Three Bedrooms, One Corpse - By Charlaine Harris Page 0,16

at one point this morning, early, someone could have entered the reception area without being seen.”

“How long a time would this one point have lasted?”

“Five minutes. Or less,” Patty Cloud said reluctantly.

“No one wants to ‘fess up, I guess,” Lynn said hopefully.

Silence.

“Well, I’ll need to talk to each of you separately,” she said. “If you all have finished your meeting, perhaps I could just stay in here? I’ll start with you, Mrs. Tea— No, Mrs. Queensland. That okay?”

“Of course,” Mother said. “Back to your work, the rest of you. But don’t leave until the detective has a chance to talk to you. Rearrange your appointments.”

Beside me Idella Yates sighed. She picked up her briefcase and pushed back her chair. I turned to make some remark and suddenly realized Idella had been crying silently, something I have never mastered. I caught her eye as she dabbed at her cheeks with a handkerchief.

“Stupid,” she said bitterly. Feeling rather puzzled, I watched her leave the room. If Idella and Tonia Lee had been friends, it would have surprised me considerably. And Idella’s reaction seemed a little extreme otherwise.

I made my own exit wondering where I would wait for my turn with Lynn. My mother’s office, I decided, and started down the hall.

A young woman was standing in the reception area. I vaguely recognized her as I went through on my way to the left-hand corridor that led to Mother’s office.

“Miss Teagarden?” she said hesitantly. I turned and smiled with equal uncertainty.

“I believe I met you at the church last week,” she said, holding out a slim hand. I jogged my memory.

“Oh, of course,” I said, none too soon. “Mrs. Kaye.”

“Emily,” she said, smiling.

“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