[Cutthroat Business 01.0 - 03.0] Boxed Set

by Jenna Bennett

  Her first words gave me no clue at all. “Hi, baby. What you doin’ here?”

  “I’m having an open house,” I said. She nodded vaguely and looked around.

  “Where’s that handsome boy of yours?”

  “Um...” Rafe? Or Tyrell? “Not here, I’m afraid. It’s just me today.”

  “You’re being careful, ain’t you? He’d be just sick if summat happened to you or the baby.”

  Tyrell, then. Rafe couldn’t care less what happened to me. And I wasn’t — thank God! — expecting his child. “Yes, I’m being careful. I don’t want anything to happen to me, either.”

  “That’s good.” She patted my hand; her own was tiny and spotted and wrinkled and brown. I smiled back, and although I suspected it wouldn’t make any difference, I tried anyway.

  “You know, Mrs. Jenkins, I’m not LaDonna. LaDonna was Tyrell’s girlfriend and Rafe’s mother. Rafe’s your grandson, not your son. And I’m Rafe’s... um... well, Rafe and I are just friends. But I’m not LaDonna. I’m Savannah.”

  Mrs. Jenkins nodded, but vaguely, her eyes on a car that was slowing down out on the road. It turned into the driveway and then started crunching its way up to the house. Mrs. Jenkins jumped. “He’s comin’ to get me!”

  “That’s not the police...” I began, remembering what had happened the first time I’d met her, when Spicer and Truman appeared to take her back to the Milton House.

  She snorted. “I know it ain’t the police, baby. That’s the bad man!”

  I shook my head. “You must have him confused with somebody else. That’s just my boss. He’s coming to talk to me about something.”

  Mrs. Jenkins shook her head right back at me. “He’s gonna hurt me. He said so. He showed me his gun, and then he said, if I told anyone I’d seen him, he’d kill me too. Just like my baby. I gotta get inside!”

  “Oh!” I said, as light dawned, “you mean...”

  But she was already gone, into the house as quickly as her ancient legs and fuzzy slippers could carry her. The door slammed behind her.

  While we’d been talking, Walker had pulled his Mercedes up to the bottom of the stairs and stepped out. Because it was Sunday, he was more casually dressed than at the office, but the khakis had a knife-edged pleat down the front, and the pale canary-yellow Oxford shirt was starched to within an inch of its life. I could have seen my reflection in his loafers, and not a hair on his dignified, salt and pepper head was out of place. He was quite amazingly good looking, and if he hadn’t been my boss, and gay, and about fifteen years too old, I would have made a dead set for him. As it was, I smiled in a friendly, but distinctly non-sexy manner. “Hi, Walker.”

  “Savannah.” He nodded cordially at me, although his eyes were on the door. He must have seen Mrs. Jenkins scurry away from him, and now he was wondering why.

  “That was Tondalia Jenkins,” I said apologetically. “I think I told you she’s old and somewhat confused?”

  Walker nodded warily.

  “Well, today she’s living thirty years in the past. She thinks I’m LaDonna Collier, pregnant with her grandchild, and that you’re my disapproving father. See, Mrs. Jenkins’s son Tyrell was shot by LaDonna’s daddy because old Jim Collier didn’t want his daughter involved with a black man. Or at least I think that’s what happened.”

  “I see,” Walker said.

  “I guess old Jim must have been hanging out, waiting for Tyrell, because Mrs. Jenkins said she’d seen him. You, that is. And that he’d shown her his gun and told her he’d kill her too, if she told anyone about him. Except, of course, you don’t have a gun and you had nothing to do with killing Tyrell.”

  I smiled. Walker didn’t. I guess he didn’t think it was funny. I added, “She’s got a little bit of paranoia anyway, because the nursing home always sends the police after her when she wanders off.”

  “Really?” Walker threw a glance over his shoulder. There was no police car coming up Potsdam Street.

  “I guess they haven’t gotten the message yet. Or maybe they’ve got more important things to do than chase down a harmless old lady.”

  Walker moved his gaze back to the door. “Shouldn’t we make sure she’s all right? If she was upset when she went in...”

  “Maybe that would be a good idea.” I walked to the door and tried the knob. It was locked. “Uh-oh.”

  “What?” Walker said.

  “I left the key inside, so I wouldn’t forget it when it was time to leave. She must have locked herself in. Maybe she’ll answer.” I started knocking on the door. “Mrs. Jenkins? Can you hear me? Come open the door, Mrs. Jenkins. It’s just me; Savannah. Nobody’s going to hurt you. Please, Mrs. Jenkins, can you hear me?”

  “Here.” Walker pushed me aside and bent over the lock. I heard a click, and then he turned the knob and pushed the door open. I stared.

  “Where did you...?”

  “There was a spare key at the office.” He waved me in, and then followed me through the door and locked it behind us. I opened my mouth.

  “Mrs. Jenkins?”

  Nothing. Walker took a breath and added his voice to mine. “Mrs. Jenkins? This is Walker Lamont, Savannah’s boss. Please show yourself. We’re worried about you.”

  There was no answer this time either, but we heard a soft shuffling noise. Walker’s gray eyes met mine. “Sounds like she’s in back,” I said softly. “Kitchen or... um... library.”

  He nodded.

  I headed down the hallway with him right behind, and believe me, I tried not to draw a parallel between this and going into the library with Rafe a week ago. But at least I wouldn’t encounter a butchered body today. Mrs. Jenkins had been alive and well just five minutes ago, and although she was old and demented and paranoid, I wasn’t worried that she was suicidal. Or homicidal.

  That is, until I walked through the kitchen door and found her in the middle of the cracked vinyl floor, holding a serrated carving knife the size of a saber with both hands.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Whoa!”

  I stopped, so abruptly that Walker walked into me and knocked me forward a step. We all froze for a moment, suspended in time, and then I pulled myself together. My voice was calmer than I felt on the inside. “You’ll want to be careful with that, Mrs. Jenkins. You could hurt yourself, or someone else.”

  Her eyes flicked to me for a second, and then she went back to staring unblinkingly past me at Walker. I made another effort to defuse the situation. “This is my boss, Mrs. Jenkins. He’s not here to hurt you. He just came to talk to me about something.”

  “I seen him before,” Mrs. Jenkins said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I seen him. Here.”

  “Well, he was Brenda’s boss, too. You know, the woman who listed your house for sale.”

  “The one who’s dead,” Mrs. Jenkins said, flatly.

  I nodded, even as I felt a shiver of fear down my back. Was it possible that Mrs. Jenkins had murdered Brenda after all? I hadn’t thought she had the strength, but maybe I’d been wrong. She was feeling threatened now, and it had caused her to brandish a carving knife as long as her arm. Maybe Brenda had underestimated Mrs. Jenkins’s strength, too, and that was what had allowed Mrs. J to kill her.

  While all of these thoughts were scurrying through my head, I was talking calmly, trying to reason with her. “If Walker was here, it was probably just to see the place. He was responsible for Brenda, just as he is for me. All the listings are his; they belong to the brokerage, not the individual agent. He probably just wanted to make sure that everything was OK.”

  Although if he’d been here before the murder, he must have known about the listing, and that it was a net-listing, then. I didn’t have time to follow this particular train of thought to its final destination at the moment, however.

  It didn’t seem as if Mrs. Jenkins had heard me. “They was busy talkin’, in there.” She nodded in the direction of the library. I felt another frisson, stronger this time, and fo
r a different reason.

  “Who were?”

  “Him,” Mrs. Jenkins used the knife to point at Walker, “and the lady who died.”

  I glanced at Walker. He was shaking his head mutely, but without conviction. His usually kind, gray eyes were darting from side to side, like a trapped animal, and suddenly a lot of little bits and pieces of the puzzle were falling into place in my head. The thought-train came out of the tunnel into blinding light, and I had the dizzying feeling that someone had shaken a kaleidoscope and changed the picture inside. The new pattern was one I hadn’t considered before.

  Of course Brenda would ask a man to accompany her to Potsdam Street on Saturday morning. A woman would be no help if Maurice decided to fight for Alexandra. Tim would have been about as useless as Clarice or Heidi, and if Brenda wanted to keep Alexandra’s involvement with Maurice from Steven, Walker was the obvious choice. I guess she didn’t realize just how upset he was over her illegal wrangling of Mrs. Jenkins, or how far he’d go to protect his reputation and snag that coveted spot on the real estate commission.

  It had taken just a few seconds for all the facts to rearrange themselves in my mind, in nice, neat, damning rows, but it was too long. Walker had seen my expression change, and knew I had figured it out. His handsome face hardened and his eyes turned the color and consistency of bullets. Steel gray and hard. He reached behind him and whipped out a little handgun. It looked dainty and harmless, like a toy, but the hand that held it was steady as a rock. I took a step back, next to Mrs. Jenkins.

  My mother trained me to be, among other things, a good hostess and an amusing conversationalist. I can talk to practically anyone about practically anything, and it isn’t often I find myself lost for words. This time I didn’t know what to say. What does one say to a man one has admired and looked up to, when one has realized that he’s a cold-blooded murderer who’s likely to kill one in the next few minutes?

  As often happens to me, my mouth took charge independently of my brain. “I can understand about Brenda — Lord knows I’ve wanted to murder her myself, more than once — but why Clarice? What did she do?”

  “The old bitch tried to blackmail me,” Walker said disgustedly. I chalked a mental point up to Rafe, who had suggested it. And I hoped devoutly that I would get the chance to tell him he’d been right. In the meantime, I talked.

  “She tried to get you to give her a percentage of everything the company took in?”

  The same thing she had done with Brenda fifteen years ago, but on a much larger scale. Walker Lamont Realty sells tens of millions of dollars worth of real estate, and brings in hundreds of thousands in commissions every month. Booty like that would be well worth a little blackmail.

  Walker nodded. “Like I’d roll over and give her whatever she wanted just because she figured out I’d got rid of that fat cow Brenda Puckett. Who deserved everything she got, let me tell ya! Even Clarice said so.”

  Walker’s cultivated accent was degenerating rapidly. Any minute now he’d probably turn and spit on the floor.

  “I didn’t like Brenda, either,” I said soothingly, while my thoughts ticked over as fast as they could, like a hamster on a wheel. Maybe if I could keep him talking, the police would show up looking for Mrs. Jenkins, and save us all.

  Walker smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “You’re a nice girl, Savannah. I’m sorry I have to kill you.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” I said, doing my best to keep my voice level. And although he probably expected me to beg for mercy, I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. Not on my own behalf, anyway. “You can leave Mrs. Jenkins be, though, can’t you? She’s old and senile; nobody’s going to believe anything she says.”

  Walker glanced at her. She still had the knife in her hands, although those hands were trembling with effort now, and her eyes were vague and unfocused. I’ve rarely seen a knife-wielding lunatic look less threatening. Nevertheless, Walker shook his head. “Sorry, Savannah. I can’t do that. She saw me. She has to go, too. But I’ll make it quick. I have no need to make either of you suffer.”

  “Gee, thanks,” I said, wondering if he’d dragged out the inevitable for Brenda or Clarice. No, surely not Brenda; there hadn’t been enough time. Clarice, maybe...

  The thought was unpleasant, and I forced my mind back to more immediate concerns. Namely, dragging the inevitable out for myself as long as I possibly could. “You must have been pretty upset with Clarice. You probably thought you’d gotten away with Brenda’s murder until she tried to extort money from you.”

  “I could have killed her on the spot,” Walker agreed, with a faint smile at his own pun. “But of course I couldn’t do that. Not right there at Brenda’s memorial service. So I arranged to meet her later instead. The next day, as it was.”

  “So that article in the Voice — the one about Clarice’s husband and the whole Kress-building fiasco...”

  Walker nodded, and a shadow of vexation crossed his no longer quite so handsome features. Funny how I had never noticed before how deep the lines at the corners of his eyes were, or how tight the lips when they weren’t smiling.

  “Did you leak it, to frame her?

  “Hardly,” Walker said grimly. “Tim did it.”

  It didn’t come as much of a surprise. I had suspected as much yesterday evening, when Tim talked about wanting to get rid of Clarice. I also remembered the phone call I had heard the beginning of last Sunday, when Tim had told someone named Larry he had a story for him. And the Voice reporter’s name had been Lawrence Derryberry.

  “What did Tim have to do with any of it?”

  “Nothing,” Walker said. “Not a thing. He knew about the — as you say — Kress-building fiasco, and that Brenda gave Clarice a job after Clarice’s husband died, but that was all he knew. But Clarice never liked him, so with Brenda out of the picture, he wanted to get rid of her, as well. I’ve had a talk with him about it.” He closed his teeth with a snap. I didn’t envy Tim the conversation, although it was much to be preferred over the one I was having at the moment.

  “But what was he doing at the Stor-All last Monday morning?” I asked. “The receptionist said she’d seen him.”

  And then it dawned on me that Tim wasn’t the only good looking gay guy that Brenda worked with. I had just suspected Tim because it hadn’t crossed my mind to suspect Walker.

  “He wasn’t there,” Walker said, confirming my conclusion. “I was.”

  “To do what?”

  “Change the date on the Potsdam Street listing agreement, of course. If the police saw that I’d signed the paperwork on the 2nd instead of the 12th, they’d know I knew about the net listing before the murder. But if I didn’t sign it until the 12th, after the murder, I would have had no reason to kill Brenda.” He smiled tightly.

  “And I guess you let Clarice believe that she was going to get what she wanted, and then you killed her?”

  Walker nodded. “I wined and dined her at her favorite restaurant, and put a little harmless powder in her drink, and then I drove her home and helped her upstairs. She was already passed out when I made the first cut.”

  My stomach turned at the picture he painted, and the offhanded way he talked about slicing into flesh, but I forced myself to stay focused. “Brenda wasn’t, though. Although I’ve been told that for someone who knows what they’re doing, it’s both quick and easy to cut a throat. Funny, I wouldn’t have pegged you for the hunting type.”

  Walker showed his perfect teeth in another smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “I guess I never told you my life story, Savannah. You will appreciate this, I’m sure. I grew up in a small town in Kentucky. My daddy was a redneck; he drove a pick-up truck with a gun rack and a mongrel dog in the back, and went hunting on the weekends. I used to have to come along, because he hoped it’d make a man out of me. So I cut my first throat before I was ten. It’s like riding a bicycle: once you know how, you never forget.”

  “I see,” I said, weakly. “Your dad…?”
<
br />   “Sadly, he’s passed on. A hunting accident. Very unfortunate.”

  Walker’s voice was cold, and I felt his words settle in the pit of my stomach like a block of ice. But before I had time to blurt out an unguarded question as to whether he’d shot his father — ill-advised under the circumstances — there came the sound of car tires from outside.

  Time went into slow motion. I could see the thoughts chasing each other across Walker’s face — shock, fear, uncertainty, anger — and the gun wavered for a crucial tenth of a second. I grabbed the opportunity and gave Mrs. Jenkins a shove in one direction while I hurled myself in the other. The bullet sliced through the air where we had stood just a second ago. Mrs. Jenkins landed hard, face first on the cracked vinyl, and stayed there. I ran, stumbling and skittering on high heels, out the kitchen door into the hallway. Behind me, I could hear Walker following. Simultaneously, someone began hammering on the front door.

  “Heeelp!” I shrieked. “Somebody help me!”

  The hammering intensified, and I heard masculine bellows outside the door, much too far away for me to recognize. My plan, if I had one and wasn’t just mindlessly trying to get away, was to run to the front hall and open the door, but Walker cut me off before I got there. I changed course and backed into the library instead. Walker followed. He had the gun in a steady grip again, and a light of homicidal mania in his eyes.

  I was just about to start praying when we heard a scrabbling noise in the hallway. Walker whirled around and went for the door. I followed, since there was nowhere else for me to go, and because I had an idea of what was going on. It didn’t come as a surprise to see old Mrs. Jenkins determinedly crawling down the hallway toward the door. She had just a few yards to go, and Walker did the only thing he could think of. He aimed the gun at her. I threw myself forward, pushing him with everything I had. The bullet went wild, and the gun went flying. So did Walker. The gun crashed through the hall window and landed in the rose bushes outside amidst the tinkling of glass. Walker landed on top of Mrs. Jenkins, and I could hear all the air being squeezed out of her body on a whooosh. The front door was vibrating under the onslaught of blows.