(1T) Real murders

by Harris, Charlaine

  I went home with a plateful of leftovers for supper, as usual, and decided to have a Sunday afternoon and evening of self-pity. Sunday afternoons are good for that. I took off my pretty dress (no matter what Amina says, I do have some pretty and flattering clothes) and put on my nastiest sweats. I stopped short of washing off my makeup and messing up my hair, but I felt that way.

  What I hated to do most was wash windows, so I decided today was the day. The clouds had lightened a little and I no longer expected rain, so I collected all the window washing paraphernalia and did the downstairs, grimly spraying and wiping and then repeating the process. I carried around my step stool, even with its boost barely reaching the top panes. When they were shining clearly, I trudged upstairs with my cleaning rag and spray bottle and began on the guest bedroom. It overlooked the parking lot, so I had a great view of the elderly couple next door, the Crandalls, coming home in their Sunday best. Perhaps they’d been to a married child’s for lunch…they had several children here in town, and I recalled Teentsy Crandall mentioning at least eight grandchildren. Teentsy and her husband, Jed, were laughing together, and he patted her on the shoulder as he held open the gate. No sooner were they inside than Bankston’s blue car entered the lot and he and Melanie emerged holding hands and smoldering at each other. Even to me, and I am not really experienced, it was apparent that they could hardly wait until they got inside.

  As a crowning touch to a feel-sorry-for-yourself afternoon, it could hardly be beat. What did I have to look forward to? I asked myself rhetorically. 60 Minutes and heated-up pot roast.

  I decided I’d take Amina’s advice after all. I’d be there when her mom’s shop opened at 10:00 the next morning. With luck and my charge card, I could be ready for my trip to the city to have lunch with Robin Crusoe.

  Then I decided that there was, after all, something I could do with my evening. I picked up my personal phone book and began dialing.

  Chapter Eight

  By 8:00 they were all there. It was crowded in my apartment, with Jane, Gerald, and Sally given the best seats and the others perched on chairs from the dinette set or sitting on the floor, like the lovebirds, Melanie and Bankston. I hadn’t called Robin, because he had only been to Real Murders one time; one disastrous time. LeMaster Cane was sitting apart from everyone else, speaking to no one, his dark face deliberately blank. Gifford had brought Reynaldo, and they were huddled together with their backs pressed against the wall, looking sullen. Gerald still looked shocked, his pouchy face white and strained. Benjamin Greer was trying to be buddies with Perry Allison, who was openly sneering. Sally was trying not to watch her son, and carrying on a sporadic conversation with Arthur, who looked exhausted. John’s creamy white head was bent toward Jane, who was talking quietly.

  Even under the circumstances, I was sorely tempted to stand and say, “I guess you’re wondering why I called you all here,” but I didn’t quite have the nerve. And after all, they knew why they were here.

  I had assumed John would take the lead, since he was the president of our club. But he was looking at me expectantly, and I realized that it was up to me to start.

  “Friends,” I said loudly, and the little rags of conversation stopped as though they’d been trimmed off with a knife. I paused for a minute, trying to marshall my thoughts, and Gifford said, “Stand up so we can see ya.”

  I saw several nods, so I stood. “First,” I resumed, “I want to tell Gerald we’re all sorry, grieved, about Mamie.” Gerald looked around listlessly, acknowledging the murmur of sympathy with a nod of his head.

  “Then,” I went on, “I think we need to talk about what’s happening to us.” I had everyone’s undivided attention. “I guess you all know about the tampered-with candy sent to me and my mother. I can’t say poisoned, because we don’t know for sure it was; so I can’t be sure the intent was to kill. But I suppose we can assume that.” I looked around to see if anyone would disagree. No one did. “And of course you all also know that Mamie’s purse was put in Melanie’s car.”

  Melanie looked down in embarrassment, her straight dark hair swinging forward to hide her face. Bankston put his arm around her and held her close. “As if Melanie would do such a thing,” he said hotly.

  “Well, we all know that,” I said.

  “Of course,” Jane chimed indignantly.

  “I know,” I went on very, very carefully, “that Sally and Arthur are in a delicate position tonight. Sally might want to report to the paper that we met, and Arthur will have to tell the police that he was here and what happened. I can see that. But I hope that Sally will agree that tonight is off the record.”

  Everyone looked at Sally, who threw back her bronze head and glared at us all. “The police want me not to print that the murder was a copy,” she said in exasperation. “But everyone in Real Murders has been telling other people anyway. I’m losing the best story I ever had. Now you all want me to not be a reporter tonight. It’s like asking Arthur not to be a policeman for a couple of hours.”

  “Then you won’t keep this off the record?” Gifford said unexpectedly. “’Cause if this isn’t off the record, I’m out the door.” He stared at Sally, and smoothed back his long hair.

  “Oh, all right,” Sally said. Her tan eyes snapped as she glared around the room. “But I’m telling you all, this is the last time anything said to me about these murders is off the record!”

  That reduced us all to speechlessness for a moment.

  “Just what did you want us here for, dear?” Jane asked.

  Good question. I took the plunge.

  “It’s probably one of us, right?” I said nervously.

  No one moved. No one turned to look at the person beside him.

  A presence in the room gathered power in that silence. That presence was fear, of course. We were all afraid, or getting there.

  “But it may be an enemy of someone here,” said Arthur finally.

  “So, who has enemies?” I inquired. “I know that sounds naive, but for God’s sake, we have to think, or we’ll be mired in this until someone else dies.”

  “I think you’re overstating this,” said Melanie. She actually had a little social smile on her lips.

  “How, Melanie?” asked Perry suddenly. “How could Roe possibly be overstating this? We all know what’s happened. We sure don’t have to be geniuses to figure out that Mamie’s murder was meant to be like Julia Wallace’s. One of us is nuts. And we all know from reading so much about it, that a psychotic murderer can be as nice as pie on the outside and a screaming loony inside. What about Ted Bundy?”

  “I just meant—” Melanie began uncertainly, “I just meant that maybe, I don’t know, someone we don’t know is doing this, and it really isn’t tied in to us at all. Maybe the presence of a group like ours sparked all this in someone’s mind.”

  “Maybe pigs can fly,” muttered Reynaldo, and Gifford laughed.

  It wasn’t a normal laugh, and the presence was bumping and flopping around the room like a blind thing, ready to grab the first person it lit on. Everyone was getting more and more nervous. I had made a mistake, and we were accomplishing nothing.

  “If any one of you does have an enemy, someone who knows about your membership in Real Murders, someone who, maybe, has been reading your club handouts or reading your books, getting interested in what we study, now is the time for you to think of that person,” I said. “If we can’t come up with someone like that, then this is the last meeting of Real Murders.”

  This brought another silence, that of shocked realization.

  “Of course,” breathed Jane Engle. “This is the end of us.”

  “It may be the end, literally, of more of us if we can’t figure this out,” Sally said bluntly. “Whoever this is, is going to go on. Can any of you see this stopping? It isn’t in the picture. Someone’s having a great time, and I’d put my money on it being someone in this room.”

  “I for one have better things to do than sit in a room with all the
se accusations going around,” Benjamin said. “I’m in politics now, and I would have quit Real Murders anyway. Don’t anyone come trying to kill me, that’s all, because I’ll be waiting for him.”

  He left amid uneasy whispering, and before he was quite out my back door, Gifford said audibly, “Benjamin isn’t worth killing. What an asshole.”

  We were all feeling some permutation on that theme, I imagine.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to everyone. “I thought I could accomplish something. I thought if we were all together, we could remember something that would help solve this horrible murder.”

  Everyone began to shift slightly, preparing to gather up whatever or whoever they’d come with.

  John Queensland exhibited an unexpected sense of drama.

  “The last meeting of Real Murders is now adjourned,” he said formally.

  Chapter Nine

  Ilooked wonderful. Amina’s mom had nodded thoughtfully when I told her I needed something new to wear to lunch in the city, and it had to be something I could wear to work too. Amina hadn’t told me to add that, but Amina wasn’t paying the bill. Mrs. Day flicked the laden hangers with a professional hand. She glanced from blouses to me with narrowed eyes, while I tried not to look as silly (or as hopeful) as I felt.

  She extracted an ivory blouse with dark green vines twining up it, and a dark green bow (“At your age, honey, you don’t need a bright one, too young”) that nestled in the wild waves of my hair with definite femininity. I got khaki-colored pants with a wide belt and extravagant pleats, and shoes, too. I slipped them on to wear away from the store. Mrs. Day clucked over my lipstick (not dark enough), but I stuck by my guns. I hated dark lipstick.

  This was not a showy outfit, but it was a definite change for me. I felt great, and as I drove the mile out of town that got me to the interstate circling the city, I felt quite confident Robin would be impressed.

  I felt less certain when I peeked through the one glass pane in the classroom door. As Amina had predicted, there were lots of cute college “chickies” in Robin’s creative writing workshop. I was willing to bet seven out of nine wrote poetry that dealt with world hunger and bitter endings to relationships. At least five weren’t wearing bras. The four men in the workshop were of the serious and scraggly variety. They probably wrote existential plays. Or poetry about bitter endings to relationships.

  When the rest rose to leave, two of the cute chickies lingered to fascinate Robin. I was smiling, thinking of Amina as I went into the classroom.

  Robin naturally thought the grin was for him. He beamed back. “Glad you found the room okay,” he said, and the young women—I reminded myself they were not girls—turned to stare at me. “Lisa, Kimberly, this is Aurora Teagarden.” Oh, I hadn’t seen that one coming. Robin and his good manners. The brunette looked incredulous, and the streaky blond sniggered before she could stop herself.

  “Are you ready for lunch?” Robin asked, and their faces straightened in a jiffy.

  Thanks, Robin. “Yes, let’s go,” I said clearly, smiling all the while.

  “Sure. Well, I’ll see you in class Wednesday,” he told Lisa and Kimberly. They sauntered out with their armfuls of books, and Robin tossed a couple of anthologies into his briefcase. “Let me just stow this in my office,” he said. His office was right across the hall, and was full of books and papers, but not his, Robin explained. “James Artis was supposed to teach three writers’ workshops and one class on the history of the mystery novel. But when he had a heart attack, he recommended me.”

  “Why’d you take it?” I asked. We strolled across campus companionably, heading for a salad and sandwich restaurant just down the street.

  “I needed a change,” he said. “I was tired of being shut up in a room writing all day. I’d written three books in a row with little or no break in between, I had no exciting ideas for my next book, and teaching just sounded interesting. James recommended Lawrenceton as a place where I wouldn’t have to go broke paying rent, and after I’d been staying in a vacant visitor’s room in one of the men’s dorms for a couple of weeks, I was grateful to find the townhouse.”

  “Are you planning on staying for any length of time?” I asked delicately.

  “That depends on the success of the workshops and the class,” he said, “and James’s health. Even if I leave the university, I might stay in the area. So far I like it here just as well as the place I was living before. I don’t really have ties anywhere anymore. My parents have retired to Florida, so I don’t have a reason to go back to my home town…St. Louis,” he said in answer to my unspoken question.

  He held open the door to the restaurant. It was a ferny place, with waiters and waitresses in matching aprons and blue jeans. Our waiter’s name was Don, and he was happy to serve us today. A local “mellow” rock listening station was being piped in for all us old rockers, who ranged in age from twenty-eight to forty-two. As we were looking at the menus, I decided to start lusting, as per Amina’s instructions. While we ordered, I seemed to get it misdirected, for Don got pretty red in the face and kept trying to look down my blouse. Robin seemed to be receiving the brunt of it though. He rather hesitantly (high noon, public place, had to teach a class that afternoon) took my hand across the table.

  I never knew how to react to that. My thoughts always ran, Wow, he took my hand, does that mean he wants to go to bed with me, or date me more, or what? And I never knew where to look. Into his eyes? Too challenging. At his hand? Pretty stupid. And was I supposed to move my hand to clasp his? Uncomfortable. I never was much good at this.

  Our salads arrived, so we unhitched hands and picked up our forks with some relief. I was wondering whether I should try to keep on lusting while I ate, when I realized James Taylor had trailed to an end and the news was starting. The name of my town always made me pay attention. A neutral woman’s voice was saying, “In other news, Lawrenceton mayoral candidate Morrison Pettigrue was found slain today. Pettigrue, thirty-five, was campaigning as the candidate of the Communist Party. His campaign manager, Benjamin Greer, found Pettigrue dead of stab wounds in the bathtub of his Lawrenceton home. Sheets of paper were floating in the water, but police would not say whether any of those sheets contained a suicide note. Police have no suspects in the slaying, and declined to speculate on whether the killing was, as Greer claims, a political assassination.”

  Our forks poised in midair, Robin and I stared at each other like stricken loonies, and not in lust either.

  “In the tub,” Robin said.

  “With a knife. And the paper clinches it.”

  “Marat,” we said in unison.

  “Poor Benjamin,” I said on my own. He’d rejected us, launched on his own new direction, and gotten kicked in the nuts.

  “Smith would recognize it, right?” Robin asked me after some fruitless speculation on our part.

  “I think so,” I said confidently. “Arthur’s smart and well-read.”

  “Did you ever find out if the chocolates fit a pattern?”

  “It rang a bell with Jane Engle,” I told him, and then had to explain who she was and why her memory was reliable. He’d only met the members of Real Murders once. “She’s looking for the right case.”

  “Do you think she’ll know by tomorrow night?” he asked.

  “Well, I may see her today. Maybe she will have found something by then.”

  “Is there a nice restaurant in Lawrenceton?”

  “Well, there’s the Carriage House.” It was a real carriage house, and required a reservation; the only place in Lawrenceton that had the pretensions to do so. I offered the names of a few more places, but the Carriage House had struck his fancy.

  “This lunch is a washout, we haven’t eaten half our salad,” he pointed out. “Let me take you out tomorrow night, and we’ll have time to talk and eat.”

  “Why, thanks. Okay. The Carriage House is a dressy place,” I added, and wondered if the hint offended him.

  “Thanks for warning me,”
Robin said to my relief. “I’ll walk you back to your car.”

  When I glanced at my watch, I saw he was right. All this walking, lusting, and speculation had used up as much time as I had, and I’d just make it to work on time.

  “If you don’t mind making our reservation, I’ll pick you up tomorrow at 7:00,” Robin said as we reached my car.

  Well, we had another date, though I didn’t think it was strictly a social date. Robin had a professional interest in these murders, I figured, and I was the local who could interpret the scene for him. But he gave me a peck on the cheek as I eased into my car, and I drove back to Lawrenceton singing James Taylor.

  That was much nicer than picturing dark, scowling, acne-scarred Morrison Pettigrue turning the bath water scarlet with his blood.

  Chapter Ten

  “Cordelia Botkin, 1898,” Jane hissed triumphantly.

  She’d come up behind me as I was reshelving books that had been checked in. I was at the end of a stack close to the wall, about to wheel my cart around the end and onto the next row. I drew in a breath down low in my chest, shut my eyes, and prayed to forgive her. Tuesday morning had been going so well.

  “Roe, I’m so sorry! I thought you must have heard me coming.”

  I shook my head. I tried not to lean on the cart so obviously.

  “Cordelia who?” I finally managed to say.

  “Botkin. It’s close enough. It doesn’t actually fit, but it’s close enough. This was so sloppy that I think it was an afterthought, or maybe this was even supposed to come off before Mamie Wright was killed.”

  “You’re probably right, Jane. The box of candy took six days to get here, and it was mailed from the city, so whoever sent it probably thought I’d get it in two or three days.”

  I glanced around to see if anyone was in earshot. Lillian Schmidt, another librarian, was shelving books a few stacks away, but she wasn’t actually within hearing distance.