A Done Deal

by Jenna Bennett

  Even after such a long time, Bradley’s cell phone number rose from the murky depths of my mental filing cabinet with just a little prodding, and I punched the keys on the phone and waited until he picked up and introduced himself.

  “Bradley,” I said.

  There was a beat—and I admit I waited to see whether he’d recognize my voice without any further prompting. Then— “Savannah?”

  There seemed to be no point in confirming it. “How are you?”

  “Fine,” Bradley said cautiously. “You?”

  “Also fine, thank you.” A little white lie, but I certainly didn’t want to tell my ex-husband any of my problems. He and his new wife were pregnant, did I happen to mention that? I’d run into Shelby a few weeks ago, during another open house I’d sat for Tim. It had been during the time when I wasn’t sure I had the courage to face down my family and all the good people of Sweetwater over Rafe’s baby. And then Shelby had showed up, glowing and delighted about being pregnant, and I’d wanted to kick her. “I saw Shelby recently. Congratulations.”

  “She didn’t mention that,” Bradley said, and I pictured the tiny line between his sandy brows I knew would be there.

  “I guess she didn’t feel the need. It was just for a few minutes. I was hosting an open house in Green Hills and she stopped by with a couple of girlfriends.”

  “I see,” Bradley said. “So you sell real estate now? How is that going?”

  “Well, thank you.” Again, I wasn’t about to tell him that I could barely make ends meet. “What about you? Are you still with Ferncliff and Morton?”

  Bradley allowed that he was. And then he must have had enough small talk, because he added, “What can I do for you, Savannah?”

  “I wanted to ask you a question,” I said. “About someone named Joshua Rowland. From Natchez, Mississippi.”

  “My uncle?” He sounded surprised, as well he should. “How did you know my Uncle Joshua? He was dead by the time we got married, wasn’t he?”

  I imagined he would have had to have been. By the time Bradley and I got married, roughly four and a half years ago, Maybelle had moved on to Harold. And anyway, if I’d ever met Joshua, I’m sure I would have remembered.

  “His name came up,” I said. “A friend of mine is getting a new stepmother. Apparently stepmom used to be married to your Uncle Joshua. Or at least to someone named Joshua Rowland who lived in Natchez.”

  “Maybelle?” Bradley said. “Are you talking about Maybelle?”

  “You remember her?”

  “Yes, I remember her!”

  And obviously not fondly, judging from his tone of voice. I could hear him take a breath, one of those long ones, through the nose, and then his voice came back on the line, deliberately calm. “I don’t think I want to talk about this over the phone. Are you available for dinner?”

  “Won’t your wife mind?”

  “It’s Shelby’s night with her mom,” Bradley said, which didn’t really answer the question, but which I took to mean that she’d never know.

  “Couldn’t I stop by your office sometime this afternoon?” And keep things on something of a professional level?

  “I have meetings,” Bradley said.

  Of course he did. “Fine. Dinner.”

  “When should I pick you up?”

  I was tempted to tell him I’d drive there myself, wherever ‘there’ was, but I decided against it. If he wanted to pick me up, he could. On his dime. That way he might not realize that I was still driving the car he’d bought for me. It was the one thing I’d salvaged from my marriage, aside from the chunk of change that had all but evaporated out of my savings account by now. Oh, and my dignity.

  “Five thirty?” Early, but I didn’t want to spend all night with him, after all. Better to get our business done and over with.

  “I’ll see you then,” Bradley said, and hung up. I wondered whether I ought to call him back to tell him where I lived, but then I decided he could figure it out on his own. It would give him something to do. Or rather, his assistant. The one he’d hired to replace Shelby after he married her.

  And then—I admit it—since I was on the south side of town anyway, I headed for the Green Hills mall, to see if I couldn’t find a new dress. Maybe something I could wear tonight as well as to Christmas dinner at mother’s house. I couldn’t go out with my ex-husband in a dress he’d bought and paid for, after all.

  The Green Hills mall is one of the snobbier shopping experiences in town. I used to buy my clothes there all the time when I lived in Green Hills and had Bradley’s money to play with. I even worked there for a while after the divorce, at the makeup counter at Dillard’s. Until I left to put my real estate license to good use.

  It was sort of nice to be back. A few things had changed—some shops had gone out of business and others had replaced them—but for the most part it was still the same. I avoided Dillard’s, and for that matter Macy’s and Nordstrom’s, and instead wandered the mall itself, looking in the windows of the various small designer shops. And it was there, while I was standing outside The French Shoppe, peering up at a green velvet dress that looked a lot like the one I’d admired in Brittany’s issue of Cosmo yesterday, that I caught the reflection of a woman in the window. When I turned, I saw that my eyes had indeed not deceived me. There, on the other side of the aisle, walking briskly toward the exit to the parking garage, was the woman Rafe had had dinner with three days ago.

  Chapter 9

  All right, so I know it’s juvenile and possibly even immature to spy on your ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend.

  Not that Rafe was even my boyfriend in the conventional sense of the word. But that aside: teenagers with crushes spy on their ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriends. Not grown women with a marriage behind them. It was something I might have done at thirteen, if I’d been aware of Rafe that way back then. But it certainly wasn’t something any self-respecting woman my age should be doing.

  That knowledge notwithstanding, I forgot all about the green velvet dress and headed for the parking garage too, a couple of yards behind, while I tried to look like I just happened to be going the same way at the exact same time.

  The new girlfriend was dressed in jeans and boots: tight jeans that fit her butt like a second skin, and high heels that made that same butt swing tantalizingly left to right. Several men turned to stare on the short walk to the exit doors, and I felt quite sedate in my knee-length coat and knee-high boots. Maybe that was what Rafe liked about her. She was sexy. I’m a lady.

  Figured he’d prefer the tramp.

  The Green Hills mall has two levels. The attached parking garage has three: two inside plus the roof. The street level spots tend to get filled first. Since it was the lunch hour and just a week before Christmas, I’d had to drive up to the roof in order to find parking. As I wandered along I wondered what I’d do if Miss Thing had parked on a lower level. I could follow her and see what kind of car she got into, but then I’d have to run up to the roof for my own car, and by the time I got outside, I’d probably have lost her.

  Or I could go directly to the roof and get my car, and cruise through the parking garage and hopefully pick up her car on its way out, but what if she wasn’t planning to leave? Maybe she just wanted to dump some of the dozen or so bags she was carrying in her trunk before going back into the mall to do more shopping. If so, I’d have given up my parking spot for nothing, and I probably wouldn’t find another.

  In the end, Miss Thing made it easy. She headed for the stairs and started climbing to the roof herself, so all I had to do was follow. Once up there, I lingered just inside the stairwell and watched as she went straight for a red Mercedes parked a few spaces over from my Volvo. It was a convertible, but the top was up now in the middle of winter. I heard her undo the alarm with a couple of quick beeps, and then the lid of the trunk raised up all on its own. She dumped the shopping bags inside and the lid lowered again, slowly and expensively. I have to slam my own lid, so it’s possible I
was just a tiny bit envious. Not only did she have Rafe, but she had a better car than I did, too.

  She hesitated for a second before getting in, and I held my breath, ready to scurry back down the stairs if she looked like she planned to return to the mall. But she didn’t. She just glanced around once—I shrank into the shadows, out of sight—before opening the car door and sliding into the front seat. I watched as she reversed out of the parking space and pointed the nose of the car toward the ramp to the lower levels. And although I was worried about losing her, I made myself wait until she was out of sight before I ran across the concrete to my own car, cranked the key in the ignition, and followed.

  I caught up downstairs on street level, and idled behind her as she waited to exit the garage and merge with traffic on Hillsboro Road. I wasn’t the only one, so I didn’t think she’d necessarily notice that I was following her. There was a Jeep behind me, also signaling to go left toward downtown and the interstate, followed by a small white compact—a Toyota, I thought, although it might have been a Honda or a Nissan—and then some kind of black SUV with tinted windows. Next to us were four cars heading in the opposite direction, south on Hillsboro, toward Forest Hills.

  The light down on the corner changed, and Miss Thing zoomed across four lanes of road and made tracks. I gave a quick look left and right and left again and followed. Behind me, the Jeep pulled up to the white line, just as two lines of cars emerged from over the hill. Looked like everyone else would have to wait.

  Green Hills noontime traffic is killer, though, and by the time we’d made it up and over the hill, and down the other side to the second set of traffic lights, the Jeep, compact and SUV had caught up. Or maybe they were different cars, not the ones I’d seen. There are thousands of white Toyotas on the road, and black SUVs are also plentiful. This might just be another white compact and another SUV with tinted windows. At any rate, all but the Jeep headed down the entrance ramp onto Interstate 440 and spread out over the three lanes there. I moved one lane over but made sure to stay behind the Mercedes—maybe that way, Miss Thing wouldn’t realize I was following her—while the compact stayed behind me and the SUV sped up and merged into the far, fastest, lane.

  I-440 happens to be the way back to East Nashville and home, but Miss Thing didn’t go that way. Where I would have merged onto I-65 North after a mile or two, the red Mercedes continued straight for a few exits, and then signaled to leave the interstate at Nolensville Road. I did the same, and slid in behind her halfway up the exit ramp, as if I’d just realized I was in the wrong lane for turning right.

  And off we went down Nolensville Road. It’s one of the more seedy parts of town, with a lot of ethnic grocery stores and storefront churches with lettering in different languages. I counted Spanish, Korean, and what looked like Swahili, but which may only have been some variety of Caribbean. There were lots of people of various ethnicities wandering around: short Hispanic women with children in tow, men in turbans and women in saris, the occasional tall African in a tribal patterned caftan and matching cap.

  Just after we passed the Krispy Kreme donut store near the corner of Thompson Lane, the Mercedes signaled a right turn into more of an industrial area. By now, I’d managed to put a few cars between us, and I thought it would be safe to follow, as long as I kept a bit of distance to the Mercedes. It wasn’t difficult to do: the red car stood out among the gray road, gray buildings, and gray, leafless trees like a beacon; all I had to do was keep it in sight.

  Miss Thing drove for a few blocks, and then turned left into a parking lot beside a big warehouse building. There were a couple of other cars in the lot as well, but no indication what sort of business it was. I drove slowly past, while Miss Thing got out of the Mercedes and undulated her way toward a door on the corner of the building. By the time I had reached the stop sign on the next corner, she’d disappeared inside.

  I drove another block and then turned around, trying to decide what to do next.

  By now it was going on two o’clock. I had three and a half hours until I’d be picked up for dinner. It wasn’t like I planned to make much of an effort for Bradley—he didn’t deserve my effort, the jerk—but at the same time, no woman likes to go out looking less than her best. And no ex-wife likes to look less than stunning when coming face to face with her ex-husband. So I’d definitely have to make sure I looked halfway presentable.

  Miss Thing would be back outside sometime. It wasn’t like she lived here. It was a warehouse, not a residence. She’d have to go home sometime, and I could follow her and figure out where she lived. Although she might work here, and if so, she’d probably stay until five or even five thirty. And by then, I’d have to be home getting ready for Bradley.

  And I didn’t even have anything appropriate to wear. In the excitement over seeing her, I’d forgotten all about needing a new dress. My savings account was thanking me, since I didn’t really have the money for a new dress, but it made things more difficult. It wasn’t like I could show up in something Bradley’s money had paid for.

  That’s as far as I got by the time the phone rang. A quick glance at the display told me the caller was Tamara Grimaldi.

  “Detective?”

  “Ms. Martin. I have that information you wanted.”

  I had to think about it before I remembered what kind of information I’d asked her for. “About Mr. Driscoll?”

  “That’s it. Harold Driscoll died of a heart attack. At home in his own bed in the middle of the night, with no one in attendance except his loving wife. No suspicion of foul play. No autopsy. The wife claimed they’d had wine and sex before going to sleep, and the general consensus was that the effort had been too much for his heart. His wife was considerably younger, so it made sense that he might have had a hard time keeping up.”

  “I suppose,” I said, dissatisfied. “His ex-wife said he didn’t have heart problems.”

  There was a pause.

  “Excuse me?” Grimaldi said.

  “He was married before Maybelle. And left his wife for her. The first wife said he didn’t have a bad heart.”

  “You talked to her?”

  “How else would I know what she’d said? And before you can start yelling at me, I didn’t go alone. I took Alexandra Puckett with me. Since they used to be neighbors, I thought it might make her more likely to talk.”

  “You took a sixteen year old girl with you to interview a witness.” It was a statement of fact, uttered in a very calm, non-committal voice. It was, frankly, pretty scary.

  “It’s not like I went into the ghetto,” I said defensively. “Carolyn lives in a nice stone cottage in Madison. Very quiet, settled neighborhood. What Tim likes to call Old Lady Acres. And it wasn’t official police business. I’m not meddling in an open investigation. You said it yourself, that Harold died of a heart attack.”

  “That doesn’t mean I want you to go to his ex-wife and give her the idea that it was something more,” Grimaldi said. “Especially if it was something more. Some people do crazy things when they think you suspect them of murder.”

  That’s certainly true.

  “Sorry,” I said. “But I don’t think Carolyn had anything to do with it.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Grimaldi said. “And in the future, I’d appreciate a call if you decide to do something stupid like that. Your mother’s a scary woman. I don’t want to have to call her to explain that something’s happened to you.”

  “Just call Dix and have him tell her,” I said.

  “Sure. I’ll do that. Or you could just stay home and behave in a way appropriate to your mother’s daughter.”

  There was a pause while I thought it over. When I didn’t answer, Grimaldi spoke again. “Did the first Mrs. Driscoll say anything else?”

  I thought back. “Not much. Although she did confirm that Maybelle had been married before. Her first husband doted on her, so after he died she needed help balancing her checkbook, and that’s how she met Harold Driscoll.”

 
; “You’re kidding,” the detective said.

  “Sadly, I’m not. It seems Harold bought it, hook, line and sinker. Carolyn didn’t, of course, but there was nothing she could do.”

  “Right.” Grimaldi hesitated, perhaps intrigued despite her better judgment. “Anything else?”

  “Not from Carolyn. But Dix called me back with information on Maybelle’s previous husband. Joshua Rowland from Natchez, Mississippi. As it happens, my ex-mother-in-law’s maiden name was Rowland. And Althea is also from Natchez.”

  “Small world.”

  I agreed that it was, for the second time today. “I called Bradley. Turns out Joshua was his uncle. Bradley and I are having dinner tonight to talk about it.”

  “I thought your ex-husband was remarried,” Grimaldi said.

  “He is. But she’s busy.”

  “Uh-huh.” Her voice was dry. “You’re not planning to do anything stupid, are you, Ms. Martin?”

  “Like what?” And then I realized what she was getting at. “Oh, gack! No. Not at all. Bradley’s a jerk. Shelby’s welcome to him. And Rafe isn’t important enough for that.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Grimaldi said, although her voice didn’t lose that dryness that made it sound like she didn’t believe me. “So you’re getting together with your ex to discuss his uncle?”

  “Apparently Uncle Joshua was married to Maybelle for a few years. He was in his late forties, she was in her twenties when they got married.”

  “Big difference.”

  I nodded into the phone. “There was fifteen years between her and Harold, so a little better the second time. As far as Steven Puckett goes, I don’t think he’s more than a few years older than she is.”

  “So maybe she’s just always liked men in their forties,” Grimaldi said. “Long before she was in her forties herself.”

  “Maybe so. Do you want me to call and tell you what I find out?” If anything at all.