Stalking Steven

by Jenna Bennett

  “All I want is to know where a call came from. Someone called me last night. He started to leave a message and got cut off. I tried *69, but no one’s answering. All I want to know is where my friend called me from, so I can go there and make sure he’s all right.”

  “If you’re concerned about someone’s well-being,” the supervisor said snottily, “it’s a matter for the police.”

  “I’ve already spoken to the police. Specifically, Detective Jaime Mendoza with the Nashville PD. Homicide. He told me he could get a subpoena and the information, but that it would be quicker for me to get it myself.” And I wasn’t even lying. “Of course, if you want to refuse to tell me where the call to my phone originated, while my friend is lying in a pool of blood somewhere…”

  An image of Griselda Grimshaw appeared, unbid and unwanted, and I ground to a halt while I tried not to imagine Steven in that same position, prone on a floor somewhere, with blood soaking his shirt. He hadn’t sounded scared last night. He hadn’t sounded like he was in danger. But of course that could have changed in the hours since he’d made the call.

  And had changed, if the ransom note was real.

  The supervisor heaved a long-suffering sigh, but agreed, very clearly against her will, to provide me the information I probably had the right to know. “When did the call come in?”

  “Just before one this morning,” I said. “To this number.” I rattled off the office phone number and waited while she tapped buttons in the background. Eventually she came back with a number. It was local, judging by the prefix, but unfamiliar.

  “Any chance you could look it up? Reverse lookup, or whatever? Find out where it belongs?”

  It didn’t sound like a cell phone. Around here, they mostly start with the same few numbers, which this didn’t.

  She sighed again, more deeply this time. I heard tapping.

  “1843 Blackburn Drive,” she said.

  “1843…” I stopped in the middle of writing it down. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m positive.” She sounded irritated that I’d ask. Of course, she’d been sounding irritated about everything else, too.

  I finished writing the address on the same piece of paper where I’d scribbled the phone number. “No chance you’re mistaken?”

  “None.” She bit the word off in a way that indicated she’d like to bite me.

  “I appreciate it,” I said. “Thank you for—” your time…

  She’d already hung up. This time I did not contain myself, but made the worst face I could manage, right at the phone. And then I called Mendoza back. “It’s me.”

  “I can see that.”

  This time the background noises indicated that he was driving.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “I’ve dropped the note off at the lab and put out the BOLO. I’m in the car, on my way to Franklin to talk to your friend.”

  She wasn’t exactly my friend, and under other circumstances I would have said so. Now I had more important concerns. “You’ll have to turn around. I got through to the phone company. The call came from 1843 Blackburn Road.”

  There was a beat. “That’s my crime scene,” Mendoza said.

  I nodded. And then said, “Yes. Mrs. Grimshaw’s house.”

  “They’re messing with my crime scene?”

  They probably weren’t messing with it. They’d probably gone there to look around. Or maybe because they figured it would be safe, that no one would look for them there.

  Or maybe they’d gone back to Araminta Tucker’s house, and something had spooked them, so they’d taken refuge in Griselda Grimshaw’s house next door. Where there was dried blood on the floor and a murder had taken place.

  Maybe that didn’t make a whole lot of sense once I started thinking about it.

  “Just meet me there,” I told Mendoza. I could hear him draw breath—probably to tell me I didn’t need to bother coming; he knew where it was—and I hung up before he could get the words out.

  He didn’t call back to tell me not to come, so I guess he was OK with it. Or at least not so upset about it that he felt he needed to stop me. I left Edwina in the office, with a note for Rachel to let her out when she got there, which ought to be sometime within the next hour. The dog would be OK until then.

  “I’ll be back,” I told her—Edwina—and headed out.

  * * *

  Mendoza had either teleported or been passing the exit when I called him, because when I pulled into Griselda Grimshaw’s driveway, his car was already there. He must have just arrived, though, because he was still sitting behind the wheel.

  Texting, I realized, when he got out with a grimace. “Sorry. Talking to my wife. Ex-wife.”

  None of my business. None at all. “Everything all right?”

  Another grimace. “Fine. Just figuring out kid stuff.”

  That can be hard. Not that I have any personal experience with it, but David had two kids when I married him. I spent the first few years of my marriage trying to make friends with Krystal and Kenny, who wanted nothing to do with me—and who could blame them?

  “Does your son like his step-father?”

  Mendoza muttered something.

  “Krystal and Kenny hated me,” I said. “Not only did I break up their parents’ marriage, but I took David away from them.”

  “Surely not?”

  “That’s what they saw. He dumped their mother and married me, and would rather spend time with me than with them. They weren’t wrong. Although it wasn’t my fault. He just wasn’t that interested in what they were doing.” And more interested, at that time, in bedding my twenty-two year old self.

  Mendoza nodded. “Elias doesn’t blame Mitch for anything. Or Lola. He blames me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Mendoza shook his head. “All Lola did was hire Mitch. And all Mitch did was what Lola hired him to do. I was the one who cheated. And got caught.”

  “But she didn’t have to marry him.” And make him Elias’s step-father.

  Mendoza shrugged. “Water.”

  Under the bridge, I assumed. And the end of the discussion. Time to change the subject.

  I glanced at the house. “Here we are.”

  Mendoza nodded.

  “I guess you’re going to ask me to wait outside?”

  “No,” Mendoza said. “You can come with me. As long as you stay behind me and make sure you don’t get shot.”

  I translated that in my head. “You don’t think they’re here anymore.”

  “I think they left here two minutes after Steven hung up the phone last night,” Mendoza said. “But just in case I’m wrong, I’m going in first. And keeping you behind me.”

  Fine by me.

  “Lead the way,” I said, and fell in behind him as we made our way to the front door.

  Mendoza unlocked it, and reached for his gun. I watched as he pushed the door open and ducked under the crime scene tape, leading with his gun hand. “Metro Police! Stay where you are!”

  He hadn’t told me I couldn’t come inside, so I waited until he’d slithered along the wall to the dining room and turned the corner, still leading with the gun, before I crouched under the crime scene tape and shuffled into Mrs. Grimshaw’s house.

  I could hear Mendoza moving stealthily down the hallway to the left. Other than his quiet footsteps, everything was silent. If anyone was here, they were being very quiet about it.

  The blood was still on the floor in front of the door, and I avoided looking at it as I glanced around. There was nothing I hadn’t expected, that I hadn’t already seen. The only new addition since yesterday was a lot of fingerprint powder on the doorjambs and flat surfaces.

  Mendoza came back, holstering his gun. “Nobody here.”

  I nodded. I hadn’t expected there to be, although part of me had been worried that he’d find Steven dead in one of the bedrooms. It was probably a positive sign that he hadn’t. If nothing else, we knew that Steven had been alive, and
seemingly unhurt, last night.

  “Any clue as to what they were doing here?”

  Mendoza shook his head. “I can’t see anything that wasn’t here yesterday. Or anything missing. Maybe they just came in to use the phone.”

  Maybe. Although you wouldn’t find me breaking into the home of a murdered woman, with crime scene tape all over the door, to use the telephone. If I didn’t want to use my own phone, I’d find a telephone booth—they still do exist here and there—or go to a library or something.

  “Hard to do at one in the morning,” Mendoza remarked.

  The library, at least. Although I might not want to drive around looking for a phone booth at one in the morning, either. Not that I’d be likely to want to call anyone at that time, anyway. “I wonder what Steven wanted.”

  “Something he didn’t want the blonde to overhear,” Mendoza said, “since it seems like he waited until she fell asleep before he hoofed it next door to use the phone.”

  Maybe that’s what he’d done. Waited for Anastasia Sokolov to fall asleep, before he braved the elements and the murder house to make a phone call to me, to… what?

  “Why didn’t he call Diana?”

  “You’ll have to ask him,” Mendoza said, shooing me toward the door, “when we find him.”

  I ducked under the crime scene tape and back out on the stoop. “Now what?”

  Mendoza followed me. I stepped back while he locked the door behind us. “Now we go next door.”

  I glanced over at Araminta Tucker’s house. “You don’t think they’re still there, do you?”

  “Not likely,” Mendoza said. “At least not since one o’clock. But I want to see if they left anything.”

  If they hadn’t left anything the first time—not even the trash in the cans—it wasn’t likely that they’d have left anything this time, either. But I wouldn’t mind another quick look at Araminta Tucker’s house, so I followed him across the grass and up the driveway to the back of the house.

  Where he shoved me behind him with one hand while he pulled his gun with the other.

  I peered around his shoulder.

  Ah. Yes. Unlike yesterday morning, when we’d been here, now the door stood open, the jamb splintered where the lock had been kicked or pushed in.

  “Stay here,” Mendoza told me, his voice tight. “I mean it.”

  I nodded. And stayed there while he slid sideways into the kitchen, gun at the ready, and disappeared.

  I spent the time while he was gone alternately biting my fingernails and checking the trash and recycling cans, which were still empty. Then Mendoza came back, holstering his gun.

  “What?” I demanded.

  “Nothing. Aside from the broken lock, it looks exactly the same as yesterday.”

  So no furniture, no dishes in the cabinets, no empty pizza boxes or Chinese food containers. “No sign they were here?”

  He shook his head.

  “But we know they were next door.”

  He nodded.

  “Why would they break the lock? They had a key, didn’t they?” They must have. The lock hadn’t been broken the last time we were here.

  “I don’t imagine they did,” Mendoza said.

  “So someone else did? Who?”

  He shrugged. “Whoever shot Mrs. Grimshaw?”

  “Why would whoever shot Mrs. Grimshaw wait twenty-four hours to break into the house next door? They had plenty of time to do it while Mrs. G was bleeding out on the floor.”

  “This place was occupied then,” Mendoza said.

  Yes, but… “If they’d shot Mrs. Grimshaw, it’s not like they balk at shooting Anastasia. Or so you’d think.”

  Mendoza seemed to agree with that. Or at least he didn’t argue.

  We stood in silence a moment.

  “What do we do now?” I asked.

  He nodded to the cars in the driveway next door. “I guess we just keep doing what we were doing. I’ll go see Araminta Tucker, and tell her that her house was broken into last night. And see if she can tell me anything she didn’t tell you yesterday. And if Steven calls again, let me know.”

  I told him I would, and asked that he return the favor. And then we got into our separate cars and went our separate ways.

  Chapter 11

  I took the time to go home for a shower and a change of clothes before I headed back to the office. The dog had been fed, and by then, Rachel had probably arrived to take care of her. Edwina was covered. So I figured I could safely spend a few minutes getting out of yesterday’s clothes.

  As a result, it was close to ten by the time I finally made it back to Music Row. Rachel’s car was in the lot by then, but Zachary’s little compact was still missing.

  “Have you heard from Zach?” I asked as I pulled the front door shut behind me.

  Edwina looked up from her doggie bed in the corner, her stubby tail wagging.

  Rachel shook her head. “Should I have?”

  “I gave him a job last night, so I’m waiting to see what he discovered. Although he probably just stayed out too late and is sleeping in this morning.”

  Rachel arched an inquiring brow, and I told her what I’d done. She clicked her tongue. “Probably sleep until noon. Those places stay open all night. And all day. He could still be there.”

  Surely not. “Don’t they have to mop the floors sometimes? Like, from eight to ten?”

  “Maybe,” Rachel said doubtfully. “Do you want me to call him?”

  “Let’s give him a little more time. And anyway, if he’d discovered anything wildly exciting, he probably would have left a message.”

  That reminded me of Steven’s message, so I told her about that. And then remembered to mention the ransom note that she also hadn’t heard about. And the missing gun.

  “This doesn’t sound like a simple cheating-spouse case,” Rachel said.

  I shook my head. “We’ll have to choose more carefully next time.” If there was a next time. “I don’t suppose anyone’s called?”

  “You checked the messages,” Rachel said.

  “Or emailed?”

  She shook her head. “But we’ve only been in business a week, Gina. We’ll get clients once word gets around.”

  I hoped so, since all the work I was doing now was pro bono, and at some point, I’d have to pay Rachel and Zachary and the electric company again.

  With that in mind, I went into my office and drafted a letter which I thought we could send out to all my friends and acquaintances. I don’t have a lot, since I’ve spent the past eighteen years as David’s spouse, and most of the women I know are married to his business associates. But that meant that many of them, like me, were trophy wives to older, successful men, and God knows that older, successful men often take up with even younger women than their wives. So for the purpose of marketing my services to women with husbands who might cheat, I was quite well positioned.

  With the draft sounding the way I wanted, I gave it to Rachel to proofread, and then we spent the next hour coming up with a mailing list. I told Rachel the names of people I remembered. She looked them up. I wrote down the names and addresses, and when it was all over, we had a list of twenty or so names that Rachel put together into a database.

  “You should handwrite the envelopes, though,” she told me. “More likely they get opened that way. If they don’t look like a business communication.”

  “And less likely their husbands will realize what the letter is about,” I added.

  Rachel nodded. “You go start addressing envelopes. Then you can sign the letters, and we’ll get them in the mail.”

  It sounded like a good plan, and the beginning of a mailing list. I retreated to my office and started addressing envelopes. When Rachel brought the letters—printed on nice, heavy stationary—I signed those, and we filled the envelopes. By then, it was past eleven-thirty. “I can take them to the post office,” I said. “Or if you want to go to lunch first, you can.”

  Rachel said she liked the noon
to one lunch hour, so I sent her out early, so she could hit the post office on her way. While she drove away, Edwina tinkled on a patch of dirt in the parking lot. When I went back to my office, she followed me in, jumped up on the sofa, and curled in a circle.

  It was late enough that I thought it might be time to check on Zachary. He did not, however, answer his cell phone. I left a message—“It’s almost noon. Are you planning to come to work today?”—and then dialed Mendoza. Unless Araminta Tucker had had a whole lot to say—or they had bonded over something on the TV—he must be finished talking to her by now. It was irritating how he hadn’t called to update me.

  I did realize that he didn’t owe me an update. He was the police and I was an annoying civilian butting into his case.

  But I was sharing what I found out with him. When I got Steven’s message, Mendoza had been my first call. It wasn’t like I was keeping anything from him. If I hadn’t told him about Araminta Tucker—

  Well, if I hadn’t told him about Araminta Tucker, he would have found his way to her on his own. She owned the house next door to the crime scene, where the Russian girl had been. Mendoza would have made it his business to interview Araminta Tucker sooner or later.

  But if I hadn’t told him about my visit to her immediately, he hadn’t had the girl’s name so soon. I’d been helpful, dammit. Couldn’t he be a little helpful in return?

  Apparently he couldn’t. The phone rang, and rang. Finally his voicemail picked up. “This is Detective Jaime Mendoza with the Nashville PD. Please leave a message at the sound of the tone. If this is an emergency, please call 911.”

  It wasn’t an emergency, and I didn’t want to be annoying—or any more annoying than I had to be—so I hung up without leaving a message. He’d see that I’d called. When he realized I hadn’t left a voicemail, he’d probably figure out that I was just curious and didn’t have anything important to say.

  Maybe he’d call anyway.