With a wide smile, she said, “Hello, I’m Celeste Autrey, Laura Halston’s sister.”
She had a brisk, snappy voice with a chirpy undertone, like a kindergarten teacher or the X-ray technician who does your mammogram.
Now that I knew who she was, I searched for a resemblance to Laura. She was fair, but not with Laura’s near-albino skin. Her blond hair was neither smooth nor silvery platinum like Laura’s, and her eyebrows were plucked to an almost invisible line. Her nose and chin were longer and more pointed, and her eyes closer together. When Mother Nature had dispensed the gifts of beauty, she had been generous to Laura but extremely frugal with Celeste.
Still with that incongruous smile, she said, “There’s a man in Laura’s house who won’t let me in. I don’t know who gave him authority to be there, but it certainly wasn’t me. He was very rude, said he wasn’t finished yet, and that I couldn’t come in no matter who I was. I took his license number, and I’ll report him to his employer for being so discourteous. He gave me a lecherous look too. I think if he hadn’t been afraid I’d call the cops, he would have tried something with me. But that’s typical, isn’t it? Nobody seems to have any respect for anybody else, they just trample all over you.”
All the time she spoke, her lips were stretched in a frozen smile. For a second, I felt as if I were back in junior high listening to the mean girls slicing and dicing reputations with their razor-sharp little tongues.
I said, “That’s a crime-scene cleaner. He was sent by the Sheriff’s Department. You won’t be able to go in the house until he’s finished. It’s for health reasons.”
“You would think I’d have been consulted before they sent somebody. I don’t want strangers going through my sister’s things. She had some valuable jewelry, just the kind of thing people would take if they’re not supervised. I doubt if they even did an inventory before they sent somebody in there. That’s inexcusable negligence, but I don’t suppose you can ask for anything better in a one-horse town like this.”
Careful not to use words like blood or bacteria, I said, “They won’t go through her things, they’ll just clean the areas that need cleaning.”
“Well, I suppose I can’t do anything about it now, anyway. Do you mind if I come in? I don’t like standing out here on the sidewalk with the neighbors watching.”
There wasn’t a neighbor’s house in sight, but she apparently thought we were under close observation. With her lips still smiling, her eyes gave me an aggrieved look, as if I were personally responsible for her discomfort. She moved toward the Richards’ front door, her high heels making clicking sounds on the walk. No question about it, I had lost control of this situation from the get-go.
I did a fast mental debate and then led Mazie after her. Laura had been a neighbor, and I was sure Hal and Gillis would want me to be hospitable to her sister, even if she had a snotty attitude. I could even halfway tolerate her snarky disposition because I knew she’d suffered a terrible shock. Besides, I wanted to hear what she had to say. I wanted to learn the truth about Laura.
At the door, she stopped and stood aside to let me open it, as hard in her skin as a premature banana.
Before obeying her peremptory direction, I made a feeble attempt at asserting some control. “This isn’t my house. I’m here to walk the dog.”
“The detective told me about you. Your name is Hemingway.”
So much for gaining control. I opened the door and motioned her in ahead of me.
I said, “It’s Dixie Hemingway, and I’m very sorry about your sister.”
Pete stood up from the sofa, and Mazie strained at the leash to go to him. I didn’t blame her. Of the two of us, Pete was the one she could depend on.
I said, “Ms. Autrey, I’d like you to meet Pete Madeira.”
Pete extended one hand to take Mazie’s leash and the other to shake Celeste Autrey’s hand, but she didn’t offer it. She didn’t even seem aware that Pete was there.
With machine-gun precision, she said, “The detective said you had my sister’s cat. I don’t know why she kept that cat. That man gave him to her, I suppose that’s why. Laura never used any judgment when it came to men. Not when she was a girl and not when she was a woman, just jumped from bed to bed, man to man. Never had any morals, not from the beginning. She was my sister, and I hate to speak ill of the dead, but Laura has always been a slut. Never could turn down any man that wanted her, and believe me, there were plenty of bad ones after her. Martin Freuland was the worst, the very worst. I tried to tell her, but Laura never listened to me. Not ever, not about anything. She wanted his money, and she thought she could get it. Now look what it got her.”
Even with that odd smile, her voice held so much acid that Pete’s eyebrows climbed toward his hairline, and Mazie edged closer to his side.
Pete said, “If you two will excuse us, Mazie and I will be on the lanai.”
Celeste dropped into a chair as if she intended to spend the rest of her life there. I perched on the arm of the sofa. I wasn’t sure why she was there, but I knew it wasn’t because she was concerned about Leo.
I said, “You think Martin Freuland killed Laura?”
“Of course he did. He found where she’d gone and he came here and killed her. I warned her. As soon as she told me he was here, I told her to leave, but she laughed at me. Laura thought she could twist every man around her finger. I don’t suppose anybody could blame her for thinking that. She started with our father and moved on to every man she ever met. It was a sickness she had, a weakness of character. I think she was born with it. But she went too far with Martin Freuland.”
I caught an odd note of satisfaction in her voice, as if she were glad Laura had got what was coming to her.
I said, “Laura told me she was married to a surgeon. She said she had gone to work for him as his receptionist and then married him.”
Her laughter spewed like ice cubes falling from a refrigerator’s icemaker. “She actually said that? Oh, she was good! That’s what I did, not Laura. My husband is a surgeon, and I’m the one who was his receptionist. But I’m not surprised she told you that. She was so jealous of me, she stole my life! She tried to steal my husband too, but he saw right through her. Not like most men—she had most men fooled. Men are stupid, you know, they’ll believe anything a woman tells them, and Laura knew all the right ego buttons to push. She was oversexed, I think. Maybe it was hormones or some extra chromosome thing. Whatever it was, she never thought of anything except sex.”
I thought back to our evening together. Two women sharing secrets have plenty of opportunities to talk about sex, but the topic hadn’t come up. Grief does strange things to people, but in Celeste’s case it seemed to have turned her into a vile disloyal gossip.
I said, “I didn’t know Laura well, but she seemed like a nice person to me. I can’t imagine her doing something so bad that it would cause a man to kill her.”
Her head snapped toward me, and in the movement a ray of light from a table lamp caught two thin wet trails on her cheeks. Her lips were still pulled back in a parody of a smile, but her eyes were leaking tears. Strangely, she seemed unaware of them.
“Let me set you straight about Laura. From the day she was born, she seduced every man she met, beginning with our father. I was four when she was born, and I don’t think Daddy ever looked at me again. Oh, she was cute, no doubt about it. I don’t dispute that. Every time we went out in public, strangers would stop us on the street to rave about how pretty she was. Right there in front of me, they’d go on and on about her looks, and she ate it up. I was cute too, plus being smart, but she hogged all the attention. It was a sickness of hers.”