“Yeah, well, that’s life, ain’t it? Since when did you become so tender of my feelings, darlin’?”
“I’m not,” I said, although I knew I was lying. The truth was that I’d never particularly considered his feelings before, or even considered whether he had any, but after getting to know him a little, I had gotten a glimpse of the world from his perspective, and it wasn’t a pretty place. In fact, it made me feel ashamed of some of the things I had thought in the past, even if I hadn’t – probably hadn’t – articulated any of them. “So what happened between you two?”
He shrugged. “I’d been avoiding her. I knew what she wanted, and I knew she’d think it meant something it didn’t. But she caught me one night when I was drunk and had had the crap beat out of me. I figured what the hell, she wanted it; it was her lookout.”
“So you slept with her?”
He nodded. “It was her first time, and with everything that was going on, I wasn’t as careful as maybe I shoulda been. I probably hurt her. But I didn’t force her.”
I waited a moment to see if he’d say anything else. When he didn’t, I asked, “What happened afterwards?”
He put his head back against the seat and closed his eyes. His lashes were long and thick enough to make shadows against his cheeks. “She wanted more. I always knew she would. Hell, she wanted me to marry her. Kept coming at me, saying how I’d ruined her and I owed it to her.”
“What did you do?” I asked softly.
He snorted. “What d’you think I did? I was eighteen. I bailed. Got myself a job working as a mechanic down in Birmingham, and spent the summer down there. Figured I might get hired on, and maybe I’d never have to see Elspeth again. Until I came home to see my mama one weekend, and found that Billy Scruggs had gone to work on her.”
“And that’s when you picked that fight with Billy and got yourself arrested.”
He nodded. “Elspeth came and saw me in jail, and told me she’d wait for me until I got out. After I ended up in Riverbend, she kept sending me letters, but I never opened none of’em. I just sent’em back. And when I got out I left Nashville, and the letters stopped.”
“I’m sorry,” I said again.
He shrugged. “Wasn’t like I cared, darlin’. Like you said, she was just another girl I dallied with.”
“And the baby?”
“Don’t know nothing about a baby,” Rafe said. “If she was pregnant, she never told me.”
In the silence that followed, another peremptory rap sounded on the window. I jumped and almost lost control of my bodily functions yet again. I’d forgotten them in the excitement of the conversation, but now the reminder was back, and with a vengeance.
It had gotten darker while we’d been sitting there, and it was difficult to see the person outside. I rolled down the window, and was greeted with a broad grin from a lined face topped by thinning ginger hair. “Evenin’, Miz Martin. Mr. Collier. What’re you folks doin’, steamin’ up the windows of this car like a couple of teenagers?”
“Good evening, Officer Spicer,” I said politely, in spite of the flush in my cheeks and the – I admit it – fear in my heart. “We’re not actually doing anything. Just talking.”
Lyle Spicer grinned. He and I had first met a couple of weeks earlier, when I had stumbled over Brenda Puckett’s butchered body inside Mrs. Jenkins’s house on Potsdam Street. I’d called 911, and they had sent the nearest patrol car over to assess the situation. It had contained Officer Spicer and his partner, Junior Officer Truman, who was even now smirking at me over Spicer’s shoulder. He was only about 22, and still young enough to find the humor in a situation like this. Of course, Spicer was pushing fifty and still thought embarrassing me was funny, too, so maybe age didn’t have much to do with it.
Spicer cut his eyes to Rafe. “Nice seein’ you again, Mr. Collier. Out and about, as it were. I wasn’t sure the detective’d let you leave on Sunday.”
Rafe smiled, but didn’t take the bait. From Spicer’s comment, I assumed Tamara Grimaldi had charged her two pet patrol officers with tracking down Rafe and bringing him in for interrogation last weekend.
“What are you guys doing here?” I asked, hoping against hope that they weren’t here to do what I thought they were doing.
“Routin’ out lovebirds along the river, ain’t we?” Spicer winked at Truman, who grinned appreciatively. I sent a mortified glance toward Rafe, who didn’t look as if the officers’ jokes bothered him. Spicer added, “Actually, Herself sent us out here to invite someone downtown for a talk.”
My stomach clenched. “What am I supposed to have done this time?” Rafe asked. His thoughts must have been following the same lines as my own, although his voice was remarkably steady.
“Oh, it ain’t you she’s after today. It’s the fella across the way.” Spicer indicated the warehouse on the other side of the road while I breathed out surreptitiously. “Name’s Melendez. Seems like maybe he had something to do with these murders the detective’s working on.”
“Don’t let us keep you,” I said politely.
Spicer grinned. “Sorry, Miz Martin, but I’m gonna have to ask you to leave. This guy’s considered armed and dangerous, and we don’t want no civilians gettin’ hurt. Go rent yourselves a room somewhere.” He winked at Rafe, who arched a brow.
“Guess it’s time for me to go.” His voice was light, but the eyes that crossed mine weren’t. “I’ll see you around, darlin’.”
“Sure,” I said, as he opened the passenger side door and swung his legs out.
He slammed the door and walked to his motorcycle, his stride loose-hipped and unhurried, although it covered ground faster than I could have run. I thought I was probably the only one who’d noticed the tension that had settled over him after Spicer told us he and Truman were there to talk to Julio Melendez.
The only reason I could come up with why that would worry Rafe, was because he was afraid of what Melendez might say. Which meant that Melendez really was involved in the robberies, and he knew that Rafe was, too. If Detective Grimaldi threatened him with a double charge of murder, Melendez would probably roll on anyone he could in an effort to help himself, and if he named Rafe, Tamara Grimaldi would be on him like a flea on a dog. With Melendez’s testimony, not to mention Rafe’s earlier conviction for assault and his fingerprints all over the Fortunatos’ house, she could make a pretty good case for Rafe having raped and murdered both Lila Vaughn and Connie Fortunato. No wonder he got on his bike and hightailed it out of there without so much as a glance back over his shoulder. I waited until the taillight of his Harley-Davidson had disappeared down on River Road, before I started my own car and pulled out of the parking lot with a jaunty wave at Spicer and Truman. And then I floored the accelerator and kept it there all the way home.
Chapter Sixteen
My thought processes were on overload with everything that had happened, so when I got back to my apartment (after I visited the little girl’s room), I sat down at the dining room table with a pen and paper and tried to make some sense of everything that had happened and what it might mean.
Item 1: Rafe had finally admitted to committing the two open house robberies and to having been the person to whom Lila had made her ill-advised comment about tying her to the bed.
Item 2: He had denied killing both her and Connie Fortunato. I believed him, although I wasn’t kidding myself: that might be because I wanted to believe him, and not necessarily because he was telling the truth. I had no doubt whatsoever that he could lie like a rug if it suited him, and there wasn’t much doubt that he could kill, should the circumstances demand it. I didn’t, however – or didn’t want to – believe that he could kill like this.
Item 3: He’d had three other men with him when he committed the robberies, quite possibly the three I had seen him talk to at the Shortstop Sports Bar last Sunday. Ishmael, A.J. and Antoine. Although that didn’t necessarily follow; it could have been one or more of them, none or all three. It could have bee
n Julio Melendez, or Malcolm Rodgers, or even Perry Fortunato; all of whom had some variety of dark eyes, and all of whom were middling to tall and would look something like Rafe in padded coveralls and a ski mask. With the possible exception of Julio, whom I hadn’t seen yet, but if he was four feet tall and scrawny, surely Rafe would have pointed it out.
Item 4: Julio Melendez was involved in the robberies somehow; most likely as a fence. It hadn’t occurred to me earlier, in the flush of being caught with my hand in the cookie jar, so to speak, but Rafe had probably been there tonight to meet with him. That would explain why Julio hadn’t left the warehouse with his employees, as well as what Rafe was doing there in the first place. It wasn’t like he’d come to talk to me; he couldn’t have known I’d be there. There wasn’t much else down there by the river – unless he was dropping off a donation to the Second Harvest Food Bank, which I doubted – and his tactical retreat when Spicer and Truman showed up hinted strongly at a healthy sense of self-preservation. I wondered where he’d ended up, and whether he was planning to make himself scarce until this whole thing had blown over. Maybe he was driving out of town at this very moment, to resurface three months from now in Kingsport or Bolivar or Lexington, Kentucky. Maybe, with the police sniffing around him, he was doing a bunk again, the way Todd said he’d been doing for the past ten years.
The thought was surprisingly upsetting. Or maybe upsetting isn’t the right word. It wasn’t like I cared, after all, so maybe annoyed would be a better description of my feelings. And I couldn’t exactly blame him. If he thought that Julio Melendez would rat him out to Detective Grimaldi, it made sense to get out of Nashville while the going was good. Not to mention that he probably didn’t have an alibi for yesterday afternoon, and couldn’t prove he hadn’t killed Connie. My issue wasn’t so much with the fact that he’d gone, as with his manner of going. I mean, “See you around, darlin’,” isn’t my idea of a suitable goodbye. If he was planning to drop off the face of the earth for weeks or months, the least he could do was tell me.
Not that he owed it to me, exactly. As I was fond of pointing out to Dix or Todd or anyone else who’d listen, it wasn’t like we were involved. I’d had my chance with him, more than once, and had turned him down. But surely we had enough of a relationship – friendship, acquaintanceship, whatever – that I deserved at least a proper explanation. Or if not that, a forthright goodbye. One that wasn’t open for interpretation. Sayonara, darlin’. It was nice knowing you. Take care of yourself. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. And since we won’t be seeing each other again, at least not until we’re both old and gray, how about a goodbye-kiss...?
Infuriating, that’s what it was. For him to just up and leave without a word, like I didn’t deserve to be told what was going on...
But no, I told myself, I was jumping to conclusions. I had no proof that he’d actually gone anywhere. Time enough to curse him when I tried to look for him and he couldn’t be found.
I went back to my list. However, the list wasn’t really working out. I wasn’t any closer to figuring out who’d done what to whom than when I’d started. Rafe had committed the robberies, with a little help from his friends. Julio Melendez had fenced the goods, and Heather Price had probably picked the targets in the first place. Or Julio had picked Heather’s brain. But anyone could have overheard or heard about Lila’s remark to Rafe and decided to take advantage of it. And as for Connie Fortunato’s murder and the theft of the O’Keeffe...
It occurred to me that with everything that had been going on, I’d been remiss in my duty. Someone I knew had died, and I’d been too busy with my own problems – tracking down Elspeth Caulfield and having deep conversations with Rafe – to do the proper thing. I hadn’t known Connie well, and knew her husband even less well, so I was probably exempt from dropping off a casserole, but surely I ought to have found the time to give Perry Fortunato a call with my condolences on his loss.
And what about Tim? Did Tim even know that one of his clients had passed away? The news probably hadn’t hit the paper yet – if Tim even read the paper – and until Detective Grimaldi had some more time to figure out what had happened, she might want to keep a lid on it. But she had called me; surely she wouldn’t mind if I told Tim...?
I decided it was the better part of discretion to ask first, just in case she did mind, so I dialed the detective’s number, hoping that maybe she hadn’t gotten around to interrogating Julio Melendez yet, and was able to talk. When I’d been pulled in for questioning last month, in connection with Brenda Puckett’s murder, she’d let me sweat for what had seemed like several hours before she got around to talking to me, and I thought she might be doing the same to Julio.
The phone rang many times without an answer, and I was starting to think I’d have to hang up, but eventually she came on. “Grimaldi.”
“Hi, detective,” I said politely, “this is...”
“I know who it is. What do you want?”
“Oh. Um...” Rattled, I explained that I wanted to know whether it would be OK to tell Timothy Briggs about Connie’s death, since I wanted to ask him for Perry Fortunato’s number.
“It’ll be on the evening news anyway,” Tamara Grimaldi said, “so go ahead. Just don’t give him any details.”
I promised I wouldn’t. “By the way, I saw Officers Spicer and Truman down on River Road earlier. How is it going with Julio Melendez?”
“They told me,” Detective Grimaldi said. “Julio’s sweating.”
“Oh. Um...?”
“Yes, Ms. Martin. Officer Spicer mentioned that Mr. Collier was there, too.”
“I told him you wanted to talk to him,” I said self-righteously.
“I’m sure you did. I should have figured it would just make him run. Next time, I’ll make sure that Spicer and Truman know not to let him get away.”
I thought it best to change the subject. “So... um... has Julio said anything?”
“I haven’t spoken to him yet. After another hour or two, I figure maybe he’ll be annoyed enough to blurt out something he shouldn’t. Especially if I hit him with a double homicide.”
“Good luck,” I said. “I’ll just call Tim now, and get Perry’s number.”
“Remember, no details.” She hung up without saying goodbye, and without giving me the time to do so. I grimaced and dialed Tim’s number.
As Realtors, we’re pretty much expected to be available 24/7. People will call at all hours of the day and sometimes the night, expecting us to drop whatever we’re doing to jump when they snap their fingers. Like doctors, Realtors are always on call. That said, we do have the right to a social life, too. Tim must be indulging his, because he didn’t answer. I hesitated for a moment while I waited for the voice mail to kick in, but eventually I decided this wasn’t really the kind of news I should break in a recorded message. Instead, I just told him I had something to talk to him about, and I would catch up with him at the office in the morning. If he wasn’t planning to be there, please give me a call.
That done, I sat back and chewed my lip, wondering whether I ought to look up Perry Fortunato’s number in the phone book and call him anyway. But no, it didn’t seem right to do so without having told Tim first. The Fortunatos’ were Tim’s clients, not mine, and although the reason for my call had nothing to do with business, it’s a no-no for a Realtor to contact another Realtor’s client directly. It would have to wait until tomorrow.
At that moment, the phone rang, and I jumped in surprise, and then grabbed it. Maybe it was Tim, calling back. Or detective Grimaldi calling to tell me that Julio Melendez had confessed to both robberies and both murders. Or Todd, inviting me to dinner. Or Rafe, calling to say he was leaving town. Or Rafe calling to say he wasn’t leaving town... “This is Savannah.”
“Hi, Savannah,” a male voice said. I sorted through my mental file, and had just about come up with the appropriate match when the voice continued, “this is Gary Lee Hodges.”
“Hi, Gary Lee,” I sa
id, trying my best not to grin. It’s possible to hear a smile in someone’s voice, and I didn’t want Gary Lee and Charlene to think I was laughing at them. Or for that matter to think that I knew anything at all about them and what they’d been up to. Although I was pretty sure I had Detective Grimaldi and her ‘little chat’ to thank for this call, I rather doubted she had told them that she had told me about their DNA-samples. “How are you? And your lovely wife?”
“Fine,” Gary Lee said. “Just fine. Um... Savannah?”
“Yes?”
“Would it be possible for you to meet us sometime tomorrow? There’s something we’d like to talk to you about.”
“Sure,” I said, allowing myself a tiny smirk. Confession-time, most likely. “I’d be happy to. When and where?”
We agreed on 3:30 at the office, and I hung up with a giggle. Tomorrow, when they explained to me what had been going on, I’d most likely be blushing, but at the moment, the idea of what they had to admit to was humorous.
My list of clues and suspects was pretty well dead in the water by now, but I did my best to go back to it. My heart wasn’t in it, though. I wanted to do something, not just sit here and think. Maybe I could call Heather Price and talk to her about what had happened. She must be devastated at having lost two friends in just a few days. Unless she and her boyfriend had been responsible, of course, but her shock and revulsion at what had happened to Lila had certainly seemed genuine when I first met her on Monday. And on top of the loss, she had found one of the bodies. I knew what that was like. Maybe I could even discover something important in the process of talking to her.
She had given me her card, and now I dug it out and dialed the number. (Life must have been so much more difficult before telephones...) “Heather? This is Savannah Martin.”
“Oh.” Heather sounded like she had a cold, but it was probably just a stuffy nose from crying. “Hi, Savannah. What can I do for you?”
“I heard about what happened to Connie Fortunato. How are you?”
[Cutthroat Business 01.0 - 03.0] Boxed Set Page 45