Aurora 06 - A Fool And His Honey Read Online Free PDF Page B

“We enjoyed the evening, I’m just sorry it ended this way.”
    As Martin and Catledge kept up the social end of the evening, I stepped into the kitchen to tell Mrs. Esther that I’d enjoyed the food and that she could clear the table. Mrs. Esther was sitting at the small breakfast table in the bay window in the kitchen, reading How Stella Got Her Groove Back. Just as I opened my mouth to speak, I saw that the kitchen door to the garage was being pulled shut, and I understood that Ellen had gone down the back stairs, stepped silently through the kitchen, and—this I definitely heard—was starting up the car in the garage.
    When I looked from the garage door back to Mrs. Esther, I saw that she was regarding me with an absolutely neutral expression. As clearly as if she’d spoken it, her face said, “This is none of my business and I don’t want to know.”
    “Thanks for the delicious supper, Mrs. Esther,” I said. I picked a dish at random. “The chicken was especially good.”
    “Thank you, Mrs. Bartell.” Another one who didn’t call me Ms. Teagarden. But it was not an issue I was going to fight over. It had never made any difference to me what people called me, as long as I knew who I was.

    We exchanged good-byes, and I turned back to the dining room to find Martin and Gatledge shaking hands. But then Catledge mentioned the Wednesday meeting of the zoning commission, and Martin remembered that Pan-Am Agra had bought some land adjacent to the plant that needed to be re-zoned, and they started up all over again.
    I couldn’t fiddle with the table, not with Mrs. Esther in the kitchen waiting to take care of it, and I couldn’t wander around the house because that would be rude. So I fished around in my purse for a mint and surreptitiously popped it in my mouth, I got all my hair freed from the collar of my coat, and then I gently patted Martin’s arm.
    “You and Catledge will just have to call each other tomorrow, honey. We need to get home.”
    Martin smiled down at me fondly. “You’re right, Roe. We need to check on Regina and the baby before we turn in.”
    So, finally, finally, we were out the door and on our way. Even then, we had to stop to get gas, because Martin was low and didn’t want to have to fill up on the way to work in the morning.
    We’d had Ellen’s wine with our meal, and a somewhat trying day, so we were quiet and (speaking for myself) sleepy on the drive home. Though I was still mildly concerned about Regina’s visit and the unexplained baby, I was willing to put off worrying about it until the next morning. But I could tell from Martin’s frown that he was brooding over it again.
    As we turned up our long driveway, my pleasant drowsiness evaporated.
    Though I couldn’t tell much about it, there was a strange car parked in front of the garage.
    And Regina’s car was gone.
    The automatic security light at the back of the house showed, also, that someone had taken Darius’s truck and trailer. I hoped it was one of his children.
    We didn’t have an automatic security light at the front of the house because it had shone in our bedroom window; we’d had it switched to manual, and we’d forgotten to leave it on when we’d left for the Lowrys’ dinner. The brilliant light in the backyard gave the front some illumination, but it was faint and full of shadows.
    So the front of the house and garage was relatively dark . . . but aside from the strange car and absence of Regina’s, there was plenty visible to alarm us. I could see, and so could Martin by his grunt, that there was something lying on the stairs that mounted to the garage apartment.
    Most worrying of all was the irregular fan of dark spots on the white siding of the garage.
    “Martin,” I said sharply, as if he hadn’t already noticed all these things for himself. We looked at each other as he switched off the Mercedes’s engine.
    “Stay here,” he said firmly, and opened his door.
    “No,” I said, and opened