which I'd heard pulling around to the front door, the minister gave a closing prayer, doleful and fervent, and the congregation began to file out to their cars. All I had to do was whisper to Mother that the cameraman had recognized me, and the Select Realty staff closed around me. I managed to get to Mother's car thus camouflaged, and squeezed in with Mother, Eileen, Patty, and Mackie, who had stood out in the Flaming Sword of God Bible Church like a chocolate drop on a wedding cake.

I hadn't planned on going to the cemetery, but it seemed as though I had to.

None of us talked much on the ride to Shady Rest. I was thinking of how soon we'd be doing this again, whenever Idella was buried. Eileen was still washed out and subdued from our experience Sunday. Mackie was always quiet in a social setting, at least in one involving whites. For all I knew, he sang solo in the choir at the African Methodist Episcopal church.

Mother was grim about the news crew. Patty was upset by the funeral itself. "I've never been to one before," she explained, and I wondered if she'd only come to this one because my mother had assumed she would.

I looked around the crowd at the gravesite. Under the green tent, in the front row of folding chairs, sat Mrs. Purdy and Donnie and a thin-lipped woman I recognized as Donnie's older sister. Tonia Lee's aunt and cousins sat behind them.

The chilly wind whipped among the mourners, making the tent awning flap and the red pall ripple. It brought tears to eyes that otherwise wouldn't have shed any. Franklin Farrell, his gray hair for once ruffled, was standing at the back of the crowd, looking a little bored. Sally Allison was there in a neat dark gray suit, her tan eyes flickering over the assemblage. Lillian, my former co-worker, had ended up with her face to the wind and was blinking furiously and shivering. Lynn Liggett Smith, muffled in a heavy brown coat, was scanning the crowd with sharp eyes.

At least the graveside service was short. It helped that Donnie had decided to play the dignified widower rather than opting for histrionics. He contented himself with throwing a single red rose on the coffin. Mrs. Purdy burst into sobs at this romantic gesture, and had to be consoled with patting and hugging during the remainder of the service. I thought perhaps she was the only person there who genuinely regretted the ending of Tonia Lee's life.

On our subdued ride back to the church, where Mother dropped me off by my car, I found myself wondering how Susu and Jimmy were getting along.

I looked at my watch. It was almost time to meet Martin. I looked dreadful. Standing still in the cold had drained all color from my face, and my hair had been whipped around until it looked like a long dust mop. In the rearview mirror, I looked at least five years over my age. I pulled some lipstick out of my purse and put it on. I did have a brush, so I tried to tame my hair. I was marginally more presentable when I got through.

The Athletic Club was a fairly new enterprise in Lawrenceton. Built only a couple of years before, it offered memberships to businesses and individuals. It featured weight rooms, exercise classes, and racquetball courts, plus a sauna and whirlpool. My mother took aerobics classes there. I explained to the dismayingly fit woman at the front desk--she was wearing orange-and-pink-striped spandex and had her hair in a ponytail--that I was meeting Martin Bartell, and she told me he was still playing racquetball on the second court. "You can watch if you climb those stairs," she said helpfully, pointing to the easily visible stairs five feet to her left.

Sure enough, one side of the second-floor hall was faced with Plexiglas that overlooked the racquetball courts. The other side had ordinary doors in an ordinary wall, and from behind one of them I could hear shouted instructions ("Okay! Now BEND!") to an exercise class, backed by the deep-bass beat of rock music. The first racquetball court was empty, but in the second court the only sounds were the rebound of bodies and the ball from the walls, and the grunts of impact. Martin was playing killer racquetball with a man about ten years younger than he, and Martin was playing with a single-minded will and determination that gave me pause. In the five or six minutes they played, I learned a lot about Martin. He was ruthless, as I'd sensed. He was a man who could push the edge of fair play, staying just on the good side. He was a little frightening.

Was it possible this man, this pirate, was content to be an executive of an agricultural company? There was a barely contained ferocity about Martin that was exciting and disturbing. I'd already known he was a competent, forceful, and decisive man, a man who made his mind up quickly and kept it made. Now he seemed more complicated.

The game was over at last, and Martin had apparently defeated the younger man, who was shaking his head ruefully.

They were both pouring with sweat. I heard someone mounting the stairs heavily, then sensed a presence to my left. Someone else was standing there looking down at the racquetball court. When I glanced sideways, I saw a blond man in his forties, burly and dressed in a suit that was rather too tight. He was staring at Martin with a look that alarmed me.

When I looked back down, Martin had spotted me and was signaling that he'd be with me in ten minutes. I nodded and tried to smile. He looked puzzled, and then his eyes moved to the man next to me. Martin's grimace of recognition was irritated, no more. He gave the man a curt nod. But then his face became angry, and when I looked back at the blond man, I found out why. The man, now only three feet away, was looking at me--and not with the hate-filled glare he'd aimed at Martin but with a spiteful speculation.

I was all too aware that the hall was empty. I'd never had anyone look at me like this, and it was horrible. I was considering if the situation warranted screaming--surely the only way the exercise class would ever hear me--when I heard more footsteps thudding up the stairs. Martin, covered with sweat, said easily, "Sam, did you want to talk to me?" He had his racket in his hand, and though his voice was relaxed, he wasn't.

"This your little squeeze, Bartell?" asked the blond man in the sort of voice you use to say insulting things.

Little squeeze?

The man hadn't decided what to do yet; I could tell by the set of his shoulders. If only I could step past him to Martin, we could simply leave. I hoped. But the burly man, who carried maybe twenty extra pounds around the middle, blocked my way. Deliberately. Now Martin's racquetball partner appeared behind Martin, and I vaguely recognized him as one of the Pan-Am Agra executives who'd been with Martin at the steak house Monday. He looked excited and interested; this was like the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

We were all frozen for a minute.

This was absurd.

"Excuse me," I said suddenly, clearly, and very loudly. They all jumped. The blond man halfway turned to look at me, and I just stepped right on by him, close enough to tell he'd been drinking--in the middle of the day, too! noted my puritan streak.

"Martin, we have to go to lunch, I'm starving," I told him, and held his elbow firmly. Because I continued walking, he had to turn and the younger man had to go down the stairs ahead of me. I didn't look at Martin, and I didn't look back over my shoulder.

"I'll wait out here for you to shower," I said at the bottom of the stairs. The blond man had not followed. I waited for Martin and his racquetball opponent to go through the doors marked men's lockers and showers before I seated myself in the safe proximity of the incredible spandex girl at the reception desk.

After a moment the blond man stomped down the stairs and, giving me another long look, left.

"Do you know who that was?" I asked the receptionist. She looked up from her book-- Danielle Steel, I noted--to say, "He's not an individual member, but he used to come here on the Pan-Am Agra membership. I think his name is Sam Ulrich. They took him off the list last week, though."

"So why didn't you tell him he couldn't come in?"

"He went too fast." She shrugged. "Besides, one of the guys in the men's locker room would see he wasn't on the list and tell him to leave if he went in to change."

Security was really tight at the Athletic Club.

I stared blankly at an out-of-date magazine until Martin emerged, dressed for once in casual clothes.

When he held out his hand, I took it and rose, conscious of the receptionist's gaze. She was really making those orange-and-pink stripes ripple for Martin's benefit. But he was not in the mood.

Martin said over his shoulder to her as we left, "I'm going to have to call the manager today. You should have informed me Sam Ulrich was in the club, and I would have escorted him out." I caught one glimpse of her dismayed and beginning-to-be-angry face as the door swung shut.

"Are you all right?" he asked. He put his arms around me. I was kind of glad to lean against him for a moment.

"Yes. It shook me up, though," I admitted. "Who was that man?"

"A very recent ex-employee. Part of the deadwood I was hired to cut out of the company. He took it pretty bad." "Yes, I could tell," I said dryly.

"I'm sorry you had to be there. If you see him again, call me instantly, okay?"

"Do you think he'd hurt me to get at you?" I asked Martin.

"Only if he's a more complete idiot than I think he is."

Not too good an answer, really. But how could Martin tell what the man would do?

"Are you really worried about Sam?" he asked. "Because, if so, I can cancel my trip and stay here."

I thought for a minute. "No, not so much worried about him, though that did shake me up. It's just been a down morning, Martin. I went to see Susu Hunter, and that was depressing. Then I went to Tonia Lee's funeral."

"You told me when it was and I forgot. I was so involved in getting everything assembled for my trip."

"I didn't expect you to come. It was pretty bleak, and very cold."

"Where are we going to lunch?" he asked. "You need something to warm you up."

I was recalled to my hostess duties. "Michelle's, have you been there? They have a buffet lunch with lots of vegetables."

"In my three months here living in the motel, I think I've visited every restaurant in Lawrenceton at least ten times."

"I didn't think about that, Martin. I'll have to cook for you soon."

"Can you cook?"

"I have a limited repertoire," I admitted, "but the food is edible."

"I like to cook once in a while," he said.

We talked about cooking until we got to Michelle's, where we collected our plates and went through the line. I saw Martin was careful in his selections and realized he was weight-and health- conscious as well as an exercise enthusiast. We sat on the same side of the booth, and even in that prosaic setting, his nearness was disturbing.

It had been a harrowing morning, and now Martin was leaving town. Ridiculously, I felt like bursting into tears. I had to get over this. This intensity was terrifying me. I sat with my fork poised in my hand, staring straight ahead, willing myself not to cry.

"Do you want me to ignore this?" Martin murmured.

I nodded vehemently.

So he kept on quietly eating.

At last, I gathered myself together and put some cauliflower in my mouth, making myself chew and swallow.

I was going to have to keep busy while Martin was gone.

After a while I said conversationally, "So you're leaving this afternoon?"

"About five o'clock. I'll have a meeting first thing tomorrow morning, and it may go on all day. Then I meet with another group Thursday. So I'll stay over that night and catch the first flight out Friday morning. Will you cook for me Friday night?"

"Yes," I said, and smiled.

"And Saturday night is the realtors' thing?"

"Yes, the annual banquet. We've booked the Carriage House, so at least the food will be good. There'll be a speaker, and cocktails. Usual stuff."

"You handled that situation at the Athletic Club with great ... aplomb," he said suddenly. "I don't think I've ever said that word out loud. But it's the only one that fits."

"Um. I figured I could rescue myself this time."

"Let me do it next time. My turn, okay?"

"Okay," I said, and laughed.

He took me back to the Athletic Club to pick up my car, and we parted there in the parking lot. He gave me the phone number of his hotel and made me promise to call if I saw Sam Ulrich again. Then we kissed, and he was gone.