DEATH COMES TO AN OPEN HOUSE (18 page)

“Thought I’d let you know your buyers just called. DeLucca house appraised. Last hurdle jumped. Lucky you.”

“I am, aren’t I?” Jean said, well aware there had been no activity on Stan’s listing. “I guess—” Jean rearranged her thoughts. “I guess I’m not coming in to the office, then. I’ll go get the lockbox. Almost forgot and took it off before the appraiser came.”

“There’s so damn much of it. Inspection, radon, termite, appraiser. I guess we’ll learn it all.”

“Yeah. But Ed’s watching out for me.”

“Guess he’ll do the same for me. So could Mom and Dad, but let’s watch out for each other, too.”

“Seriously.”

 
Chapter 30

The DeLucca’s house didn’t look as if the owners were out of town. No shades had been pulled; bicycles and a hot pink plastic baseball bat were in the front yard. Maybe not such a bad idea. It looked occupied. It was still raining, so Jean got the key card out of her purse while she was in the car, hung her purse over her shoulder and stuck the umbrella out the door before opening it.

Getting into the house was a struggle with that miserly two foot overhang. Smiling slightly as she remembered the similarity to the night she had taken the listing, Jean carefully set the umbrella against the wall and opened the lockbox. The key was missing. Jean’s heart took a small jump, then calmed immediately. It could be the appraiser failed to return the key or another agent was checking the house as a comparable. Neither was a problem. There was a backup key at the office or maybe … she turned the knob. The door was unlocked. Theresa had always checked houses for absent owners. She would do that. As she pushed open the door, voices could be heard coming from upstairs. The sounds quickly clarified the situation. Surely these were relatives. At least, one of them. Lovers with no other place to go?

Then she recognized the woman’s voice. It was Rita.

Jean wanted to be somewhere else. She backed out the door and reached for the umbrella. But sometimes being very slow and careful doesn’t work as well as doing things in the usual way. The umbrella fell over with a rattle and, impulsively, she said, “Damn!”

“Hello?” Rita’s voice challenged from upstairs.

There seemed nothing to do but answer.

“It’s Jean.”

She was immediately sorry she had spoken. Now she couldn’t leave. She stood there a moment, then stepped inside, closing the door behind her.

“Wait a minute! I’ll be down.”

Jean waited.

In very few minutes, Rita appeared, short of makeup and with erratic hair.

“Come with me to the kitchen,” she said in a voice that sounded more like a plea than an order.

Jean obeyed. Rita stood silently, her eyes closed as heavy footsteps came down the stairs and out the front door. Then she opened her eyes.

“You have no idea how hard it is to look at you,” she said.

“Why don’t we go sit down?” Jean suggested, for lack of anything better to say, and led the way back into the living room.

Rita still wasn’t looking directly at Jean. Jean was fine with that.

They sat.

“I don’t want to explain,” Rita started.

“Then don’t.”

“I have to. You’re my friend.”

It was a few minutes before Rita began again.

“It would be a lot easier if you were a member of my family.”

Jean got that. “It’s just … why here?”

“It’s always some ‘here’. Sold houses with contingencies are best. Still a lockbox, no one likely to come. I like my neighbors. You’ve met them. They’re my friends. I don’t want them to know.”

“But why is that a problem? I mean, these days. You could have introduced this guy to me.”

“I did. You met him at the office two weeks ago.”

“I did?”

Finally, Rita did look directly at Jean.

“You’re going to get it all, girlfriend. It’s time. You’ve become my best friend. I need to know if maybe you don’t want to be. It’s like …” Rita took a deep breath. “You know how hard it is to make a living in this business.”

Jean nodded. “But you’re so gorgeous. Lots of men want to work with you.”

“Some do. True. But for most of them, it’s not about houses.”

“Not about houses,” Jean echoed. “Okay, so they’re interested in
you
. Are you telling me you don’t have one boyfriend, that you have … well, more than one? That’s okay, I guess.”

“No, it’s probably not okay for you. And they’re not exactly boyfriends. Look,” Rita said, leaning forward and then backing off again. “It started with this dude from out of town, a really cool guy. I was just getting started, broke, holding one of Theresa’s listings open. He came with his agent. It was instant chemistry, you know? We got to talking. We made a sort of … a sort of, not exactly in words, but … he knew if he dumped his agent and worked with me, we’d …” Rita laughed without humor. “We’d play together, too. And we did. For three weekends. Then he found the right house and he went home and got his wife and they bought it and that was that. Well, not exactly. A little while after they moved here, he sent another guy to me. Local. Wanted to move up. But we both knew … Anyway, repeat story. Sometimes they felt like the commission was enough. Sometimes there were gifts, too. And dinners and stuff like that.”

Rita was staring out the bay window. It reminded Jean of the day Theresa was killed. She had done the same thing, escaping from what was inside.

“And so on,” Rita finished.

And so on?

“Only the ones I liked. I mean, I wasn’t a hooker exactly. One guy I really liked—he wasn’t married—we stuck together a while and he gave me stuff. That was more like what used to be called a mistress. Today it’s more okay, but …”

Jean guessed. “There were still the buyer referrals.”

“And sellers.”

Rita suddenly decided to become defensive. “If you had a family like mine …” The defiance died. “Anyway, I’ve got a nice IRA, bought my condo and this is going to stop. At least, I keep saying it’s going to stop. But you know what this market is like. I have to make a living.”

“You need to? With all these diseases around, you’re risking—”

“I know. I’ve been tested a couple of times. Shitty, isn’t it? I’ve become like my family because I don’t want to be like my family!” Rita pushed her hair out of her face. “Do you know what it means to me, not living like poor white trash? Buying that condo! That knocked me out! I could buy my own place! Oh, shit!” Rita had just realized. “You do understand
that
.”

“But—”

“Don’t tell me. You wouldn’t do what I’m doing.” Rita reached over to touch Jean’s arm, then pulled back, not sure the touch was welcome. “It’s okay if you don’t feel the same way about me, Jean. And it’s going to be tough for you to fake it at the office. They may wonder what’s gone down, but they won’t ask.”

At first, Jean didn’t understand what Rita meant.

“We’re still buds, Rita. I never had this good a friend.”

“Maybe something else I should tell you.”

Jean wanted to stop her. She’d had enough.

“Theresa knew.”

That was unexpected.

“So?”

“So that’s motive.” Rita gave Jean a few seconds to connect the facts. “She—this same thing happened at one of her listings. It was way overpriced. No one was showing it. Didn’t know she’d promised to check on it once in a while after the owners moved. I was the last one she’d tell anything. Anyhow, she was disgustingly thrilled. Never let me forget it. When the office was empty, I’d get these knowing looks. And she could get me kicked out any time she decided to tell Ed. At first, that’s why I wanted to find the real killer. I had a motive, too.”

“Why didn’t you leave? With your looks and your record, you could have gone anywhere.”

“Theresa wouldn’t let me. It’s an advantage having my listings in the office. You know. Extra commission if she sold one. If I left, she could tell Ed and he wouldn’t recommend me to anybody. She could tell the Board. Who wouldn’t believe Theresa? Madam Ethics. Just spreading rumors would have killed my business. That was part of the deal. I had to stay. She loved the power! Shit! She had us both, only in different ways. But I swear to God, Jean, I didn’t kill her!”

It was impossible not to feel the pain this confession was causing Rita.

“I believe you. You know I believe you!”

“And you won’t tell anyone? Because if they check into this, I’m in trouble. I even knifed a guy once. I would be one prime suspect!”

“The one who raped you?”

“Shit, no. He never touched me again. One of my brothers would have killed him. No, some guy in a bar. No charges. He was totally drunk. Self-defense. But it would look bad. I know you well enough to know you might have to tell. I don’t want to mess with your conscience, either. It’s okay if you have to.”

Rita sounded defeated, a Rita Jean had never heard before.

“I won’t tell. I believe you.”

A whisper was all Jean could manage.

“Thanks, girlfriend. My bad, huh? Bad not to have told you sooner, too. I’ve been feeling guilty as hell. It took finding me to … well, I know you’ve been scared and you had a right to know there were two of us with a motive. I’m supposed to be a friend. A friend should have told you before. And this …” Rita attempted a smile, but it didn’t work. “I kept hoping something—someone else would be arrested and you wouldn’t ever need to know. But I’m stopping. This was seriously painful, telling you. So no more. I swear. Now I’m going to get the hell out of here. I’m sure you don’t want me around right now.”

Jean dropped the lockbox in her purse and carefully locked the door to her first listing. It was done. It should have been a triumphant moment. Next, she would take her suit to the cleaners and go to the office and remove the appraisal contingency from the Board listing. She had been through crises with Ellie many times. She had survived the death of her father and her now unfathomable mentor. She was a suspect, but now Rita could be one, too. Jean paused, her hand pressed against the newly painted red door. A little time, just a little time doing normal, everyday things would bring these emotions down to a manageable level. It always had.

 
Chapter 31

Another bad night. A half moon lightened the faded, multicolored geometrics of one side of Grandmother’s quilt, leaving the other half subdued in shadow. The quilt was there for warmth and in memory of Grandma and the many people’s lives the pieces represented. It had never claimed beauty.

My life is there, the pink checked pinafore she made for me, the yellow dress I wore when I got an award for a poem in third grade, a red and white square from the tablecloth I ruined with grape juice the summer I was supposed to keep Grandma company when Grandpa died. She didn’t really want me there, a nine-year-old with no idea what to say, no grasp of what death or marriage meant. The lights and darks, the good and the bad, the jumbled pieces of lives all sewn into one unwieldy piece of goods. The problem is that too many lights and darks have moved in and out of my life too quickly lately. I need to know where I am, how to feel. Grandma’s stitches have held through many washings. I need to do that. Hold together the pieces of my life. Wash out the stains. Make something useful of it.

Apparently I’m still a suspect. No one else has been arrested. Will they find Frank? And will he have an alibi? In my mind, Theresa in her blue suit is still lying on the white floor, her head in a pool of blood. Red, white and blue. Peculiar way to spoil the sight of the American flag. It was almost humorous. Foxhole humor, emotions a disordered heap in my head. Rita seemed to top the pile tonight. Rita had knifed somebody before. She was capable, then, of that kind of violence. How did you shove a knife into someone’s flesh? I’m sure I couldn’t unless it meant saving myself. Maybe saving someone else. Not in cold blood. Maybe not at all.

Do I
really know my friend? Never seen her like that before. Humiliated, defeated. The image hurts. So does the memory of Marian’s tears. And Kevin’s. I’m on the dark side of the quilt tonight, the shadow side. Another idea that would make Rita laugh at my overactive imagination. At least, it would have before yesterday.

Rita is the best, closest friend I ever had. She helps me to move toward confidence and a strength I never had before. Now she’s important in a new way, a way out of fear, a new suspect. But what about what Rita had said at Manny’s? “If it ever hurts me to help you, I come first?” Weren’t those the words she had used? There could be no proof of Theresa’s blackmail.

Jean desperately needed reassurance. It was too early to phone.

At seven o’clock, she could wait no longer. Picking up the phone from her bedside stand, she punched familiar number three.

“Hello?”

Rita was clearly wide awake. There was even an eager note.

“It’s me. Jean.”

“Thank God. I was hoping it was you. Yesterday was awful. Are you okay? Did you believe me? That I didn’t do it?”

Jean decided to be honest.

“It was, you know, a shock,” she said slowly. “Yesterday I think I believed you totally. Now I keep thinking you would have the guts to do it and … this is hard for me to admit, but it seems like Theresa was kind of asking for it.”
No!
Jean immediately reacted against her own judgment. “Nobody deserves that. But she was—wasn’t the person I thought she was.”

“So now you don’t believe me?”

“I just need to talk to you again.”

“I’ve been thinking, too, so think about this.” Rita was breathing audibly, her voice thin with tension. “Yes, I could have done it. Physically, I mean. I’m not squeamish and I know where to stick the knife. I knew her routine, sending Kevin out for the signs. And you know I had a motive. You also know I’m not the type that likes to be in someone’s power. You’ve probably thought of all this since yesterday.”

Jean hadn’t. She slid further under her grandmother’s quilt without responding.

“But I came up with this: you get me. I mean, you totally deep down
know
me.”