Three Bedrooms, One Corpse - By Charlaine Harris Page 0,57
believed that. But I think she gave a ride home to whomever left Tonia Lee’s car at the office. And I think I know who that was.”
“You should tell the police, Donnie.”
“No, Roe, this is mine. My vengeance. I may take my time about it. But Tonia Lee would have wanted me to avenge her.”
I drew in a deep, cautious breath. The conversation could only go downhill from here. “It’s really dark, Donnie. I’d better go.”
“Yes, don’t get caught alone with someone you don’t know very well.”
I took a tiny step backwards.
“And don’t go into houses with strangers,” he added, and ran away, the measured thud of his Reeboks fading into the distance.
I headed in the opposite direction. I would have gone that way even if it hadn’t been the way home.
I walked back to the townhouse more quickly than I’d set forth. It was too dark to be out by now, and my brown coat rendered me invisible to cars. I hadn’t prepared very well for my walk, and I was unnerved by my encounter with Donnie. I pulled my keys out when I neared the back of my town-house—I’d automatically walked into the parking lot instead of going to my closer but seldom-used front door. The lighting back here was good, but I glanced around carefully as I approached my patio gate.
I caught a little movement, from the corner of my eye, back by the dumpster in the far corner of the lot.
There weren’t any strange cars parked under the porte cochere. All the vehicles belonged to residents. I stared into the dark corner where the dumpster squatted. Nothing moved.
“Is anyone there?” I called, and my voice was disgracefully squeaky.
Nothing happened.
After a long moment I very reluctantly turned my back, and moving quicker than I had on my walk, I raced through my patio and turned the key in the back door, closing and shutting it behind me with even greater rapidity.
The phone was ringing.
If the caller had been Martin, I probably would have told him how scared I was. But it was my mother, wanting to know the news about the police questioning of Jimmy Hunter. I talked with her long enough to calm down, carefully not mentioning why I was so breathless. I hadn’t really seen anything, and if I possibly had seen just a tiny movement, what I’d glimpsed was a cat prowling around the dumpster in search of mice or scraps. There was, it was true, a murderer at large in Lawrenceton, but there was no reason on earth to believe he or she was after me. I knew nothing, had seen nothing, and was not even in real estate.
But the feeling of being observed would not leave, and I wandered restlessly around the ground floor of the townhouse, making sure everything was locked and all the curtains and shades were drawn tight.
Finally, after telling myself several times in a rallying way that I was being ridiculous, I went upstairs to change. Even in the cold, I’d sweated during my walk. Normally, I would have taken a shower, but this night, I could not bring myself to step in the tub and close the shower curtain. So I pulled on my ancient heavy bathrobe, a thick saddle blanket of a robe in green-and-blue plaid, the most comforting garment I have ever known.
It didn’t work its magic. I found myself scared to turn on the television for fear the noise would block out the sounds of an intruder. But nothing happened, all evening. I was caught up in some kind of siege mentality; I got a box of Cheez-Its and a diet Coke and holed up in my favorite chair, with a book I’d read many times, one of William Marshall’s Yellowthread Street series. But even his endearingly bizarre plotting could not relax me.
I wondered if men had evenings like this.
The time passed, somehow. I turned on my patio and front door lights, intending to leave them burning all night. I switched off the interior lights. I went from window to window, sitting in the dark and looking out. I never saw anything else; about one o’clock, I heard a car start up somewhere close and drive away. Though that could have signaled any number of things, perhaps none of them concerning me, I was able to sleep in fits and starts after that.
Chapter Thirteen
IT WAS RAINING Friday evening when Martin came to supper. He had barely shed his raincoat when he gathered me up