Change of Heart

by Jenna Bennett

  She looked at me. Maybe it was too personal a question. Or maybe, as a cop, she just wasn’t supposed to share that kind of information. “I can ask Dix instead,” I said. More to be informative than as a threat.

  She sighed. “I own a house near Charlotte Park.”

  “Really?” Middle-class neighborhood on the west side of town, across Charlotte Avenue from the much more upscale neighborhood of West Meade, where Rafe’s son David lives with his adopted parents.

  The detective nodded. “Yes, really. I like historic houses too, but there are limits to what someone can afford, on a cop’s salary.”

  “Can I see it sometime?” I love looking at other people’s houses. As a little girl, whenever I went home with a friend after school, I was always nosing around their place. You can learn a lot about someone by looking at the space they inhabit.

  “Sure,” Grimaldi said, in a tone of one humoring a pest, and changed the subject back to where we’d started.. “Mr. Briggs must be doing all right financially.”

  He certainly wasn’t suffering. “With Brenda gone, he’s the biggest producer in the office. From what I know about it, just from watching his closings, he makes at least ten thousand a month. Sometimes a lot more.”

  Grimaldi nodded. “Let’s knock.”

  We headed up the steps to the porch. My business card was still stuck in the crack between the door and the jamb, but we rang the bell anyway, and when that didn’t work, we knocked. No one answered. I refrained from saying, “I told you so,” but just barely.

  “Let’s go around back,” Grimaldi said.

  I followed her down the steps and around the house. “There’s a side door to the garage.” I pointed. “It has a window. You can see in. The garage was empty yesterday.”

  Grimaldi headed there. I stayed where I was and waited. She was wearing pants and low-heeled boots. I was wearing a skirt and heels. If anyone ought to traipse through the grass to the side door, it was her. Besides, it was her job.

  “It’s empty today too,” she told me when she came back.

  My second business card still adorned the back door. “Looks like he hasn’t been here since yesterday. Or maybe even Saturday.” Whenever he’d decided to go away.

  Grimaldi nodded. “Was the door locked when you were here yesterday afternoon?”

  I hesitated. Did I want to admit that I’d tried the door? Would she be shocked that I’d considered breaking and entering?

  Nah. She’d be more shocked if I told her I hadn’t checked. “Yes.”

  “Are you concerned about him?” Grimaldi asked.

  “Of course.”

  “That’s good enough for me.” She covered her hand with her sleeve and hit one of the glass panes in the door, hard. Glass tinkled onto the floor inside. After knocking out the leftover shards, she stuck her hand through and unlocked the door, the same way I’d thought to myself that I’d do it just yesterday afternoon.

  Grimaldi pushed the door open and put a hand on her gun before stepping through. “Mr. Briggs?”

  I followed her into the laundry room. “Tim? Are you here? It’s Savannah.”

  There was no answer. Grimaldi entered the kitchen. The refrigerator hummed softly; otherwise there was nothing to be heard.

  I kept behind her as we walked from room to room, her low boots mostly silent and my heels clicking on the hardwood floors. Everything looked normal, and pristine. Tim has exquisite taste, and his house looked like a—slightly gay—magazine spread. There were touches of his favorite baby blue in almost every room, in throw pillows or pictures or tchotchkes, and rather more zebra print than I liked.

  The downstairs consisted of the kitchen and laundry room, a formal dining room, a living room, a parlor or library, a hall bath, and two guest bedrooms, one of which Tim used as a home office. Grimaldi pulled the covers back on the guest bed—perhaps to inspect the sheets for blood—but found nothing. It was fully outfitted with comforter and a full sheet set, anyway. The sheet Brian Armstrong had been wrapped in hadn’t come from this bed.

  “He must sleep upstairs,” I told Grimaldi, gesturing up the stairs. “There’s probably a master suite up there.”

  She nodded. “Stay behind me.”

  I did. I didn’t really think we’d find Tim in a puddle of gore in the master bedroom, but if we did, Grimaldi could find him first and tell me not to look. I’m not proud.

  The stairs opened directly into a big and beautiful bedroom. Not surprisingly, the watered silk comforter on the king-sized bed was in Tim’s trademark baby blue. The bed was immaculately made up, wrinkle-free, with a ton of little throw pillows and a stuffed elephant, also blue.

  “If he killed Brian Armstrong here,” Grimaldi commented, “he took the time to make the bed afterwards.”

  She folded up the corner of the comforter. The bed was in apple-pie order, with corners tucked in and everything accounted for: fitted sheet, flat sheet, and pillowcases. Blue.

  “What was the color of the sheet Brian Armstrong was wrapped in?” I wanted to know.

  Grimaldi hesitated, but in the end she told me. “White with navy stripes.”

  “Ticking?”

  “If you say so.” She folded the comforter back down again and smoothed it. “Nothing like these. Good quality Egyptian cotton, though. High thread count. Queen size.”

  “I suppose you’ve checked whether they came off his own bed?”

  “First thing,” Grimaldi said. “Or first thing once we found the body, anyway. Eight or ten hours after he was killed. They didn’t match his sheets. Or his wife’s.”

  “They have different sheets?”

  “They’re separated,” Grimaldi said. “She’s still in the house. He’s in a furnished rental near his office.”

  “So that’s what—” I trailed off.

  “What?”

  “When I saw her yesterday, she said something about needing to see Tim this week. About the house. That there were issues. That now that Brian was gone...”

  “Now that Brian was gone, what?”

  “She didn’t say. Just trailed off like that. But maybe she’s thinking of taking the house off the market. If they were divorcing and splitting assets, and that’s why they had to sell the house, maybe she’ll decide to keep it now. She won’t have to sell. All the assets will be hers.”

  “Hmm,” Grimaldi said.

  I shrugged. “You must have thought about it. You told me the spouse is always the first person you look at.”

  “Usually. Spouse or significant other. Next of kin. Heirs. Business partners or rivals. It goes from there.” She looked around. “I don’t see anything particularly interesting here.”

  I shook my head. Me either. “If the sheet Brian was wrapped in came off a queen bed, it didn’t come from here.”

  “The bed downstairs is a queen,” Grimaldi said.

  “But if Tim took Brian to bed, why wouldn’t he take him to his own bed? Why use the guest bed?”

  She glanced at me. “Do you have any reason to think Tim took Brian to bed?”

  Well... “He was naked when you found him. I guess I assumed he was naked when he was stabbed, too.”

  She nodded. “No fibers in the wounds.”

  “And I thought, since he and his wife were separated, that maybe he was getting it on with someone else.”

  “Maybe,” Grimaldi agreed, “but do you have any reason to think he was gay?”

  I shook my head. “Do you?”

  “His wife didn’t mention it.”

  “Would she have known?”

  “If they separated because of it, she must have.”

  Yes, although that didn’t necessarily mean she’d say so. Then again, if Brian had been gay, why marry Erin in the first place? These days, it isn’t as if gay men have to try to look straight. It’s perfectly acceptable to be gay now.

  “How long were they married?”

  “Six years,” Grimaldi said. “They married when she was twenty three and he was fort
y.”

  “That’s a big age difference.” Although at forty, he certainly ought to have known whether he was gay or not.

  “Hollywood,” Grimaldi said, as if that was explanation enough. “I’m going to take a look at the master bath before we leave.”

  She headed for it with me trailing behind.

  The entire attic of Tim’s Victorian had been converted to one giant master suite. The bedroom was easily twenty five feet long, and beyond it was a short hallway with closet doors on either side, that gave way to a bathroom. I stopped in the doorway, struck by envy.

  As I’d already told Tamara Grimaldi, I didn’t own my apartment. It was a rental, and although it’s not a bad place to live, it’s nothing fabulous. Convenient location, nice, clean and new, but nothing special. All of it would fit into Tim’s second floor. And his bathroom blew mine out of the water. It had skylights, a marble floor, a freestanding pedestal tub for soaking, and a double—or maybe triple—marble shower stall bristling with rainwater heads from every conceivable angle. It was the kind of bathroom you’d see on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, twenty first century edition. All of the Kardashians would fit in this bathroom, with space left over, and they’d look like they belonged, too.

  “Wow,” I said.

  “Nice,” Grimaldi agreed and turned on her heel. There was nothing here to interest her, obviously. I followed, after another quick and envious look around the room.

  Outside in the hall between the bedroom and bath, Grimaldi pulled open one of the sliding closet doors. The space beyond was full of Tim’s clothes, and he has a lot. Suits and ties for work, silk and satin for playtime. All colors of the rainbow, from staid and conservative navy pinstripe to eye-searing lime, aubergine, and royal blue. Looking at it, I was struck again by just how unusual Tim’s choice of dress had been on Saturday morning.

  Grimaldi closed the closet without comment and opened the matching door. Same thing there. More clothes. There were no obvious gaps, or empty hangers, so it didn’t seem as if Tim had packed to go anywhere.

  Grimaldi shook her head when I said as much. “Did you happen to notice a linen closet in the bathroom?”

  “I didn’t.” I’d noticed everything else, but not that. “Maybe downstairs?”

  “Maybe.” We traipsed down the stairs again, after a last look at Tim’s boudoir.

  Down on the first floor, the detective got busy looking for the linen closet while I wandered into Tim’s home office and looked around. It was pristine. At a guess, he used the elegant desk to write bills but not much more. This had none of the busy disarray of the desk at the office. The single file drawer held bank statements and paid bills. I wanted to check and see how much his loan payment was for the house he lived in, but I resisted the temptation.

  I closed that drawer and opened the other one, the wide, shallow one running underneath the writing surface, just as Grimaldi’s voice sounded from the hallway. “Ms. Martin?”

  “Detective?”

  “Could you come here a moment?”

  “Sure,” I said, and closed the drawer again. It was full of the usual disarray: scattered rubber bands and paperclips, business cards and pencils. “What’s up?”

  She was standing in the hallway, outside the door to the bathroom.

  “Check the linen closet, if you don’t mind. You have to go inside and close the hall door in order to open the closet door.”

  Sure. I entered the bathroom and closed the door behind me. Opened the closet door and peered in.

  Like the desk drawer, it contained the usual stuff. A few rolls of toilet paper wrapped in plastic on the floor. A plunger, in case of stoppage. Bottles of ammonia, Clorox bleach, and drain cleaner. A shelf of wrapped soaps and shampoo bottles, shaving cream, lotions, cotton balls, and Q-tips. Above that, a shelf with stacked towels: white, black, gray and baby blue, and replacement sheets. At the bottom of the stack, almost as if someone had attempted to hide them, was a neatly folded sheet and a few pillowcases with navy stripes on a white background.

  “I see them,” I told Grimaldi.

  “Good. I used my phone to take a picture. Bring them out here, please.”

  No problem. I removed the sheets from the bottom of the stack, without allowing the rest of the stack to topple over on top of me, and brought them out into the hallway. The detective was already prepared with an open plastic bag for me to slide the sheets into.

  “You think they’re the rest of the set?” I scrubbed my palms against the outside of my thighs. I have no idea why, since the sheets felt and smelled clean.

  “They look like they are,” Grimaldi said, closing the bag. “I’ll have to compare them to the sheet in the evidence room, but the pattern is the same. And there’s a flat sheet missing.”

  The flat sheet that had been wrapped around Brian Armstrong’s naked body. “What happens now?”

  “I put out an APB on Tim Briggs,” Grimaldi said, as we made our way through the kitchen into the laundry room again.

  Wanted, in connection with murder...

  “Gosh,” I said, “I know he’s always happy to get his name on TV, but I don’t know if he’ll like that.”

  “We’ll do an internal bulletin first, and try to find him through those channels. Get a court order to pull his phone and credit card records, that kind of thing. In a day or two, if we can’t find him that way, we may have to go to the media.”

  “Is there anything I can do to help?” I watched Grimaldi secure the back door.

  “I’ll let you know. I will need you to sign an affidavit saying we entered Mr. Briggs’s house because you were in fear for his safety, and also that you saw me remove the sheets from his closet.”

  “Just let me know when.”

  “First I have to get these to the lab,” Grimaldi said, hefting the bag with the sheets.

  “Will you let me know if you find him?”

  She hesitated, but eventually she nodded. “I assume I can trust you to do the same?”

  Probably. I nodded back.

  “What are you planning to do now?” Grimaldi wanted to know.

  I glanced at my watch. It was past lunch time. “I guess I’ll find something to eat. You want to come?”

  “Some other time. I have work.”

  “I guess I’ll pick something up and drive over to see Rafe. He’s probably ready for a break, too.”

  “Tell him I said hello,” Grimaldi said and opened the door to her car. I said I would and headed for mine.

  Thirty minutes later I pulled the Volvo up outside the house on Potsdam, with a bag of steak sandwiches on the seat next to me. My stomach was rumbling, and the entire car smelled of meat and onions. It was wonderful, and I couldn’t wait to dig in.

  What wasn’t so wonderful, was getting there and finding that Rafe’s mode of transportation was missing from the front of the house.

  He drives a big, black Harley-Davidson, muscular and shiny with metal and chrome. The sight of him astride the beast, with his thighs gripping the seat and the muscles in his arms flexing under the sleeves of a tight T-shirt, never fails to give me a thrill.

  Of course, it was winter now, so that short-sleeved T-shirt was usually hidden under a black leather jacket, but you get my drift.

  But now the beast was gone.

  I got out of the car anyway, and made my way up to the front door. Leaving the sandwiches in the car, since I figured it’d be a waste of effort to take them with me. I didn’t expect him to be there. I expected to knock on the door and have no one answer.

  I knocked on the door. No one answered.

  I didn’t have a key, so I couldn’t go inside. I’d had one once, because I spent a few days with Mrs. J last autumn, after someone broke into my apartment and left a threatening message scrawled in lipstick on my bedroom wall, but I’d long since given it back. All I could do was knock, and press my nose against the glass in the door, fogging it up.

  Everything looked normal inside. There were the usual coup
le of paint cans lined up in the hallway, along with a long-handled brush and a folded up drop-cloth. Nothing unusual there. If I pushed the mail slot open and stuck my nose in the crack, I could even smell fresh paint. Obviously he’d been here. He’d painted. He just wasn’t here now.

  I trundled back to the car, fuming. The first thing I did was call him, and if it occurred to me that I was acting like the stereotypical jealous girlfriend, I ignored it. I’d left him alone all weekend. I’d trusted him. It hadn’t even crossed my mind that he wouldn’t be here now.

  I’d spoken to him just over an hour ago. He hadn’t mentioned anything about going out. So where the hell—heck—was he?

  Chapter Nine

  There was no answer, of course. I hadn’t expected one. And because I did realize I was acting like a jealous girlfriend, and I wanted above all to avoid sounding like one, I hung up without leaving a message.

  If I could have eaten his cheese steak sandwich in addition to my own, I would have, just so I could have told him later that I did. I couldn’t, and I’d lost the appetite for my own too, so I pulled the car up alongside two homeless men lounging on a bus bench on Dresden Avenue and handed them the bag. “Enjoy.”

  They looked at me like I were crazy, but by the time I’d reached the next corner, they had opened the bag and were digging in. I felt maliciously good about that.

  The office was quiet when I got back to it. Brittany must be out to lunch, because the front door was locked and the reception area unoccupied. I unlocked the door, since you never know when someone might walk in off the street looking for a real estate agent, and then I went into my own office—I’d hear the door open from there—and went back to work arranging Tim’s shreds of calendar page.

  An hour passed in blissful silence before Brittany came back. By then, I had most of Friday’s page assembled. It was missing a few strips here and there, that I must have missed when I dug through the confetti in the shredder, but I had what I needed. Tim had had an appointment on Friday night. Or at least he’d had plans.

  Chaps, 9:00.