Contract Pending

by Jenna Bennett

  The appraisal for my clients Gary Lee and Charlene’s new home was today, so after making Mrs. Jenkins pancakes and coffee, I got her washed and dressed and medicated, and myself washed and dressed, and both of us out the door and into the Volvo. Pulling out of the circular driveway, I glanced over at Mrs. J, perched in the seat next to me, her small, wrinkled hands folded in her lap and her black bird eyes alert.

  “Did you sleep all right, Mrs. Jenkins?”

  She nodded. “Oh, yes, baby. Well, other than the hollerin’.”

  She must have been the same ruckus that had woken me up in the middle of the night.

  “Poor lady,” Mrs. Jenkins said, “carryin’ on something awful out in the street in the middle of the night.”

  “I think I heard her. Some woman screaming obscenities.”

  “Prob’ly drunk,” Mrs. J said sadly. “Happens sometimes around here.”

  We pulled to a stop at the corner, and I signaled a left onto Dresden. Directly in front of us was the Milton House Home for the Aged, where Mrs. Jenkins had lived when I first met her. At the time I had thought that if it came down to a choice between putting one of my loved ones into the Milton House, or shooting them, I’d go with the latter option. Bless Rafe; whatever his other faults, he’d at least gotten her out of there.

  Behind us, a sleek, black SUV turned the corner. It had been parked halfway down Potsdam Street, and had been in the process of pulling out when we approached. The driver, invisible behind the tinted glass, had waited to let us pass and had fallen in behind. Now it went in the same direction we did.

  In a movie, that would have meant something, and I admit I kept an eye on the car in the rearview mirror as we made our way into the ‘better’ part of East Nashville and over to the townhouse that Gary Lee and Charlene wanted to buy. The SUV stayed with us almost the whole way there, only peeled off at the last minute, into the parking lot of the Walden Development on Eastland Avenue. The driver was probably on his way to the Ugly Mugs coffee house for a caffeine jolt. I put it out of my mind and concentrated on the task at hand.

  The appraiser was waiting outside the townhouse up the street, clipboard at the ready, tapping his cowboy-booted toe. I left Mrs. J relaxing in the Volvo with the radio and AC going, and got out to meet him.

  “Mr. Cobb? I’m Savannah Martin. Agent for the buyers. Sorry I’m late.”

  I wasn’t actually late, or if I was, it was by less than a minute, but I’ve been brought up to take responsibility for things like that. Keep the menfolk happy. Mr. Cobb looked impatient, so I apologized for keeping him waiting.

  He grunted something and took a tighter grip on his clipboard. He was a small, spare man with lots of white hair pulled straight back from his forehead, falling past his collar in the back. The snake-skin cowboy boots were paired with loose jeans and a tan sort of safari jacket with about a hundred pockets. Many of them were weighted down with heavy objects.

  “Let me just unlock the door for you,” I said, suiting action to words, “and you can get started. Let me know if you have any questions.”

  Mr. Cobb grunted noncommittally. He brushed past me and into the house. I followed, after a glance over my shoulder to make sure Mrs. J was still comfortably ensconced in the Volvo.

  Mr. Cobb didn’t turn out to have many questions, and the appraisal was a pretty short process. He walked through the townhouse, muttering and making notations on his clipboard. He measured the height of the walls in a few places upstairs, where the ceiling slanted down—height has to be a minimum of seven feet to be considered proper living space—and he made note of any upgrades, like hardwood floors vs. carpets, brushed nicked faucets vs. plain nickel-plated ditto, granite counters, stainless steel appliances, and that sort of thing. And that seemed to be it.

  “So how did we do?” I asked brightly when he came toward the front door again. “Will it appraise for the purchase price?” Or would the deal fall through because the bank wouldn’t want to lend more money than the house was worth?

  “Dunno,” Mr. Cobb said.

  “When will you know? My clients are eager, as I’m sure you understand.”

  “Gotta get back to the office,” Mr. Cobb explained, his voice gravelly. “Gotta put the info into the computer. Coupla days.”

  “A couple of days?”

  My disappointment must have been obvious, because he looked maliciously amused. “Can’t rush this stuff. Bank wanna be sure they ain’t lending too much.”

  “Right.” I could understand that. Still, a couple of days? To input the results of this ten-minute surface-inspection into the computer? “Just get it done as quickly as you can, would you? My clients are—”

  He nodded. “Eager. Yeah. I got that.”

  “Right.” OK, then. There was nothing I could do but smile graciously, the way mother taught me. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Cobb. Here’s my card, in case you have any questions after you leave here.”

  Mr. Cobb grunted and stuck the business card into one of the many pockets of his jacket. The others had contained items like a hundred foot tape measure, a screwdriver, a ball of string, and a digital camera, all of which he had used.

  He wandered toward his truck, a green behemoth parked in the lot beside the condo. The engine started up with a roar and a gush of exhaust, and I turned toward the curb and the pale blue Volvo. Only to stop after a few steps when I saw that Mrs. Jenkins wasn’t alone.

  For just a second—less; half a second, maybe—my heart stuttered in my chest at the sight of the man leaning on the car. Tall, dark, muscular... One arm braced above the passenger side window and dark head inclined toward Mrs. J, he was dressed in faded jeans that molded long legs and a nice posterior, while a plain white T-shirt stretched across broad shoulders and well-developed arms.

  My breath caught in my throat, my stomach swooped... and then I realized that it wasn’t Rafe after all. Just another tall, dark, muscular guy in faded jeans and a T-shirt. One who was bugging Mrs. Jenkins.

  “Excuse me!” I raised my voice and sped up, my heels clicking against the pavement. “Sir!”

  The man straightened and turned. Up close and from the front, he looked less like Rafe. The coloring was the same—dark hair and eyes, golden skin—but this guy’s hair was longer than Rafe’s, straight and shiny, slicked back. Rafe keeps his hair cropped short. The man had a trim goatee, while Rafe stays clean-shaven, and he had an earring, a small silver cross, that Rafe doesn’t have. He also had some sort of tattoo—a dragon or demon, maybe; something green and scaly—that extended a claw above the neck of the T-shirt in the back, and around the side of his throat. And though the eyes were the same—brown bordering on black, deep and dark, fringed with long, sooty lashes any woman would sell her soul for—the expression in them was different. Where Rafe rarely looks at me without some form of amusement, even when he’s about to kiss me and his gaze is hot enough to scorch, this guy’s eyes were flat and expressionless.

  “Can I help you?” I came to a stop in front of him. He was a little shorter than Rafe, too. Just an inch or so over six feet tall.

  He looked me over. From head to toe and back. If it had been Rafe, the inspection would have been slow, insolent, appreciative, and ending in a killer grin. It would have made my cheeks flush and my stomach quiver. This appraisal made a chill go down my spine. There was no feeling there. No appreciation, no curiosity, no anger—nothing but cold assessment.

  I forced myself not to show a reaction. “Sir?”

  “I’m looking for Rafe.” His voice was low, harsh, with a hint of an accent. Not Southern. That was different, too. Rafe’s voice is husky and warm. Only when he’s angry do his voice and eyes go dead and flat, like this man’s.

  “That’s quite a coincidence,” I said. “So am I. I’m sure Mrs. Jenkins told you we haven’t seen him for more than a month?”

  I leaned sideways, to try to get a bead on Mrs. J, in the front seat of the Volvo. Just to make sure she was OK and still breathing. The way
this guy was looking at me, I wouldn’t put it past him to have slit Mrs. Jenkins’s throat if he didn’t get the answers he wanted.

  She was still alive. Staring straight ahead, her wrinkled face blank. I recognized the expression, or rather, the lack thereof. Clearly, whatever the guy had said or done to her, had scared her practically witless. She’d retreated into this place she goes, where she isn’t living in the same world as the rest of us anymore. She gets a vacant look in her eyes, and she babbles. About old Jim Collier shooting her son Tyrell, about Walker Lamont cutting Brenda Puckett’s throat, about Walker coming after the two of us with a gun... The poor dear has had some tough breaks in her life, and obviously, being related to Rafe isn’t destined to make anything easier for her.

  I added, pulling my attention back to the man in front of me, “He left almost six weeks ago. He mentioned Memphis, although that could have been just a ruse. No one’s heard from him since. For all I know, he’s dead.”

  The man parted his lips, just far enough to squeeze out a few words. “He ain’t dead.” The unspoken last word of that sentence, I thought, was yet.

  It took another superhuman effort to keep my voice from shaking. “I’m sorry. As I told you, we haven’t heard from him. Not since he left. I’m sure he’ll be back sooner or later, but I have no idea when. And I doubt I’ll get advance warning. He usually just shows up. One day I’ll turn around, and there he’ll be.” Please, God...

  The man didn’t answer. Just kept looking at me with those dead eyes.

  “I’ll be happy to give him a message,” I offered, a little desperately. Maybe that would make him leave. “Whenever he comes home. Or in case he calls.”

  The man looked at me again. Up and down. The regard was still impersonal, but his eyes lingered for a second longer than necessary on my legs and on the top button of my blouse. And on my throat. I paled. It was only too easy to guess what he was thinking, and I hadn’t meant that I wanted to be the message.

  He must have seen the realization on my face, because he smiled. Chillingly. By which I mean that the corners of his mouth stretched, but his eyes stayed the same. “Tell him to watch his back.”

  I nodded. Fervently. “I can do that. When I see him. Or talk to him. Whenever that will be.”

  He nodded. And turned on his heel and walked away. I watched him cross the street, and then I turned to Mrs. J. “Are you OK?”

  She turned and blinked at me. “Hi, baby. What’re you doing here?”

  “Letting the appraiser into this house.” I pointed to it.

  “You and my boy plannin’ to move in here when the baby comes?” She squinted through the windshield and her face fell. So did her voice. “Oh, baby, it’s gotta be real expensive. I don’t know...”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “Your boy—” I knew she was talking about Tyrell, not Rafe, “won’t be living here.”

  She clutched at my hand, her wrinkled face worried. “You ain’t plannin’ on leavin’ him, are you, baby? He loves you!”

  “I know he does.”

  If Old Jim Collier hadn’t come along with his shotgun, LaDonna and Tyrell would probably have gotten married and maybe even lived happily ever after. LaDonna certainly was never the same again after Tyrell was killed. Then again, raising Rafe on her own would have been enough to drive any mother to drink.

  “And no, I’m not leaving him. This is for someone else.” I’d been through this conversation enough times by now, that I knew it didn’t do any good to try to explain. I just had to go with the flow, and sooner or later she’d come back on her own.

  “Oh.” Mrs. J looked relieved for a moment until her face puckered again. She lowered her voice, her hand tightening on mine. “That man... he’s gonna try to hurt my boy!”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, patting her small, wrinkled claw. Mrs. Jenkins had actually seen Old Jim shoot Tyrell, outside the house on Potsdam Street one night when Tyrell was coming home from work, and whenever she got upset, she tended to relive it. “What did he tell you?”

  She shook her head. “Didn’t tell me nothin’, baby. Just asked me where Rafe was.” She looked confused for a moment, before reality realigned itself and she remembered that Tyrell had been dead for thirty years and Rafe was her grandson. And that I wasn’t LaDonna at all, but Savannah; not her son’s pregnant girlfriend, but her grandson’s... something or other.

  “Did he tell you his name? How he knows Rafe? What he wants him for?”

  But Mrs. Jenkins shook her head again. “Didn’t say nothin’, baby. Just asked me where Rafe was. I said I didn’t know, that I hadn’t heard from him since he left.”

  I nodded. Unfortunately, the man with the cold eyes probably wouldn’t be satisfied with that. “I think we need to call Detective Grimaldi.”

  “The cops?” Mrs. Jenkins made a face. She doesn’t trust the police. They used to return her to the Milton House every time she wandered away, which didn’t exactly endear them to her, although it started much longer ago than that, back when the police didn’t believe Mrs. J when she said her son had been killed by a middle-aged white man.

  “Remember Detective Grimaldi? You like her. And this may be the guy who broke into my apartment yesterday. I think he probably followed us from the house this morning...”

  Mrs. Jenkins blinked. Her face started to pucker, and I stopped talking before my words could throw her into another tailspin. Instead, I made my voice deliberately perky as I walked around the car and got into the passenger seat. “Let’s go do something fun. Would you like some ice cream?”

  Mrs. J’s face cleared. “Sure, baby.”

  “Great.” I put the Volvo in gear and pulled out of the parking lot.

  We drove to Bobbie’s Dairy Dip across town, and while Mrs. Jenkins was spooning up her chocolate soft serve with chocolate sprinkles at one of the tables under the awning, I stepped aside to call Tamara Grimaldi and tell her about the latest development.

  “Ms. Martin.” She sounded tired again.

  “Long night?” I asked sympathetically.

  “No longer than usual. Is everything all right? Any word from Mr. Collier?”

  “I’m afraid not. Although you’re not the first person to ask me that today.” I told her about my conversation with the man outside the townhouse.

  “Interesting,” the detective said politely. Not quite the reception I’d been hoping for. When I said as much, she added, “You said he didn’t actually threaten you, right?”

  I had to admit that he hadn’t. “Not per se. It was more his demeanor than the words he used.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t arrest someone for demeanor, Ms. Martin.”

  “You wouldn’t be able to arrest him anyway. He’s gone.”

  “Right.” Tamara Grimaldi hesitated. “But if he didn’t actually threaten you...”

  “He didn’t. Not in so many words. It was just the way he looked at me. And the way he said what he said. The look in his eyes.”

  “You don’t think you could have imagined it?”

  I shook my head, then—because she couldn’t see me—added an emphatic, “No. I’ve come face to face with two coldblooded killers in the past couple of months; I think I can recognize what one looks like.”

  Detective Grimaldi sighed. “What do you want me to do about it?”

  “I don’t know what I want you to do,” I said. “But I wanted you to know. There’s a good chance this was the guy who broke into my apartment, and that makes me nervous. And what if he got hold of Marquita Johnson and had a ‘talk’ with her, and that’s why she’s not coming home? What if she’s lying in a ditch somewhere with her throat cut?”

  “We have no evidence to support that,” Grimaldi said. “No reason at all to suppose that Mrs. Johnson didn’t go off voluntarily, and is staying gone for reasons of her own.”

  “What sort of reasons?”

  “Well...” She hesitated. “Perhaps Mr. Collier contacted her? And asked her to meet him somewhere? She’d go, wouldn
’t she?”

  “Of course she would.” Marquita worships Rafe. Has ever since they were in high school together. If he crooked his little finger in her direction, she’d set a world record to get to him, knocking down anyone who stood in her way. “Why isn’t she coming back, though? Surely you’re not suggesting that he did something to her?”

  Grimaldi didn’t answer, but her silence was eloquent. The lightbulb went off over my head. I shook it. “Oh, no. Absolutely not. He’s told me more than once that there’s nothing between them. They’re not shacked up in some motel somewhere going at it like rabbits. Absolutely not.”

  “Fine,” Detective Grimaldi said. “So they’re not together. That doesn’t mean she isn’t alive and well somewhere.”

  “Have you heard from Sweetwater?”

  She had. Bob Satterfield had called with an update just a few minutes ago. “Still no sign of her down there. Her family and friends haven’t seen her.”

  “Do you know if they’ve checked the Bog? The trailer park? That’s where she grew up.” And Rafe, too. “It’s empty these days; someone bought the land and kicked everyone out a couple of months ago. I don’t think anyone’s lived there since July or August, at least.”

  “What would she be doing there?” Tamara Grimaldi wanted to know.

  “I have no idea. But it’s where she’s from. It seems worth checking.”

  “I’ll call Sheriff Satterfield back. If they haven’t already been there, I’ll ask him to have someone swing by.”

  “And let me know if they find anything?”

  Grimaldi promised, a little reluctantly, that she would. “And if you see the man you saw earlier again, let me know. And this time, try to get a name. Or a license plate number. Or something I can use.”