“I think I have everything I need here,” Susan said brightly-and honestly.
Kathleen stood up immediately. “Then we’d better be going.”
“But I have other properties that you might be interested in, and we could go see this one any time. I just have to call the owners first.” The agent reached out and almost grabbed Kathleen’s arm in her attempt to forestall their escape.
“If I could take a copy of this to show my husband and then get back to you…,” Kathleen said.
“That would be wonderful. And I have your phone number. If you don’t call me in a day or two, I’ll just call you.”
Susan realized the smile on Kathleen’s face was a bit strained. “We really have to go,” she explained and pushed her friend out the door in front of her. “Thank you for all your help,” she called back over her shoulder. “You’ll never guess what I found,” she whispered when she was sure they could no longer be overheard.
“It better be worth being put on a list of potential buyers of a seven-million-dollar estate,” Kathleen whispered back,
“Seven million!” Susan was momentarily sidetracked. “Do you think you qualify for an adjustable rate mortgage?” she added, grinning.
EIGHTEEN
SUSAN HAD PLANNED TO GO OVER THE TWO LISTS-THE ONE she had been given and the one she had stolen-first thing in the morning. And she did, although “first thing” in this case described 3 AM rather than her usual wake-up time four hours later. She had arrived home to find a nervous Shannon, two babies with what experience suggested was garden-variety colic, Chrissy frantic with worry that the new pediatrician didn’t know what he was talking about, and Jed and Stephen enjoying a pepperoni, mushroom, spinach, and extra garlic pizza-which didn’t, as she had expected, keep either man from sleeping right through the night.
One baby crying is difficult to ignore, two even more difficult, but Susan had been making an effort to do so when there was a knock on the bedroom door. Jed’s response was to move one leg a quarter of an inch closer to the edge of the bed and ratchet up the volume on his snoring. Susan got up, grabbed the robe she had left on a nearby chair and, gently nudging Clue out of her path, left the room, closing the door behind her. The hallway was deserted and she hurried to the nursery, praying nothing was seriously wrong.
Nothing, she discovered, was wrong with Ethan or Rosie. Both twins were drifting off to sleep, bottles of formula in their mouths. As Susan had planned, the matching rocking chairs were being used by Shannon and Chrissy. But nothing else in the room looked as she had planned it. The wastebasket was on its side, tissues spilling onto the floor. The diaper pail lay nearby; fortunately Susan had purchased one with a tight top. Receiving blankets were tossed around the room as though someone had been playing a game with them. Dirty baby clothing overflowed the pretty wicker hamper and CDs had not been returned to their spots on the shelves. In fact, Susan wondered if someone had misplaced all the CDs as the music coming from the high-tech speakers sounded more appropriate to a college dorm room than a baby nursery. “Someone knocked on our door. Do you need me for something?” she asked.
“We thought we needed someone to help heat more formula, but I think they’re going to sleep now.” Shannon could hardly be heard over the base beat of the music.
“Then I’ll go back to bed,” Susan said and started to do just that.
“Mom.”
Susan, recognized the exhaustion in her daughter’s voice and turned around at once. “What?”
“I have a sore throat.”
Susan started into the room and would have been at her daughter’s side immediately if she hadn’t stepped on a large stuffed animal. “Oh… What in the world is this?” she asked, bending down and picking up a large black-and-white stuffed animal. “Some sort of zebra?”
“Oh, Mother, it’s not a zebra! It’s a polar bear! Those aren’t stripes-they’re letters. If Ethan and Rosie are exposed to letters right from the start, they’re more likely to read at an early age.”
“Couldn’t you just wrap them up in yesterday’s New York Times?” Susan muttered, feeling a bit cranky. It was, she thought, awfully late for educational lectures. But back to the business at hand. “If you’re not feeling well, I can give Rosie the last of the bottle and you can go back to bed.”
“Ethan. Not Rosie. And I don’t want you to take care of him. I want you to bring me a cup of peppermint tea. You know the kind you used to make me when I didn’t feel well?” Chrissy added plaintively.
Susan had no idea whether that brand of peppermint tea-which she herself thought absolutely disgusting-was still made, but she’d grow the herb and dry it herself before she refused this request. “I’ll just run down to the kitchen and see what I can find. Would you like some, Shannon?”
“Once the babies are settled, I’ll make myself some tea. Thank you, though. “
Shannon sounded even more exhausted than her daughter, and Susan went down to the kitchen determined to find a snack as well as those tea bags.
Fifteen minutes later she was back in the nursery carrying a tray loaded with a plate of blondies, mugs of tea, cream, sugar, and a hastily assembled bowl of fruit salad. Everyone in the room was asleep. The twins had been placed together in one crib, all the dirty clothing and bedding tossed into the other, and, apparently too tired to drag themselves the few feet to their own bedrooms, Chrissy and Shannon were dozing in the rocking chairs. Susan smiled and returned to her kitchen with the snack.
She had put the envelope from the real estate agency in her desk drawer and now, after making herself a cup of decaf, she sat down to examine the papers. The Christmas card list was long and must have included everyone who had ever known the Baineses-or else Nadine and Donald were more popular than Susan had ever imagined. She counted. Three hundred and nineteen names. No wonder Nadine had thought sending the cards out was such a chore.
The list was alphabetical and it took Susan a while to weed out the people who had lived in the same town as Nadine and Donald before their move to Hancock. But she finally came up with thirty-nine names and addresses. She would, of course, wait until daytime to call, but operators (and their computer equivalents) worked all night, so she spent some time collecting phone numbers. Thirty-nine information-only calls later, she had thirty-two numbers. She then turned her attention to Donald’s phone message list.
The messages from his mother interested her the most so she saved them for last.
There were five messages of condolence and Susan cross-checked them with the list of former neighbors. Two matched and she decided she would call them first in the morning… well, later this morning. Three messages were from clients, one seeming to think that the murder might bring down the price of real estate in Hancock. There was a message from someone called Daria, who suggested that dinner at her town house just might assuage his grief. A brief “call me ASAP” from someone named Connie. And those puzzling messages from his mother.