Charlaine Harris - Three Bedrooms, One Corpse

Of course, that was what the police might think.

I shut my eyes.

“Are you okay, sweetie?” Benita was asking with concern.

“I’m fine,” I lied automatically. “Are we about finished?”

“Just about. Do you like it?”

“It’s different,” I said, startled enough to peek out from under my personal black cloud. “Gosh, I don’t look like me.”

“I know,” said Benita proudly. “You look very sleek and sophisticated. Just beautiful.”

“Gee,” I said slowly. “I do.”

“All you need to do is go home and put on your dress and some lipstick, and you’ll be ready to step out.”

I did need lipstick. And I needed some spine, too, I decided grimly. I wasn’t going to let these black thoughts overwhelm me. I knew Martin, on some level, knew him thoroughly.

I thought.

I paid Benita handsomely, and went home to slide into my green flouncy dress and put on some lipstick. I’m going to go and have a good time, I told myself. I’m going with a handsome, sexy man who considers me absolutely necessary. He might have wanted to kill nasty Sam Ulrich last night, but he wouldn’t have killed Tonia Lee and Idella. Absolutely not.

At least my inner turmoil wasn’t showing on the outside. When I looked in my bathroom mirror to put on my bronzy lipstick, I looked just as good as I had in the beauty shop.

I almost wished I’d polished my nails, but that would have been absolutely out of character; and with my hair put up, I hardly knew myself, as it was.

Instead of bustling around thinking of something to do, I sat on the ottoman in front of my favorite chair, my current book lying neglected on the table beside it. I decided to pop the dress on at the last second. It hung on the bathroom door, looking festive and fancy, mocking me. I stared into space and thought about Martin gone, Martin in jail, Martin on trial.

He was as necessary to me as he said I was to him.

When the doorbell rang, it actually surprised me. I pulled off my robe, pulled the dress over my head, and zipped it up in record time. I slid my feet into my high-heeled pumps and pulled myself together to answer the door, wondering vaguely why everything looked so funny.

Martin took in a deep breath when I opened the door. He looked down at me with some unreadable emotion.

“Do I look all right?” I asked, suddenly anxious.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Oh, yes.”

“Do you like the hair?” I asked nervously when he still stared.

“Yes… very much.” He finally stepped in so I could close the door against the cold. He was wearing a black overcoat, and his white hair was strikingly attractive.

Once again I had the unsettling feeling that he was grown up and I wasn’t.

“Where are your glasses?”

“Oh,” I exclaimed, “that’s why everything looked so funny.” In some relief, I found them on the little table beside my chair and popped them on. “I tried contact lenses,” I told him defensively, “but I’m one of those people who can’t wear them. They just drove me crazy.”

“I’m glad you wear glasses.”

“Why?”

“So no one else can see you with them off,” he said, and bent to give me a kiss on the cheek. His finger traced the line of my neck. I shivered. My fears abated now that I was with him. When I was close to him, I felt that Martin would not let himself be arrested.

“Come look in the bathroom mirror,” he suggested.

“What?”

“Just for a minute; come with me.”

“Is my hair coming down?” My hands flew up.

“No, no,” Martin said, and smiled.

So into the bathroom we went, and I looked at myself in the mirror, Martin’s face rising neatly above mine in the reflection. He pulled off his gloves, and his hand went into a pocket.

Suddenly I realized I should be absolutely terrified.

But if he wanted to kill me, he would. I took a deep breath, looking steadily at his eyes in the mirror, and from his pocket he pulled a little gray velvet box and set it on the counter. Gently and expertly he removed my earrings, plain gold balls, and opening the velvet box, he extracted gorgeous amethyst-and-diamond earrings and with no fumbling at all fixed them in my ears.

“Oh, Martin,” I said, stunned. I felt as if I’d put on my brakes at the edge of a precipice.

“Sweetheart, do you like them?” he said finally.

“Oh, yes,” I said, trying hard not to cry. “Yes, Martin. They’re beautiful.” My hands were shaking, and I clenched my fists so he wouldn’t notice.

“Didn’t you tell me November was your birthday?”

“Yes, it is.”

“And here it is November. I didn’t know which day, but I wanted to get you a present. I know topaz is your birthstone, but none I saw seemed warm enough to me. These look like you. If you didn’t know it, you look beautiful tonight.”

The stones glittered. The amethysts were rectangular and edged with small diamonds.

“I’m overwhelmed. Martin, I don’t know what to say.” I’d never spoken truer words.

“Tell me you love me.”

I looked into the mirror.

“I love you.”

“That’s all I wanted to hear.”

“Martin.”

His hand touched my cheek.

“Do you-?”

“Yes,” he said into my ear, kissing my neck. “Oh, yes. I love you.”

After a while he said, “Do we have to go?”

“Unless we want my mother coming here to find out what happened to me, yes.”

Actually, I needed a space to think, to calm down. If we stayed here, I certainly wouldn’t get it.

Talk about warring emotions. Someone loved me. I loved him back. He might be questioned tomorrow for murder. He’d given me the most romantic gift, the kind women wait a lifetime for. And I’d thought for a moment that he was going to strangle me.

Martin fetched my coat from the closet while I reexamined my earrings in the mirror. “Can you stop looking long enough to put on your coat?” he asked, laughing.

“I guess so,” I said reluctantly. The moment of terror was oozing out and filling up with delight. “Martin, what’s that clipped to your coat pocket?”

“Oh, a beeper. We’ve been having trouble with a particular man on the night shift. His supervisor is watching him tonight, and if he catches him stealing, he’s going to beep me so I can go have it out with the guy.”

In my now almost complete wave of euphoria, I did a Scarlett O’Hara and decided to think about the bad stuff later. Maybe I couldn’t put it off until tomorrow, but I could savor this minute, surely.

Martin and I were a little late, among the last to arrive. We picked glasses of white wine off the tray a waiter carried by. I spotted Lizanne and Bubba Sewell immediately. Lizanne did not hint in her greeting to me that she had given me a warning that afternoon. Maybe her liquid dark eyes rested on me a little sadly, but that was all. Bubba started one of those conversations with Martin designed to link them in the male network: he connected what he was working on as a representative with what Martin was trying to achieve at Pan-Am Agra, he told Martin that he could call him any time he wanted to “talk things over,” he illustrated his intelligence and grasp of Pan-Am Agra’s interests, and he implied that Martin was the best thing that had happened to the company since sliced bread.

Martin responded cautiously but with interest.

Lizanne told me how pretty my hair looked, and admired my earrings.

“Martin gave them to me,” I said proudly.

She looked worried for a minute, then properly complimented me and drew Bubba’s attention to them.

“Did you show them your ring?” he responded after a token remark.

Lizanne, with her lovely slow smile, held out her hand on which glittered a notable diamond. “My engagement ring,” she said calmly.