A Cutthroat Business (12 page)

He nodded to Truman who, having secured his gun in its holster, bent and lifted the old lady in his arms. He headed for the door with his burden, and I addressed myself to Spicer.

“Where are you taking her?”

Spicer didn’t seem to mind sharing the information with me. “Back to the nursing home. She keeps walking off, and they keep calling us to bring her back. Poor old bird.” He shook his head.

“Who is she?” I asked, although I was pretty sure I already knew the answer. This had to be the homeowner; who else would worry about intruders?

Spicer’s words confirmed my theory. “Name’s Jenkins. Lived here up till just a few weeks ago. Can’t remember it ain’t her home no more.”

“Alzheimer’s?”

Spicer shrugged. “Or she’s just forgetful. Happens to most of us when we hit eighty or so.”

I nodded. When I didn’t say anything else, Spicer tipped his uniform cap and started to walk off. He stopped after a few steps and turned back. “What happened here, anyway?”

“Oh.” I glanced at Rafe, who was standing next to me, sunk in thought. “We came back to see the house one more time. We’d only been here a few minutes when Mrs. Jenkins turned up. She must be an early riser.”

Spicer confirmed that she was. “Old folks don’t sleep so good no more. Nursing home attendant said she disappeared before breakfast. Ain’t but a quarter mile walk.”

I nodded. “At first she was worried about us being here, but then she seemed to think she recognized Rafe. She called him Tyrell.” I paused, hoping that Spicer could give me some more information, but if he had any, he chose not to share. “Then we heard the car door slam, and she realized you were coming. I don’t think she likes it where she lives now.”

“Ain’t the nicest place in the world,” Spicer agreed.

“She asked us — Rafe, really — to help her, and when he didn’t say yes right away, she must have realized he wasn’t Tyrell after all. She started screaming for help, and that’s when Truman came running in.”

“I’ll have a talk with the boy,” Spicer grunted. “Can’t have him pulling his weapon on innocent bystanders. Though I don’t mind telling you it’ll make it easier with Mrs. J. Last time we did this, we thought we’d have to tase her.”

“That poor old lady?”

“Hey, lemme tell you, she can be a handful. She scratched both of us, and bit Truman. I guess I’d better get her back there before she wakes up.” He tipped the cap again and headed for the door. This time he didn’t stop. I waited until I heard the car door slam and the tires crunch before I turned to Rafe.

“That was interesting.”

He muttered something. I added, “Do you want to look around some more? We could go upstairs again. Or downstairs. You didn’t see the basement last time.”

“I think I’m done. Thanks.” The ‘thanks’ was an afterthought. He sent me a distracted glance as we headed out of the kitchen.

“No problem. So do you want the house?” I smiled optimistically.

“Who wouldn’t want this?” He looked around at the peeling wallpaper, the dull wood floors, and the sagging ceilings.

I grimaced. “Right.”

“I’ll let you know.”

“You do that. Here, why don’t you take one of my cards? That way you can call me if there’s anything you need.”

I dug a couple of business cards out of my purse. “In fact, take several. Spread the joy.”

He accepted the cards with a grin. “When you say ‘anything’...”

“I mean something vaguely related to real estate. Like, you want to buy this house. Or you want to see it again. Or you want to see another house. Or you’d like the name of a good mortgage broker.”

“Right.” He pocketed the card, although he didn’t stop smiling. I locked the front door and put the key back into the lockbox in case someone else wanted to see the place. When I straightened up, Rafe was still standing in the same spot. We looked at each other in silence for a few seconds.

“Well...” I said finally, awkwardly, “it’s been nice seeing you again.” I was surprised to find that I sort of meant it.

“You too.” That grin still wasn’t going anywhere.

“I guess I’ll... um... go now.” I gestured towards my car. He nodded pleasantly. “Places to go, people to see. I’ve got to stop by the office to let them know I escaped unscathed. I’ll... um... see you around.”

“I’ll call you.”

“Right.”

He didn’t say anything else, so I did what I’d said I’d do, and went. Down the stairs and over to the car. Into the driver’s seat. Down the drive and through the gate. He was still standing on the porch when I turned the corner. And although I couldn’t see it, he was probably still grinning, too.

Clarice, Tim, Heidi, and Walker had their heads together when I walked into the office.
Walker
was stone-faced, and Clarice looked so much like a hen that I slowed down, frowning. “What’s wrong?”

Tim straightened up. “Well, hello,
Savannah
. Late night?” He smirked. I muttered something, but didn’t ask for clarification. Tim’s choice of words was bound to be a lot more cutting than Rafe’s. He added, cheerfully, “Have you seen the
Voice
today?”

The
Nashville Voice
is a weekly paper that comes out on Thursday morning, just in time for the (long) weekend. This was the first issue since Brenda’s death, so it wasn’t surprising that they had published something about her. What I didn’t expect to see, was a six page layout with a headline that screamed ‘BRENDA PUCKETT KICKS THE BUCKET!’ in letters three inches high. The accompanying photograph showed Brenda at her worst: taken from below, so all three of her chins were prominently displayed and her elephantine calves looked like tree-trunks. Her mouth was open, as if she were yelling at someone, and she was gesturing with a finger. It wasn’t the middle finger, but it looked rude nonetheless.

“Ouch,” I said, averting my eyes. Tim giggled.

“This is terrible!” Clarice was wringing her hands. Heidi nodded fervently.

“What’s the article about?” I inquired.

It was Walker who answered, in a heavy voice. “Apparently someone has remembered that Brenda once was investigated by the real estate commission. It’s twelve or thirteen years ago now.”

“Fifteen,” Clarice said.

“Investigated for what?” I wanted to know.

Walker
hesitated. I waited, and eventually he felt compelled to explain. “It had to do with a property she owned in downtown. An office building she wanted to convert to condos.”

“And?”

Walker
shrugged. Elegantly. I turned to Clarice. “You’ve worked for Brenda for a long time. Don’t you know anything about it?”

Tim tittered and glanced at Clarice. She pursed her lips, unwillingly. “I hadn’t started working for her yet, when this was going on.”

“So you don’t know anything about it?”

Tim giggled. “Nothing more than what’s in the paper,” Clarice said firmly. I turned back to
Walker
.

“Why are they bringing it up again? If it was fifteen years ago, it can’t have anything to do with what happened to her.”

Walker
’s voice sounded as if the words were being dragged forcibly from him. “I guess they’re implying that she might be engaged in something similar again. Some shady deal that could make someone want to kill her.”

I hesitated. “Was she?”

“Well! I never...!” Clarice sniffed.
Walker
raised his voice.

“If she was, I hadn’t heard about it.”

I nodded. I hadn’t really expected him to know and not put a stop to it. Walker Lamont Realty was Walker Lamont’s pride and joy. He had built it from nothing up to a very well respected, profitable company that handles a lot of upscale clients and expensive properties. If someone was doing something that might damage the reputation of the company or of Walker himself, I would expect him to land on them like a ton of bricks.

“This isn’t going to hurt you or the company, is it?”

And by extension the rest of us. Not that I personally was in a position to be hurt much. If the company went belly-up, I’d have to find another broker who’d take me on, but that was as bad as it could get for me.
Walker
was another story. He’d have to go back to being a sales agent in someone else’s brokerage firm, and something like this wasn’t exactly going to improve his chances of getting that coveted spot on the real estate commission, either.

His face was sober. “We’ll just have to hope that it doesn’t. It probably won’t, but you just never know.”

I looked around. “Would anyone mind if I read the article? I’m sure someone will ask me about it sooner or later, and I may as well know what I’m talking about.”

Tim giggled. Clarice sent me a look of loathing. “Knock yourself out,”
Walker
said. “We’ve got a stack of
Voices
. No one’s going to mind if you take one.”

Clarice looked like she minded, but she didn’t dare speak up. I took a paper and stuck it in my bag before I went to my office, a converted coat closet off the reception area. While the computer booted up, I opened the
Voice
and started reading about Brenda.

The Wicked Witch of the South had started in real estate during a time when interest rates were almost 20% and suburbia was the place to be. The urban neighborhoods, so popular now, were blighted areas where no one wanted to live. Brenda had been ahead of her time in seeing the revitalization currently going on in our inner-city neighborhoods. Her foray into the downtown arena had taken place too soon, was all. If she had waited twelve or fifteen years, she could have made a killing. Investors were developing lofts and condos all over downtown these days, and selling them for big bucks. Or had been, until the bottom dropped out of the market last year, and everything slowed down.

At any rate, instead of paying off big-time and making everyone involved super-rich, Brenda’s plan to make the Kress office-building into upscale condominiums had backfired. It had left her with a smudge on her record, and had left her business partner facing disgrace, bankruptcy and a criminal investigation.

He was employed in some branch of banking or finance, the article said, and he had been channeling other people’s funds into Brenda’s project when he couldn’t come up with the capital for the ever-increasing renovations out of his own pocket. Somehow — and the article didn’t go into detail, although it hinted darkly at something similar to insider trading — Brenda had managed to bail out just before the whole thing came crashing down. Her partner had not been so lucky. Left holding the bag, he killed himself rather than face the music.

His widow had brought a lawsuit against Brenda, claiming self-dealing and breach of the Realtor’s code of ethics, but nothing had ever come of it. All the current members of the real estate commission had declined the
Voice
’s invitation to comment — not surprisingly, as they had all come aboard long after the Kress-case had been forgotten — and although Lawrence Derryberry, the reporter for the
Voice
,
had tried to contact the widow, he had been unable to find her. I wasn’t sure whether that meant that she was dead herself by now, or had remarried or otherwise changed her name, or if she just plain didn’t want to be found.

The article was long on speculation and innuendo, but short on facts. It didn’t even mention the name of the business partner, or his widow. Not that something like that ought to be difficult to find. Unless the woman had a good reason for wanting to stay under the radar, of course. Like, for instance, if she had been at
101 Potsdam Street
on Saturday morning to cut Brenda’s throat…

OK, so I knew that finding Brenda’s killer wasn’t my job. Tamara Grimaldi got paid to do it, and I should just leave it to her. She seemed capable, and besides, snooping is unladylike. It wasn’t as if I had a personal stake in the matter, to justify my interest. The detective didn’t suspect me — I’d been elsewhere when Brenda was killed — and I didn’t care enough about any of the others to worry about them being suspected. Except maybe Walker, but nobody in her right mind would suspect him.

On the other hand, Rafe Collier was my client now, by default, and maybe I owed it to him to keep him out of jail. As long as he was innocent, of course. Which I wasn’t ready to bet much on. Still, for my own safety as well as for any other reason, surely it couldn’t hurt just to make a few inquiries...

I started on one of the people-search engines, by typing in
Rafael Collier
and leaning back in my chair while the computer worked. It ticked and buzzed for a while, then dinged to let me know the search was complete. There were a few people who shared the name Rafael Collier, but none with an address in
Memphis
, or
Nashville
or Sweetwater or for that matter anywhere in
Tennessee
. Nor in
West Memphis
,
Arkansas
. So the sheriff had either misunderstood about Rafe living in
Memphis
, or Rafe had lied. Imagine that. I stuck my lower lip out and switched to Google.