my only interest in real estate was in buying my own. When terms like “equity” and “Fannie Mae” and “assumable mortgage” began to be bandied about, my brain glazed over. But when I watched the controlled and purposeful bustle on good days at Select Realty, I felt a pang of regret.
Mother’s terrifyingly perfect receptionist, Patty Cloud, had graduated to office manager and then to realtor. Her understudy, Debbie Lincoln, now controlled the desk in the reception area. Debbie had done some evolving of her own, from a rather slow, silent girl with cornrowed hair and baby fat to a slim, streamlined, fashionable babe who’d become the office computer expert. In the process, Debbie had gained a lot of artifice, and shed some of her natural charm. She’d also acquired confidence and lost her diffidence around older people.
As I entered, she gave me an “I see you but I’m in the middle of this” smile and waggle of magenta fingernails, the phone clamped between ear and shoulder, her fingers busy separating computer sheets, collating and stapling them.
“Uh-huh. Yes, Mrs. Kaplan, she’ll be there at three. No, ma’am, you don’t need to do anything special. She’ll just look over the house and tell you what she’d recommend you ask for it ... no, ma’am, that doesn’t obligate . . . no, ma’am, you can call in as many as you like, but we hope you’ll list your house with us ... right, three o’clock.” Debbie blew a breath out after she’d hung up.
“Difficult?” I asked.
“Girl, you know it,” Debbie said, shaking her head. “I half hope that woman doesn’t decide to list with us. Dealing with her is almost more trouble than it’s worth. Your mom is showing a house now, so if you wanted to see her, you may have quite a wait.”
“Heck,” I said. I wondered whether I should leave a note. “Debbie, do you know Beverly Rillington?” I asked out of the blue.
“Oh, isn’t that terrible, what happened to her?” Debbie stapled the last batch of papers together and tossed the result into Eileen Norris’s basket, which was half full of phone message slips already. Debbie followed my glance. “Eileen can’t get used to coming out here every time she comes back in the building,” Debbie said. “So her stuff kind of piles up. I don’t really know Beverly that well, she goes to a different church,” she added. “But Beverly has always been a real tough individual, a real loner. She had a baby, you know, when she was just fourteen . . . and then, when that baby was about a year old, it choked on a marble or something and died. Beverly hasn’t had it easy.”
I tried to imagine being pregnant at fourteen. I tried to imagine my baby dying.
I found I didn’t want to imagine that.
“I guess I’ll just leave Mother a note,” I told her, and started down the hall to Mother’s office. It was the biggest one, of course, and Mother had decorated it in cool, elegant gray, with a slash of deep red here and there for eye relief. Her desk was absolutely orderly, though covered with the paperwork on various projects, and I knew the notepads would be in the top right drawer—and they were—and that all Mother’s pencils would be sharp . . . and that I would snap off the point of the first one since it was so sharp and I pressed so hard. Having gone through that little ritual, all I had to do was compose a message to let her know I was going to be at the police station at a detective’s request, without propelling her out the office door with her flags flying.
Maybe such a composition wasn’t possible, I decided after sitting for several blank seconds with the (now blunt) pencil actually resting on the paper.
After a false start or two, I settled on: “Mom, I’m going to the police station to tell them about working with Beverly Rillington at the library. She got hurt last night. Call me at home at four o’clock. Love, Roe.”
That should do it. I knew if I wasn’t at home at four she’d storm the bastions and get me released.
The car by which I parked at the police station/small claims court/county sheriff’s office/jail (known locally as “Spacolec” for Sperling County Law .Enforcement Complex) seemed very familiar, and after a second I recognized Angel’s car, the one Jack Burns had ticketed. Then I recalled Angel telling me she was