Change of Heart

by Jenna Bennett

  The bathrooms were spic and span, the living room pillows fluffed and fabulous. It was as if no one had ever been there at all.

  Throughout it all, the alarm kept blaring.

  I ran back to Rafe, who was still keying numbers into the keypad. By now, the expression on his face was morose, and his other hand was fisted, as if he’d much rather just punch the keypad until it stopped wailing, than try to hit on the right combination. “Anything?”

  I shook my head. “It’s like he’s never even been here.”

  “Probably decamped as soon as you were outta sight last night,” Rafe said, scowling at the keypad.

  I tilted my head. “Why don’t you just rip it out of the wall? That would shut it up, wouldn’t it?”

  “Might be a little hard to explain when the cops show up, though.”

  “Don’t we want to be out of here by then?”

  “It’s prob’ly too late for that. Scuse me.”

  He walked off, just as a police cruiser rolled around the corner of the house and onto the parking pad.

  “Where are you going?” I called after him.

  He glanced at me over his shoulder. “You’re better off without me. They see me, they’ll think we’re breaking in. Just spin’em a story, get the hell outta here, and come back for me.”

  He ducked through the door and out of sight. I squared my shoulders and went to talk to the cops.

  Only to sag with relief when I saw the car doors open and officers Spicer and Truman get out.

  I met Lyle Spicer and George Truman the first Saturday in August last year, upon the occasion of having discovered Brenda Puckett’s butchered body. When Rafe called it in, they were the first officers on scene. I’ve run into them several times since then. Not only were they on hand to arrest Walker after he came close to killing me back in August, but they have a habit of catching me doing things I shouldn’t be doing, like kissing Rafe and committing B&E. It wasn’t the first time they’d caught me somewhere I technically wasn’t supposed to be.

  “You again,” Spicer said when he spotted me. He’s the senior partner, in his late forties or early fifties, with frizzy ginger hair turning gray and a little paunch. Truman is younger, straight out of the police academy, and he blushes if I look at him too long.

  I looked from one to the other of them. “What are you two doing here? This isn’t your usual area, is it?” Normally I’d see them in and around East Nashville, while now we were ten miles or so south of that.

  “The detective sent us to check out the place,” Spicer said. To hear him talk about it, it’s as if Tamara Grimaldi is the only detective on the Nashville force.

  I kept my voice light. “Great minds.”

  He chomped on his gum. “Whatcha here for, Miz Martin?”

  “Looking for Timothy Briggs,” I said.

  He didn’t answer, just chewed. I felt compelled to continue. “This is Walker’s house. Walker Lamont, my old broker. Then one who killed Brenda Puckett, remember? Tim has been taking care of the place since Walker went to prison.”

  “And you thought he might be here.”

  It wasn’t a question, but I nodded. And focused on looking as innocent as I could manage.

  “How d’you get in?” Spicer asked.

  “Oh. Um...”

  As Rafe frequently informs me, I’m a lousy liar. Can’t tell a fib without blushing and fiddling with my hair. I felt my hand sneaking up to twirl, and managed to force it back down, but there was nothing I could do about the blood rushing to my cheeks.

  Truman grinned. Spicer sighed. “Where’s your boyfriend?”

  “What boyfriend?”

  Of course Rafe chose that moment to return to my side. I guess he’d recognized Spicer and Truman, and realized that his arrest wasn’t imminent. I don’t think he would have dared to show himself to anyone else, since your average Oak Hill cop would have assumed that a black man setting off the alarm on a three quarters of a million dollar house would be reason enough to arrest him. But Spicer and Truman know better. Or so I sincerely hoped.

  Indeed, Spicer grinned. “Mr. Collier.”

  “Officers.” Rafe nodded back. “Tammy having you run errands again?”

  “The detective sent us down to check out the place. Just in case Briggs was holed up here.”

  “You can tell her she’s too late,” Rafe said. “He was here, but he ain’t here now.”

  Both cops stiffened like pointers. “How d’you know he was here?” Truman asked.

  Rafe glanced at him. “Shower curtain’s wet. Hard to imagine who else it’d be.”

  So Tim had washed and put away the dishes, made the beds, taken his trash with him and probably wiped down the walls and chrome in the shower... but he hadn’t been able to do anything about the shower curtain, so he’d left it, thinking it would dry and nobody would notice the difference.

  “At least he left under his own steam,” I said. All three of them turned to me, and I added, flushing, “Rather than someone dragging him off, kicking and screaming.”

  Spicer’s eyes sharpened. “D’you have reason to think someone would wanna drag him off, Miz Martin?”

  “He—” I caught Rafe’s eye and stopped short of telling them that Tim had told me he couldn’t remember committing murder. “If he didn’t kill Brian Armstrong or Beau Riggins, whoever did do it might be after him.”

  “You got a reason to think he didn’t kill Armstrong and Riggins?”

  I hesitated.

  “What about other suspects?” Rafe asked.

  Spicer shook his head. “Can’t tell you that, Mr. Collier.”

  Rafe nodded, so he probably hadn’t expected anything else, nor for that matter cared whether he got an answer or not. “We’ll leave you to it. Unless you’re bringing us in?”

  Spicer and Truman exchanged a look. “The detective would love that,” Truman muttered. Spicer grimaced and raised his voice.

  “Not this time.”

  “You’ll tell her we were here, though?”

  Spicer nodded. “No way around that.”

  Good. I wouldn’t have to call Grimaldi myself, then. I could just wait for a phone call this afternoon. Spicer and Truman would let her know Rafe and I had been together, so she’d know things were back on track, and I could reliably expect a call in a couple hours, ostensibly to yell at me for being at Walker’s house before her cops got here. In the process of talking, she’d get around to making sure I was OK with whatever Rafe was doing, too. I was getting to know the way she operated, little by little.

  “We’ll have to go through the place ourselves before we leave,” Spicer said. “Can’t take your word for it, Mr. Collier.”

  “Course not.”

  “Scram before I change my mind about hauling you in.” He looked around the living room. “Nice place.”

  Truman nodded. Rafe nodded toward the back door and we tiptoed out.

  Chapter Twenty Two

  “That could have gone worse,” I said when we were in the car and on our way down the road.

  He nodded. “Anybody else, and I’d have been on my way to lockup.”

  “You? What about me?”

  “Ain’t nobody wanna arrest you,” Rafe said.

  “You’re not a criminal anymore, you know. You don’t have to worry about anybody arresting you.”

  “There are people would arrest me for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, darlin’. For breathing the wrong air. Driving the wrong car. Looking at’em wrong.”

  Maybe so.

  “And besides, I just broke into a house. Burglary is a felony.”

  “We weren’t going to steal anything.”

  “Don’t matter,” Rafe said. “Still a crime.”

  Huh. It certainly wasn’t our first time making our way—or the first time I’d made my own way—into someone else’s space. I’d never really considered that I was committing a crime before, though, since I’d never broken and entered with malice aforethought. It was alwa
ys for other, nobler reasons. But if he was right...

  “I’m a criminal?” I said.

  “Fraid so, darlin’.”

  “Wow.”

  He grinned. “You prob’ly shouldn’t sound so happy about it.”

  “Wait until my mother hears!”

  The look he shot me was concerned, as if he wasn’t quite sure I was joking. “You know who’ll get blamed for this, don’t you?”

  He would. “I won’t tell her,” I said. “I’ll just enjoy the knowledge in peace and quiet.”

  He looked relieved.

  “And if Todd ever gives me a hard time about choosing you over him—” At the moment Todd and I weren’t on speaking terms. Easier for both of us that way, “—I might mention it then.”

  “He prob’ly won’t believe you,” Rafe said, hitting the entrance ramp for I-65 north.

  “Probably not. But you and I know better.” I looked around. “Where are we going?”

  “Back to East Nashville.”

  “Back to bed?”

  He slanted another look my way, and a grin. “For such a nice girl, you’re shameless.”

  “I told you before, I’m not that nice. And I have a lot of years to make up for.”

  “I’ll make it up to you later. In the meantime, text Tim. Tell him I wanna see him.”

  “Oooh.” I dug my phone out of my purse. “He won’t be able to refuse that.”

  “That’s the hope,” Rafe said and concentrated on merging the car into traffic as we approached 100 Oaks Mall.

  I sent my text, and it wasn’t even a minute later that my phone signaled an incoming message. It was no surprise at all to see it was from Tim. Where/when?

  “You’ve made his day,” I told Rafe. “Where do you want to meet him?”

  He shrugged. “Somewhere he’ll feel comfortable.”

  I told Tim to choose, and a minute later, had a time and location. “Twenty minutes, Fort Negley.”

  Rafe made a face but changed lanes so the car was pointed in the right direction.

  “He probably just wanted somewhere without a lot of people,” I said.

  “Pain in the ass,” Rafe answered.

  “It’s not that bad. And you can’t blame him for being cautious.”

  Rafe looked like he could, but he didn’t say anything else, just maneuvered the car off the interstate at Wedgewood Avenue and proceeded in the direction of Fort Negley.

  Nashville was occupied by Union forces during the War Against Northern Aggression—that’s the Civil War to those of you on the other side of the Mason-Dixon line—and Fort Negley was part of that. The Union built it in 1862, of limestone and earth, using free blacks and conscripted slaves, and named it after Union Army Commander General James S. Negley. They were preparing for an attack by the Confederates, certain the South would want Nashville back under their control again. But when the Battle of Nashville finally began in December 1864, the fighting took place mostly farther south, so Fort Negley didn’t end up playing a big part in any of it. The fort was abandoned after the war, although in an ironic twist, it served as a meeting place for the Ku Klux Klan during the reconstruction period.

  People tried for a long time to do something with it, but for one reason or another, nothing ever happened. The Nashville Sounds baseball stadium was built on one side of St. Cloud Hill, and the Adventure Science Center, a children’s museum, on the other, but most of Nashville forgot that Fort Negley existed, up there on top. But a few years ago a visitors’ center appeared beside the big stone gates. Effort was made to clear off the trees and brush that had grown on the hilltop over the past century, and after many years of being inaccessible, it’s now possible to climb the hill to the fort again.

  The visitors’ center is open longer hours during the summer, but now, on a sour February morning, it was closed. The parking lot was deserted when Rafe pulled the Volvo to a stop in the far corner.

  “Looks like he isn’t here yet,” I said, pointing out the obvious.

  Rafe nodded. “You wanna stay in the car, or go up the hill?”

  I hesitated. It was cold and dreary, and I was wearing suede boots with heels, and aside from that, I’m not really the type to climb hills. Tim isn’t either, so he might just want to talk in the car. But on the other hand... “Have you been here before?”

  Rafe shook his head.

  “Then let’s go up. You should see it.”

  He opened the car door and came around to open mine. “Is it worth seeing?”

  I shrugged. “The view is nice. Though it’s a bit chilly.”

  “I’ll keep you warm.” He put an arm around my shoulders. I snuggled into his side as we headed up the paved path circling the top of the hill.

  It took a few minutes to get there, and once on top, there honestly wasn’t much to see. I imagine the fort might have been impressive back when it was built, but all that’s left is a lot of low limestone walls, mostly overgrown, and two or three remaining doorways and staircases. Newly built wooden walkways snaked over and through the site so most of the time, we didn’t actually set foot on the hallowed ground, we just sort of floated above it. There were signs posted everywhere, telling visitors to stay off the limestone walls and keep to the walkways.

  The view was nice, though. On the side of the hill facing downtown, we could see the pyramid shaped roofs of the Adventure Science Center through the bare branches of the trees. And the downtown skyline stretched in front of us from side to side, the buildings spiky against the iron gray of the sky.

  Back in the old days, the soldiers at the fort would have been able to look down on downtown Nashville. Not so these days: aside from the trees obscuring the view, the buildings were taller than the hill, so we looked straight at the middle to upper floors.

  On the interstate circling the north side of the hill, tiny Matchbox cars chased one another from I-65 onto I-40 to the east and west. Beyond, I could see the church towers of Edgefield rising out of the gray tangle of branches on the other side of the river.

  On the other side, the parking lot side, we could see further. There were no trees, and all of South Nashville was spread out below and beyond, with Peach Orchard Hill in the distance. To our right was Reservoir Park with the remains of Fort Casino, and to the left, the giant floodlights of the baseball stadium, taller than we were.

  Directly below us, at the bottom of the hill, was the roof of the visitors’ center and the big stone gates. As we watched, a pale blue car pulled into the lot and parked.

  “There he is,” I said.

  Rafe nodded. “Think he’ll come up here? Or wait in the car?”

  “I guess that depends on how much privacy he wants. How afraid he is of being arrested.”

  “Not like I couldn’t arrest him,” Rafe said dryly.

  “I don’t think he’s thought of that.” I hadn’t thought of it myself, if it came to that. “Could you?”

  “Sure. You could arrest him too. Citizens arrest.”

  “That’s different.”

  “Comes to the same thing in the end,” Rafe said. “Tammy wants him, so she ain’t gonna quibble about who brings him in.”

  Down in the lot, a small figure got out of the car and slammed the door. We watched as Tim crossed the lot and began trundling up the hill. He was dressed in an oversized plaid jacket that looked like something a lumberjack might wear, nothing he’d have in his own closet, and he had his hands stuffed in his pockets and his head drawn in like a turtle. The mist glistened like diamonds in his hair.

  “Are you planning to arrest him?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I just wanna talk to him.”

  “About?”

  “Turning himself in.”

  “He’s not going to agree to that,” I said.

  “I have an idea.”

  “What kind of idea?”

  “One that might help.”

  “Unless you’re planning to bribe him with yourself—” and he’d better not be, “—I don’
t think that’s going to work.”

  “We’ll see.” He turned me around, away from the view. “Let’s go meet him.”

  I glanced over my shoulder down the hill. Tim was no longer visible. “OK.”

  We headed across the grass toward the Sally Gate, and the paved path beyond.

  We’d walked for about a minute, surrounded by the soft whisper of rain and the low hum of cars from the interstate, when a shot rang out, shattering the silence of the Civil War shrine.

  Tim had just come into view, just in time to shriek and fall to the ground.

  “Shit!” Rafe took a few quick steps to the right, pulling me along with him, and tumbled us both into the wet bushes at the edge of the path. Spiky sticks poked at my face and hands.

  Rafe fumbled behind himself and looked chagrined when he realized he didn’t have his weapon. Nonetheless, he turned to me. “Stay here.”

  I clutched at his sleeve as he made to move away. “Where are you going?”

  He glanced over his shoulder, down the path to where Tim was lying in a crumpled heap. It was impossible, from here, to see whether he was alive or dead. “Someone’s gotta check on Tim.”

  “Someone has a gun!”

  “And if I don’t stop whoever it is, Tim’s gonna be history. Stay.”

  He moved away, sticking close to the edge of path, but moving at a good clip. I hissed, but stayed. I’ve learned that he’s more effective—and more prone to take care of himself—if I don’t put myself in danger. It took everything I had to stay where I was, on my butt on the wet ground, with rain seeping through my coat into my buttocks, but I didn’t follow him.

  Another shot rang out. It came nowhere near me, but I lost my breath at the thought that the unknown gunman might be aiming for Rafe. Tim was down, already hit, and I was still and not very exciting, but Rafe was moving, determinedly making his way closer to Tim. If any one of us made for a good target, it was him.

  Tim yelled, so at least he wasn’t dead—and hopefully he didn’t get hit again, either—and Rafe flattened himself against the ground. My heart stopped beating, until he lifted his head again. When nothing happened, he continued moving south.

  I fumbled for my phone. I couldn’t do anything else, sitting here, but I could call for help, without attracting the attention of whoever was shooting at us. At them.