1. Finish measuring the house.

2. Talk to Miss Neecy about Essie Nyland, also the Zinsners—where was the boarded-up closet?

3. Possible to find the boyfriend, Harley Dimmoch?

4. See if Parnell Engle will tell me about the day he poured the concrete. 5. Ask Lynn or Arthur if I could see the file on the Julius disappearance, or if he would just tell me about it in detail.

6. See if I could worm anything out of Mrs. Totino's lawyer, Bubba Sewell (who was incidentally my lawyer and the husband of my friend, the former Lizanne Buckley).

I was pleased. This looked as if it would keep me busy for quite a while. Right now, busy-ness was what I wanted. Maybe while I worked on the problem of the Juliuses, the problem of my husband's secret life would sort of solve itself. Right.

Chapter Ten

"SALLY," I SAID QUIETLY into the telephone on Martin's desk. "I want to have lunch with you at my place or your place soon, okay? I need to ask you some questions. You covered the Julius disappearance, didn't you? Do you still have a file on it somewhere, of your notes you took at the time?" Sally, cohostess at my bridal shower, had worked at the Lawrenceton Sentinel for at least fifteen years.

"I don't keep my notes on fiftieth wedding anniversaries or who won the watermelon-seed-spitting contest, but I do keep my notes on major crimes." She sounded a little testy.

"Okay, okay!" I said hastily. "I'm sorry. I don't know how reporters do things!" "Yes, I have the file right here," she said in a mollified tone. "And I can certainly understand why you're interested. My better half—well, my other half—is attending a seminar in Augusta on interrogation techniques, so I'm footloose and fancy free for two days. What suits you?" "What about here, tomorrow, for lunch at noon?" I asked. I knew Sally, like all of Lawrenceton, wanted to see the house.

I hung up as Martin came down the stairs, sweating and relaxed after his session with the Soloflex. He played racquetball at the Athletic Club too, but sometimes the hours didn't suit him. He liked having the exercise equipment at home. "I'm sweaty," he warned me. I didn't care since I could use a shower myself after my work in the garage that morning. Angel and I had finished our measurements later in the afternoon, and there was a four-inch question mark running down the middle of the garage, but I figured that was just where Mrs. Zinsner had demanded Mr. Zinsner make it a two-car garage. I didn't think four inches was enough space to hide three bodies, and Angel agreed. I hugged Martin, sliding my hands around his waist and up his back.

"Roe," he said hesitantly.

"Um?"

"Are you mad?"

"Yes. But I'm working on it."

"Working on it."

"Yeah. I suppose you didn't tell me all that before we got married in case I wouldn't marry you if I knew it. Is that right? Or did you just hope I wouldn't ever ask? Or did you just think I was desperate or stupid enough not to notice that there were a few holes in your story?"

"Well..."

"I'll give you a clue, Martin. There's only one correct answer to that."

"I was afraid you wouldn't marry me if you knew."

"And that was the correct answer."

"Good."

"So now I have to decide how I feel about you wanting me to enter into marriage, a very serious thing, not knowing all the facts about your life. Am I flattered that you were so anxious to keep me that you wouldn't risk it? Sure." I traced his spine with my fingernail and felt him shiver. "Am I angry that you treated me like some fifties little woman, the less I knew the better? You bet." I dug the fingernail in. He gasped. "Martin, you have to be honest with me. My self-respect—I can't stand being lied to, no matter how much I love you."

The next day, the day I was going to have Sally Allison over to lunch, Martin and I had also been invited to dinner at the home of one of Pan-Am Agra's division chiefs. This man, Bill Anderson, was a new employee, hired by Martin's boss and sent to Lawrenceton to evaluate and expand the plant's safety program. So I woke with a certain sense of anticipation. Martin was shaving as I groped past him into the bathroom for a quick stop on my way downstairs to the coffeepot. We were beginning to find our routine. He liked to be at his desk when the other Pan-Am Agra executives arrived. And Martin always looked spic and span. His clothes were all expensive and he liked his shirts taken to the laundry to be starched, which frankly suited me. I didn't mind in the least dropping them by or picking them up. I hated ironing worse than anything in the world, and Martin, who could do a competent job of it, didn't have the time or inclination unless there was an emergency. Luckily, we both liked noncommunication until coffee had been consumed. He would come downstairs and make his own breakfast and pour his own coffee. By that time I would have finished the front section of the paper, which I had fetched from the end of the driveway. He would read that, then I would hand him the inside sections. Martin was not much interested in team sports, I had noted silently. One-on-one sports, now that was something he checked the scores on. When Martin had finished the paper and his breakfast, we had a brief conversation about appointments for the day. He went upstairs to brush his teeth. I poured another cup of coffee and worked the crossword puzzle in the newspaper.

He came downstairs, gathered his briefcase, checked with me to make sure we didn't need to talk about anything else, told me he was going to be out of his office most of the afternoon, and kissed me good-bye. He was gone by seven-thirty, or earlier.

I felt we had made a success of mornings, anyway. So far.

This morning Angel reported about eight-thirty. "Shelby says," she began without preamble, "that we need to find out if an aerial search was made, particularly of the fields around the house." "Hmmmm," I said, and made a note on my list. "I'll remember to ask that at lunch. A local reporter is a friend of mine, and she's coming over for lunch." "You sure have a social life."

"Oh?"

"You're always having people over, or you go out, or people call you, seems like."

"I grew up here. I expect if you were still in the town you were born in, it would be the same."

"Maybe," said Angel doubtfully. "I've never had that many friends. When I grew up, we lived way out in the swamps. I had my brothers and sisters. What about you?"

"I have a half-brother, but he's in California. He's a lot younger than me." "Well, except for some Cubans, it was just us out there. We pretty much kept to ourselves. When I was a teenager, I began to date... but even then, I was usually glad to get home. I wasn't much good at small talk, and if you didn't talk and drink, they wanted to do the other thing, and I didn't." We smiled at each other for the first time.

Then Angel clammed up, and I realized she would only speak about herself in rationed drips, and I had had my allotment for the day. We went out into the bright spring air to measure the outside of the house. Then we measured each inside room and drew a detailed map of our house. "I guess sometime having this will come in handy," I sighed, a comparison of figures having shown that the walls were only walls and not secret compartments with grisly contents. So much for a hidden closet. "Oh, I'm sure," Angel said drily. "The next time someone wants to know how to get to the bathroom, all you have to do is tell him to go forty-one inches from the newel post, due east, then north two feet." I stared at her blankly for a second and then suddenly began to laugh. Maybe our strange association was going to be more fun than either of us had anticipated.