Contract Pending

by Jenna Bennett

  “I see,” Todd said. He was staring intently at me, in a way that suggested that he might be trying to read my mind. I didn’t think he could, but I also didn’t want to take any chances. So I looked away, down the hall.

  “You should go. It’s a long drive.”

  “You’ve mentioned that,” Todd nodded. “All right. How about Tuesday? Are we still on?”

  We’d had what pretty much amounted to a standing dinner date every Tuesday and Friday for the past five weeks. When Rafe left, Todd had decided he’d better take advantage of this time without—as he perceived it—competition, and he had been wining and dining me every chance he got. Which was twice a week. I didn’t want to go out with him any more frequently than that. First because I didn’t want to give him the idea that I was waiting for him to pop the question, but also because mother has brought my sister Catherine and myself up never to give any gentleman the impression that we are too available. Occasionally, he’d get us tickets to the opera or the theatre on a Saturday or Sunday instead, and we’d skip one of the other nights, but I never went out with him more than twice in the same week.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “I’ll pick you up at the usual time.” He leaned in to kiss my cheek.

  I nodded. He’d pick me up at the usual time and we’d go to the usual place and eat the usual dinner. Not that there was anything wrong with that—I knew exactly what I’d get, and had the assurance of knowing that it would be excellent—but just once in a while it would be nice to try something different. Especially since I had personal reasons for wanting to avoid Fidelio’s. My ex-husband had taken me there on our first (and last) wedding anniversary and invited his mistress to join us, under pretext of talking business. Needless to say, I didn’t have good feelings about the place. I was also concerned that one of these days, I’d run into Bradley and the new Mrs. Ferguson celebrating their anniversary at Fidelio’s. But I knew better than to question Todd’s choice of restaurant, and I suppose there’s something to be said for tradition and continuity. It’s safe and comfortable, if nothing else.

  “Good night, Savannah.” He squeezed my hand. I smiled.

  “Good night, Todd. Thanks for dinner.” I went up on my toes to kiss his cheek. At the last moment he turned sideways, and I ended up kissing his lips instead. They were cool and tasted faintly of red wine.

  The kiss went on for a few seconds, and when I pulled away, Todd had what I can only describe as a triumphant smirk on his face. He had a spring in his step as he walked down the hallway toward the stairs to the first floor. I let myself into my apartment and locked the door behind me.

  Chapter 2

  Mrs. Jenkins’s house on Potsdam Street—the house where Brenda Puckett met her untimely end, and where I’d met Rafe two months ago, for the first time since high school—is a big run-down Victorian with an overgrown yard and a tower on one corner. Before he left town, Rafe had done his best to fix it, but there’s a limit to how much one man can do in a few weeks, so when I drove up the circular drive the next afternoon, the place still looked pretty dismal. The grass was dry and dead from the summer heat, and yellow leaves had started to fall from the trees onto the lawn, but no one had made any attempt to rake them. The porch swing was still peeling and the boards in the porch creaked under my feet as I made my way up to the front door.

  The door bell had long since given up the ghost, so I banged on the glass instead. And waited while shuffling footsteps made their way toward me, agonizingly slowly. “Who is it?” Mrs. Jenkins’s quavery voice asked.

  “It’s me, Mr. Jenkins. Savannah Martin. I just wanted to see how you were.”

  I heard the rattling of chains and the sound of the security bolt being pulled back, and then the heavy oak door opened. “C’mon in, baby.”

  Mrs. Jenkins’s wrinkled raisin-face beamed up at me. As usual, she was dressed in a flowery housecoat and fuzzy slippers. She’d been wearing the same thing every single time I’d seen her, although these days, at least both dress and slippers were neat and clean. Her steel-gray kinky hair was carefully tamed and slicked back against her head, and she looked reasonable healthy, happy and alert. At least I thought so, until she glanced at my midsection and added, “How’s my grandbaby this mornin’?”

  It was actually early afternoon, but that was the least of my concerns. “Your grandbaby is thirty years old, Mrs. Jenkins, and somewhere in Memphis. I’m Savannah, remember? Rafe’s… um… well, I’m not sure what I am—I don’t think I’m Rafe’s anything, really—but I know I’m not pregnant.”

  Mrs. Jenkins’s eyes turned vague for a few seconds while she processed this information. I held my breath. Sometimes she believes me, sometimes she doesn’t. Sometimes she has no idea who I am. She forgets me between visits, and the past is a lot more vivid to her than the present, so she mistakes me for LaDonna Collier. LaDonna was Rafe’s mother, and she had gotten pregnant by Tyrell Jenkins more than thirty years ago. Old Jim Collier, LaDonna’s daddy, had then shot Tyrell because he didn’t want his daughter involved with a black man. All three of them were dead now: Tyrell while LaDonna was still pregnant, Old Jim when Rafe was twelve, and LaDonna most recently, this summer. Her death was the reason Rafe had come back to the Middle Tennessee area in the first place.

  Eventually, Mrs. Jenkins’s eyes cleared. “Oh. Hi, baby. It’s you.”

  I nodded. “I brought you some cookies and lemonade. Would you like to go inside and sit down?”

  “Sure, baby.” She shuffled down the hall, leaving me to close and lock the door behind me.

  The first time I’d been in this house, there had been debris and mouse droppings on the floor and cobwebs draping the ceiling. Today, it looked better. Not as fabulous as it could look, with an influx of a few hundred thousand dollars and a lot of elbow-grease, but not bad. Rafe had refinished the floors and taken down the tattered wallpaper, although the plaster walls in the hall still needed a coat of paint to come into their own. He’d expended more money and effort on the kitchen. A new bank of cabinets stood against the wall, topped by a new Corian counter, and a new refrigerator hummed in the corner, instead of the avocado-green 1970s relic that had been here before. The old, cracked vinyl had been replaced by new, and someone—probably Marquita—had taken the time to cover the kitchen table with a pristine, yellow-checkered tablecloth. I didn’t like the woman any better than she liked me, but I had to admit she wasn’t bad at her job. Except…

  “Where is Marquita today?” I asked, opening the cabinets above the counter to look for glasses and something to put the cookies on.

  Mrs. Jenkins looked around, vaguely, as if she expected to see Marquita pop up from behind the microwave. Fat chance of that, no pun intended. Marquita was two years older than me, two inches shorter, and approximately twice my weight. She might be able to hide behind the side-by-side refrigerator, but not behind anything smaller.

  “Did she run an errand? Go to the grocery store, maybe?”

  Mrs. Jenkins’s face cleared. “Gotta phone call,” she said. “Took the afternoon off.”

  “Really?” I placed a plate of gourmet chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin cookies on the table before I turned around to pick up two glasses of lemonade. “Does that happen often?”

  Mrs. Jenkins shrugged her birdlike shoulders, a cookie already halfway to her mouth. “Girl’s gotta have free time, you know. Can’t always stay here with me.” She bit into the treat greedily, scattering crumbs on the tablecloth and the front of her dress.

  “She’s supposed to be here with you,” I said, sitting down opposite. “That’s the point of paying her. You’re not supposed to be alone.”

  “Marquita’s gotta couple kids, you know, baby. They was here visitin’ last week.”

  “No,” I said, “I didn’t know that. Where are they now?”

  “Livin’ with that ex-husband of hers down south, I guess. Or maybe with her mama. They’s in school down there, so she only gets to see’em weekends. And not all the tim
e, neither.”

  “Is that where she went? To Sweetwater to see her children?”

  Mrs. Jenkins shrugged again. “Can’t rightly say, baby. But she’ll be back tonight. And meantime, I get to eat what I want and see what I want on the TV.” She winked. I smiled back.

  “So how is everything going? When Marquita is here, does she take good care of you?”

  Mrs. Jenkins nodded, her mouth full of raisin and oatmeal. When she had swallowed, she assured me that yes, Marquita took very good care of her. We sat and chatted for another fifteen or twenty minutes, and then I got up to take my leave. Mrs. Jenkins shuffled with me out to the front door, and I told her I’d stand outside to make sure she put the chain back on after I’d gone out.

  “By the way,” I added, just as I was about to leave, to give the impression that the question wasn’t of much consequence, “I don’t suppose you’ve heard from Rafe, have you?”

  Mrs. Jenkins looked blank for a second, like she had no idea who Rafe was. Then she shook her head. “Can’t say as I have, baby. Why?”

  “Oh, no reason. I was just thinking… if Marquita doesn’t come back…”

  “She’ll be back. Ain’t the first time she’s gone home to see her babies.” She looked at me, shrewdly, for a moment, and then added, “You miss him, huh, baby?”

  “I guess I do.” I might as well admit it. It wasn’t like Mrs. Jenkins would tell anyone—no one who mattered, like my mother—and it was nice to be able to say it to someone. Especially someone who’d likely have forgotten by the time I drove away. Plus, I was worried. I had expected him to be back by now. I’d even taken to checking the Memphis newspapers online while I was at the office every morning. That was how I’d found out about the TBI arresting all those people in the hijackings of those cargo containers Todd had mentioned yesterday. I wasn’t so far gone that I read the obituaries yet, but I did skim headlines, and if I came across anything about shootings or arrests or the unrolling of criminal syndicates, I read the article to make sure Rafe’s name wasn’t mentioned. So far I had refrained from calling the Memphis justice system to inquire whether they had him locked up somewhere—I didn’t want to turn them on to him if they didn’t—but I figured it was only a matter of time before I gave in to temptation and picked up the phone.

  Mrs. Jenkins patted me sympathetically on the arm. “He’ll be back, baby. Don’t you worry; he can take care of himself.”

  I nodded. “Thank you, Mrs. Jenkins. I’d better be on my way. Do you need anything else while I’m here?”

  Mrs. Jenkins shook her head. “Marquita’ll take care of me when she gets back tonight, baby. Meantime, I’ll just eat cookies and watch the TV.” She closed one of her little black bird-eyes in a wink. I smiled back.

  “Have a good time. I’ll stop by again in a few days. Just to make sure you’re all right.”

  Mrs. Jenkins said that that would be fine, and I headed back home, where I spent the rest of the night curled up on the sofa with a romance novel and a bottle of wine. Let Mrs. Jenkins have her cookies and her TV; I’d take a bottle of Chardonnay and the florid prose of my favorite author Barbara Botticelli any day.

  Barbara writes what is affectionately known as bodice rippers, and in this latest release, the blonde and beautiful Lady Serena—Barbara Botticelli’s heroines are always blonde and beautiful—was doing her best to avoid being kidnapped and put in the harem of the dastardly Sayid Pasha, while falling hard for the dark and dangerous Sheik Hasan al-Kalaal, who was out to bring Sayid down. The Egyptian setting was exciting, and Sheik Hasan was equally so, with his melting, dark eyes and to-die-for physique. When he rode off into the sunset on his Arabian stallion, his robes flapping in the wind, my girlish heart went pitter-patter.

  I continued the book the next afternoon, while hosting an open house for Timothy Briggs. Tim was my boss now that my former boss, Walker Lamont, languished in prison. I had put him there, and sometimes I wondered if it might not be better for me to go to work at a different real estate company. But Lamont, Briggs & Associates was located right down the street from my apartment, and nobody seemed to hold it against me that I’d been responsible for getting Walker arrested. The two women he killed had worked for what used to be Walker Lamont Realty, too; that may have had something to do with it. Anyway, Tim was far too busy to host his own open houses these days, and since I wasn’t busy at all most of the time, he often asked me to stand in.

  This week’s open house was a small and uninspiring mid-century ranch in a settled area full of old people and unmarried spinsters, and it was a rainy day to boot. Hardly anybody came, and I had plenty of time to read. I stayed by the front window, ready to hide the book whenever anybody pulled to a stop outside, but although a few people came by, nobody seemed to want to buy the house, at least not right at the moment. I had my hopes pinned on a small white car, a Honda or Toyota, that drove by a few times, slowing down to a crawl whenever it got alongside the house, but whoever was inside never actually pulled up to the curb and stopped.

  At 4 o’clock, I closed up shop and headed home. On the way I stopped at the grocery store and did my shopping for the next couple of days, and then I headed to my apartment to cook dinner.

  Ten minutes after I walked in, the phone rang. I picked it up with one hand and tucked it under my chin while I continued to chop tomatoes. “This is Savannah.”

  For a second I couldn’t hear anything, then I became aware of breathing. Not heavy breathing; just the usual kind.

  “Can I help you?” I added. Maybe he or she hadn’t heard me the first time. Sometimes there’s a second or two of lag-time on cell phones.

  A pause, and then a muffled voice whispered, “Look out the window.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Was this some kind of joke? I didn’t recognize the voice; couldn’t even tell whether it was male or female. High-pitched man, low-pitched woman, someone hiding his or her voice behind a handkerchief…

  “Who is this?”

  I got no answer, but the breathing continued. Eventually I gave in to curiosity and wandered over to the double doors to the balcony. Maybe something exciting was going on outside. Maybe Todd had hired a mariachi-band and a dancing bear and a stretch limousine with the words ‘Will you marry me?’ spray-painted on the roof. Or a hot-air balloon or a blimp or at least a megaphone with which to serenade me.

  Or maybe, a treacherous voice in my head suggested, it isn’t Todd at all.

  Maybe Rafe was back, and was waiting downstairs. There was no reason why he wouldn’t have come upstairs to the door, or why he’d bother to disguise his voice when he called, but what the heck, I was in the mood to be hopeful. I opened the doors and stepped onto the balcony.

  In my ear, the phone clicked off, and outside, nothing at all was happening. There was no balloon, no blimp, no limo, and no mariachi-band. Certainly no dancing bear. Nor did I see anyone I knew. Rafe’s Harley-Davidson wasn’t anywhere on the street below, and Todd’s green SUV wasn’t there, either. There were cars parked at the curb, sure—a shiny, black Cadillac with tinted windows, a white compact, a lemon yellow VW Beetle with a sunroof, and a red pickup truck with a load of mulch in the bed—but they didn’t belong to anyone I knew.

  Nothing happened—nobody waved, or shot at me, or made themselves known in any other way—so after a few seconds I went back inside the apartment and back to my tomatoes. Unless it was a prank call, someone yanking my chain for the fun of it, they’d call back and tell me what they wanted.

  By nine the next morning, nobody had called, and I had put the whole incident out of my mind. I was on my way to the office for our weekly staff meeting, and then I was planning to check the Memphis papers online, just in case something big had broken in West Tennessee since Saturday morning.

  Every Monday at 10 o’clock sharp, the sales staff at Lamont, Briggs & Associates gets together for a meeting. We discuss our new listings, our new sales, any new buyer prospects under contract, how successful our ope
n houses were the day before, and so on and so forth. I very rarely have anything to contribute, unless I just happened to have hosted an open house for Tim or someone else the previous day. In my almost four months in business, I’d only had one client—actually two, but they were a couple, buying the same house—and at the moment, we were waiting to close. In other words, they had found a house they liked, I had negotiated a contract acceptable to both buyers and sellers, and now the sale was pending. After I had detailed my experiences at the open house yesterday—minus the fact that I had spent most of my time vicariously enjoying Sheik Hasan al-Kalaal—Tim looked from me to Heidi Hoppenfeldt. “When is the appraisal for the townhouse scheduled?”

  Heidi looked at me, chewing. Tim had brought in a box of donuts, and she was working her way through them.

  “As far as I know it’s tomorrow,” I said.

  Tim and Heidi were co-listing the townhouse Gary Lee and Charlene Hodges were trying to buy. It was Brenda Puckett’s originally, and when she died, all her listings got divided between the two remaining members of the Brenda Puckett real estate team: Tim and Heidi. Tim got all the high end, expensive stuff and Heidi the smaller, cheaper starter homes. But when Walker went to jail and Tim took over as broker, he got so busy running the office he couldn’t keep up with his work, and so he talked Heidi into becoming his assistant, the way she’d been Brenda’s.

  “Excellent!” Tim said, showing all his capped teeth in a blinding smile. Before coming back to Nashville to become a Realtor, Tim spent a couple of years in New York City, trying to get on Broadway as a song-and-dance-man. He’s light in the loafers and has a brassy tenor voice, and although I doubted it, he might have been the person who called me yesterday and told me to look out the window of my apartment.