“And what happened at the meeting?” I asked everyone at the table.
No one seemed in any big hurry to answer.
“Nothing was settled,” Idella murmured.
Eileen snorted. “That’s putting it mildly.”
“Lots of mutual accusations and a general clearinghouse of old grievances,” Mother said. “But finally, to keep this out of the papers, we agreed to reimburse the homeowner for anything missing while the house was listed.”
“That’s pretty broad.”
“Well, there couldn’t be any signs of a break-in.”
“And there never were?”
“Oh, token ones, and the police came in at first. That Detective Smith,” said Mother distastefully. She was unshakable in her conviction that Arthur Smith had done me wrong and that Lynn Liggett had somehow stolen him from my arms, despite the fact that Arthur and I had broken up before he began dating Lynn. Maybe a week before, it’s true. And I’d only broken up with Arthur maybe twenty seconds before he was going to break up with me, so I could salvage some dignity. But what the hell… it was all over.
“And what did he find?”
“He found,” said Mother carefully, “that in his expert opinion, the break-ins were staged to cover up the fact that the thief had entered with a key. And later on, the thief didn’t even pretend to break in.”
“But there was no one to accuse-any of us could have been guilty or innocent,” Mackie said. “As usual, they checked me out first.” He wasn’t disguising his bitterness.
“No one was showing any sudden affluence. No one was taking lots of trips to Atlanta to dispose of the stolen items, at least as far as he could tell. Of course, we all go to Atlanta often,” Eileen said. “And I gather the Lawrenceton police force is not large enough to follow all the Lawrenceton realtors wherever they go.”
Would Arthur tell me any more? I wondered. Had he, for example, staked out a house that might be robbed? Had he had any suspicions that he couldn’t prove?
“As far as we know, the investigation is ongoing,” Mother said with apparent disbelief. “The whole thing is still up in the air and has been for a long time, too long. We’re all sick to death of watching our every move for fear it’ll be misinterpreted. At least the talk about this isn’t so widespread that people are afraid to list their houses, but it may come to that.”
“That would really hurt business,” Eileen said, and there was a reverent silence.
“So who,” I asked, moving on to the vital question, “put the key back on the board?”
Chapter Three
That question had to be asked and answered sooner rather than later, and I stuck my neck out to ask it because I was very interested in the answer.
But you would have thought I was a policeman with a rubber hose, one who was furthermore holding their kids as hostages.
“We have to find out,” my mother said. “Someone in this office got that key and put it back on the key board. No one here knew I was going to show the Anderton house this morning. I didn’t know it myself until last night, when Mr. Bartell called me at home. So it was likely the body wouldn’t be found for a long time-how often do we show the Anderton house? Maybe one client in ten can afford a house like that.”
For the first time Debbie Lincoln opened her mouth. “Someone,” she offered softly, “could have come in when Patty and me were both gone from the reception area.”
Patty shot her a look. “We’re never supposed to both be gone from the reception area. But there was a period of maybe five minutes this morning when both Debbie and I were not there,” she admitted. “While Debbie was in the back copying the sheet for the Blanding house, I had to visit the ladies’ room.”
“I walked through while no one was there,” Eileen said immediately. “And I didn’t see anyone coming in from outside.”
“So that narrows the time someone could have come in by a few more seconds,” I observed.
Mother said, “It would have to be someone who knew our system and could find the right hook for the Anderton key very quickly.”
“Every realtor in town knows where our key board is, and that we label every hook alphabetically,” Mackie said.
“So you’re saying whoever returned the key is another realtor, or one of you,” I pointed out. “Though I think anyone coming into the office could figure out the key board in seconds. But it does make more sense for a realtor to have returned it, to have realized not having the key on the board would have alerted us much sooner than the key being there. It’s just bad luck for whoever killed Tonia Lee that Martin Bartell wanted to see some big houses this morning, and that he called Mother at home last night after the office was closed.”
Again I was aware of my lack of popularity as the people around the table realized they’d just been boxed in.
“All right,” said Patty defensively and illogically, “where is Tonia Lee’s car? Why wasn’t it at the Anderton house this morning?”
That was another interesting question. And one I hadn’t thought of… nor had anyone else in the room.
“It’s parked behind Greenhouse Realty,” said a new voice from the door. “And wiped clean of fingerprints.”
My old buddy Lynn Liggett Smith, making another of her silent entrances.
“Your daughter-in-law told me to come on back,” she told my mother, who had a particularly nasty gleam in her eye. I didn’t think Melinda would be asked to answer the phones anymore.
Lynn was a tall, slim woman with short brown hair very attractively styled. She wore little or no makeup, always pumps or flats, and plain solid-color suits with bright blouses. Lynn was brave and smart, and sometimes I regretted that because of Arthur we would never be good friends. Lynn was also the only detective specifically designated “homicide” at the Lawrenceton police department; she’d served on the Atlanta police force before taking what she thought would be a lower-stress job. She hadn’t counted on Detective Sergeant Jack Burns.
“When did you find her car?” Mother was scrambling to regain her composure.
“This afternoon. Mr. Greenhouse knew it was there this morning, but he didn’t think that was important, because he thought Mrs. Greenhouse had driven off in someone else’s car. He just plain didn’t know where Mrs. Greenhouse was, and when she didn’t come home last night, he thought she was just spending the night with someone else. I gather it’s common knowledge she was prone to do that sort of thing.” Lynn had made a little pun, and she gave me the ghost of a smile.
“But today Mr. Knight has told us that Mrs. Greenhouse’s car was in the driveway of the Anderton house last night, so she got there under her own steam. Someone, presumably the murderer, drove that car to Greenhouse Realty and left it there out of sight of the street.” Lynn cocked her head and scanned our faces.
The absence of the car would have been noticed by Donnie Greenhouse, just as the absence of the key would have been noticed at our office, sooner or later.
But the murderer had had bad luck, no doubt about it.
“So,” Lynn continued, “who put the key back?”
“My daughter brought that up, too,” Mother said smoothly. “We have decided that at one point this morning, early, someone could have entered the reception area without being seen.”
“How long a time would this one point have lasted?”
“Five minutes. Or less,” Patty Cloud said reluctantly.
“No one wants to ‘fess up, I guess,” Lynn said hopefully.
Silence.
“Well, I’ll need to talk to each of you separately,” she said. “If you all have finished your meeting, perhaps I could just stay in here? I’ll start with you, Mrs. Tea- No, Mrs. Queensland. That okay?”
“Of course,” Mother said. “Back to your work, the rest of you. But don’t leave until the detective has a chance to talk to you. Rearrange your appointments.”