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The one thing Terry .,Hazzard remembered about that strange morning was how the woman who came to buy her house seemed more interested in Terry's moving out than in her moving in. |
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Her name was Claire Manning, a tense, cheerless woman. She was the sixth party to see the place in a week but the only party to come without the realtor. For some odd reason she wanted to inspect the place on her own. |
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According to Beverly Otis, their agent, the woman had driven by the other day and "it was love at first sight." Beverly was full of such hype: A seller's market; money's no object; name your price. Theirs was $380,000, which the third party had offered and which Terry was happy to accept, except for Beverly's insistence that this Manning woman had come by to bid. "The way she carried on," Beverly had said, "I think she'd kill for it.'' |
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She pulled up the driveway in a modest blue sedan a little after eight. An hour early. Terry didn't want to show the place until Calvin was off to work and Matty at school. Calvin was gone, but her twelve-year-old Matty was still inside. And he was in one of his black moods. The kind that triggered fifty-megaton headaches. |
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Except for her stern expression, Mrs. Manning was quite handsome. She looked to be in her late fifties, had stylishly coiffed champagne hair and was smartly dressed in a beige designer pants suit, white silk blouse and several twenty-two-carat gold chainsin fact, too smartly for house shopping. She also looked incongruous beside the Ford Escort. More the Mercedes or Jaguar type, Terry thought. |
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Through oversized red-tint lenses she said, "I'm sorry about the |
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