Aurora 03 - Three Bedrooms, One Corpse by Charlaine Harris Read Free Book Online

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,” my mother said. “Someone in this office got that key and put it back on the key board. No one here knew I was going to show the Anderton house this morning. I didn’t know it myself until last night, when Mr. Bartell called me at home. So it was likely the body wouldn’t be found for a long time—how often do we show the Anderton house? Maybe one client in ten can afford a house like that.”
    For the first time Debbie Lincoln opened her mouth. “Someone,” she offered softly, “could have come in when Patty and me were both gone from the reception area.”
    Patty shot her a look. “We’re never supposed to both be gone from the reception area. But there was a period of maybe five minutes this morning when both Debbie and I were not there,”
    she admitted. “While Debbie was in the back copying the sheet for the Blanding house, I had to visit the ladies’ room.”
    “I walked through while no one was there,” Eileen said immediately. “And I didn’t see anyone coming in from outside.”
    “So that narrows the time someone could have come in by a few more seconds,” I observed.
    Mother said, “It would have to be someone who