Free Aurora 03 - Three Bedrooms, One Corpse by Charlaine Harris

evening? I thought I saw your van parked at the Youth Club field.”
    “What time?”
    “Oh, I guess it was about five-thirty.”
    “Let me think. No, no, Wednesday afternoon is Bethany’s Girl Scout meeting, and Little Jim has Tae Kwon Do at the same time, so Jimmy has to take him to that while I go with Bethany to Scouts. Jimmy has Wednesday afternoons off anyway—that’s the afternoon the store is closed, because it’s open on Saturdays. I think the older league had a game scheduled for Wednesday.
    There are lots of vans like ours.”
    “Little Jim’s Tae Kwon Do is in that building in the shopping center on Fourth Street?”
    “Yes, right by that carpet and linoleum place.”
    “Does Jimmy get to stay and watch Little Jim’s class?”
    “No, the teacher won’t let parents stay except for special occasions. He says it distracts the boys, especially the littler ones. But the lessons are just half an hour or forty-five minutes. So Jimmy takes a book and reads in the car, or runs an errand. And it’s right before supper, too, at five o’clock, so on Wednesdays I have to have leftovers or run home from Scouts and get something out of the freezer to microwave.”
    Susu didn’t seem to think it was strange I was interested in her family’s schedule, something she enjoyed detailing anyway. Like any specialist, she wanted to air her knowledge.
    As I finally took my leave and drove away, I was thinking that if Jimmy Hunter had killed Tonia Lee, he’d done it on a tight time budget. Susu hadn’t actually said her husband had eaten with the family on Wednesday night, but she hadn’t mentioned it was different from any other Wednesday, either. So I had to decide this was inconclusive. But the odds were a little more in favor of Jimmy Hunter’s being innocent. It looked as if Patty Cloud’s favorite suspect had been sitting outside the Tae Kwon Do studio with a newspaper or a book, or sitting at the country pine table eating supper, at the time Tonia Lee Greenhouse had been killed.

Chapter Five
    THERE WAS a blinking light on my answering machine.
    The first message was from my mother. “If you haven’t taken anything by Donnie Greenhouse’s, you need to do that. I took by a chicken casserole this morning, Franklin Farrell said he was going to take a fruit salad of some kind, and Mark Russell from Russell and Dietrich says his wife is making a broccoli casserole. But no one’s made a dessert. I know her mother’s church will take a lot of stuff, but if you could make a pie, that would mean that the realtors had provided a full meal. Okay?”
    “Make pie,” I wrote on my notepad. (Despite the fact that I was not a realtor, and I supposed Eileen or Idella knew how to make a pie—probably Mackie, too, for that matter.)
    “This is Martin Bartell,” began the second message. “I’ll see you tonight at your mother’s.”
    I swear the sound of his voice made something vibrate in me. I had it bad, no doubt about it.
    It was a helpless feeling, kind of like developing rabies, I figured. Though they had shots now for that, didn’t they? I wished I could take a shot and be over this thing with Martin Bartell.
    Aubrey was sexy, too, and a lot safer; perhaps, despite my doubts, our relationship was viable.
    With an effort, I dismissed Martin from my thoughts and began to rummage through the freezer to see if I had enough pecans for pecan pie.
    Not enough pecans. Not enough coconut for German chocolate pie. (Yes, pie. I never make the cake.) Not any cream cheese for cheesecake. I turned my search to the cabinets. Ha! There was a can of pumpkin that must have come out of Jane’s cupboard. I would make a pumpkin pie.
    I took off my navy blue sweater and put on my old red apron. After tying back my hair, which tends to fly into batter or get caught in dough, I set to work. After I cleaned up and ate my lunch—granola and yogurt and fruit—the pie was ready to go to Donnie Greenhouse’s.
    Tonia Lee and Donnie’s