“In local news” (“In lawcol nyus”), twanged the conscientiously serious voice, “in Hartsfield County, Shakespeare real estate developer Pardon Albee was found dead in Estes Arboretum at approximately two-thirty a.m. by Police Chief Claude Friedrich, who was acting on an anonymous phone tip. The cause of death is not known at this time, but police suspect foul play. Albee was a lifelong resident of Shakespeare and a member of the Shakespeare Combined Church. In other news, a Creek County judge sentenced Harley Don Murrell to twenty years for the abduction and rape of a local-”
“Oh no!” Mrs. Hofstettler exclaimed in real distress.
I carefully put down the shepherdess I’d been dusting and hurried into the living room. “Lily, this is horrible! Oh, Lily, do you suppose he was killed and robbed right here? And who will we pay rent to now that Pardon Albee’s dead? Who’ll own the building?”
I automatically handed Mrs. Hofstettler a Kleenex, thinking it was very like her to come right to the point. Who indeed owned the building now? When I’d recognized Pardon Albee’s ugly green-and-orange plaid shirt last night, that hadn’t been what I’d thought of.
The answer would not affect me directly, for I’d bought my house from Pardon, as had my neighbor. And Pardon had sold the lots at the north end of Track and around the corner on Jamaica Street to the Shakespeare Combined Church, a coalition of splinter churches that had thrived most unexpectedly. As far as I knew, the only property that Pardon still owned outright was Shakespeare Garden Apartments, and he’d enjoyed owning it to the hilt. In fact, he’d seen himself as the pivotal character in some kind of television drama-the kindly landlord who helps all his tenants solve their problems and knows all their most intimate secrets.