Blanche on the Lam: A Blanche White Mystery Read Free Page B

the rickety range and dripping tap in the house Blanche lived in that she didn't think they ought to be called by the same name.
    “I'm sure you can find everything you need.” The woman looked around the kitchen like a bellhop checking the towels. “There will be three at table for lunch. We shall want lunch at eleven-forty-five. You may use the room up these stairs, first door on the left, to freshen up. You won't be coming back here, so don't leave anything behind.” The woman gave Blanche an expectant look.
    “Yes, ma'am,” Blanche told her. “I understand.” Blanche thought the woman was about to add something, when the phone rang. The woman turned abruptly and pushed a swinging door that Blanche assumed separated the kitchen from the rest of the house. The phone fell silent in mid-ring.
    Blanche leaned against the butcher-block station and let her breath out in a slow, steady stream. If the agency had found a replacement for her, that person had to show up pretty soon. Then what? Miz Mistress was sure to call the sheriff. To save face after having let a stranger into her house, she might even claim that Blanche had pushed her way in uninvited or tried to steal something. If I had any sense, Blanche thought, I'd leave now. But which way was out? A look out the kitchen window showed her a walled-in yard that didn't have a wooded path like the one they'd taken to the house. If she went through the front of the house she might run into the woman, and she certainly couldn't find her way through the house to the way she'd entered.
    She heard a noise on the other side of the swinging door and quickly slipped on the bright-eyed but vacant expression behindwhich she'd hid from the woman so far. Blanche had learned long ago that signs of pleasant stupidity in household help made some employers feel more comfortable, as though their wallets, their car keys, and their ideas about themselves were all safe. Putting on a dumb act was something many black people considered unacceptable, but she sometimes found it a useful place to hide. She also got a lot of secret pleasure from fooling people who assumed they were smarter than she was by virtue of the way she looked and made her living.
    “That was your agency,” the woman said as she entered the kitchen. “They called to say you weren't going to be able to make it until tomorrow! Can you imagine! I gave them quite a lecture about their lack of efficiency.”
    The woman looked so pleased with herself, Blanche wondered if she got her jollies from telling people off—or maybe it was the novelty that perked her up.
    “They want you to call them. Perhaps after lunch.” She turned her head to give Blanche another of those mouth-only smiles and bumped into a chair. “Ow!” The woman pushed the chair away from her as though it had been the attacker. She turned sharply and left the kitchen as though the whole room might be in cahoots with the chair.
    That was the second time Blanche had seen her stumble. There was something about the woman's clumsiness that reminded Blanche of Deke Williams, the stunt man for whom she'd once worked. She used to love to listen to Deke explain things like how to take the least painful fall, and how Charlie Chaplin had raised falling to an art form. There was certainly nothing arty about this person's stumbling around.
    Blanche looked at her watch—10:45. How could so much have happened to her in so few hours? She opened the refrigerator. Three of its spacious shelves held artfully decorated and arranged platters of cold meats and salads, as well as two trays of yeast rolls waiting for the oven. Good. She had plenty of time tomake her phone calls. She'd noticed that the woman had gone to the front of the house to answer the phone instead of using the one hanging on the kitchen wall. She wondered if this was the colored-only phone—this was Dixie, after all. But she thought it more likely that the woman had been expecting a call she didn't want