A Cutthroat Business

by Jenna Bennett

  Yes, I’d probably recognize the young man in the green car if I saw him again; I’d gotten a pretty good look at his face.

  Sure, I’d be happy to look at mug shots.

  No, I hadn’t noticed that the contents of Brenda’s purse had been strewn over half the library floor. But I hadn’t noticed much of anything; just Brenda’s face and the gash across her throat, and then I had fainted.

  Yes, Rafe had gone back inside after dropping me on the porch.

  No, I had no idea what he’d been doing; I’d had other things on my mind.

  Sure, it was possible that he had gone back to look through Brenda’s purse; there was no way I could say definitely whether the contents had already been scattered or not. Then again, he didn’t know that. But it was more likely he’d just gone back to get me a wet paper towel and to make sure she was really dead.

  No, I hadn’t actually meant that the way it came out...

  “What was your relationship with Mrs. Puckett?”

  “I didn’t have one,” I said. “We worked for the same company, that’s all.”

  “So you worked together?”

  I shook my head. “She had her own team of assistants to do her bidding. I’d see her at the weekly sales meeting, or pass her coming and going, and once she came into my office with a stack of fliers she wanted me to sort and package for her…”

  It had involved tying every three sheets neatly together with a pretty, color-coordinated ribbon which fought my attempts to finish it in a tidy bow. As if I didn’t have plenty of my own work to do! Kick-starting a real estate career is hard even in the best of times, and in the current economic climate, with foreclosures and short-sales running rampant, with people choosing to stay in their houses rather than selling them, it’s harder. Yes, I resented Brenda for making me do her work for her, and with every knot, I had pictured pulling the string tighter around her plump neck and watching her eyes — small, piggy, mean eyes — bug out of her skull. I smiled.

  Detective Grimaldi contemplated me for a second. “You didn’t like Mrs. Puckett much, did you?”

  I opened my mouth to do the proper thing — sugarcoat the truth, i.e. lie — but I thought better of it. There was probably perjury or something involved here. “Is it that obvious?”

  This wasn’t good. I was supposed to be better than this at hiding my feelings.

  “Can I ask why?”

  I shrugged. “She was just difficult to get along with, is all. Self-centered. Bossy. Demanding. I wouldn’t have killed her, though. You don’t kill somebody just because they’re common and loud and make more money than you do.”

  “Murder has been committed for less,” Detective Grimaldi said.

  “Maybe, but not by me.”

  Grimaldi didn’t answer. “Did you know she was going to be at 101 Potsdam Street this morning?” she asked after a moment’s pause.

  I shook my head. “She didn’t tell me what she was doing. Except for when she was rubbing something in. Like yesterday, when she had five closings and made sure we all knew it. She might have told Clarice, her assistant.”

  “Would Clarice have written it down somewhere, if she did?”

  “There’s an appointment book, I think. You’d have to ask her. I’m not on the Brenda Puckett Team, you see.”

  “I’ll do that.” Detective Grimaldi made a note in her folder. She didn’t say anything else, and after a few moments, I broke the silence.

  “So is that it? Can I go?”

  “Unless there’s something you’d like to add.”

  I shook my head.

  “Take my card, in case you remember something you haven’t told us.” She handed it across the table to me. I picked it up and glanced at it.

  “Thank you. Um... when will the funeral be?”

  “There’ll be an autopsy,” Tamara Grimaldi said, as I got to my feet. “The next of kin will be notified when it is completed and the body can be released. Would you happen to know who Mrs. Puckett’s next of kin is?”

  “She’s married,” I said, my mind still on the autopsy. “His name is Steven. And there are a couple of kids. Teenagers. I guess I should call and ask if there’s anything I can do...”

  “Give it some time,” Detective Grimaldi said firmly. “Go home and take care of yourself first. Officer Truman will drive you back to your car. And don’t leave town in the next week or two.”

  I was almost to the door, walking in a daze, but this last statement made me stop and turn around. “Excuse me?”

  She looked up from the folder. “Don’t go anywhere. In case we need to talk to you again.”

  “But it’s my mother’s birthday on Tuesday. She’ll have a fit if I’m not there!”

  Detective Grimaldi thought for a second. “Sweetwater?” she said. I nodded. “All right. You may go to your mother’s birthday party. Just don’t go anywhere we can’t get hold of you.”

  I promised I wouldn’t, and opened the door. Young Officer Truman escorted me to the parking lot and drove me back to Potsdam Street, looking less green and more like himself again.

  I, on the other hand, must have looked about as shaky as I felt, because he offered to follow me home, to make sure I didn’t get into an accident on the way. He was very sweet and solicitous, as if I were his aged, white-haired grandmother, and I wanted to swat him upside the head and tell him to save it for someone who’d appreciate it, but of course I’m far too well brought-up to do something like that.

  My car was parked where I left it, and the house and grounds were swarming with cops, both uniformed and plain-clothed, just like Officer Spicer had said. None of them paid any attention to me. Rafe’s black Harley-Davidson was still there at the foot of the steps when I drove slowly down the graveled drive and turned right onto Potsdam.

  Chapter 3.

  I spent what was left of Saturday in my apartment, curled up on the sofa staring miserably at the TV. Usually my cozy one-bedroom rental, with its view of East Main Street through the glass doors of the patio and the comfortable furniture I had gathered from consignment stores and estate sales over the past two years, made me feel safe and relaxed. Not so today. After what had happened, I jumped every time I heard a noise in the hallway, and the running of water in the pipes made me break into a cold sweat. I went to bed before nine, just because I couldn’t stand being awake any longer.

  Not surprisingly, I had bad dreams. The corridors and rooms at 101 Potsdam seemed to go on forever, and I ran from room to room calling Brenda’s name, ever more hysterically, and all the time I knew that someone else was in the house with me, trying to find me the way I was trying to find Brenda, but a lot more silently. The dream ended in the library, with Brenda lying on the floor in front of the fireplace. But unlike that morning, she wasn’t dead yet. Her eyes were fastened on my face and she was trying to speak, but couldn’t because her throat was slit from ear to ear. Blood was bubbling out of the wound and dripping onto the dusty floor. The part of me that was aware I was dreaming, wished I would faint again, so I wouldn’t have to look at it. And then I saw her eyes shift, and felt a presence loom up behind me, and I swung around on my heel, just as the knife came up, and the last thing I saw was Rafe Collier’s face; dark eyes narrowed in concentration as he prepared to cut my throat.

  I woke up with a scream, so wrapped around with nightgown and sheets that I resembled a mummy. It was five o’clock in the morning, and just beginning to turn light outside. I put away any thoughts of going back to sleep — I’d rather have bags under my eyes than another such nightmare — and swung my feet over the edge of the bed. And watched some more TV. And managed to choke down a piece of toast and a couple of sips of coffee.

  By mid-afternoon I was starting to feel a little more human again. I even went outside for a walk, down to the corner market to pick up the Sunday paper. Mostly I wanted to know whether any of the papers had mentioned my name, but I admit that I was a little curious, too.

  The murder was front page news, j
ust as it had been the lead story on all the news shows the night before. TOP REALTOR MURDERED IN EMPTY HOUSE! was the headline in the Nashville Banner, with a sidebar on the crime statistics in the neighborhood around Potsdam Street. (The Banner is a conservative, factual kind of paper.) The stats were staggering. Home invasions, muggings, drive-by shootings, gang violence... The reporter suggested that Brenda’s death could have been the result of a robbery gone wrong, and called for the mayor to do something about the criminal underclass preying on upstanding citizens.

  REAL ESTATE QUEEN ASSASSINATED! screamed the headline in the Tennessean. (The Tennessean is less conservative and more widely read than the Banner.) Not to be outdone, the Tennessean reporter suggested, none too delicately, that maybe Brenda had been the victim of a sexual crime. Rapes, too, were prevalent in the Potsdam Street area, and the ripe Mrs. Puckett — his word, not mine — might have caught someone’s eye. The article was accompanied by an archive photo of Her Highness busting out of a strapless gown, and ripe didn’t even begin to cover it.

  The last paper was the City Paper, which had sent a photographer with a telephoto lens to Potsdam Street to take pictures of the police cars and medical vans. Rafe’s black motorcycle had made it into one of the shots, but my Volvo had escaped that honor. Maybe I had left before the photographer got there. It made me wonder how long the police had kept Rafe downtown, and why they had kept him longer than me.

  The City Paper reporter had had the brilliant idea to interview some of the neighbors, and between them, they managed to give a pretty good description of both Rafe and myself. I hadn’t noticed anyone hanging out of any windows watching us, but someone must have, because the descriptions were spot-on. ‘A classy-looking blonde in a tight skirt’ was how they described me, while one witness called Rafe ‘tall and dangerous-looking,’ and added, “I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d had something to do with it.”

  The phone rang just as I was contemplating this last statement, and I steeled myself before picking it up, certain it would be the grieving husband. Steven Puckett hadn’t answered the phone when I called yesterday, and I wasn’t surprised; if the light of my life had been snuffed out — and Steven might well have considered Brenda the light of his life, difficult as that was for the rest of us to fathom — I wouldn’t want to talk to all the well-wishers, mourners, and just plain nosy-parkers, either.

  “Hello, Savannah,” a smooth voice said in response to my greeting. I managed to bite back a heartfelt “Oh, God!”, but only just.

  “Hi, mother,“ I said instead, politely, “What can I do for you?”

  “How are you, darling?”

  “I’m fine,” I said, not entirely truthfully.

  “You sound tired, darling. You’re taking care of yourself, aren’t you?”

  “Of course I am,” I said. “I eat right, I get enough sleep, I give my hair a hundred strokes with a brush every night...”

  “And you’re being careful, aren’t you, darling?”

  “Of course I am,” I said.

  Mother hesitated. “It’s just that one hears such stories...”

  I smothered a sigh. I should have known this was coming. Brenda’s death would be news all over the state, and quite possibly to the ends of the earth. Wasn’t it just too ironic for words? All the notoriety she could possibly desire, and she was dead and couldn’t take advantage of it!

  “You’re talking about what happened to Brenda Puckett, right? She was universally disliked, bless her heart. There must have been at least a dozen people who would have liked to murder her.” Including myself, on that day I was tying ribbons. “But there’s nobody who wants to murder me, so don’t worry.” And as none of the papers had mentioned my name, mother must be unaware that I’d been involved in the discovery, and I wasn’t about to tell her.

  “A mother always worries, darling,” my mother said smoothly. I suppressed an unladylike groan. I knew what was coming, and it didn’t help to realize that I had walked right into it. She continued, on cue, “Especially when her daughter is all alone. It’s been almost two years since the divorce, darling; don’t you think you should find someone else...?”

  “I’m not interested in finding anyone else,” I said. “One failed marriage was enough, thank you.”

  Mother thought for a moment. Her next remark might sound like a non sequitur, but only to someone who didn’t know her well. “You’re still coming down for the birthday party, aren’t you?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “I’ve invited Todd Satterfield to join us. He’s back in town, you know, and working for the district attorney’s office. You would like to see Todd, wouldn’t you, darling?”

  I mentioned Todd in passing earlier, when I was talking to Detective Grimaldi. Todd’s daddy has been Sweetwater’s sheriff for as long as I can remember — he was the one who arrested Rafe Collier back then — and Todd and I have known each other our whole lives. We’d even dated for a while in high school, more to please our families than because there were any real feelings between us, but we had lost contact when Todd left for college and I went to finishing school and then married Bradley. I knew that Todd had gotten married too, but if mother was trying to fix me up with him, it was a safe bet the marriage was a thing of the past.

  “Of course,” I said. “How is he? And his wife?”

  Mother clicked her tongue. “He’s not married anymore, darling. That little gold-digger wife of his — I always suspected that he married her because he couldn’t have you; she looked quite a lot like you the one time I saw her, although without your breeding of course, darling — anyway, she left him. I thought, now that you’re both single again...” She let the sentence trail off suggestively. I rolled my eyes.

  “It’ll be nice to see Todd again. Thanks, mother.”

  Mother hung up, well contented, and I flopped back on the sofa with a groan. Now I’d have to spend all of Tuesday night swapping war stories with Todd, who had probably been very fond of his wife, despite the fact that my mother didn’t like her, and I’d have to commiserate and comfort while the entire rest of my family and Todd’s daddy shot us covert glances out of the corners of their eyes to judge how we were getting along. Marvelous.

  The phone rang again, and I picked it up with a snarl. If it was my mother calling back with a suggestion for what I should wear to the party, in order to make the best possible impression on Todd, I was going to kill her. “Yes?!”

  “Ms. Martin?”

  Oops. “Yes, Detective,” I said smoothly, while my mind started running probabilities. “What can I do for you?” Had they arrested someone? Were they about to arrest me?

  “I was wondering if you might do me a favor, Ms. Martin.”

  “Of course,” I said blithely.

  “The forensic team is finishing up at the house, but we haven’t been able to find the key to lock up. It wasn’t on the body or anywhere else in the house. I thought you might be able to help.”

  I hesitated. There was probably a spare key at the office, but the idea of digging through Brenda’s belongings was unpalatable. Plus, I didn’t want to go back to Potsdam Street. I’ve always been a little afraid of the dark — I grew up being fed ghost stories by my older brother Dix; true ghost stories, the South is rife with them — and discovering a corpse hadn’t helped matters. And in addition to the fear of meeting Brenda’s angry ghost, there was the even less appealing possibility of meeting her murderer. I’ve seen enough TV shows to know that the killer often returns to the scene of the crime, and occasionally kills someone else who happens to be hanging around.

  On the other hand, I couldn’t in good conscience say no.

  “Sure.” My voice was a lot less happy this time, and Detective Grimaldi noticed.

  “If you prefer, I can meet you somewhere and get the key from you. That way you don’t have to go back there.”

  She didn’t even bother to try to hide her scorn.

  “No,” I said, stung, “that won’t
be necessary. I’ll take care of it.”

  She reverted to her cordial manner. “Thank you, Ms. Martin. I’ll be in touch.”

  She hung up before I had time to say anything else.

  So that was how I came to be driving up Potsdam Street around 8 o’clock that same evening. I drove slowly, looking around, ignoring the drug deal taking place on the corner, but inspecting the grounds of 101 Potsdam for lingering forensic experts. The drug dealers ignored me and everything else was quiet as I turned the car into the circular drive and crunched up to the front steps. The gravel was a mess from all the cars that had come and gone, and there were cigarette-butts and empty gum wrappers littering the front yard. I grimaced. I would have thought cops had better sense than to clutter up their own crime scene with garbage. Or maybe the droppings had come from the reporters or the general public, who had probably stopped by to gawk at the scene of the crime because of all the publicity Brenda’s case had received in the media.

  I was already a little jumpy from something that had happened earlier. I had stopped by the office to look for Brenda’s spare key, and while I was there, someone had walked in, and I had ducked down behind the desk to avoid talking to them. I was planning to come into the office in the morning, to tackle everyone’s questions at the weekly sales meeting, but until then I was rather avoiding people. So when I heard a key in the back door, I switched off the desk lamp and crouched behind Brenda’s desk, holding my breath.

  The steps, light and quick, went past, and into another office further up the hall. The light came on down there, and spilled out into the hallway. I could hear drawers opening and closing, the rattling of keys or maybe coins, and singing. Then the light was shut off again, and the steps came back. They halted outside Brenda’s open door. A hand snaked around the doorjamb and flicked on the overhead light. I held my breath and squeezed my eyes shut.

  That brassy tenor voice couldn’t belong to anyone but Timothy Briggs, who had spent a couple of years in New York City, trying to get on Broadway, before returning to Tennessee and becoming a realtor. I could even make a pretty good guess as to what was going through his sleek, blond head as he stood there, and it wasn’t that he thought he had heard a noise and wondered if someone was hiding behind the desk. No, he was admiring the office, the second largest in the building, with a solid mahogany desk and a leather chair bearing the permanent imprint of Brenda’s broad butt, and imagining the day when it would be his.