Aurora 03 - Three Bedrooms, One Corpse (22 page)

Martin responded cautiously but with interest.

Lizanne told me how pretty my hair looked, and admired my earrings.

“Martin gave them to me,” I said proudly.

She looked worried for a minute, then properly complimented me and drew Bubba’s attention to them.

“Did you show them your ring?” he responded after a token remark.

Lizanne, with her lovely slow smile, held out her hand on which glittered a notable diamond.

“My engagement ring,” she said calmly.

“Oh,” I said. “Oh, Lizanne, it’s beautiful.” I sighed, suddenly realized I was doing so, and tried to make it silent. “When’s the wedding?”

“In the spring,” Lizanne said offhandedly. “We’ve got to sit down with a calendar and pick a date. It depends on the legislature, and of course I have to give notice at my job.”

“You’re quitting work?” I didn’t mean to sound startled, but I was. What on earth would Lizanne do all day?

“Oh, yes. We’re going to be living in my house for a while, until Bubba’s career plans are finalized, but there’s a lot I need to do to it... and I’m bored with my job anyway.”

I hadn’t known boredom was a concept Lizanne understood. Also, Lizanne heard every bit of news in her job, since the power company was a place everyone had to go sooner or later, and she had the most amazing capacity to attract confidences. I would have supposed Bubba would want Lizanne right where she was.

“Congratulations, Lizanne,” I said quietly as Bubba drew Martin off to meet another Lawrenceton mover and shaker.

She bent down to kiss me on the cheek. “Thanks, honey,” she murmured. Then she whispered, “They’re going to take your friend in tomorrow for questioning. For sure. I’m not going to tell you how I know.”

That was why she was so popular. She never told how she knew. And she certainly hadn’t told her fiancé; otherwise, he wouldn’t be sucking up to Martin. He’d be avoiding him as though Martin were a leper.

“Thanks, Lizanne,” I said in almost as low a voice. Suddenly curious, I asked, “Why are you telling me?”

“You helped me the day my parents were killed.”

I nodded, and pressed her hand. I had never been sure Lizanne had been aware of my presence or my identity on that horrible day. She and I gave each other a look and drifted apart, and I strolled over to my mother, my wineglass clutched in a death grip.

“Where’d you get the earrings?” she asked instantly. “They’re gorgeous.”

“Martin gave them to me tonight,” I said numbly, turning my head from side to side so she could get the full effect, all the time wondering what I could do to prevent tomorrow from happening.

“He did?” Mother raised her perfect brows. “But you’ve only known each other such a short time!”

I shrugged.

“Oh, you have got it bad,” she said darkly. “But at least he does, too. They’re very nice, dear.”

“What are you admiring, Mrs. Queensland?” Patty Cloud, in her favorite pink, this time a rose shade, appeared at my mother’s shoulder, trailing a delicate cloud of expensive perfume and a staggeringly handsome date, some man from Atlanta she’d met at a Sierra Club meeting, she managed to let me know. I talked to them for a few minutes of stultifying conversation about white-water canoeing before Martin rescued me.

“How’d you get along with Bubba Sewell?” I murmured as we went to our places around the table.

“He’s on the rise,” Martin said thoughtfully. “I won’t be surprised if he makes U.S. Senate some day.”

“Really?” I tried not to sound skeptical.

“He’s doing everything right. A lawyer, but not a criminal lawyer. Comes from a local family with a clean record, worked himself through law school, practiced for a while before running, going to marry a beautiful wife who can’t possibly offend anyone. She’s planning to quit work and stay at home, producing the right picture, and I bet they have a baby before they’ve been married two years. It’ll look good on the campaign poster, a family picture.”

I tried to think about this, to care about Bubba’s career, all the while turning nonsensical schemes over in my mind. I should tell Martin. Then he could brace himself. Or run. (I staved that thought off.) I should
not
tell Martin, so he would show unfeigned surprise when the police came to Pan-Am Agra. I pictured Martin being taken from his office, his humiliation; at least the people who worked for him would see it as humiliation. I checked the rein on my imagination; surely the police could not arrest him without warning, on the little or no evidence they had. But still.. .

Of all the people I knew, the one best qualified to fend for himself was Martin. Why was I worrying?

I yanked myself out of this anxious silent yammering to introduce Martin to Franklin Farrell and his date, who were seated across from us. Franklin must have been calling his reserve list, the day he’d called me; maybe this woman had been next, in alphabetical order. She was in her late forties, remarkably well groomed and dressed. Physically she was a good match for the immaculate Franklin. She glittered in a hard way, and her practiced conversation aroused my instant distrust. Her name I didn’t catch, but she was full of glib comments that gave no clue to her character. She was playing up to Franklin in a rather desperate way, and I could tell they hadn’t been out together before. He was being courteously cool.

The meal was served, and I talked to Mackie on my left, and Martin on my right, and Franklin and Miss Glitter across the way, though what I said I couldn’t have told you afterward.

Even through the worry, I could tell Martin and I were attracting a certain amount of attention. The tables had been arranged in a large U. Martin and I were seated on the outside of one arm of the U, and as Franklin bent to retrieve his lady friend’s napkin, I realized someone across from us at the far side of the U’s other arm was staring. With some amazement, I recognized my former flame Arthur Smith sitting with his wife, homicide detective Lynn Liggett Smith. Who on earth had invited them? Arthur was looking at me with all too apparent concern, his fair brows drawn together and his fingers drumming on the table. Lynn was eating and listening to Eileen Norris, who had come in with Terry, announcing to the room at large that the single ladies had just decided to come together.

I raised my eyebrows very slightly, and Arthur looked down, flushing red.

I knew then that Lizanne was right. Martin was under suspicion. Perhaps I hadn’t been quite sure Lizanne had gotten the true word before, but I knew it now.

“Are you all right?” Martin asked me.

“I’m all right. I need to—” I started to say “talk to you later,” but what an irritating thing that is to do to someone. “I’m fine,” I said clearly. “Do you like this salad?”

“Too much vinegar in the dressing,” he said critically, but his sharp look told me he knew something was in the wind.

Somehow I did the right things through the meal, but when Bubba got up to make his address about new legislation for the real estate industry, I was able to tune out completely. In fact, it was hard to keep my eyes aimed in the right direction. I gnawed at my problem, poked at my fear, which was like a monster with many faces; I was afraid of Martin’s getting arrested, afraid of losing him, afraid of what it would do to his job and self-esteem to be questioned at the police station; and maybe afraid he was guilty.

My eyes traveled across the faces around the Carriage House’s elaborate wine-and-cream banquet room. All these faces, almost all familiar. One of these people was most probably the person the police really wanted, if I could just make them see it.

The murderer was a realtor, or connected with realty in some way—someone who’d known how to get the key replaced.

The murderer had been able to arrive at the Anderton house without a car and had been part of the scenery while doing so—someone who ordinarily walked or jogged or biked in the evening.

The murderer had to be someone Idella Yates trusted, someone she’d been willing to risk a lot for, since it seemed pretty certain Idella had replaced the key.

I looked at Mackie’s dark neck as he turned his face politely to the speaker. His date beyond him was picking at her nails, though she, too, was keeping a courteous face turned in the right direction. Across the room, Eileen was dabbing her lips with her napkin. Beside her, Terry, in a dark blue dress with big fake diamond buttons, was listening to Bubba with a skeptical lift to one corner of her mouth. Mark Russell and his wife were sitting with the practiced posture of those who listen to many speakers; his partner, Jamie Dietrich, a lanky man with a huge Adam’s apple, stifled a yawn. Patty was all attention, though her date was doing something surreptitious under the tablecloth that brought a tiny secret smile to her face. Even young Debbie Lincoln, more beads woven into her hair than I would have thought possible, was turned to Bubba and trying to pay attention, though her date was openly, elaborately bored. Conspicuously alone, Donnie Greenhouse had deliberately left an empty chair beside him to remind people that he was a brand-new widower. Somehow I’d known he wouldn’t miss an opportunity to star in a public drama, even if he had to point it out himself.

Close to Lizanne, my mother inclined her head regally to one side, her resemblance to Lauren Bacall especially pronounced. John was resting his arm on the back of her chair. John looked ready to go home. Across the table from Martin, Miss Glitter appeared riveted. Franklin was listening with slightly drawn mouth, his long, thin hands arranging and rearranging his cloth napkin.

He pleated it, unpleated it. I returned my eyes to Mackie’s neck, prepared to plunge back into my fears and my dreadful burden of love. Then my attention shot back to Franklin. He pleated, unpleated. Then he folded the napkin into neat triangles, triangles that got smaller and smaller but never less neat. His long white fingers smoothed the napkin out. Then he pleated it. Then again, the triangles. Meticulously neat triangles. Where had I—?

His eyes began to turn toward me, and I instantly looked forward, my heart thumping.

Through no great feat of ratiocination, I, Aurora Teagarden, had solved a mystery.

Franklin Farrell was the murderer.

He was folding and refolding his napkin in the same curious way Tonia Lee’s clothing had been treated. It was as unmistakable as a fingerprint.

Franklin Farrell.

I COULDN’T jump up and scream and point to him. I had to force myself back down in my seat. I gripped my hands together, willing them to be still.

Charming, handsome Franklin, who’d had so many conquests they must have become boring and routine by now. Franklin, with a house we all entered only once a year for his annual party, a house that could be full of things stolen from homes he was showing.

Franklin could have had Tonia Lee just by crooking his finger, and his legendary charm could have persuaded lonely and shy Idella to do something she must have known was incredibly suspicious. How had he persuaded her to return the key to the key board, or to give him a ride from Greenhouse Realty to his house? He must have told her that he had arrived at the Anderton house to find Tonia Lee already dead—though what explanation he could have given her for going to the Anderton house at all I couldn’t imagine.

Maybe he’d told Idella that putting back the key would lessen the chances of his being suspected of something he hadn’t done, but Idella couldn’t stand up to the heavy secret she carried, the guilt she felt. I remembered her crying in the bathroom of Beef ‘N More, the day of her death. And Franklin, of course, could tell Idella was cracking. Even if she couldn’t face the fact that Franklin was almost certainly the murderer, she would feel terribly conscious that she had lied to the police. And to her employer.

“Roe? Roe? Are you all right?”

“What?” I jumped.

Martin was leaning toward me, his incredible light brown eyes full of concern. His innocent light brown eyes, I thought with a swelling heart.

“Um, as a matter of fact, Martin, I don’t feel too well.” People were getting up, chatting.

Time to go.

“Let’s get you home, then.”

Martin retrieved our coats while I sat at the table, afraid to look up for fear I’d meet Franklin’s eyes. He and his date were still sitting across from me.

“Let’s leave, honey,” she was saying.

“Want to stop at The Pub for a drink?” he asked, his voice warm and inviting as a crackling fire on a freezing night.

“Sure. Then we’ll see after that,” she said teasingly.

There wouldn’t be much to see, I thought. It was already a case of my-place-or-yours. And, my mind raced, I was willing to bet it would be hers. Franklin probably still had the vases from the Anderton place in his house. Somewhere. He’d be afraid to sell them in Atlanta, surely, with the case still so fresh. On the other hand, I argued with myself, keeping the vases in his house would be so dangerous! His car would be an even riskier place, though . ..

I slipped into my coat without even thinking about Martin, who was holding it for me.

How could I get the police to search Franklin’s house?

Martin’s arm was around me. “Are you going to make it to the car?” he asked, concerned.

“Martin, I’m thinking,” I told him. He looked at me oddly.

“Honey, I’m going to get the car. I’m worried about you. I’ll bring it around as quickly as I can.”

I nodded absently, and was only vaguely aware when he left.

“It was so nice to meet you,” a voice at my elbow said with routine courtesy.