Charlaine Harris: Real Murders

The effect of all those shut doors in that blank corridor was also unnerving. It was like a little beige tunnel, interrupted only by the pay phone mounted on the wall. I recalled once telling Bankston Waites that if that phone rang, I’d expect Rod Serling to be on the other end, telling me I had now entered the “Twilight Zone.” I half smiled at the idea and turned to grasp the knob of the door to the big meeting room.

The phone rang.

I swung around and took two hesitant steps toward it, my heart banging against my chest. Still nothing moved in the silent building.

The phone rang again. My hand closed around it reluctantly.

“Hello?” I said softly, and then cleared my throat and tried again. “Hello,” I said firmly.

“May I speak to Julia Wallace, please?” The voice was a whisper.

My scalp crawled. “What?” I said shakily.

“Julia…” whispered the caller.

The other phone was hung up.

I was still standing holding the receiver when the door to the women’s room opened and Sally Allison came out.

I shrieked.

“God almighty, Roe, I don’t look that bad, do I?” Sally said in amazement.

“No, no, it’s the phone call…” I was very close to crying, and I was embarrassed about that. Sally was a reporter for the Lawrenceton paper, and she was a good reporter, a tough and intelligent woman in her late forties. Sally was the veteran of a runaway teenage marriage that had ended when the resulting baby was born. I’d gone to high school with that baby, named Perry, and now I worked with him at the library. I loathed Perry; but I liked Sally a lot, even if sometimes her relentless questioning made me squirm. Sally was one of the reasons I was so well-prepared for my Wallace lecture.

Now she elicited all the facts about the phone call from me in a series of concise questions that led to a sensible conclusion; the call was a prank perpetrated by a club member, or maybe the child of a club member, since it seemed almost juvenile when Sally put it in her framework.

I felt somehow cheated, but also relieved.

Sally retrieved a tray and a couple of boxes of cookies from the small conference room. She’d deposited them there, she explained, when she entered and suddenly felt the urgency of the two cups of coffee she’d had after supper.

“I didn’t even think I could make it across the hall into the big room,” she said with a roll of her tan eyes.

“How’s life at the newspaper?” I asked, just to keep Sally talking while I got over my shock.

I couldn’t dismiss that phone call as lightly and logically as Sally. As I trailed after her into the big meeting room, half listening to her account of a fight she’d had with the new publisher, I could still taste the metallic surge of adrenaline in my mouth. My arms had goosepimples, and I pulled my sweater tightly around me.

As she arranged the cookies on her tray, Sally began telling me about the election that would be held to select someone to fill out the term of our unexpectedly deceased mayor. “He keeled over right in his office, according to his secretary,” she said casually as she realigned a row of Oreos. “And after having been mayor only a month! He’d just gotten a new desk.” She shook her head, regretting the loss of the mayor or the waste of the desk, I wasn’t sure which.

“Sally,” I said before I knew I was going to, “where’s Mamie?”

“Who cares?” Sally asked frankly. She cocked one surprised eyebrow at me.

I knew I should laugh, since Salty and I had discussed our mutual distaste for Mamie before, but I didn’t bother. I was beginning to be irritated with Sally, standing there looking sensible and attractive in her curry bronze permanent, her well-worn expensive suit, and her well-worn expensive shoes.

“When I pulled in the parking lot,” I said quite evenly, “there were two cars, yours and Mamie’s. I recognized Mamie’s, because she’s got a Chevette like mine, but white instead of blue. So you are here and I am here, but where is Mamie?”

“She’s set the chairs up right and made the coffee,” Sally said after looking around. “But I don’t see her purse. Maybe she ran home for something.”

“How’d she get past us?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Sally was beginning to sound irritated with me, too. “She’ll show up. She always does!”

And we both laughed a little, trying to lose our displeasure with each other in our amusement at Mamie Wright’s determination to go to everything her husband attended, be in every club he joined, share his life to the fullest.

Bankston Waites and his light of love, Melanie Clark, came in as I put my notebook on the podium and slid my purse underneath it. Melanie was a clerk at Mamie’s husband’s insurance office, and Bankston was a loan officer at Associated Second Bank. They’d been dating about a year, having become interested in each other at Real Murders meetings, though they’d gone through Lawrenceton High School together a few years ahead of me without striking any sparks.

Bankston’s mother had told me last week in the grocery store that she was expecting an interesting announcement from the couple any day. She made a particular point of telling me that, since I’d gone out with Bankston a few times over a year ago, and she wanted me to know he was going to be out of circulation. If she was waiting in suspense for that interesting announcement, she was the only one. There wasn’t anyone in Lawrenceton Bankston and Melanie’s age left for them to marry, except each other. Bankston was thirty-two, Melanie a year or two older. Bankston had scanty blond hair, a pleasant round face, and mild blue eyes; he was Mr. Average. Or at least he had been; I noticed for the first time that his shoulder and arm muscles were bulging underneath his shirt sleeves.

“Have you been lifting weights, Bankston?” I asked in some amazement. I might have been more interested if he’d shown that much initiative when I’d dated him.

He looked embarrassed but pleased. “Yeah, can you tell a difference?”

“I certainly can,” I said with genuine admiration. It was hard to credit Melanie Clark with being the motivation for such a revolutionary change in Bankston’s sedentary life, but undoubtedly she was. Perhaps her absorption in him could be all the more complete since she had no family to claim her devotion. Her parents, both ‘only’ children, had been dead for years-her mother from cancer, her father hit by a drunk driver.

Right now Melanie the motivator was looking miffed.

“What do you think about all this, Melanie?” I asked hastily.

Melanie visibly relaxed when I acknowledged her proprietorship. I made a mental note to speak carefully around her, since Bankston lived in one of “my” townhouses. Melanie must surely know Bankston and I had gone out together and it would be too easy for her to build something incorrect out of a landlady-tenant relationship.

“Working out’s done wonders for Bankston,” she said neutrally. But there was an unmistakable cast to her words. Melanie wanted me to get a specific message, that she and Bankston were having sex. I was a little shocked at her wanting me to know that. There was a gleam in her eyes that made me realize Melanie had banked fires under her sedate exterior. Under the straight dark hair conservatively cut, under the plain dress, Melanie was definitely feeling her oats. Her hips and bosom were heavy, but suddenly I saw them as Bankston must, as fertility symbols instead of liabilities. And I had a further revelation; not only were Bankston and Melanie having sex, they were having it often and exotically.

I looked at Melanie with more respect. Anyone who could pull the wool over the collective eye of Lawrenceton as effectively as Melanie had earned it.