We sat in silence for a moment, him on the edge of the bed and me under the blankets.
“All the more reason to find out who it is,” I said. “Before he can hurt anyone. Or she.”
He shook his head. “How’d I know you were gonna say that?”
“You didn’t.” I smiled. “I’ll talk to Grimaldi in the morning, and dump the problem on her. There’s probably someone down there who specializes in this kind of thing, don’t you think?”
He nodded. “Tammy’ll find you somebody.”
“And maybe I’ll just have a talk with Tim, and see if his clients know about any letters that might have come before they sold the house.”
Timothy Briggs is by way of being my boss, or at least my broker at LB&A. The B is his. The L is Lamont, Walker Lamont, who was the broker before Tim—currently serving twenty-five to life in Riverbend Penitentiary for multiple counts of murder and attempted murder. The A stands for Associates. That’s me and everyone else.
Anyway, Tim had had the listing side of what was now Aislynn and Kylie’s house back in December. The sellers had been his clients. If they had been the recipients of creepy, anonymous letters, he would have known. Or so I assumed.
And while I was at it, I could ask him whether creepy, anonymous letters were a material fact that needed to be disclosed to potential buyers. That would give me a nice segue into the conversation. And would also give me a nice cause for blackmail if he said they were, but then it turned out he’d known about them but hadn’t informed me or Aislynn or Kylie.
Tim had tried to fire me not too long ago. He said my getting involved in crimes gave LB&A a bad rep. And that was in spite of my meddling having saved his sorry butt on at least on occasion. With a little help from Rafe.
Anyway, Rafe had sweet-talked him into taking me back, but having blackmail material is never a bad idea.
“You wouldn’t mind if I talked to Tim,” I asked, “would you?”
His lips quirked. “No, darlin’. Unless you think he’s got plans to kill you so he can have me all to himself.”
I tilted my head to look at him. It was no secret that Tim had had a—pardon the pun—man-sized crush on Rafe since the first time he saw him.
Yes, Tim is gay. Rafe, however, is not, even if he had occasionally amused himself by making Tim hot and bothered. He’s an equal opportunity flirt.
“Are you trying to tell me something?” I wanted to know. “Like, if I weren’t here, you’d consider Tim?”
He put his head back and laughed. “No, darlin’. But he might not know that.”
“I’m sure he does,” I said. “And anyway, if he wanted to kill me to get to you, he wouldn’t have waited until we were married.”
“No chance he’s the one writing the letters?”
It sounded like a joke, but something told me he might be serious.
“I can’t think of one,” I said, after considering it. “Why would he?”
Rafe shrugged. “Maybe just ‘cause he’s a malicious little gnat who likes to create trouble.”
He was. Tim definitely had the personality for something like this.
I thought for another few seconds before shaking my head. “I really can’t think of a reason why he would. There’s nothing in it for him. If Aislynn and Kylie wanted to sell the house again, they wouldn’t come to him. They’d come to me. Like they did.”
“But you work for him.”
“That doesn’t make it his money,” I said. “But if I ask him about it, and then my car suddenly develops brake line trouble, I’ll know who’s to blame.”
“Let’s hope it don’t come to that,” Rafe said and put the stack of letters on the bedside table. On his side. He reached a hand over his head and yanked his shirt up, in that manner that efficient men have of getting undressed. “You tired?”
“Yes,” I said, my eyes on his chest, “but if you’re getting naked, I’m sure I could keep my eyes open for a bit longer.”
He grinned. “I need a shower.”
“If you get in the shower, I’ll probably be asleep by the time you come out. Much better if we get the sex out of the way first.”
“You sure you wanna say it like that?”
“Just come here,” I said, and reached for him.
He came.
Chapter Three
By the time he got out of the shower, I was dead to the world, and when I woke up in the morning, he was gone. I rolled out of bed—literally; it had gotten to the point where I had to turn on my side to get up—and padded into the bathroom to take my own shower. By the time I had dried my hair and put on makeup, and was standing in front of the open closet contemplating my rapidly dwindling wardrobe, it was almost nine o’clock.
The more pregnant I became, the less any of my old clothes fit. Obvious, right? But it meant that I would have to go clothes shopping soon.
Albeit not today. I had too many other things to do.
I pulled out an eggplant-colored wrap dress I’d bought for my high school reunion a couple of months ago, and wrapped it around myself. I have a black wrap dress, too, one that Rafe is particularly fond of, but it was July and almost a hundred degrees in the shade; I wasn’t about to wear black unless I was going to a funeral.
I got to the office by nine-thirty. Tim’s baby blue Jaguar—the same color as his eyes—was parked in the lot.
I slotted the Volvo next to it and entered through the back door. Tim’s office was the first door on the left.
I heard him before I saw him. When he was in his early twenties, before coming back to Nashville and making a go of real estate, Tim spent some time in the Big Apple trying to get on Broadway. He has the voice for it: a big, brassy tenor. He has the looks, too: curly, golden hair, bright, blue eyes, and a handsome, if pouty, face. And I’m sure he can move well, as the cliché goes. I don’t know why things didn’t work out for a show biz career. Maybe he just didn’t have the chutzpah. Maybe he didn’t have the talent. Or maybe he got sidetracked somehow. I’ve never asked and he’s never told.
Anyway, he was singing. I stopped in the open doorway and knocked. Tim stopped singing and turned to face me. “Oh,” he said after a second. “It’s you.”
“Nice to see you, too.” I didn’t bother to sound as if I meant it.
Tim and I have had an awkward relationship for as long as we’ve worked together. He doesn’t really like me, and the feeling is mutual. He likes to tweak me—that malicious quality Rafe mentioned—and he isn’t above making people squirm, me included. He isn’t above backhanded machinations, either. Last August, when our colleague Brenda Puckett was murdered, it was Tim who leaked the information about her illegal shenanigans to a reporter at the Nashville Voice. The leak resulted in a front page spread that proclaimed that Brenda Puckett had kicked the bucket, and it caused our then-broker, Walker Lamont, to have conniptions, since the aforementioned shenanigans implicated LB&A—or Walker Lamont Realty, as it was called back then—in the misdeeds, as well. I’m surprised Walker didn’t kill Tim, too. He certainly killed—or tried to kill—enough other people.
But no, Walker named Tim broker in his absence. And now I was saddled with him.
Between you and me, I’d rather have Walker back. I’d always gotten along well with him, at least up until the point when he tried to kill me. Twice.
Tim pulled out the executive leather chair from behind the desk and planted his butt in it. “How’s married life?”
“Fine,” I said, perching on the edge of one of the uncomfortable seats in front of the desk.
“Rafael still looking good?”
“He looks the same way he looked the last time you saw him.” Which was a month or two ago, when he leaned on, or charmed, Tim into hiring me back after firing me.
And my statement wasn’t entirely true, actually. Rafe had picked up some cuts and bruises since then. But since most of them were in places Tim would never get to see anyway, I saw no reason to mention that.
“Well, the
n he’s looking remarkably fine,” Tim said, smacking his lips. “You’re a lucky girl, Savannah.”
Yes, I was. Although it was a little disconcerting to hear my male boss say so, in such very sincere tones.
I put it out of my head, or tried to. “I need some advice.”
“Oh, dear.” Tim clicked his tongue and leaned back in his chair, baby-blues gleaming. “Did he shave his legs and wear a thong to the beach? I hate to be the one to tell you, Savannah, but he’s turned gay.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “He isn’t gay. And he didn’t... actually, he did wear a Speedo. But not a thong. And not to the beach. Just in the privacy of our room. But he didn’t shave anything first. And besides...”
Tim wasn’t listening. He had snatched up a folder from the desk and was leaning back in his chair, eyes closed, fanning himself with it. I rolled my eyes and sat back to wait for him to finish having the vapors.
“Speedo?” he said faintly after a minute.
I nodded. “Metallic gold. Tiny.”
The folder went into action again, so vigorously that Tim’s curls bounced in the breeze. Another minute passed while he recovered.
“About the question,” I said.
He cracked an eye to look at me. “Question?”
“The one I wanted to ask you. The advice.”
He sat up and put the folder down. “Are you sure he isn’t gay?”
“Positive,” I said.
Tim sighed. “It was nice while it lasted.”
“It didn’t happen,” I said. “Or only in your mind. About my question.”
“Yes, yes. Ask me your question. Even though I’m sure it won’t be as intriguing as the possibility that Rafael might swing my way.”
Since there was no possibility at all that Rafe would swing Tim’s way, the reality of the anonymous letters were far more intriguing, at least as far as I was concerned. “It’s about disclosure. Material facts and things like that.”
Tim nodded.
“Say you had a client who wanted to sell his house. And say it was because he had been getting anonymous letters.”
Tim looked interested. I watched him closely, to see if it was more than just normal interest—like maybe he’d had a client of his own with this problem—but if he had, I couldn’t tell.
“Has anything like that ever happened to you?”
Tim shook his head. “If it has, nobody’s told me about it. Which client is this?”
I hesitated. I had gotten Kylie’s and Aislynn’s permission to talk to Rafe and the police, but I hadn’t gotten their permission to talk to Tim. And between you and me, he’s a horrible gossip. Besides, he had represented the former owners. What if he told them what was going on, and warned them not to talk to me?
“Nobody you know.” I reached up to twist the end of a strand of hair around my finger, and had to force myself to stop. People who know me—like my brother—know it’s my tell for lying. “Nobody from around here. Someone in Sweetwater.”
My hometown, where people know me, and can tell when I’m lying. Tim didn’t seem able to.
“That’s awkward,” he remarked. “For something like that to happen in a small town where everyone knows everyone else.”
I nodded, relieved that he seemed to believe the lie. “Which is why I don’t want to have to disclose it unless I have to.”
“It isn’t a material fact,” Tim said and put his fingertips together, preparatory to lecturing. “In the state of Tennessee, we are not required to disclose murders and suicides taking place on the property, or individuals with AIDS or other communicable diseases living in the property. We are not required to disclose if the house has been used for cooking meth. We are not required to disclose if the previous owner was a convicted felon. We are not required to disclose anything that doesn’t—and I quote—have an effect on the physical structure of the property.”
“So I don’t have to disclose the letters.”
Tim shook his head. “Although...”
My heart sank. “Although what?” It wasn’t like I wanted Aislynn and Kylie to decide to sell the place, but if they did, I didn’t want to have to stigmatize the property.
“If it comes out later, things could get ugly.”
Yes, they could. Just as a for-instance: if Tim’s clients had been receiving letters and that’s why they’d decided to move, and Aislynn and Kylie had bought the house in good faith and had, so to speak, inherited Tim’s clients’ anonymous correspondent, they wouldn’t be happy about the non-disclosure. Even if Tim hadn’t been required, by law, to disclose anything, Aislynn and Kylie would still be upset, and with good reason. There are legal issues, and then there are ethical ones, and they don’t always coincide. It might not have been a legal requirement, but if the previous owners had known about the letters, it would have been nice of them to share.
Hypothetically, of course.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, getting to my feet before he could ask me anything else. I had what I needed—or at least I had some of it. “What are you up to today?”
The look he gave me was a little strange, but he answered easily enough. “Paperwork. And I have a listing appointment at eleven.”
“Good for you.” I sidled toward the door. “A house in the neighborhood?”
Tim shook his head. “Brentwood. I’ll be leaving in less than an hour.”
Excellent. “Good luck,” I said, since listing appointments can go either way. Sometimes the potential client loves you and wants you to take on the job of selling their house, and sometimes they don’t like you, and you don’t get the listing.
“I’m not worried,” Tim answered.
I spent the hour before he left huddled in my office. I did a CMA—comparative market analysis—for Aislynn and Kylie’s house, just in case I couldn’t find out anything about their anonymous letter writer, and they decided to put the house on the market and asked me how much it was worth. And since I was looking at houses for sale and recently sold in the neighborhood, I made note of which houses had changed hands in the last six months, as well. There weren’t a whole lot. As the girls had mentioned, they had new neighbors a block away on either side, and someone new on the next street over. I’d have to drive by and take a look, I guess. Not that I expected to be able to tell from the outside of the houses whether anonymous letter writers were likely to live inside, but it was something to do. And maybe I would come across someone cackling maniacally while he or she was penning another anonymous tome.
I spent some time on the internet researching anonymous letters in general—a couple in New Jersey had been getting some extremely creepy ones recently, a lawsuit was pending, and Hollywood was sniffing around the movie rights—and after that I called Tamara Grimaldi to ask her opinion on the subject.
The phone rang a couple of times, and then she picked up. “Ms. Martin.”
Detective Grimaldi was maid of honor at my wedding, and is sort of dating my brother Dix—‘sort of’ because Dix lost his wife last November and isn’t really ready to move on to a new relationship yet. Although something’s going on. They could just be good friends, but I suspect it’s a little more than that.
Anyway, she should probably be calling me Savannah by now, but calling me by my last name seemed to be a hard habit to break. It wasn’t even my last name anymore.
And I had no room to talk, since I had the worst time trying to get used to calling her Tamara.
“Detective,” I said instead.
“Everything all right?”
“Fine,” I said. “I have a question. Do you know anything about poison pen letters?”
There was a pause. “Not much,” the detective said. “Pretty much just what I’ve read in Agatha Christie.”
“You’re the police. Don’t you deal with stuff like that all the time?”
“First,” Grimaldi told me, “people don’t really write letters at all anymore. They call or text or email.”
“Sur
e,” I answered, “but those are traceable. You know who’s contacting you. It isn’t possible to contact someone anonymously.”
“Of course it is. Spoofing can make someone’s phone number look like it comes from the White House or your own home.”
Fine. “You said ‘first.’ What’s second?”
“What?... Oh. People don’t write letters anymore. And when they do, those letters rarely end in murder. I work homicide.”
She had a point. “So no experience with anonymous letters?”
“Not since I was a kid and we sent them to other kids we didn’t like,” Grimaldi said. “Are you getting anonymous letters?”
I told her I wasn’t.
“Mr. Collier?”
She’s worked with Rafe before. She calls him by his last name, too.
“No,” I said. “Rafe isn’t getting threatening letters.”
That would be a much bigger deal than this was. And no offense at all to Aislynn and Kylie, but with all the—pardon me—crap in his past, someone sending Rafe anonymous letters would be an oversized, red flag that something was wrong. “A couple of clients of mine have been getting them.”
I laid out the situation, starting with the first letter just after April 1st, and ending with the phone call and visit yesterday. “They’re giving me the day today to see what I can find out. We’re meeting again tomorrow morning to talk about putting the house on the market. I don’t really want to do that.”
“You probably won’t have to,” Grimaldi said. “Poison pens aren’t usually violent. They avoid conflict. That’s why they send anonymous letters, instead of confronting whoever they have the beef with.”
That made sense.
“In the few instances where poison pen letters have ended in murder, it has usually been the letter writer who ended up dead. And it’s usually in cases where he or she claims to know the recipient’s secrets. Some people have secrets they’re willing to kill for.”
It would have to be a pretty damn—excuse me: darn—big secret to cause me to kill someone over it, but diff’rent strokes, I guess.
“So you don’t think Kylie and Aislynn have to worry?”
Adverse Possession Page 3