DEATH COMES TO AN OPEN HOUSE (25 page)

Jean thought of Marian, the way Theresa had used the information about Jeffrey’s affair.

“Something about me being ‘delicious’,” Vivian said. “It was dinner that was delicious, not me.” She looked down at her sturdy body. “Nothing delicious here. I’m built like a football player. Not so sure about the dinner, either. Frank was a flatterer and he needed me on his side. Thank God they’re gone now, those notes, sold with her house, furniture and all, to Wayne’s REIT.”

But they’re not! They’re right there across from us in your basement!

“Theresa was going to tell the police Ed and Frank fought about me, the affair the note seemed to imply. Our agents could see that Ed was angry all that day, Frank defensive. A perfect opportunity. The note told Frank to stay. So she stayed, too, of course, to make sure no one else heard what they were really talking about. Her arrogance … I will never be able to lose the picture of her telling us how perfect the situation was, those notes in her hand—mine was from several months before—as she told us what she would tell the police: that she left first and Frank never came home. He did go home of course. And she killed him.”

Jean needed time to come to terms with this new Theresa, but Vivian wasn’t giving her time.

“Ed thought the warning kept Frank away from the office for a while, that Frank was giving Ed time to cool off. Frank was far from faithful, so no one questioned why Theresa didn’t report his absence. She could take a few days to dispose of both him and his car before it became obvious Frank was really gone. She called the police then.”

Vivian’s eyes drifted to the now darkening sky.

“Strange how perfectly suited the real estate life is for planning a murder,” Vivian said, almost as if talking to herself. “We needn’t account for the hours and hours we spend previewing houses, showing buyers around. But this was just in case Frank’s body was found. Theresa always seemed pretty confident it wouldn’t be. She was right. He’s probably buried somewhere in their twenty-nine acres in West Virginia. The car …” Vivian shrugged. “… there are places in D.C. or Baltimore where an abandoned car would be stolen for its parts or painted and resold.”

“How do you know any of this?” Jean asked, matching Vivian’s near-whisper. “Why did she tell you at all?”

Vivian turned to Jean.

“Ed guessed. He knew the situation. He confronted her, giving her a chance to turn herself in.” Vivian shut her eyes and her head moved from side to side. “Amazing woman. Completely turned the tables on us with those notes that sounded as though Frank and I were having an affair and Ed’s letter opener. Add those things to Ed’s anger the day she killed him, the anger all the staff saw. Blackmail. All planned in advance. I think she wanted him to figure it out. She drained the financial life out of our company. Took all my listings. That’s why I quit. Took all the referrals that came to Ed and claimed a bigger percentage of the commission, both justifiable on the basis of her sales volume if there was any kind of investigation. We were about to lose this house, try to sell it in this awful market. You know how run down the office was. Dying.” Vivian dropped her head. “Worst of all, Ed was dying, too. You saw him. His heart—the reports were getting worse and worse. It was justified, wasn’t it? Kill or be killed?”

Abruptly, Vivian said, “I need a glass of wine. Want one?”

Jean started to get up.

“No,” Vivian said in a voice that now sounded only tired. “I need to move.”

She walked slowly up the path that led to the side door to the kitchen. Jean felt as she had the day she found Theresa’s body, as though something had hit her, leaving her unable to breathe normally or think clearly. That unsettled feeling in her stomach was familiar, too.

Birds again, on the garden cart. Like the birds outside the window after I found Theresa. At Theresa’s open house, Vivian had been distraught. Was it more than sympathy for me? Was it because she knew Ed had killed Theresa?

Jean felt caught inside some overwrought soap opera. She rubbed her forehead as if that would somehow wipe away unwanted knowledge.

It had always been clear there was tension between them. At last, a motive for Ed. Those tells. Useless. Or perhaps he didn’t feel guilty at all, justified because she was a killer? Vivian seemed to feel that way.

The difference in Ed since Theresa’s death.

Why had Vivian and Ed never looked for the notes in the office? Because it was natural to assume they were kept safely at home? Keeping them in her office drawer sounded like Theresa. Confidence. Nerve. A kind of secret flaunting, as she flaunted the opener.

Vivian was walking down the path from the house now, carefully carrying two glasses of white wine. A rush of feeling told Jean she wanted no harm to come to this woman. Theresa had made a terrible substitute mother. Vivian was sympathetic, uncritical, always ready to listen, not preach.
I don’
t
want to hurt her. Or lose her
. It was impossible to tell which felt more important.
Why did justice have to raise its legal head? It wouldn’t bother Rita
. Vivian handed the glass to Jean with a rueful smile, sat down on the black bench and continued her story, calmer now.

“Wayne wouldn’t join us while Theresa was there. He’d butted heads with her before. We were afraid we’d lose him. He’s perfect to buy us out in another five or ten years when Ed’s ready to retire.” Surprisingly, Vivian smiled. “Ed and I didn’t like you being under her influence, either. Ed could have done for you what she did. She wanted you under her influence. And Kevin.”

Darker and darker, Jean thought. She had assumed Theresa was helping her, not the other way around. The radio show came back and she remembered that these “nasty people” had mostly been victims themselves. In her mind, Theresa’s dark form lay on the white floor again, protesting such extreme punishment.

“How could Ed do it?”

Jean’s voice was a whisper.

Vivian looked at her in obvious surprise.

“Oh, my dear!” Once more, the hand was extended, again pulled back. “Ed didn’t do it.
I
did.”

Jean’s mouth opened, but no sound came out.

 
Chapter 47

“I’m sorry. Oh, my dear, you look so shocked! We’ve become so close, haven’t we? She was killing the man I loved, destroying our lives, hurting you. She had to be stopped. Months—maybe years—ago I began to plan how to get rid of Theresa.”

Vivian was leaning toward Jean, anxious. Jean thought she had never looked so old.

“For a while, it was just daydreaming, planning the details. A certain satisfaction in that alone. But as the market got worse and you came, I realized I was going to do it. And then that silly idiot in the news killed his wife and gave me—well, it seemed to be the perfect plan. If only he hadn’t—” Vivian shrugged “—caved and confessed. I had always heard that most murderers are never caught.”

Jean nodded meaninglessly. Vivian searched her face for a response, then gave up and sat back.

They sipped wine as the sun moved behind a willow tree. Its leaves made shade patterns that fell across their faces and matching red university sweat shirts. Jean made her way through this mountain of unacceptable information, trying to start over.

“But why the letter opener, Vivian? Why make it look as though someone in our office did it?’

“Stupid, wasn’t it? Before I quit working, it was always in her briefcase, ready to show off to anyone who would listen. Then, that Sunday at the office—”

“At the office? Ed said you went to church and he left you there.”

Vivian smiled. It seemed improbable that she should smile.

“That was to protect us both. Ed likes to stop at the office to check phone messages on Sunday morning. Ed told me to be sure to say we had gone straight to church from home. Police don’t generally accept spouse’s alibis for each other, but they knew of no motive for either of us. And they did know that Theresa earned us a good deal of money. My darling Ed has never suspected I was the one. I wandered into the staff room and saw the opener, picked it up, thought how perfect, how symbolic it would be. I thought everyone would assume it had been in her briefcase. It always used to be. But was it sharp enough? That was a surprise. Perfect again. I couldn’t use a knife from home. Ed knows them all. I had bought a new one, but the police seem to be able to trace everything these days. The letter opener seemed perfect. So perfect.” Vivian spoke slowly, lost in the memory. “What a terrible mistake. Not the only one. Ed never told me you all had a second person at the open houses. That would have meant telling me Kevin was with Theresa and Ed knew not to speak of Theresa. A painful subject for me. Thank God Kevin wasn’t there!”

Ed hadn’t lied. He hadn’t talked about stopping at the office on Sunday morning. The tells didn’t cover omissions.

Too much had come at Jean too fast. Only now did it strike her what all this awful information meant to her. The emotions that had been attacking her since the story of Frank’s death began to separate and send consoling fingers through her body. She wasn’t going to be arrested! Fear dissipated, leaving the separate horror of what Theresa and Vivian had done. It would not have been her choice, this way of relieving her of fear, but it was welcome, nevertheless. Jean took a deep breath and a sip of her wine, her attention once more on what Vivian was saying.

“… church. I had a meeting afterward. Ed took our car and Emily DuBois took me home, as she always does after those luncheons and stewardship meetings. She’s a talker. The whole plan wouldn’t have worked if the timing had been off. She dropped me off with enough time to change clothes but, of course, not enough to go to the office for the letter opener. Otherwise, the police might have suspected me.”

Vivian’s head went slowly up and down as she remembered.

“It seemed … No. I can’t say ‘the hand of God’. Not in this situation. But it’s true that it seemed this was meant to happen.”

“But, Vivian, the police talked to all the neighbors. Nobody mentioned you. Wait! Your picture wasn’t in the brochure any more, was it? And then they had no reason to suspect you.”

“Even so, I took no chances. I put on my athletic bra to flatten these—” Vivian pressed her breasts “—wore one of Ed’s enormous tee shirts, tucked my hair under one of his baseball caps. With jeans and sneakers, I looked like what I always say I’m built like. A football player. A nice young, sturdy boy no one would ever suppose to be a woman.” I figured on lots of people, but also lots of cars in that townhouse community on a Sunday morning. My old car would never be noticed. And it connected so perfectly with the previous murder. Except, of course, that it didn’t connect when the husband confessed.”

It seemed that Jean’s question had prompted Vivian to relive the event. The story went on in a detached voice. She didn’t look at Jean.

“I barely got there in time. I walked in imitation of a boy’s strut to the house and used a tissue to open the front door and locked it behind me. Then I wrapped the tissue around the knife and went into the kitchen. Theresa always set up in the kitchen. I told her I wanted to see the house as a comparable. She smiled at me—” Vivian smiled, too, mimicking in remembrance “— and said, ‘how nice, another listing for me’, and turned her back to me. That created a final surge of anger. Up to that point, I might not have done it. The hardest part was afterwards. The anger was gone. Just gone. I ran out the back door, afraid I might be sick. That would have been bad. DNA. TV tells us a lot about how to commit crimes. I almost forgot to empty the envelope of Theresa’s torn business cards on the counter. Went through the two back yards to the other street in case Kevin returned.”

“You left the back door open,” Jean said, immediately wondering why she would utter such an inane comment in this midst of this horrific story.

“Yes, I suppose I did,” Vivian said, turning to Jean, her face crumpled as it had been when she had come to comfort her after Theresa’s murder.

“The owners were supposed to find her. Not you. Oh, my dear, not you.”

It wasn’t sympathy Jean could respond to. She looked away. Vivian, accepting the rejection, sat back in her chair.

They watched in silence as starlings flew to the garden cart again now that the occupants of the bench were still and silent. The sky seemed bruised, blue and purple. Vivian finished her wine and closed her eyes, though that wouldn’t shut out the scenes that must be playing in her head. Jean wanted to be alone in her cheerful blue and yellow living room, aware of the irony that it was Vivian’s house that offered sanctuary.

“I didn’t need to tell you that last part, did I? It must have been hard for you to hear. I think I—not right, but I think I want you to understand that I’m not likely to be suspected. A plea for silence, I suppose.”

Only now did Jean realize the weapon Vivian had handed her.
What to do with it? Tell the police?
Forgive and be silent?
It sounded as though Vivian had forgiven herself.

“You and Ed were the ones who wanted us to go to church together. Pray together. How can you live with this?”

“I have bad days. Other days … after a time … silence had made us both accessories in Frank’s death, hadn’t it? It seemed impossible to end it except as I did. Most days it seems to me a just execution. The Lord our God is a jealous God. Vengeful, too. Wiped out whole tribes. God isn’t very real to me. I have never really been able to deal with what he allows to happen to his children.”

“But you’re not God. Only God has the right to punish, to kill. Your church told me that.”

The sun was almost gone. Vivian’s face was barely discernable in the shadows.

“We kill all the time, Jean. We condemn prisoners to death, we give medals to those who kill in war, self-defense is applauded. Theresa was the enemy and Ed was going to die of a heart attack if I didn’t kill her. To kill a killer is just, surely. Or to kill to save a life.”

“That’s the way Ed feels?”