A Cutthroat Business

by Jenna Bennett

  He didn’t speak to me, just stepped around Mrs. Jenkins and into the hallway. “Guess it’s time to go.” He grabbed me by the arm.

  “You’ll be back, won’t you, baby?” Mrs. Jenkins smiled toothlessly up at him. Officer Spicer had said that she had bitten Officer Truman, but I had a hard time figuring out how that could have happened, when she had no teeth. Gummed him, more likely. Left him with a drooly, wet spot on his starched uniform shirt. The thought made me smile, and she smiled back.

  “You take good care of my boy, y’hear?”

  She patted Rafe on the arm. He didn’t say anything, just nodded to her before he propelled me down the dusky hallway toward the reception area. His legs were a lot longer than mine, and I was wearing high heels again. I had to take two steps for each of his. The nurse at the duty-desk got halfway up from her chair and stared at us with her mouth hanging open, but she didn’t say anything. Maybe she didn’t realize that I was being more or less kidnapped, or maybe the look on his face warned her off. Either way, she didn’t interfere, just let him walk me through the lobby without lifting a finger.

  We erupted out of the double doors with enough force to knock them both back against the wall. The next second I was knocked back against the wall, too. Or not exactly knocked; it was the shock more than the impact that drove the breath out of my lungs. Nothing that Rafe had done so far, had led me to believe I was in any danger of being manhandled by him.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he wanted to know, between clenched teeth.

  I could have asked him the same thing, but I refrained. He was too close for comfort and too upset for me to take any chances with. Instead, the truth fell out of my mouth without any additional prompting. “I recognized your motorcycle when I drove by. And I wondered what you were talking to Mrs. Jenkins about.”

  His eyes narrowed to black slits as he looked down on me. “My private conversations ain’t none of your business.”

  “They are if they concern me,” I said, tilting my chin up.

  He lifted an eyebrow. “Why’d I be talking about you?”

  “I thought maybe you were discussing the house. You might have contacted Mrs. Jenkins to try to get her to sell the house directly to you rather than going through us first. You could probably get a better price that way. And she wouldn’t have to pay a commission. Everybody wins.” Except for Tim and me, of course.

  “Course.” There was a glint of... was it relief, in his eyes? “Sorry to disappoint you, darlin’, but I ain’t planning to go behind your back to cut you out of your commission. This ain’t nothing to do with you. I had some other business to take care of.”

  He had eased off just a fraction, and it gave me the courage to confront him. “You’re not still letting that poor woman believe that you’re her son, are you? That’s not only unethical and illegal, but downright mean.” He didn’t answer, and I added, “If this other business involves taking advantage of her...!”

  “Ain’t much you can do about it, if I am.”

  “I can warn her!”

  He shrugged. “Go ahead. Fat lot of good it’ll do you. She thinks I’m family, remember? And she don’t know you from Adam. She didn’t even recognize you when you knocked on the door. She ain’t gonna believe anything you say.”

  “Then I can warn the nurses and tell them to make sure you don’t get in to see her.”

  “Ain’t a nurse alive that can say no to me,” Rafe said with a smug grin. I sniffed.

  “I can call the police and tell them that I think you’re planning to rip her off. Revoke your parole, or whatever. Detective Grimaldi is already interested in you because of Brenda’s murder, and Sheriff Satterfield isn’t positive that your mother’s death was entirely accidental...”

  His hands tightening on my arms made me subside. For a second or two he didn’t say anything. Then he moved closer to me again; so close that I could feel his body heat and the tension of his muscles through the fabric of my clothes. To anyone watching, we probably looked like a courting couple, but there was nothing romantic about the look in his eyes. His voice was low and deathly calm. “You ain’t accusing me of killing my mother, are you, darlin’?”

  I hesitated. I was, sort of, but there was something about him — it could have been the warning in his voice, or maybe the flat, black eyes, reminiscent of a cobra preparing to strike — that made it seem like a supremely bad idea to admit it. “Um... no?”

  “That’s good. I’d hate to think you thought so little of me as that. C’mon.”

  He removed me from the wall and towed me after him across the parking lot. I gulped. “Where are you taking me?”

  “This is your car, ain’t it? Gimme your keys.” He held out a hand. I scrabbled in my handbag and dug out my key chain. It didn’t occur to me to refuse. It did occur to me to slash at him with the keys, on the off-chance that it would make him let me go, but by the time the thought crossed my mind, it was already too late. He snagged the keys out of my hand, disengaged the alarm, and opened the door. “Get in.”

  I slid behind the wheel and waited for the order to move over into the passenger seat. It didn’t come. Instead, he dropped the keys in my lap. “Go home. And don’t come back here.”

  And with that, he slammed the car door and disappeared.

  The first thing I did was lock all the doors. Then I had to wait for my hands to stop shaking before I could fumble the key into the ignition and crank the engine over. By the time I got out to the street, the Harley-Davidson was long gone, and to be totally honest, I didn’t think I minded. Nancy Drew would have followed it, to try to discover anything else she could about him, but personally, I felt that I knew all I needed to know about Rafael Collier, and after this, believe me, I wasn’t eager to confront him again.

  I thought about postponing the research trip to the library, but in the end I decided to go after all. It beat going home in a tizzy; at least I’d have something to do for a couple of hours, until my lacerated nerves healed.

  I was just pushing the library doors open when my cell phone rang. The caller ID looked vaguely familiar, but wasn’t one I recognized immediately. I punched the Accept button and put the phone to my ear, heading back out onto the baking sidewalk. “This is Savannah.”

  At first I heard nothing but music in the background, and I wondered if maybe it was a crank call from someone whose idea of fun it was to scare people. Under the circumstances, Rafe Collier’s name came to mind. Then a voice asked, “Is this Miss Martin?”

  The voice was female, sounded young, and was also vaguely familiar. I confirmed that I am, indeed, Savannah Martin. “What can I do for you?”

  Another pause, then, “This is Alex. Alexandra Puckett. Brenda’s daughter.”

  No wonder I hadn’t recognized the voice. The one and only time I had spoken to Alexandra was at the funeral the day before, and she had said less than a half dozen words to me. “Hi, Alexandra. What can I do for you?”

  “I just... um... wanted to talk to you.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Go ahead.”

  “Not on the phone.” I had a vision of her casting a furtive glance over her shoulder.

  “Would you like to get together? We could grab an early dinner somewhere.”

  “Maybelle’s cooking dinner. I have to stay home. Plus, dad’s got something he wants to talk to us about.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, then...”

  “I could meet you later. At a bar, or something.”

  “How old are you, again?”

  She sighed gustily. “I’ve been to bars before, OK? Mom used to take me sometimes. To business meetings, like that.”

  “She held business meetings in bars?”

  “Not like in real bars, you know. But, like, cool bars. Hip bars. Like the FinBar and Beckett’s.” The two names she mentioned belonged to establishments within walking distance of the real estate office. I’d been in both of them, and had nothing against either. They were clean and well-lit and s
erved plenty of non-alcoholic beverages and snack food — hamburgers, chicken strips, French fries and onion rings — as well as beer, wine and mixed drinks. The clientele was young and hip, nobody drank too much or started fights, and the atmosphere was reasonably pleasant and not at all rowdy.

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll go to the FinBar with you. So long as you know I won’t buy you anything with alcohol in it. When?”

  “Um... 6:30?”

  I agreed to meet her there, and put the phone away as I headed back into the library again.

  A wasted two and a half hours later, I was on my way to the FinBar. In my possession were the names of three men who had killed themselves between fourteen and sixteen years ago. (Without a specific date, and with only Clarice’s word to go by, it was difficult to narrow it down any further.) Joey Shoemaker, an insurance salesman, had driven his car through a guard-rail and into the Harpeth River on his way home from work one night. It could have been an accident, but then again, it could have been deliberate. A case of insurance fraud was under investigation at his company at the time, implicating Mr. Shoemaker. The second man was Graham Webster, who had left his job at a small credit union early one day, claiming a headache, and had gone home to his house in Hendersonville, where he had pulled the car into the garage and proceeded to poison himself with carbon monoxide. His wife had found him dead when she came home from her own accounting job at the end of the day. And William Bigelow, local manager of a national mortgage company, had shot himself through the head at the family’s vacation cabin on the Cumberland Plateau, leaving a message for his wife of his intent.

  Of the three, my money was on Webster, as it didn’t seem likely that the other two would be in a position to be handling a whole lot of cold, hard cash. But I don’t know much about such things, so I could quite well be wrong. Plus, I wasn’t sure it was even one of these three. I could have missed something, or the death might not have been written up in the paper, or it could have happened at an earlier or later date. Walker had said the event took place twelve or thirteen years ago, and maybe he, and not Clarice, was right. I ran out of time, though, so I had to be satisfied with what I had.

  Alexandra was already seated at a table in the corner, sipping a drink, when I came through the door at FinBar.

  “That looks like Coca-Cola,” I remarked, sliding down on the chair opposite from her. Alexandra sniffed.

  “Yeah. So?”

  “Just making sure. You want anything else?”

  “Like a beer?”

  “I was thinking more like a hamburger or a basket of chips and salsa. Unlike you, I haven’t had dinner yet.”

  She rolled her eyes. They were heavily made up with shadow and mascara. I wondered if she was trying to hide that she’d been crying, or if she was just taking advantage of having no mother to tell her that she couldn’t leave the house looking like a hooker. “No thanks.”

  “No problem.” I ordered a Diet Coke for myself — no sense in rubbing the girl’s nose in something she couldn’t have; plus, it was a lot cheaper than white wine — as well as an order of nachos, and then leaned back on my chair. “So what did Maybelle cook for dinner?”

  Alexandra twisted her face into a hideous grimace. “Cabbage rolls. With boiled potatoes and gravy. Yuck.”

  “Cabbage rolls aren’t so bad,” I said. She shrugged. I added, “What did your mother usually cook?”

  “Take-out,” Alexandra said.

  “I see.”

  “She was too busy to cook. So we ate out a lot, and ordered in. My favorite’s pizza.” She smiled. It was a funny, almost secretive smile, but it lit her face up for a second before it was gone.

  “I like pizza, too,” I said, although the thought of it doesn’t make me smile the way Alexandra did.

  We sat in silence for a little longer. My drink and the nachos came. I took a sip. “So how are you holding up?”

  She shrugged.

  “What did you want to talk to me about?”

  She was playing with her glass, using it to make a pattern of wet rings across the table, and she answered without looking up at me. “The other day at the funeral, someone said you’re the one who found my mom.”

  I nodded. “She had an appointment to meet a client at eight, to show him that house on Potsdam Street. When she didn’t show up, he called the office. I went out there, and that’s when we found her.”

  “Was that the guy you were with at the funeral?”

  I wrinkled my forehead. “I wasn’t with anyone at the funeral.”

  Except for the minute or two I’d stood speaking to Tamara Grimaldi, but surely Alexandra didn’t think Detective Grimaldi was a man.

  And of course I’d talked to Tim, as well, but she knew who Tim was.

  “In the parking lot, after the service was over. I saw you on the news.”

  “Oh. Yes, that was him.”

  She took a nacho and pulled it towards her, trailing cheese. Her eyes were on it instead of on me. “Are you sleeping with him?” she asked.

  “Are you crazy?” I answered.

  She glanced up. “I just thought he looked hot.”

  “He’s not my type. Not yours, either.“

  “How do you know what my type is?”

  “I don’t,” I said. “But I know what type he is, and trust me, you wouldn’t want to be involved with him. He’s also at least ten years too old for you.”

  “Boys my age are boring.”

  “Boys your age will be thirty one day, too. Maybe then you’ll be ready for them.”

  I grabbed a nacho from the plate and popped it into my mouth. Alexandra rolled her eyes and sucked on her Coke. We sat in silence for another minute or two.

  “So tell me about it,” she said, finally. “What was it like?”

  I hesitated. “Did your dad let you see your mom, afterwards?” She shook her head. “But you saw her at the funeral. So you know that she looked a lot like herself.”

  “Only deader,” Alexandra muttered. I shrugged. No arguing with that.

  “To be honest, I didn’t look that closely at her on Saturday. I fainted. There was a lot of blood. But I could tell that she looked surprised, rather than scared or angry. I don’t think she knew what was happening before it happened.”

  Alexandra nodded. “One of the papers said she was... you know... raped...?”

  I shook my head. “If she was, I didn’t see any signs of it. She was wearing all her clothes, and like I said, she didn’t look angry or afraid.”

  “That’s good.” She took another sip of Coke.

  “Yes, it is.” I thought for a second and then added, “Would you happen to know when she left home on Saturday morning?”

  She looked suspicious. “Why?”

  “Just curious. I was wondering how much time there was between her getting there and Rafe getting there. But if you don’t want to tell me, that’s OK.”

  Alexandra shrugged, looking down at her glass. “I was asleep. I didn’t get downstairs until after ten, and by then everyone was gone. Austin spent the night with a friend, and daddy had gone out somewhere. All I know is that she said she had to leave early.”

  I nodded. So nobody in the Puckett household had an alibi. Not that I seriously suspected any of them. Except maybe Steven. But he had probably just been across the street, in Maybelle’s bed, stealing some time for himself while Brenda was working. I changed the subject.

  “So did you and your mom come here a lot?”

  Alexandra shook her head. “Just when — you know — she didn’t want to do things in the office. Because... um...” She faltered. I arched my brows inquiringly, and she added, reluctantly, “Mr. Lamont can be a little strict sometimes, you know. Not very... flexible. About special terms and things like that.”

  It sounded as if she were quoting her mother.

  “Of course,” I said smoothly. So Brenda had been in the habit of handling things out of the office so Walker couldn’t micro-manage anything too closely. Inter
esting. “When was the last time you were here?”

  “Oh, I haven’t been here for a few months.” Alexandra looked around at the FinBar’s Irish pub decor. “But we went to Beckett’s just a couple of weeks ago. Something to do with that house on Potsdam.”

  “Your mother made poor, old Mrs. Jenkins come to a bar?”

  “Who’s Mrs. Jenkins?” Alexandra said. I explained, and she shook her head. “This was a man. Black guy. Worked in a hospital or something.”

  “Tyrell Jenkins?” I suggested optimistically. Maybe Tondalia Jenkins hadn’t signed the sale-papers for her house herself after all. She certainly shouldn’t have been able to do so. Not legally. Not if she thought some guy she had never seen before was her only son. Nothing says non compus mentis like that kind of mistake.

  Alexandra shrugged. “Could have been. Middle-aged dude, not hot at all.” She took a sip of Coke. “So on the morning she died... did you see anybody? Or anything? You know, suspicious? Or out of the ordinary?” She peered at me through a curtain of long, dark hair, blue eyes furtive.

  “Not really,” I said, wondering who she was worried about my having possibly seen. Herself? Her father? Maybelle? “Just neighborhood people, you know. A middle-aged lady waiting at the bus-stop, a black kid in a green car who drove by a couple of times... So tell me more about this guy your mother was meeting with at Beckett’s.”

  But Alexandra didn’t know anything else about him. Just that the meeting had something to do with the house on Potsdam Street, and that the guy had something to do with the healthcare field. When I asked her how she knew that, she shrugged vaguely.

  “Well, was he wearing scrubs or something?”

  But Alexandra didn’t know. The man had been wearing a suit, so that wasn’t it, and she couldn’t pinpoint exactly how she knew he worked in healthcare, she just did. I gave up and turned the conversation to innocuous subjects. But at least now I knew that there was something fishy about the listing for 101 Potsdam Street. If there hadn’t been, Brenda wouldn’t have had any reason to work out the details in the dark corner of Beckett’s Bar.