A Done Deal

by Jenna Bennett

  She didn’t look like she’d been outside the house so far today, to be honest. Her red hair was a tangled mess, her face was bare of make-up, and she was dressed in shapeless gray sweatpants that did nothing for her derriere, and a stretched-out and faded blue T-shirt I would have turned into dust rags, had it been mine.

  “Where’s your car?” I asked.

  She looked at me as if she thought I was crazy, but she pointed down the street. “Right there. The van.”

  I turned to look at it. Dark blue. “I thought you drove a white Toyota.”

  “No,” Heather said. “I use the van to transport my staging stuff. There’s not enough room in a sedan. Or even an SUV. I could really use a bus.” She smiled, although it looked a bit forced.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I guess I must have been confused.”

  Heather nodded. And shifted her feet for a second before she said, “I saw on the news last night how the police raided that nightclub. The one you called and asked me about. Hector’s place. La Havana.”

  I nodded.

  “Did you know that was going to happen, when you called me?”

  “No,” I said, “I had no idea.”

  “Did you tell them to do it?”

  “Of course not,” I said. “I’m a real estate agent. I don’t tell the police what to do.”

  “But you were there, weren’t you? I saw the video.”

  There seemed no point in denying it. “When I went there, I had no idea what was about to go down, though. I just wanted to see the place. If I’d known, I’d have stayed away.”

  She wrapped her arms around herself. “That guy you were with in the video... it wasn’t really Jorge Pena, was it?”

  She was probably cold, and no wonder, with her arms bare and the temperature in the thirties.

  “Do you want to go inside and sit down?” I asked. “I have a few minutes, if you want to sit and talk.”

  She shook her head. “I’m fine. It didn’t look like Jorge. It looked like that guy who used to work for Julio.”

  I didn’t answer, and eventually she must have taken my silence for acceptance, same as in a real estate contract.

  “I thought he was dead,” Heather said. “Didn’t Jorge kill him?”

  Not quite. Although he tried.

  “Did he kill Jorge instead? Because somebody got killed, didn’t they? A couple of months ago?”

  She waited until I nodded.

  “Shit,” Heather said, with another glance over her shoulder. “So has he been pretending to be Jorge this whole time? Where is he now?”

  “The police have him.”

  “He’s in jail?”

  I shook my head. “The police in Atlanta were supposed to arrest Hector Gonzales last night. They let him get away instead. The police here think he’s on his way to Nashville, and they’re hoping he’ll get in touch with Rafe when he gets here.”

  “Rafe.” Heather nodded. “That’s his name. I remember now. You two had something going, right?”

  I shrugged.

  “So where is he?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “All I know is that the police and TBI are keeping him somewhere until they catch Hector. I don’t know where.”

  Heather nodded. “Thanks for letting me know. You know, about Hector and everything.”

  “No problem.” I looked around. There was no activity on the street, and no white Toyota. “I should go. Thanks for talking to me.”

  “You’re welcome,” Heather said and reached for the door handle. “Take care of yourself.”

  “You, too.” I headed down the stairs toward the street. When I hit the bottom step, I could hear the lock slide home behind me, and then the rattle of chains and deadbolts. It seemed like Heather was taking precautions. Maybe the idea of Hector Gonzales worried her too.

  I sat in the car on the other side of the street for a minute before driving off. The weather was still bad, and there wasn’t much else I could do out here, so I should probably just head home. In my hurry to get to Heather, however, I had neglected to follow up on the information Bradley had given me, so I took a minute to call 411 and ask for listings of people named Wilkins in Florence, Alabama. There turned out to be many of them. As the operator read down the list for me, I listened with half an ear while the other half tried to figure out what to do next. It took a second for my ears to catch up with my brain, so by the time I said, “What?” the operator had already reached the Ns.

  “Norma, Oliver, Penny...”

  “No, no. Before that.”

  “Leonard,” the operator said.

  “Leonard Wilkins?”

  “Is that who you’re looking for?”

  It had to be. I replied in the affirmative and got connected. The phone rang a few times on the other end, and was answered. “Body shop.”

  I smiled. The greeting brought back memories. Back in August, whenever I’d call the only telephone number I’d ever had for Rafe, now disconnected, Wendell Craig would answer, and he’d always say something different. It had been a car lot once, a grocery store, and—if memory served—a pool hall. Of course it was neither; it was just Wendell’s throwaway cell phone that he used to keep in touch with Rafe and the TBI.

  “I’m looking for Leonard Wilkins,” I said.

  “Speaking.”

  The voice was male, but sounded too young to have been Maybelle’s husband, who at any rate was supposed to be dead.

  “I’m looking for information about the Lenny Wilkins who used to be married to Maybelle Hicks,” I said.

  There was a pause. Then— “Who’s this?”

  I introduced myself and explained the situation. “Did you know Maybelle?”

  There was a pause. “No,” the young man said, “I didn’t have that pleasure.”

  It might have been my imagination that supplied the sarcasm, but I don’t think so.

  “Did you know Lenny? Was he your uncle or something?”

  “Something,” young Lenny agreed. “Don’t remember much about him, though. I was just a couple years old when he died.”

  “I don’t suppose you remember Maybelle either, then.”

  “No,” Lenny said, “can’t say as I do. Where d’you say you was calling from, again?”

  I told him I was calling from Nashville. And since I assumed he might have been too surprised by my call to process a few of the other salient details as well, I also recapped what I’d said earlier. “Maybelle is set to marry the father of a friend of mine. I’m looking into her past and finding a lot of ex-husbands.”

  “You don’t say?”

  I said I did. “After your... uncle?... she went on to marry a stockbroker from Natchez, Mississippi, and after he died, a CPA in Nashville. Now she has her eye on a financial planner.”

  “Moving up in the world,” Lenny said.

  “What did Lenny do? The original Lenny?”

  “Used to be his body shop,” the new Lenny said, with—I imagined—a look around. “After he died, his brother took over. I started working here when I was fifteen, part time. Now I run the place.” I heard a faint note of pride in his voice.

  “Good for you,” I said. He sounded pretty young to be running his own business. “Would you mind telling me how Lenny died? The original Lenny?”

  “House fire,” Lenny said. “Trailer burned to the ground with him in it.”

  “That’s horrible.” But I also wasn’t surprised Maybelle had left Lenny if he lived in a trailer. Rafe had grown up in a singlewide trailer in the Bog, the Sweetwater mobile home park, and I wouldn’t wish his upbringing on my own worst enemy.

  “Imagine so,” Lenny said.

  “Was it an accident? Was he smoking or something?”

  “That’s what they say,” Lenny said. “What did you say your name was, again?”

  I told him my name was Savannah Martin. “I don’t suppose there was anything suspicious about the fire?”

  “Suspicious?”

  “You know, like ma
ybe it wasn’t an accident. Maybe someone torched the trailer.”

  “Who’d wanna do that?” Lenny wanted to know.

  “I certainly can’t imagine. I thought maybe you could.”

  He didn’t answer, and I added, “Thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it. Would you mind giving me a call if you remember anything you think might be helpful?”

  “Sure,” Lenny said, but judging from the tone of his voice, I was pretty sure I’d never hear from him again. Since there wasn’t anything I could do about it either way, I hung up the phone and put the car in gear. Glancing across the street as I pulled away from the curb, I saw the curtains in Heather’s house flutter. She must have been standing at the window watching me.

  Chapter 17

  Instead of going home once I’d crossed the Cumberland River, I took a quick left up Dickerson Pike, past the bronze buffalos at Dickerson and Grace Street, outside the old Salvation Army headquarters. Dickerson Pike was a buffalo trail back in the old days, hence the statues.

  Dickerson Pike is where Rafe and I had broken into a storage unit one night back in August to look for evidence of Brenda Puckett’s murder. And it’s also where Jorge Pena’s motel room was, at the old Congress Inn on the corner of Hart Lane. I’d gone there once, after Jorge was dead, to say goodbye to Rafe and tell him that he had a son no one had bothered to mention.

  Mrs. Jenkins’s house was nearby, and after a few blocks on Dickerson I took a right and cruised down Dresden Street, over to the Milton House, the old folks’ home where Mrs. Jenkins lived when I first met her. At the four way stop at the entrance to the Milton House, I turned left up Potsdam.

  101 Potsdam Street, Mrs. J’s house, is a three story brick Victorian with a circular tower on one corner, a ballroom that takes up the entire third floor, and a library on the first floor where Rafe and I had found Brenda Puckett’s butchered body the first Saturday in August.

  In October, while Jorge Pena was gunning for Rafe and someone else was taking potshots at me because I was involved with him, Rafe had arranged for Mrs. Jenkins to go to a safe house somewhere. The house on Potsdam was supposed to be empty. It had crossed my mind to consider whether Tamara Grimaldi and the TBI might be using it to try to lure Hector Gonzales into their trap, and since I was out driving anyway, and on this side of town, I figured I’d drive by and scope things out.

  The area isn’t the best, so I wasn’t surprised to see a couple of homeboys in saggy pants hanging out down on the corner, probably waiting to either buy or sell drugs. It was also not too surprising to see a young woman in super-tight jeans and a short, furry jacket walking slowly down the other side of the street, long, blond hair swaying and hips swinging. She stared intently at every car that drove by and was probably looking for business, too. The homeboys catcalled something at her, and she flipped her hair over her shoulder and answered in kind. At the bus stop across the street from the house, an older black man was sitting on a bench, shoulders hunched and chin pulled into the collar of an oversized corduroy jacket. I couldn’t see his face, but the sun shone on grizzled hair. He looked cold, and no wonder: it was chilly out, just above freezing, and he looked like he’d been sitting there a while.

  There’s a circular driveway that goes up to the house, and I turned in, hearing the gravel crunch under my tires. It brought back memories of the first time I came here, on a hot August morning, after getting a phone call from a potential client telling me that Brenda Puckett had stood him up for an appointment. He hadn’t introduced himself, and at that point I’d had no idea he was someone I’d gone to school with. My first sight of him—astride that big, black Harley-Davidson, with sunglasses covering his eyes and the viper tattoo peeking out from underneath the sleeve of a T-shirt that might as well have been painted on his body—had inspired something roughly halfway between instant attraction and instinctive recoil. I’d noticed he was gorgeous—what woman wouldn’t?—but that edge of danger, of ruthlessness, had warned me off. He’d been a big ethnic-looking guy with lots of muscles and a tattoo, and he’d scared me.

  Amazing what a few months can do for someone’s perspective.

  He wasn’t here today, nor was the Harley. The driveway was empty. I pulled to a stop at the bottom of the stairs and contemplated getting out and knocking on the door. But it was cold and I didn’t think I’d get an answer even if someone was here. So I sat a minute and then put the car back into gear and drove off. If he was inside, at least he’d know I was thinking about him.

  I was two blocks away, headed back in the direction of Dresden, when my phone rang.

  “What do you want?” Tamara Grimaldi demanded.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Didn’t I tell you to let me handle this?”

  “Um...” Yes, she had. Seemed like maybe they were at the house on Potsdam after all, or at least that the detective kept it under surveillance. “Sorry.”

  “I’m sure you are. He’s fine, and I’ll make sure he stays that way. Go home. Stay out of trouble. I’ll call you when it’s over.”

  She hung up without waiting for my answer. I did the same, grimacing.

  When the phone rang again a minute later, I thought it might be Tamara Grimaldi calling back. Or—my heart skipped a beat at the thought—Rafe himself wanting to reassure me. But instead it was Heather Price’s number I saw on the caller ID.

  “What are you doing?” was her greeting when I answered the phone.

  I wrinkled my brows. “I’m still in the car. Why?”

  “I need to talk to you.” She lowered her voice. “About Hector.”

  Hadn’t we just talked about Hector a few minutes ago? “What about him?”

  “Not on the phone,” Heather said.

  I sighed. What could be so important that she couldn’t tell me over the phone? “I’m not too far away from you. I’ll just turn around and drive back. It’ll just take a few minutes.”

  “No!” She sounded upset at the idea. “I’ll meet you somewhere.”

  “You want to grab some lunch?” It was getting on for that time of day, and I could definitely eat. “There’s a place just down the street from your house that—”

  “No,” Heather said. “Somewhere where there are no other people.”

  I blinked. “What is it that’s so important you can’t tell me where someone else might overhear?”

  “He contacted me,” Heather said.

  “Call the police.”

  “I can’t!” She took an audible breath, and when her voice came back, she sounded a little calmer. “I’m afraid, OK? He knows where I live, so I don’t want to stay here. Or anywhere nearby. Can’t we just meet somewhere? Please?”

  I hesitated, and she added, “He told me to meet him. He wants my car so he doesn’t have to drive around in his. If I don’t meet him, he’ll be angry. But you can call the police and get them out there...”

  “Where?”

  “I’ll tell you when we meet,” Heather said. And added, “I want to get somewhere safe first.”

  Fine. Maybe she’d tell me where Hector was, and then I could call Tamara Grimaldi and tell her I’d done her job for her. And get Rafe back. “Do you know where I live?”

  “I can find it,” Heather said. “Give me the address.”

  I did. “I’m on the second floor. Just park on the street and hit the bell by the door. I’ll buzz you in.”

  “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” She hung up. I did the same, arching my brows. Hector really must be a scary dude, if just a phone call from him could get her this worried.

  I did consider calling Tamara Grimaldi again, to tell her what Heather had said. But she had her hands full, and she was already miffed at me, so she might not appreciate it. Plus, I didn’t want to distract her unnecessarily. Or worse, distract Rafe. And it wasn’t like I’d be in any danger. It was just Heather—who really hadn’t tried to run me down; the white Toyota belonged to someone else—and she’d sounded pretty terrified on the phone. I’d g
o home, calm her down, find out what she knew, and then I’d call the detective.

  Pleasant thoughts of solving the case, of having Heather tell me where Hector would be, of arranging for Grimaldi and her crew to be there to nab him, and of having Rafe be safe, finally, played through my head on the drive home. Since I didn’t have anything scheduled for the rest of the day, I drove the car into the underground parking garage when I got there, instead of parking on the street the way I do when I know I’m going back out again. The sleet had turned nasty, and I don’t like to get wet.

  I parked in my usual, designated space, and got out of the car. I was bent over, reaching for my purse, when I heard the scuff of a shoe behind me. The next second, before I even had a chance to straighten up and look behind me, something hard connected with the back of my head, and everything turned black. A black that was a lot less enjoyable than the black that accompanied kisses from Rafe.

  I came back to myself slowly. The first thing I became aware of was that my head hurt. A lot. Enough that I felt nauseous. Lifting my head increased the pain, so I kept it hanging, even if that was uncomfortable, as well. And opening my eyes hurt, with bright flashes of light stabbing my retinas.

  Everything spun for a few seconds while I swallowed nausea. Once I managed to focus, I realized I was looking at my own lap. I recognized the purple and gray skirt I’d put on this morning. Or maybe it had been yesterday morning, depending on how much time I’d lost being unconscious.

  The circular swirling pattern made the nausea worse, so I closed my eyes again for a while, trying to focus on whatever else I could discern about my situation instead.

  I was sitting, obviously, if my head was hanging and my lap was down. The chair was hard, wood or metal, not cushy against my posterior. I could rock it back and forth a little, so it wasn’t bolted to the floor. I couldn’t move my hands or my feet, however. When I tried, my ankles stayed together, and so did my wrists. Someone must have tied me up, and had probably tied me to the chair, too.