Right of Redemption

by Jenna Bennett

I sighed. “That was yesterday afternoon. Hours before he ended up dead.”

  He didn’t answer, but the silence spoke volumes.

  “He knocked on the door around four yesterday,” I said, resigned. “Told me his name was Steve Morris and that he owned the house before us.”

  “And the reason you didn’t tell me this last night was…?”

  “I was distracted by the SWAT outfit. And we didn’t know whether he was going to go ahead with—”

  I bit my tongue, a second too late, and winced.

  “With what?”

  I might as well just tell him, because at the rate I was going, he’d have it out of me in another minute anyway. “He said he wanted the house back. That there’s a statutory right of redemption period that allows him to pay us back the amount of money we paid for the house plus ten percent, and he’ll get it back.”

  There was a beat. “That true?”

  “I checked with Dix,” I said. “He said yes.”

  “You tell Jarvis about that?” Rafe wanted to know.

  “He didn’t ask.”

  “You don’t think maybe you shoulda told him anyway?”

  “No,” I said. “It didn’t have anything to do with anything. He wasn’t killed because he wanted the house back. That would mean that one of us killed him.” I glanced from Darcy to Charlotte. “And we didn’t.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Of course I’m sure. Besides, we were together last night. You and I. You know I didn’t go anywhere and kill anyone.”

  “And the others?”

  “Darcy spent the night with Nolan,” I said. “Charlotte lives with her parents and her kids.”

  Which was not the same as saying that Charlotte had an alibi, and Rafe has spent enough years deflecting to recognize an evasion when he hears one. “Savannah—”

  “She didn’t kill anyone, either,” I said. “Give me a break, Rafe. You can’t seriously suspect Charlotte of stabbing somebody in the heart with a screwdriver!”

  He didn’t answer that. “You’re gonna have to tell Jarvis about this right of redemption business,” he said instead. “It’s only a matter of time before he finds out about it on his own, and it’s gonna look really bad for all three of you if you haven’t told him yourselves by then.”

  I could quite see that, of course. But— “How is Jarvis going to find out? Steve Morris is dead. And we don’t think he had enough time to go to the county clerk’s office and start the paperwork between the time he left the house and the time they closed yesterday afternoon…”

  “That a chance you wanna take?”

  He didn’t wait for my answer. “I’m gonna tell Jarvis. When he asks you, you better admit to everything.”

  “Of course I will,” I said. “When you say everything…”

  I could practically hear his eyes roll. “I mean everything you told me. That he came and said he was thinking about taking the house back. That you talked to your brother, the lawyer, and he told you Morris could do that if he wanted, and there was nothing you could do about it. And that you had no reason to kill him, ‘cause you’ll get your money back plus ten percent.”

  “Right.” I breathed out. “Good point.”

  “That’s what you told me, ain’t it?”

  “Yes,” I said. “That’s what I told you.”

  “And it’s true, right?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s true. You can check with Dix.”

  Rafe made a noise but didn’t actually ask me whether Dix would confirm it if he did. “You OK?” he asked instead.

  I nodded. “We’re all fine. It was a bit of a shock, but compared to, say, Brenda—” The first dead body I’d found, with her throat cut from ear to ear, “there was very little blood. He just had a screwdriver sticking out of his chest—”

  Charlotte made a gurgling noise and turned pale. I lowered my voice a degree and continued, “But there wasn’t much blood.”

  “If whoever stabbed him left the screwdriver in the body,” Rafe said calmly, “that makes sense. The bleeding would start if the screwdriver was removed.”

  Good to know. “Anyway. As crime scenes go, it was pretty clean. No signs of a fight; not that it would be easy to tell in that location. He was stabbed in the chest, so he must have known—or at least trusted—whoever stabbed him.”

  “Or thought it was nothing to worry about,” Rafe said, which I guessed brought the suspicion back on us again. Morris would probably not have believed either of us—Darcy, Charlotte, or me—capable of murder.

  “What’s going on where you are?” I asked, to turn the conversation away from that possibility and onto something different.

  “Not much. Not till Jarvis called, anyway. We’re just riding around the area on the back of a golf cart. Keeping an eye out.”

  “You’re not on horseback?”

  I’d never seen Rafe on horseback. I tried to picture it, and got it to look pretty all right in my head, but there was no denying he looked much better astride the big black Harley-Davidson he prefers.

  “No, darlin’.” His voice was dry.

  “There are riding trails, right?”

  “There are trails. We’re driving’em.”

  “But you’re not seeing any neo-Nazis?”

  “Not so far,” Rafe said. “The day’s young. You want I should come home?”

  For my sake? “Not at all. We’ve got this under control. It’s nothing to worry about. You stay where you are and keep looking for bad guys.”

  He sounded amused. “Sure thing, darlin’. The baby all right?”

  I glanced at her. “The baby’s fine. Probably getting hungry, though.” And maybe wet. “I should go so I can feed her.”

  “Talk to you later, darlin’. Tammy says hi.” He disconnected before I could respond in kind. I dropped the phone back in my purse.

  “Well?” Darcy said.

  “Jarvis must have called him. Or maybe he called Grimaldi. She and Rafe are together down there. Either way, Rafe found out what happened and wanted to make sure we were OK.”

  “Was he upset?” The curve of Darcy’s mouth gave me the idea that she thought it might be funny if he was, although Charlotte looked worried.

  I shook my head. “Not aside from the fact that he thought I should have called him myself, instead of letting Jarvis break the news.”

  “Can’t blame him for that,” Darcy said.

  I shook my head. “Speaking of… did you talk to Nolan?” He’d probably prefer to be told in person, too, rather than hearing the news from Jarvis. Or through the grapevine.

  “On the way over,” Darcy said. “He’ll be by after work.”

  We sat in silence a second.

  “So what do we do now?” Charlotte wanted to know.

  I glanced at Darcy, who looked back at me. The two of us were fine. We had alibis for last night, and I’m sure Jarvis knew that we couldn’t have—wouldn’t have—killed Steve Morris. I was less sure about his faith in Charlotte.

  “I guess we’ll wait and see what Jarvis comes up with. If it looks like he’s going to be a problem, we’ll do what we can to figure out who else would have had reason to want Steve Morris dead.”

  “How would we do that?”

  I had no idea, to be honest. “I guess we have to figure out who Steve Morris was, first of all. And why he left his house sitting empty for more than three years without paying the taxes. Once we know that, maybe we’ll have a better idea who would have wanted him dead.” If he’d been gone because there was someone here he was trying to avoid, for instance.

  “I’ll ask Patrick,” Darcy said. “He grew up in Columbia. He might know.”

  I nodded. “And once Jarvis and the crime scene crew is done on Fulton, we can go talk to some of the neighbors. If Morris lived there for several years, some of them must have known him.”

  We both turned to Charlotte. She said nothing.

  “I’m going to take my daughter home,” I
said, and scooted out of the dinette. “When Jarvis gets in touch, I’ll make sure he knows that we’d get Darcy’s money back—” or at least most of Darcy’s money back— “if Morris decided to invoke his right of redemption. Hopefully that’ll take us off the suspect list. If he contacts either of you, make sure you tell him the same thing.”

  They both nodded.

  “How about we meet for lunch tomorrow, and compare notes. Afterwards, we can go over to Fulton and knock on doors if we don’t have the information we need by then. Will your mother baby-sit for an hour, Charlotte?”

  “I’m sure,” Charlotte said, without sounding sure of anything.

  “Noon at Beulah’s?”

  Charlotte grimaced, and I told her, “It’s convenient for Darcy.” She wouldn’t have to drive all the way to Sweetwater. And as an added bonus, we wouldn’t have to worry about seeing Dix, Catherine and Jonathan, all the kids, and Mother and Bob Satterfield, at the usual Sunday Brunch location at the Wayside Inn.

  “I’ll pick you up,” I added, magnanimously. “That way you can leave the van and the car seats with your mother. In case she wants to take the kids somewhere.”

  We agreed to that, and then we went our separate ways. Darcy back into her house after waving us off, Charlotte into the minivan for the drive to her parents’ house, and me and Carrie into the Volvo for the trip back to the mansion.

  * * *

  Jarvis called just after lunch. “I wonder if I could bother you to come down to the station, Mrs. Collier?”

  “Of course,” I said. “You aren’t planning to arrest me when I get there, are you?”

  He didn’t answer that. Not specifically. “It’s just to make a formal statement, Mrs. Collier.”

  “Because if there’s a chance I won’t be coming home,” I said, “I’ll have to make arrangements for the baby. Rafe’s still in Lawrence County, but I can leave her with my mother or sister. Other sister.” Since, if he was planning to arrest me, he was probably planning to arrest Darcy, too.

  “Are you going to confess to something that would cause you to be arrested?” Jarvis asked.

  I sniffed. “Of course not.” I planned to tell him what I hadn’t told him earlier, that Steve Morris had threatened to take his house back, but beyond that, I wasn’t planning to confess to a thing.

  “Then feel free to bring the baby,” Jarvis said.

  Great. I breathed out. “I’ll be there in about thirty minutes.”

  “I’ll be waiting,” Jarvis said, and hung up.

  * * *

  When I walked into the police station thirty minutes later, the girl behind the desk—the same girl who had been behind the desk every time I’d been here lately—gave me a smirk. “Your husband isn’t here. He and Chief Grimaldi left this morning. Together. In her car.”

  Her name is Officer Robinson, and she doesn’t like me. I’m sure she has a first name, too, and she has probably shared it with Rafe, but she hasn’t with me. He has that effect on some women, and this one had taken one look at him the first time he walked through the door, a few days into the new year, and started to ignore me. After a while, the ignoring wasn’t enough, and she started making snide little comments. Like this one, insinuating that Rafe and Grimaldi were off doing God knows what, while I was home with the baby, barefoot and, if not exactly pregnant, the second best thing.

  Except of course they weren’t doing anything they shouldn’t be, and I knew it, and Officer Robinson probably knew it too, unless the Laurel Hill taskforce was a secret, and no one had informed her what was going on. If she spent her time behind this desk in the lobby, maybe she didn’t need to know what was going on in the wider world.

  “I’m here to see Detective Jarvis,” I said, without responding in kind. Rafe came home to me every night, not Officer Robinson—and certainly not Grimaldi—so I had no need to stoop to her level. “If you’d let him know I’m here?”

  I didn’t wait for her to comply, just took my baby in her carrier over to the waiting area on the other side of the room. Jarvis opened the door to the inner sanctum a minute later, and waved for me. “Mrs. Collier.”

  I gathered up my coat and the baby again, and followed him through the door and into the bowels of the police station.

  I’d been here before, so I knew that Grimaldi’s office was the big one at the end of the hall. I’d also seen Jarvis inside one of the smaller offices on the left, and that’s where we ended up.

  “Have a seat.” He gestured to the two cloth-covered chairs in front of the desk while he walked around to the other side himself. I put Carrie’s seat on the floor and made myself comfortable on a chair while Jarvis took a seat behind the desk. The swivel chair squeaked when he sat down in it, and so did the leather. “Thank you for coming in.”

  “I’m happy to help,” I said politely. “Have you finished with the crime scene?”

  Jarvis nodded. “We won’t be releasing it for a few days, though. You’ll have to wait until Monday or Tuesday to get back to work.”

  Fine by me. I wasn’t looking forward to going back into the house, and I had a feeling Charlotte might flat out refuse.

  “Do you know who killed him?”

  “I was hoping you’d help me with that,” Jarvis said.

  Me? I shook my head. “I have no idea. Until Friday afternoon, I had no idea he existed. I spoke to him for two minutes, and that’s it.”

  Jarvis didn’t respond, and I added, “I don’t know anything about him other than that he used to own the house and lost it to foreclosure. And that he wanted it back.”

  Jarvis’s eyebrows twitched. “Is that what he wanted?”

  “That’s what he said. That he used to live there, and he wanted his house back. It doesn’t make any sense. If he wanted it, why wait so long? Why not just keep up with the taxes, so he wouldn’t lose the house in the first place? Two weeks earlier he could have gotten away with paying six grand in taxes instead of sixty thousand to us.”

  “Two weeks ago he was in jail,” Jarvis said.

  My jaw dropped, and I hiked it up quickly. “Jail?”

  Jarvis nodded.

  “Why?”

  “Rape and murder,” Jarvis said.

  I felt myself turn pale, and it was hard to get my voice to cooperate. “He didn’t look like a murderer.” Or a rapist.

  Not that you can always tell, I guess. But I’ve met a few rapists, and more than a few murderers. The rapists, to a man, had given me the creeps. The murderers, overall, seemed like normal people, and in most cases, I’d had no idea they were murderers until long after I first met them. But Steve Morris hadn’t struck me as either, in the couple of minutes I’d spoken to him.

  “He was arrested for the rape and murder of a young woman named Natalie Allen,” Jarvis said. “Three and a half, almost four years ago now. It’s public knowledge. Her body was discovered a couple blocks away. She lived down the street.”

  “And Steve Morris killed her?”

  “He was the main suspect,” Jarvis said. “Close in proximity. Knew the victim. We had a witness who said he’d argued with her. And he had a record for sexual misconduct.”

  I blinked. “He did?”

  Jarvis nodded. “Statutory rape. He didn’t have an alibi for the time of the murder, so we arrested him. He’s spent the past three years plus in jail, until he was released two days ago.”

  “Holy shit,” I said. “I mean… wow.”

  Jarvis didn’t respond, and I added, “It doesn’t sound like you need my help with figuring out who killed him, then. It’s probably someone who thought he got away with murder when he was released after less than four years. Have you spoken to the victim’s family?”

  Jarvis opened his mouth, and I made a face. “Sorry.” I couldn’t expect him to indulge my inquisitiveness the way Rafe and Grimaldi did.

  “Yes,” Jarvis said. “They’re alibied.”

  “By each other? Or by someone who can actually be trusted?”

  Because
family members providing an alibi for each other during the time when their daughter’s rapist and murderer was killed, didn’t strike me as iron-clad.

  “It was the middle of the night,” Jarvis said. “It’s hard for most people to provide a solid alibi.”

  It was, admittedly. Unless you happen to share your bed with someone, and Natalie’s parents probably did. If Natalie had brothers or sisters, they might, too. But again, those were people I would expect to lie should their spouse or significant other need to provide an alibi.

  Jarvis probably wouldn’t be amenable to giving me further details, so I resolved to dig up the details on the murder and on the Allens myself, later.

  “What I wanted to talk to you about,” Jarvis said, “is your friend.”

  “Charlotte? She wouldn’t do anything like this.”

  Jarvis didn’t respond to that. Or at least not directly. “You know her well?”

  “My whole life,” I said. “We were best friends growing up. She dated my brother Dix in high school.”

  “But she ended up marrying someone else.”

  It didn’t sound like a question, but I nodded anyway. “She went to college in North Carolina, and met a guy named Richard Whitaker. A doctor.” Just the kind of guy she’d been brought up to look for. The same kind of man I’d been brought up to look for, although my expectations had run more along the lines of lawyers than doctors. “They married after she graduated, and had a couple of kids. Then he knocked up one of his clients, and she left him.”

  “I spoke to her earlier,” Jarvis said.

  So he had called Charlotte into the police station before me. I wondered what, if anything, that meant. “She must have told you this herself, then.”

  “Not in so much detail,” Jarvis said blandly. “Her husband isn’t paying alimony?”

  I grimaced. “He’s punishing her for leaving. He’s the one who cheated, but I guess he expected Charlotte to just put up and shut up. When she didn’t—when she took the kids and left—I guess he decided to get her back the only way he could.”

  “By not paying support?”

  I nodded. “He’s waiting for a judge to rule on the alimony, he says. In the meantime, Charlotte and the kids are living with her parents, with no money and no job.”