[Cutthroat Business 01.0 - 03.0] Boxed Set

by Jenna Bennett

  Unless she’d been lying? If he’d been hurt worse than I’d realized, maybe she’d had to, to keep me from having hysterics. Maybe there was a reason they couldn’t get him to a hospital right away, and so he’d died. And it was all my fault, for leaving him there, for not making sure that he was safe.

  My eyes filled with tears.

  “I’m really sorry, sis.” Dix fumbled between the seats and came up with a box of Kleenex, which he dumped in my lap.

  I pulled one out and dabbed at my eyes. “Maybe Todd misunderstood. Maybe he doesn’t have all the information. Maybe Rafe was shot but he’s still alive. Maybe...”

  “I really don’t think so, Savannah.” Dix alternated between looking at the road and looking at me, concern on his face. “Todd had it straight from his dad. And the sheriff ought to know, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose.” I’d passed the sheriff’s car on Main Street last night, just after turning off the Pulaski Highway, so they must have called him pretty much as soon as I left the trailer. But I’d seen Rafe. He’d been alive when I left.

  “He said it was some kind of ambush. Apparently someone has been gunning for Collier for a while, and last night they found him. With a woman. I’m sorry, sis.”

  I shook my head.

  “Elspeth Caulfield,” Dix said. “Remember her? They had some kind of fling in high school. Apparently they were there together, in the trailer in the Bog, when this guy showed up. José somebody. Or maybe it was Jorge. Anyway, he killed them both.”

  “No.”

  “The sheriff told Todd there’s no doubt. He’s dead. And so is Elspeth.”

  “No.” I shook my head, tears spilling down my face faster than I could mop them up. Dix reached over and squeezed my hand.

  “I’m sorry, sis. D’you want me to pull over?”

  I shook my head. “Just... don’t talk for a while. Give me some time to get myself together.”

  He nodded. “Sure.”

  “Or maybe you could talk about something else.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like...” I sniffed into the tissue. “Why are we going to Damascus?”

  “Oh.” Dix flushed. “That’s something else I have to tell you.”

  “God.” Sounded like more bad news. Although it couldn’t possibly be as bad as the last thing he’d said. I still had a hard time believing it. I mean, I’d seen Rafe. Felt his heartbeat. Talked to him. How could he be dead?

  “Well...” Dix said, “Elspeth Caulfield died.”

  “And?”

  “Her father was a client of Dad’s. When Dad died, the account went to Jonathan, Catherine, and me. Since Elspeth inherited the house and a good bit of money from her parents, and since she wasn’t married and didn’t have any close kin, she made a will. She asked Jonathan to draw it up. Probably because she remembered me and Catherine from school and didn’t want us to know too much about what was in it.”

  I nodded. That made sense. I didn’t want anyone to know too much about what was going on in my personal life, either.

  “I hadn’t read it before today. But when Todd called to say she’d died, we pulled it out.”

  “And?”

  He looked over at me. “She left everything she owned to her son.”

  “What?”

  “She left everything she owned to her son.”

  It sounded the same this time. “I didn’t know she had a son,” I said.

  “Neither did I,” Dix answered. “Neither did anyone. And that’s why we’re on our way to her house. To see if we can figure out who he is.”

  “Yikes.” I dabbed my face with the soggy tissue. “No offense, Dix, but why are you involving me in this? I don’t work for Martin and McCall. I didn’t know Elspeth. And to be honest, I think I’m probably the last person she’d want going through her things.”

  “What makes you say that?” Dix wanted to know.

  “Because she’s spent the past week trying to kill me. Just like she killed Marquita and tried to kill Yvonne.”

  Dix stared at me. For long enough that I had to remind him to watch the road.

  He focused forward again. “You’re kidding.”

  I shook my head. “Tamara Grimaldi told me.”

  “Wow.” Dix didn’t say anything else for a moment, just concentrated on driving. “Um... why? Why did Elspeth kill Marquita and try to kill you and Yvonne?”

  I sighed. “Because of Rafe. She wanted him for herself. Apparently she thought we were all a threat to their happily-ever-after.”

  “She and Collier had a happily-ever-after?”

  “In her mind they did. She hadn’t even seen him for twelve years, but I guess she never got over that one-night-stand in high school.”

  “Huh,” Dix said.

  “Marquita lived with Rafe, to take care of Mrs. Jenkins, so Elspeth thought they were involved. Marquita may even have intimated that they were. Wishful thinking, you know? And Elspeth was at the cemetery the other day, and saw him kiss Yvonne, so Yvonne had to die.”

  That was probably Elspeth who Millie Ruth next door had seen walking down the street that night. Instead of me.

  “What about you?” Dix asked, in a weird echo of my thoughts. It took me a second to figure out what he wanted to know.

  “I talked to Elspeth a couple of months ago, after Todd told me about her and Rafe. She wouldn’t tell me what happened between them in high school, but since I drove down here to ask, I guess she formed the impression that there was something between us.”

  “Something?”

  “I was sort of...” I swallowed, “...falling for him, a little.” And now he was dead. Before I’d had the chance to tell him how I felt. My eyes filled with fresh tears.

  Dix muttered something. He was obviously lost for words, so he just reached over, fished out another tissue, and handed it to me. I sniffed.

  Neither of us spoke again until we pulled up in front of Elspeth’s big, white house in Damascus. Dix got out and walked around the car. I waited for him to open the door for me. He’s been trained well, plus, I was really, really reluctant to do this. Going through Elspeth’s things; Elspeth, of all people...

  “You go ahead inside,” I told Dix as we stood on the wraparound porch and he fumbled the key into the lock. “I want to make a phone call.”

  He looked at me for a second, but then he nodded. I waited until the door was closed behind him before I pulled out my phone and dialed.

  And got Tamara Grimaldi’s voice mail.

  Of all the mornings for her not to answer her phone...! Of course, it had been a late night for her. Later than for me, since she’d had to deal with the—my heart squeezed—bodies.

  Still, I needed her. She ought to be there.

  “Detective? This is Savannah Martin. It’s about ten thirty. I’m still in Sweetwater. At Elspeth Caulfield’s house, actually. With my brother. He’s her lawyer. We’re trying to figure out where her next of kin lives. Anyway... Dix told me—”

  My voice broke, and I had to stop and get myself under control before I could continue.

  “Dix told me that Rafe... that Rafe didn’t... oh, God!” I couldn’t force myself to say the words out loud. “Just call me, OK? Please? As soon as you can.” I hung up, and spent another few minutes sobbing into a tissue. Before I squared my shoulders and walked into Elspeth’s house.

  And stopped inside the door like I’d walked into an invisible wall.

  The interior of the house was almost surreal.

  It’s not that I’m not used to old houses. The Martin mansion is antebellum, 1839, so fifty or sixty years older than this place, and full of antique furniture, including some of the original pieces from when the house was first built. Mrs. Jenkins’s house is another Victorian, with dark woodwork and immensely tall ceilings. And I’ve seen my share of other old homes too, in the three or four months I’ve had my real estate license. But this, this was freaky. It was like stepping into the 19th century. Heavy, dark furniture, lam
ps with fringe, tchotchkes everywhere. Waxed flowers under glass, ceramic kittens, old books with their distinctive leathery smell.

  Except for the painting above the fireplace mantel. I would have expected some Victorian monstrosity of dead birds and lemons, or maybe a reproduction Renoir or Monet; the impressionists would fit the time period of the house. Instead, what I got was the cover of a Barbara Botticelli romance. Blown up to thirty times its paperback size, and stuck in an ornate gold frame.

  I blinked. Why would Elspeth Caulfield have the cover art for a Barbara Botticelli romance on display in her house? Maybe it was just a painting, or a photograph, that looked a little like it.

  But no, I was pretty sure it was the real thing. I even knew which Barbara Botticelli novel it came from. The debut, released about four years earlier. I’d read it, of course. In one sitting.

  As with all the BB books, the plot was a variation on the blonde and beautiful, well-bred heroine and the dark and dangerous, not-at-all-well-bred, bad-boy hero. It was called “Slave to Passion” and was set during the Civil War. In the Deep South. With a Southern Belle heroine named Elizabeth, who was irresistibly drawn to a man she couldn’t have, not only because she was engaged to someone else, but because Benjamin was a Yankee, and a soldier for the North, who was occupying her family’s land, and most of all because he was colored: the product of a union between Elizabeth’s fiancée’s father, the owner of a neighboring plantation, and the father’s slave, who had run away and made it all the way to the North before giving birth to Elizabeth’s fiancée’s half brother.

  The cover was the usual confection: the swooning heroine, her long blonde hair undone and the bodice of her hoop-skirted gown ditto, clasped in the hero’s brawny arms, her soft white hands clutching his muscular shoulders and his dark head buried in her neck. He was naked to the waist, of course, the way Union soldiers always were. The two of them were up against a background of glossy-leaved magnolia trees, obviously hiding from Elizabeth’s family in the big white plantation house in the distance.

  She—Elizabeth—looked a lot like Elspeth.

  I took a couple of steps closer and squinted.

  She looked a lot like Elspeth. Funny I hadn’t noticed that when I read the book.

  Then again, I hadn’t seen Elspeth for years at that point, so maybe it wasn’t that funny, after all.

  I noticed now, though. And my brain hiccupped.

  There was a sound from the room to the left of the front hall, and I went over to a pair of sliding pocket doors and peered in. It was an office, and Dix was sitting at the desk busily sorting through paperwork. Of which there was plenty. Papers everywhere. Stacks and folders on the desk, piles on every flat surface, including the floor. Built-in bookshelves on one wall, floor to ceiling, and along the wall next to them, some sort of clothesline with a row of small colored index cards held up by clothes pins. There were also more Barbara Botticelli covers, small ones this time, framed and hanging on the wall. Along with what looked like—I squinted—awards?

  Definitely awards. Given to Barbara Botticelli for excellence in the romance genre.

  “Holy cow,” I said.

  Dix looked up from the paper sorting. “What?”

  “I think she’s Barbara Botticelli.”

  “Who?”

  “Elspeth. I think she’s Barbara Botticelli.” Or was.

  “Who’s Barbara Botticelli?” Dix wanted to know.

  I stared at him. “Only my favorite romance author. Doesn’t Sheila read Barbara Botticelli?”

  “I have no idea,” Dix said, and went back to his papers.

  Maybe his and Sheila’s sex life was exciting enough without the aid of romance novels, but speaking for myself, I’d found them a great comfort during my short-lived marriage to Bradley. Who was about as far from a dark and dangerous Botticelli hero as it’s possible to get.

  If Elspeth was Barbara Botticelli, it explained why all her books were variations on the theme ‘sweet, innocent, blonde good girl falls for dark, dangerous, mysterious bad boy,’ anyway. If she’d been obsessed with Rafe since high school, he’d obviously been the hero of every book she’d ever written. I guess she’d been imagining herself redeeming him. Over and over and over. Rewriting their story so they got their happily ever after.

  It also explained why I’d pictured every Botticelli hero—at least recently—with Rafe’s face. I truly wasn’t going crazy.

  Or maybe that was just because I had fallen in love with him.

  And now he was gone.

  I blinked back another round of tears and turned to Dix. “Anything?”

  “Not yet. There’s a lot to go through here. Would you mind walking through the rest of the house, just to see if anything jumps out at you? Most likely any information would be here in the office, but have a look around.”

  “Sure.” I left the room and wandered back into the hallway, sparing Elizabeth/Elspeth and Benjamin/Rafe a glance on the way past.

  Unlike the Martin mansion, which is symmetrical with a central foyer and long hallway straight through to the back door, Elspeth’s house was a Queen Anne Victorian: asymmetrical and quirkily charming. The foyer was in the front right corner of the house, with the parlor to the left, and a short hallway down the middle, ending in the master bedroom. On the right side, beyond the foyer, the house widened, and another room—the dining room—flowed into the kitchen. I walked through it all, but didn’t see anything of interest. The dining room was pristine, with dark, heavy furniture, while the kitchen was updated with stainless steel appliances and a tile floor. There were no kid drawings fastened to the fridge, the way there were in many of the houses I’d seen over the past few months. There were a few photographs, but they were of Elspeth herself. Hidden under a big picture hat, wearing some kind of fairy costume, maybe from a party or something. There were no telephone numbers or addresses tacked to the fridge, either; the only thing worthy of note was the books everywhere. There was at least one bookcase in every room, including the kitchen. They were stuffed full, and the small bedroom between the master and the parlor had been turned into a library, with shelves on all four walls.

  Upstairs was mostly unused, it seemed. Several of the rooms had dust covers over all the furniture. The room where I’d seen the light on the other night, when I drove over to Yvonne’s house, was Elspeth’s bedroom, just as I had suspected. And like my bedroom in the mansion, it didn’t look like it had changed since she was a teenager. Mine hadn’t either, but that was because I didn’t live there anymore. And because it hadn’t changed appreciably in the past hundred years before I was born, either.

  Elspeth’s bedroom was sweet and girly: pale blue walls, white canopied bed, frilly lace curtains. White furniture and a fluffy rug on the floor. Like she hadn’t grown or changed since she was fifteen.

  There were books here, too, and a stack of paper next to the bed. A manuscript, I saw when I got closer. A new Barbara Botticelli. I’d have to make sure Dix sent it back to the publisher in New York on Elspeth’s behalf.

  It was called “Prisoner of Love,” which seemed a worthy follow-up to “Apache Amour” and “Pirate’s Booty,” not to mention “Highland Fling” and “Slave to Passion.”

  I couldn’t resist sitting down on the bed and leafing through a couple of pages, and before I knew it fifteen minutes had passed. I put the manuscript down, guiltily, and looked at the rest of the room. And froze.

  There were a couple of photographs on the night table, next to the stack of printed pages. I’d been so busy honing in on the manuscript that I hadn’t noticed them. There was Elspeth, with her big, black dogs. She owned a half dozen of the beasts, which must have been removed to a facility somewhere before we arrived, probably by the sheriff’s department. Two months ago, when I was here, they’d tried to lick me to death. Another framed picture showed an older couple, probably Elspeth’s parents, on the porch outside. Her mother was small and blond and looked harassed, with a tense smile and worried eyes, while
Elspeth’s father was big and beefy with an uncompromising look to his thin lips and straight brows.

  Those were not what interested me, although a closer study of the picture of the parents might give some insight into Elspeth’s psyche. At the moment I didn’t care. I reached for the last photograph with a hand that was shaking.

  For a moment I thought I was looking at Rafe. Not Rafe the way I’d ever seen him; Rafe long before we ended up at Columbia High together. Nine or ten years old, maybe. With a couple of oversized front teeth and a big grin, dancing eyes and a boyish face.

  And for a second it hurt, and I thought I might start crying again. But then I saw the car in the background, behind the boy. An SUV. Fairly new. This picture had been taken within the last few years. Not twenty years ago, when Rafe was this age.

  “Your phone rang,” Dix said when I came back into the office, photograph in hand.

  I glanced at my purse, which I had left on the chair next to him. “Why didn’t you answer it?”

  “I did. It was Detective Grimaldi from Nashville.”

  God. “What did she say?”

  “She didn’t say anything,” Dix said. “Just that she was returning your call and to try her again later.”

  “That’s it?”

  “I asked her if it was true that Rafe Collier had died.”

  My heart stuttered. “And?”

  Dix shook his head, his eyes somber. “I’m sorry, sis. She said yes.” He caught sight of the photograph I had put on the desk and added, “Whoa. Where did you find this?”

  I struggled to get myself together as I told him it had been on the night table upstairs, next to Elspeth’s bed.

  “This isn’t Collier, is it?”

  I shook my head.

  “Looks like him, though.”

  I nodded. “But the car...” My voice was barely audible.

  “I see it. This could be the son. If Elspeth did get pregnant in high school, after that one-night-stand with Collier, her son would be... twelve or so now?”