“Aurora,” I told her, and to her credit, her smile barely faltered.

  “Do you work here?” she asked. “At Select Realty?”

  “Not really,” I confessed. “It’s my mother’s agency, and I’m trying to find out a little more about how the business works.” That was close enough to the truth.

  Emily Kaye was at least five inches taller than I, no great feat. She was slim and small-breasted and dressed in a perfect suburban sweater and skirt and low-heeled shoes… and her purse matched, too. Her jewelry was small, unobtrusive, but real. Her hair was golden brown and tossed back from her face in a smooth, well-cut mane.

  “Did you like the church?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes, and Father Scott is so nice,” she said earnestly.

  Huh?

  “He is so good with children,” she went on. “My little girl, Elizabeth, just loves him. He promised he’d take her to the park soon.”

  He what?

  All my senses went on full alert.

  “You’re so lucky,” she said.

  My stare must have made her a bit nervous.

  “To be dating him,” she added hastily.

  So she’d been doing some research. I was thinking a number of things, so many that it would have taken a long time to have completed each thought.

  Aubrey loved children? Aubrey had already visited his new parishioner and invited her little girl to the park?

  “You play the organ, don’t you?” I said thoughtfully.

  “Oh, yes. Well, not very well.” She was lying through her teeth, I just knew it. “I did play for the church in Macon.” Suspicion confirmed.

  “You’re-excuse me, you’re a widow?”

  “Yes,” she said briskly, to get quickly over a painful subject. “Ken died last year in a car wreck, and it was hard to live in Macon after that. I don’t have any family there, we were there just because of his job… but I do have an aunt, Cile Vernon, here in Lawrenceton, and she heard there was a teacher’s job available at the kindergarten here, and I was lucky enough to get it. So now I’m house-hunting for a little place for Elizabeth and me.”

  “Well, you came to the right realtor,” I said, trying to brighten up the conversation and not give way to my deep suspicions. I had a feeling that if I looked over Emily Kaye’s shoulder, I would see writing on the wall for my relationship with Father Aubrey Scott.

  “Yes, Mrs. Yates is so nice. I’m really looking seriously at a little house on Honor right by the junior high school. It’s just a couple of blocks from the kindergarten, and there’s a preschool for my little girl nearby, too. Of course, I’d really like to quit work and stay home with Elizabeth,” she said wistfully.

  That writing got darker and darker. Sure she would.

  And to top it all off, that was my house, the house I’d inherited from Jane Engle, she was thinking of buying.

  She’d be right across the street from Lynn and Arthur and their baby.

  Aubrey would drop me and fall in love with this organ-playing widow with the cute little girl.

  No, I was being paranoid.

  No, I was being realistic.

  “Mrs. Kaye,” Idella’s sweet voice said, just in the nick of time. “I’m so sorry, we have to rearrange our appointment to see the house again.”

  “Oh, and I had my aunt keep Elizabeth just so I could see it by myself!” Emily Kaye said, regret and accusation mingling in her voice.

  I was battling a tide of rage and self-pity that had torn through me with the force of a monsoon. And I would rather have died than for Emily Kaye to notice that anything was wrong with me.

  “Why don’t you just go ask Detective Smith if you could run over for a half hour and show the house to Mrs. Kaye?” I suggested to Idella, who was looking distressed at her client’s disappointment. My voice rang a little hollow in my ears, and I felt my expression probably didn’t match my concerned words, but I was doing the best I could.

  “I’ll do that,” Idella said with unaccustomed decision. “Excuse me just a second.”

  “Oh, thanks,” Emily told me with a warm sincerity that made me want to throw up. “I hated to ask Aunt Cile to keep Elizabeth this morning. I don’t want her to think I moved here just to have a free babysitter!”

  “Think nothing of it,” I answered with equal sincerity. I wanted to get out of that room so badly my feet were itching. Any minute I was going to slap the tar out of Emily Kaye.

  And why? I asked myself as I gave her a final, civil nod and glided off down the hall to Mother’s office. Because, I answered myself angrily, Emily Kaye was going to get married, she would marry Aubrey, and even if I didn’t want to marry him, I would once again be left. I knew I was being childish, I knew there was nothing logical about my feeling, and still I couldn’t help it. This was not my finest hour.

  It was time for one of my pep talks.

  It is better not to be married than to be married unhappily.

  Women do not need to be married to have rich, fulfilled lives.

  I didn’t want to marry Aubrey anyway, and I probably wouldn’t have accepted if Arthur Smith had asked me. (Well, yes I would, but it would’ve been a mistake.)

  All relationships fail until you find the right one. It’s inevitable.

  The failure of a relationship to lead to marriage does not mean you are unworthy or unattractive.

  Having told myself all this, I recited the list again.

  By the time Mother returned to her office, I’d completed the circuit three times. Mother was not in the best of humor, either. She was fuming about the disruption of the office, about being questioned again by the police, about the nerve of Tonia Lee, turning up dead in a Select Realty listing. Of course, she didn’t use those words, but that was the gist of her diatribe.

  “Oh, listen to me!” she said suddenly. “I can’t believe I’m going on like this, and a woman I know is probably lying on a table somewhere waiting to be autopsied.” She shook her head at her own lack of empathy. “We’ll just have to put up with all this. I wasn’t crazy about Tonia Lee, God knows, but no one should have to go through what she must have.”

  “You did tell Lynn about the thefts?”

  “Yes. I let her draw her own conclusions. I’d already told her about the vases missing from the Anderton house. So I went on and told her about the pilfering that’s been going on. Of course, it’s more than pilfering. Someone in our little group of realtors is seriously dishonest.”

  “Mom, have you happened to think that Tonia Lee found out who stole the stuff from the houses? That maybe that was why she got killed?”

  “Yes. Of course. I hope the thefts had nothing to do with the murder.”

  “That would mean that a realtor is the killer.”

  “Yes. Let’s just drop the subject. We don’t know anything. It was probably one of Tonia Lee’s conquests that did her in.”

  “Probably. Well, I’m going to go home as soon as Lynn talks to me.”

  “You don’t have a feel for the business, do you?” Mother said reluctantly.

  “I don’t think so,” I said with equal regret.

  She reached across her desk and patted my hand, surprising me for the second time today. We are not touchers.

  “Excuse me,” Debbie Lincoln said from the doorway. “That woman wants you, Miss Teagarden.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I retrieved my purse from the floor and fluttered my fingers at my mother. “See you tomorrow night, Mom, if not sooner.”

  “Okay, Aurora.”

  That night, after I’d taken my shower and wrapped myself up in a warm robe, something that had been picking at the edges of my mind finally surfaced.

  I looked up a number in the little Lawrenceton phone book and dialed.

  “Hello?”

  “Gerald, this is Roe Teagarden.”

  “My goodness, girl. I haven’t seen you in a year, I guess.”

  “How are you doing, Gerald?”

  “Oh, pretty well. You know, don’t you, that I’ve remarried?”

  “That’s what I heard. Congratulations.”

  “Mamie’s cousin Marietta came to help me clean out her stuff after Mamie-died, and we just hit it off.”

  “I’m so glad, Gerald.”

  “Is there anything I can do for you, Roe?”

  “Listen, I heard a name today and I’m trying to pin a case to it. Think you can help me?”

  “I’ll sure give it a shot. It’s been a long time since I’ve read any true crime. Mamie getting killed kind of made my interest in crime fade…”

  “Of course. I’m being so stupid calling you…”

  “But lately I’ve thought about taking it up again. So what’s your question?”

  “You were always our walking encyclopedia in Real Murders, Gerald. So here’s the question. Emily Kaye?”

  “Emily Kaye… hmmmm. A victim, not a killer, I remember that right off the bat.”

  “Okay. American?”

  “Nope. Nope. English… early this century, 1920s, I think.”

  I kept a respectful silence while Gerald rummaged through his mental attic of old murder cases. Since Gerald was an insurance salesman, his interest in wrongful death had always seemed rather natural.

  “I got it!” he said triumphantly. “Patrick Mahon! Married man who killed and cut up his mistress, Emily Kaye. There were pieces of her all over the holiday cottage he’d rented; he’d tried several methods to dispose of the body. He’d bought a knife and saw before he’d gone down to the cottage, so the jury didn’t believe his excuse that she’d died accidentally. Let me flip open this book, Roe. Okay… his wife, who’d thought he was fooling around, found a ticket to retrieve a bag from the train station… and in the bag was a woman’s bloodstained clothing. She told the police, I believe. So they backtracked Mahon and found the body parts. That what you needed to know?”

  “Yes, thank you, Gerald. I appreciate your help.”

  “No trouble at all.”

  The early Emily Kaye was certainly a far cry from the present-day Emily. I couldn’t imagine the Emily I knew going to a cottage for an illicit vacation with a married man.

  So a little niggling point had been settled. I knew where I’d heard the name.

  But there was no one I could share this fascinating bit of information with, no one who would appreciate it. For the second time in one day, I regretted the disbanding of Real Murders. Call us ghouls, call us just plain peculiar, we had had a good time with our admittedly offbeat hobby.

  What had happened to the members of our little club? Of the twelve, one would go on trial soon for multiple murder, another had committed suicide, one had been murdered, one had been widowed, one had died of natural causes, one had been arrested for drug trafficking (Gifford’s unusual lifestyle had finally attracted the wrong attention), one was in a mental institution… on the other hand, LeMaster was still busy and prosperous with his dry-cleaning business, presumably, though I hadn’t seen him since Jane Engle’s funeral. John Queensland had married my mother. Gerald had remarried. Arthur Smith had gotten married. And I…

  It seemed LeMaster Cane and I were the only ones who were basically unchanged in life condition in the eighteen months or so since Real Murders had had its last meeting.

  Chapter Four

  FRIDAY MORNING I woke with that blank feeling I’d had lately. Nothing specific to do, nowhere particular to go. No one expected me anywhere.

  Even though library funding cuts had meant I’d only been part-time, my work hours had shaped my week. I had an increasingly strong feeling I wouldn’t be throwing my lot in with Mother’s at Select Realty, so I wouldn’t be studying for my real estate license.

  Lying in bed drowsily was not such a pleasure if it wasn’t illicit, even with Madeleine’s heavy warm body curled up against my leg. Before, I’d used this time to map out my day. Now the time lay like a wasteland before me. I didn’t want to think about the dinner party tonight, didn’t want to feel again the alternating apprehension and attraction Martin Bartell aroused in me.

  So I scolded myself out of bed, down the stairs, and popped an exercise video into the VCR after switching on the coffeepot. I stretched and bent and hopped around obediently, grudging every necessary minute of it. Madeleine watched this new part of my morning routine with appalled fascination.

  Now that I was thirty, calories were no longer burning themselves off quite so easily. Three times a week my mother, clad in gorgeous exercise clothes, went to the newly opened Athletic Club and did aerobics. Mackie Knight, Franklin Farrell, and Donnie Greenhouse, plus a host of other Lawrencetonians, ran or biked every evening. I’d seen Franklin’s cohort, Terry Sternholtz, out “power walking” with Eileen. My mother’s new husband was a golfer. Almost everyone I knew did something to keep her muscles in working order and her body in the proper shape. So I’d succumbed to the necessity myself, but with little grace and less enthusiasm.

  At least I felt I’d earned my coffee and toast, and my shower was a real pleasure afterward. While I was drying my hair, I decided that today I’d start looking at houses seriously. I needed a project, and finding a house I really liked would do. Jane’s books and the few things from her house I’d wanted to keep were stacked in odd places around the town-house, and I was beginning to feel claustrophobic. Mother had hinted heavily that Jane’s dining room set would be welcome in her third bedroom for a short time only.

  Of course, I’d have to go through Select Realty, and I didn’t think I ought to have Mother showing me around. Eileen, Idella, or Mackie? Mackie could use the vote of confidence, I reflected, standing bent at the waist with my hair hanging down so I could dry the bottom layer. But though I didn’t have anything against Mackie, I never had been too crazy about him, either. I didn’t think it was because he was black or because he was male. I just wasn’t that comfortable with him. On the other hand, Eileen was smart and sometimes funny, but too bossy. Idella was sweet and could leave you alone when you needed to think, but she was no fun at all.

  After a moment’s consideration, I chose Eileen. I phoned the office.

  Patty said she wasn’t in.

  I looked up Eileen’s home number and punched it with an impatient finger.

  “Hello?”

  “May I speak to Eileen, please?”

  “May I tell her who’s calling?”

  “Roe Teagarden.” Who the hell was this? Eileen’s personal home secretary? On the other hand, it wasn’t exactly my business.

  Eileen finally came on the line.

  “Hi, Eileen. I’ve decided to start moving on finding a house of my own. Can you show me some, pretty soon?”

  “Sure! What are you looking for?”

  Oh. Well, four walls and a roof… I began speaking as I thought. “I want at least three bedrooms, because I need a room for a library. I want a kitchen with some counter space.” The townhouse was definitely deficient in that department. “I want a large master bedroom with a very large closet.” For all my new clothes. “I want at least two bathrooms.” Why not? One could always be kept pretty for company. “And not lots of traffic.” For Madeleine, who was weaving around my ankles, rumbling her rough purr.

  “What price range do you have in mind?”

  I was still talking to an investment banker about what I would have to live on if I didn’t use any of Jane’s capital. But I could buy the house outright and then invest the rest, or I could put the money from the sale of Jane’s house down on the new place… I let all this swirl around in my head, and then an answer popped to the top of my brain, like the answer popping up to the window of a fortune-telling ball.

  “Okay,” Eileen said. “Seventy-five to ninety-five gives us some room. There are quite a few for sale in that range since Golfwhite closed its factory here.” Golfwhite-which, logically enough, manufactured golf balls and other golfing accessories-had closed its Lawrenceton factory and moved all its people who were willing to move to the larger factory in Florida.

  “I don’t really need anything awfully big or important-looking,” I told Eileen, assailed by sudden doubts.

  “Don’t worry, Roe. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to buy it,” she said dryly. “Let’s get a start tomorrow afternoon. I’ll see what I can get lined up in that time.”

  After I’d dressed in my lime-green blouse and navy blue pants and sweater, I had nothing better to do than drop in on my old friend Susu Saxby Hunter. The house she’d inherited from her parents was in the oldest part of Lawrenceton. The house had been built in the last quarter of the previous century, and had charming high ceilings and huge windows, negligible closets, and wide halls, a feature I was especially fond of for some reason. Wide halls are a great location for bookshelves, and Susu was wasting a whole lot of prime space, in my opinion. Of course, she had other things to worry about, I found out that morning. In a house the age of hers, the heating and cooling bills were extortionate, drafts were inescapable, curtains had to be custom-made because nothing was of standard size, and all the electric wiring had had to be replaced recently. To say nothing of the antiquated toilets and tubs that Susu had just replaced.

  “But you love this house, don’t you?” I said, sitting across from Susu at her “country pine” kitchen table. Susu’s kitchen was so heavily “country,” including a pie safe in the corner (lovingly refinished and containing no pies whatsoever), that you expected a goose to walk in with a blue bow around its neck.

  “Yes,” she confessed, putting out her third cigarette. “My great-grandparents built it when they were first married, and then my parents inherited and they redid it, and now I’m redoing it. I guess I always will be. It’s lucky Jimmy’s in the hardware business! The only thing it would be better if he did is if he were a licensed electrician. Or had a fabric store. Want some more coffee?”

  “Sure,” I said, reflecting I’d have to view the renovated bathrooms quite soon at this rate. “How’s Jimmy doing?”

  Susu didn’t look quite as happy as she had when discussing the house. “Roe, since we’ve been friends a long time, I’ll tell you… I’m not sure how Jimmy’s doing. He goes to work, and he works hard. He’s really built the business up. And he goes to Rotary, and he goes to church, and he coaches little -Jim’s baseball team in the summer. And he goes to Bethany’s piano recitals. But sometimes I have the funniest feeling…” Her voice trailed off uncertainly, and she stared down at her smoldering cigarette.