Three Bedrooms, One Corpse - By Charlaine Harris Page 0,45

might be a little angry with me.

“I thought about you. Of course. It’s just that—really—for all our emotions for each other, we really don’t know each other that well. And you’re the plant manager, you have all kinds of duties and responsibilities that I don’t know anything about, Martin. Even on Sunday night, I just felt very hesitant about interrupting you.”

I had been able to picture all too clearly his exasperated face as he turned away from some important papers to answer a call from his one-night flame.

“Listen,” he said intently. “Don’t. We haven’t learned a lot about each other, but this is not just a bed thing. I hope. On my part, anyway, and I think for you, too.”

I didn’t know, yet.

He touched my hair. “If you need me, I’ll come. That’s all there is to it. We have time to get to know each other. But if anything bothers you or upsets you, you call me.”

“Okay,” I said finally, with misgivings.

Our salads arrived and we began eating, very conscious of each other.

“Martin, you’ll have to tell me about your company,” I said. “I have only the vaguest idea of what Pan-Am Agra does.”

“We arrange for the exchange of good used farm machinery for the produce from some of the South American countries,” he explained. “Also, we manufacture some agricultural goods and food using raw materials from North and South America, which is what we do at the plant here. And we own land in South America where we’re trying to use North American farming methods to produce better yields. Those are the main things Pan-Am Agra does, though there are a few other things, too.”

“What kind of products does Pan-Am Agra make?”

“Some fruit blends, some products containing coffee, some fertilizer.”

“Do you have to travel to South America much?”

“When I was at company headquarters in Chicago, I had to go often, at least once every month. Now I won’t fly down as much. But I will have to visit the other plants.”

“Is the government very much involved in what you do?”

“As a regulatory agency, yes, too much so. They’re forever thinking we’re smuggling drugs in or weapons out, knowingly or unknowingly, and our shipments are almost always searched.”

I thought of searching fertilizer, or the raw materials thereof, and wrinkled my nose.

“Exactly,” Martin said.

“So what is a pirate like you doing in an agricultural company?”

“Is that the way you see me? A pirate?” He laughed. “What is a quiet, slightly shy, introverted librarian doing dating a pirate like me? Your life has changed a lot lately, if what you tell me and what other people tell me is true.”

I noticed he hadn’t answered my question.

“My life has changed a lot,” I said thoughtfully. “I’m changing with it, I guess.” Funny, I’d never thought of myself changing, just my circumstances. “I guess it started—oh, almost two years ago,” I told him, “when Mamie Wright was killed the night it was my turn to address Real Murders.”

The salads left, and the main course came while I was telling Martin about Real Murders and what had happened that spring.

“You’re certainly not going to think I’m quiet after hearing all that,” I said ruefully. “You had better tell me about your growing up, Martin.”

“I don’t like to think about it much,” he said after a moment. “My father died in a farm accident when I was six ... a tractor overturned. My mother remarried when I was ten. He was a hard man. Still is. He didn’t put up with any nonsense, and he had a broad definition of nonsense. I didn’t mind him at first. But I couldn’t stand him after a few years.”

“What about your mom?”

“She was great,” he said instantly, with the warmest smile I’d seen. “You could tell her just about anything. She cooked all the time, did things you just see mothers in old sitcoms doing now. She wore aprons, and she went to church, and she came to every game I played—baseball, basketball, football. She did the same for Barbara.”

“You said you grew up in a small town, too?”

“Yes. A few miles outside the town, actually. So I wasn’t sorry to get the chance at this job here. I wanted to see what it would be like to be back in a small town again, though Lawrenceton is really on the edge of Atlanta.”

“Your mother isn’t alive anymore?”

“No, Mom died when I was in high school. She had a brain aneurysm, and it happened very—very suddenly. My stepfather