Barbara had used it to describe a character who was sleeping with someone else’s betrothed. I wasn’t. I wasn’t sleeping with anyone at all, and the men in my life were—by their own assertion—single. I’d never had even the mildest of flirtations with Steven Puckett, who was at least fifteen years older than me, and not my type. Todd had been married for a couple of years, but he and Jolynn separated just after Bradley and I did. By now, they were probably legally divorced, as well. Bradley was married to Shelby now, and I hadn’t seen him since the divorce, so Shelby had no reason at all to suspect me of anything. If he was cheating—and I wouldn’t put it past him—it was with someone else. I wouldn’t touch him with the proverbial ten foot pole. And Rafe had told me he’d never been married. On most subjects, I wouldn’t trust Rafe any farther than I could throw him, but in this case, I was inclined to take his word for it. His lifestyle over the past ten years hadn’t been conducive to steady relationships, and his personality doesn’t seem to be, either.
Perry Fortunato had had something of an obsession with loose women. He had killed Lila Vaughn because she, as he put it, always flaunted her body and then refused to put out. He’d had some of those same issues with me, in spite of my never, ever being anything but perfectly businesslike with him. If you ask me, it was all in his head. Besides, Perry was dead. And not by my hand. If anyone had decided to avenge his death—and I couldn’t imagine who—they’d come after Rafe, not me. I’d been tied to a bed when Perry died. Rafe was the one who had wielded the knife.
Funny how everything that had happened in my life over the past couple of months seemed to come back to him. To Rafe. I shook that particular thought off, and went back to soaping and rinsing dishes, no closer to figuring out what was going on than I had been when I started.
Detective Grimaldi called some twenty or thirty minutes later, and caught me in the middle of contemplating sleeping arrangements.
“Miss Martin.” She sounded tired.
“Detective.” It was after eight; I couldn’t blame her. She’d probably put in at least twelve hours today. And not in a nice, relaxing, comfortable desk-job, either.
“The CSI-team is finished at your apartment. With your permission, I’d like to stake it out for a couple of days, just in case whoever broke in comes back for another look.”
“Sure,” I said. “What do you think they were looking for?”
“No idea. It’s possible they were looking for you.”
That idea gave me a shiver down my spine, as an image of my slashed nightgown came back to me. Someone who would do that to my clothes, might equally well do it to me. “Surely not?”
“No way to know. That’s why I’m going to station a decoy in your place for a couple of nights.”
“Whatever you need to do. Please. Did the CSI-team find anything of interest?”
“Fingerprints,” Tamara Grimaldi said. “Yours. Mr. Satterfield’s—they’re on record with the state, seeing as he’s a D.A.. Mr. Collier’s; they’re on record with the state—”
“Because he’s a felon. I know.” No one ever passes up an opportunity to remind me. “Anyone else’s?” I don’t entertain much, and very few people have ever been to my apartment.
“The late Lila Vaughn’s. We took them after her death, while we were investigating her murder.”
“And that’s it?”
Detective Grimaldi sighed. “There are several others, including a lovely set on the glossy cover of that masterpiece you were reading. But they’re not in the system, so until we have a suspect, there’s no one to compare them to.”
“At least it isn’t a professional criminal, then.” To look on the bright side...
“Unfortunately not,” Tamara Grimaldi said. “Believe me, Miss Martin, in these situations, the devil you know is almost always preferable to finding the needle in the haystack. Any ideas who this could have been? Somewhere for us to start?”
“I’m afraid not. I’ve been wracking my brain, but I can’t imagine who would want to scare me this way. Or what they could have been looking for.”
The detective didn’t answer. The silence lengthened. A sort of pregnant, very eloquent silence, that kind that said, loudly, that I should know what she was thinking.
“What?” I said.
“You said your mail had been riffled, is that correct? You may not have realized it, but your email was accessed, too. New messages as well as sent, deleted, and your address book. And someone looked through your Rolodex.”
I blinked. “That’s weird.”
“Very,” the detective said dryly. “Would you consider that this might have something to do with Mr. Collier?”
“Why would it?”
Her voice was patient. “Because he’s been gone for... what is it, almost six weeks now? If someone were looking for him, your apartment might be a good place to start. The two of you spent some time together before he left, and from what I understood, you’d become...” She hesitated delicately, “close.”
“Where did you hear that?” Rafe and I weren’t close. Not in that tone of voice, anyway.
“Officers Spicer and Truman told me they’d found the two of you steaming up the windows of your car not too long ago.”
“I told you,” I said, my cheeks pink, “we were just looking for Julio Melendez.” Body temperatures might have ratcheted up a little—mine, at least—but it was from the conversation. Nothing else had been going on.
“And then there was that evening when Mr. Collier left town, on the sidewalk outside your apartment. Officer Spicer said he was considering running you in for indecent behavior...?”
“Officer Spicer was joking,” I said. “It wasn’t indecent. Rafe kissed me. Because he was leaving. But that was all it was. And I haven’t heard from him since he left. By snail mail, e-mail, or telephone. Or carrier pigeon or anything else. I swear.”
“Of course,” the detective said blandly. “But to someone who doesn’t know that, it might seem reasonable to think that you would know where he is.”
“I don’t!”
“I believe you. However, if your unknown visitor was looking for an address or a location for Mr. Collier, and didn’t find it, and can’t find Mr. Collier, he or she may be back to try again. Just on the off-chance that you might know, but haven’t written the information down anywhere.”
“Hence the decoy in my apartment,” I nodded. “I get it. I’ll be staying here for the next couple of days anyway. You know where to find me if anything happens.”
“I do, indeed. And if Mr. Collier should happen to get in touch...”
“I’ll let you know,” I said.
“Of course you will,” Tamara Grimaldi answered. And hung up, without waiting for my answer. I made a face and went back to contemplating sleeping arrangements.
Chapter Five
I ended up sleeping in Rafe’s bed. Like Goldilocks, I considered and discarded Mrs. Jenkins’s bed—she needed it herself—Marquita’s bed—what if the nurse came back in the middle of the night?—and the love seat in the parlor—too hard and at least six inches too short. But Rafe’s bed was just right: unoccupied, big enough—a little too big for just one person; two would have been better—and already made, with crisp sheets and a soft comforter. There was no chance that he’d come home and find me there—or at least only a very slim chance—and the benefits seemed to outweigh the minimal risk. I changed into another lacy nightgown, similar to the one that had been hacked to pieces back in the apartment, and crawled under the satin comforter. And did my best to go to sleep.
It wasn’t easy. There was some kind of ruckus outside in the middle of the night that woke me, and the strangeness of being in someone else’s house and the knowledge that I was sleeping in Rafe’s bed, surrounded by the smell of him, made it hard to sleep. Then there were the nightmares and the—pardon me—pornographic dreams, and between all of it, I woke up bleary-eyed and exhausted, with a lingering sense of having spent the whole night breathless. Someon
e was after me, some nameless, faceless someone with a sharp knife, and no matter where I went or how fast I got going, they were always there, just out of sight. Waking up didn’t do much to dispel that feeling either, unfortunately.
The appraisal for my clients Gary Lee and Charlene’s new home was today, so after making Mrs. Jenkins pancakes and coffee, I got her washed and dressed and medicated, and myself washed and dressed, and both of us out the door and into the Volvo. Pulling out of the circular driveway, I glanced over at Mrs. J, perched in the seat next to me, her small, wrinkled hands folded in her lap and her black bird eyes alert.
“Did you sleep all right, Mrs. Jenkins?”
She nodded. “Oh, yes, baby. Well, other than the hollerin’.”
She must have been the same ruckus that had woken me up in the middle of the night.
“Poor lady,” Mrs. Jenkins said, “carryin’ on something awful out in the street in the middle of the night.”
“I think I heard her. Some woman screaming obscenities.”
“Prob’ly drunk,” Mrs. J said sadly. “Happens sometimes around here.”
We pulled to a stop at the corner, and I signaled a left onto Dresden. Directly in front of us was the Milton House Home for the Aged, where Mrs. Jenkins had lived when I first met her. At the time I had thought that if it came down to a choice between putting one of my loved ones into the Milton House, or shooting them, I’d go with the latter option. Bless Rafe; whatever his other faults, he’d at least gotten her out of there.
Behind us, a sleek, black SUV turned the corner. It had been parked halfway down Potsdam Street, and had been in the process of pulling out when we approached. The driver, invisible behind the tinted glass, had waited to let us pass and had fallen in behind. Now it went in the same direction we did.
In a movie, that would have meant something, and I admit I kept an eye on the car in the rearview mirror as we made our way into the ‘better’ part of East Nashville and over to the townhouse that Gary Lee and Charlene wanted to buy. The SUV stayed with us almost the whole way there, only peeled off at the last minute, into the parking lot of the Walden Development on Eastland Avenue. The driver was probably on his way to the Ugly Mugs coffee house for a caffeine jolt. I put it out of my mind and concentrated on the task at hand.
The appraiser was waiting outside the townhouse up the street, clipboard at the ready, tapping his cowboy-booted toe. I left Mrs. J relaxing in the Volvo with the radio and AC going, and got out to meet him.
“Mr. Cobb? I’m Savannah Martin. Agent for the buyers. Sorry I’m late.”
I wasn’t actually late, or if I was, it was by less than a minute, but I’ve been brought up to take responsibility for things like that. Keep the menfolk happy. Mr. Cobb looked impatient, so I apologized for keeping him waiting.
He grunted something and took a tighter grip on his clipboard. He was a small, spare man with lots of white hair pulled straight back from his forehead, falling past his collar in the back. The snake-skin cowboy boots were paired with loose jeans and a tan sort of safari jacket with about a hundred pockets. Many of them were weighted down with heavy objects.
“Let me just unlock the door for you,” I said, suiting action to words, “and you can get started. Let me know if you have any questions.”
Mr. Cobb grunted noncommittally. He brushed past me and into the house. I followed, after a glance over my shoulder to make sure Mrs. J was still comfortably ensconced in the Volvo.
Mr. Cobb didn’t turn out to have many questions, and the appraisal was a pretty short process. He walked through the townhouse, muttering and making notations on his clipboard. He measured the height of the walls in a few places upstairs, where the ceiling slanted down—height has to be a minimum of seven feet to be considered proper living space—and he made note of any upgrades, like hardwood floors vs. carpets, brushed nickel faucets vs. plain nickel-plated ditto, granite counters, stainless steel appliances, and that sort of thing. And that seemed to be it.
“So how did we do?” I asked brightly when he came toward the front door again. “Will it appraise for the purchase price?” Or would the deal fall through because the bank wouldn’t want to lend more money than the house was worth?
“Dunno,” Mr. Cobb said.
“When will you know? My clients are eager, as I’m sure you understand.”
“Gotta get back to the office,” Mr. Cobb explained, his voice gravelly. “Gotta put the info into the computer. Coupla days.”
“A couple of days?”
My disappointment must have been obvious, because he looked maliciously amused. “Can’t rush this stuff. Bank wanna be sure they ain’t lending too much.”
“Right.” I could understand that. Still, a couple of days? To input the results of this ten-minute surface-inspection into the computer? “Just get it done as quickly as you can, would you? My clients are—”
He nodded. “Eager. Yeah. I got that.”
“Right.” OK, then. There was nothing I could do but smile graciously, the way Mother taught me. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Cobb. Here’s my card, in case you have any questions after you leave here.”
Mr. Cobb grunted and stuck the business card into one of the many pockets of his jacket. The others had contained items like a hundred foot tape measure, a screwdriver, a ball of string, and a digital camera, all of which he had used.
He wandered toward his truck, a green behemoth parked in the lot beside the condo. The engine started up with a roar and a gush of exhaust, and I turned toward the curb and the pale blue Volvo. Only to stop after a few steps when I saw that Mrs. Jenkins wasn’t alone.
For just a second—less; half a second, maybe—my heart stuttered in my chest at the sight of the man leaning on the car. Tall, dark, muscular... One arm braced above the passenger side window and dark head inclined toward Mrs. J, he was dressed in faded jeans that molded long legs and a nice posterior, while a plain white T-shirt stretched across broad shoulders and well-developed arms.
My breath caught in my throat, my stomach swooped... and then I realized that it wasn’t Rafe after all. Just another tall, dark, muscular guy in faded jeans and a T-shirt. One who was bugging Mrs. Jenkins.
“Excuse me!” I raised my voice and sped up, my heels clicking against the pavement. “Sir!”
The man straightened and turned. Up close and from the front, he looked less like Rafe. The coloring was the same—dark hair and eyes, golden skin—but this guy’s hair was longer than Rafe’s, straight and shiny, slicked back. Rafe keeps his hair cropped short. The man had a trim goatee, while Rafe stays clean-shaven, and he had an earring, a small silver cross, that Rafe doesn’t have. He also had some sort of tattoo—a dragon or demon, maybe; something green and scaly—that extended a claw above the neck of the T-shirt in the back, and around the side of his throat. And though the eyes were the same—brown bordering on black, deep and dark, fringed with long, sooty lashes any woman would sell her soul for—the expression in them was different. Where Rafe rarely looks at me without some form of amusement, even when he’s about to kiss me and his gaze is hot enough to scorch, this guy’s eyes were flat and expressionless.
“Can I help you?” I came to a stop in front of him. He was a little shorter than Rafe, too. Just an inch or so over six feet tall.
He looked me over. From head to toe and back. If it had been Rafe, the inspection would have been slow, insolent, appreciative, and ending in a killer grin. It would have made my cheeks flush and my stomach quiver. This appraisal made a chill go down my spine. There was no feeling there. No appreciation, no curiosity, no anger—nothing but cold assessment.
I forced myself not to show a reaction. “Sir?”
“I’m looking for Rafe.” His voice was low, harsh, with a hint of an accent. Not Southern. That was different, too. Rafe’s voice is husky and warm. Only when he’s angry do his voice and eyes go dead and flat, like this man’s.
“That’s quite a coincidence,” I said. “So am I. I’m
sure Mrs. Jenkins told you we haven’t seen him for more than a month?”
I leaned sideways, to try to get a bead on Mrs. J, in the front seat of the Volvo. Just to make sure she was OK and still breathing. The way this guy was looking at me, I wouldn’t put it past him to have slit Mrs. Jenkins’s throat if he didn’t get the answers he wanted.
She was still alive. Staring straight ahead, her wrinkled face blank. I recognized the expression, or rather, the lack thereof. Clearly, whatever the guy had said or done to her, had scared her practically witless. She’d retreated into this place she goes, where she isn’t living in the same world as the rest of us anymore. She gets a vacant look in her eyes, and she babbles. About old Jim Collier shooting her son Tyrell, about Walker Lamont cutting Brenda Puckett’s throat, about Walker coming after the two of us with a gun... The poor dear has had some tough breaks in her life, and obviously, being related to Rafe isn’t destined to make anything easier for her.
I added, pulling my attention back to the man in front of me, “He left almost six weeks ago. He mentioned Memphis, although that could have been just a ruse. No one’s heard from him since. For all I know, he’s dead.”
The man parted his lips, just far enough to squeeze out a few words. “He ain’t dead.” The unspoken last word of that sentence, I thought, was yet.
It took another superhuman effort to keep my voice from shaking. “I’m sorry. As I told you, we haven’t heard from him. Not since he left. I’m sure he’ll be back sooner or later, but I have no idea when. And I doubt I’ll get advance warning. He usually just shows up. One day I’ll turn around, and there he’ll be.” Please, God...
The man didn’t answer. Just kept looking at me with those dead eyes.
“I’ll be happy to give him a message,” I offered, a little desperately. Maybe that would make him leave. “Whenever he comes home. Or in case he calls.”
The man looked at me again. Up and down. The regard was still impersonal, but his eyes lingered for a second longer than necessary on my legs and on the top button of my blouse. And on my throat. I paled. It was only too easy to guess what he was thinking, and I hadn’t meant that I wanted to be the message.
[Cutthroat Business 01.0 - 03.0] Boxed Set Page 59