“Where are we going?” I asked again when we had merged with traffic and navigated the I-24/I-40 split and were zooming toward Hermitage and the lake.
Grimaldi glanced at me. “We’re going to see one of Devon’s friends. Someone he plays music with. I figured I’d give him a couple extra hours to sleep, since I want him awake and aware when I talk to him.”
I nodded. “They aren’t Devon’s fingerprints on the window sill. And I don’t know why I even bothered to look, since Devon was dead when someone broke in. Sorry.”
“No problem,” Grimaldi said.
“They aren’t mine, since I know I wasn’t there.” I moved my own fingerprint card out of the way and picked up Brittany’s. They weren’t hers, either. By the time we pulled up in front of a small mid-century ranch somewhere in the wilds of Donelson, I had eliminated Tim, Heidi, and everyone else who had been in the office this morning. Not that anyone in the office would have had a reason to bash in the window. Everyone in the office had a key.
I waited for Grimaldi to tell me to stay in the car, but she didn’t. “Come on.”
“You want me to go inside with you?”
“Just try to look official. You want to hear what he has to say, don’t you?”
Of course I did. I just didn’t know whether I had the ability to look like a cop. Somehow I doubted it. It’s in the eyes, and I just don’t have them. Cop eyes, I mean. I can see just fine. I just don’t see—or look—like a cop.
But I swung my legs out of the car and scurried after Grimaldi up to the front door. She knocked and we waited. And knocked and waited. And knocked and waited some more.
Eventually we heard the sound of dragging footsteps inside. It sounded like a zombie approaching the door. When the door opened, it looked something like a zombie, too. Minus the blood and other creepiness, but definitely a zombie-look.
The boy was Devon’s age, early twenties. He had dirty blond hair in a Devon-haircut: too long, uncombed, hanging in his eyes and over his ears. Not to put too fine a point on it, but his style looked like it had been achieved by rats chewing and sucking on his hair. He was pale, with eyes barely open, peering out furtively through the brush, and the fact that he had opened the door in a pair of unzipped jeans and nothing else, didn’t seem to have occurred to him.
“Yeah?”
Grimaldi showed him her badge. He stared at it for a moment, and I could see the wheels turning over, very slowly, inside his head.
“Shit,” he said eventually.
We waited, but that was all there was.
“We’d like to talk to you,” Grimaldi said. “Inside.”
He glanced over his shoulder. The living room looked like a frat house. The coffee table had at least a dozen beer bottles sitting on it, all of them empty, and there were empty pizza boxes and gaping chip bags everywhere. Also a couple of ashtrays full of cigarette butts.
“I’m not here to bust you for pot,” Grimaldi told him. “Or whatever else you’ve got sitting around.” She waited a second before adding, “At least not if you cooperate.”
“Whaddaya want?”
“Like I said, we want to talk to you. Inside.”
The young man hesitated another second, and then he stepped back. “Sorry about the mess.”
No kidding. It looked even worse up close, and didn’t smell so good, either. My nose wrinkled.
“On second thought,” Grimaldi said, with a look at me, “let’s do this outside. Someone could get high just from breathing the air in here.”
No kidding. I backed out again, my head swimming.
“There are some chairs on the patio,” the young man said. “We can go there.”
“Lead the way.” Grimaldi waved at me to go around the house, while she followed the young man through. Maybe she was afraid he’d lock the door with us on the outside, if she didn’t keep an eye on him.
By the time I had circumvented the house and garage, they were already seated on a pockmarked but shady patio in the rear. Grimaldi had her book out. “Name?” she asked.
The young man owned up to being christened Hanse Neyman. “But everyone calls me Han.”
“Star Wars?”
He grinned. “Yeah.”
OK, then.
“I imagine you can guess why we’re here?”
“If it’s not about the pot,” Han said—not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, obviously, “I guess it’s about Devon?”
Grimaldi nodded. “You’ve heard the news?”
“Britt called me yesterday. We had rehearsal last night, and she called to let me know he wasn’t gonna be there.”
“How often do you rehearse?” Grimaldi asked, settling back in her chair with her notebook on her knee.
Han shrugged. Like Devon, he was pretty androgynous, with skinny shoulders and not much of a chest. A tuft of blond hair showed in the unzippered part of his pants, but nothing worse than that. “Every couple of days, I guess.”
So if they’d rehearsed two nights ago, why had they rehearsed again last night?
“We didn’t,” Han said when Grimaldi put the question to him. “Not two nights ago.”
“Brittany said Devon had been at rehearsal from seven o’clock until he got home at two-thirty.”
Han shook his head. “Not on Tuesday. We rehearsed yesterday.”
“Can you tell me where you were Wednesday morning from one to four?”
“Here,” Han said, making a sweeping gesture at the house. “Sleeping.”
“Alone?”
“There are three of us living here. But I wasn’t sleeping with any of them.”
“Can you prove that?” Grimaldi said, and we watched the young man’s eyes bug out of the sockets.
“Why would I wanna do something to Devon? We were friends, man. I owe him a lot. If it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t be on our way now.”
“On your way where?” Grimaldi sounded ready to pull out the handcuffs and slap them around his skinny wrists to stop him from going wherever it was.
He shook his head. “Not like that, man. Devon got us a really good gig playing for Magnolia Houston. We’re going places.”
Grimaldi looked like she wanted to ask about the places, but I got in first. “Devon did? Devon got you a job playing for Magnolia Houston? All of you?”
Han nodded. “The whole band. We’re backing her up on her videos, and when she goes somewhere to perform, we go with her. It’s awesome. She has a bus and everything.”
I’m sure she did. “How did Devon come to know Magnolia Houston?” They didn’t exactly travel in the same circles. Or so I assumed.
“Something to do with his day job,” Han said vaguely.
“Computers?”
“Something like that. She had a problem with something and hired him to fix it. He works for—” He faltered for a second before he went on, “—worked for one of those troubleshooting places.”
“The kind that comes out if your computer acts up?”
Han nodded. “She called and he went out there. And I guess they got along. Wasn’t long before he was banging her.”
“Excuse me?” I said.
“You know what banging means, right? You musta had a bang yourself to get like that.” He pointed to my stomach.
Grimaldi made a face. Hard to say whether it was humor or disgust.
“Yes,” I said, “I know what banging means. You’re saying that Devon and Magnolia were having sex.”
Han nodded, looking pleased.
“I thought he was marrying Brittany.”
“He was banging Britt,” Han said.
“They were living together. I guess Brittany didn’t know that he was... um... banging Magnolia, too.”
The word sounded weird coming out of my mouth.
“He didn’t tell her,” Han said. “But he wasn’t marrying her, neither.”
“Are you sure? She told me they were flying to Curacao this weekend.”
Grimaldi was furrowing her brow—I g
uess maybe I wasn’t supposed to mention that—but it was too late now.
Han shook his head. “I don’t know nothing about that. We’re playing a gig on Saturday. That’s what we’ve been rehearsing for. We’re rehearsing again tomorrow night. Magnolia’s been invited to sing at a fundraiser at the Ryman Auditorium. I don’t think Devon would wanna miss that.”
I didn’t think so either. Not that I would care personally, but for a Nashville musician, the Ryman Auditorium is the Holy Grail. The Mother Church of Country Music, it’s where the Grand Ole Opry performed for years. All the country greats have stood on the stage there. If Devon had a chance to perform at the Ryman, I don’t think he would have prioritized getting married. Not when he could have postponed the wedding for a week.
I glanced at Grimaldi.
“Do you have any information about this house that Magnolia was buying in Goodlettsville?” she asked.
“Just what Devon told me,” Han said. “Old place. She was gonna fix it up nice and live there. And build a big rehearsal space in the barn. It sounded nice.”
He sounded wistful. Maybe without Devon, the gig would be over, and Magnolia would kick the rest of the band to the curb. Giving Han no reason at all to want to get rid of Devon. Not unless he hoped to step into Devon’s shoes, I guess.
“Thank you for your time, Mr. Neyman.” Grimaldi got to her feet and dug a card out of her pocket. “If you think of anything that might be important, please give me a call.”
Han said he would, and padded into the house. Grimaldi and I made our way around the corner and down the driveway to the car.
* * *
“THAT’S VERY STRANGE,” I told Grimaldi when we were pulling away from the house. “I know what Brittany told me. She’d gone out shopping, and bought a lot of stuff, and she told me they were getting married and flying to Curacao on their honeymoon.”
Grimaldi nodded. “There are tickets booked in both their names. And a hotel room on the beach. I checked.”
“Maybe Devon was feeling so guilty about sleeping with Magnolia that he was willing to sacrifice the Ryman gig to marry Brittany.”
“Hmmm,” Grimaldi said, and it didn’t sound like she believed it. I didn’t either. No musician worth his salt—especially an up-and-coming one, who had just landed himself and his band a good gig—would give up a performance at the Ryman just to get married.
“Why would Brittany say they were getting married if it wasn’t true?”
“That’s an interesting question, isn’t it?” Grimaldi said, but she never answered it, because my phone rang. “Go ahead and get it.”
I picked it up. The number was unfamiliar, and there was no name attached to it. That happens a lot to a real estate agent, though. Perfect strangers call and want to know about properties for sale and that sort of thing all the time. I put a smile on my face, since supposedly it shows up on the other end of the line, and said brightly, “This is Savannah. How may I help you?”
“Hello, Savannah,” a voice said.
EIGHTEEN
My jaw dropped, and I almost dropped the phone, too. Grimaldi sent me a worried look as I fumbled, and then a narrow-eyed stare when she saw my expression.
I managed to hit the speaker button. “Where are you? What do you want?”
Denise Seaver giggled, and Grimaldi’s eyes narrowed further. She pulled over to the side of the road and stopped the car.
“It’s not what I want,” Denise Seaver said gaily—and I knew even as she said it that she was lying; it was all about what she wanted, “it’s about what I have that you want.”
“And what’s that?”
Not that I couldn’t guess, but I wanted to hear her say it. Or rather, I wanted to hear what she was going to say. Call it curiosity. Next to me, Grimaldi had pulled out her own phone and initiated the record function to have a record of the conversation.
The smirk in Denise Seaver’s voice was audible all the way from the other end of the metaphorical line. “Your husband’s brat.”
It took effort to make sure my voice was even. “We haven’t found any proof that Carmen’s baby is Rafe’s.”
“You will,” Denise Seaver said, and sounded confident about it.
“How would you know that? Did Carmen tell you it was?”
She made a little humming noise that was either assent or pleasure. It could be either, to be honest. She could probably hear that I was upset, and I’m sure it made her happy.
“So what do you want?” I asked again.
“To make a deal.”
Grimaldi arched her brows.
“What kind of deal?”
“You give me fifty thousand dollars,” Denise Seaver said, “and I tell you where to find the baby.”
Fifty thousand dollars? “Have you lost your mind? I don’t have fifty thousand dollars. I sell real estate. I haven’t made ten thousand dollars yet, let alone fifty thousand. And Rafe’s in law enforcement. We don’t make fifty thousand dollars between the two of us!”
Grimaldi scowled at me. I made a face. Yes, I realized that this might not have been the best response. But in the surprise, and the heat of the moment, I hadn’t thought about that. Now, all I could do was wait and see how she reacted. Hopefully she wouldn’t just hang up the phone and peddle the baby somewhere else.
“Your mother has money.”
She does. My father was a lawyer, and of course Mother inherited everything when he died. Including the Martin Mansion, that had been in his family for generations. If she didn’t have fifty grand sitting in an account somewhere, a loan on the house would net her many times that.
“While that may be true,” I said, “my mother is trying to deal with the fact that her husband had a love child with her best friend, and over the thirty-three years she’s known Audrey, nobody said a word about it. I don’t think now’s a good time to ask her for fifty thousand dollars so I can save my husband’s love child.”
Denise Seaver was starting to sound impatient. Grimaldi was starting to look it. “I don’t care how you get the money. Ask your brother or sister. Take a loan. But if you want the brat, you’ll get it.”
“How long do I have?”
“An hour,” Denise Seaver said.
“I can’t come up with fifty grand in an hour!”
She sighed. Long-suffering wafted along the air waves. “If you want this baby, you can.”
“I really don’t think so. I mean, it’s not just that I have to find someone with that kind of money just sitting around, and then talk them into giving it to me. But there’s getting it out of the bank, too. I assume you won’t take a check?”
“Cash,” Denise Seaver said. “Small, unmarked bills.”
Like in the movies. “Let’s say I can make this work, and I can get the money. Then what happens? We’ll meet somewhere and I give it to you?”
Denise Seaver agreed that this seemed like a fine plan.
“When do I get the baby?”
“When I have my money.”
I shook my head. Not that she could see me. “I don’t think so. If you have the money, you have no incentive to give me the baby. I want the baby first.”
“If you have the baby, you have no incentive to give me the money,” Denise Seaver pointed out.
A classic Catch-22.
“Then what do you suggest we do? Meet on the bridge at midnight, you put the baby down, I throw the duffel bag with the cash in your direction, and you take it and run while I pick up the baby?””
“I suggest you get busy asking your family to fund your husband’s brat,” Denise Seaver said. “I’ll call back in an hour.”
She hung up before I had the chance to say anything more.
For a moment, both Grimaldi and I sat there in silence. We were both too shocked to speak, I think. Then I woke up. “I have to find fifty thousand dollars somewhere.”
“Extortion,” Grimaldi said with grim satisfaction. “Not that she’s ever seeing daylight again, once we get her back
behind bars. But the charges are racking up. At this point, she’s looking at another count of murder, reckless endangerment and negligent homicide, kidnapping, and now extortion.”
“That only matters if we can find her. And I don’t know how we will.” I was dialing while I spoke. “Darcy? It’s Savannah. I need to talk to Dix.”
“If this is about your mother...”
“It isn’t,” I said, although now I had gotten curious. “What happened?”
“Your sister went over there this morning—”
Your sister, too, I thought, but didn’t say it.
“—and your mother had mixed herself a blender full of mimosas and was making her way through it.”
Sheesh. “Well, at least it wasn’t brandy.”
“Not this morning,” Darcy said. “By now, who knows?” She waited a second, I guess to see if I had a response, and then added, “I’ll put you through to Dix.”
I thanked her, and waited. A second later, I heard my brother’s voice. “Morning, Sis.”
“Morning,” I said. “I need fifty thousand dollars.”
“Funny thing,” Dix said. “So do I.”
“What do you need money for?”
There was a pause. “I thought you were kidding,” Dix said. “What’s going on?”
“I told you that Denise Seaver escaped from prison yesterday with another inmate, didn’t I? The Hispanic woman with the big stomach? She gave birth in a shack up in the hills north of Nashville after they stabbed the guard and walked off. Denise Seaver left her there to bleed out, and took the baby. Now she wants to sell it to me for fifty thousand dollars.”
The pause this time was much longer. “I get the feeling there’s more to this story,” Dix said.
I grimaced. “There’s a chance the baby might be Rafe’s.”
This time, the pause went on for long enough that I started to worry he wasn’t going to answer. I glanced at the phone display, and the line was still open. “Dix?”
His voice sounded sort of dangerous. Or as dangerous as my brother’s voice ever is. “He cheated on you?”
“It was before we worked things out between us,” I said. “Sometime in late November or early December last year.”
Scared Money (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 13) Page 20