A Cutthroat Business

by Jenna Bennett

  Walker hesitated. I waited, and eventually he felt compelled to explain. “It had to do with a property she owned in downtown. An office building she wanted to convert to condos.”

  “And?”

  Walker shrugged. Elegantly. I turned to Clarice. “You’ve worked for Brenda for a long time. Don’t you know anything about it?”

  Tim tittered and glanced at Clarice. She pursed her lips, unwillingly. “I hadn’t started working for her yet, when this was going on.”

  “So you don’t know anything about it?”

  Tim giggled. “Nothing more than what’s in the paper,” Clarice said firmly. I turned back to Walker.

  “Why are they bringing it up again? If it was fifteen years ago, it can’t have anything to do with what happened to her.”

  Walker’s voice sounded as if the words were being dragged forcibly from him. “I guess they’re implying that she might be engaged in something similar again. Some shady deal that could make someone want to kill her.”

  I hesitated. “Was she?”

  “Well! I never...!” Clarice sniffed. Walker raised his voice.

  “If she was, I hadn’t heard about it.”

  I nodded. I hadn’t really expected him to know and not put a stop to it. Walker Lamont Realty was Walker Lamont’s pride and joy. He had built it from nothing up to a very well respected, profitable company that handles a lot of upscale clients and expensive properties. If someone was doing something that might damage the reputation of the company or of Walker himself, I would expect him to land on them like a ton of bricks.

  “This isn’t going to hurt you or the company, is it?”

  And by extension the rest of us. Not that I personally was in a position to be hurt much. If the company went belly-up, I’d have to find another broker who’d take me on, but that was as bad as it could get for me. Walker was another story. He’d have to go back to being a sales agent in someone else’s brokerage firm, and something like this wasn’t exactly going to improve his chances of getting that coveted spot on the real estate commission, either.

  His face was sober. “We’ll just have to hope that it doesn’t. It probably won’t, but you just never know.”

  I looked around. “Would anyone mind if I read the article? I’m sure someone will ask me about it sooner or later, and I may as well know what I’m talking about.”

  Tim giggled. Clarice sent me a look of loathing. “Knock yourself out,” Walker said. “We’ve got a stack of Voices. No one’s going to mind if you take one.”

  Clarice looked like she minded, but she didn’t dare speak up. I took a paper and stuck it in my bag before I went to my office, a converted coat closet off the reception area. While the computer booted up, I opened the Voice and started reading about Brenda.

  The Wicked Witch of the South had started in real estate during a time when interest rates were almost 20% and suburbia was the place to be. The urban neighborhoods, so popular now, were blighted areas where no one wanted to live. Brenda had been ahead of her time in seeing the revitalization currently going on in our inner-city neighborhoods. Her foray into the downtown arena had taken place too soon, was all. If she had waited twelve or fifteen years, she could have made a killing. Investors were developing lofts and condos all over downtown these days, and selling them for big bucks. Or had been, until the bottom dropped out of the market last year, and everything slowed down.

  At any rate, instead of paying off big-time and making everyone involved super-rich, Brenda’s plan to make the Kress office-building into upscale condominiums had backfired. It had left her with a smudge on her record, and had left her business partner facing disgrace, bankruptcy and a criminal investigation.

  He was employed in some branch of banking or finance, the article said, and he had been channeling other people’s funds into Brenda’s project when he couldn’t come up with the capital for the ever-increasing renovations out of his own pocket. Somehow — and the article didn’t go into detail, although it hinted darkly at something similar to insider trading — Brenda had managed to bail out just before the whole thing came crashing down. Her partner had not been so lucky. Left holding the bag, he killed himself rather than face the music.

  His widow had brought a lawsuit against Brenda, claiming self-dealing and breach of the Realtor’s code of ethics, but nothing had ever come of it. All the current members of the real estate commission had declined the Voice’s invitation to comment — not surprisingly, as they had all come aboard long after the Kress-case had been forgotten — and although Lawrence Derryberry, the reporter for the Voice, had tried to contact the widow, he had been unable to find her. I wasn’t sure whether that meant that she was dead herself by now, or had remarried or otherwise changed her name, or if she just plain didn’t want to be found.

  The article was long on speculation and innuendo, but short on facts. It didn’t even mention the name of the business partner, or his widow. Not that something like that ought to be difficult to find. Unless the woman had a good reason for wanting to stay under the radar, of course. Like, for instance, if she had been at 101 Potsdam Street on Saturday morning to cut Brenda’s throat…

  OK, so I knew that finding Brenda’s killer wasn’t my job. Tamara Grimaldi got paid to do it, and I should just leave it to her. She seemed capable, and besides, snooping is unladylike. It wasn’t as if I had a personal stake in the matter, to justify my interest. The detective didn’t suspect me — I’d been elsewhere when Brenda was killed — and I didn’t care enough about any of the others to worry about them being suspected. Except maybe Walker, but nobody in her right mind would suspect him.

  On the other hand, Rafe Collier was my client now, by default, and maybe I owed it to him to keep him out of jail. As long as he was innocent, of course. Which I wasn’t ready to bet much on. Still, for my own safety as well as for any other reason, surely it couldn’t hurt just to make a few inquiries...

  I started on one of the people-search engines, by typing in Rafael Collier and leaning back in my chair while the computer worked. It ticked and buzzed for a while, then dinged to let me know the search was complete. There were a few people who shared the name Rafael Collier, but none with an address in Memphis, or Nashville or Sweetwater or for that matter anywhere in Tennessee. Nor in West Memphis, Arkansas. So the sheriff had either misunderstood about Rafe living in Memphis, or Rafe had lied. Imagine that. I stuck my lower lip out and switched to Google.

  The thing about Googling somebody, is that you get hits on all sorts of things. Every Rafael with a presence on the internet showed up, as did every Collier. It wasn’t very often that both names converged, but it happened once or twice. None seemed to apply to the Rafe Collier I knew, unless he was actually a professor of micro-engineering at Yale or a pediatric dentist in Northern California or in the habit of winning on-line poker tournaments. (That last one actually seemed like a real possibility. At least I wouldn’t put it past him.) The only bona fide mention I could find was in the Sweetwater Reporter — where Aunt Regina writes the society column — and it was from a couple of weeks ago, when LaDonna Collier’s obituary had run.

  The obit was pretty basic, with just the bare bones. Name — LaDonna Jean Collier — daughter of Wanda and Jim, both deceased, and sister of Bubba, ditto. Date of birth, some 45 years ago, and date of death as determined by the medical examiner. Cremation had already taken place, and there was no mention of flowers or contributions to be sent to a favorite charity. I guess maybe Rafe, if it was he who had drafted the obit, hadn’t expected anyone to care enough to want to send flowers. It didn’t seem as if he had cared overmuch himself, because there was nothing about dearly beloved or missed or any of that sentimental twaddle. Survived by her son, Rafael, was as far as it went.

  Since I was on the Sweetwater Reporter’s site anyway, I went to their homepage and typed in LaDonna Collier for an internal search. There I found another oblique mention, from the time the body had been discovered. Sheriff Bob Satterfield co
nfirmed that LaDonna Collier had been found dead in her home in the Bog, but emphasized that the police had no clues, and were unsure that a crime had even taken place. They had not yet notified next of kin. But once they had a chance to go through the Collier house, the sheriff said, he was confident that they would be able to find a way to contact him. There was stuff there from thirty years back, so it would take a while, but Sheriff Satterfield was sure the information they needed was there. As indeed it must have been, because I knew they had found Rafe eventually.

  The Reporter’s online archives didn’t date back far enough for me to discover anything new about Rafe’s arrest twelve years ago, and without knowing more about it, I didn’t know where else to look. So that was pretty much it for Rafe Collier, at least for now.

  Next I decided to visit the Metropolitan Nashville government website. If I couldn’t do any more research about Rafe, I could at least do some research for him, and maybe figure out why he was so interested in that house on Potsdam while I was at it.

  Property assessments are a matter of public record, at least in the state of Tennessee, and our powers that be, in their infinite wisdom, have laid them out on the internet. In great detail. Property address and color photograph, owner’s name, square footage and number of rooms; it’s all there. There’s even a schematic drawing of each house, to make it easier for potential burglars to get around. It’s a great resource, whether your purposes for checking are nefarious or not.

  The official owner of record for 101 Potsdam Street was Tondalia Jenkins. The previous owner had been one Douglas Jenkins — a father or husband maybe; now deceased — and before that, the property had belonged to someone named Hausmann. Tyrell Jenkins wasn’t mentioned, as owner, co-owner, previous owner, or anything else. There wasn’t even an etux he could be hiding under.

  Which was just fine as far as it went; Dix, Catherine, and I don’t show up as owners on our mother’s house, either. It’s hers outright, to do with whatever she wants. But if she tried to sell it, you’d better believe we’d be there with bells on to keep an eye on the transaction, and if there had been any question at all about her legal competence, which there certainly seemed to be in the case of Mrs. Jenkins, we’d make sure she had an attorney-in-fact to handle everything for her. We would not be leaving her to handle things on her own, the way Tyrell seemed to be doing.

  There wasn’t anything I could do about it, though. Turning my mind to other things, I finished up my session by Googling the Kress-building, but all I could come up with were other Realtors’ websites advertising condos for sale, plus the homepage for the downtown neighborhood association. There was no information online about Brenda’s botched plan of fifteen years ago, nor any mention of the resulting lawsuit. I guess the Nashville papers weren’t any better than the Sweetwater Reporter about online archives. But whereas I couldn’t very well drive down to Sweetwater and walk into the Reporter’s offices and start looking at micro-fiche without causing all my friends and relatives to have heart attacks over my interest in Rafe Collier, visiting the downtown Nashville library’s research room was no big deal. I turned off the computer, gathered up my handbag, and set out.

  Chapter 8.

  On my way downtown, I took a detour through the Potsdam area. Not because I had any business there, but just out of idle nosiness. I had left Rafe on the front porch of 101 Potsdam Street four hours ago, and although I doubted he was still there, I wanted to check.

  I was in two minds about Rafe. On the one hand, I didn’t feel as if I was in any danger from him. He’d startled me, and crowded me, and even — jokingly, I thought — threatened me, but I hadn’t gotten that nervous, creeped-out feeling one gets from some people. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that I enjoyed his company, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to avoid it, either.

  On the other hand, I knew he was dangerous. I had only his word for it that Brenda never showed up for their appointment. He could have met her and killed her and then called me, pretending to have been waiting for 45 minutes. I had no idea what his motive might be, but it needn’t even have been anything personal: with his background, someone could have hired him to get rid of her. Brenda had been so universally disliked it was amazing she’d survived as long as she had, and the Voice’s insinuation that she might have been mixed up in something illegal and/or unethical again, made a lot of sense. Once a crook, always a crook, right?

  And it seemed to me that one would need a certain personality-type to slit someone’s throat. It’s not like pulling a trigger from a safe distance, or poisoning someone’s food while they’re not looking, or cutting the brake cables on someone’s car, hoping for a tragic — and fatal — accident. Throat-slitting is up-close and personal and seems to require a particularly brutal, yet unemotional personality. A personality a lot like Rafe Collier’s.

  But if he did kill Brenda, why involve me? He could have just walked away, gotten on his bike, and disappeared. Nobody would have known that he was ever there. Unless someone had seen him, of course. One of the neighbors, maybe. Or unless he was afraid that he’d left evidence behind, and he wanted to be sure that he could explain away anything the forensic team found. His fingerprints and DNA must be in the police database from when he was arrested before, and it’d be impossible to get around hair or fingerprints found in the house if he claimed never to have been inside.

  The driveway of 101 Potsdam Street was empty, and I continued on down the street while my thoughts kept churning. I was so preoccupied that I almost ran the stop sign at the corner of Potsdam and Dresden, and came within five inches of hitting a Chrysler with a middle-aged man behind the wheel. He mouthed an insult, to both my race and gender, before he drove off in a cloud of smoke. His car obviously had engine problems, and I supposed that was punishment enough for calling me names.

  I was just about to turn the corner and follow him when I caught sight of something in the parking lot across the street. It was a black motorcycle, parked in the shade under a tree, and although I’m certainly no expert, it looked familiar.

  I inched forward, peering beyond the rows of glossy-leaved magnolias. The parking lot flanked a long, low building with lots of windows and faded, blue curtains.

  A motel?

  I narrowed my eyes. Was it possible that I had discovered — entirely by accident — where Rafe lived?

  But no. The sign at the entrance said Milton House and below the name, in smaller letters, Home for the Aging.

  All right, so I know I said earlier that I don’t want to be Nancy Drew. I do, however, have a healthy share of what my mother calls unladylike curiosity. At the moment, it was twanging like a steel-guitar string. This must be the nursing home where Tondalia Jenkins lived. It was the right distance from the house for her to have walked, and it was the only nursing home I had seen in this part of town. And that looked an awful lot like Rafe Collier’s bike. But if it was, what was he doing here? Had it something to do with Brenda’s murder? Or was he perhaps — my eyes narrowed — talking about the house? Telling Mrs. Jenkins that if she’d take it off the market, he’d buy it directly from her, without using an agent? Thus doing away with Tim and myself, and cheating us both out of our commissions?

  I didn’t think; I just reacted. I pulled into the parking lot and found a spot close to the entrance. Then I stalked inside, ready to do battle.

  The reception area was dingy, with threadbare, green carpet and a utilitarian desk. I dredged up a smile from somewhere and plastered it across my face. “Excuse me?”

  The desk nurse, middle-aged and plump, looked up from her issue of Ebony. “Yes?”

  “Do you have someone named Tondalia Jenkins living here? I’d like to see her, please.”

  “Miz Jenkins already has a visitor.” She didn’t close the magazine, and I found my eyes drawn to a photo-spread showing five or six dark-skinned men with their shirts off. Muscles bulged and the nurse’s eyes did, too. I rather hoped mine didn’t, but I wasn’t entirely sure.

&nb
sp; “That’s all right,” I said. “He’s a tall guy in jeans and a T-shirt, with a tattoo of a snake wrapped around his arm, right? Looks a little like number 4 down there, but without the braids.”

  The nurse nodded. “Miz Jenkins said he was her grandson.”

  Of course she had, poor, confused, old woman. And naturally it hadn’t occurred to the nurse to ask Rafe to prove it. Not when he looked like one of her photo-spreads come to life. I pried my teeth apart. “We’re old friends. He won’t mind if I drop in.”

  She tossed her head. “Lucky girl. Room 114, down the hall on the right.”

  I thanked her and headed in that direction.

  Officer Spicer had said that the nursing home where Mrs. Jenkins lived wasn’t the nicest place in the world, and now that I was inside it, I had to agree. The interior of the Milton House looked almost as bad as the house on Potsdam, with peeling paint and chipped industrial tile on the floor, and it smelled worse; sour and clinical at the same time, of antiseptic and bodily excretions left too long without being cleaned. It’s amazing how some of these places manage to get and keep the health department’s seal of approval. I would sooner shoot one of my loved ones than allow them to live in a place like this, and I couldn’t blame Tondalia Jenkins for trying to escape. I would have done anything to get out, too.

  The door to room 114 was shut, but I could hear a murmur of voices inside. They stopped when I knocked on the door. It was silent for a few seconds, and then the door opened a crack. Mrs. Jenkins’s wrinkled face peered out. “Yes?”

  I smiled. “Hello again, Mrs. Jenkins. Remember me, from this morning?”

  It didn’t look like she did. “You from the health department, baby?”

  I shook my head. “Sorry, no. We met this morning at your house on Potsdam Street. Remember? I was there with...”

  It was all I got out, because now the door was pulled all the way open and Rafe looked down at me, above Mrs. Jenkins’s head. And although I won’t quote the old adage about looks that can kill, I could tell he wasn’t happy to see me. His eyes were black and hard, his lips were set in a tight line, and he somehow managed to look even taller and more imposing than he usually did.