His eyebrows lowered. “I don’t need your help doing my job, Mrs. Collier.”
“That’s not what you said last month,” I pointed out. When his scowl deepened, I added, “I’m not trying to do your job, Detective. I’m just concerned that, like with Natalie’s murder, you’re going to arrest the obvious suspect—Charlotte, in this case—and not consider anyone else.”
“I’m considering everyone,” Jarvis said stiffly. “As for Natalie Allen’s murder, there were no other suspects.”
“There had to be. The jury acquitted Morris. They obviously thought someone else did it.”
“There wasn’t anyone else!”
I put my hands on my hips. “What about Rodney?”
“Rodney Clark had an alibi,” Jarvis said, his teeth gritted, “and no motive.”
“He was the boyfriend. The boyfriend always has a motive.”
“Not this time,” Jarvis said. “They weren’t breaking up. He wasn’t cheating. She wasn’t, either. Everyone we spoke to said they were doing fine. And he was with his best friend when she died.”
“And you don’t think his best friend would lie for him?”
“I’m sure he would,” Jarvis said, with patience that was starting to fray around the edges, “but Clark and Scoggins were also surrounded by a lot of other people in a movie theatre—”
“Movie theatres are dark! They could have left, and nobody would have noticed!”
And then I stopped. “Wait a second. Did you say Scoggins?”
Jarvis nodded.
“Kyle Scoggins?”
“Yes,” Jarvis said.
“Well, there’s your motive, right there. Kyle Scoggins is a neo-Nazi. He’s part of the case my husband’s working, down in Laurel Hill.”
Jarvis looked blank.
“Surely you know about that. There’s a group of neo-Nazis meeting in Laurel Hill for target practice. Kyle Scoggins might be one of them.” We didn’t actually know that yet, but it was likely. Either way, he was a nasty specimen who wouldn’t be above murder.
Jarvis didn’t say anything, and I added, “If Kyle Scoggins is a Nazi, maybe Rodney Clark is one, too.” Maybe Rodney was the other guy from Beulah’s. “And maybe Natalie found out and they killed her.”
“We’re getting off the subject, Mrs. Collier,” Jarvis told me. “If Clark and Scoggins killed Natalie, they wouldn’t have killed Morris. And I thought you were trying to come up with another suspect for Morris’s murder so I’d leave your friend alone.”
He was right. I was. While it was interesting to speculate, it didn’t actually matter who had killed Natalie. What mattered was that Charlotte not go to prison for murdering Steve Morris. “Did you happen to check Rodney’s alibi for this Friday night?” Just in case he hadn’t killed Natalie, and thought Morris had.
“Yes,” Jarvis said. “He and Scoggins were at the movies.”
“Again?”
Jarvis didn’t respond to that. Maybe it didn’t sound as far-fetched to him as it did to me.
“Fine,” I said. “What about Natalie’s family? Any chance one of them killed Morris?”
“No,” Jarvis said, and I could tell by the set of his jaw that he dearly wanted me to stop asking him these questions.
“Were they somewhere else? Halfway across the state so they couldn’t have done it?”
“They were here,” Jarvis said. “In their house. Together.”
“So just a few yards away. And you can’t tell me Natalie’s parents wouldn’t alibi each other for the murder of the man who killed her.”
Jarvis didn’t respond. After a few seconds he pried his jaws apart, though, to tell me, “Feel free to leave now, Mrs. Collier. I’ve got this under control.”
“I’m sure you do, Detective,” I said politely. “Officer Enoch said to tell you to walk over there after you’re done here. I guess he wants to know what’s going on.”
Jarvis eyed Enoch’s house.
“Any objection to me telling Rafe that Kyle Scoggins is BFFs with Rodney Clark? It would probably help with his case.”
“Go ahead,” Jarvis said. “Have him call me if he has any questions.”
I told him I would, and then I picked up Carrie and the car seat and walked away from Mrs. Oberlin’s house toward my car.
* * *
”I feel like somebody dropped the ball on the Natalie Allen thing,” I told Rafe a couple hours later.
We were sitting on the peach velvet love-seat in the parlor, while Carrie was enjoying tummy-time on the floor, and Pearl was watching from her pillow in the corner. The fireplace had a flicker going, I had my feet in Rafe’s lap, and the whole situation was lovely, warm and comforting. The only part that wasn’t, was the conversation. But then we were used to that. “They were so gung-ho to arrest Steve Morris that I feel like they didn’t spend enough time eliminating any other suspects.”
“How d’you know how much time they spent?” Rafe wanted to know. “You ain’t seen the case file.”
I had to admit that I hadn’t. “But Jarvis told me that Rodney Clark, Natalie’s boyfriend, was off the hook because he had no motive and an alibi. And then it turned out his alibi was his best friend, who you know would probably lie for him, and the other part of the alibi was being at the movies, which isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. The movies are dark. One or both of them could have walked out at any time, and chances are no one around them would have noticed.”
Rafe nodded, running his thumbs up the sole of my foot. I had told him about the Natalie Allen/Rodney Clark/Kyle Scoggins connection as soon as he’d walked in the door earlier, so we were already past that point. Dinner had been spent talking about that. Now we were onto my concerns for Charlotte. Again.
“And then there’s the motive,” I continued. “Jarvis said Rodney Clark didn’t have one. That he and Natalie were doing fine, weren’t breaking up, nobody was cheating, etcetera, etcetera. And that might have been true. But if Rodney’s best friend is a white supremacist, isn’t it likely that Rodney’s one, too? And that they were, even back then?”
Rafe shrugged, but nodded.
“Maybe Natalie didn’t like that about Rodney,” I said. “Or maybe—if he wasn’t a Nazi—she just didn’t like that he was hanging out with one.”
Rafe dug his fingers into the arch of my foot, and I squeaked and tensed before I forced myself to calm down and keep going with the conversation. “That sounds like motive to me. Or at least like it might be a motive. If she wanted to break up with Rodney, maybe Rodney killed her. Or if she wanted Rodney to break up with Kyle, maybe Kyle killed her. Or maybe she threatened to tell someone they were Nazis, and they both killed her.”
“No evidence of any of that,” Rafe said.
“But it makes sense. Doesn’t it?”
I waited for him to shrug again, and then I went on. “But Jarvis didn’t consider any of it. He just took Rodney’s word for it that he and Kyle were together and couldn’t have killed Natalie, and then he arrested Morris instead.”
“Where were Clark and Scoggins when Morris was killed?”
I made a face. “Believe it or not, they were at the movies again.”
“Folks do go to the movies every couple years,” Rafe said. “Not like they can say they were practicing goose stepping and Sieg Heil at Laurel Hill, after all.”
No, I supposed not. “I’m not saying they did it. I have no idea whether they killed Natalie or not. Or killed Morris or not. I’m just saying that they might have, that there are other suspects in this case in addition to Charlotte—or in addition to Morris—and it would be nice to see Jarvis do something about investigating them.”
“How d’you know he don’t?”
He abandoned my right foot and moved to my left.
“I guess I don’t,” I admitted, crossing my legs the other way to give him better access. “He arrested Morris for Natalie’s murder without doing a particularly good job of eliminating the other suspects. I’m afraid he’s g
oing to do the same thing to Charlotte.”
“He mighta gotten away with that under Carter,” Rafe said. “Carter wanted to solve cases. Tammy won’t let nobody get arrested without evidence.”
“I’m sure she wants to solve cases, too.”
Rafe nodded. “’Course. But part of the reason she’s here—the reason we’re here—is to look into this kinda thing. Corruption, or malfeasance, or just general cutting of corners that Carter allowed ‘cause he was trying to make himself and his department look good.”
He dug his thumbs into the arch of my other foot, and I squeaked and twitched. He grinned and eased up. “Paul Jarvis ain’t a bad detective. He kept on going on the Mason investigation last month, when a lotta other cops woulda let it go. There wasn’t much evidence to go on. Just gut feeling. But he kept scraping away at it ‘cause he thought there was something there.”
And he’d ended up solving—or helping to solve—two cold cases, in addition to the fresh murder that had kicked the whole thing off.
“I just want him to arrest someone other than Charlotte,” I said, as, down on the blanket, Carrie gurgled and pushed herself up on her chubby little arms, kicking her feet. “Charlotte didn’t do it. That means someone else did. And that means that there has to be another suspect out there. Rodney Clark, or Natalie’s family. Someone with a reason to kill Morris. If Rodney’s part of your group of white supremacists, he isn’t above murder.”
“He ain’t above talking about it,” Rafe said, “but that don’t mean he’d actually kill anybody.”
No, I guess it didn’t. A lot of people talk big until they’re faced with doing whatever it is they say they want to do, and then they can’t go through with it.
“He has an alibi for Friday night,” I said, “but it’s Kyle Scoggins again, and I don’t know how far I’d trust him. And Mr. and Mrs. Allen alibi each other…”
Rafe nodded. “Not exactly iron-clad, either.”
No. Even if it seemed to be good enough for Jarvis.
We sat in silence a moment. Down on the blanket, Carrie was still doing pushups.
“Here’s another theory,” Rafe said eventually, his eyes on the baby. “Say Morris didn’t kill Natalie. That don’t mean that somebody couldn’t have killed Morris because they thought he’d gotten away with it. But say he didn’t. Say someone else did.”
“If Morris didn’t, then someone else would have had to. Someone did.”
Rafe nodded. “And say that someone thought he’d gotten away with it. It’d been a couple of years, and the first trial ended in a hung jury. Another trial was coming up, and there was no reason to think that’d go any differently.”
“But then Ida Burns died,” I said, “and the defense dug up Morris’s old girlfriend.”
“And Morris was released. And came back home. How d’you think Natalie’s killer would feel about that?”
“I don’t imagine he’d be happy,” I said slowly. “Not only had Morris been acquitted, so there was the chance that the police would open the case again and look for someone else. But Morris might have wanted to look for someone else, too. Mrs. Oberlin suggested that. That he came back to clear his name.”
“He spent three years in prison,” Rafe said, “and he woulda had a lot of time to think. If he thought he knew who mighta been responsible, he coulda made life difficult for that person.”
We sat in silence a moment.
“I wrote off Ida Burns,” I said. “I mean, I got this little tingle down my spine, you know, when I heard that she’d been a witness in the first trial and had died before she could testify in the second. But Morris was in prison when that happened, and couldn’t have killed her, so I kind of wrote that possibility off…”
He arched a brow.
“But then Mrs. Oberlin said that Mrs. Burns might be rethinking what she’d heard. Which would only help Morris, right? If she stayed alive to testify that she wasn’t sure it was him she’d heard after all?”
Rafe nodded. “That’d give somebody else reason to want to shut her up, though. If she was changing her tune.”
Exactly what I’d been thinking. “Jarvis handled that case, too. Mrs. Oberlin found Mrs. Burns. She called Enoch—makes sense, right?—and Enoch called Jarvis.”
“And Jarvis determined natural causes?”
“I think the ME did,” I said. “Or at least there didn’t seem to have been any question about it being anything but natural causes.”
He thought for a moment. “Lotsa deaths on Fulton.”
Indeed. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to double-check the results from Mrs. Oberlin’s autopsy, if there is one? Or whatever the ME decides to do in her case?”
“Any evidence it was something more than a natural death?”
I shook my head. I hadn’t noticed anything like that. “But the timing is interesting. She might have seen something on Friday, and not even realized it.”
He nodded. “I’ll talk to the ME tomorrow. And to Jarvis, too. I’ll have to anyway, to discuss the way his case—again—touches on mine.”
That made sense.
He added, pensively, “I’d like to have a chat with Clark and Scoggins without letting’em know that we know about the Laurel Hill connection, too. Maybe Jarvis’ll agree to take me along on an interview, so I can size’em up without them realizing I’m doing it. That way, I can take a look at the way Jarvis handles the Morris case at the same time.”
“Thank you,” I said.
He gave me a look. “I’m not just doing it for you, darlin’. Part of the reason I’m here is to help Tammy flush out bad cops. Jarvis came up from Alabama with Carter. I gotta give him a close look.”
I nodded. “I still appreciate it. Is there anything I can do to help?”
“We can spend some time doing something that isn’t work,” Rafe said.
We could, although with the baby on the floor and the dog watching us, what we could do right this moment was quite limited.
And then I realized he wasn’t reaching for me, he was reaching for the remote. “Basketball OK?”
“Fine,” I said, as down on the floor, Caroline flopped over on her back with a surprised squawk.
Pearl gave a yip and startled Carrie into a howl. I moved to pick her up, but Rafe beat me there.
“Hush, baby.” He cradled her against his chest, one big hand on her fuzzy, pink butt, and sat back down on the loveseat with a grin at me. “D’you see that? She turned over. First time, right?”
It was the first time I’d seen her flip from her front to her back. And judging from her startled reaction, it was new to Carrie, too. “She’s growing up.”
“Not so much that you’d notice,” Rafe said, and reached out an arm to pull me close. We snuggled together, all in a huddle, while Pearl grinned a doggie grin from over in the corner.
Eighteen
When I got to Fulton Street the next morning, Charlotte wasn’t there yet. I brought Carrie inside, put her on the kitchen floor, and got busy grouting the tile we’d hung yesterday afternoon. There wasn’t a lot of it, so it only took an hour or so, including the time I spent figuring out how to grout tile. I’d looked up the process on YouTube yesterday, and asked Rafe—who had done some grouting in Mrs. Jenkins’s house in the past—but this was my first time actually attempting the work myself. It turned out to be messy, but strangely satisfying. A little bit like playing with mud, something I hadn’t been allowed to do much as a girl. Not lady-like.
By the time I was finished, Charlotte still hadn’t shown up, though, and I was starting to get worried. Had Jarvis arrested her, and no one had told me? Or had she had a car accident on the way over, or something like that? If something was wrong and she couldn’t make it, why didn’t she call?
I tried to call her, but she didn’t answer. And when I called the Albertsons’ house, the phone just rang and rang, which wasn’t encouraging.
I had to wait for the grout to dry anyway—or so I told myself. It wasn’t ent
irely true, because there were lots of other things I could be doing, that had nothing to do with the grout. But they were things that would be easier with four hands instead of two, and anyway, Charlotte was supposed to be here. So in the end, I ended up bundling Carrie back into the car, and climbing behind the wheel, and rolling off down the road.
Only to roll to a stop two seconds later, when I saw a guy get into a car in the Allens driveway.
It wasn’t any of the Allens. Or at least I was pretty sure it wasn’t. He was too young to be Natalie’s father, and anyway, I recognized him. Or thought I did. I hadn’t gotten a particularly good look at him the other day—when I walked into Beulah’s he’d had his back to me, and when I’d sat down, I’d had my back to him—but I was pretty sure I was looking at Rodney Clark.
So I stopped down the street—blocking Carl Enoch’s driveway, as it happened, although Enoch’s truck was gone, so he was probably at work—and waved Rodney down as he backed his car off the Allens property.
He rolled down the window. “Help you?”
It didn’t look like he recognized me. I was wearing a different coat today than I’d worn at Beulah’s for Sunday brunch, and I had my hair up in a ponytail and minimal makeup on, so maybe it wasn’t surprising. It was a good thing, anyway, so the adage about gift horses came to mind.
“I’m sorry,” I said, giving him my sweetest smile, “but aren’t you Rodney Clark?”
He squinted at me. “Who wants to know?”
“I’m Savannah Martin,” I said, and then wondered if maybe I shouldn’t have given him my name. It was too late for that, of course, but I could leave Rafe’s name off, though, so I did. “My sister and I bought Steve Morris’s house two weeks ago. We’re fixing it up. Or we were, until he came back and got killed in what was supposed to be the master suite.”
I watched for his reaction. If he’d killed Morris, would he preen? He probably wouldn’t admit it, but would I be able to see some sort of pride on his face or in his eyes?
What he did, was smirk. “That’s too bad.”
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