A Cutthroat Business

by Jenna Bennett

  Maurice slumped. “You the cops?”

  I shook my head. “Just friends of Alexandra’s. She found this,” I wiggled the check, but made sure to keep it out of his reach, “in your dresser.”

  “Stupid bitch.” He turned his head and spat. It ended up a few inches from the toe of my shoe. Rafe’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t speak.

  “She’s a sixteen year old girl whose mother was murdered last week,” I answered coldly. That particular epithet is one of my least favorite, even when it isn’t applied to me. “And then she finds a check for $5000 in her boyfriend’s underwear drawer. From her mother. Dated the day her mother died. Oh yes, and her boyfriend wasn’t at home that morning, because she stopped by to see him, and he wasn’t there.”

  “I don’t have to talk to you,” Maurice said. He was probably aiming for tough and truculent, but managed only to sound like a pouty five-year-old. Rafe smiled.

  “Why don’t you try not talking to us, and see what happens.”

  Maurice looked up at him. He wasn’t much taller than me — 5’10” maybe — and Rafe had him beat by four or five inches, as well as a good thirty pounds. Solid muscle, all of it.

  “And watch your language, if you don’t mind,” I added.

  Maurice rolled his eyes. “She called me last week sometime. The old... I mean, Alex’s ma. Told me to meet her Saturday mornin’.”

  “Where? And when?”

  “7:30, at the house on Potsdam. Said she had a client comin’ at eight and wanted me outta there before he showed. Said our business wouldn’t take long.” His tone when he pronounced the word ‘business’ was sour.

  I nodded. That fit well with the notation in Clarice’s – Clarissa’s – calendar and what Alexandra had said about her mother leaving the house around seven. It isn’t a 30-minute drive from Winding Way to Potsdam Street, but maybe Brenda wanted to go to Starbucks for a muffin and a cup of coffee on the way.

  “What happened?”

  Maurice shrugged skinny shoulders underneath the oversized T-shirt. “When I got there, the door was standin’ open.”

  “You see anybody else?”

  Maurice shook his head.

  “What about her car?” I asked.

  “Didn’t see no car. Just the door standin’ open.”

  “What did you do?”

  Maurice had gone in, calling Brenda’s name, and found her dead in the library.

  “If she was dead, how did you get the check?” I asked.

  Maurice folded his arms. “It was in her purse.”

  “You went through her purse?”

  “I wanted to make sure she hadn’t got nothin’ with my name on it.” Maurice’s tone indicated that this was something I ought to have figured out for myself.

  “Why didn’t you call an ambulance?” I asked.

  Maurice turned to Rafe. “She for real, man? Listen, the old... I mean, Mrs. Puckett was dead. Wasn’t nothin’ nobody could do for her. And I got a clean record. Got a scholarship to TSU in a couple weeks. I’m gettin’ outta here, goin’ places. Why’d I go and fuck that up?”

  “Because it was the right thing to do?” I suggested. Maurice looked at me blankly. “Because she was Alexandra’s mother and you’re dating Alexandra? Because your girlfriend had to hear that her mother was dead from the police?”

  Maurice didn’t say anything. I glanced at Rafe, who gave a one-shouldered shrug. I turned back to Maurice. “So you took the check and left. What did you do then?”

  “Drove around for a while, just to see what happened. Saw you get there.” He nodded to Rafe. “But you didn’t go in. So I drove around some more, and then she came.” He glanced at me. “Next time I drove by, you were inside, so I figured I could go home. I put the check away and tried to stop thinkin’ about it, but it ain’t that easy, you know.”

  I nodded. I knew. It had taken me days to start sleeping through the night again, and I hadn’t been in danger of being arrested. Hadn’t been dating Brenda’s daughter, either.

  Maurice added, as much to himself as to us, “Only good thing was Alex ain’t been up to gettin’ together much. Busy with the funeral and stuff. Tonight was the first time I seen her since it happened.”

  And then she’d found the check and thought he’d taken money to stop seeing her. And he couldn’t tell her the truth, not without admitting that he’d left her mother bleeding to death on the floor. It seemed to me that Maurice was in a bad way however one looked at it.

  Rafe said the same thing. “Looks to me like you’re screwed, pal.”

  Maurice shrugged, like it didn’t matter, but his eyes said otherwise. Rafe glanced at me. “Anything else you wanna ask, darlin’?” I shook my head. “Looks like we’re done here, then. Thanks, man.” He released Maurice.

  “I guess you can have this back,” I added, holding out the check. Maurice eyed it with loathing. “Or I can hang on to it for you, if you’d like.”

  He nodded. “Yeah. I ain’t gonna use it. Only reason I kept it, was so I coulda shown it to the cops to prove I didn’t have no reason to want the old... I mean, Mrs. Puckett dead.”

  “Works for me,” Rafe said. “C’mon, darlin’. The night’s young.” He winked at Maurice, who dredged up a weak smile from somewhere.

  “If you see Alex...”

  “Yes?”

  “Never mind.” He turned and disappeared into the house again. We headed for the car.

  “So what did you think?” I asked when we were rolling toward the corner once more. Rafe grinned.

  “You’re a natural, darlin’. Saved me from beating the answers out of him.”

  “I didn’t mean that. Although... do you often... um... beat answers out of people?”

  “It’s been known to happen,” Rafe said, unrepentantly, and turned the wheel. I watched him in silence for a moment or two while I gathered up my courage.

  “Is that what happened with Billy Scruggs?”

  He drew his brows together. “Who?”

  “Billy Scruggs.” Surely he couldn’t have forgotten the name of the man who had been responsible for sending him to prison for two years? “You know, the man you had that fight with twelve years ago.”

  His tone was resigned. “Something else Satterfield’s background check dug up?”

  I nodded, apologetically. “It sounded like he was hurt pretty badly.”

  “Not bad enough,” Rafe said. He coasted up to the intersection of Dresden and Dickerson and turned right, with no more than a cursory glance to make sure no one else was coming. I wondered where he was taking me — it was in the opposite direction from my apartment, and also in the opposite direction from his, if he had told the truth about living in South Nashville — but I didn’t want to interrupt the conversation to ask.

  “It doesn’t sound like you’re very sorry,” I said instead.

  He glanced at me. “About Billy? I’m sorry I had to spend two years in jail, but I ain’t sorry I did it.”

  “What about your mother? My brother told me that she was so upset she didn’t even come to your sentencing.”

  A sour smile curved his mouth. “That wasn’t cause she was upset with me, darlin’. It was cause Billy’d beat her black and blue, and she didn’t want nobody to see her.”

  For a second or two, my voice deserted me, and I could feel myself turning pale. Then I managed an, “Oh, God.”

  Rafe didn’t answer, just shrugged. After a minute or two, I got over my ladylike vapors enough to continue. “I guess she didn’t want to report him, so you decided to go after him yourself.”

  “Everyone was just waiting for me to fuck up anyway, so I figured I might as well help’em out.”

  I nodded. I could understand that. In a way, I was dealing with something similar myself. Everyone thought I was involved with him when I wasn’t, so the thought had crossed my mind that I might as well be. At least that way I’d get something out of the situation. Not that I’d actually do it, of course. “But you weren’t really t
rying to kill him, were you?”

  He arched a brow, and I blushed. “Never mind. Forget I asked. Um...” I looked around, at Apple Annie’s motel and the street walkers outside the tinted window, “where are we going, anyway?”

  “Thought you said you wanted me to break into the Stor-All.”

  “Oh,” I said, disconcerted. “I didn’t think you’d want to do it tonight.”

  “Now’s the best time. Saturday night. Everybody’s out partying. Ain’t nobody there.”

  “True,” I admitted, “but...”

  “What’s the matter? You got a Catwoman outfit you were planning to change into? I can spare the time for something like that.” He grinned.

  “Hardly. No, it’s just that I don’t know which storage unit was Clarice’s, and there won’t be anyone in the office to tell us.”

  “We’ll figure it out.” He changed lanes, and the next second we cruised to a stop outside the Stor-All on Dickerson Pike.

  “Looks safe,” Rafe commented after a brief overview. I nodded. Perfectly safe. Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse; let alone anything bigger. He opened his door. I waited while he came around the car and opened mine. “Let’s go.”

  “You’re not going to make me wait in the car?”

  “You’re safer with me than out here by yourself.”

  He took my elbow. I wasn’t sure I believed him, but I didn’t want to be left to cool my heels outside, so I hustled to keep up. The octogenarian receptionist wasn’t in evidence tonight; the small cubby where she had been sitting was dark and closed, and no one answered when Rafe knocked on the door.

  “It’s empty,” I said, unnecessarily.

  “I can see that. C’mere, darlin’.”

  “I’m already here,” I pointed out, from the safe, arms-length distance to which I had retreated when he dropped my arm.

  “Closer.” He grabbed my wrist and yanked. Gently, but a yank nonetheless; and hard enough to force me to take a step toward him. He maneuvered me up against the wall next to the door. It would be monotonous, were it not for the fact that every time it happened, a brand new, stronger wave of panic washed over me.

  “Let’s see...” He tipped my chin up, dark eyes moving over my face. Simultaneously, his other hand disappeared behind my neck, and I could feel long fingers weaving through my hair. I lost my breath, and I swear my knees buckled. A corner of his mouth turned up.

  A second later my prim chignon was history, and the hair I had endeavored to keep from looking tousled and sexy fell over my shoulders.

  “Thanks, darlin’,” Rafe said and turned away.

  Chapter 18.

  It took me a few seconds to put two and two together. Embarrassingly, the conclusion was hard to escape. I had used hairpins to put my hair up. Now my hair was down, so the pins must be gone.

  “Like stealing candy from a baby.” Rafe grinned at me over his shoulder.

  “Huh?” I said. He pushed at the office door, which swung open. “Oh, my God,” I added, choking, “you didn’t!”

  “It’s easier than opening every unit. Takes less time, too.”

  He wasn’t kidding. The whole thing had taken less than sixty seconds, from the moment he pulled me to him to the time the door was unlocked.

  “Yes,” I said, “but...”

  It seemed worse, somehow — more like a crime — to break into the office rather than into the storage unit itself.

  Rafe didn’t seem to have any such qualms. “I’ll be right back.”

  He ducked through the door. I waited, looking nervously from side to side, wishing I’d had the chance to put on something different. Not a Catwoman outfit — I wouldn’t be caught dead in anything so formfitting — but something less conspicuous than this gleaming white blouse and prim pumps.

  But at least I didn’t have long to wait. It may have been another minute before he came back out, but no more. “Unit 516, aisle E. I borrowed a master key, too.” He brandished it.

  “Why did you bother to look for one?” I wanted to know, breathlessly, as I trotted after him. “If you can open the lock just as quickly with hairpins.”

  “Hairpins are harder to explain away, darlin’. With this, I can just pretend I work here.”

  “You wouldn’t get away with it,” I said. “Someone would check.”

  “I got away with saying I was a cop. Nobody checked that.”

  “And you should be grateful. There are all sorts of penalties involved in impersonating a police officer.”

  He shrugged. I added, tentatively, “I know I’ve asked before, but...”

  “I ain’t.”

  “Honestly?”

  “Would I lie to you, darlin’?”

  “Hell, yes,” I said. He grinned.

  The master key turned as smoothly as butter in the lock of unit E-516, and Rafe pulled up the heavy folding door. Side by side, we peered into Clarice Webb’s — Clarissa Webster’s — storage space.

  It was the same size as Brenda’s, and less than half full. What was here, was better organized, and wasn’t all work related. There were a few pieces of decent furniture; heirlooms, maybe, or pieces that didn’t fit with Clarice’s current decor. Clothes in plastic bags were hanging on a rack along the wall. Clarice either switched out summer and winter clothes twice a year — difficult in a place like Nashville, where it can be either 75° or 25° in January — or the clothes were like the furniture: out of style, but too financially or sentimentally valuable to throw away.

  A couple of cardboard boxes in the corner turned out to hold knick-knacks and assorted junk. Ceramic kittens, vases, framed family photographs. One showed a younger Clarice standing next to an equally young, somewhat weak-chinned man with prematurely thinning hair and eyes that were a smidgen too close together over a pointy nose. “This must be Mr. Webster,” I remarked, examining it.

  “Looks like the criminal type,” Rafe agreed. He was watching over my shoulder, standing close enough to brush against my back. I moved away, fractionally.

  “That’s pretty funny, coming from you. You didn’t get that good at picking locks without considerable practice.”

  “I’m good at a lot of things.” He winked. I fought down a blush, resolving to try harder not to feed him all these straight lines. It was going to be difficult, however, since I had no idea I was doing it until he took my innocent remark and turned it into something I hadn’t intended.

  “There’s a file box over there.” He pointed. “I’d guess that’d be where it’s at.”

  “Where what’s at?”

  “Whatever you’re looking for, darlin’. Unless you were planning to ask me to put this on my back and stagger out with it.” He patted a heavy dining room table with carved clusters of grapes like goiters on its legs.

  “Thanks,” I said with a shudder, “but no. I don’t mind antiques, but that’s really too awful.”

  “I didn’t notice many antiques in your apartment.” He was making his way toward the file box, and wasn’t looking at me.

  “You weren’t there very long.”

  “Long enough.”

  “And you only saw the hallway.”

  “I had a look around while you and Satterfield necked.”

  “Todd and I didn’t neck for more than a second.”

  Rafe arched a brow, and I sighed. “Our house in Sweetwater had nothing but antiques, but Bradley preferred things more modern. So we furnished our townhouse with leather and chrome and glass.” All very cold and angular. An apt metaphor for our marriage, come to think of it. Small wonder the relationship hadn’t lasted. “I left it all behind when I divorced him.”

  “What happened?” Rafe didn’t sound like he cared one way or the other. I folded my arms and watched him navigate the obstacle course to the file box in the corner.

  “Other than that we had different tastes in home decor? He cheated.”

  I know I mentioned that that fact was something I didn’t want to get around, but I figured it would be sa
fe to tell Rafe. Who could he tell, after all? It wasn’t like we moved in the same circles. And ― somehow ― he was easy to talk to about things like this. I guess maybe because he wasn’t in a position to judge me for being less than perfect.

  “Figures.” He shifted another, smaller box out of his way. It clinked, like it was full of porcelain or glass.

  I sniffed. “What’s that supposed to mean? I’m the kind of woman who gets cheated on? Thanks a lot!”

  “I just meant that you pick the wrong guys to get involved with.”

  “There was nothing wrong with Bradley,” I said, stung. I was no fan of Bradley’s either, anymore, but I was damned if I would let Rafe Collier lecture me about my love life. Bradley had turned out to be a jerk, yes, but while he courted me, he had seemed like my perfect match. “He was young, wealthy, reasonably good looking, came from a good family, was offered a very good job after graduation...”

  Rafe murmured something. I couldn’t hear what it was, but I heard the tone, and decided not to ask him to repeat it.

  “If something wasn’t wrong with him,” he said instead, “why’d he cheat?”

  “Maybe he thought there was something wrong with me.”

  He straightened up and looked at me. Up and down, for a little longer than strictly necessary. “Ain’t nothing wrong with you, darlin’. Any man who has you in his bed and goes somewhere else for his jollies, needs his head examined.” He turned back to the box.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I think.”

  “No sweat. So when you and I get it on...”

  “I should have known this was just another way for you to try to talk me into bed.”

  “Can’t fault a man for trying.” He grinned at me over his shoulder.

  “I can. Plus, I’m frigid.”

  I couldn’t imagine why I’d blurted that piece of information out ― surely I wasn’t that comfortable talking to him! ― but on the upside, maybe it would make him stop asking.

  “Just cause Bradley couldn’t get the job done, don’t mean I can’t.”