Stalking Steven

by Jenna Bennett

  Mendoza’s lips twitched. “I’m sure you’re doing a fine job.”

  And so was he. The dog was practically purring.

  “So what can I do for you?”

  He stopped rubbing, and Edwina looked up at him with big, doleful eyes. When it became obvious that he wasn’t going to continue to rub, she settled her chin on his thigh with a disappointed sigh.

  “I was actually hoping Zachary would be here.”

  “Oh.” And here I thought he’d been looking for Edwina. “He went back to the university to have another look around. He left me a report of his adventures this morning and last night. Would you like to see it?”

  “I wouldn’t mind,” Mendoza said. I handed over the report, and he sat back in the sofa to read it. I spent the time watching him while he was not watching me do it.

  The thing is, he’s just so very easy on the eyes. Great bone structure, perfect skin, thick, black hair. Perfect teeth. Dimples. Nice shoulders, good chest, trim waist, and so on, all the way down to his perfect feet.

  Not that I’ve ever seen them, unencased in shoes. If he ever takes his shoes off, it might turn out he has ingrown toenails or hammer toes, but until then, I’ll just imagine them as being as perfect as the rest of him.

  And if he ever gets to a point where he’s getting undressed in my presence, I’m pretty sure I’ll have other things to think about than his toes.

  The expressions on his face were amusing to watch, too, as he made his way through the report. While I’d found Zachary’s abbreviations and slang faintly annoying, Mendoza seemed to find them humorous. By the time he’d finished both reports, he was grinning, perfect, white teeth and dimples on display.

  “There’s nothing there you didn’t already know,” I pointed out.

  He nodded. “It’s still good to read it in his own words. I need him to give me a better description of the blonde, though. Maybe even get him to work with a police artist, to see if we can come up with a face for her.”

  I leaned forward. “You think she might have had something to do with Mrs. Grimshaw’s murder?”

  “She was there,” Mendoza said. “If nothing else, she might have seen or heard something.”

  She might. And this was the first time I had considered that possibility. Because I suspected the blonde of having led Steven astray, I had only thought of her as the villainess. I’d been more than happy to wonder whether she’d shot poor, old Mrs. Grimshaw and left Edwina an orphan, but I hadn’t considered that she might be a witness to the crime.

  Although that would explain—or would also explain—why she was gone this morning. If I’d seen someone commit cold-blooded murder next door, and I was worried that they might have realized I was there and could identify them, I would have wanted to get away as soon and as far as possible, too.

  “I can have Zachary call you when he comes back in,” I offered.

  Mendoza arched his brows. “Trying to get rid of me?”

  I shook my head. Never. “I’m sure you must be busy.”

  “Now that you mention it.” He leaned back against the sofa and closed his eyes. “It’s been a long day.”

  “Have you found out anything?”

  “Not much.” He opened his eyes again. So much for the nap. Edwina gazed up at him adoringly. “I found a business card from a lawyer in Mrs. Grimshaw’s desk. When I called, he admitted to having done some work for her. Including drawing up her will. I am headed over there next, to take a look.”

  “Will you let me know what happens?” Mrs. Grimshaw’s next of kin might want Edwina. I would have to give her up. And I was already becoming attached to her.

  Mendoza nodded. “Once I’ve spoken to him, I’ll have a better idea who might have had a reason to want Mrs. Grimshaw out of the way.”

  He moved Edwina’s head off his lap, and pushed up from the sofa with a grunt. Edwina gave him a baleful look.

  “Sorry, sweetheart,” I told her. I didn’t want him to leave, either.

  Mendoza’s mouth twitched, but he didn’t comment. “I’ll call you later,” he told me. “Take care of the dog.”

  I promised I would.

  “And let me know when Zachary comes back.”

  “I will. When can I expect to see you—I mean, hear from you—again?”

  He glanced at his watch. “I have an appointment with the lawyer in thirty minutes. After that, I should have a better idea what might be going on. I’ll call you.”

  I told him I appreciated it, and watched him walk out the door. He said goodbye to Rachel on his way through the lobby, and then I heard the front door close behind him. A few seconds later, the sound of an engine started in the parking lot. At the same time, Rachel’s sensible heels came clicking down the hallway. A moment later, she appeared in the doorway of my office. “If I wasn’t an old lady, and he wasn’t young enough to be my son, I would jump that man.”

  “You are not an old lady,” I told her, even as I tacitly admitted that the same was true for me. If I wasn’t an old lady, I would also jump that man. “And I don’t think you’re old enough to be his mother. He has to be into his thirties.” While Rachel was in her mid fifties. So yes, maybe she was old enough to be his mother. The same way I was old enough to be Zachary’s.

  She put a piece of paper on my desk. “There’s the information you wanted. The house belongs to someone named Araminta Tucker. She has a permanent address in Franklin.”

  “Kentucky?”

  Rachel shook her head. “Tennessee.”

  Nashville is about sixty miles from the Kentucky border. There’s a small town called Franklin just over the border, and another about twenty miles south of us, in Williamson County. Since one of them is about half the distance of the other—not that either is a particularly long drive—I was relieved that she was talking about the closer one.

  I pulled the paper closer. “Maybe I’ll go talk to her.”

  Rachel nodded. “I’ll hold down the fort.”

  I got to my feet and grabbed my bag. “If Zachary comes back, tell him to call Mendoza. The detective wants a better description of the blonde.”

  Edwina watched us walk out of my office, but made no move to jump down from the sofa and follow. “Car ride?” I asked her.

  She twitched an ear, but didn’t move otherwise.

  “I’ll see you later,” I told her, and followed Rachel down the hallway toward the front door.

  * * *

  Franklin is a nice little town, surrounded by horse farms and the estates of country music stars and record executives. And these days, surrounded by a lot of subdivisions, as well. When I plugged Araminta Tucker’s address into the GPS, it directed me to one such. It was called Sheridan Farms, and was located on the south side of Highway 96, not too far from the Historic Carnton Plantation, a civil war site.

  The houses were large and cookie-cutter, in four or five different designs. I saw gothic farmhouses, a couple of different Queen Anne styles, and a modern Eastlake as I followed the GPS directions.

  “You have arrived,” the deep male voice with the Italian accent said. I had named him Bruno, and sometimes I talked back to him. In this case I told him, “Thank you,” and pulled up to the curb and cut the engine, and peered through the windshield at the house.

  Or building, rather.

  Five stories tall, with at least sixty windows just on the front. A big sign next to the entrance said Sheridan Farms Assisted Living Community.

  A retirement home. Someone had attempted to give it the same Victorian flair as the surrounding homes, but while it had something of the air of an old turn-of-the-century hotel, they hadn’t quite managed to get rid of the institutional. It gave off more of a Victorian insane asylum vibe, if that isn’t too politically incorrect a comparison.

  I opened the car door and got out. And made my way into the lobby.

  At least that looked more like a hotel than an asylum. Lots of green plants and plush sofas. I deduced—from the looks of it, and the fact t
hat it was located in prosperous Williamson County—that only rich old people could afford to live here.

  The young woman behind the reception desk was wearing a trim, blue uniform rather than the expected scrubs. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m looking for Araminta Tucker,” I said.

  Her elegant brows drew together. “Are you a relative?”

  “Just a friend. Of a friend.” Or something like that. “I wanted to talk to her about her neighbor.” Former neighbor. “Mrs. Grimshaw.”

  “Are you with the police?”

  I blinked. “No. Have the police been here?”

  “She said they’d be coming,” the receptionist said.

  “Who did? Ms. Tucker?”

  She nodded.

  “No,” I said. “I’m not with the police.” Although I supposed there was a chance they might show up. If the blonde was, or became, a suspect in Mrs. Grimshaw’s murder.

  “Identification?”

  It took me a second to realize that she was asking for mine. I dug in my wallet and pulled out my driver’s license. She scanned it and handed it back, along with a sticker that said ‘visitor’ along with a grainy black-and-white depiction of my face. My driver’s license photo is bad enough; the grainy copy of it looked like something out of a horror movie.

  I peeled the back off and put the sticker on my coat.

  “Sign here.” She pointed to the empty line at the bottom of a visitor’s log. I wrote Araminta Tucker’s name down as the person I was visiting, and scrawled my signature next to it.

  “Unit 204,” the receptionist said. “Second floor. Elevator’s down there.” She pointed down the hallway.

  I thanked her and headed off. And wondered how Araminta Tucker had known that the police might show up to talk to her.

  The answer to that, at least, became very clear when I got off the elevator on the second floor and headed down the hall toward unit 204. The closer I got, the louder I could hear the sound of a TV. By the time I stood outside the door—cracked open an inch or two—I could barely hear myself think. There was no chance at all that Ms. Tucker would hear a knock, so I dispensed with politesse and just pushed the door open.

  It led into a small living room, with an ornate velvet sofa against one wall, flanked by two equally elegant wingback chairs. The coffee table was glass, and sported an oversize, fake flower arrangement full of spiky gladiolus and what I thought might be moonflowers. The sound was up so high on the TV that the vase rattled against the glass.

  Ms. Tucker sat on the sofa, legs tucked up Indian style. She was tiny, with a bouffant hairdo of impossibly black hair, and two beady black eyes in a small, wrinkled face. Her hands were fisted, and she was swearing at the screen like a sergeant major in a military movie.

  I looked at the screen. Ice hockey.

  Really?

  I cleared my throat. She flapped a hand at me. “Hush, girl.”

  Hush? How had she even been able to hear me with the noise coming from the TV?

  And girl? It’s been decades since I was a girl. Although to a woman twice my age, maybe I looked younger than I was.

  “I’d like to talk to you!” I bellowed.

  “There’s no need to yell, girl.” She reached out and dropped the volume on the TV. “I’m not deaf, you know.”

  Could have fooled me. Or at least I had assumed she was hard of hearing, with the way she had the sound turned up. The silence was so loud it practically rang in my ears.

  I cleared my throat. “My name is Gina Beaufort Kelly.”

  “Araminta Tucker.” She looked me up and down. “You’re quite attractive for a police detective, dear.”

  Hard to tell whether she approved or disapproved.

  “I’m sorry to disappoint,” I said. “But I’m not with the police.”

  She hadn’t asked me to sit, but I sidled a little farther into the room and positioned myself next to one of the wingback chairs, with my hand sort of casually propped on its back. It was positioned well out of the way of the sofa’s view of the TV, I noticed.

  She waved me into it, sort of vaguely. “I saw what happened next door. I thought maybe that handsome detective would show up to talk to me.”

  I perched on the edge of the wingback. “Mendoza?” She must have seen the interview the blonde reporter had done earlier. Hard to blame her for wanting him to stop by.

  She nodded. “Such a good-looking boy. My poor husband wasn’t much in the looks department, bless his soul. But he was a good provider.” She crossed herself.

  “If you want to see Mendoza,” I told her, “I’d be happy to put in a good word. Do you know something he might want to hear?”

  “I knew Griselda Grimshaw,” Araminta Tucker said.

  Griselda? Really?

  I made myself more comfortable in the chair. “Did you used to live in the house next door?”

  She nodded. “All through my marriage. Poor Patton, tied to his sister’s apron strings his whole life long.”

  “Wait…” I wasn’t sure, but it sounded like… “Mrs. Grimshaw was your sister-in-law?”

  She snorted. “Mrs. Grimshaw? If anyone had the right to call herself Mrs. Grimshaw, it was me, dear. Griselda never married. Never found anyone who was good enough for her, Patton used to say. Between you and me, I don’t think she found anyone crazy enough to take her on. And so I told him, too. Repeatedly.”

  “So Mrs. Grimshaw wasn’t Mrs. Grimshaw at all. She was Miss Grimshaw.”

  She nodded.

  “But you…?”

  “Kept my maiden name,” Araminta Tucker said. “Going through life as Araminta Tucker was bad enough. Could you imagine being Araminta Grimshaw?”

  I couldn’t. It sounded like something out of Harry Potter. As did Griselda Grimshaw. Or Patton Grimshaw, for that matter.

  “I took my husband’s name,” I said. “And tacked it onto my own.”

  “Nothing wrong with Kelly, dear. Good Irish name.”

  There’d been something wrong with my husband, though. But before we could wander down that garden path, I dragged the conversation back on track again. “So you and your husband lived next door to Mrs…. um… Griselda. Before you moved here?”

  She nodded. The bouffant swayed. “Patton died two years ago. I moved out a week after the funeral. Couldn’t stand being near her any longer. And she must have felt the same, because I haven’t seen her since. She hasn’t visited me even once.”

  “And you haven’t gone back to see her?”

  She shook her head. “She despised me, dear. Never failed to tell poor Patton what a rotten choice he’d made.”

  “That must have been tough.” David hadn’t had any sisters. His misfit brother Daniel could take me or leave me, but until recently, Daniel had lived in California, so he’d only been a drag on David’s finances and not the rest of our lives.

  “Oh,” Araminta Tucker said brightly, “I wouldn’t say that, dear. Every day I wake up and know it’s a good day because I don’t have to see Griselda Grimshaw today.”

  OK, then. And now that was permanent. Which didn’t seem to bother her much.

  “So you saw the footage on the news and recognized the house?”

  She nodded. “I lived next to that house for forty-nine years. Not like I could mistake it.”

  I guess not. “Any idea who might have wanted your sister-in-law dead?”

  “Other than me?” She didn’t wait for me to answer. “Any number of people, I imagine. She had a positive genius for rubbing people the wrong way. And always sticking her nose in other people’s business.”

  “She called the police on me yesterday,” I said.

  Her brows, plucked to within an inch of their lives and carefully drawn on, arched. “Did she?”

  “I was sitting in my car on the street watching the house next door. She called the police and reported a suspicious vehicle.”

  Araminta Tucker nodded. “That sounds like something she’d do. I don’t suppose you killed h
er?”

  I told her I hadn’t. “She died sometime overnight. Ten to midnight, I think Detective Mendoza said. I was at home by then. Asleep.”

  “And I suppose you can prove that, can’t you?” She didn’t wait for me to answer. “Why were you watching the house next door?”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” I said. “I’m a private investigator—”

  I fumbled in my purse for my license while her eyebrows winged up her forehead again. “Why didn’t you say so? That’s almost as good as the police. Maybe even better.” She snatched the license out of my hand and examined it carefully.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I forgot.”

  She handed the license back. “That’s the kind of thing you lead with, dear. Not something you use as a throwaway line in the middle of a conversation.”

  I told her I’d keep that in mind. “So about the house…”

  “The one you were watching. My house.”

  I nodded. “I was following a man whose wife hired me to see if he was cheating on her.”

  “Steven Morton,” Araminta Tucker said.

  By now I was past surprise. “You know him?”

  She shook her head. “Not to say know, dear. He contacted me a few days ago.”

  He must have known her, then. Or known about her. Or something. “What did he want?”

  “To rent my house,” Araminta Tucker said. “For his daughter.”

  Daughter? “Steven doesn’t have a daughter.”

  “You don’t say?” Araminta said. And added, “I wasn’t born yesterday, dear.” She shook her head. “They had different names. Different nationalities. And how many middle-aged men do you know who would pay the rent on a grown woman’s apartment out of the goodness of their hearts? Especially one that looks like that?”

  Not many. David had contributed to Jacquie’s rent and wardrobe and probably wine budget, but it hadn’t been altruistic.

  “What do you mean, different nationalities?”

  “She was Russian,” Araminta Tucker said. “Or from somewhere in what we used to call the Soviet Union when I was a girl. He had her cosign the lease. He paid, first and last month’s rent, but he insisted she sign the lease.”