Ditching David

by Jenna Bennett

  But he’d been their father, and I wanted them to be happy, so I let them have their way, overall. The music was contemporary—with some modern renditions of older songs—and the flowers a compromise of everything we’d talked about, including a blanket of daisies that would drape over the mahogany casket.

  “Thanks for your help,” I said insincerely when it was all over and we parted ways on the front steps.

  Krystal sniffed. “Don’t think this means we like you.”

  “Of course not.” I was under no such illusions. They hadn’t liked me for the past eighteen years; I had no reason to think they’d start now. Especially if they thought I’d had something to do with their father’s death. “I’ll see you Friday.”

  I didn’t wait for them to answer, just walked down the steps and over to my car. When I drove out of the parking lot, they were both folding themselves into a sleek, black BMW. Krystal was driving, so I guess it must be hers.

  * * *

  BACK AT THE house, I kicked off the heels and peeled out of the gray dress. I hadn’t liked it last year, when I wore it to David’s mother’s funeral, and I liked it less now. After Friday, I might just donate it to Goodwill.

  Barefoot and dressed in yoga capris and a pink camisole—one that David had said made me look twenty-eight back when I was a blonde, but which probably clashed badly with my new strawberry red hair—I made my way back downstairs and to the kitchen, where a bottle of Cabernet was waiting. It wasn’t even four o’clock, but after the day I’d had, I figured I deserved it.

  However, the powers that be must have had other plans. I hadn’t even gotten the cork out when the doorbell rang. I put bottle and corkscrew down, and padded in the direction of the front door.

  When I pulled it open, and found myself looking at Jaime Mendoza—for the third time in less than six hours—I was tempted to slam the door in his face.

  And the thought must have shown, because he grinned. “Hello again, Mrs. Kelly.”

  I sighed. “Detective.”

  “I have a few more questions, if you don’t mind.”

  “Would it matter if I did?” I opened the door and stepped aside. “Come in.”

  I led the way into the formal living room—because I didn’t want him to see the wine bottle on the kitchen counter and think I had a drinking problem—and sat down on the sofa. Mendoza took the chair opposite. When I crossed one leg over the other, he didn’t even blink.

  “This won’t take long,” he told me, pulling a battered notebook from the inside pocket of his suit jacket.

  “I’m not busy,” I answered. “I’m just sitting here waiting to bury my husband. Or waiting to be arrested. Whichever comes first.”

  He looked up, brows arching. “Did you do something I should arrest you for?”

  “I didn’t kill David,” I said. “Although I know you think I did.”

  “I don’t particularly think you did. I just think you might have.”

  If that was intended to make me feel better, it failed.

  “I don’t even know where he was last night.” How could I cut his brake cables if I didn’t know where he and his car were?

  “Having dinner with friends. Celebrating his birthday.”

  Mendoza opened the notebook. I waited for him to lick the point of the pencil and start writing, but he didn’t. “Mr. and Mrs. Farley Hollingsworth,” he recited. “Mr. and Mrs. Harold Newsome. Mr. and Mrs. John Oliver. And Ms. Demetros.”

  “The Newsomes and Olivers are clients.” And Mrs. Newsome and Mrs. Oliver did actually have first names, Mendoza’s listing of them as appendages to their husbands notwithstanding. Mrs. Newsome was Heidi and Mrs. Oliver Gwendolyn, respectively. There was a time—before Jacquie, before David left me—that the three of us had been friends. We’d had lunch together and done volunteer work together and taken Zumba classes together at the Y.

  And now they were dining with Jacquie.

  “So Mr. Hollingsworth told me,” Mendoza said.

  “You’ve talked to Farley? How is he doing?”

  “As expected,” Mendoza said. “Shocked. In disbelief. Grieving. Can’t imagine why anyone would want to kill his business partner. Mr. Kelly didn’t have an enemy in the world.”

  He sounded just a touch sarcastic.

  “Do you hear that a lot?” I asked.

  “Every time someone’s murdered,” Mendoza answered.

  “It’s true, though. David really didn’t have any enemies. If someone’s investment went belly-up and they lost all their money, they’d be more likely to blame Farley than David. Although I haven’t heard of that happening. And nobody kills someone else just because they beat them at golf.”

  Mendoza shrugged.

  “I guess you’ve spoken to everyone by now,” I added. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance Jacquie did it?”

  Mendoza’s mouth curved. “She doesn’t have much of a motive. As you said, your husband was worth more to her alive. But she did have means and opportunity. She left the table between dinner and dessert, and didn’t come back for what Mrs. Hollingsworth said was ‘a long time.’” He made air quotes with his fingers. “She might have had time to run to the parking lot, slide under the car, slice the brake cables, and run back inside.”

  I’d love it if she had, but unfortunately, I couldn’t quite see it. “What was she wearing?”

  “I didn’t ask,” Mendoza said.

  Typical man. “Probably a dress. Something sexy and slinky.” Something like what she’d been wearing every other time David had taken her to dinner. “Where did they dine?”

  “Fidelio’s,” Mendoza said. “On Murphy Road.”

  I nodded. Definitely a dress. Something short and skimpy. Bare legs and high heels. “If she’d been crawling around under cars, her dress would have been dirty and her hair a mess. One of the other women would have noticed her looking disheveled when she came back.”

  And would have commented on it. I doubted Martha, Heidi, and Gwendolyn had taken to Jacquie. And not because they were feeling any loyalty to me. No, they were all trophy wives—except Martha, but she was secure in Farley’s adoration—and Jacquie would have been their worst nightmare. If she could happen to me, she could happen to any one of them.

  “No one mentioned that,” Mendoza said, consulting his notebook. “Mrs. Hollingsworth assumed Ms. Demetros had been in the restroom touching up her makeup.”

  Then she’d surely not looked disheveled. And she probably hadn’t had time to both cut the brake cables and touch up her makeup. “Damn,” I said.

  Mendoza’s lips twitched. “Sorry, Mrs. Kelly.”

  He didn’t sound sorry. “I don’t suppose there’s any point in asking what you thought of her?”

  “Me?” He sounded sincerely surprised that I asked. “The same thing every other man who saw her thought, I suppose.”

  I grimaced. Great. “Not sure that’s something you should tell the grieving widow.”

  “You asked. And you’re not grieving.”

  Since saying I was grieving would be lying, I didn’t. “How do you know?” I asked instead.

  He used the pencil to point to my head. “That doesn’t look like grief. That looks more like a statement.”

  “I can’t wear red to the funeral, so I colored my hair instead?”

  He shrugged. Very nicely, too. Good shoulders.

  And I had no business noticing that, since he was roughly the age of my stepchildren.

  “I started life as a redhead,” I told him. “David liked me as a blonde, so I stayed blond for him. This morning I woke up and realized I didn’t have to be a blonde anymore.”

  Mendoza nodded. “Can you tell me where you were yesterday?”

  “All day?”

  He nodded.

  “But...” I bit back my objection that I’d only found out about the prenup in the afternoon; that until then, I’d had no reason to kill David. If Mendoza didn’t know about that little wrinkle, I wasn’t about to point it out
to him. “Is it possible that the brake cables were compromised during the day?” I asked instead. “Wouldn’t the accident have happened sooner?”

  “The car was parked outside the Hollingsworth & Kelly offices for most of the day,” Mendoza told me. “The parking lot isn’t monitored. At five o’clock, Mr. Kelly drove directly to Fidelio’s. The valet parked the car. The lot is a self-park as well as a valet-park, so anyone has access to the cars.”

  I nodded. “I’d been to Fidelio’s. I knew the setup.”

  “The others arrived within the next twenty minutes. Ms. Demetros parked her own car. The Newsomes arrived separately, with both using the valet. Ditto for the Hollingsworths. The Olivers arrived together, and also used the valet.”

  So they’d all had cars in the lot, and they’d all had excuses, if they needed one, for going outside during the meal. “Did you ask the valet whether any of them went into the lot during dinner?”

  “There were a couple of valets,” Mendoza said, “and they both stayed busy. They couldn’t say for sure one way or the other.”

  Too bad.

  Mendoza eyed me. “Do you have a reason to think someone at the dinner wanted Mr. Kelly dead?”

  Well, no. I just wanted to make sure he knew I wasn’t the only suspect.

  “If you know the setup,” Mendoza said, and I grimaced. Maybe it would have been better not to tell him that, “you know that someone from outside could easily have accessed the lot while your husband was inside at dinner.”

  I was well aware of that. It was just a few months since David and I had been to Fidelio’s, for my fortieth birthday.

  Mendoza twitched his pen over the notebook page. “If you’d give me a rundown of your whereabouts yesterday, Mrs. Kelly? Including last night after five?”

  Chapter 5

  I TOLD HIM I had no alibi for last night between talking to Diana on the phone and his own showing up on my doorstep to tell me David was dead. Mendoza thanked me and left, and I headed back to the kitchen and my bottle of Cabernet. I needed it more than ever.

  He had admitted that while David’s brakes could have been tampered with during the day, while the car had been parked behind the Hollingsworth & Kelly building on Music Row, it was more likely any tampering had happened later, in the parking lot at Fidelio’s Ristorante.

  There were a couple of different reasons for this. Someone might have felt nervous about sabotaging someone’s brakes in broad daylight in a well-trafficked area, in a parking lot surrounded by business buildings. There was no telling who might happen to come by, or who might be watching from out of an office window. The lot behind Fidelio’s is secluded, and it was dark by the time David got there. Much safer to do that kind of damage at night.

  Also, the drive from Music Row to Murphy Road had been on secondary roads during rush hour. There’d been a lot of other cars, and a lot of stop and go. David’s brakes must have gotten a workout. It was Mendoza’s opinion that if the brakes had been compromised at that point, it was likely they would have failed before David made it all the way to Fidelio’s.

  He also made the point that an accident in those circumstances was unlikely to be fatal. With bumper-to-bumper traffic and low speeds, failed brakes between Music Row and Sylvan Park were more likely to result in a fender-bender than death. And if someone had deliberately cut David’s brake cables, a fender-bender probably wasn’t the desired result. That was a lot of trouble to go to for very little payoff.

  I think that was the first time it really sank in that someone had deliberately tried to kill David. I knew he was dead, and I knew the police thought it wasn’t an accident, but until Mendoza said that, it hadn’t felt real.

  Someone had killed David.

  The problem, I reflected, as I guzzled Cabernet with unladylike eagerness, was that even with that knowledge, I had no idea who would have wanted him dead. Sure, I might have joked that I did, but I certainly wouldn’t have done anything to kill him. And I hadn’t been kidding when I told Diana I wouldn’t recognize a brake cable if one reached out and bit me. I’d be just as likely to cut the fuel lines, and end up with gasoline all over me.

  Also, I’d been home last night, other than that quick trip to the liquor store—the one I had camouflaged as a trip to the grocery store when I spoke to Mendoza.

  Heidi, Gwendolyn, and Martha weren’t likely to know the difference between a brake cable and a fuel line, either. Not that either of them had a reason for wanting David dead. Nor their husbands. As far as I knew, the business was going well and everyone was happy.

  Unless David had diddled one of the wives, and her husband had found out...?

  Just a couple of months ago, I would have laughed at the idea. But that was before Jacquie. Now I was willing to acknowledge that if he had cheated on me with her, he might have cheated on me with someone else. Including someone I might consider a friend.

  But if he had, he wasn’t doing it anymore. I’d been following him around for weeks, and the only woman he ever saw—other than Rachel—was Jacquie. So why would a jealous husband want to kill him at this point?

  Unless it was Jacquie’s jealous husband, of course. I wondered whether Mendoza was looking into that possibility.

  Or unless David had had an affair with someone else, and she was upset about being supplanted.

  I tried to imagine one of my friends—former friends—sleeping with my husband, and couldn’t. If either of them wanted to have an affair, surely they wouldn’t pick another old fart just like their own husbands. They’d find some gorgeous young stud in his twenties or early thirties—someone like Jaime Mendoza—and get their money’s worth.

  For a moment or two—or three or four—I enjoyed the mental image of Detective Mendoza undressed and sprawled across a big bed: his hair rumpled, his skin glowing against cool cotton sheets, his eyes smoldering, and his grin wicked.

  And then I derailed the train of thought before it could go any farther. Aside from his age—too young for me—he was most likely attached. If not actually married, then he probably had a girlfriend. At his age, and looking like that, I couldn’t imagine he didn’t have someone in his life. And I wasn’t about to commit adultery, not even in the privacy of my own mind.

  But yes, if I had wanted to cheat on David—or on Harold Newsome or John Oliver or Farley Hollingsworth—that’s what I’d do. Find someone like Jaime Mendoza and make it count. I certainly wouldn’t choose to cheat with someone who had anything in common with David. What would be the point?

  This was all speculation, though. I had no proof, and not even a reason to suspect that David had cheated before he took up with Jacquie. And anyway, if he had, surely he wouldn’t have invited her and her husband to his birthday dinner. Would he?

  Which brought me back to the money. The money that was the only logical reason why anyone would want to do away with David.

  I had the best motive of everyone, but I hadn’t done it. Jacquie had no motive at all. Krystal probably made a decent living. The suit she’d had on this afternoon had been expensive, and the car she drove more so. Unless David had bought both for her—and I didn’t recall that he had—she was obviously capable of keeping herself in style.

  Kenny was a different story. He’d always drifted from one thing to the next, looking for God knew what. His backbone, maybe. He’d dabbled in drugs in his teens, and David had had to bail him out more than once. He’d gotten kicked out of no less than two colleges for partying instead of studying. He’d never graduated with any kind of degree, so it was no wonder he couldn’t get a decent job. Whatever settlement he was getting from David’s will might make a big difference to him. And he’d probably know the difference between a brake cable and a fuel line, too.

  He’d said he’d been working last night. He might have been telling the truth. I had no way of knowing, since I hadn’t asked him where he worked.

  If I called and asked, he’d probably refuse to tell me. But it was still fairly early. Not quite five o’clock.
Maybe he hadn’t left home yet.

  Maybe I could catch him before he did, and follow him. And then I could call there and ask someone else whether he’d worked last night.

  There was no time to waste, so I didn’t change, just slipped my feet into a pair of shoes and headed out the door.

  * * *

  KENNY LIVED IN a condo complex on Hillsboro Road, near Green Hills. David bought the apartment for him half a dozen years ago, before Kenny got kicked out of Belmont College for excessive partying.

  It’s an expensive area, but the condos were old and not very well maintained. They also weren’t gated. I was able to drive right into the lot and find a parking space across from Kenny’s building, where I could park and slide down in my seat and keep an eye on his door in the rearview mirror.

  If memory served—and I hadn’t been here since he moved in—Kenny lived on the second floor. There were two stories to each building, with four apartments on each floor: two facing the front of the building and two facing the back. The staircases were exterior. Because of the location—close to the universities and the hospital district—and the fairly reasonable prices, the complex was popular with students and young professionals, who couldn’t afford anything better.

  As cars came and went, depositing and picking up men and women in suits and jeans, I watched Kenny’s door. It didn’t open.

  There were parked cars in the lot that could belong to him, but since I had no idea what kind of car he drove, I didn’t know if any of them did. Or maybe he didn’t have one. He’d been riding with Krystal this afternoon.

  Hard to believe, in a town as lacking in public transportation as Nashville. Then again, there was a bus line right around the corner.

  As dusk settled, the apartment windows stayed dark. I glanced at the clock. I’d been here an hour, and there’d been no sign of Kenny. He was either holed up inside, in the dark—not a very likely scenario—or he’d gone out before I got here.

  Bummer.

  I turned the key in the ignition and backed the convertible out of the space. I was just on my way out of the lot when I met a car coming in through the same fairly narrow gate. I and the other driver were less than four feet away from each other as we passed, and because I feared for my mirror, I glanced out. And stomped on the brake.