Item 1: Rafe had finally admitted to committing the two open house robberies and to having been the person to whom Lila had made her ill-advised comment about tying her to the bed.
Item 2: He had denied killing both her and Connie Fortunato. I believed him, although I wasn’t kidding myself: that might be because I wanted to believe him, and not necessarily because he was telling the truth. I had no doubt whatsoever that he could lie like a rug if it suited him, and there wasn’t much doubt that he could kill, should the circumstances demand it. I didn’t, however – or didn’t want to – believe that he could kill like this.
Item 3: He’d had three other men with him when he committed the robberies, quite possibly the three I had seen him talk to at the Shortstop Sports Bar last Sunday. Ishmael, A.J. and Antoine. Although that didn’t necessarily follow; it could have been one or more of them, none or all three. It could have been Julio Melendez, or Malcolm Rodgers, or even Perry Fortunato; all of whom had some variety of dark eyes, and all of whom were middling to tall and would look something like Rafe in padded coveralls and a ski mask. With the possible exception of Julio, whom I hadn’t seen yet, but if he was four feet tall and scrawny, surely Rafe would have pointed it out.
Item 4: Julio Melendez was involved in the robberies somehow; most likely as a fence. It hadn’t occurred to me earlier, in the flush of being caught with my hand in the cookie jar, so to speak, but Rafe had probably been there tonight to meet with him. That would explain why Julio hadn’t left the warehouse with his employees, as well as what Rafe was doing there in the first place. It wasn’t like he’d come to talk to me; he couldn’t have known I’d be there. There wasn’t much else down there by the river – unless he was dropping off a donation to the Second Harvest Food Bank, which I doubted – and his tactical retreat when Spicer and Truman showed up hinted strongly at a healthy sense of self-preservation. I wondered where he’d ended up, and whether he was planning to make himself scarce until this whole thing had blown over. Maybe he was driving out of town at this very moment, to resurface three months from now in Kingsport or Bolivar or Lexington, Kentucky. Maybe, with the police sniffing around him, he was doing a bunk again, the way Todd said he’d been doing for the past ten years.
The thought was surprisingly upsetting. Or maybe upsetting isn’t the right word. It wasn’t like I cared, after all, so maybe annoyed would be a better description of my feelings. And I couldn’t exactly blame him. If he thought that Julio Melendez would rat him out to Detective Grimaldi, it made sense to get out of Nashville while the going was good. Not to mention that he probably didn’t have an alibi for yesterday afternoon, and couldn’t prove he hadn’t killed Connie. My issue wasn’t so much with the fact that he’d gone, as with his manner of going. I mean, “See you around, darlin’,” isn’t my idea of a suitable goodbye. If he was planning to drop off the face of the earth for weeks or months, the least he could do was tell me.
Not that he owed it to me, exactly. As I was fond of pointing out to Dix or Todd or anyone else who’d listen, it wasn’t like we were involved. I’d had my chance with him, more than once, and had turned him down. But surely we had enough of a relationship – friendship, acquaintanceship, whatever – that I deserved at least a proper explanation. Or if not that, a forthright goodbye. One that wasn’t open for interpretation. Sayonara, darlin’. It was nice knowing you. Take care of yourself. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. And since we won’t be seeing each other again, at least not until we’re both old and gray, how about a goodbye-kiss...?
Infuriating, that’s what it was. For him to just up and leave without a word, like I didn’t deserve to be told what was going on...
But no, I told myself, I was jumping to conclusions. I had no proof that he’d actually gone anywhere. Time enough to curse him when I tried to look for him and he couldn’t be found.
I went back to my list. However, the list wasn’t really working out. I wasn’t any closer to figuring out who’d done what to whom than when I’d started. Rafe had committed the robberies, with a little help from his friends. Julio Melendez had fenced the goods, and Heather Price had probably picked the targets in the first place. Or Julio had picked Heather’s brain. But anyone could have overheard or heard about Lila’s remark to Rafe and decided to take advantage of it. And as for Connie Fortunato’s murder and the theft of the O’Keeffe...
It occurred to me that with everything that had been going on, I’d been remiss in my duty. Someone I knew had died, and I’d been too busy with my own problems – tracking down Elspeth Caulfield and having deep conversations with Rafe – to do the proper thing. I hadn’t known Connie well, and knew her husband even less well, so I was probably exempt from dropping off a casserole, but surely I ought to have found the time to give Perry Fortunato a call with my condolences on his loss.
And what about Tim? Did Tim even know that one of his clients had passed away? The news probably hadn’t hit the paper yet – if Tim even read the paper – and until Detective Grimaldi had some more time to figure out what had happened, she might want to keep a lid on it. But she had called me; surely she wouldn’t mind if I told Tim...?
I decided it was the better part of discretion to ask first, just in case she did mind, so I dialed the detective’s number, hoping that maybe she hadn’t gotten around to interrogating Julio Melendez yet, and was able to talk. When I’d been pulled in for questioning last month, in connection with Brenda Puckett’s murder, she’d let me sweat for what had seemed like several hours before she got around to talking to me, and I thought she might be doing the same to Julio.
The phone rang many times without an answer, and I was starting to think I’d have to hang up, but eventually she came on. “Grimaldi.”
“Hi, detective,” I said politely, “this is...”
“I know who it is. What do you want?”
“Oh. Um...” Rattled, I explained that I wanted to know whether it would be OK to tell Timothy Briggs about Connie’s death, since I wanted to ask him for Perry Fortunato’s number.
“It’ll be on the evening news anyway,” Tamara Grimaldi said, “so go ahead. Just don’t give him any details.”
I promised I wouldn’t. “By the way, I saw Officers Spicer and Truman down on River Road earlier. How is it going with Julio Melendez?”
“They told me,” Detective Grimaldi said. “Julio’s sweating.”
“Oh. Um...?”
“Yes, Ms. Martin. Officer Spicer mentioned that Mr. Collier was there, too.”
“I told him you wanted to talk to him,” I said self-righteously.
“I’m sure you did. I should have figured it would just make him run. Next time, I’ll make sure that Spicer and Truman know not to let him get away.”
I thought it best to change the subject. “So... um... has Julio said anything?”
“I haven’t spoken to him yet. After another hour or two, I figure maybe he’ll be annoyed enough to blurt out something he shouldn’t. Especially if I hit him with a double homicide.”
“Good luck,” I said. “I’ll just call Tim now, and get Perry’s number.”
“Remember, no details.” She hung up without saying goodbye, and without giving me the time to do so. I grimaced and dialed Tim’s number.
As Realtors, we’re pretty much expected to be available 24/7. People will call at all hours of the day and sometimes the night, expecting us to drop whatever we’re doing to jump when they snap their fingers. Like doctors, Realtors are always on call. That said, we do have the right to a social life, too. Tim must be indulging his, because he didn’t answer. I hesitated for a moment while I waited for the voice mail to kick in, but eventually I decided this wasn’t really the kind of news I should break in a recorded message. Instead, I just told him I had something to talk to him about, and I would catch up with him at the office in the morning. If he wasn’t planning to be there, please give me a call.
That done, I sat back and chewed my lip, wondering whether I ought to look up
Perry Fortunato’s number in the phone book and call him anyway. But no, it didn’t seem right to do so without having told Tim first. The Fortunatos’ were Tim’s clients, not mine, and although the reason for my call had nothing to do with business, it’s a no-no for a Realtor to contact another Realtor’s client directly. It would have to wait until tomorrow.
At that moment, the phone rang, and I jumped in surprise, and then grabbed it. Maybe it was Tim, calling back. Or detective Grimaldi calling to tell me that Julio Melendez had confessed to both robberies and both murders. Or Todd, inviting me to dinner. Or Rafe, calling to say he was leaving town. Or Rafe calling to say he wasn’t leaving town... “This is Savannah.”
“Hi, Savannah,” a male voice said. I sorted through my mental file, and had just about come up with the appropriate match when the voice continued, “this is Gary Lee Hodges.”
“Hi, Gary Lee,” I said, trying my best not to grin. It’s possible to hear a smile in someone’s voice, and I didn’t want Gary Lee and Charlene to think I was laughing at them. Or for that matter to think that I knew anything at all about them and what they’d been up to. Although I was pretty sure I had Detective Grimaldi and her ‘little chat’ to thank for this call, I rather doubted she had told them that she had told me about their DNA-samples. “How are you? And your lovely wife?”
“Fine,” Gary Lee said. “Just fine. Um... Savannah?”
“Yes?”
“Would it be possible for you to meet us sometime tomorrow? There’s something we’d like to talk to you about.”
“Sure,” I said, allowing myself a tiny smirk. Confession-time, most likely. “I’d be happy to. When and where?”
We agreed on 3:30 at the office, and I hung up with a giggle. Tomorrow, when they explained to me what had been going on, I’d most likely be blushing, but at the moment, the idea of what they had to admit to was humorous.
My list of clues and suspects was pretty well dead in the water by now, but I did my best to go back to it. My heart wasn’t in it, though. I wanted to do something, not just sit here and think. Maybe I could call Heather Price and talk to her about what had happened. She must be devastated at having lost two friends in just a few days. Unless she and her boyfriend had been responsible, of course, but her shock and revulsion at what had happened to Lila had certainly seemed genuine when I first met her on Monday. And on top of the loss, she had found one of the bodies. I knew what that was like. Maybe I could even discover something important in the process of talking to her.
She had given me her card, and now I dug it out and dialed the number. (Life must have been so much more difficult before telephones...) “Heather? This is Savannah Martin.”
“Oh.” Heather sounded like she had a cold, but it was probably just a stuffy nose from crying. “Hi, Savannah. What can I do for you?”
“I heard about what happened to Connie Fortunato. How are you?”
She hiccupped. “All right, I guess.”
“I thought maybe you’d like to go get some dinner or something. Or lunch tomorrow. Something to take your mind off things.”
“Oh.” She sniffed again. “That’s really nice of you, but... um... I’m waiting for someone to call. I don’t want to go anywhere just in case I miss it.”
“Of course not,” I said quickly. Waiting for Julio to call when Detective Grimaldi let him go, most likely. “I guess it’s getting kind of late anyway. How about tomorrow? I have to go to the office in the morning, and I have an appointment in the afternoon, but I could meet for lunch in between, if you’d like.”
Heather hesitated. I prepared myself for a rejection, thinking she was probably trying to come up with an excuse to say no. Instead she said yes, although her voice was notably unenthusiastic. “Sure. Unless something comes up.”
“Great,” I said, trying not to take it personally. “Do you have a favorite place?”
Anywhere except...
“I really like Fidelio’s. Lila and Connie and I used to go there sometimes.” She sniffed.
I grimaced, but did my best to keep my own lack of enthusiasm out of my voice. “That’s fine. I had lunch with Lila there myself last week, as a matter of fact. When do you want to meet?”
We agreed to see each other at Fidelio’s Restaurant at noon the next day, and I hung up, feeling a little better. At least I’d done something, and I had a fairly full day scheduled tomorrow, which is always helpful. There’s nothing worse than lying in bed in the morning, alone, and having nothing to look forward to but a day full of nothing.
By the time I got to the office the next morning, Tim had already heard the news. When I bearded him in his den – what used to be Walker’s office, the biggest and nicest in the building – he was sitting behind his (Walker’s) desk, reading the paper and looking positively stricken.
“Oh,” he said when I knocked on the open door, “it’s you. Come in.”
“I see you’ve heard the news.” I sat down in one of the chairs across the desk from him. The headline read, “Priceless Work of Art Missing!” with an accompanying photograph of the O’Keeffe. It was unmistakable, with its bright pink flowers and spiky needles.
Tim nodded. “Disgusting,” he said, folding the paper over to hide the picture.
I agreed. “The way they worded it in the article, poor Connie Fortunato’s death seems like an unfortunate side issue to the theft. Like the painting was more important than her life. They didn’t even run a photograph of her.”
“And they didn’t mention my name,” Tim said.
“How is Mr. Fortunato holding up? Have you spoken to him?”
Tim shrugged. “I guess he’s all right. After so many years, some of the gilt has rubbed off the lily, if you know what I mean.”
“Really?” I wasn’t surprised, considering the way Connie had looked at Rafe and the way her husband had looked at me last Sunday. What was surprising, was that Tim had come right out and said it. The Fortunatos’ relationship wasn’t any of my business, or his, and under the circumstances, when Perry Fortunato had just lost his wife, putting it like that seemed beyond rude and well into callous. Not that I’d expect any less from Tim, who has all the delicacy and sensitivity of a cheese grater.
He nodded. “Oh, yes. I think she said they’d been married for more than ten years, and of course she was getting a little long in the tooth, poor dear. Holding on for all she was worth, going the surgery route and everything, but when a woman’s pushing forty, it’s pretty much all down-hill, isn’t it, darling?” He smoothed a hand over his sleek, blond head. “Everything sags; the face, the butt, the boobs... Of course, that’s what the good Lord invented the Wonderbra for!” He winked.
“Or, I suppose, the Wonderjock.”
Tim’s eyes widened. “How do you know about the Wonderjock, darling?”
“Oh, I spoke to someone who was wearing one the other day,” I said, wishing I’d engaged my brain before I’d opened my mouth. Conversations about men’s underwear really make me uncomfortable. Tim lowered his voice conspiratorially and leaned closer, across the desk.
“You’re not talking about the dishy Mr. Collier, I hope? Because if I found out that he has to wear a Wonderjock, that would just ruin all my favorite fantasies!”
“No,” I said, feeling my cheeks burn, “I’m not talking about Rafe.”
“Thank God,” Tim said, looking relieved. “Because, let me tell you, darling...”
“I’d rather you didn’t, if it’s all the same to you.” I stood up. “If you don’t mind, I didn’t come in here to discuss Rafe Collier’s underwear. I actually just wanted to make sure that it would be OK for me to call Perry Fortunato to give him my condolences. He’s your client, and I don’t want to go behind your back.”
“Sure. Call him. Tell him I’ll be in touch later.”
I promised I would, and withdrew, back to my own tiny office. But when I dialed Perry’s number, he didn’t answer the phone, and I was forced to leave a message, condoling him on the loss of
his wife and telling him to call me if there was anything I could do. It’s something one says in circumstances like these, and the words just fell out of my mouth without conscious thought, but after I’d done it, I sort of wished I hadn’t. The way he’d looked into my blouse and let his lips linger on my hand last Sunday, had made me feel uncomfortable, and I hoped he wouldn’t take my remark as an invitation to call for a kind of sympathy and consolation I wasn’t prepared to give.
Chapter 16
Heather Price was late, and looked like she had spent a sleepless night. She was a handsome woman under normal circumstances, but today her eyes were red and swollen from crying, her face was blotchy, and she had made no effort to make herself more presentable. Her face was devoid of make-up, and her hair was flat and tucked behind her unadorned ears, while the rest of her was simply dressed in a pair of khaki pants and a green T-shirt. She looked like the ‘before’ part of a before-and-after makeover.
“Hi,” I said when she plopped herself down across from me. “You look like you could use a drink.”
“And how!” She waved at the waiter, who glided over. “Give me a scotch. Double.”
“And mademoiselle?” The waiter turned to me.
“White wine, please. Thank you.” I don’t usually drink alcohol during the day, but I thought I should probably try to build a connection with Heather.
The waiter nodded and withdrew, and Heather leaned back on her chair and breathed out. “God, I feel like crap.”
I nodded sympathetically. She looked like crap, too, but of course I couldn’t say so. “I was sorry to hear about Connie,” I said instead. “I only met her a few times, but she seemed like a nice woman.”
“She was a peach,” Heather agreed. “Much too good for that husband of hers.”
From her vehemence, and her careful diction, I wondered if she might not have had a drink or two before coming here, as well. “Had you known each other long?”
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