That was as far as I got before Mendoza popped up in the doorway, like a Jack-in-the-Box. “Let me walk you out,” he told me, “Mrs. Kelly.”
I swallowed my surprise. “Thank you, Detective.”
“I’ll be right back, Mrs. Newsome.” He gave Heidi a nod before he gestured me toward the front of the house. I went.
Chapter 7
“Any idea what’s going on?” I asked as we navigated the hallway and then the ostentatious foyer.
Mendoza shook his head. “Too soon for anything but the basics.” He opened the front door and nodded me out. “He was taken down by a gunshot to the chest. Life was extinct in just a few seconds. So far, there’s no way to tell who was holding the gun.”
We headed down the couple of steps to the parking area, and stopped at the sound of an engine coming up the hill at a good clip.
I expected the van from the medical examiner’s office, but instead it was a convertible Jaguar, top up now that it had gotten colder, that powered up toward us. It came to a stop next to my SUV and Mendoza’s unassuming sedan. The driver’s side door opened. A man swung his legs out and straightened to a full height of six-one or –two.
He was in his late forties or early fifties—maybe half a decade younger than Harold had been, give or take—and clearly cut from the same cloth. Same dark hair with touches of silver at the temples, same blue eyes. But where Harold had looked expensively maintained, this guy looked ruggedly handsome, like he had to put forth zero effort but was just genetically blessed.
He looked at the house for a second before he turned his attention to us. And dismissed Mendoza with the flick of an eye. One look at the detective’s jeans, sweatshirt, and sneakers, followed by an almost imperceptible lift of his upper lip, and he turned his attention to me. “You must be from the police. I’m Greg Newsome. Harold’s brother.”
He accompanied the statement with a frankly appreciative look at my expensive boots and jacket. Or perhaps it was the way my jeans fit.
“Nice to meet you,” I said politely, and I’ll admit the appreciation was nice; he was a good-looking guy, if nowhere near as good-looking as Mendoza. “I’m sorry for your loss. I’m not from the police, though. This gentleman is. Detective Jaime Mendoza.”
Greg Newsome arched his brows and focused on Mendoza. “Detective?”
The question held enough incredulous disbelief that I was afraid Mendoza was going to lose his temper. His jaw was tight, like he was gritting his teeth.
“Mr. Newsome,” he said shortly.
“Heidi called me. She said my brother’s been shot.”
Mendoza nodded. “If you’ll come inside with me.” He gave me a nod. “Mrs. Kelly.”
“I’m going,” I told him. “I need to talk to you, though. Let me know when you have a minute.”
“It’ll be a couple of hours.” He gestured Greg toward the front door. I went in the other direction, toward the SUV and from there, down the hill and home.
* * *
When the phone rang an hour later, I assumed it was Mendoza. The number wasn’t familiar, but people do change numbers, and Mendoza might have a personal phone and a cop phone. I pushed the button and lifted the phone to my ear. “That took a while.”
There was a slight pause, then a masculine chuckle. “If I’d known you were waiting, I’d have called sooner.”
My eyes narrowed. That didn’t sound like Mendoza’s voice. “I’m sorry. Who is this?”
That chuckle again. “This is Greg Newsome.”
My jaw dropped, and it took me a second to hike it up. By the time I had, he’d gone on. “We met an hour or two ago outside my brother’s house in Forest Hill.”
“Of course.” I knew who he was. I just hadn’t expected to hear from him, and certainly not so soon. “I’m sorry. I thought you were someone else.”
“Obviously,” Greg said. “Hopefully some day you’ll respond like that when you know I’m the one calling.”
It had been a long time since anyone had flirted with me—he was flirting, wasn’t he?—and before I could figure out how to respond, he moved on. “I thought perhaps I could talk you into having dinner with me.”
My mouth dropped open again. Dinner? Someone was asking me on a date?
“Heidi told me about your husband,” Greg added. “That he died not too long ago. I’m sorry for your loss. If it’s too soon, I understand. I just thought…”
He trailed off, invitingly.
“No,” I said. “I mean… yes, David died in September, but it’s not too soon. We were getting divorced. I’d love to have dinner with you.”
Not only was he good-looking and seemed interested in me, which is always nice, he was—had been—Harold’s brother, and might be able to shed some light on his brother’s life.
“Wonderful.” His voice was warm. “I don’t suppose you’re available tonight?”
Tonight?
Well, yes. I was available. But what did it say about me that I was?
Then again, my husband had just died a couple of months ago, so maybe it wasn’t so surprising that I should find myself with a vacancy on a Saturday night.
“I would love to go out tonight,” I said firmly. The sooner I could get him in a position where I could pick his brain about Harold, the better.
“Wonderful.” His voice was, if anything, even warmer. “Should I pick you up at seven?”
I’m not sure why I hesitated. It might just be because it was nineteen years since I’d been on a date. Or maybe because this was going a little fast. I’d only met the man an hour ago.
Or it might have been because he wasn’t Mendoza, but I wasn’t about to admit that, not even to myself.
“Seven is great,” I said. “I live in Hillwood.” I rattled off the address. “There might be a dog in the yard, so if you’d be careful coming up the hill?”
He assured me he would. “I’ll see you at seven.”
And then he disconnected before I could say anything else. I looked at the phone for a second, and then shrugged. He was Harold’s brother, so chances were he was a reasonably upstanding citizen—he’d certainly looked upstanding pulling up to the Newsomes’ house an hour ago—and even if I got the idea that he was a weird stalker, I could always take Edwina and move back to David’s love-nest in the Gulch.
And in the meantime, I had a date. The first in a very long time. I wandered over to the closet and tried to decide what would be appropriate to wear to a date at my age. And after that, I called Rachel—who had actually dated in the past eighteen years—to make sure the outfit I’d picked didn’t send the wrong message.
* * *
It was afternoon by the time Mendoza finally called. “Mrs. Kelly.”
He sounded tired.
“Detective,” I said.
“What did you want to tell me?”
“In person,” I said, since I wanted to see his face. Not just because I like looking at it, but because I wanted to observe his reaction when I told him about Mitch.
He sighed. “Where are you?”
“The house in Hillwood. But I can come to you.” I had hours yet, before I had to get ready for Greg.
“I’m in the car. I’ll stop by.”
He hung up without giving me an estimated time for his arrival. He must have been close, though, because it was only about five minutes before I heard his car come up the drive. I wondered whether he’d always been planning to come here, and the sigh was just cover, or whether he lived in the area and I had been on his way home.
I had no idea where Mendoza lived. I could use my newly licensed powers to figure it out, of course, but so far I hadn’t done anything about it. My crush on Mendoza was embarrassing enough without adding stalkery behavior to the mix.
Besides, if I knew where he lived, I’d be tempted to drive by to see if I could catch a glimpse of him, and that would be crossing a line no forty-year-old woman should cross.
Edwina went into full protective mode as soon as she sa
w the car, her little body tensing, and a small growl, like a sewing machine, starting in her throat. She has the heart of a pitbull, in spite of being a small, fifteen pound Boston Terrier. But as soon as Mendoza stepped out of the sedan and she recognized him, she went immediately into transportations of delight: wagging not just her tail, but her entire hindquarters, panting excitedly, and dropping to the ground in front of him and presenting her stomach for scratches.
Mendoza obliged, and then straightened to face me. “She looks happy.”
“She enjoys the yard.”
When he’d first handed her to me, the morning I’d found her owner dead, I’d been living in David’s penthouse in the Gulch, the one he’d bought to entertain Jackie-with-a-q while he was thinking of divorcing me. Edwina and I had moved back to the house in Hillwood a few days later, partly so Edwina could have more room to run, but more because I’d had both Zachary and Rachel living with me for a while, while they were both recuperating, and there hadn’t been enough room for all of us in the love-nest.
Mendoza cocked his head. “You don’t sound like you do.”
“I don’t mind the yard.” I looked at it, and then at the house. “But this was where I lived with David for most of our marriage. This was where I lived when he told me he’d met someone else and wanted a divorce. I was living here when you came to tell me he was dead. Someone tried to kill me here. I’d like to be done with this house.”
“Sell it,” Mendoza said. “If you want a yard for the dog, buy another house.”
I could do that. This property would certainly fetch enough that I could afford something very nice, and more manageable, somewhere else. “The construction work isn’t done yet. But I’ll probably put it on the market after that.”
“Let me know if you need a recommendation,” Mendoza said. “I know a good real estate agent.”
Female, probably. “Let me guess. Blond, around five-seven…”
His dimples popped out. “Yes, and yes. Also married. A friend of a friend, and the wife of a colleague.”
“Never mind,” I said. “Do you want to come in?”
“I’ve got a minute.” He followed me toward the front door. Edwina trotted along, and did her best to trip him up by stopping and looking over her shoulder to make sure he wasn’t getting lost on the way.
We ended up in the dining room, which was where we’d sat the night I first met Mendoza.
“Something to drink?”
I’d had a glass of wine in my hand back then. He’d said no. Now he told me, “I wouldn’t mind.”
“I’ll be right back.”
I went to the kitchen, pulled two sodas out of the fridge, and brought them back. “I assume you’re still on duty, so I won’t offer you anything stronger.”
“This is great.” While I’d been gone, he’d seated himself at one end of the table.
“So you finally finished at the Newsomes,” I said, sitting down around the corner from him.
Mendoza nodded,.
“What happened with Greg?”
“What you might expect,” Mendoza said, popping the tab on the can of Pepsi. “Shock, disbelief, anger. What do you know about him?”
“Nothing at all. He wasn’t a client of David’s, so I’ve never met him before. I’m not sure I even knew Harold had a brother. But I’ll know more by tomorrow.”
“How’s that?” Mendoza wanted to know, and lifted the can to his mouth. I watched his throat move for a second, before I made myself look away.
“He called me a couple of hours ago and asked me to dinner.”
He lowered the soda to the table and looked at me. Just looked for several seconds, before his eyebrows rose. “Convenient.”
Well, yes. That was part of it. Although I didn’t like it that he immediately went to that conclusion.
“He’s a good-looking guy.” And sort of dashing. “Looks reasonably well off.”
“Author,” Mendoza said. “Thrillers.”
Really? “That’s exciting.”
“Less exciting than living it, I imagine.”
Well, yes. “Do you find your job exciting, Detective?”
“Most of the time I find it satisfying,” Mendoza said. “But it has its moments.”
Yes, I imagined it did. “So Greg would know how to plot a murder.”
Mendoza’s lips curved. “On paper, anyway.”
“Why would he kill his brother?”
“Motive is the least of what we’re looking for,” Mendoza said. “Motive is easy. Maybe his publisher dropped him and he needs money. Maybe he has a gambling addiction. Maybe he was sleeping with his sister-in-law. Maybe he’s harbored ill-will toward his brother since they were kids.”
I stared at him. “Do you have proof of any of that?”
He shook his head. “I’m just saying that motives are easy to come by. Means and opportunity are harder.”
“Did he have means and opportunity?”
He leaned back against the chair. “Too soon to tell whether he has a gun licensed in his name, or could have gotten his hands on an unregistered gun. I’ll look into it. But I can tell you that he wasn’t where he claimed to be when Heidi called him. There wasn’t enough time for him to drive to Forest Hill from Franklin by the time he got there. So he was either closer, or she called him before Harold was dead.”
It took me a minute to wrap my brain around all that, and when I had, I said, “If he was sleeping with Heidi, why would he ask me out?”
“Maybe to see whether you had any inkling that that was going on. You did say, in his hearing, you had something to talk to me about. Maybe he wants to know what you know.”
Maybe. It wasn’t very flattering, if so, and I wouldn’t like to believe it, but it made an annoying sort of sense.
“What was it you wanted to tell me?” Mendoza added.
“Oh.” I dragged my brain back to business, and grimaced. “Not that Greg Newsome asked me out to dinner. That happened later.”
He nodded.
“Two things. Or maybe three. When I was sitting outside Somerset this morning, waiting for Harold to get up and go to the gym the way he usually does, I heard the shot. Then, a minute later, a car came out of the subdivision and took off down the road.”
“Describe the car,” Mendoza said, pulling his phone out ready to tap the information into it.
“It was a yellow VW Beetle. Tennessee license plate, Knox county.” I rattled it off.
Mendoza’s brows were arched, but he took it down. “You must have gotten a pretty good look, to know all that.”
“I followed it,” I said, “although I lost it before I got to the corner of Old Hickory Boulevard. I had to stop for the ambulance when it came out of the fire station down there.”
He nodded.
“But I’ve seen the car before. It’s registered to someone named Tara Cullinan, with an address in Knoxville. I had Rachel check.”
“Uh-huh,” Mendoza said.
“I drove out there yesterday,” I added, “after… That’s something else I have to tell you. But let me finish this first. I drove to Knoxville and spoke to the neighbors. Tara sold the house and left at the beginning of the summer. There are new people in the house now. I got her phone number, and it doesn’t seem to be disconnected, but she’s not answering, either.” Or getting back to me.
“Give it to me.”
I gave it to him, and watched as he took it down.
“Who is Tara Cullinan?” he wanted to know.
“In the scheme of things? I have no idea. But she’s been following Harold, too. I’ve seen her three or four times. Outside his office, outside the gym he goes to, down the road here…”
“Did Harold speak to her?”
“He tried,” I said. “I think he wanted to. A couple of times, he saw her through the window and came running outside, but she was always gone, and he always looked frustrated.”
“So she didn’t want to talk to him.”
I shook my head
. “I got the feeling she wanted him to see her. Wanted him to know she was there. But she was always gone before he could talk to her.”
“A threat,” Mendoza said.
I hadn’t thought about it in those terms, but in light of what had happened this morning… “I guess. Maybe. She didn’t do anything threatening. Didn’t point at him or pretend-shoot him or anything like that. Didn’t hold up a sign saying You’re Next. But she was there. Like a reminder. Or yes, a threat.”
Mendoza nodded. He was busy tapping on the phone. “Tell me when and where you saw her.”
I thought back over the four or five days I’d been following Harold, and the times and places I’d seen Tara. Assuming she was Tara, and not someone else using Tara’s car. “Outside the Brentwood YMCA the first morning I followed him. At the Richland golf club in the afternoon. Down Hillsboro Road in Forest Hill the following day…”
I went down the list. When Mendoza had written it all down, he said, “Describe her.”
“Caucasian. Around thirty. Average height and weight. Blond hair down to her shoulders—but I think that might be a wig. In the DMV picture, she has brown hair. Or it could be someone else using Tara’s car. I’ve never come close enough to her to know that the woman I’ve seen is Tara Cullinan.”
Mendoza nodded. “Anything else you can tell me about her?”
“She’s always wearing the same gray dress and boots. There’s probably some significance to the outfit. I sent the picture I took of her to Heidi, but Heidi didn’t recognize her. And I tried the phone number again after I lost her this morning. I told her to call me. So far she hasn’t.”
“Don’t do that again,” Mendoza said.
I opened my mouth to protest, and he added, “This woman might have shot Harold. If she knows you saw her, she could shoot you next.”
I closed my mouth again. I didn’t know why that hadn’t occurred to me. The idea that she might have shot Harold had, of course, but somehow I had neglected to consider the possibility that if she knew I could place her at the scene of the crime, she might want to get rid of me, too. “Do you think she did it?”
Haunting Harold Page 8
