Stalking Steven

by Jenna Bennett

  Maybe.

  “And secondly, even if it is unusual for Steven to miss work, we don’t know that it has anything to do with Mrs. Grimshaw’s murder. Which happened last night between ten and midnight, by the way. Do you know where Steven was then?”

  I shook my head. I had no idea. “I assumed home with his wife.”

  “Have you spoken to Diana?”

  I said I hadn’t.

  “Call her,” Mendoza said.

  “Why do I have to call her? It’s your murder case.”

  “We don’t know that Steven’s involved in my murder case,” Mendoza told me. “It’s your cheating husband case. And you’re working for Diana. She won’t think anything of it if you call to see whether Steven’s home. If I call, she’ll wonder why.”

  He had a point. I pulled out my phone and dialed.

  It was the middle of the workday, and Diana was a busy divorce attorney. I thought it was possible that she was talking to a client, or having lunch with a colleague. Part of me wished she wouldn’t answer the phone, so I wouldn’t have to tell her what Steven had been doing yesterday. You’ll notice I hadn’t written up a report or filled in my client yet. There was a reason for that. Diana wasn’t just a client. She was a friend. And I didn’t want to give her bad news.

  She was available to talk, though. The phone rang once, then twice, and then her voice came on. “Gina.”

  “Diana,” I said. And didn’t know what else to say. I could hear the tension in her voice, and I didn’t know what to do about it.

  “He’s cheating, isn’t he?”

  “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I followed him from the university yesterday afternoon. He drove to a house in Crieve Hall. Do you know where that is?”

  “Neighborhood south of Nashville,” Diana said. “Lots of ranch houses.”

  “Do you know anyone who lives there?”

  “I can’t think of anyone. What was he doing there?”

  “He went inside a house,” I said. “Spent more than an hour there. Then he left and drove back to the university.”

  “Who lives there?”

  “We’re trying to figure that out,” I said. “Zachary knocked on the door last night, with a pizza, and said the girl who opened the door was around twenty-two or twenty-three, blond and very pretty.”

  Diana moaned softly.

  “But that was later. There could be other people living in the house, as well.”

  Diana didn’t answer. Mendoza waved at me to go on.

  “The reason I’m calling,” I said, turning my back on him, “is that I can’t find Steven this morning. Zachary went to the university to see if he could track down the blonde. We thought maybe she was one of Steven’s students. But he didn’t see her. He also said that Steven wasn’t around.”

  I waited for her to tell me that Steven was home, in bed, with a bucket next to him.

  She didn’t. “That’s strange. I talked to him this morning. He didn’t say anything about not going to work.”

  If his absence from the university had anything to do with the girl, then he probably wouldn’t mention it to his wife. But now at least we knew he really wasn’t where he was supposed to be. “Maybe you could call him? Try to figure out where he is, so I can pick up his trail?”

  “I can do that,” Diana said. “I’ll call you back.”

  She was gone before I even had the chance to say goodbye, let alone mention anything about Mrs. Grimshaw’s murder. I turned back to Mendoza. “She doesn’t know where he is. She’s going to call him and get back to me.”

  Mendoza nodded.

  “So Mrs. Grimshaw was shot between ten and midnight last night?”

  “That’s the ME’s preliminary determination. It could change upon further examination, but it’s probably pretty close.”

  “I was home by then,” I said. “I have no idea what happened.”

  “I didn’t think you would,” Mendoza told me.

  “Have you spoken to the neighbors?” I glanced at the house next door, where Steven had been yesterday.

  “There are two uniformed officers going door to door asking if anyone saw or heard anything last night.”

  “And did anyone see or hear anything?”

  “Not so far,” Mendoza said.

  “Was anyone home next door?”

  He didn’t answer, and I added, “I didn’t tell you this, but this morning, before I saw the dog and discovered Mrs. Grimshaw, I checked the trash cans outside the house next door.”

  Mendoza’s lips twitched. It was the first time they’d done that during this conversation. “The trash cans?”

  “Private Investigating for Dummies says you can learn a lot about someone from their trash.”

  The twitch became more pronounced. Practically a grin. “What did you learn?”

  “That they don’t care about the environment.”

  He looked blank, and I added, “They don’t recycle. And apparently they don’t generate trash, either. All the cans were empty.”

  “That’s interesting,” Mendoza said.

  I had thought it was. Until I forgot all about it in the horror of discovering that Mrs. Grimshaw was dead.

  “Come on,” I told Mendoza. “I’ll show you.”

  I’m sure he was capable of walking across the lawn to the trash cans on his own, to look for himself, but he didn’t say so. Instead he just followed as I led the way across the grass to the next driveway and around the house. “There.” I pointed to the trash can and recycling bin lined up under the carport. “Empty. Just like I told you.”

  Mendoza checked for himself, wrinkling his nose at the residual stench, just as I had. I did my best not to admire his rear view, but I didn’t succeed very well.

  Once he had satisfied his curiosity and turned back to me, I gestured to the house. “All the curtains are drawn. I’m sure you noticed. There’s no way to look inside.”

  Mendoza nodded.

  “If Mrs. Grimshaw had been living here instead of next door, I wouldn’t have seen her through the window. She could have been lying there for days before anyone noticed she was dead.”

  Mendoza gave me a look. He was clearly following the train of my thoughts. “Do you have any reason to suspect that the inhabitant of this house has been shot?”

  “Not a reason,” I admitted, “per se. But if you consider that the inhabitant of the house next door was shot, and the inhabitant of this one isn’t answering the door, I think it bears looking into.”

  Mendoza contemplated me for a second. “You just want a look inside.”

  I did. But— “I’m still right.”

  “You might be,” Mendoza said. “It’s a long shot. But under the circumstances, I can make a case for opening the door and taking a look.”

  “Great.” I refrained from rubbing my hands together gleefully.

  He eyed me. “I said I can take a look. Not you.”

  “That’s mean,” I said.

  His lips twitched. “Just stay back.”

  I made a face, but I stayed out of the way as he pulled a key chain out of his pocket and chose what I assumed was a universal key. The first thing he did, was knock on the back door. “Hello? Anybody home?”

  Nobody answered, of course. So Mendoza called out again. “This is the police. If you’re in there, please answer the door.”

  Nobody answered the door. Mendoza inserted the key in the lock and twisted it. “Metro Nashville PD,” he called out again as he pushed it open with one hand and dropped the keys into his pocket with the other. “I’m coming in.”

  He pushed the suit jacket aside to pull a gun from the holster at his hip. My breath caught in my throat. He looks like a matinee idol to begin with, with that gorgeous face and sleek, black hair. Add in the gun and the heroic expression, and it was like watching James Bond in action, right in front of me.

  Mendoza slipped through the door. I followed, all the way up to the threshold, and stuck my head into the room.

>   The back door opened into a kitchen, circa 1950s vintage. Original to the house. Wood, slab-front cabinets, Formica counters with an aluminum edge, and fake brick vinyl on the floor.

  There was no sign of occupancy. No dirty dishes in the sink or on the counter, no trash in the can I spied sitting next to the plain, white fridge.

  Mendoza had disappeared through the doorway to the right and couldn’t see me. I slithered through the open kitchen door and into the house.

  When he came back three minutes later, he found me standing in the middle of the kitchen floor. “I didn’t go beyond this point,” I told him. “I know you said to stay outside, so I only went as far as the kitchen.”

  He didn’t answer, just holstered the pistol.

  “I didn’t hear you scream, or shoot anyone, so I guess the place is empty?”

  “You could say that,” Mendoza said. “Come and take a look.”

  “Really?” I stuck my hands in my pockets. “Thank you. And don’t worry, I won’t touch anything.”

  “I’m not worried,” Mendoza said and led the way through the door into the dining room.

  I could see why. There was nothing to touch. As we moved from room to empty room, our footsteps echoed hollowly.

  “I don’t understand,” I said when we were back in the kitchen. “There’s nothing here.”

  No furniture, no carpets, no pictures on the walls. No beds and no bedding. When I yanked open one of the kitchen cabinets, there were no dishes or glasses. No food in the pantry.

  “No one lives here,” Mendoza said.

  “I can see that. Unless... You don’t think there’s any chance that they moved out overnight, do you?”

  “Someone would have noticed that,” Mendoza said.

  “Maybe not. Nobody noticed the neighbor getting shot.”

  “It probably took all of three minutes to shoot Mrs. Grimshaw, including the time it took the shooter to walk from his car to the house and back. But you don’t empty a whole house of furniture in a couple of minutes. If someone pulled a moving van into the driveway and started carrying out furniture, someone would have noticed. And they couldn’t have done it in the dark. If it was dark, they would have needed flood lights to see what they were doing.”

  All good points.

  “Maybe Mrs. Grimshaw noticed,” I said. “And that’s why they shot her.”

  Mendoza didn’t answer. I looked around again. “The girl was here yesterday. So was Steven. For more than an hour. And there isn’t even a bed in here!”

  Mendoza’s mouth quirked. “There are other ways, you know. Ways that don’t require a bed.”

  I’m sure there were. “For more than an hour, though? That can’t be comfortable. And Steven must be close to David’s age, wouldn’t you say? Fifty, at least.”

  Well past the age of picking anyone up, propping her against the wall, and proceeding to have his way with her. Or so one would think.

  “Nothing to sit on here,” Mendoza said with a look around. “No bed. No sofa. Not even a table.”

  There was the kitchen counter. But that was hard to imagine too, frankly.

  “So what were they doing for more than an hour?” I asked.

  “Maybe she was a real estate agent,” Mendoza suggested, “and she was showing him the house.”

  It made as much sense as anything else. None, in other words. “Hard to see how anyone would spend an hour and a half looking at half a dozen empty rooms. And there’s no sign in the yard.”

  “Maybe it’s for rent and not for sale,” Mendoza said. “Or maybe they sat on the floor and pretended to have a picnic.”

  Maybe. At this point, I’d accept almost any explanation. “At least no one’s dead in here.”

  Mendoza shook his head. “And nobody’s likely to complain that we took a look, either. We didn’t invade anyone’s privacy. Time to go.”

  He gestured to the back door. I headed in that direction, and waited for him to close and lock the door behind us. “You don’t think Steven had anything to do with what happened to Mrs. Grimshaw, do you?”

  Mendoza gave me a look out of the corner of his eye. “Do you?”

  “I don’t know him well. Although I wouldn’t think so. He’s a normal person. A university professor. Married to a lawyer. Not the kind of person who’d go around shooting someone for no reason.”

  “I’m sure he had a reason,” Mendoza said, “whoever he was.”

  “Or she.”

  He nodded. “Tell me more about the girl who was in the house last night.”

  I couldn’t tell him anything beyond what I’d already told him, and said so. “You’d have to talk to Zachary about her. He was the one who took the pizza up to the door and actually spoke to her. I was waiting in the car, and the angle was wrong. I didn’t get a good look. All I know is that she had long, blond hair. Zachary said she was very pretty, and maybe a couple of years older than him. But he capitalized her pronoun when he came back to the car, so I’m sure he’d be able to give you a good description.”

  Mendoza’s eyebrows had elevated. “Excuse me?”

  “She,” I said. “When he said ‘she,’ it sounded like it had a capital S. She obviously made an impression on him.”

  “Ah.” Mendoza’s lips quirked. I kept amusing him, it seemed. I tried to tell myself that it was a good thing, but honestly, I wasn’t sure. He might be laughing at me instead of with me.

  This seemed like a good segue to ask about the blond newscaster, but I wasn’t sure how to bring up the subject without sounding like I was jealous. And before I could figure it out, we had reached the front steps of Mrs. Grimshaw’s house.

  “Stay here,” Mendoza instructed me. “I’ll get you the dog stuff.”

  “Thank you.” I had no desire to go inside. I had already seen the blood on the floor, and I had no need to look at it up close and personal. Mendoza got paid to deal with it. Let him.

  He disappeared inside, and I waited. When my phone rang, I pulled it out and glanced at the display. “Diana.”

  “Gina.” Her voice was tight. “Steven isn’t answering his phone. I called the university, and his assistant said she hadn’t seen him today.”

  “The assistant doesn’t happen to be blond and beautiful, does she?”

  “No,” Diana said. “Black girl. Very professional. Not at all the type to sleep with her boss.”

  Good to know. “So you have no idea where he is?”

  I imagined her shaking her head. There was a faint clicking noise, as if an earring was hitting the speaker. “I left messages. With Jeanette. With the office. At home. On Steven’s cell. I’ll let you know if I hear from him. And now I’m driving home, to make sure he hasn’t had a heart attack and is dead on the floor.”

  “I’ll meet you there,” I said. “I’m just about to leave where I am. I can be there in about twenty minutes.”

  Diana said she’d see me there, and hung up. I turned toward the door as Mendoza came out, a bag of dog food under one arm, and a plastic bag in the other hand. “Food and water bowls,” he told me, lifting it. “And a leash. There are some chew toys in there, too, and a bag of dog treats.”

  I reached for it, but he shook his head. “I’ll carry it to your car.”

  “That’s kind of you.” And hopefully it wasn’t because he looked at me and thought I was too old to carry my own dog food. Not that I particularly wanted to haul the bag, but I’m forty, not eighty-five. I can still pull my weight.

  “No problem,” Mendoza said and set off across the grass. If nothing else, he wasn’t worried about me being too decrepit to keep up. “Did I hear your phone ring?”

  “Diana called back.” I told him what she’d said as we made our way across the lawn. “I’m going over to their house to meet her. Just in case something’s wrong, I don’t want her there alone.”

  Mendoza nodded, and waited for me to open the trunk of the Lexus. It slid up elegantly with the push of a button. Mendoza dumped the dog food and plastic ba
g into the back. He straightened. “Call me if you find anything. Or even if you don’t.”

  I said I would. “Let me know what you find out about the dog. If any of the relatives want her. And if Steven’s name comes up anywhere in your investigation.”

  I opened my car door. Mendoza made sure all of me was safely inside the car before he shut it. Then he set off across the grass toward Mrs. Grimshaw’s house once more, while I reversed down the neighbor’s driveway and headed up the street.

  Chapter 6

  The Mortons live in a big, old foursquare house in Richland. The neighborhood isn’t too far from the house I shared with David in Hillwood, but a mile or two closer to downtown, and fifty years or so older. The houses are all early twentieth-century: foursquares, Tudors, and big Craftsman bungalows, on neat rectangular lots spaced precisely seventy-five feet apart. Nothing like the rambling hillsides of Hillwood, but very pretty and quite affluent. Full of doctors and lawyers and university professors.

  The house is yellow brick, with a stately three-step staircase leading up to a set of double doors and a sitting porch. A concrete urn with a curly topiary tree stood on each side of the door. I knocked on the wooden frame and refrained from pressing my nose against the glass. Without going to that extreme, I could make out gleaming wood floors in a high-ceilinged foyer, a Persian rug, and a console table against the wall on the right.

  Nobody answered. If Steven was here, he either wasn’t conscious, or he didn’t want to talk to anyone.

  I thought about trying the doorknob, but then I realized that Diana might not be thrilled to drive up and find that I had made myself comfortable in her home. Better to wait until she got here.

  So I sat down in one of the wicker chairs on the porch instead, and no sooner had I gotten comfortable than she pulled up at the curb. I got up again and went to greet her. “I knocked on the door. Nobody answered.”

  Diana is a few years older than me, an elegant blonde in a cream colored business suit and blue blouse. Small gold studs caught the afternoon sun and glittered in her ears. “That’s not good,” she told me on her way over to the door, keys already in her hand.