A Cutthroat Business

by Bente Gallagher

The waiter sniffed. “We carry a large selection of imported beer, sir.”

  “I ain’t all that fancy. How about a Bud?”

  Fidelio’s could oblige with a selection of domestic beers as well, and in no time at all, Rafe was drinking a Budweiser while I was nursing a glass of chilled white wine. The waiter had brought another glass, so cold frost was forming on it, but Rafe had indicated that he preferred the bottle. The waiter had removed the glass with an eloquent sniff. Now Rafe leaned across the table and knocked his bottle against my glass. “Cheers.” He poured about half the contents down his throat.

  “If you keep drinking like that,” I commented, “I’ll know all your secrets before the evening is over.”

  He grinned. “Don’t count your chickens, darlin’.”

  I shrugged and changed the subject. There’s more than one way to skin a cat. “That friend of yours you sent to pick me up seems nice. How long have you known him?”

  He looked at me for a moment, his dark eyes watchful. Eventually, he seemed to decide that it wouldn’t do any harm to answer. “Going on ten years.”

  “Were you in prison together?” I asked. Maybe the man’s loyalty dated back to some occasion when Rafe had stood up against the prison bullies for him or something. Not that he had looked like he would need help taking care of himself. There had been absolutely nothing servile about him, hired hand, or no. In fact, he was the least-polite chauffeur I’d ever encountered. Rafe shook his head in response to my question. “So you met him after you got out? Do you work together?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “At the . . . um . . . car lot?”

  He smiled. “The car lot’s what you might call a sideline.”

  “So you’re not a used car salesman?”

  “God forbid. No, darlin’. I don’t sell cars. Drive ’em sometimes, but I don’t sell ’em.”

  “So you’re a . . . chauffeur, too?”

  My questioning seemed to amuse him, because he laughed. “Not the way you mean.”

  “Truck driver?”

  “Not really.”

  “Mover? Pilot? Maybe you freelance as a NASCAR driver?”

  “Haven’t tackled that one yet. No. Might be fun, though.” He took another swallow of beer before leaning back and folding his arms across his chest. I conceded defeat with a sigh. He wasn’t going to tell me what he did for a living, so I might as well ask him something there was a chance he’d answer.

  “Tell me about Brenda’s storage unit.”

  “Ain’t much to tell. I was looking for something specific, so I didn’t take no notice of nothing else. What were you wanting to know?”

  “What you were looking for, for a start. And whether you found it.”

  He didn’t answer for a few moments, just watched me in silence. I was getting ready to squirm when he finally spoke. “I was looking for the paperwork for that house on Potsdam.”

  “And did you find it?”

  He looked away, over to the next table where the three women were sitting. One of them caught his eye and smiled. He lifted one corner of his mouth in return and turned back to me. “Yeah.”

  “So you know that Brenda Puckett offered Mrs. Jenkins a measly fifth of what she hoped to sell the property for.” He nodded. “Did you know that that kind of contract stipulation is illegal in Tennessee?”

  He shook his head. “But I didn’t have to know that to know it’s wrong.”

  “Good point.”

  “Did you know that the hundred grand is already on deposit with the Milton House?”

  It was my turn to shake my head. “How did you find that out? It wasn’t in the contract. Not the part I saw, anyway.”

  “I asked,” Rafe said.

  “And they told you? Oh, wait. That’s right. There’s not a nurse alive who can say no to you.”

  He grinned and toasted me with the beer bottle.

  While we had been bantering, the waiter had come back to take our dinner order. I ordered without consulting the menu—Chicken Marsala, the same thing I had had the night before—and waited for Rafe.

  “I don’t suppose you got cheeseburgers?” The waiter just stared at him, stonily, down the length of his nose. “Guess not. I’ll have what she’s having.” He handed the waiter his menu.

  “It won’t go well with the beer,” I warned. The waiter sniffed. Rafe shrugged. The waiter took the menus and disappeared, his back radiating disapproval. I turned back to Rafe. “They do steaks, I think. You can call him back and . . .”

  “Chicken’s fine.”

  “Oh.” I bit my lip. “Okay, then. If you’re sure.”

  He grinned. “I ate courtesy of Riverbend Penitentiary for two years, darlin’. Chicken Marsala and beer ain’t the worst meal I’ve ever had.”

  “Maybe not,” I admitted, “but if you’re paying these kinds of prices for dinner, you may as well get something you enjoy.”

  “You afraid you’re cleaning out my food budget for the week? Don’t worry. I can afford to pay for dinner and still eat tomorrow.”

  “Good for you,” I said, trying not to think about the state of my own checking account and the refrigerator at home. “So you went to Brenda’s storage unit to look at the contract for 101 Potsdam Street?” He shrugged. “Or to steal it?” He smirked. “Why would you do something like that?”

  He didn’t answer, just kept his eyes on the now-empty beer bottle he was turning over in his hands. I looked at him, at the downturned eyes and sweep of lashes across his cheeks, and decided to take a chance on expressing an idea I’d been toying with for a couple of days. The worst thing that would happen was that he’d laugh at me, and even if he did, I’d survive. After all, it wasn’t like I cared what Rafe Collier thought of me.

  “Tondalia Jenkins really is your grandmother, isn’t she?”

  He looked up abruptly, and for just a second I saw a genuine emotion in his eyes. Surprise, and something deeper. Then it was replaced with amusement. “Quite the girl-detective, ain’t you? How’d you figure that out?”

  “Process of elimination,” I said modestly. “You’re interested in the house, but there’s nothing in it worth stealing, and you can’t afford to buy it. You don’t have the resources in hand, and without a steady job, you won’t be able to get a loan.”

  His eyes narrowed. “How d’you know anything about my resources?”

  I did a mental eye roll. He didn’t object to the suggestion that he would have stolen things had there been any to steal, but he didn’t like the idea that I knew about his financial status. “Todd did a background check on you.”

  He sat up straight so fast that the beer bottle wobbled. “You had Satterfield look into me? Why?”

  “I didn’t ask him to,” I said. “He did it all on his own. He was worried about me being involved with you.”

  Rafe leaned back in the chair again, relaxing once more. “I should be so lucky. So what did Satterfield come up with? Other than that I’m broke and unemployed?”

  “Not much,” I admitted. Rafe smirked, but the smirk faded as I went on to enumerate the things Todd’s noninvasive search had found. (So much for Todd’s assertion that the search hadn’t gone deep.) “You’ve never been married. You have no children, or at least none you’ve acknowledged. You don’t own a house. You don’t borrow money. You file taxes, but you don’t have the kind of income Todd thinks is necessary.”

  “But what does he know?” Rafe murmured. I ignored him.

  “And although you haven’t been arrested again since you got out of prison, you’ve been suspected of a fair number of crimes and interviewed in connection with several of them.”

  “Like Brenda Puckett’s murder.”

  I nodded. “Which brings me back to your interest in the house on Potsdam. And the Jenkinses. Tyrell was your father and Tondalia is your grandmother.”

  He arched a brow. “What if she is? Ain’t no crime for a man to look for his family.”

  “Of course not. And I�
�m glad you found her. Especially now that your mother has passed on.”

  I planned to add something else, but before I could, the waiter arrived. He placed a steaming plate of Chicken Marsala in front of each of us. I waited while Rafe cut a piece of chicken and put it in his mouth. Silence reigned while he chewed.

  “So what do you think?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “It ain’t a cheeseburger, but I guess it’ll do.”

  “It will help you sustain life, anyway.” I added, lifting my own utensils, “Just out of curiosity, how did you find Mrs. Jenkins? After all this time? Or did you always know who she was?”

  Rafe shook his head. “My ma never talked about my daddy, and if I asked questions, old Jim would hit me, and her, too, if she answered. I learned real fast to keep my mouth shut.”

  I nodded. I could imagine.

  Rafe continued, “After he died, I tried asking my ma again, but all she said was that my daddy was dead, too. Wasn’t till last week, when I was clearing out all her stuff, that I found a newspaper notice about some kid named Tyrell Jenkins. She’d written a date on it, a couple months before I was born.”

  “What made you think it had anything to do with you?” I nibbled delicately on another piece of chicken. Rafe answered readily enough.

  “The date. And that she kept it for thirty years. And . . . here, I’ll show you.”

  He put down knife and fork and fished in the pocket of the black leather jacket hanging over the back of his chair. Out came a wallet, and out of that a creased, yellowed piece of newsprint which he handed across the table to me. It was brittle, and felt fragile in my hands. I unfolded it carefully, and caught my breath when I saw what it contained. “My goodness. No wonder Mrs. Jenkins thought you were Tyrell.”

  According to LaDonna Collier’s childlike script, the clipping had come from the Tennessean, three years before I was born. A brief paragraph stated bluntly that Tyrell Jenkins, eighteen, had been shot to death by an unknown assailant outside his home on Potsdam Street. Beside the text was a grainy, black and white photograph of a smiling teenager. A yearbook photo, maybe; Tyrell was wearing shirt and tie, and had the fixed look of someone posing. The resemblance to Rafe was uncanny. Tyrell was darker skinned and blunter featured, with an afro that would have made the Supremes envious, but the eyes were the same, fringed by the same long, thick lashes, and he had the same hairline and the same bright grin. Rafe’s face was harder and more sculpted these days, but I could remember when he looked a lot like this. I looked from father to son a couple of times before I handed the clipping back. “That’s pretty conclusive. Almost as good as a note saying, ‘this was your father.’”

  Rafe folded the clipping and tucked it back in his wallet, next to—I couldn’t help noticing—a thick stack of bills. “That’s what I thought. It even talks about the street. All I had to do was check the tax assessor’s website for the right address. When I drove up to it, I saw it was empty and for sale, so I called Miz Puckett and asked to look at it. I hoped maybe she’d tell me where the rest of the family was.”

  “And did she?” I asked innocently. He squinted at me.

  “On the phone, you mean? No, darlin’, she didn’t.” And then his voice changed. “Oh, I get it. Nice try.”

  I shrugged. “I thought it couldn’t hurt to ask. Just in case.”

  “Can’t blame a girl for trying.” He cut another piece of chicken and chewed on it before he added, “I thought you said Clarice killed Brenda. Why’re you trying to pin it on me?”

  “I’m not. Not really. It just makes for a nice, neat solution. If you knew beforehand that Brenda had cheated your grandmother out of her house—and you out of your inheritance—and you made an appointment to talk to her about it, and she refused to listen and told you that hell would freeze over before she released Mrs. Jenkins from the contract . . .”

  “I might have got so angry I killed the old broad?” He shrugged. “I guess I might.”

  I squinted. “Really?”

  “No, darlin’. Not really. Not when I coulda just broken into her office and taken all the copies of the contract. No contract, no deal.”

  “It’s not as easy to break into our office as into the storage unit.”

  He didn’t answer, but I could tell from his expression that he didn’t think he’d have much of a problem. I added, “So what are you going to do now?”

  “Don’t know that there’s much I can do. I ain’t got no legal standing, remember. I can’t prove who I am. Tyrell’s name ain’t on my birth certificate, and my ma ain’t alive to say it oughta be. And Mrs. Jenkins—my grandma— ain’t in any kind of condition to know who I am one way or the other.”

  “They can do paternity testing for babies these days. Maybe they can test your DNA against Mrs. Jenkins’s, and tell whether you’re related. Heck, if they could prove that Thomas Jefferson slept with Sally Hemings two hundred years ago, they ought to be able to do something like that!”

  Rafe didn’t answer, just shrugged. I hesitated for a moment before I added, “My brother Dix—do you remember Dix? He was a year behind you in high school— Dix is an attorney. He and his partners—my sister Catherine and her husband—specialize in family law. He might have some ideas. I could ask him, if you’d like.” He shrugged. “Knock yourself out. Though maybe you’d better not tell him who you’re asking for. I don’t think he’d want you doing me any favors.”

  Knowing Dix, he had a point, but before I had time to say anything, I was interrupted.

  “Why, Savannah!” a delighted voice behind me said, “I thought that was you!”

  15.

  Rafe looked past me and smiled. I fixed a bright expression to my own face before I turned around. This was a guy who took no prisoners, and I didn’t want to appear to have any chinks in my armor. He’d stick it to me right through each and every one. “Hi, Tim. Fancy meeting you here.”

  Tim smiled. He must be going somewhere else later, because he was dressed for the evening in a white poet shirt, dripping with ruffles and open halfway down his smooth chest, tucked into a pair of black leather pants that fit his narrow hips like plastic wrap. Rafe’s T-shirts had nothing on Tim’s pants (although Rafe’s shirts were a lot more entertaining to watch, at least for a straight female).

  Tim glanced from me to Rafe and back with a bright, speculative look in his eyes. “Out for a romantic tête-àtête, kids?”

  Rafe grinned and leaned back on his chair, causing the thin fabric of his shirt to pull tight across shoulders and chest. I could see the outline of the snake through the left sleeve. Tim’s eyes lingered. “Who’s your friend, darling?” The question was addressed to me, though his eyes were still on Rafe. I opened my mouth to perform the introductions, although what I really wanted to do was tell Tim to mind his own business. Rafe beat me to it. (The introduction, I mean; not telling Tim to leave.)

  “Rafael Collier. Good to meet you.” He extended a hand across thetable. Tim’s manicured digits disappeared into it.

  “Timothy Briggs. My, what nice, strong hands you have!”

  I rolled my eyes. “Don’t you have somewhere to be, Tim? Someone to meet, maybe?”

  Tim smiled at me. “Now, now. Don’t be catty, darling. I’m just looking.” He proceeded to do just that, since Rafe obviously wasn’t going to do anything to stop him.

  “Horrible what happened to Clarice,” I said.

  Tim nodded distractedly.

  “Coming right on the heels of Brenda’s murder like that, it kind of makes you wonder who will be next.”

  Tim shuddered theatrically, still without looking at me.

  “By the way, I hear you stopped by Brenda’s storage unit the Monday after the murder. Do you mind if I ask you what you were doing there?”

  That did it. Tim tore his eyes away from Rafe. (There’s no other word for it.) “I don’t know what you’re talking about, darling.”

  “The receptionist said you’d been there,” I said. Tim shrugged elegantly.
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  “Sorry, darling. What would I be doing in Brenda’s storage unit?”

  “Picking up the contract for 101 Potsdam Street? BecauseyouassumedWalkerwouldgivethelistingtoyou?”

  I saw something flash in Tim’s eyes—anger, maybe, at being passed over, or something more sinister, if my questions were getting to him—but it was gone a second later. “The receptionist must have been mistaken. I haven’t been to Brenda’s storage unit in months.”

  “How about Clarice’s storage unit?”

  “I didn’t even know she had one,” Tim said easily. “In case it escaped your attention, Clarice and I weren’t on the best of terms.”

  “You must be glad that she’s gone, then.”

  Tim smiled tightly. “I won’t tell you I’m not, darling. Although I certainly didn’t plan for it to happen like this.”

  I opened my eyes wide. “You mean you had something to do with it?”

  He shook his head, causing the pale blond hair to flop over his forehead. “Oh, no. No, no. I didn’t have anything to do with her death. Nothing at all. I just wanted her to leave the company now that Brenda was gone. That’s all.”

  “I see,” I said. “The receptionist probably just made a mistake, then.”

  Tim nodded. “If I remember correctly from the last time I was there, she’s quite old. She probably saw someone else blonde and terribly good-looking and thought it was me.” He winked at Rafe, who grinned back. I smiled sweetly.

  “Thanks, Tim. Say goodnight.”

  Tim made a moue. “If you’re going to be that way.” He offered Rafe a limp hand and another melting smile. “So very nice to meet you, Rafael.” From the position of the hand, one might almost assume he wanted Rafe to kiss it.

  Rafe gave it a squeeze. “Same here, Tim. Enjoy your dinner.”

  Tim swung around on his heel and, facing me, mimed feeling dizzy and fanning himself vigorously with his hand to show me just how stupendously hot he thought Rafe was. I smiled politely and managed to hold my tongue until he had swayed off to a table on the other side of the restaurant, romantically situated between a palm tree and a tinkling fountain. Somebody was waiting for him there, but with the tree blocking my view, I couldn’t see anything beyond a charcoal gray sleeve. I turned back to Rafe.