Real Murders

"What on earth is she doing here?" Melanie said. She seemed really put out, and I decided we had here another Mamie Wright in the making. Liza

But she required constant entertainment from her dates, and the tall red-haired man with the beaky nose and wire-rimmed glasses seemed to be making heavy weather of it.

"Do you know who he is, the man with Liza

"You don't recognize him?" Melanie's surprise was a shade overdone. So I was supposed to know him. I re-examined the newcomer. He was wearing slacks and a sport coat in light brown, and a plain white shirt; he had huge hands and feet, and his longish hair flew around his head in a copper nimbus. I had to shake my head.

"He's Robin Crusoe, the mystery writer," Melanie said triumphantly.

The insurance clerk beats the librarian in her own bailiwick. "He looks different without the pipe in his mouth," John Queensland said from behind my right shoulder. John, our wealthy real-estate-rich president, was immaculate as usual; an expensive suit, a white shirt, his creamy white hair smooth and the part sharp as an arrow. John had become more interesting to me when he'd started dating my mother. I felt there must be substance below the stuffed-shirt exterior. After all, he was a Lizzie Borden expert... and he believed she was i

"Wait, I need to tell you about this phone call," I said quickly. The newcomer had distracted me. "When I came in a few minutes ago—" But Liza

"Roe, I brought you all some company tonight," Liza

"Robin, this is Roe Teagarden."

He gave me an appreciative smile but he was with Liza

"I thought Robin Crusoe was a pseudonym," Bankston murmured in my ear.

"I did too," I whispered, "but apparently not." "Poor guy, his parents must have been nuts," Bankston said with a snigger, until he remembered from my raised eyebrows that he was talking to a woman named Aurora Teagarden.

"I met Robin when he came in to get his utilities turned on," Liza

"You're lucky to have met such a well-known writer," I said enviously to Liza

She sure didn't know who Julia Wallace was. And she didn't know who Robin Crusoe was either, as it turned out.

"Writer?" she said indifferently. "I'm kind of bored."

I stared at her incredulously. Bored by Robin Crusoe? One afternoon when I'd been at the Power and Light Company paying my bill, she'd told me, "I don't know what it is, but even when I pretty much like a man, after I date him a while, he gets to seem kind of tiresome. I just can't be bothered to act interested anymore, and then finally I tell him I don't want to go out anymore. They always get upset," she'd added, with a philosophical shake of her shining dark hair. Lovely Liza

Robin Crusoe, desirable writer, was striking out with Liza

He reappeared at her side.

"Where do you live in Lawrenceton?" I asked, because the newcomer seemed dolefully aware he wasn't making the grade with our local siren. "Parson Road. A townhouse. I'm camping there until my furniture comes, which it should do tomorrow. The rent here is so much less for a nicer place than I could find anywhere in the city close to the college." Suddenly I felt quite cheerful. I said, "I'm your landlady," but after we'd talked about the coincidence for a moment, a glance at my watch unsettled me. John Queensland was making a significant face at me over Arthur Smith's shoulder. Since he was president, he had to open the meeting, and he was ready to start.

I glanced around, counting heads. Jane Engle and LeMaster Cane had come in on each other's heels and were chatting while preparing their coffee cups. Jane was a retired school librarian who substituted at both the school and the public libraries, a surprisingly sophisticated spinster who specialized in Victorian murders. She wore her silver hair in a chignon, and never never wore slacks. Jane looked sweet and fragile as aged lace, but after thirty years of school children she was tough as a marine sergeant. Jane's idol was Madeleine Smith, the highly sexed young Scottish poisoner, which sometimes made me wonder about Jane's past. LeMaster was our only black member, a stout middle-aged bearded man with huge brown eyes who owned a dry cleaning business. LeMaster was most interested in the racially motivated murders of the sixties and early seventies, the Zebra murders in San Francisco and the Jones-Piagentini shooting in New York, for example.

Sally's son Perry Allison had come in too, and had taken a seat without speaking to anyone. Perry had not actually joined Real Murders, but he had come to the past two meetings, to my dismay. I saw quite enough of him at work. Perry showed a rather u

Gifford Doakes was standing by himself. Unless Gifford brought his friend Reynaldo, this was a pretty common situation, since Gifford was openly interested in massacres—St. Valentine's Day, the Holocaust, it didn't make any difference to Gifford Doakes. He liked piled bodies. Most of us were involved in Real Murders for reasons that would probably bear the light of day; gosh, who doesn't read the articles about murders in the newspaper? But Gifford was another story. Maybe he'd joined our club with the idea that we swapped some sickening sort of bloody pornography, and he was only sticking with the club in the hope that soon we'd trust him enough to share with him. When he brought Reynaldo, we didn't know how to treat him. Was Reynaldo a guest, or Gifford's date? A shade of difference there, and one which had us all a little anxious, especially John Queensland, who felt it his duty as president to speak to everyone in the club.