Change of Heart

by Jenna Bennett

  “I love you,” I murmured against his cheek a bit later, when he had collapsed on top of me, his skin slick and his breathing ragged.

  “Love you too.” The words were half-lost in my hair, hoarse and breathless and edged with exhaustion.

  I smoothed a hand down his back, over hot, slick skin and hard muscles. “Everything OK?”

  He murmured something. It could have been anything, really. Yes or no or maybe. I waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t. His breathing slowed, and became deep and rhythmic.

  “Rafe?”

  There was no answer, just the sound of his steady breaths in my ear. He was dead asleep.

  I thought about trying to wake him—trying being the operative word, since I wasn’t sure I’d be able to; he seemed to hover just a scant inch from the edge of unconsciousness—but in the end I decided against it. Partly because I wasn’t sure I could, yes, but also because I wanted him to rest. We’d have time to talk tomorrow.

  I squirmed out from under him—he’s heavy, and his weight made breathing hard—and curled up next to him instead. He didn’t stir. I closed my eyes and settled in to sleep, with his steady breaths ruffling the hair at my cheek and the warmth of his body at my back.

  Chapter Three

  He was gone when I woke up. I don’t know why that surprised me. And this time I hadn’t even stirred when he left. The only evidence that he’d been there at all, was the scent in the air and the loose feeling in my body as I turned over in bed and stretched.

  There was no “good morning” message today. I guess he felt he’d done his duty last night, in allaying my fears and convincing me not to worry. And he had, to a degree. If nothing else, I felt pretty certain I could trust that he wasn’t with another woman, rolling around in bed with her. Not after the way he’d made love to me last night.

  And in case you wondered: yes, it had been about making love. It wasn’t just sex, or about getting release after what I had to assume had been a rough day.

  When the phone rang just after ten, I thought it might be him. It wasn’t. Instead it was Tamara Grimaldi.

  As usual when the detective called, my first instinct was to fear for Rafe’s safety. It was habit, hard to change at this point.

  There may have been a tremor in my hand when I pushed the button to answer the call. “Detective?”

  “Ms. Martin.”

  “Something wrong?”

  “No,” Grimaldi said. “I’m just checking in.”

  “He came home last night. Eventually.”

  “And did he tell you where he’d been?”

  I blushed. “No. We... um... didn’t get around to talking about it.”

  “I see.” Her voice was bland to the point of being neutral. I blushed more furiously. There was nothing I could say, though, because the reason we hadn’t talked about it was exactly the reason she thought we hadn’t talked about it.

  “I was happy to see him,” I said in my defense.

  “Of course you were. What about this morning? Did you talk then?”

  “He’s gone again.”

  There was a beat. “Snuck out again, did he?”

  “And this time I didn’t even hear him.”

  “You must have been tired from last night,” Grimaldi said, and although I’m sure she wasn’t smirking—because she rarely smirks—I felt pretty certain I could hear the smirk in her voice even so. Especially when she continued. “Have you thought about chaining him to the bed?”

  Yes. Frequently. However— “It wouldn’t work. He’s too good at picking locks.”

  “I don’t want to know that,” Grimaldi said.

  “Sorry. I don’t suppose you were able to find out anything? About anything?”

  “I’m afraid not. I spent yesterday working a case.”

  “The dead guy in the park? How’s that going? Have you arrested anyone yet?”

  “This isn’t television,” Grimaldi said. “In real life, it usually takes a bit longer.”

  “Does the wife have an alibi?”

  There was a pause. “You do realize you’re not supposed to ask me these things, don’t you?”

  “Sorry.”

  “I can’t talk to you about what I’m doing. Bad enough when it’s a case you’re peripherally involved in, but when you’re not, definitely not. I told you more than I should have yesterday.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I guess I just got used to asking. Since so many people I know have died lately, and you’ve dealt with all of them.”

  “You didn’t know this one,” Grimaldi reminded me. “Unless you’ve changed your mind about that?”

  I contemplated telling her that I had, just because I wanted to know what was going on. I’d found myself involved—sometimes more than peripherally—in a few of Tamara Grimaldi’s cases last fall, and I’d actually sort of enjoyed hearing her explain what was going on with them. I’d enjoyed tracking down a few killers myself, too. But it was probably better if I didn’t lie. “I don’t think so. The name didn’t ring a bell. Was he local?”

  “Not originally,” Grimaldi said. “A Californian.”

  We’d seen a lot of those lately. Nashville had weathered the recent economic downturn fairly well, and quite a few people from the places that were harder hit by the bad economy had arrived in town over the past year or two. Many from California, but we’d also gotten our fair share of Floridians and people from Michigan. Of course, they came from other places too, and not only because of the economy. Nashville is a magnet for all the musicians and music industry people, and there are a lot of wannabes who hope to strike it rich in Music City.

  “A musician?” I ventured.

  “An orthodontist,” Grimaldi said.

  Interesting. Or at least it struck me as such. What could an orthodontist have done to make someone want to kill him?

  “Wealthy?”

  Grimaldi didn’t answer—I must have come too close to classified information with that question—but it wasn’t like I couldn’t guess. “He probably was. Most doctors are well off. Do rich people get murdered more than poor people?”

  “No,” Grimaldi said. “Crime rates are usually higher in low income areas. Poverty breeds crime. But the crimes that affect rich people are different from the ones that affect poor people.”

  “How so?”

  “If you’re a welfare mom living in the projects,” Grimaldi said, “your chances of being killed by a stray bullet from a gang-related drive-by shooting is much higher than if you’re a doctor or a lawyer living in Belle Meade or Green Hills.”

  Naturally.

  “When a doctor or a lawyer is killed, it’s more often personal, and the stakes are usually higher. Your average crime-for-profit criminal will steal a car, or rob a bank, or break into a house, or take someone’s wallet, with no real concern for who the victim is. It’s more or less random. Your average citizen who gets tempted into committing murder may still kill for money, but not for a couple hundred dollars for a fix. It’ll be bumping off Aunt Edna for the inheritance or doing away with a coworker for the promotion to the corner office.”

  “Is that what happened to Brian Armstrong?”

  She immediately clammed up again. “We don’t know what happened to Brian Armstrong. And I couldn’t tell you if I did.”

  “But you don’t think it was random violence.”

  “He wasn’t walking through the park when someone came upon him and stole his wallet and his clothes and stabbed him a few times for good measure. He was killed somewhere else and brought there. Wrapped in a sheet.”

  “His own sheet?”

  The detective was silent. I took that to mean no. So the man hadn’t been in his own bed when he died. He’d been naked in someone else’s. The obvious suspects, then, were the wife and the other woman. If Grimaldi could find her.

  “Seems like a pretty open and shut case,” I offered.

  “Seems that way,” Grimaldi agreed pleasantly.

  “Probably won�
��t take you too much longer to arrest someone.”

  “Maybe not.”

  There was a pause. “I’ll let you get on with it,” I said.

  “Most kind,” Grimaldi answered, although it was she who had called me in the first place, not vice versa. I was just about to remind of her of that fact when she added, “Call me if you need anything.”

  The words got stuck in my throat. “Thank you,” I said instead.

  “And when you figure out what your boyfriend’s been up to, let me know. I’m curious.”

  She hung up before I had the chance to tell her I would.

  I spent the rest of the morning hanging around the apartment, doing a couple of loads of laundry, and giving myself a shower and a pedicure.

  Washing and folding Rafe’s Tshirts—his other clothes too, but especially the Tshirts—was very calming. I love his Tshirts. I love it more when he’s not wearing them, but there’s just something about the way those Tshirts fit, and how soft they are, that gets my heart rate up.

  It seemed he’d worn a black one yesterday. Plain black, short sleeved—he’s not much bothered by the cold—and smelling faintly of spice and citrus and—I inhaled deeply—smoke?

  Once it came out of the dryer, the smoke smell was gone, of course, and so were the other smells, but as I folded the shirt and put it on top of the others, I wondered where he’d been and what he’d been doing for long enough that the smell of smoke had permeated his clothing.

  Around one, I headed out. First to the grocery store, for a tray of cookies and a big box of hot chocolate mix. I’d already tucked my fancy samovar into the trunk of the Volvo, and I was planning to serve hot cocoa and cookies at the open house. The weather was chilly and a bit nasty: not quite snowy, but with a sort of cold mist in the air. It was more like autumn weather, really, than something you associate with February, but the climate in Nashville is strange at the best of times. Summers are hot and muggy, we don’t always have spring or fall, and it can be seventy five degrees in January. Or January can bring a few days of snow and a week or more after that of no school for the kids, since the school buses can’t drive if the roads aren’t perfectly clear.

  All in all, what we had now wasn’t too bad. It probably didn’t bode too well for my open house, though. Open houses do well when the weather is overcast, the temperature neither too high nor too low. If the weather is too nice, people find other things to do. If it’s too nasty, they stay indoors. We were borderline too nasty today, but maybe I’d be pleasantly surprised. And as locations went, it was certainly a very nice, desirable one.

  The house Tim had assigned to me was squarely in the middle of East Nashville’s historic district, on a street full of old turn-of-the-century Victorians and 1920s Craftsman cottages. It was a street you would expect to be treelined, with big, old, majestic oaks, but the 1998 tornado hit East Nashville hard, and took out a lot of trees. Some of the streets were down to brand new growth, only what had managed to grow in the last fifteen years.

  My assigned house was neither a Victorian nor a Craftsman cottage. Instead, it was what’s known as a historic infill: a brand new house, made to look somewhat old to fit with the guidelines in the historic overlay district.

  It was two stories tall, with a stacked stone foundation and porch supports topped by square pillars. Very Arts and Crafts. It also had a steep, Victorian-looking gable with half-timbering, but there were no other Tudor accents. Instead of brick on the lower half, the whole house was covered with Hardiboard siding. So basically, it was a hodgepodge of different styles and elements, all of which—separately—had their counterpart somewhere in the neighborhood.

  The house was big, though—almost 3,000 square feet—and the pictures of the interior had been beautiful. Real hardwood floors—they don’t always put those in new construction; this had been an upscale one—granite and stainless steel kitchen with oversized, commercial refrigerator and gas stove, stacked stone fireplace in the family room... It was nicely furnished, too, at least according to the pictures. The family still lived there, or so I had to assume from what I’d seen of furniture and knick-knacks. It looked personal, not staged.

  That can be a bit uncomfortable, to be honest, because sometimes the owners insist on sticking around for the open house, sort of incognito, to hear what people might say about their home. Or worse, not incognito, but because they want to be on hand to answer any questions anyone might have. It’s always difficult to try to convince them that it isn’t a good idea for them to be there. Not only because their feelings get hurt when people say bad things about the house, but because buyers want to be able to imagine themselves in the house, and if the current homeowner is standing right there expansively chattering about how the ceiling in little Tommy’s room had a leak before the roof was replaced two years ago and how much they enjoy using the covered deck and permanent gas grill on cool nights... well, it does tend to destroy the illusion.

  When I pulled up across the street and saw no less than three cars parked at the curb, my heart sank. Surely Tim had explained to them the importance of spending two hours elsewhere?

  And not only that, but there were cars parked at the curb on the other side of the street, too, and for a half block in both directions. And when I took a closer look, I saw that the front door was open—only the glass storm door was closed—and people were standing around inside.

  I checked the clock. 1:43. Surely they hadn’t started the open house without me? It wasn’t supposed to begin until two o’clock, but there was already a crowd here.

  Had Tim changed his mind and decided to host the open house himself?

  I looked around. The baby-blue Jaguar of his is pretty easy to spot, and I couldn’t see it anywhere.

  Had Tim called off the open house for some reason, and forgotten to tell me? Had the owners called it off and Tim didn’t know?

  Was he playing a joke on me? He does have his moments of maliciousness, although it was difficult to fathom how this could be aimed at me in any way. I might look a bit stupid if I came to set up for an open house that had been cancelled, but let’s face it, it could have happened to anyone.

  Sitting in the car peering across the street at the house and the open door, I dialed Tim’s number and waited. It rang a few times on the other end, and then his voice mail kicked in. “You’ve reached Timothy Briggs with LB&A Realty. I can’t come to the phone right now. Please leave a message...”

  I waited for the beep and introduced myself. “I’m sitting outside the house on Forrest that you told me would be open today. And it’s open, all right. Lots of people inside. But it’s only a quarter to two, and there’s no Open House sign in the yard. Did you cancel and forget to let me know? Did something happen? Call me, please.”

  I sat back and waited. He didn’t call.

  By five to two I was sick of waiting. I thought again about just turning the car around and going home. But I’d gotten dressed up, and anyway, I was curious. I’d double checked the address—twice—and this was definitely the place I was supposed to be. Tim’s For Sale sign was in the yard. As I’d told him, the Open House sign wasn’t. But something was clearly going on. People came and went, arriving and departing in glossy BMWs, Mercedes and Lexus, and it did look a bit like an open house of some sort. And I was supposed to be here. It would be OK for me to go up to the door and see if I could figure out what was going on.

  I swung my legs out of the car and trotted across the wet street on high heels.

  So far, everyone I’d seen coming and going had been dressed in their conservative Sunday best: heels and hose, suits and ties. Subdued colors. That should probably have clued me in. It didn’t. But I did fit right in, in my black skirt and pumps and my businesslike striped blouse. When I stopped outside the storm door, hesitating, a lady inside turned and saw me, and beckoned.

  I pulled the door open and walked in, smiling apologetically. She smiled back, her mouth full of something.

  I looked around. I was
in a foyer that opened into a formal parlor on one side and a formal dining room on the other. Straight ahead was a kitchen and, I assumed, a family room. The parlor had a grand piano in the middle of the floor, while the dining room table was set with food; a much bigger spread than the one I had tucked away in the trunk of the Volvo. There were finger sandwiches and stuffed mushroom caps, bacon wrapped dates and all sorts of vegetables and cheeses.

  My stomach registered approval. I’d had a late breakfast but no lunch, and I was starting to feel empty.

  It wouldn’t be polite to attack the buffet before I knew what was going on, though. It looked a bit like a party, with lots of people standing around eating and talking—maybe twenty, maybe more; certainly more people than I’d expected to have at my open house on a gray and gloomy day like this one—but the atmosphere seemed very subdued, not at all celebratory. There was no music and everyone spoke in somber, low voices.

  I turned to the lady who’d waved me in. “Hi. I’m Savannah.”

  She swallowed. “Lydia Hollingsworth. Are you a friend of Erin’s?”

  I hesitated. I didn’t even know who Erin was—or Aaron, in case Lydia pronounced the name strangely. It was tempting to say yes, but safer to say no. “I’m afraid not.”

  “Oh, dear.” Her eyes filled with tears, and her voice dropped to what was almost a whisper. “You knew her husband. I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you,” I said automatically. My mother trained me well. “I mean... no, I didn’t. Our company is listing the house for sale. I’m the realtor.”

  “Oh.” The tears evaporated. “You should have said so, dear.”

  And here I was under the impression that I just had. I looked around. “What’s going on?”

  “I guess no one told you,” Lydia said, leaning closer. “He died.”

  Dear Lord, had I inadvertently walked into a funeral? And of someone I didn’t even know?