Appraisal for Murder (2 page)

She had wide eyes, which gave her the appearance of perpetual amazement, accented by large, octagonal glasses. Thin blonde hair fell to nearly the middle of her back, and was pulled back from her face in a large clip. She was almost four inches taller than my 5’2” and looked as if she enjoyed the fashion of the 1970s. More important, her smile was friendly.

“I’m Ramona Argrow. We had geometry together. You did a lot better than I did.” Her voice had a kind of dreamy quality, so I was surprised that her handshake was firm. “Where did you go?”

Her name sounded familiar, as if it should mean more than just geometry class. “Go..?”

“Why didn’t you come back to senior year?”

It was such a simple question I had not followed her logic. “My parents lived in Lakewood. I was just down here for a year with my aunt while they sorted some stuff out.” In eleventh grade, I had said they were on a long trip through Europe.

“That’s right; your aunt has the B&B. I like her. She buys her nameplates here.”

Aunt Madge makes small little signs that she inserts in a 4x6 picture frame affixed to the wall outside each of the guest rooms. On it she puts the name of the guests, ostensibly so they don’t wander into the wrong rooms. One couple was quite put out by it, said they didn’t care to advertise their whereabouts to the world. In retrospect, I suppose they were lovers out for a jaunt. Aunt Madge still makes the signs, but now she asks each guest if they want to place one by their door.

“She’s terrific,” I agreed. Now what? All I could remember about Ramona was that she always had a faraway look and probably took art class, since she often carried a portfolio with her. I had tripped over it once in geometry class. “You, uh, still paint?”

No wonder she was so slim. I automatically sucked in my small tummy. I always tell myself that tomorrow I’ll eat less and lose five pounds within a month. Never happens. “Could you, uh, help me find some bond paper?”

“Sure.” She moved toward the back of the store and I followed. “We have regular white and ivory bond, and a couple pastel colors. The colors are more expensive.”

I could feel her eyes on me as I looked at the paper. I hadn’t planned on an audience, and it made me nervous. In general, I don’t give a tinker’s damn what anyone thinks or if they stare at me for an hour, but after the last couple months, I feel as if everyone is looking at me as the wife of Robby Marcos, embezzler. I grabbed a small box of the ivory bond. “This’ll do.”

Ramona took it and walked toward the front. “Most people use this for resumes.”

I felt like saying I wasn’t ‘most people,’ but in this case, I was. “Yeah. I’m thinking of recareering. Decided to have my mid-life crisis early.”

She smiled as she scanned the paper. “I’m not that far along yet.” As she reached for a small bag, her eyes met mine. “I’m sorry about your husband’s stuff.”

“Oh. Thanks.” I didn’t realize she would know, and I didn’t like it. I could feel my face burning and I dropped my purse as I reached in for money.

“I guess I shouldn’t have said anything,” she said. “I just…”

“It’s okay. I appreciate the sentiment.” I handed her my money. “Um, do you mind if I ask how you heard?” I knew it wouldn’t be Aunt Madge.

“Local busybody, Elmira Washington.” She put my resume paper in the small shopping bag. “Nobody pays much attention to her, and she doesn’t talk much to people our age. I have to listen to her when she comes in here.” She handed me the bag. “What was your first career?”

“I’ve been in real estate.”

“Ooh. You can make a lot of money with that here. My uncle does it.”

That’s why her name sounded familiar. Lester Argrow’s photo was plastered on a billboard on the south side of town. “Sure. I remember his sign now. Where’s his office?”

“It’s a small one, above First Bank. He usually meets his clients in their houses or at the Burger King. It’s easy for his clients to park at Burger King.”

Sounded as if Lester Argrow had made some conscious decisions about not becoming a major force in the real estate industry. All I said was, “I know where First Bank is.”

“If you want some advice about getting into real estate here, just tell him you talked to me.” She smiled again as she handed me my bag. “There’s a group planning the ten-year reunion. I think they’re going to do it Thanksgiving weekend, because a lot of people will be home. Even if you didn’t graduate with us you could come.”

I thanked her, made no promises about the reunion, and stepped back into the brisk October air. I wasn’t up for seeing a lot of people until I had my wits more about me. Aunt Madge says I’m still in the “reeling stage,” though I think I’m close to moving to what I have decided to call a “slow spin.” I am definitely feeling better about life now that I’ve put most of my stuff in a storage locker and left the town where people greeted me with either words of encouragement or a sad smile.

Aunt Madge lives on the corner of D Street and Seashore. Her three-story Victorian has three turrets and a wrap-around porch that is populated with an array of comfortable chairs and a porch swing. She has the house repainted every three years, white with blue trim. She repairs porch boards herself when they start to rot, though she no longer saws her own lumber. When I was little, my sister Renée would read picture books to me as we sat on the porch swing. She took her role as big sister very seriously, and unless she was trying to make me do something I didn’t want to, I mostly appreciated her attention.

Aunt Madge is technically my mother’s aunt. Madge’s sister, Alva, was my late grandmother. They grew up in Ocean Ally in what old-timers at the diner just off the beach call the ‘glory days’ of World War II. Aunt Madge is a woman who knows her own mind. She does not often feel a need to tell it to you, but when you look at her it's clear she is reflecting on what's going on around her.

Where my grandmother left her hair at its natural white, Aunt Madge says white hair makes her face look like it belongs in a casket, and she tries different colors. Today it is a very light red; or was when I left the house, anyway. She tried deep auburn but she said it made her look like an old lady trying to pass. As a younger one, I suppose; I didn't ask. She doesn't use permanent color, so after twenty or thirty washes she's close to white and can try another look. My father still laughs about the time she tried deep black, leaving a dashing white streak straight back from her widow’s peak. He told her she looked like a skunk and she washed her hair thirty times in one night to get it out.

I was still smiling about her ‘skunk hair’ as I climbed the front steps. Even on the porch I could smell Aunt Madge’s cheddar cheese bread. She bakes it and a loaf of wheat every day, and puts them out with coffee, tea and ice water at 4 p.m. She is the only one of the four B&Bs in Ocean Alley that provides an afternoon snack. She says she does it so she can charge more and keep the riff-raff out, but I think she does it so she has a reason to talk to her guests. She is a lot more outgoing than I, though you never hear a word of gossip pass her lips. I admire her for this, but it has always made it tough to get any town news out of her.

I could hear her two dogs barking from the small back yard, which is unusual; she usually has them in the back of the house with her. Behind the large guest breakfast room is her enclave—her huge kitchen with an old oak table, which adjoins what home magazines today call a great room (and she calls her sitting room), her bedroom, and a large bath. At the back of the great room is a set of back stairs, originally the servants’ stairs according to Aunt Madge, who has none. I put my package at the foot of the main set of stairs so I would remember to take it to my room, and made my way to her.

Aunt Madge was taking the breakfast dishes out of the dishwasher. Like my grandmother and mother, she is tall and thin and stands and sits very straight. If you don’t know her, you expect a rigid person who purses her lips a lot. As I smiled in her direction, she turned to me and puckered her lips for an across-the-room air kiss and motioned to a chair at the kitchen table. “Enjoy your coffee?”

“Yep.” I tossed the empty paper cup in her trash.

“Any luck?” she asked.

“Not unless I want to drive short-haul trucks or tend bar.” I settled in a chair at her large oak table. “Or computers. Every office needs computer geeks.”

I caught sight of the larger of Aunt Madge’s two shelter-adopted mutts, Mister Rogers, who had his nose pressed against the pane of the sliding glass door. He wagged his part-retriever tail as he looked at me. “Want me to let the guys in?”

“Heavens no.” She turned to glare at him. “The dogs have been in the prunes again. They have to stay outside until they do their business.” She checked the oven knob to be sure it was off.

She has to be making this up.
“Prunes. Your dogs eat prunes?”

“Whenever they can. I store them in plastic bowls now, but if I leave the pantry open, they go in after them and chew through the bowls.” She shut the oven door. “I may have to stop making my prune danishes.”

“That would be a loss.”

She glanced at me. “Too healthy for you?”

Mister Rogers suddenly dove off the porch and squatted in the small garden. His co-conspirator, Miss Piggy—also part Retriever but with even more mixed parentage—looked down at him and then peered in at me, wagging her tail. “I think you may be able to let Mister Rogers in.”

“Oh no, he’ll be busy for awhile.”

Since she was so serious I tried not to laugh. “I ran into someone who knows you. Ramona Argrow, at the office supply store.”

She nodded. “Nice girl. In your class, as I recall.” She sat at the table with me, bringing with her a stack of cloth napkins that she started to fold into triangles. I grabbed a few and began folding. She studied me for a moment and asked, “So, if no luck on the coffee shop computer, do you want me to ask around town?”

“Nope. I’m seriously thinking I should go into bartending.” She looked at me with interest, and then realized I was kidding. We watched Miss Piggy run down the steps and Mister Rogers took her place at the door.

“You don’t want to try real estate here? Your license would still be good, wouldn’t it?” she asked.

“Yeah, but there’s not much of a commercial market, and I don’t see me schlepping families with kids from beach house to beach house.”

“You did appraisal work first, what about that?” She finished her stack and reached over to turn the knob on the electric kettle. She drinks about ten cups of hot tea every day. When it’s really cold she adds amaretto to her evening cups.

“Maybe, but you have to know the local market and land values really well. I’m not sure Stenner and Stenner would be interested in me now. Old man Stenner’s retired anyway, hasn’t he?”

“Yes, but his daughter took over. You may remember her; she was a class ahead of you.”

Jennifer Stenner. Of course. One of the cheerleaders Michael Riordan had dumped, now that I thought of it. “My class, if she’s who I think. Tall, light brown hair, lots of white teeth?” Jennifer was something of a snob, to boot.

“That’s her. Of course, she has competition now, you know.”

This interested me. “Who?”

“Older man, Harry Steele.” She poured tea into a mug. “His grandparents lived here and he spent summers here for probably twenty years. He retired from someplace near Boston and came here and opened Steele Appraisers.”

She was concentrating very hard on draining excess water from her teabag. “His wife died after he retired, and he wanted something to do besides play golf and visit grandchildren. He bought the house his grandparents owned at G and Ferry and turned the first floor into an office.”

“Sounds like your kind of guy.”

She smiled. “He goes to First Presbyterian, too. All the women of a certain age,” her eyes showed her amusement, “invite him to Sunday dinner.”

“Have you?” I tried to keep my tone casual. As far as I knew, she had not been interested in anyone since Uncle Gordon died.

“Didn’t your mother teach you not to chase the boys?”

I laughed. “I don’t remember that. She was a lot younger than you. I think it was OK to at least call them when she was dating.” I passed her my small pile of napkins. She would probably refold them, but at least I hadn’t just watched her work.

She sipped her tea. “You could call Harry. Use my name.”

That was the second time today someone had told me that. A good sign, perhaps. I glanced at the dogs, now sitting calmly on the porch. “They may have worn themselves out.”

She turned and looked at them. “You can let them in now, but watch where you step in the garden until I go out there with the hose.”

I decided to take this sage advice, and to think about calling Harry.

I UNLOCKED THE DOOR to my room (Aunt Madge insists I lock it, despite her belief that she keeps the riff-raff out) and Jazz greeted me. I’ve had the tiny black cat for three years, and she was often my sole comfort the last couple of months I lived in Lakewood. Not that others didn’t try, but they needed me to tell them that I was OK, and Jazz did not require any such lies. She just assumed I was fine and issued her usual commands for food, scratches, and trips outside.

Her prior owner had declawed her, something I did not believe in, but it meant she was no danger to Aunt Madge’s furniture. When she wanted to go out she stood on her hind legs and pawed relentlessly on the door. At the moment, she was in the mood for a scratch.

I obliged, and sat in the small rocker thinking about my next move. If I kept to my current routine of chatting with Aunt Madge, getting coffee and muffins at Joe’s place, and scratching Jazz I would be broke and five pounds heavier in short order. It was time to get back to my usual spontaneous behavior. I stood and Jazz jumped to the floor, meowing to let me know she was put out at being dumped so quickly.