Three Bedrooms, One Corpse

I HAD AGREED to meet Eileen at the office, and it was close enough to the time for me to head that way. There were several cars parked outside; Sunday was often a busy day at Select Realty.

The first person I saw was Idella, who said "Hi, Roe!" as brightly as if I hadn't seen her boo- hooing in the women's room at a restaurant not forty-five minutes before.

"Hello, Idella," I said obligingly.

"I just got an offer on your house on Honor. Mrs. Kaye is offering three thousand less than your asking price, plus she wants the microwave and the appliances to stay."

We went to Idella's little office, decorated exclusively with pictures of her two children, together and separate, the boy about ten and very heavyset, the girl perhaps seven and thin, with lank blond hair. I sat in one of her client chairs and considered for a moment.

"Tell her--her offer needs to be up by a thousand, and she can have everything but the washer and dryer." Mine came with the townhouse, and I'd need a set when I moved.

"What about the freezer in the carport toolshed?" Idella asked. "It's not spelled out here whether she is including that under appliances or not."

"I don't really care that much about the freezer. If she wants it, she can have it."

"Okay. I'll take your counteroffer over to her aunt's house right now."

Idella was obviously determined not to refer to the scene at Beef 'N More. Of course, I wanted to know what it was about, but in all decency I would have to wait until she felt like confiding in me.

"I'm really pleased about this offer," I told her, and she smiled.

"It was an easy sell, the right person at the right time," she said dismissively. "She needs a small decent house in good shape, you have a small decent house in good shape; the deadend street location and the price are right."

The phone rang while Idella gathered papers. She picked up with one hand while her other kept busy. "Idella Yates speaking," she said pleasantly. The first words of her caller changed Idella's demeanor dramatically. Her free hand stilled, she sat up straighter, the smile vanished from her face. "I'll have to talk later," she said swiftly. "Yes, I have to see you ... well ..." She closed her eyes in thought. "Okay," she said finally. She hung up and sat very still for a moment. The cheer, the bustle, had seeped right out of her. I didn't know whether to say anything or not, so I settled for looking concerned, as I certainly was.

Idella decided to stonewall. "I think I've got everything here," she said in a dreadful simulation of her previous cheerful efficiency.

"If you need help, you know you can count on me and my mother," I told her, and left her office for Eileen's.

Just as Eileen got up to go, she received an unexpected call from an out-of-town client who'd decided to make an offer on a house he'd seen the week before. The house was listed with Today's Homes, but the client had been referred to Eileen personally, so she had shown it along with a lot of Select Realty listings. It took Eileen some time to hammer out the client's offer, assure the client that she'd call Today's Homes that very second, then hang up and immediately lift the phone to dial. I had fished my book out of my purse several minutes before and was reading contentedly. "Franklin? Eileen. Listen, that Mr. and Mrs. McCann I showed the Nordstrom house to last week, they just called ... Yep, they want to make an offer ... I know, I know, but here it is ..." As Eileen relayed the offer to Franklin, I became immersed in my book. I was almost through with the Catherine Aird.

Finally Eileen was ready to set out. I told her the good news about the probable sale of my own house as we got into her car.

"Does Idella seem okay to you?" I asked cautiously.

"Lately, no."

"I think something's wrong."

"What? Anything we can do something about?"

"Well--no."

"If we don't know, and she doesn't ask for help, seems like we aren't wanted," Eileen said, giving me a straight look.

I nodded glumly.

At the first house, the owners were on their way out as we pulled up to the curb. Eileen had cleared the showing with them first, of course, and she went up to talk to them while I surveyed the yard, which badly needed raking.

"How are the two of you?" Eileen said in her booming voice. "Ben, you ready to go out with me yet?"

"The minute Leda lets me off the rope," the man answered with equally heavy good humor. "You better get out your dancing shoes."

"Haven't you found Mr. Right yet, Eileen?" the woman asked.

"No, honey, I still haven't found anyone who's man enough for me!"

They chuckled their way through some more faintly bawdy dialogue, and then the couple pulled off in their car while Eileen unlocked the front door.

"What?" Eileen said sharply.

I hadn't known anything was showing on my face.

"Why do you do that, Eileen?" I asked as neutrally as I could. "Is that really you?"

"No, of course not," she said crisply. "But how many houses am I going to sell in this small town if Terry and I go out in public holding hands, Roe? How would we make a living here? It's a bit easier for Terry in some ways ... Franklin actually wanted someone working for him who was immune to his charm. He didn't want to fall into bedding an employee. But still, if everyone knew ... and the people who do know have to be able to pretend not to."

I could see her point, though it was depressing.

"So here is the Mays' house," Eileen said, resuming her realtor's mantle with a warning rattle. "We have--three bedrooms, two baths, a family room, a small formal living room ... mmmm ... a walk- in closet off the master bedroom ..."

And we strolled through the Mays' house, which was dark and gloomy, even in the kitchen. I could tell within two minutes I would never buy this house, but this seemed to be a day for pretense. I was pretending I might, Eileen was pretending the preceding conversation hadn't taken place. Idella had been pretending she wasn't upset by the phone call in her office.

My lack of sleep began to catch up with me by the hall bathroom, which I viewed dutifully, opening the linen closet and yawning into it, noting the hideous towels the Mays had wisely put away.

"Are you with me today, Roe?"

"What? Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't sleep too well last night."

"Do you even want to go see this other house?"

"Yes, I promise I'll pay attention. I just don't like this one, Eileen."

"Just say so. There's no point in our spending time in a house you don't want."

I nodded obediently.

We were short on conversation and long on silence as we drove to our next destination. Lost in daydreams, I barely noticed when Eileen began to leave town.

Just a mile east out of Lawrenceton, we came to a house almost in the middle of a field. It had a long gravel driveway. It was a two-story brick house, and the brick had been painted white to set off the green shutters and a green front door. There was a screened-in porch. The second story was smaller than the first. There was a separate wide two-car garage to the left rear, with a covered walk from a door in the side of the garage to the house. There was a second story to the garage, with a flight of stairs also covered, leading up to it. The sun was beginning to set over the fields. It was much later than I'd thought.

"Eileen," I said in amazement, "isn't this--"

"The Julius house," she finished.

"It's for sale?"

"Has been for years."

"And you're showing it to me?"

She smiled. "You might like it."

I took a deep breath and got out of the car. The fields around the house were bare for the winter, and the yard was bleached and dead. The huge evergreen bushes that lined the property were still deep green, and the holly around the foundation needed trimming.

"The heirs have kept it going all this time," I said in amazement.

"Just one heir. Mrs. Julius's mother. She wanted to turn the electricity off, of course, but the house would just have rotted. There's been surprisingly little vandalism, for the reputation it has."

"Well. Let's go in."

This was turning out to be an unexpectedly interesting day. Eileen led the way, keys in hand, up the four front steps with their wrought-iron railing painted black, badly needing a touch-up now. We went in the screen door and crossed the porch to the front door.

"How old is it, Eileen?"

"Forty years," she said. "At least. But before the Juliuses disappeared, they had the whole house rewired ... they had a new roof put on ... a new furnace installed. That was ... let me check the sheet... yes, six years ago."

"And they had the extra story put on the garage?"

"Yes, it was a mother-in-law apartment. Mrs. Julius's mother lived there. But of course you remember."

The disappearance of the Julius family had been the sensation of the decade in Lawrenceton. Though they had some family in town, few other people had had a chance to get to know them, so almost everyone had been able to enjoy the unmitigated thrill of the mystery and drama of their vanishing. T. C. and Hope Julius, both in their early forties, and Charity Julius, fifteen, had been gone when Mrs. Julius's mother came over for breakfast, as was her invariable habit, one Saturday morning. After calling for a while, the older woman had searched through the house. After she'd waited uneasily for an hour, and finally checked to see that their vehicles were still there, she'd called the police. Who of course had at first been skeptical.

But as the day progressed, and the family car and pickup truck remained parked in the garage, and no member of the Julius family called or returned, the police became as uneasy as Mrs. Julius's mother. The family hadn't gone bike riding, or hiking, hadn't accepted an invitation from another family.

They never came back, and no one ever found them.

Eileen pushed open the front door, and I stepped in.

I don't know what I'd expected, but there was nothing eerie about the house. The cold sunshine poured through the windows, and instead of sensing ghostly presences of the unfound Julius family, I felt peace.

"There's one bedroom downstairs," Eileen read, "and two upstairs, plus a room up there used for an office or a sewing room ... of course, that could be a bedroom, too. And there's an attic, with a boarded floor. Very small. Access through a trapdoor in the upstairs hall."

We were in the family room, a large room with many windows. The pale carpet smelled mildewy. The double doors into the dining room were glass-paned. The dining room had a wood floor and a built-in hutch and a big window with a view of the side yard and the garage. After that came the kitchen, which had an eat-in area and many, many cabinets. Lots of counter space. The linoleum was a sort of burnished orange, and the wallpaper was cream with a tiny pattern of the same color. The kitchen curtains were cream with a ruffle of the burnished orange. There was a walk- in pantry that had apparently been converted into a washer-dryer closet.

I loved it.

The downstairs bathroom needed work. New tile, recaulking, a new mirror.

The downstairs bedroom would make a great library.

The stairs were steep but not terrifying. The banister seemed quite solid.

The largest bedroom upstairs was very nice. I didn't like the wallpaper too much, but that was easily changed. Again, the upstairs bath, which opened into the hall, needed some work. The other bedroom needed painting. The small room, usable as a storeroom or sewing room, also needed painting.

I could do that. Or better yet, I could have it done.

"You look pretty happy," Eileen observed.

I had forgotten anyone else was there.

"You are actually considering buying this house," she said slowly.

"It's a wonderful house," I said in a daze.

"A little isolated."

"Quiet."

"A little desolate."

"Peaceful."

"Hmmm. Well, as far as price goes, it's a bargain ... and of course, there's the little apartment over the garage that you can rent to whomever ... that'll help with the isolation, too."

"Let's see the apartment."

So down the stairs and out the kitchen door we trooped. The flight of stairs up to the little second floor seemed sturdy enough; of course, this addition was only six years old. I followed Eileen up, and she unlocked the glass-paned door.

It was really one large open area, the only sealed-off part being a bathroom at one end. The bathroom had a shower, no tub. The kitchen was just enough for one person to heat up a few things from time to time; the mother had gone over to the house for most of her meals. Some nice open shelves had been built in, and there were two closets. There was a window air conditioner, but no hint of how it had been heated.

"A kerosene space heater is my guess," Eileen said. "There shouldn't be any problem in an area this size."

Perhaps I could rent this to a student at Lawrenceton's little Bible college or to a single schoolteacher. Someone quiet and respectable.

"I really like this," I told Eileen unnecessarily.

"I can tell."

"But I need to think about it, of course."

"Of course."

"I can afford it, and the repairs, and pay for it outright. But it is stuck out of town, and I need to decide if that would make me nervous. On the other hand, I can practically see Mother's house from here. And if you could find out who owns this field, I'd appreciate it. I wouldn't want to buy out here and then discover someone was putting up a discount mall. Or a chicken farm."

Eileen scribbled a note to herself.

I told myself silently that if any of these variables didn't work out, I would hire an architect and have a house very similar to this one built from scratch.

"And I'll keep looking, too," I told Eileen. "I just don't want to see anything cramped."

"Okay, you're the boss," Eileen said agreeably. It had grown dark enough for her to switch on the car lights as she turned around on the apron to the side of the garage to negotiate the long driveway.

We went back to town in silence, Eileen obviously trying not to give me some good advice, I in deep thought. I really liked that house.

"Wait a minute," Eileen said, her voice sharp.

I snapped out of my reverie.

"Look, that's Idella's car. But she's not showing the Westley house today. My God, look at the time! I'm showing it in an hour to a couple who work different shifts all week. I'm going to need that key."

Eileen was seriously miffed. If I'd been just any client, she would have waited until she got me back to the office and then returned to or called the listing, but since I was part of the realtor family, she felt free to vent in front of me. Eileen pulled into the driveway and swung out of her car with practiced ease. I got out, too. Maybe Idella would know if Emily Kaye had already responded to my counteroffer.

There was no client car parked by Idella's.

"The Westleys moved last week," Eileen said, and opened the front door without knocking. "Idella!" she hooted. "I'm going to need this key in an hour, woman!"

Nothing. All within was dark. We went in slowly.

For once, Eileen seemed disconcerted.

Eileen called again, but with less expectation that she would be answered. The blinds and curtains were all open, letting in some light from the streetlamp one lot away. Eileen tried to flip on a light, but the electricity had been turned off.

The house was very cold, and I pulled my coat tighter around me.

"We should leave and call the police," I said finally.

"What if she's hurt?"

"Oh, Eileen! You know ..." I couldn't finish the sentence. "All right," I said, bowing to the inevitable. "Do you have a flashlight in your car?"

"Yes, I do. I don't know where my head is!" Eileen exclaimed, thoroughly angry with herself. She fetched the flashlight and swept its broad beam around the family room. Nothing but dust on the carpet. I followed her and her flashlight into the kitchen . . . nothing there. So, back past the front door and down the hall to the bedrooms. Nothing in the first one to the left. Nothing in the bathroom. By now, tears were running down Eileen's face and I could actually hear her teeth chattering.

Nothing in the second bedroom.

Nothing in the hall linen closet.

Idella was in the last bedroom. The flashlight caught her pale hair, and the beam reluctantly went back to her and stayed.

She was crumpled in a corner like a discarded bedspread. Tonia Lee had been arranged, but Idella had just been dumped. No living person could have been lying that way.

I made myself step forward and touch Idella's wrist. It was faintly warm. There was no pulse. I held my hand in front of her nostrils. No breath. I touched the base of her thin neck. Nothing.

You never know about people. I heard a slithery sound, and the flashlight beam played wildly over the walls as tough Eileen Norris slid to the floor in a dead faint.

Of course, there wasn't a phone in the Westley house. I had the sudden feeling I was on an island in the middle of a populous stream. I hated to leave Eileen alone in the dark and silence with Idella's corpse, but I had to get help. There was a car at the house to the right of the Westleys', the helpful flashlight revealed, and I knocked on the screen door.

A toddler answered, in a red-checked shirt and overalls. I couldn't tell if it was a little boy or a little girl. "Could I speak to your mommy?" I said. The child nodded and left, and after a moment a young woman with a towel around her hair came to the door.

"I'm sorry, I've told Jeffrey not to answer the door, but if I don't hear the doorbell in time, he zooms to it," she said, making it clear she thought that very clever of Jeffrey. "Can I help you?"

"I'm Aurora Teagarden," I began, and her face twitched before the polite lines reasserted themselves. "I need you to call the police for me. There's been a--an accident next door at the Westley house."

"You're really serious," she said doubtfully. "No one should be in that house, it's for sale."

"I promise you I am serious. Please call the police."

"All right, I will. Are you okay, yourself?" she asked, terrified I would ask to be let into her home.

"I'm fine. I'll go back over there now if you'll call." I had the distinct feeling that she would much rather have gone back to washing her hair and forgotten that I'd knocked.

"I'll call right now," she promised with sudden resolution.

So I went back over to the cold black house next door. Eileen was stirring around but still out of it. I gripped the flashlight defensively as I crouched next to her on the nasty brown carpet, and stared dully at a dead beetle while I waited for the police.

At least Jack Burns didn't show up. I would rather have been in a locked room with a pit bull than have faced Sergeant Burns at that moment. He had regarded me with baleful mistrust ever since we'd come across each other during the Real Murders investigation. He seemed to think I was the Calamity Jane of Lawrenceton, that death followed me like a bad smell. If I'd been Jonah, he'd have thrown me to the whale without a qualm.

Lynn Liggett Smith seemed to take my presence as a matter of course. That was almost as disturbing.

Eileen came out of her faint, we were allowed to tell the little we knew, and then I drove a shaken Eileen back to the office. My mother had already been called by the police, so she had waited there. Eileen went to Mother's office in a wobbly parody of her usual brisk trot. There were lights on down the hall. I slid into the client chair in Mackie Knight's office. With considerable astonishment, Mackie put down the paperwork he was doing. "What's happening, Roe?"

"Have you been here all afternoon, Mackie? Till now?" I saw by the clock on the office wall that it was already seven.

"No. I just came back after spending all afternoon at church and eating supper at home with my folks. Just as my mom put her lemon meringue pie in front of me, I remembered that I didn't have all the papers ready for the Feiffer closing tomorrow morning." There was lemon meringue smeared on a Styrofoam plate and a used plastic fork on a corner of his desk.

"Was anyone else at your folks'?"

"Yeah, my minister. What's this about?"

"Idella was just killed."

"Oh, no." Mackie looked sick. "Where?"

"At the empty Westley house."

"How?"

"I don't know." I hadn't seen a weapon, but Idella's coat had been covering her throat. The poor light hadn't been reliable, but I'd thought her face had had the same funny tone as Tonia Lee's. "Maybe strangled."

"The poor woman. Who's told her kids?"

"I guess the police. Or maybe whoever she left the kids with while she worked."

"And I couldn't have done it!" Mackie said, the penny finally dropping. "I've been with someone every blessed minute, except driving time from my folks' back here."

"Maybe this wasn't planned as well as Tonia Lee's murder."

"You think Tonia Lee was killed at the time she was killed and the place she was killed because there would be a lot of available suspects."

"Sure, don't you?"

"I hadn't thought about it that way," he said slowly, "but it makes good sense. Poor Idella." Mackie shook his head in disbelief. "She sure had been acting funny lately, almost apologetic, every time I talked to her."

"She knew you didn't kill Tonia Lee, Mackie. I think she knew who did, or suspected."

We both sat and thought for a while, and then my mother came to the door and asked gently if she could speak to me for a moment.

"Mackie," she said as I got up to leave his office, "you went to church after Idella left the office? Or before?"

"Before. She was still in her office when I walked out the door. I said good-bye to her."

"Oh, thank God. You're in the clear, then."

"Yes, I think I am." Mackie was having a hard time with conflicting emotions.

Lynn was waiting in Mother's office.

"I hear you had an interesting conversation with Idella at Beef 'N More," she said.

I thought Lynn was bluffing, but I'd intended telling her what Idella had said anyway, vague though it was. The only person who could have told Lynn that I'd talked to Idella at lunch was Sally Allison, and Sally didn't know what Idella had said to me. No, I wasn't being fair to Sally ... there was Terry Sternholtz.

I told Lynn all about Idella's and my little bathroom t?te-?-t?te. We went over and over it while my mother listened or worked quietly. I wondered why I was sitting here instead of going down to the police station. I told Lynn, frontward and backward and upside down, every little nuance of Idella's apparent fight with Donnie Greenhouse, her flight to the women's room, my halfhearted attempt to help her, her few comments to me, and her departure from the restaurant. My next glimpse of her at the office, my brief conversation with her here, the exchange with an unknown person she'd had over the telephone, and her statement that she was going to go to Emily Kaye with my counteroffer. Then how I'd found her at the empty house.

By the time Lynn was satisfied she'd gotten everything out of me she could get, I was heartily sorry I'd spoken to Idella at the restaurant. Sometimes good impulses backfire.

"Go talk to Donnie Greenhouse," I said irritably. "He was the one who upset her, not me."

"Oh, we will," Lynn assured me. "In fact, someone's talking to him right now."

But Donnie Greenhouse, who'd let Tonia Lee stomp on him for so long, would not yield an inch to the police. He called my mother while I was still in her office and told her triumphantly he hadn't given Paul Allison the time of day.

"He told Paul that no matter what Roe Teagarden said Idella told her, he and Idella had discussed nothing more than business and Tonia Lee's funeral." My mother's famous eyebrows were arched at their most skeptical.

"He might as well wear a sign that says `Please Kill Me. I Know Too Much,'" I said.

"Donnie doesn't have enough sense to come in out of the rain, but I didn't think he was this dumb," Mother said. "And why he's doing it, instead of telling the police all he knows, I cannot fathom."

"He wants to avenge Tonia Lee himself?"

"God knows why. Everyone knows she made his life hell on wheels."

"Maybe he always loved her." Mother and I pondered that separately.

"I personally don't think a rational person with a sense of self-preservation could continue to love under such a stream of abuse as that," my mother said.

I wondered if she was right. "So Donnie's not rational and has no sense of self-preservation," I said. "And what about Idella? Evidently the call she got in her office was from someone she suspected might be the killer. And yet she apparently agreed to meet this person in an empty house. Doesn't that sound like she loved whoever it was?"

"I just don't love that way," said Mother finally. "I loved your father until he was unfaithful." This was the first time she'd ever said one word to me about her marriage with my father. "I loved him, in my opinion, very deeply. But when he hurt me so much, and things weren't going well otherwise, it just killed the love. How can you keep on loving when someone lies to you?" She really could not understand it.

I didn't know, with my limited experience, if my mother just had an extraordinarily strong sense of self-preservation, or if the world was full of irrational people.

"It seems from what I've read, and observed," I said hesitantly, "that lots of people aren't that way. They keep on loving, no matter what the hurt or cost."

"No self-respect. That's what I believe," my mother said crisply. She stared out her window for a moment, at the bare branches of the oak tree outside, which made a bleak abstract pattern against the gray sky. "Poor Idella," she said, and a tear oozed down her cheek. "She was worth ten Tonia Lees, and she had children. She'd done so much for herself since her husband left her. I'd gotten pretty fond of her without ever getting really close to her." Mother looked back at me. Our eyes met. "She must have been so frightened." Then she shook herself. "I'll have Eileen call Emily Kaye to find out if Idella'd actually gotten over there with your counteroffer, honey. The police should let us have the papers in her car, soon. We can get on with the house sale, with Eileen or me taking Idella's part. I'll let you know."

I hadn't been worried about it at all. "Thanks," I said, trying to look relieved. "I think I'll go home now." But I turned at her office door to say, "You know, I'll bet money that Donnie doesn't really know anything at all. If he does get killed, it'll be over absolutely nothing."

I was really glad I hadn't agreed to meet Martin tonight. I needed a little time to get over this horror. Driving home, I felt the impulse to call him nonetheless. But I shook my head. No telling what he was doing. Still trying to inspire Pan-Am Agra executives, eating supper with a client, working in his motel room on important papers. I hated him to find out how lonely I was, so soon.

I kept thinking about Idella, her children, her death from love.