“Why do you ask?” I added, belatedly.
Perry made an apologetic moue. “I don’t mean to offend...”
“Don’t worry.” My voice was dry. “I know him too well to take offense at anything anyone has to say about him.”
“Well...” Perry still looked apologetic. “If you’ll forgive the impertinence, he didn’t seem like the type of person I’d expect would interest a well-brought-up young woman like yourself. I was wondering if perhaps he was using you.”
“Oh.” I blushed. “No. He’s not.”
“Not necessarily in a sexual way,” Perry said, with a penetrating look at me. “But perhaps... well, I wondered if he might have had something to do with what happened to my poor, dear Connie. That he was using you to gain entrance to the house.”
I shook my head. “Absolutely not.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I trust him,” I said firmly. “I know he wouldn’t kill anyone.” Stealing the painting, yes; I could maybe see that. But not murder. And certainly not rape and murder. “He’s not the type who has to resort to rape to get a woman. No offense.”
Perry didn’t answer, just looked at me. For long enough to make me squirm.
“If you say so,” he said – finally! – and headed for the door.
I breathed a sigh of relief, which I did my best to hide with a breezy goodbye. And then I waited for him to disappear down the drive before I locked the door behind him and went back to the kitchen to find my phone.
I wish I could tell you that the open house was a smashing success and that several people showed up who seemed seriously interested in buying the place, but unfortunately, such was not the case. In actuality, nobody showed up at all, save for a couple who seemed to find the opulence of the house a little oppressive, and a few gawkers who mostly were interested in seeing the bedroom where the murder had taken place. I’d dealt with the same phenomenon after Brenda Puckett’s death, when I hosted an open house at 101 Potsdam Street. The one where Walker tried to kill me. At least no one was trying to hurt me today, and no one was chanting and trying to contact Connie’s wandering spirit, either. Thank God.
Just before 3:30 Beau Riggins finally called. “Good afternoon, gorgeous.”
“Same to you,” I said.
Beau giggled. “What are you doing with yourself?”
“Hosting an open house at the Fortunatos’. You?”
“Just rolling out of bed. Late night.” As if to provide proof, he yawned and then apologized.
“No problem,” I said. “Now that I’ve got hold of you, would you be willing to answer a couple of questions for me?”
“For you,” Beau said expansively, “anything.”
“Thank you. It’s about the open house robberies and the murders. You know, Lila Vaughn’s murder, and now Connie Fortunato’s.”
Beau shuddered. I could hear it through the phone. “Awful business. Just shocking. I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to go back to the Fortunatos’ again.”
After a moment he added prosaically, with most of the drama gone from his voice, “Of course, I may not have a job there anymore. With Connie gone, I doubt Perry’ll keep me on.”
“Perry doesn’t swing that way?”
I meant it facetiously. Beau took me seriously. “Oh, no. Perry’s got his problems, but that isn’t one of them.”
“What kind of problems does he have?”
I hadn’t contacted Beau to find out about Perry Fortunato – I was more interested in Beau himself, and the coincidence that he’d worked for all three of the houses that had had items stolen – but I thought discussing Perry might open the door for further confidences. If I gave him the chance to tell me about Perry first, maybe he’d be more willing to talk about himself later.
“Money, mostly,” Beau said with an audible shrug. “He likes to visit pay-per-click porn sites, from what I understand.”
Eeeuw. “How can he afford to pay your salary if he’s wasting all his money on the internet?”
“Oh, it isn’t his money,” Beau said. “Or I guess it is now. But Connie was the one with the money. Her father made a pile in the stock-market – one of those guys who started with nothing and ended up raking in money the way the rest of us rake leaves in the fall – and he left it all to his little girl when he died. Perry’s been making inroads, but the money is Connie’s. Or was.”
“So it was Connie who was paying you.” And presumably watching him swing his feather duster.
Beau knew what I was thinking. “She was a nice lady. I’m gonna miss her.”
“And her money.”
Beau giggled. “There are plenty of other people who’ll gladly pay my salary, sweetie. I won’t be hurting. But I liked her. She deserved better than that idiot she married.”
“Somebody else said that, as well,” I said. “That same someone also told me that you work for all three of the houses that have been robbed.”
I had hoped for some kind of reaction, but I got none at all. “I work for a lot of people,” Beau said.
“Mr. Givens,” I said, “and his boyfriend. The Caldwells and the Fortunatos.”
“So?”
“So don’t you think it’s a bit of a coincidence that three of your clients have been robbed in the past three weeks?”
“Maybe so,” Beau said, “but that’s all it is. A coincidence. I didn’t rob anyone. Why would I? I make good money doing what I do.”
“Not as good as you could on what went missing. Paul and Simon’s art collection must have been worth a pretty penny, and I’m sure the Fortunatos’ O’Keeffe was worth even more.”
Beau mentioned a price that made my jaw drop and my eyes bug out of my skull. “How do you know?”
“Heard them talking about it,” Beau said. “I was dusting that little room of Perry’s behind the master bedroom, and I guess they didn’t realize I was there.”
“Perry has a room behind the master bedroom? I never noticed it.” And as a result, never mentioned it to any potential buyers, either. Granted, in a house this size, one little room wouldn’t make much of an impression, but still: a room is a room.
“You won’t,” Beau said, “unless you know it’s there. It isn’t a secret or anything; it isn’t even much of a room. More of a big closet, really, behind the other closet. With racks to hang clothes and shelves to store things on. He keeps his dirty magazines in there, and his collection of porn videos.”
“Yuck!”
“A lot of people have goody-drawers,” Beau said tolerantly. “Perry’s goody-closet is a little bigger than most, is all.”
“Double-yuck! Oh, gack!”
Beau chuckled. “You should see Paul and Simon’s goody-drawer. Perry’s collection looks tame compared to theirs. And there’s not much in the way of… um… tools. Anyway, I was there, dusting, and they started arguing in the bedroom. Perry asked for money, and Connie said no. He brought up the O’Keeffe, saying that she wasn’t hurting for money with that thing hanging on the wall, and she could afford to give him some more. But Connie refused, and told him if he didn’t stop wasting her daddy’s money on online whores she’d divorce him, and they got into a filthy row, which ended with him banging out and slamming the door.”
“Yikes,” I said.
“Yep. And then Connie freaked out again when she realized I’d heard the whole thing. I had to do some stuff I’m not proud of to calm her down.”
He was on the other end of the phone line – for all I knew on the other side of town – or I’m not sure I would have dared to challenge him. “I don’t suppose you mean that you tied her to the bed and strangled her?”
“Of course not!” Beau said. “I told you, I liked her. I’d never do anything to hurt her. If you have to know, I slept with her.”
“Oh,” I said. “Sorry.”
“No need to apologize. It wasn’t that bad.” He hesitated for a moment before adding, “I can’t imagine why she put up with Perry’s crap.”
<
br /> I couldn’t, either. Bradley has been normal to the point of boring in bed, but if my husband had had a goody-closet full of dirty magazines and videos, I couldn’t imagine letting him touch me.
“So was that all you wanted to know, darling?” Beau asked.
“Pretty much, I guess...”
“In that case I’m going back to bed. All this talk about goody-drawers has put me in mind of certain things. I’ll talk to you later.” He hung up before I had the chance to say goodbye, let alone to thank him for his help.
Of course the mention of Perry’s secret closet had piqued my interest. Not because I wanted to look at his collection of dirty magazines and videos, let alone his sex-toys, but we have a secret room at the Martin plantation too. Rumor has it that a Martin lady from the time of the War Against Northern Aggression hid a Confederate spy there while the Union soldiers were mucking about outside. Which was a whole different ballgame than what I found in Perry’s cubby.
As Beau had said, the ‘secret’ room wasn’t all that secret once you knew where to look for it, and it also wasn’t much of a room. More of a walk-in closet, really. The access was through a wall of shelves that swung out when I pulled on it. I stepped into the small space and looked around.
Beau hadn’t been kidding. There must be hundreds of dirty magazines in there, in stacks on the shelves. Most of them looked well-used, as if someone had been thumbing through them a lot. And they weren’t the soft, suggestive variety of which Dix had owned a couple back in his teens. (He’d hid them under the mattress in the old slave cabin so mother wouldn’t find them.) These were the hard-core kind, with nothing suggestive about them at all. If Perry had been my husband, he would have ceased to be so as soon as I got a look at his collection. To call it disturbing didn’t even begin to cover it.
The movies were of the same caliber, with titles that made me blush, although a few looked like home movies. They were dated, not labeled. Counting back on my fingers, I realized that the last one was dated for Friday a week ago, which just happened to be the day of Lila’s murder. There was also a folder with photographs, some of which Perry must have downloaded off the internet, and some of Connie. One was of Connie with a man, one who looked a lot like Beau Riggins. I turned it face down, blushing. How totally icky of Perry, to photograph his wife having sex with someone else.
Entirely apart from the fact that the display was making me feel nauseous and creeped out, I didn’t want to linger in the secret room too long. It was getting on for 4 PM and the end of the open house, and I had a duty to Perry – no matter how disgusting he was. I was just about to close the shelves behind me when I noticed a black gym bag over in the corner. It looked out of place; where everything else in Perry’s personal space was obsessively neat and orderly, the bag seemed to have been negligently tossed there at some point. Curiosity got the better of me, and I tiptoed back into the little room and dragged it out from under the shelf. It had a zipper across the top, and when I pulled it, the bag opened. I stuck my hand in, grabbed the topmost thing – black and woolen – and pulled. And dropped it with an exclamation a moment later. It was a black ski mask.
Chapter 19
“Yoo-hoo!” a voice called. “Anybody home?”
I swung around on my heel with a terrified squeak. It wasn’t 4 o’clock yet; Perry wasn’t supposed to be back!
Yet he was. Clearly. It was his voice I heard. “Hello? Savannah?”
What happened next can only be put down to extreme stupidity on my part. Instead of stepping out of the closet and trying to spin what was going on in a way that might get me out of the house with my skin intact, I did the worst possible thing: I slammed the shelf shut, closing myself up inside Perry’s special closet.
Of course I realized almost immediately how dumb I had been, but by then it was too late. I couldn’t find a way out. There had to be one, but in the dark, with my hands shaking and with no clue where to look, I wasn’t able to locate the latch or lock that kept the secret closet a secret. My handbag and open house paraphernalia were still on the kitchen island, so Perry would know I was around somewhere – unless he thought I’d been abducted – and sooner or later he’d find me. And what would happen to me then was too terrifying to contemplate. The ski mask I’d seen made him a prime suspect in Lila’s murder, the videos and magazines were additional evidence of his liking for bondage and rough sex, and I could come up with several reasons why he might have killed Connie. She had the money in the family and he didn’t. He wanted her to sell the O’Keeffe and she wouldn’t. She had threatened to divorce him. Plus, she might have suspected him of killing Lila, and if what Heather had said was true, Connie wouldn’t have stood for being publicly humiliated. Or she might have walked in on him taking the O’Keeffe, and he killed her over that. The open house robberies and Lila’s murder had probably given him the idea, and if Perry had taken the painting, that would explain why there was no sign of forced entry. If he could pin both the robbery and the two murders on someone else – like Rafe and his associates – he’d be home free. At least until I’d stumbled into his closet and found his bag.
All of these thoughts went through my mind in flash, before I could jolt myself into action. Hands shaking, I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket, thanking God for my habit of keeping it in my pocket instead of in my bag, and used the lighted display to dial Detective Grimaldi’s number. And got her voice mail. Cursing – silently, of course – I hung up and tried again. 911 this time. Only to be put on hold. Which really shouldn’t happen when one’s in mortal danger. I hung up again, feeling as if time was running short. I couldn’t count on Dix to answer, or Todd, or Tim. The only other person whose number I knew by heart, and whose phone had always been answered by a live person – someone who might actually be of some use to me – was Rafe. Or more accurately, Wendell. I heard Perry come into the bedroom as I fumbled to punch the numbers into the phone. His voice was playful and joking, but not in a good way. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”
I put the phone to my ear with a shaking hand, listening to it ring on the other end. Pick up; come on, pick up!
The closet shelves swung outward just as Wendell answered. “Grocery store.”
“I need Rafe,” I said, as quickly and succinctly as I could. “I need help. Perry Fortunato…”
And that was all I got out, before Perry reached down and snatched the phone out of my hand. I heard Wendell’s stock answer float into thin air, “Nobody here by that name,” before Perry snapped the phone shut and tossed it over his shoulder into the recesses of the closet. Looking at me and shaking his head sadly, he clicked his tongue. “Savannah, Savannah. What am I going to do with you?”
It wasn’t a question I wanted to answer, and judging from the light in his eyes and the excitement distorting his features, I thought he had a pretty good idea anyway, without my input.
When he grabbed me by the arm and yanked me to my feet, I did my best to fight and get free, but all it got me was a clout on the side of the head which made me see stars. While I was blinking away tears and trying to pull myself together to try again, I heard Perry scrabbling in the dark, and then I heard a fizzing sound, and the next second, everything went black.
When I woke up, I was still in the Fortunatos’ house. For that matter, I was still in the master bedroom. The sun outside the window was a little lower in the sky, so I estimated that an hour or so might have passed, but no more. My head hurt, and I was feeling nauseous. This time it wasn’t just from fear and disgust, though; it was physical. From everything I had read and seen on TV, I rather thought Perry had hit me with a taser and knocked my cells for a loop.
While I was unconscious, he had moved me from the closet onto the bed, and tied my hands to the headboard with a piece of twine. He had also undressed me.
I wasn’t totally naked, so I suppose it could have been worse. The idea of Perry stripping off my underwear while I was out cold, was beyond disgusting and terrifying; it was abhorr
ent.
On the other hand, the fact that he’d taken off my blouse and skirt was bad enough. I was still wearing the pink bra and panties I had put on that morning to match my pink blouse. Other than that, all I had on were earrings and black pumps with an ankle strap. My own. They looked a lot tartier without proper clothes to dress them up. And I had a perfect view of them, and of everything else, in the mirrored ceiling.
Perry was nowhere to be seen, which was the one positive aspect of the situation. The flipside was that although he wasn’t here now, he was sure to be coming back, and there was nothing I could do but wait, since I couldn’t free my hands without help. I tugged as hard as I could, and twisted my hands, but all I accomplished was to make the rope bite into my wrists. An image of Lila’s hands, wrists abraded, in the photograph that Detective Grimaldi had shown me the day after Lila’s death, flashed through my mind, and I closed my eyes to fight back the tears.
The door to hallway was closed, but after another few minutes, something seemed to happen downstairs. I heard what sounded like a thump, and then, unmistakably, footsteps on the stairs. Rapid, impatient steps. I pictured Perry bearing down on me, and renewed my thrashings. I knew it wouldn’t do any good, but it was the only thing I could do, so I did it. A hand grabbed the doorknob and twisted, but the door didn’t open. It strained, as if something heavy was pushing against it from the other side. For a breathless second, nothing happened, and then the door exploded inward with a splintering noise and an almighty bang as it slammed against the wall and bounced back. Rafe stood in the doorway, looking like the avenging hero in one of my favorite bodice rippers: muscles rippling, chest expanding, and eyes black as pitch.
“Thank God!” I breathed.
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