Ellen McKenzie 04-Murder Half-Baked Read Online Free PDF Page B

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.