Ellen McKenzie 04-Murder Half-Baked (4 page)

I
had arranged to meet Anne Kennedy at Grace House. I needed to see it so that I could establish a reasonable sales price. Anne had told me that the mortgage had long since been paid off, so the proceeds would go a long way toward the purchase of another, larger home. However, she had been adamant that they needed to find a new house before I could put it on the market. The
residents
had all been through bad times and didn’t need prospective buyers who might be more curious about them than about the features of the house poking around. I gladly agreed,
for a different
reason. I was fairly certain that a house filled with people in transition to someplace else wouldn’t show well. Usually we encouraged
owners
to “stage” their homes, putting out their prettiest things, packing up the rest, and storing them in a garage made newly neat, but in this case, empty
would be
better. We might
—
most likely would
—
have to do a few things to get it in shape to sell. I just hoped
the job
wouldn’t
involve
much more than clean
ing
and paint
ing
.

Grace House was right in the middle of a quiet residential district. Modest three to four bedroom family homes lined both sides of the street, the sidewalks littered with bright plastic bikes, scooters, and skates. None of the homes was especially well kept, but none was in really bad shape. Mostly, they looked tired.

The house I was looking for was in the middle of the block. I pulled up in front and spent a moment studying it. Placed f
a
rther back on the lot than its neighbors, the front door was covered with a heavy metal screen door that looked new; the front windows were large, light, and clean. The lawn was free of toys and landscaping. The house looked bare, unadorned, but the paint was fresh.
On each side of the house was a high front fence, on one side a gate secured by a chain. The garage door was down and didn’t have a handle, indicating it could only be worked by an automatic opener. I looked around. The house on one side had more trees, more bushes, but they weren’t trimmed, and the paint was pe
e
ling off the rafters. The house on the opposite side had an even higher backyard fence and, judging from the growls behind it, more than one unfriendly dog. That garage door was also firmly shut. The only indicat
ion that
this house was different from its neighbors was the small plaque above the mailbox that said “Grace House.”

I walked up to the front door and rang the bell. “Ellen.” Anne Kennedy opened the front door. “Your timing’s perfect. I just got here myself.” She fumbled for a second, but the screen door stayed shut. “Sorry. We have a new door and the lock’s tricky. I’m not too good at it yet.” There was a snap and the heavy screen opened. “There. Come in.”

I stepped into a surprising room. I don’t know what I’d expected, something depressing I guess, but this room was anything but. Bright flowered slipcovers on the two sofas, a rocking chair, and a deep red upholstered chair with an ottoman, all clustered around a low round coffee table that held a red bowl filled with pinecones and greenery. There was a Christmas tree in the corner, ablaze with lights, decorated with strings of cranberry, popcorn, and paper ornaments made by small hands. A fireplace sat in the middle of a long wall, scenting the room with last night’s fire. It was flanked by bookcases overflowing with books, games, and DVDs, many of them Disney. Two shelves had been removed to make room for a TV. Windows filled the wall that faced the street. They were all covered with louvered blinds, open to let in the sparse winter light.

“It came out pretty well, didn’t it?” Anne grinned at me. I grinned back. It was hard not to. How this slightly plump, past middle age, grandmotherly looking woman could deal with the problems she must see day in and day out and still remain so cheerful, I didn’t know. It made my bad temper over a ridiculous wedding dress and a garish wedding cake seem trivial. Well, almost trivial.

“It’s great,” I assured her. “Better than lots of the other houses I’ve seen in this neighborhood.”

“I wanted it to be as cheerful as possible.” She looked around the room. “These women and their kids have gone through bad times. They need something a little uplifting, even if it’s only slipcovers.” Then she laughed. “Besides, they wash. Come on, I’ll show you the rest of it.”

The house had three bedrooms, two
with
multiple beds, and they were all obviously occupied. “Many of these women come with their kids.” Anne waved at the Spiderman pajamas and the Cinderella nightgown neatly folded on the dresser in one of the rooms. The only other sign
of the presence of
children was the Disney backpack propped up in
the
corner. “They have to stay in one room because of
the
lack of space, but also because these kids need to stay close to their moms. Lots of these women are newly divorced, or in the process. Often the husband won’t provide support, and the woman isn’t trained to do anything that comes close to making a living, or she’s been out of the work force so long she can’t go back to her old job. That’s where we come in. But we do a lot more than job training. Counseling, help with child care, money management, and most important, we give them time to get back on their feet
. W
e give them hope.” She laughed and led the way to the next room. “Sounds a little pompous, maybe, but lots of times we can make the difference between a woman starting a successful new life or ending up on the streets.”

The rooms were spartan in their furnishings, and in their neatness. Except for the last one. It had twin beds, one neatly made. The other was heaped with a blanket and bedspread tangled together. Clothes spilled out of
the
suitcase in
the
corner
and
a sweatshirt
in
obvious need
of
washing had been thrown on the low dresser along with a brush, hairspray, and what looked like an open pot of face cream.
Clothing that
smell
ed
faintly of smoke and
was
hopefully also destined for the washing machine was
piled
in front of the dresser.

Anne looked at the mess and sighed. “Sometimes we can’t pair up the women.
That’s a
nother
factor
that makes
us
hard
-up
for space.”

A
s we went through the bedrooms and bathrooms
,
I made notes on my legal pad. The shower dripped in one and the toilet wobbled in the other. One of the bedroom windows refused to open and a closet door wouldn’t stay closed. Easy fixes. My home inspector would tell me if there were others. These are the
repairs
I like to
have made
before we put the house on the market. If left undone, buyers will always use them as bargaining chips to get a lower price.

We entered the kitchen, a corridor style with a door at the end that opened into the garage. A chipped Formica counter
—
topped with open shelves filled with mismatched plates, bowls, and coffee mugs
—
evidently doubled as a breakfast and lunch area. Two women sat on stools, one making circles with a wet glass on the countertop, the other pulling on a cigarette, waving the smoke away from her companion with her free hand
as
she puffed. Both had plates in front of them with the remains of what looked and smelled like tuna salad sandwiches. Behind them was a long table
surrounded by
an assortment of chairs. A blue and white crockery rooster sat in the middle of the table, a look of perpetual surprise on
its
face.
A sliding glass door opened onto a good-sized backyard surrounded by the same high fence I had seen across the front. The lawn was piled high with decaying leaves and fringed with dormant untrimmed bushes. A single swing, hanging from the bare branch of a large tree, rocked all alone, pushed by the early winter breeze.

The older of the two women looked up as we
entered
and hurriedly ground her cigarette out in a saucer. Her blond hair showed dark brown at the roots; her face was long and thin. So was the rest of her. Her glance at me was cursory and dismissive. It was Anne who had her attention.
W
av
ing
at the lingering smoke
, she
pushed the saucer f
a
rther away. She looked up at Anne but immediately dropped her eyes, like a child caught in the act of stealing a forbidden cookie.

“Leona.” Anne said the woman’s name like she was throwing a dart at a corkboard. She marched across the kitchen, also waving at the smoke. “This is a smoke- free house. You know that. If you can’t
…
” She glanced at me, and the fury in her voice subsided a little. “I’ve told you before not to smoke in here, and I’ve told you the consequences. We have rules
…
” She looked at me again, then s
napped
at the woman
,
“Why aren’t you at work?”

Leona turned slightly and looked at me again before she answered. She took in my baggy but warm sweater, my somewhat scuffed running shoes, and my lack of makeup and evidently decided I was
—
what. A new resident? At any rate, I was someone Anne didn’t mind talking in front of so she nodded at me slightly before she answered. “Ruthie said it was slow. I could go home.”

Ruthie? The Yum Yum’s Ruthie?

“I’ve never
b
een
there at
lunch
hour when it
was slow.”

Had to
be the Yum Yum, and Anne was right.
P
eople
always had to
wait for tables
at lunch hour
.
The waitresses were all as highly charged as Ruthie herself. She wouldn’t stand for anything else. This woman looked like a study in slow motion. Even the hand she used to wave away the smoke was slow, lazy. She must be driving Ruthie crazy. I wondered why she’d hired her.

“Leona, I had to move heaven and earth to get you that job.”