Kickout Clause (Savannah Martin Mystery)

by Bennett, Jenna

  I won’t claim that the memory didn’t play with my mind as I fished the key out of the box, inserted it in the lock, and pushed the door open.

  I stopped in the hallway just inside the open door and held my breath. The many times I’ve been here since then, with or without Rafe, I haven’t really been nervous. Not about walking into the house. Or if I’ve been nervous, it’s been for other reasons. Like, I was afraid I’d end up in bed with Rafe if I got too close to him.

  But this time I was uncomfortable. It wasn’t anything in particular that bothered me, nothing I could put my finger on, because there were no indications that anyone had been inside, but part of me (the intuitive part) was telling the moving parts to turn around and get out.

  I didn’t listen to myself, because the logical part of me was busy telling the intuitive part that I had nothing to worry about. The door had been locked and the key had been in the lockbox. And although the window was broken, nobody had gotten in through it. Not unless he could vaporize. There was a jagged hole in the middle of the pane, about the size of a baseball, with a few jagged shards missing, but it wasn’t like the rest of the pane was gone. The only living thing that would fit through the hole would be a bird, or if it could get up there, a mouse.

  So there was no way anyone could be inside. It was just the memories of coming upon Brenda’s butchered body that were playing havoc with my mind. Lying there in front of the fireplace, with her throat cut from ear to ear, and a surprised look on her face. And the blood...

  I pushed the mental image aside and pulled the door shut behind me and, after a second, locked it. If anything were to happen to me, it was more likely to come from outside than in here.

  That done, I looked around.

  The house was not a perfect square, but it did have a central hallway. Directly in front of me, the hall headed straight back to the kitchen, along the stairs to the second and third floors. On the left, beyond the bottom step, was a formal living room or parlor, beyond that the library, where Brenda had met her demise, and then the kitchen across the back of the house.

  On the right, a little further down the hall from where I was standing, was another formal living room or parlor, then the dining room, and again, the kitchen. There was a bathroom down there too, but all the bedrooms were upstairs, and then on the top floor was the big, open ballroom.

  The baseball—or stone or brick—had taken out the window in the room to my left, so I headed in that direction first.

  There were glass shards on the wood floor too, just as outside in the mulch under the window. The flying object—a broom?—lay in the middle of the floor.

  I had expected something smaller and heavier—hard to imagine a broom flung from outside would sail all the way in here—but maybe whoever threw it had reasoned that I’d need it for the cleanup.

  Still, it seemed like a strange sort of weapon. And where had it come from? Stones and bricks were plentiful, but it wasn’t like brooms just lay around.

  I left it where it was for the time being, and walked closer to the window. The glass crunched under my shoes.

  The window needed immediate attention. Someone would have to come and replace the pane, or cover it with cardboard or plywood if they couldn’t get to it immediately. We didn’t want to leave the house unsecured like this, and besides, it was still cold enough in mid-March that I could feel a chilly draft on my face from the hole.

  Dammit, it wasn’t very long since I had spoken to Rafe, and now I had to call and bother him again.

  Maybe I should just call the hardware store myself, and see if someone could come out and replace the glass. It would cost more than if we were to do it ourselves, but Rafe was busy. And it was the least I could do, to take a little worry off his mind on such a trying day.

  Before I did that, though, I headed back past the bottom of the staircase into the hallway and down the hall toward the kitchen. I was here; I might as well make sure the broken window in the front was the only problem before I set about getting someone out to fix it.

  The room to the right of the hall—another parlor or living room—looked fine. So did the dining room, when I stuck my head in. No broken windows or other problems in either of them. The furniture was all there, and nothing seemed disturbed.

  I continued into the kitchen.

  The first time I had been in this room, a few days after Brenda’s murder, it had been a hideous mess, with cracked vinyl on the floor, lopsided cabinets, and avocado green appliances from the 1970s. Now it looked like a different room.

  For all intents and purposes, it was a different room. The only thing that remained of the original was the ceiling, and even that had gotten a fresh coat of paint. The chipped vinyl was gone and the old hardwoods had been sanded and polished to a high gloss. The cabinets and appliances were new, and in the middle was a nice, sturdy kitchen table.

  Once upon a time, Rafe and I had almost ended up making love on that table. I had put a stop to it, because the idea made me feel uncomfortable. And on our way down the hall and up the stairs to the bedroom, a gunshot had almost put a stop to both of us.

  One of the windows had shattered then, as well. I had swept up the glass—a lot more glass than was on the parlor floor right now; it seemed as if most of the shards had fallen outside this time—and Rafe had boarded up the window, and eventually we had ended up upstairs and in bed.

  That had been almost six months ago. We still hadn’t made love on the kitchen table. Not here, and not anywhere else. I didn’t have a kitchen table in my apartment—there wasn’t enough room—and we had never spent the night here again. Now I guess we never would, since we were selling the house.

  For a second I got lost in the memory of Rafe and me in this kitchen back in October, of my bare back against the coolness of the refrigerator and the heat of him against my front, before he swung me around and boosted me up on the table... and then I shook it off. Maybe we could come back here and finish what we’d started before the house sold. We—he—still owned it until then.

  There was nothing noticeably out of place in the kitchen, and the back door was secured with a deadbolt. I headed back up the hall toward the front door.

  The one room I hadn’t checked yet was the library. I still avoid going in there whenever I can. It looks totally different now—the faded wallpaper with the big cabbage roses is gone and everything is neat and clean and tidy, with comfy furniture and a pretty rug. But I still can’t look at the tile-front fireplace without imagining Brenda on the floor, her fat arms outflung, her skirt twisted around her hips, and that gaping wound across her throat.

  I had to stop and steel myself before pushing open the door, and I was aware of my heart beating a little faster as I stepped across the threshold.

  And then I wasn’t aware of much of anything, except shock.

  Chapter Eleven

  No, nobody hit me over the head. The room was empty, just as it should be. But that was the only thing that was as it should be.

  There were two windows in the library, and both of them were broken. All the books were tumbled onto the floor, along with the vases and other knick-knacks that had decorated the shelves. There were shards of glass everywhere, not just scattered in front of the windows, but all along the edges of the room. Clear glass in front of the windows, colored shards below the shelves.

  Rafe had bought some very nice, comfortable furniture for this room: a pretty, overstuffed sofa and chair in nubby taupe fabric. Someone had slashed the seats of both of them, so the fabric hung in shreds. Same with the throw pillows: stuffing was spilling out, like organs out of a body.

  Nasty metaphor, I know, but the feeling it gave me was a bit like that. A horrible clenching in my stomach. Someone hadn’t just thrown a broom through the front window. Someone had been inside the house. And that same someone had taken a big knife out of the butcher block in the kitchen and used it to slash the furniture.

  I knew that was the case, because the knife was standing
upright in the floor right in front of the fireplace. In the same spot where Brenda’s body had lain the first Saturday in February.

  I made it out of the house and into the car in record time. I didn’t even lock the door behind me, nor did I put the key back into the lockbox. I just tumbled down the steps as quickly as my three inch heels would carry me, threw myself into the car, locked all the doors, and sat there, trying to get my breathing under control.

  Nothing happened. I hadn’t really expected it to. I assumed that whoever had done this—and I had a pretty good idea who—had done it either last night, or the night before. Either way, he was long gone.

  Unless he was waiting for me on the second floor, of course. But surely he’d have realized that after seeing the tableau in the library, I wouldn’t stick around to search the rest of the house.

  Once my hands stopped shaking enough that I thought I could manage to push the right buttons on the phone, I fished it out of the purse on the passenger seat and dialed. While I listened to it ring on the other end of the line, I concentrated on steadying my breathing.

  “M... Savannah?”

  “Listen.” I was pretty sure I could hear a hint of impatience in Tamara Grimaldi’s voice, and I stumbled over my words trying to tell her that this was more than me just being curious and wanting to know what was going on. “You need to send a CSI team out to Mrs. Jenkins’s house on Potsdam Street. Someone’s been inside. I think it was Walker.”

  There was a beat while the detective processed this information. Then— “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. Just scared.”

  “Are you there now? At the house?”

  I told her I was in the car in the driveway. “I only walked through the downstairs. And when I saw the library—”

  “What’s wrong with the library?”

  What wasn’t? “Broken windows, slashed sofa pillows, books and knick-knacks and everything else on the shelves tossed on the floor...”

  “What makes you think that’s Mr. Lamont’s doing? Broken windows and slashed furniture sounds like it could just be random vandalism.”

  “Two things.” I took a deep breath, trying to get my voice to stop shaking. “There’s no sign that anyone’s broken in. All the doors were locked, and none of the windows were cracked enough that someone could get through. They’re just small, jagged holes.”

  “OK,” Grimaldi said. “So how do you think Mr. Lamont got in?”

  “I think he opened the lockbox and took out the key. He may still have an MLS card he could have used. Maybe that’s what he came to the office to look for. And that reminds me...”

  “What?”

  I recapped what Tim had told me about Walker contacting him to ask for money. “You may want to talk to Tim. Figure out wherever the drop point is for the money.”

  “I’ll do that.” Her voice was grim. “The issue with the lockbox doesn’t prove that it was Mr. Lamont who broke into your boyfriend’s house, though, Savannah. It could have been someone else picking the lock. A lot of people know how. And didn’t you tell me you had two clients vying for this same property? Isn’t it possible the losing bidder might have wanted to get even?”

  I hadn’t thought about that. I didn’t really want to think about it now. I didn’t want to believe that that sweet young couple I had liked so much could do something like this, out of spite for losing the house. But it wasn’t impossible, at least not on paper.

  I acknowledged as much. “I don’t think so, though.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because of the knife. A big butcher knife from the kitchen. The biggest knife in the butcher block. It was driven into the floor in front of the fireplace. In exactly the same spot where I found Brenda’s body.”

  “The exact spot?”

  “As far as I can tell. Right about where her throat was.”

  “Obviously Mr. Lamont would know where that was.”

  Obviously, since he was the one who had cut it.

  “That could be luck,” Grimaldi said. “The papers said that Mrs. Puckett was found in front of the fireplace in the library. The fact that the knife was in the exact same spot could be a coincidence.”

  Could be. I didn’t believe it was, but I appreciated the attempt to make me feel better. “He trashed my office a couple days ago. This feels the same.”

  Grimaldi murmured something. It could have been agreement, or it could have been something entirely different.

  “Whoever it was,” I said, “it was someone. Someone was in the house, and someone vandalized it. Can you send a tech out here to dust for fingerprints on the knife and broom? Maybe that’ll tell us something.”

  “I’ll have someone out there in thirty minutes,” Grimaldi promised. “Can you wait that long?”

  “As long as Walker doesn’t come running out of the house brandishing the butcher knife. If that happens, I’m driving away.”

  “Let’s hope it won’t come to that,” Grimaldi said and hung up.

  I leaned back in the seat, trying to relax, but I kept my eyes wide open and alert, just in case.

  The crime scene tech—the same one who had smeared fingerprint dust all over my office a few days ago—showed up within a half hour, and I made him walk through the rest of the house with me. It was empty and untouched. And because I had company, I didn’t linger over Rafe’s bedroom on the second floor, overcome by the memories of waking up there with him next to me. We just walked through, opening doors and checking to make sure no one was there and nothing else was wrong, and then I made myself scarce while the tech went to work.

  My first stop was Cumberland Hardware, down the street from the office. They do glass, and I ordered the panes I needed, along with someone to install them, to be at the house the next morning at eight. Maybe I could have the house cleaned up and the new glass in by the time the potential buyers and their inspector showed up at nine. No need to scare them off unnecessarily, after all.

  While I was at it, I also picked up an old-fashioned coded lockbox. Not one of the new-fangled electronic ones that anyone with an MLS card can open, but one with a four digit code and thousands of possible variations, from 0000 to 9999 and everything in between. I had no proof—yet—that anyone had accessed the electronic lockbox, but it was just as well to be proactive.

  Then I went down the street to the locksmith, and arranged for him to be there at the same time as the glazer to replace the cylinders in the locks. Not the locks themselves: they were original to the house, antique and practically priceless. I wasn’t about to mess with those. But the cylinders for the keys, those we could replace. And would. Chances were there were no stray keys out there, but just in case Grimaldi was right, and the vandalism had been my sweet young buyer couple’s work, I wanted to make sure the locks were changed and any key they may have made for themselves was useless.

  The phone rang as I was getting back into the car. Rafe’s number flashed on the screen. “Hi,” I told him, surprised.

  “Darlin’.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Wondering why you haven’t called.”

  “I spoke to you just an hour and a half ago.” Surely he didn’t want me to bother him more often than that? Not on a day like today, with so many other things on his mind.

  “About the house.”

  Oh. “How did you find out about that?”

  “Tammy called me,” Rafe said.

  “Why?” Didn’t she think I was capable of handling things on my own?

  “I guess she thought you might not wanna bother me, and she thought I oughta know.”

  Right.

  “So were you gonna call me?”

  “I was planning to handle it myself,” I said. “I’ve already got the glazer and the locksmith lined up for tomorrow morning. I figured you had enough on your plate and that it could wait until I saw you tonight. It’s being taken care of.”

  “It ain’t that I don’t trust you to do it, darlin’.”

 
; “I know,” I said. “It’s your house. You have a right to know. I’m sorry.”

  I could hear him sigh. “You OK?”

  “Fine. I was a little rattled at first, but I’m all right now.”

  “How bad does it look?”

  “The house? Not too bad. The only damage is the broken windows. It’s leaded glass, so we won’t ever be able to replace it, but at least we can get new glass in. There are a lot of broken vases and things in the library. Everything breakable that was on the shelves smashed, pretty much, when whoever it was swept the shelves clean.”

  “Whoever?”

  I took a breath. “I think it was Walker. Did Grimaldi tell you about the knife?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It was driven into the floor just where Brenda was lying when we found her. Remember?”

  “Not like I’m gonna forget,” Rafe said mildly, and added, “It ain’t every day a gorgeous woman faints into my arms.”

  “I didn’t faint.”

  “You came close.”

  Maybe so. And he’d managed to take my mind off Brenda’s death, which was probably what he’d intended.

  “Anyway, the knife was there. Who else but Walker would have put it there? It was almost like writing a note. You’re next.”

  There was a pause, and when Rafe’s voice came back, it was rather more alert than it had been. “You think he wants to kill you?”

  “I’m not sure,” I admitted. “When he first destroyed my office, I assumed it was just pique. He was there, my office was handy, and he took his frustrations out on it. But this... He went to the house deliberately. He went inside and found the broom and broke the windows and smashed everything else. He took a knife from the kitchen and slashed the sofa and chair. And then he drove the knife into the floor where Brenda died. Into hundred-and-twenty year old hardwood floors. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but I think it could be a message.”