We all mulled that over for a minute.
“I wonder why the police told you so much?” Patty asked.
Mackie shook his head. “I guess they thought they would pressure me into confessing or something. If I’d been guilty, it might have worked.”
“You run every night, you’ve always told us that, and I’ve often seen you. That’s not suspicious at all,” my mother said staunchly. We all murmured agreement, even Patty Cloud, who was none too fond of having to do work for a black man, I’d observed. Though having Debbie working for her didn’t seem to be a problem.
“Lots of people run or ride bikes in the evening,” Idella said suddenly. “Donnie Greenhouse does… Franklin Farrell does.”
Franklin Farrell was another local realtor.
“I bet it was Donnie,” Eileen said bluntly. “He just couldn’t stand Tonia Lee screwing around anymore.”
“Eileen,” Mother said warningly.
“It’s true, and we all know it,” Eileen said.
“I’m sure she just made an appointment with someone who used a false name, and the man killed her,” Idella said in so low a voice we had to strain to hear her. “It could happen to any of us.”
We were all silent for a moment, staring at her.
“Except Mackie, of course,” Eileen said briskly, and we all broke into laughter.
“Naw, I just get framed for it,” Mackie said after the last chuckle had died away. And we were all sober again.
Patty Cloud said suddenly, “I think it was the House Hunter.”
“Oh,” my mother said doubtingly. “Come on, Patty.”
“The House Hunter,” said Eileen consideringly. “It’s possible.”
“Who’s that?” I asked. I was apparently the only one not in the know.
“The House Hunter,” Idella said softly, “is what all the realtors in town call Jimmy Hunter, the owner of the hardware store. On Main, you know?”
“Susu’s husband?” I asked. There were several women named Sally in Lawrenceton, so most of them went by distinguishing nicknames. “I was in their wedding,” I said, as if that made it impossible for Jimmy Hunter to be peculiar.
“We all know him,” Mother said dryly. “And we christened him the House Hunter because he just loves to look at houses. Without Sally with him. He’s always going to buy her a house for her birthday, or some such thing. And he’s got the money to actually do it, that’s the only reason we put up with him.”
“He’s not really in the market?”
“Oh, hell no,” Eileen boomed. “They’re going to stay in that old house they inherited from Susu’s folks till hell freezes over. He’s just some mild kind of pervert. He just likes to look at houses.”
“With women,” Idella added.
“Yes, when we sent him out with Mackie, he didn’t call us back for months,” Mother said.
“He won’t make appointments with Franklin, either,” Idella added. “Just that Terry Sternholtz that works with him.” Eileen laughed at that, and we all looked at her curiously.
“Maybe he called Greenhouse Realty instead,” Mackie said quietly.
“And since the Greenhouses are hard up, Donnie sent Tonia Lee out with him, just on the off chance he might really buy something.” This was Eileen’s contribution.
“Let me get this straight. He doesn’t make passes?” I asked.
“No.” Mother shook her head emphatically. “If he did, none of us would show him a doghouse. He just likes to look through other people’s homes, and he likes to have a woman who isn’t his wife with him. Who knows what’s going through his head?”
“How long has Jimmy been doing this?” I was fascinated with this bizarre behavior on the part of my friend’s husband. “Does Susu know?”
“I don’t have any idea. How would any of us tell her? On the other hand, it does seem strange that gossip hasn’t informed her that her husband is house-hunting. But as far as I know, she’s never said anything. You were close to Susu in high school, weren’t you, Roe?”
I nodded. “But we don’t see each other much nowadays.” I forbore from adding that that was because Susu was always ferrying her children somewhere or involved in some PTA activity. I was having trouble picturing thick-featured Jimmy Hunter, still broad-shouldered and husky as he’d been in his football days but now definitely on the heavyweight side, wandering dreamily through houses he didn’t want to buy.
“If it’s not the House Hunter,” Patty suggested, “maybe Tonia Lee’s murder has something to do with the thefts.”
This caused an even greater reaction than Patty’s first suggestion. But this reaction was different. Dead silence. Everyone looked upset. Beside me, Idella rubbed her hands together, and her pale blue eyes brimmed with tears.
“Okay,” I said finally, “fill me in on this. The real estate business in this town just seems to be full of secrets, these days.”
Mother sighed. “It’s a serious problem, not something like the House Hunter, whom we more or less treat as a joke.” She paused, considering how to proceed.
“Things have been stolen from the houses for sale for the past two years,” Eileen said bluntly.
Even Debbie Lincoln was roused by this. She slid her eyes sideways at Eileen.
“In houses just listed by a particular realtor? In houses that have just been shown by one realtor every time?” I asked impatiently.
“That’s just the trouble,” Mother said. “It’s not like-say, the refrigerator vanished every time Tonia Lee showed a house. That would make it clear and easy.”
“It’s small things,” Mackie said. “Valuable things. But not so small a client could slip them into a pocket while we were showing the home. And even though the property might be listed with one realtor, of course we let any other realtor show it-that’s the way you have to be in a town this size. We all have to cooperate. We all leave a card when we show a house, whether the owner’s home or not… you know the procedure. If only we’d gotten the multiple-listing system, we could use lockboxes. None of this would have happened.”
What he meant was, none of the police station routine would have happened to him, because he wouldn’t have had to take a key to the Anderton house. Tonia Lee would be just as dead, presumably. Mother was in favor of paying for one of the multiple-listing services most of the Atlanta area towns used, but the smaller realtors in town-particularly the Greenhouses-had balked.
“And it was never the same people, never, any more than coincidence could explain,” Mother was saying. “I don’t think the houses had been shown by the same person-or to the same person-before the items were missed, any time.”
“You all borrow keys back and forth,” I said.
The realtors nodded.
“So anyone could have them copied and use them at his or her leisure.”
Again, glum nods all around.
“So why haven’t I read about this in the paper?”
Distinctly guilty looks.
“We all got together,” Eileen said. “Us, Select Realty; Donnie and Tonia Lee, Greenhouse Realty; Franklin Farrell and Terry Sternholtz, Today’s Homes; even the agency that deals mostly in farms, Russell & Dietrich, because we had shown some of the farmhouses.”
“City people who want to say they own property in the country,” Mother told me, raising her eyebrows in derision.