A Cutthroat Business

by Bente Gallagher

  “My mother sent me to finishing school,” I blurted. Steven smiled.

  “See? Brenda was born in Bucksnort. All her life she wanted to be a Southern Belle, with everything she thought it entailed. The family mansion, the education, the social standing. All of it was beyond her, so she focused on the one thing she could do, and that was making enough money so that when Alexandra grew up, she would have everything Brenda hadn’t had, and become everything Brenda couldn’t be. I daresay my wife could have done a better job in some areas than maybe she did, but she meant well.”

  “I’m sure she did,” I said politely. “She—you both— did a good job with Alexandra. She’s a nice girl. And now that she’s settled at home, I guess maybe I should go. I’m sorry if we interrupted anything.”

  I got to my feet. Steven stood, too, just as Maybelle came back down the stairs. From the tiny wrinkle between her brows, I guessed that Alexandra had refused the motherly touches Maybelle wanted to administer. Steven didn’t seem to notice. “We appreciate you bringing her home, Savannah.”

  Maybelle went to his side and linked a proprietary hand through his arm. “Are you leaving already, Miss Martin? Where’s your car?” She glanced out the French doors to the obviously empty driveway.

  “Actually,” I said, “my . . . um . . . date dropped us off. I’ll have to call a cab.”

  “Oh, nonsense! I’ll drive you.” She smiled up at Steven. “That way you can go talk to Alexandra, and Miss Martin and I can become friends.” She transferred the smile to me, bright and hard. There wasn’t anything I could do but to accept, but I don’t mind telling you that the offer made me nervous. Maybelle’s single-minded devotion to Steven was more than a little creepy.

  I looked around surreptitiously when we got outside, hoping against hope that Rafe had changed his mind and come back to get me, but, of course, he hadn’t.

  “My car is parked across the street.” Maybelle headed for her own, smaller cottage. I trailed behind, keeping an eye on her back and wondering what she’d do if I refused to get into the car with her.

  Of all the people I had come across in connection with Brenda’s murder, Maybelle was the one who set my sensors to vibrating the fastest. She had the best reason of anyone for wanting Brenda out of the way. She wanted Brenda’s husband, Brenda’s children, Brenda’s house, Brenda’s life; and she had the kind of personality I could visualize murdering someone who stood in her way. A typical Southern woman: sweet as sugar on the outside, and hiding bubbling cauldrons of malice inside.

  “Here we are.” She opened the passenger door to a silver Toyota Camry and gestured me in. I hesitated. “It’s perfectly clean, I assure you.” She smiled.

  “Of course. I didn’t mean . . .” I got in. There wasn’t anything else I could do. She closed the door and trotted around the car.

  “Fasten your seatbelt, dear.” She put the car into gear and backed out of the driveway. The doors locked automatically as the car started moving. I glanced at the door, then over at Maybelle. She was smiling beatifically.

  17.

  It was difficult to know what to say, especially since I was afraid of saying the wrong thing. To be safe, I waited for Maybelle to speak. When she didn’t, I felt compelled to break the silence myself, with the most innocuous remark I could find. “I really appreciate your driving me home.”

  “It’s the least I can do after you brought Alexandra back home to us.” She smiled.

  “It was my pleasure,” I said, relieved. “She’s a nice girl.”

  “I’m glad you think so.” Maybelle said it complacently, as if she had had something to do with it. “No thanks to Brenda, of course. But things will be different from now on.”

  I didn’t doubt it. “I hear congratulations are in order.”

  She glanced over at me. “I beg your pardon?”

  “About you and Steven? The engagement? Congratulations.”

  She wrinkled her brows. “How did you hear about that?”

  “Alexandra told me,” I said. Her forehead cleared.

  “Of course. I’m sorry if I sounded ungracious. It’s just . . . it’s very soon, and we’ve decided to keep it quiet for a while. So as not to give anyone the wrong impression. You understand.”

  She smiled. I nodded. I understood perfectly. She didn’t want anyone to know that the murdered woman’s husband had gotten himself engaged to someone else the day after the funeral, and who could blame her? Not only was it in poor taste, but it might set tongues to wagging about the possibility that one or both of them had hastened Brenda’s demise.

  “Well, I hope you’ll be very happy,” I said politely. There was no sense trying to question Maybelle about where she and Steven had been the Saturday morning Brenda died, or on Thursday when Clarice supposedly cut her wrists. If they hadn’t been together, Maybelle would say they had. She’d probably consider it her sacred duty.

  She smiled. “Thank you, dear. I’m sure we will be, once everything goes back to normal. Steven needs a wife; someone who puts his needs and the needs of the family first. Not a career-woman like Brenda, who always had other places to go and other people to see.”

  Her voice was serene. I smiled politely, but once again found I had nothing to say. Although I sensed that Alexandra was in for a lot of cabbage rolls and unwanted mothering as Maybelle attempted to replace Brenda in the Puckett family unit.

  It’s not a very long drive from Winding Way to my apartment on East Main, and we drove the next few minutes in—mostly—companionable silence. Maybelle didn’t appear to have any plans of murdering me, which made me feel silly for my earlier fears, and she didn’t veer off course at all. It wasn’t until we were on the homestretch, heading down Main Street, that she spoke again. “Savannah, dear . . . you don’t mind if I call you Savannah, do you?”

  “Of course not,” I said.

  “It is really so sweet of you to take Alexandra under your wing, and to show her the world, not to mention help her acquire some polish . . .” She pulled up to the curb outside the gate, right where I had hoped—in vain— that Rafe would drop me off just an hour or two ago. “And we’re so very grateful that you came to her rescue this evening, believe me . . .” I scooted a little closer to the door as her gentle voice hardened. “But maybe it would be best if you didn’t come around again, dear. At least not for a little while. She’s still very young, and distraught by her mother’s death, and I’m not at all sure she should be subjected to the kind of life you lead. I saw you drive up through the window, and the young man who dropped you both off! Well, I’m sure you understand, dear.” She unlocked the doors. I didn’t waste any time getting out of the car, and she didn’t waste any in driving away. Nothing more was said by either of us. She’d made her point and I was, frankly, too shocked to respond.

  It took a few seconds for the numbness to wear off and anger to kick in. But once there, it kicked with a vengeance. Who the helldid she think she was to tell me to stay away from Alexandra? She wasn’t the girl’s mother, or even her stepmother, yet. And with her horribly illtimed engagement, surely she didn’t imagine she had anything to teach meabout good manners and proper behavior!

  I had worked myself into a fine state of righteous indignation when I sensed—more than heard—a movement behind me. I swung around only to be confronted with a tall, dark figure, menacingly close.

  It took just a second for me to recognize him, but it was the longest second of my life. Visions of butcher knives and Brenda Puckett’s throat danced before my eyes. And when I did recognize him, it didn’t make me feel all that much better. “Dammit, Rafe.” My voice sounded weak and breathless. “One of these days you’ll scare me into a faint.”

  He grinned, teeth very white in the semi-darkness. “You didn’t think we were done for the night, did you?”

  Oh, God. “Um . . .” I said weakly. “I kind of hoped we were.”

  He chuckled. “It’s not that late. I thought maybe you’d wanna have a chat with Maurice Washingt
on.”

  “Oh.” It took a few seconds for my thoughts to switch track from romance—or sexual assault—to murder. “Um . . . sure.”

  “Let’s go, then. Time’s a-wasting.” He gestured to the Town Car, which I now saw was parked at the curb a few car lengths away. I got in, trying to decide how I felt. I was relieved, of course—for a moment, I had thought he meant that wehad unfinished business between the two of us, and it was a relief to discover that this wasn’t the night when I’d be fighting off his advances—but I was also a little . . . is insulted the right word?

  We were halfway to Reinhardt Street by the time I’d gotten over my little snit and had managed to convince myself that there were more important things at stake here than my ego. Especially as I didn’t even want to have anything to do with him. “I’ve been meaning to ask,” I said, “how you got into Brenda’s Stor-All unit on Thursday. Did you have a key?”

  He shot me a glance out of the corner of his eye. “Where’d I get a key?”

  “I thought maybe you’d looked through her purse on Saturday morning. Detective Grimaldi said someone did.”

  If the suggestion that he might have robbed a dead woman offended him, he didn’t show it. “Musta been someone else. I don’t need keys.”

  “You vaporize and slide through the key hole?”

  “Not really. I just finesse the lock.”

  “You’re a locksmith?”

  He smiled, amused. “Not really. It’s one of those useful skills you pick up along the way.”

  “I haven’t picked it up,” I said.

  “You and me prob’ly haven’t travelled in the same circles, darlin’.”

  No arguing with that. “It’s interesting, anyway.”

  “Glad to hear it. Why?”

  “Clarice Webb had a storage locker, too. In the same place as Brenda.”

  “No kidding.”

  “The receptionist said she was there just a few days ago. After Brenda’s murder, and just before she got dead herself.”

  “So?”

  “So I’m wondering if it had something to do with those papers that Heidi found in her desk. And the manila envelope she came back to pick up the night she died.”

  “You wanna explain that?” After I had, he thought for a moment. “So you’re thinking she went to the storage place to get the papers? And they had something to do with why she killed herself?”

  “Or why she was killed.”

  “She was killed?”

  I shrugged. “It’s easier for me to believe that someone else killed both of them than to believe that Clarice killed Brenda. I knew her. But either way, I’m hoping that there’s something in that unit that can settle it one way or the other.”

  Rafe didn’t say anything for a minute. I assumed he was working on a counter-argument, but as it turned out, he wasn’t. “If she took the papers outta the storage unit,” he said instead, “they ain’t gonna be there no more.”

  “Not those papers. But as meticulous as Clarice was, she wouldn’t have neglected to make extra copies. All of Brenda’s paperwork was copied in triplicate: an office copy, a Brenda copy, and a Clarice copy. She would never risk losing her last copy of something. There must be another somewhere, and it’s probably in the storage unit. Unless it was at her house, but then the police would have found it.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” Rafe said. “So you’re asking if I’ll burgle Clarice’s locker for you.”

  I hesitated. “Not burgle it, exactly . . . Just open it so I can have a look around. See, I didn’t find a key to Clarice’s storage unit anywhere.”

  He looked at me for a second. “I can’t believe you’re asking me to break the law.”

  “Well, if you don’t want to . . .”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t want to. Depends on the incentive, don’t it?”

  “Truth, justice, and liberty for all?” I suggested. He grinned.

  “I had something a little different in mind.”

  “Somehow I knew that.” I was trying hard not to blush, but not succeeding very well. Good thing it was dark in the car. Rafe chuckled, and something about it made all the little hairs on my arms stand up. But before he could answer, the turnoff for Reinhardt Street appeared, and we rolled into the cul-de-sac again.

  Rafe turned off the engine. “You ready?”

  I swallowed. “I guess.”

  “Still got the check?”

  I nodded. It was crumpled up in my handbag, hurriedly stuffed out of sight so Steven wouldn’t notice it. “What if he doesn’t want to talk to us?”

  “I ain’t worried about that,” Rafe said and opened his door. “Let’s go.”

  Maurice’s house still looked much as it had earlier. Light was spilling out of the windows, music was throbbing, and several cars were parked in the driveway. A souped-up green Dodge was among them. “I think this is his,” I said, patting the hood on my way past. I don’t know why I bothered to lower my voice, because the people inside wouldn’t have heard the sounds of a full-scale invasion.

  “Likely he’s still inside, then,” Rafe answered. He walked up on the narrow front porch. I followed.

  “Stand here.” He pointed to a spot right in front of the door, while he stepped off to the side, where he couldn’t be seen. “Don’t go in. Just get him to open the door.”

  “But . . .”

  “I need you to get Maurice outside. If he sees me, he won’t set foot out here. Not after what happened earlier.”

  “I thought you said nothing happened earlier.”

  He grinned and rapped on the door. Hard. “I lied.”

  He faded into the shadows. I was still gaping when the front door opened and a young black man with a diamond stud in his ear and pants that hung down to his knees appeared in the doorway. The sullen expression on his face looked familiar. Although I had suspected it, it was nice to be able to confirm that he was indeed the same man who had driven his green Dodge past 101 Potsdam Street last Saturday morning, staring insolently at Rafe and myself. What’s more, he recognized me, too, although he tried to hide it. I pretended I didn’t notice. “Maurice?” I gave him my best smile. “My name is Savannah Martin. Do you have a minute? I’d like to talk to you. In private, if you don’t mind.”

  “C’mon in.” He took a step back.

  “I’d rather do it out here,” I answered, glancing over his shoulder into the smoky living room, where dark shadows were gyrating and rap music was booming loud enough to pierce a person’s eardrums. “It’s more private. And not so loud.”

  Maurice hesitated for a second, peering out into the darkness. I did my very best to look innocent and harmless. After a moment he seemed satisfied that I was alone, and he unlocked the screen door and stepped out onto the tiny front porch. The door slammed behind him, and Rafe appeared as if from thin air between Maurice and the door. Maurice jumped, and I could see a flash of fear cross his face before he conquered it. He turned back to me. “You with him?”

  I nodded, with an apologetic smile.

  “Figures.” He pulled his head down between his shoulders like a turtle.

  “You carrying?” This was Rafe’s contribution. Maurice shook his head, but Rafe patted him down anyway. Maurice didn’t object. It looked like it might have happened before. Rafe seemed to be no stranger to the procedure himself.

  While Rafe was checking Maurice for hardware, I dug in my handbag and brought out the crumpled check. “We’d like to know about this, please.”

  Maurice squinted at it, and turned as pale as a man with a complexion like hot chocolate can turn. His eyes flickered from side to side, as if he was thinking about making a break for it. I glanced at Rafe, who grabbed him. “Easy.”

  Maurice slumped. “You the cops?”

  I shook my head. “Just friends of Alexandra’s. She found this”—I wiggled the check, but made sure to keep it out of his reach—“in your dresser.”

  “Stupid bitch.” He turned his head and spat. It en
ded up a few inches from the toe of my shoe. Rafe’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t speak.

  “She’s a sixteen-year-old girl whose mother was murdered last week,” I answered coldly. That particular epithet he used is one of my least favorite, even when it isn’t applied to me. “And then she finds a check for five grand in her boyfriend’s underwear drawer. From her mother. Dated the day her mother died. Oh yes, and her boyfriend wasn’t at home that morning, because she stopped by to see him, and he wasn’t there.”

  “I don’t have to talk to you,” Maurice said. He was probably aiming for tough and truculent, but managed only to sound like a pouty five-year-old. Rafe smiled.

  “Why don’t you try not talking to us, and see what happens.”

  Maurice looked up at him. He wasn’t much taller than me—five foot ten maybe—and Rafe had him beat by four or five inches, as well as a good thirty pounds. Solid muscle, all of it.

  “And watch your language, if you don’t mind,” I added. Maurice rolled his eyes.

  “She called me last week sometime. The old . . . I mean, Alex’s ma. Told me to meet her Saturday mornin’.”

  “Where? And when?”

  “Seven thirty, at the house on Potsdam. Said she had a client comin’ at eight and wanted me outta there before he showed. Said our business wouldn’t take long.” His tone when he pronounced the word business was sour.

  I nodded. That fit well with the notation in Clarice’s— Clarissa’s—calendar and what Alexandra had said about her mother leaving the house around seven. It isn’t a thirty-minute drive from Winding Way to Potsdam Street, but maybe Brenda wanted to go to Starbucks for a muffin and a cup of coffee on the way.

  “What happened?”

  Maurice shrugged skinny shoulders underneath the oversized T-shirt. “When I got there, the door was standin’ open.”

  “You see anybody else?”

  Maurice shook his head.

  “What about her car?” I asked.

  “Didn’t see no car. Just the door standin’ open.”

  “What did you do?”

  Maurice had gone in, calling Brenda’s name, and found her dead in the library.