Free Blanche on the Lam: A Blanche White Mystery by Barbara Neely Page A

from Quebec—soothed and energized her. It provided living proof that the world was still out there and, therefore, at least theoretically within her grasp. The most nasal and nagging of her employers' voices could be tuned out if the radio was playing. She'd once been a TV soaps addict. But for there were too many people on it telling her she needed to look and act and buy like them in order to be all right. Radio was willing to go where she went and to let her decide what the people whose voices she heard looked like. But this morning her plans required quiet.
    Grace had told her they'd want breakfast at 8:30. The kitchen clock said 6:15. A good time to pay a visit to the front rooms. Blanche regularly used the front rooms in houses where she worked for more than a day. It was something she had to do, it would be bad luck not to. She preferred to wait until her employers were out and were expected to be gone for some time. But, to her knowledge, these people had no plans to go anywhere, and she would be in the house only a few more days. She had to take her chance while she could. Twice she'd been caught takingliberties with her employers' space. Both times she'd been in the bathtub.
    The first time she'd been caught by Hazel Spence, a rich Long Island widow for whom she'd worked two days a week for nearly two years. The widow had called Blanche's use of her bathtub, bath salts, inflatable bath pillow, and elegant back brush a breach of her privacy, if not an illegal use of her possessions. She'd fired Blanche on the spot and refused to pay her the wages she'd already earned.
    The second time she'd been caught by David Lee Palmer, the brother of her first Farleigh customer. He'd made her pay in a much more painful and private way. She hadn't bothered to report it to the police. Even if they'd believed her and cared about the rape of a black woman by a white man, once it came out that she'd been attacked while naked in her employer's bathtub, she'd never have been employed in anybody's house in town again. But she still had hopes of fixing that motherless piece of shit one day.
    Neither incident had stopped her from taking her ease among the items she spent her time tending. On the few occasions that she'd stopped to think about what she was doing, she'd recognized that sitting in their chairs, looking out their windows, using their telephones and stereos were ways of getting some of her sold self back. For while the work beat anything else she'd tried—it at least didn't have the routine of an assembly line or the tyranny of a supervisor out to make promotion—she wouldn't be doing it if she didn't need the money. If she had money, she'd move to the Caribbean and open a guesthouse for hardworking women like herself: reasonably priced comfort, good food, no men or children allowed.
    Now she walked slowly down the hall toward the living room, once again listening for sounds or movement from above. Still nothing. If no one had been at home, she might have switched on the stereo. There was a time when she'd have gone to the television and turned on a soap opera. But she'd given upsoaps when she'd found herself worrying about whether Meg should marry Peter or Carl on
Moments of Our Lives
on the very same day that she lost her wallet, got a notice from her landlord saying her building was being condoed out of her price range, and one of her best-paying clients announced she was moving to Europe. She'd decided then that she didn't need to be involved with anything that kept her from dealing with the real world, since it was surely going to deal with her, no matter who Meg married. Nowadays, she was more likely to loll in an easy chair and leaf through whatever books or magazines might be about. Over the years, she'd picked up information on everything from medicine to map-making from her employers' reading material.
    She fluffed a few cushions and wiped a speck of dust from the coffee table before choosing her seat. She sat on