Instead of heading straight to Heidi’s townhouse, I drove into the parking lot of the strip mall and parked the car. Although the idea of eating still didn’t hold much appeal, my stomach was complaining loudly about being empty. It had been a couple hours since lunch with Grimaldi, and I figured I might as well try to force down a few bites of something.
As luck would have it, Aislynn was working, and she set me up with a bowl of soup and a drink. The soup was a bit easier to choke down than the salad had been. It required less effort, for one thing, and for another, the warmth in the pit of my stomach felt good.
It wasn’t just the chill in the air outside. The day was gray and gloomy, with a bone-chilling sort of cold that got into my clothes and bones and didn’t let go... but I think it was more that I felt cold and numb and alone with the knowledge that Rafe was spending his time with someone else.
It was like Bradley all over again. I hadn’t been woman enough for my husband, and now it turned out I wasn’t woman enough for my boyfriend, either.
And it hurt worse than anything Bradley had ever done. I loved Rafe in ways I hadn’t realized was possible back when I was Bradley Ferguson’s wife.
So the soup warmed the physical parts of me, but the emotional parts, those stayed cold and empty. Aislynn must have seen it too, because when she came to take my empty bowl away, she lingered by the side of the table, goth-girl eyes worried. “Everything all right?”
I shook my head. “My boyfriend’s with someone else.”
“Bastard,” Aislynn said. “This is why I’m gay.”
“Because my boyfriend’s with someone else?”
“Because all men are swine.” She took the bowl and stomped off, dreadlocks swinging halfway down her back.
When she came back a minute later, I thought she was bringing me the check. Instead, she made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. “Why don’t you come over to the house tonight? We’re all settled in. You can see what we’ve done to the place. And Kyle makes killer lasagna.”
That sounded too wonderful for words, actually. Not the lasagna, so much, but the company. The last thing I wanted, was to go home tonight and sit there in my empty apartment, halfway hoping and halfway dreading that Rafe would come home. To talk, or to pack his things and leave once and for all.
“I’d love to,” I said.
“Six o’clock,” Aislynn answered and walked away.
“Wait a second! Where’s my check?”
“It’s on the house.” She kept walking.
All right, then. I left a five dollar bill on the table and took my leave, feeling marginally better. My stomach was full, I wasn’t feeling as nauseous anymore, and I had something to do tonight, something to take my mind off Rafe.
I stopped by the Panera Bakery on my way to the car, and picked up a couple of pastries, just in case I needed a bribe.
Heidi’s place was just a few minutes away, in a complex full of two-story townhouses surrounding a pool. The pool was covered now, of course, and the lounge chairs looked cold and a little sad in the chilly air.
I parked the Volvo next to Heidi’s Honda and got out. The wind bit my cheeks as I ventured up to the front door and rang the bell.
At first I wasn’t sure she was going to answer. She was here, or so it seemed, since the car was parked outside and she isn’t the type to walk anywhere. Heidi is voluptuous and then some, if you catch my drift. She likes to eat and she doesn’t like to exercise. I had a hard time believing she’d taken to her feet.
I rang again. And I saw the peephole in the door darken, so I knew she was inside. Or that someone was, anyway. I considered making a face, but resisted the temptation. Instead I smiled and lifted the Panera bag invitingly.
The door inched open and I stuck my foot in the opening and leaned in. “Hi.” For good measure, I waved the bag back and forth so the smell of the pastries would leak out. “I brought you a cinnamon roll.”
That did the trick. The door opened all the way, abruptly enough that I almost fell into the foyer and landed at Heidi’s feet.
She’s about my age and height, and approximately twice my weight. Her hair is brown and frizzy, and she has a round face and a round body. As is often the case, she had crumbs on her bosom, from the last thing she’d eaten. Judging from the residue, I suspected some sort of corn-based chip. Fritos, maybe.
She reached for the bag, and I handed it over, before closing the door behind me. “How are you?”
“Fine,” Heidi said, opening the bag to peer in.
“You haven’t been at work for a few days. I was getting worried.”
“Oh.” She blinked. “With Tim out, I didn’t think I needed to be there.”
“Did you know that Tim was going to be out?” Because, if memory served, she hadn’t been there for the sales meeting on Monday morning herself, either. At that point, I’d still been hopeful that Tim would show up.
“He called me on Sunday,” Heidi said, “and told me he wouldn’t be in on Monday.”
Ah. So instead of taking that as indication she should go to the office and take over Tim’s responsibility for the meeting, she’d decided to sleep in instead.
“Have you spoken to him since?”
Her eyes shifted, sideways. That was a sign of someone lying, Rafe had told me once.
I banished the thought of Rafe and focused on Heidi.
“No,” she said.
“Are you sure? Because Tim hasn’t been in the office the rest of this week, either. Brittany is out as well.”
“Brittany is in bed with Devon,” Heidi said dismissively.
I had assumed as much. There was no reason why Heidi wouldn’t simply have assumed the same thing, of course, but there was something in her tone that caught my attention. Something of the implication that Brittany was shirking her duty while she—Heidi—wasn’t.
Between that and the lying, it bore further investigation.
“So Sunday was the last time you spoke to him?”
She nodded, and her eyes slid sideways again.
“Did he say what was wrong?”
“No,” Heidi said.
“Because I stopped by his house, and he wasn’t there. If he’s sick, I’d expect him to be at home in bed.”
She didn’t answer.
“He isn’t in the hospital, is he?”
Heidi shook her head before she made an abrupt turnaround and headed for the kitchen, bakery bag in hand.
I followed, of course, looking right and left as I went.
The place was nicer than I had expected. Nicer than my apartment. Bigger, too. There was a staircase immediately beside the door in the foyer, leading upstairs to what I assumed were a couple of bedrooms and a bath. Beyond the foot of the stairs was what looked like a formal living room with a gas-log fireplace and leather furniture. I don’t have a fireplace, and I also don’t have hardwood floors. My rental is all carpet, except for the bathrooms and kitchen, which are vinyl, not tile.
Down the hall from the front door was a small half bath tucked under the stairs, then a laundry closet, and a kitchen and dining room combination across the back of the townhouse. A small courtyard waited beyond the double glass doors. It looked dreary and cold now, with only spindly brown sticks in the colorful glazed pots, but I could imagine how nice it might be in the summer, with sunshine and ivy growing up the brick walls. Much nicer than my little balcony overlooking the traffic on Main Street.
“This is great.” I looked around at the kitchen. Nice Shaker-style cabinets, stainless steel appliances, and a granite counter. I don’t have any of those things, either.
“Thanks.” Heidi put the bakery bag down on the island and ripped it open.
I continued my perusal. There was a pot on the stove, bubbling with something that smelled great. A Ziploc travel container sat on the counter, empty and waiting, and beside it sat an aluminum-foil wrapped something. From the shape of it, maybe half a loaf of French bread?
I turned back to Heidi. �
��Beef stew?”
She hesitated, with a cinnamon bun halfway to her mouth. Maybe she was afraid I’d ask to stay for dinner. “Yes.”
She bit into the bun, and flakes of sugar scattered across her chest.
“That’s a big pot, for just one person. Do you freeze the leftovers?”
“Yes,” Heidi said, and her eyes slid sideways.
I was tempted to ask if I could stay, just to see what she’d say, but I refrained. “I should go,” I said instead, turning back toward the front of the townhouse. “I have plans for dinner. I’ll leave you to get on with it.”
Heidi followed me to the front door, practically stepping on my heels. I stopped on the top step and turned back to her. “If you talk to Tim, tell him I need to talk to him about Beau.”
“Beau?” Heidi said.
“Beau Riggins. Don’t you know him?”
She shook her head.
“He’s a friend of Tim’s. Or was. He died yesterday.”
I waited and watched, for some kind of reaction, but she just kept chewing. So I gave up and headed down the couple of steps to the parking lot. She was still chewing when she closed and locked the door behind me.
I got in the car and cranked over the engine. Then I backed out of the parking space and maneuvered out of the lot. And once I was out on the road and halfway down the hill toward Old Hickory Boulevard, I pulled into the parking lot of a fast food restaurant and stopped again.
If I’d had the necessary equipment, I’d totally be listening in on Heidi’s cell phone communications right now, because I would have wagered my left testicle, had I had one of those, that she’d be on the phone with Tim the second the door closed behind me. Or at least the second she was sure I had driven away. She’d been skulking behind the drapes in the living room window when I drove off. They were sheer drapes, and with the lights on inside, she was hard to miss.
By now, she was probably deep in conversation with Tim.
I thought about calling Tamara Grimaldi. But she had her hands full with Beau, and besides, all I knew—or thought I knew—was that Heidi had lied. She’d been in contact with Tim, maybe as recently as today.
Grimaldi might be able to haul her into the Nashville PD for questioning, and that might scare the truth out of her, but I had a better idea. That bubbling pot on the stove, along with the wrapped bread and waiting to-go container, had given me an idea. If I waited a while, what were the chances that Heidi would be coming down the hill, to bring Tim his dinner?
He was holed up somewhere. With the police looking for him, he probably wouldn’t risk going outside any more than he had to. Eating in public, in a restaurant, would be dangerous, and even ordering a pizza for delivery might be too big a chance to take. The delivery guy might recognize him. But if he were in contact with Heidi, he could get her to bring him food. She relied on him for her living, so she wouldn’t want to refuse.
It was only 3:30. I had two free hours before I had to leave this part of town to get to Kylie and Aislynn’s by six. And I certainly didn’t want to go home in the interim. I settled in to wait.
With nothing to do but peer out the window for Heidi’s Honda, the temptation to turn the phone back on was too much to resist. I pushed the power button with great trepidation, but I pushed it nonetheless. And I wasn’t sure whether to be disappointed or relieved when Rafe hadn’t called and hadn’t texted.
No one else had called or texted either. I dropped the phone back into the car console with a sound somewhere between a sigh and a huff.
Time passed. Cars passed. None of them were Heidi’s Honda.
I got tired and sick of waiting. I eyed the phone balefully, thinking critical thoughts about Rafe and Lantana.
Good Lord, didn’t he have better taste than that? A stripper, for God’s sake?
How could he do this to me? He knew Bradley had cheated. He knew how that fact had messed with my mind and my self-esteem and my confidence in the aftermath of the divorce. He’d spent months telling me what a jackass Bradley was and how there was nothing wrong with me. How could he turn around and do the same thing Bradley did?
And how was I going to explain this to my mother? Dix and Catherine had been supportive of my relationship with Rafe because they loved me. They’d accepted him because I’d made it clear I wanted them to. I knew they’d had reservations, but they hadn’t voiced them, out of respect for me and because they acknowledged my right to make my own decisions—or mistakes. But mother had been vocal, and staunchly opposed to my getting involved with Rafe. This development probably wouldn’t surprise her at all.
It surprised me. I hadn’t thought he’d do this. Not in a naive way, because I’d been pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to hold on to him forever. He’d get tired of me eventually, and probably sooner rather than later. I wasn’t—couldn’t be—as exciting as the other women he’d known. But I hadn’t thought he’d cheat. I’d trusted him to tell me if he wanted out, not to continue to live with me while he got some from someone else on the side.
I glared at the silent phone and almost missed the small, blue Honda coming down the hill. By the time the sight registered, Heidi was halfway through the intersection and on her way up Old Hickory Boulevard toward the interstate and Franklin Road.
I breathed a word of the sort that would have caused mother to click her tongue, and cranked the key in the ignition.
I didn’t have to be as careful with Heidi as I’d been when following Rafe earlier. She wasn’t trained to pick up a tail, and she probably wouldn’t even consider the possibility of one. I’d have to be pretty blatant to catch her attention, I figured, and if I’d managed to follow Rafe all the way from Potsdam Street to the Booby Bungalow without him seeing me—and if he had, surely he would have stopped before getting there?—I shouldn’t have any problems tailing Heidi to wherever she was going.
She headed straight up Old Hickory Boulevard toward the shops in Brentwood. Past the entrances to Interstate 65 north and south, past Franklin Road, and past the stores and business buildings of Maryland Farms. I made sure to keep two cars between us whenever I could, and when I couldn’t, I slowed down until I wasn’t directly behind her. It helped that she’d gotten a head start, and the cars coming off the interstate ramp that lodged between us helped too.
At Granny White Pike she took a right. Luckily a few other cars were in line behind her, so it wasn’t just the two of us heading north.
Granny—Lucinda—White was a poor widderwoman who came to the Nashville area from the Carolinas in the early 1800s sometime, after her husband died. At one point, she ran a still and a tavern in the hills just north of Radnor Lake, in what is now the Inns of Granny White subdivision. Her grave is still there, behind a little fence, in the median halfway up the hill.
Closer to town, Granny White Pike becomes 12th Avenue South, and leads to Tim’s house in the 12 South area. For a minute or two, I thought Heidi might be headed there. But then she took a right on Tyne Boulevard and headed east.
I slowed down. None of the other cars turned, and once I did, it would be just the two of us on the road. At that point, she couldn’t really miss seeing me behind her.
By now, I was starting to develop a sneaky suspicion where we were headed. After a couple of minutes, when she turned onto Chatsworth Drive, that clinched it.
It was just this afternoon that I’d thought about a house on Chatsworth Drive. It used to belong to Walker Lamont, my old broker, now a guest of the state of Tennessee. I had assumed he’d had to sell it to pay legal fees, but perhaps not. He’d pleaded guilty, so maybe there hadn’t been a trial and so no need for a financial sacrifice. Maybe Walker still owned the place.
Maybe Tim had a key.
I idled in front of the neighbors’ while I watched the Honda pull into the driveway and disappear behind the house, and while I tried to decide what to do.
I could drive up behind the house myself, and perhaps catch Heidi in the process of aiding and abetting a fugitive.
Or I could wait until she left, and tackle Tim on my own.
If I went up there now, there’d be two of them against one of me. Tim was probably pretty desperate to avoid trouble by now, and Heidi was something of a loose cannon. She was also sizeable enough to make it impossible to breathe if she sat on me. Much as I was tired of sitting in my car, it might be better to wait for her to leave again.
As luck would have it, she didn’t stay long. It was only five minutes later when she came back down the drive. I ducked down below the dashboard and crossed my fingers that she wouldn’t stop to investigate the Volvo parked on the side of the road.
But she must have been eager to get out of there, because she just drove by. I waited until her taillights had disappeared around the corner onto Tyne, and then I started the car and made my way up the winding driveway toward Walker’s elegant home.
Chapter Eighteen
Tim must have thought Heidi had forgotten something, because he flung the door open as soon as I knocked, without bothering to check who it was. His consternation when he saw me made it abundantly clear that if he’d realized who was outside, he wouldn’t have answered.
“We need to talk,” I informed him.
He glanced around the parking pad. “Are you alone?”
“Of course I’m alone. Who’d be with me?”
As the words left my mouth, I realized that maybe I shouldn’t have admitted that. If Tamara Grimaldi was right and Tim had killed both Brian Armstrong and Beau Riggins, he probably wouldn’t quibble about killing me.
He stepped back. “Come in, then.”
Now it was my turn to hesitate. Going inside an empty house with a suspected murderer probably wasn’t the smartest move I’d ever make. I’d done it before, but then I hadn’t actually realized what I was doing. This time I did. And this time, there was no chance that Rafe would show up in the nick of time to save me, either. If anything happened, my body would lie on the floor of Walker’s house until there was nothing left but bones. All Tim had to do was kill me and leave. Nobody would think to look for me here.
Change of Heart Page 18
