Free Appraisal for Murder by Elaine Orr Page A

might not want to give it to the Arts Council and would put it on the market. If he did that, he probably would not want me to finish the appraisal now. He’d wait and let a prospective buyer pay for it.
    But, Harry said that Michael had called that morning to say he would get in touch again after the funeral. His father and his father's wife were coming into town this afternoon, and he had invited them to stay at the house. He didn’t want a lot of other activity. I was surprised he’d had the presence of mind to call. Had to be before his scene at the station.
    No other work, but Harry had had what he termed get-acquainted calls from three agents that morning. He tried not to look too pleased, since we both knew it was probably because of the mention of me and his firm in Mrs. Riordan’s article. “I’m not sure that everyone is as pleased with Stenner’s as they once were,” he said, trying to appear tactful.
    “I bet they told you more than that,” I said, fishing for info.
    He shrugged. “Jennifer’s very competent, but I hear she can be a little brusque.”
    Gee, she and Michael could get together . I left his office headed for the boardwalk, and walked a couple blocks looking for Scoobie. The boardwalk had a forlorn air about it, as if it missed having hordes of visitors and the smell of fries and cotton candy. The benches, which were usually not repainted until spring, showed the effects of a summer of wet bathing suits and many had the usual hearts with names of teen lovers. When there was black paint over a few inches of bench I knew that meant those carved words were less polite.
    No Scoobie, so I headed for the Purple Cow. I was confident that I didn’t need to do a resume, at least in the short term, but I was thinking of getting a new business card case. Mine was gold-plated and had the seal of my old real estate firm on it.
    As I drove to the Purple Cow, I tried to memorize every street name. It seemed an appraiser should know where each street is, at least in a town the size of Ocean Alley. The blocks of the very long alphabet streets are intersected many times with cross streets with names like ‘Seaside,’ ‘Fairweather’ and ‘Conch Shell.’ There are a number of large Victorian homes that probably had at least a half-acre of land around them when they were built. However, the wealthy city folks who built those homes are long gone, and before Ocean Alley instituted its current lot size requirements people built as many as two or three bungalows or summer cottages between them, more on the streets closest to the water. Some of them started as two-room cottages with no indoor plumbing and now have a small concrete addition in the back. Here and there are small tool sheds that were outhouses in a prior life. Although it’s a hodge podge, I find the lack of order appealing.
    I drove through the center of Ocean Alley. While not a town square in the true sense, the block that houses the court house also has the post office, police station, library, and small in-town grocery, so it is as close to a downtown as a small beach town can get. I parallel parked in front of The Purple Cow and locked the car, wondering as I did so if I would ever live in a place where I didn’t think to lock my car. Not if people murder elderly women in their beds.
    Today, the store’s white board said, “All beginnings are somewhat strange; but we must have patience, and, little by little, we shall find things, which at first were obscure, becoming clear.” Vincent de Paul. It took up all the room on the board. Clearly, someone at the Purple Cow was into life changes. It was a little too kvetchy for me. I pushed open the door and waited a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to light that was dimmer than the brilliant sunshine.
    Ramona, her long hair held back with a dark purple bow, greeted me with more than mild curiosity. “I saw you in the paper. That must have been terrible.”
    She didn’t know the half of it.