PI On A Hot Tin Roof

those,” she said. “This is Buddy’s favorite hangout—the original smoke-filled room, where he brings his cronies to drink and puff on vile cigars. Someone gave him those old things and nobody’s ever been able to talk him out of them.”
    “Too bad—I know somebody who’d like them, and he’s a black man. Collects what he calls ‘insult art.’ Aunt Jemima clocks, those little jockey statues, mammy salt shakers, the whole thing. Let me know if the judge ever wants to sell them.”
    Adele looked as if she didn’t know whether to wince or smile. Instead, she just stared. “Uh—I prefer the sun room myself,” she said finally. But even that seemed hopelessly out of date, its wicker furniture covered in a floral print on a black background that had gone out of style sometime before the Kennedy era. But it did afford a view of Adele’s pride and joy. “Gorgeous garden,” Talba said.
    “Thank the good Lord for it,” Adele said. “It’s the only thing between me and a padded cell.”
    That sounded so promising Talba held out a bit of bait. “Things get pretty crazy around here?”
    Adele rolled her eyes, though rather unsuccessfully—it took a teenage girl to pull that one off. “Families,” was all she said.
    Aside from the library, the den was the most user-friendly of all the rooms, having been recently painted a soft cream. The furniture looked relatively new, and a great deal less expensive than the maw-maw stuff on the rest of the first floor. It even had a built-in television console.
    “We built this out of the old pantry,” Adele explained. “Had to have some place to relax.”
    They ended up in the kitchen, where Reedy had a desk for paying bills, which seemed to be about it for her personal space outside the bedroom. Talba found the tour alone had nearly exhausted her.
    “Monday’s the day we change the sheets,” Adele said. “So that’s done. Alberta usually does the rest of the laundry on Tuesday, and irons the sheets she did the day before. That way she can do the rest of the ironing throughout the week, when she has some spare time.”
    Good Lord,
Talba thought, wondering when she was going to find any.
    “I think she does the bathrooms on Tuesday, too, so they’re probably pretty dirty. And of course she makes the beds and straightens things every day. Then she’s available to make lunch for whoever wants it, and I don’t know what the rest of her system is.”
    “Kitchen every day, of course,” Talba ventured.
    “Certainly. Do you do windows?”
    “Yes, ma’am. Long as the Pope’s still Catholic.”
    “Good. Because Alberta doesn’t. You could make that a project while you’re here.”
    “Happy to. Place’ll be glowing time I get through.”
    “You’re on your own, then.”
    “I’d better get my laundry going.” Adele had by now shown her where the laundry room and the various hampers were, except, of course, those belonging to the still sleeping beauties.
    She had gotten the first load of laundry in, and was just putting the finishing touches on Adele and Lucy’s blessedly marble-less but completely trashed bathroom when a male voice roared, “Hey! Can I get some breakfast around here?”
    She returned to the hall, still wiping her hands, almost colliding with a man probably in his early thirties—around Kristin’s age—wearing ripped khaki shorts and nothing else. His hair was greasy and hadn’t been combed. She could smell alcohol from three paces, that stale day-old reek that comes from a hard night of heavy drinking.
    “Well, hello!” he said, giving her what he obviously believed was a charming smile. He was tall and skinny—way too skinny for her taste—and his dirty hair was brown, with natural blond highlights. His face was somewhat obscured by a fashionable goatee, but mostly, it was handsome—straight nose, unremarkable brown eyes, okay lips, high brow, and decent chin—not exactly strong, but decent. He had premature wrinkles around his eyes, probably from too much partying, and one of those bracelet-of-thorns tattoos on his right bicep. Talba never could get the hang of those things. If you were going to get a tattoo, why not get a jaguar, say, or a parrot? What was up with thorns?
    She stepped backward, to make a statement. “Mr. Royce, I presume.”
    “You presume, do you? You a Harvard Ph.D. or somethin’?”
    “Something,” she said. “That’s for sure. Something named Sandra Corey.” Once again she offered to