Three Bedrooms, One Corpse - By Charlaine Harris Page 0,14

And even though the property might be listed with one realtor, of course we let any other realtor show it—that’s the way you have to be in a town this size. We all have to cooperate. We all leave a card when we show a house, whether the owner’s home or not . . . you know the procedure. If only we’d gotten the multiple-listing system, we could use lockboxes. None of this would have happened.”

What he meant was, none of the police station routine would have happened to him, because he wouldn’t have had to take a key to the Anderton house. Tonia Lee would be just as dead, presumably. Mother was in favor of paying for one of the multiple-listing services most of the Atlanta area towns used, but the smaller realtors in town—particularly the Greenhouses—had balked.

“And it was never the same people, never, any more than coincidence could explain,” Mother was saying. “I don’t think the houses had been shown by the same person—or to the same person—before the items were missed, any time.”

“You all borrow keys back and forth,” I said.

The realtors nodded.

“So anyone could have them copied and use them at his or her leisure.”

Again, glum nods all around.

“So why haven’t I read about this in the paper?”

Distinctly guilty looks.

“We all got together,” Eileen said. “Us, Select Realty; Donnie and Tonia Lee, Greenhouse Realty; Franklin Farrell and Terry Sternholtz, Today’s Homes; even the agency that deals mostly in farms, Russell & Dietrich, because we had shown some of the farmhouses.”

“City people who want to say they own property in the country,” Mother told me, raising her eyebrows in derision.

“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,”