Three Bedrooms, One Corpse - By Charlaine Harris Page 0,6
on the dot, that I parallel-parked perfectly, and that I didn’t even jaywalk.
“If it isn’t Miss Teagarden,” he said with a terrifying affability. “I declare, young woman, you get prettier every time I see you. And I always do seem to see you when I come to a murder scene, don’t I?”
“Hello, Jack,” said my mother with a distinct edge to her voice.
“Mrs. Teagarden—no, Mrs. Queensland now, isn’t it? I haven’t seen you since your wedding; congratulations. And these must be our new residents? Hope you don’t feel like running back north after today. Lawrenceton used to be such a quiet town, but the city is reaching out to us here, and I guess in a few years we’ll have a crime rate like Atlanta’s.”
Mother introduced her clients.
“Guess you won’t want this house after today,” Jack Burns said genially. “Ole Tonia Lee looked pretty bad. I’m sure sorry you all ran into this, you being new and all.”
“This could have happened anywhere,” Martin said. “I’m beginning to think being a real estate agent is a hazardous occupation, like being a convenience-store clerk.”
“It certainly does seem so,” Jack Burns agreed. He was wearing a hideous suit, but I’ll give him this much credit—I don’t think he cared a damn about what he wore or what people thought about it.
“Now, Mr. Bartell, I believe you touched the deceased?” he continued.
“Yes, I walked over to make sure she was dead.”
“Did you touch anything on the bed?”
“No.”
“On the table by the bed?”
“Nothing in the bedroom,” Martin said very definitely, “but the woman’s neck.”
“You notice it was bruised?”
“Yes.”
“You know she was strangled?”
“It looked like it to me.”
“You have much experience with this kind of thing?”
“I was in Vietnam. I’ve had more experience with wounds. But I have seen one case of strangulation before, and this looked similar.”
“What about you, Mrs. Lampton? You go in the room?”
“No,” Barby said quietly. “I stayed on the landing outside. When Miss Teagarden opened the doors, of course I saw the poor woman right away. Then my brother told me to go downstairs. He knows I don’t have a strong stomach, so of course it was better for me to go.”
“And you, Mrs.—Queensland?”
“I came up the stairs just after Aurora opened the bedroom doors. I actually saw her swing them open from downstairs after I started up.” Mother explained about the Thompsons and her delegation of me to open the house for the Bartells. “Excuse me, Mr. Bartell and Mrs. Lampton.”
“You’re his sister,” Jack Burns said, as if trying to get that point quite clear. He swung his baleful gaze on poor Barby Lampton.
“Yes, I am,” she said angrily, stung by the doubt in his voice. “I just got divorced, my only child’s in college, I sold my own home as part of the divorce settlement, and my brother invited me to help him house-hunt down here out of sheer kindness.”
“Of course, I see,” said Jack Burns with disbelief written on every crease in his heavy cheeks.
Martin Bartell’s hair might be white, but his eyebrows were still dark. Now they were drawn together ominously.
“When was the last time you saw Mrs. Greenhouse, Roe?” Jack Burns had switched his questioning abruptly to me.
“I haven’t seen Tonia Lee to speak to in weeks, and then it was only a casual conversation at the beauty parlor.” Tonia Lee had been having a dye job and a cut, and I’d been having one of my rare trims. She had tried the whole time to find out how much money Jane Engle had left me.
“Mr. Bartell, had you contacted Mrs. Greenhouse about looking at any homes?” Jack Burns shot the question at the Pan-Am Agra manager as though he would enjoy beating the answer out of him. What a charmer.
I could see Martin taking a deep breath. “Mrs. Queensland here is the only realtor I have contacted in Lawrenceton,” he said firmly. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, Sergeant, my sister has had enough for this morning, and so have I. I have to get back to work.”
Without waiting for an answer, he got up and put his arm around his sister, who had risen even faster.
“Of course,” Burns said smoothly. “I’m so sorry I’ve been holding you all up! You just go on, now. But please, folks, keep everything you saw at the scene of the murder to yourselves. That would help us out a whole bunch.”
“I think we’ll be going, too,” my mother said coldly. “You know where we’ll be if you need