Double

I’d have to work fast and get out of here before the sheriff’s men arrived. Quickly I went into the living room at the front of the house. It was furnished in light wood and tasteful blue upholstery; the only jarring note was a wall of mirrored squares that probably had already been there when Elaine bought the house. I caught sight of myself behind their tacky gold veining — bedraggled, nervous-looking, and clearly depressed.

So much for your terrific weekend, I thought.

There was a hallway off the living room, probably leading to the bedrooms. I turned, about to go that way, when there was a crashing noise near the front door. Whirling, I got ready to run.

One of the mirrored squares lay on the floor of the little tiled area near the door. The heat, of course, had softened the adhesive that held it to the wall. Smiling weakly, I remembered when my sister Charlene had decided — in a fit of teenaged worldliness — that she had to have the same sort of squares on the ceiling above her bed. My parents, adopting the attitude of letting us live out harmless fantasies, allowed her to do it; my father even helped her affix the squares to the ceiling. The fantasy, which involved a lot of posturing and risque talk from Charlene, lasted until the first hot spell. Then, in the middle of one torrid night, the entire thing had come down, right on Charlene’s rear, scaring hell out of her. The next day, the squares had been dumped unceremoniously in the trash.

Leaving the square on the entryway floor, I hurried down the hall to the farthest door. The room contained a brass bed with a fluffy comforter and many pillows, a dresser, and a walk-in closet. The bedside table yielded Kleenex and aspirin and calcium lactate. Evidently, Elaine had not been much of a reader, because there were no books in evidence.

Next I started through the closet, which was full of conservative suits and dresses and pants and tops — all in good taste and of excellent quality. I worked left to right, toward the back, where a number of items were jammed together as if they were things she never wore.

And I could see why. There was a bright red party dress with a plunging neckline; a black number with a slit that must have extended all the way up the thigh; pants in a shimmery fabric that were cut to be skintight; see-through tops designed to be worn over sexy bras. The clothes were not Elaine, not her at all.

So what was she doing with them? Did she actually go out in public dressed like that? No, more likely she — like my sister Charlene — had had her fantasies. Nothing wrong in occasional dressing up in front of a mirror.

Or for a male friend, someone special.

I gave up on the closet and went through the dresser quickly, coming up with only standard serviceable lingerie and jewelry items, plus a whole collection of security gear — three pairs of handcuffs and some leather thongs with loops at the ends — tucked under some sweaters in a bottom drawer.

Why bring all that stuff home? I wondered. Probably because it was her own property and she didn’t want anyone at Casa del Rey appropriating it. After all, handcuffs don’t come cheap, and Elaine hadn’t been on the job long enough to know if she could completely trust her co-workers.

From the bedroom I went across the hall to a room that had been fitted out as a combination TV and exercise room, complete with a stationary bicycle and a small set of weights. I opened the closet and saw it was what my mother called a “crazy closet” — crammed with things too junky to display but too full of sentimental value to get rid of. There was a doll with a chipped china face, a white tulle creation that might have been Elaine’s first prom dress, a large box of photographs, several scrapbooks and high-school yearbooks, stacks of old 45 records, an incredibly ugly beer stein, three stuffed animals, and a sorority paddle. Curiously I picked up the paddle and looked at it. It was one of those wooden ceremonial things inscribed with the Greek letters and crest — in this case, Mu Omega Sigma. I was surprised because I hadn’t known Elaine had gone to college. Nor had she seemed like a sorority type.

I put the paddle back and left the room. There was another door off the hall, and I went through it into an office. It contained some shelves and filing cabinets, and a desk with a bunch of folders stacked in the center of the blotter. I went through them, finding insurance papers, income tax records, and a simple will leaving everything to a nephew, James Picard, in Lemon Grove. There was a note clipped to a homeowner’s policy indicating she planned to increase her coverage.

Does a person who is depressed enough to kill herself worry about liability and loss from fire or theft? I asked myself. It didn’t seem likely.