A Cutthroat Business (20 page)

Dix’s voice took on the cadences of someone reading. “The incident took place at Dusty’s Bar in
Columbia
. The injured party was one Billy Scruggs. And I do mean injured; there’s a hospital report attached, and Scruggs had a broken nose, broken ribs, a punctured lung, two black eyes, and numerous contusions and abrasions.”

“Bruises and scratches,” I translated.

“Apparently Billy Scruggs was LaDonna Collier’s boyfriend. She must have been pretty upset about the whole thing, because she didn’t even come to the sentencing two days later.”

“Yikes.”

“It says here that Collier didn’t get off unscathed either. He had cuts and bruises, a split lip, a black eye, and a sprained wrist. No wonder his wrist got sprained, the way he was using it. Scruggs was a big guy, in good shape for his age — he was 45 — and this wasn’t his first fight. He’d been arrested a couple of times before, for the same type of thing. Drunk and disorderly conduct, brawling, domestic assault on his ex-wife...”

“Did he have to serve time, too?”

“Not on this occasion,” Dix said. “All the witnesses agreed that Collier started the fight. He pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of assault and battery, in order to avoid being tried for attempted manslaughter, I guess. There was certainly a case for it. He was sentenced to five years and got out in two.”

“Thanks,” I said. “So what happened back then doesn’t seem to have had anything to do with Brenda Puckett.”

“Not really. I’ll let you know if I find out anything else.”

“About Tyrell Jenkins, right? I don’t need to know anything else about Rafe.”

“I’ll talk to you later, sis,” Dix said and hung up. I did the same, shaking my head. It shouldn’t be this difficult to convince my family that there was nothing going on between me and Rafe.

My cell phone rang again before I had the opportunity to put it down. “
Savannah
? This is Alex.” Alexandra Puckett. I recognized the voice this time.

“Hi, Alexandra,” I responded. “What can I do for you?”

“What are you doing?”

“Just sitting in my office waiting to talk to the police again.”

I made a face when I realized I had, once again, spoken out of turn. Open mouth, insert foot. Mother had frequently admonished me not to move my mouth so fast that my brain couldn’t keep up, but apparently I hadn’t learned my lesson yet. Alexandra turned frantic.

“Is it about my mom? Has something happened?”

“No, no,“ I said soothingly. “It’s Clarice. Clarissa.”

“Clarice Webb is dead?! Oh, my God! Was she murdered too?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “It sounds like she committed suicide.” Alexandra didn’t answer. “I’m sorry,” I added. “She and your mom worked together for a long time. You must have known her pretty well.”

“Um... not really.” It sounded like Alexandra was regretting her outburst and was trying to seem calm, so I wouldn’t think anything was wrong. “She and mom weren’t friends, you know.”

“Really?” I’d always gotten the impression that that they were inseparable. Brenda was high-handed and demanding and Clarice was a sour-puss; still, Brenda had relied totally on Clarice, and Clarice seemed to have adored and admired Brenda.
 

“Nuh-uh. Clarice made my mom give her a job like a thousand years ago, when I was a baby, and she worked really hard, but mom said she had to pay her way too much. And they didn’t hang out or anything, except when they were working.”

“Oh,” I said. That probably shouldn’t surprise me. Brenda must have hired Clarice — Clarissa — after Graham Webster died, either to make Clarice drop the lawsuit or because Brenda actually felt guilty and wanted to be helpful. Or both. But I could understand why there was no love lost between them. If I’d been Clarice, and I was holding Brenda responsible for the death of my husband, I wouldn’t have wanted to hang out with her either.

“You know,” I said, in an effort to change the subject, “you never told me what the big announcement was, that your dad was going to make yesterday.”

“Oh, that.” Alexandra sounded disgusted. “It wasn’t anything exciting. Just that he and Maybelle are engaged.”

I managed, narrowly, to convert a shocked expletive to a ladylike cough. “Already?” His wife had only been in the ground for a couple of days. Wasn’t this rather precipitous?

“He says he’s waited long enough and he doesn’t want to wait any longer,” Alexandra said. After a second she added, reluctantly, “My mom and dad didn’t always get along that great.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, for lack of something better. She gave an audible shrug.

“They argued about stuff, you know. Money, and
Austin
’s grades, and my boyfriend... stuff like that.”

“Parents do that,” I agreed, although I couldn’t actually remember mine ever doing so. That was probably because I never did anything they wouldn’t have approved of. Until I divorced Bradley and declined to move back to Sweetwater and into the bosom of the family, of course. And until they somehow got the impression that I knew Rafe Collier better than I did. “Especially the boyfriend. If you get involved with someone they don’t like — or even if they just think you are — they’ll never let you hear the end of it.”

Alexandra agreed wholeheartedly. “My mom was usually too busy to notice what I was doing, but then Clarice saw me with Maurice one day, and told my mom, and she just freaked!”

“What’s wrong with Maurice?”

“Nothing,” Alexandra said promptly.

“If there wasn’t something wrong with him, why would your mother freak out?”

She blew out another of those gusty sighs. “Maurice is black, OK? My mom tried to tell me that it was because I’m too young, and that she hadn’t given me permission to date, but the real reason is that he’s black.”

“I see,” I said. “Um… are you sure she wasn’t telling the truth? I mean, I know… knew Brenda, and I never noticed that she had any prejudices to speak of. As far as I could see, she treated everyone the same.” Not necessarily very nicely, but the same. It didn’t matter if we were black or white, gay or straight, men or women; we were all subjected to Brenda’s magnificent condescension.
 
 

Alexandra didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure whether she believed me or not, but it didn’t seem as if she wanted to argue about it, at any rate. I added, “So tell me about Maurice. Where did you meet him? How long have you dated?”

It turned out that Alexandra had met Maurice about four months ago, when he had brought the family a pizza. After that, Alexandra had gotten in the habit of ordering a lot of pizza so she could keep seeing him. They had started dating exclusively at the beginning of the summer. She was obviously head over heels in love with him, and couldn’t stop talking about how handsome he was, and how smart, and how sexy.

“So what happened when your mother found out that you were dating?” I asked. Alexandra’s voice turned poisonous.

“That witch Clarice saw us in Maurice’s car last week. She told mom, and mom totally lost it. I thought she was going to have a heart attack. She threatened to ground me until I’m eighteen unless I agreed to stop seeing him. So I told her I would, just to get her off my back, but I didn’t, really. I just had to be more careful, and see him when they thought I was doing other things.”

“Like sleeping?”

“Huh?”

“Is that what you were doing the morning your mother died? Seeing Maurice? You said you were home alone, sleeping. But I called your house when I couldn’t get hold of your mom on her cell phone, and no one answered.”

“Maybe I just slept through it,” Alexandra said defensively. “Maybe I don’t have a phone in my room.”

“Yes, that’s likely.”

She sighed. “All right. Yes, I went over to Maurice’s. I had to wait until mom was gone, so it was after seven when I left the house. But when I got to
Reinhardt Street
he wasn’t there, so I drove home again.”

I felt a frisson down my back, as if someone had dropped a millipede with cold feet under my blouse. “Maurice lives on Reinhardt?”
Reinhardt Street
is in the same area as
Potsdam
and
Dresden
, a stone’s throw away from the Milton House Nursing Home. “What kind of car does he drive?”

“A green Dodge with lots of chrome and zebra seat covers,” Alexandra answered promptly. “Why?”

“No reason. Just curious. Listen, I’ve got to go. The detective is ready for me again.”

“Oh.” She sounded disappointed. “Give me a call later, OK? Let me know what happened to Clarice? Nobody ever tells me anything.”

I promised I would, and hung up the line. And leaned back on my chair contemplating what I had just learned. (No, Detective Grimaldi wasn’t ready for me again. I had fibbed, in order to get off the phone before I said something else that my brain hadn’t vetted.)

This was interesting information. Alexandra was dating a black youth in a green car, of whom her mother disapproved. Surely it had to be more than a coincidence that a black youth in a green car had driven by
101 Potsdam Street
when Rafe and I were standing in the drive on Saturday morning. Twice.

Was it possible that Alexandra’s boyfriend, tired of Alexandra’s mother telling her daughter that she couldn’t date him, had taken matters into his own hands and gotten rid of Brenda?

And then, because Clarice had been the one to tip Brenda off about the relationship, he had revenged himself on her too?

Was Alexandra Puckett dating a double murderer?!

It was almost four o’clock by the time Tamara Grimaldi had finished all her interviews and got back to me. By then, most everyone else had been dismissed, except for the small crew of detectives scouring Clarice’s office for clues. I had spent a couple of boring hours preparing a 300 piece mailing to my ‘sphere of influence’ — everyone I had ever known, with the exception of my ex-husband and his new wife — to tell them I was a real estate agent and to ask if they would please keep me in mind if they were thinking of buying or selling. That done, I had descended into reading the tawdry romance novel I keep in my bag for just such occasions, and was just getting to the part where the muscled highwayman was riding off across the moors clutching the swooning form of the heroine to his manly chest when Detective Grimaldi appeared at my door.

“Ready to go?”

I had been ready for two hours, but I thought it best not to say anything about that. Instead I rose with alacrity. “Sure. Where?”

She waited until we were outside on the sidewalk before she answered. “Since Mrs. Jenkins already knows you, I thought you might want to come with me when I talk to her.”

I stumbled slightly, but told myself it was because of the heels on my shoes and nothing she had said. “We’re going to the Milton House?”

She glanced at me. “Is there a problem?”

I had to hustle to keep up with her long-legged and short-heeled gait. “Um... no?”

“You don’t sound sure.”

“No, it’s just that... well... Rafe Collier told me not to go back there.”

“What does Collier have to do with it?”

“Nothing that I know of,” I admitted, “but he gave me the distinct impression that he would prefer not finding me there again.”

Detective Grimaldi sniffed. “As long as you’re with me, I don’t see what he can do about it.”

He couldn’t, not while I was with her. It was later, when I was alone, that worried me. I decided against saying so. She thought I was wimpy enough already, and a complaint like that would only reinforce the impression.

“Haven’t you spoken to her already?” I asked instead. “With her being the owner of the house where the murder happened, I mean?”

Detective Grimaldi shook her head. “I spoke to Officer Spicer, and he told me all about Mrs. Jenkins. I didn’t see the need to waste my time or hers with an interrogation. I doubt she would have been able to produce anything coherent.”

Most likely she was right.

“I have to talk to her now, though.” She didn’t sound pleased about it.

“Sorry,” I said.

She smiled, not very nicely. “That’s OK. At least I’ll have you there, in the event things get difficult.”

Great, I thought.

The detective must have shared my low opinion of the nursing home, because I could see her aquiline nose twitch with disgust when we walked into the lobby.

“Tamara Grimaldi, Metro PD.” She flashed her ID.

The nurse at the desk — the same one who had allowed Rafe to walk off with me the day before — jumped to her feet with a guilty look. “What can I do for you, Detective?”

She threw a panicked glance over her shoulder, probably hoping that someone with more authority would appear.

“I’d like to see Mrs. Jenkins.”

The receptionist looked like she was thinking of pretending she didn’t know who Mrs. Jenkins was.

“Tondalia Jenkins,” I said.

She looked at me. And recognized me. And looked unhappy to see me. Tamara Grimaldi didn’t say anything, just raised her brows. The receptionist, lacking the courage to object, waved her hand in the direction of the hallway. “Your girl there knows the way.”