Hot
Property
by
Jenna Bennett
HOT PROPERTY
Cutthroat Business Mystery #2
Smashwords edition
Copyright © 2011 Bente Gallagher
All rights reserved.
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner of this book.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover image by Simon Howden/FreeDigitalPhotos.net
1
Chapter 1
The first open house robbery took place on the second Sunday in August, just at the time I was busy apprehending a murderer.
Before I go any further, I guess I should make it clear that I’m not actually in the business of law enforcement. Walker Lamont was the first, and I sincerely hope the last, murderer I’ll encounter.
My name is Savannah Martin, and what I am, is a Realtor. Walker was my boss. Up until the moment I happened to be standing next to him when he came face to face with someone who could put him in the wrong place at the wrong time, we’d had a very good relationship, and I’m sure he meant it sincerely when he apologized for having to kill me.
But I digress. As I was pushing the business end of a lipstick into Walker’s back, trying to make him believe it was a gun, another Realtor – Kieran Greene with RE/MAX – was being gagged and tied to a chair on the other side of town. After he was safely trussed, four masked men proceeded to strip the house of anything of value and cart it off in a rented moving van, leaving Kieran sitting in the kitchen waiting to be rescued.
The incident made the news, but was treated as sort of a sidebar to Walker’s arrest. Violence against Realtors, Part II. Poor Kieran’s ordeal was buried on page 4 of the Nashville Banner and received scant attention from anyone. It wasn’t until the next Sunday, when the same thing happened again, that the real estate community sat up and took notice.
The first I heard of this second robbery was at the weekly staff meeting on Monday morning. With Walker in jail, Timothy Briggs had taken over as managing broker of Walker Lamont Realty, and he was the one who brought it up. “Before we talk about holding open houses next weekend,” he said, leaning back in Walker’s leather chair and folding his manicured hands across his flat stomach, “I guess we should discuss what happened yesterday. I assume you’ve all heard the news?”
He looked around the table, his baby-blue eyes bright.
I raised my hand. “I haven’t. What happened yesterday?”
“Oh, Savannah, it was just awful!” Heidi Hoppenfeldt was busy chomping her way through the three dozen donuts Tim had brought in for us to share, and when she spoke, a fine spray of crumbs arched out of her mouth and landed on her ample bosom. She was on the other side of the table from me, so I wasn’t hit, but the people on either side of her leaned away.
“What’s awful?” I said. And added, mentally, “apart from Heidi’s table manners.”
Tim smirked. “Didn’t you catch the news last night, darling? My goodness, you must have had a busy day. It was on the five o’clock, six o’clock, nine o’clock and ten o’clock news!”
“I was in Sweetwater this weekend,” I said. Sweetwater is my hometown, a small place an hour or so south of Nashville. My mother and my two siblings live there, along with their spouses and children, my aunt Regina, and various old friends and acquaintances. “I had dinner with a friend before I drove back, so I didn’t get home until after eleven. And I didn’t listen to the radio in the car.”
Tim smacked his lips appreciatively. “And how is the scrumptious Mr. Collier?”
A few of the girls and the other (gay) guys tittered. Tim has an outspoken and unrequited crush on Rafael Collier, who’s an old acquaintance of mine, also from Sweetwater. Rafe isn’t gay – not by any stretch of the imagination – but Tim likes to dream.
“He’s fine,” I said repressively.
“He certainly is,” Tim agreed, with a saucy grin.
I rolled my eyes. “You know what I mean. I haven’t seen him for a few days, but he seemed all right on Thursday. And we’re not dating.”
“You were dating last weekend at Fidelio’s,” Tim pointed out. A whisper, like a breath of wind through stiff grass, spread around the table. Fidelio’s is one of the nicest (and most expensive) restaurants in Nashville; the sort of place where country music stars dine and normal people can only afford to go on special occasions. It’s not the kind of place one takes a casual acquaintance, unless one has serious designs on her. Which Rafe does. (He wants to sleep with me. And he hasn’t made any secret of it, so I don’t see why I should.) But if he had thought that wining and dining me at Fidelio’s would make me give in to his predatory charms, he must have been disappointed. He didn’t get so much as a goodnight kiss when he brought me home, although I’d wager that my near-faint when he suggested it may have been almost as gratifying to his undeniable ego.
“It was a business dinner,” I said firmly. “And it’s none of your concern. Yesterday I had dinner with someone else. Someone you haven’t met.”
“You get around, don’t you, darling?” Tim smirked.
I narrowed my eyes. Tim added, “Well, since you missed the news... There was another open house robbery yesterday.”
I blinked. “Like the one last week? When the owners came home and found their Realtor bound and gagged in the kitchen?”
Tim nodded. “Poor Kieran. He’ll never be the same.” He clicked his tongue sympathetically and then brightened. “This time the Realtor was Lila Vaughn, with Worthington Properties.”
I must have made a noise, for he added, “Do you know her?”
I nodded. “I took real estate classes with Lila Vaughn. We got together for lunch less than two weeks ago.” Just after the ordeal with Walker, in fact. She’d wanted to hear the scoop.
“I saw her on the news yesterday,” Heidi mumbled, spraying another shower of crumbs across the table. The donut box was slowly emptying out.
“They interviewed her?” That sounded like Lila. She was an aggressive go-getter, willing to do pretty much whatever it took to get ahead, and she probably considered the news coverage free advertising. I could easily see her pushing through any fear or discomfort she was feeling to get her face on TV. She’d exhorted me to do the same thing last time we spoke, and to take advantage of the media circus surrounding Walker’s arrest.
Heidi nodded. “Black girl, pretty, with long, curly hair.”
“That’s her. What happened?” I looked around the table.
“The same thing as last time,” Tim said. “Just before the open house was over, a group of men showed up. They tied Lila to a chair and spent twenty or thirty minutes carrying everything of value out of the house. Electronics, jewelry, rugs, paintings. The house was full and they got it all.”
“Was Lila hurt?”
Tim shrugged. “The news didn’t say. The owners found her when the
y came home later.”
“Gosh,” I said, “she must have been terrified.”
We all thought about Lila’s ordeal and – I’m sure – thanked God it had happened to her and not to us.
“In light of all this,” Tim broke the silence, “those of you with open houses scheduled for this weekend may want to take some extra precautions. Get a friend to come with you so you don’t have to be alone. Keep the doors locked between visitors, or stay on the porch or outside in the yard where people can see you. Arrange to call a friend every fifteen minutes. You know, all the usual things.”
“The same things my daddy told me when I was sixteen and started dating,” one of the women said with a grin.
Tim nodded. “And that reminds me... Savannah, I can usually count on you to host an open house for me, but if you’d rather not, under the circumstances...” He let the sentence trail off suggestively. I grimaced. At the last open house I hosted, someone had tried to kill me, which didn’t make me particularly eager to try again. Until the open house robbers were caught, I’d just as soon not tempt fate.
However, I couldn’t in good conscience say no. Tim was, for all intents and purposes, my boss, now that Walker was languishing in jail, and although he couldn’t really order me to do anything – like all Realtors, I’m an independent contractor and responsible only to myself – I didn’t think it would go over very well to refuse. In my roughly eight weeks on the job, I hadn’t brought in so much as a dime in commissions.
“Sure. I’m happy to help.” I don’t think I sounded happy, but I got the words out.
“Excellent.” Tim showed all his capped teeth in a blinding smile. The conversation went on to the houses he and the others wanted to hold open next weekend, and I tuned out while I let my mind wander.
Poor Lila, what a horrible thing to have happen. She wasn’t the most delicate of women, bless her heart – not by a long shot – but still, surely something like this would be enough to put the wind up anyone. I’d had to deal with some scary stuff myself in the past few weeks, and I was becoming quite an expert on heart-stopping terror. I should definitely give her a call to commiserate, once the meeting was over. IfI scraped the bottom of my purse, I could come up with enough change to pay for lunch.
“Does that sound OK, Savannah?” Tim’s voice said. I nodded vaguely. “I’ll put you down for that, then. Thank you.”
“No problem.” I had no idea what I’d just agreed to do, but I wasn’t willing to admit I hadn’t been paying attention by asking him to repeat it. I’d figure it out later.
Tim giggled. “If you’re worried, maybe you should ask Mr. Collier to keep you company. He looks like he’d be able to handle any number of robbers.”
Rafe would be more likely to be aiding and abetting them, but I didn’t say so. “I’ll keep the suggestion in mind,” I said instead, cooly.
“Do that, darling. And if you don’t, maybe I’ll ask him to guard my body instead.” Tim tittered.
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t be surprised if you find yourself tied to a chair, in that case.”
“Darling!” Tim bleated, seemingly overcome with emotion. He fanned himself with a limp hand as the rest of the room laughed. I blushed.
After the meeting broke up, I headed for my office, otherwise known as the converted coat closet off the reception area. It’s hardly big enough to turn around in, but I’ve managed to squeeze in a miniature desk with a laptop, and a chair. While the computer booted up, I put a call in to Lila. She didn’t pick up – she was probably inundated with phone calls, the way I had been after the incident with Walker and the lipstick – so I left a message on her voice mail, inviting her to lunch just as soon as she could dig herself out from under all the reporters and colleagues and just plain nosy-parkers who wanted to talk to her about what had happened.
That done, I turned my attention to the computer, which had finished booting up while I was telephoning.
Everything is computerized these days, so it wasn’t hard to find more information about what had happened. The Nashville Banner’s website and the Tennessean’s website both had articles about the robberies, as did all four of the local TV-station websites. Several of them had dug up pictures of Lila to accompany the articles, but they were posed and didn’t give me any idea of how my friend was holding up under the pressure. There were pictures of Kieran Greene, too, and he looked like a dark-haired Tim, with lots of white teeth, perfect hair, and skin as smooth as a baby’s bottom.
After reading the various accounts, I pieced together a basic story of what had happened. At some point between 3:30 and 4 pm on Sunday afternoon, when the open houses were beginning to wind down and the Realtors were alone inside, a moving van had pulled into the driveway of each house. Possibly the same moving van in both cases, possibly not. The jury was still out on that. Four masked men had walked into the house, which – of course – was unlocked. That’s the whole point of an open house, to get as many prospective buyers as possible to come in and browse. Lila and Kieran were tied to chairs in their respective kitchens, while the men stripped the houses of anything of value and carried it out to the moving van. When each house was empty of valuables, or they had gotten what they came for, they walked out, leaving Lila and Kieran bound and gagged in the kitchen. The whole thing hadn’t taken any more than ten minutes from beginning to end. Luckily for both Realtors, the owners had come home within an hour or two, although it was anybody’s guess what would have happened if they hadn’t. Poor Kieran or Lila could have been sitting there until midnight or longer.
None of the websites had managed a good description of the criminals, not even as to race or gender. Both Realtors were fairly certain they had been men, but it was difficult to be sure even of that, as they were all dressed in padded coveralls and boots, with ski masks covering their faces and heads, and with gloves on their hands. It seemed almost miraculous that none of them had passed out from heat exhaustion in the 90˚F weather, but we keep our air conditioners cranked up high in Nashville in the summer, and if they’d only been dressed like that for thirty minutes or so, maybe it hadn’t been such a big deal. And the loot had certainly been worth a little discomfort. The estimated loss was more than forty grand in one house, and closer to sixty in the other. Not bad for a half hour’s work. There were no fingerprints or obvious DNA found in either house – both open houses had had at least a dozen visitors who had to be eliminated first – and although some of the neighbors had seen the moving vans, no one had thought anything of it, since the houses, after all, were for sale. And because all of the hauling had been done through the garage or back doors, none of the neighbors had gotten more than a brief glimpse of the robbers.
On impulse, I picked up the phone again. It was a number I had called a fair few times during the preceding couple of weeks, and I had more or less memorized it. It was answered on the second ring. “Metro PD. Homicide. Tamara Grimaldi.”
“Hi, Detective,” I said politely. “Savannah Martin.”
A beat passed, while the detective adjusted to my voice. It was a week or so since we’d spoken, and with Walker safely behind bars and his crimes solved, she must be wondering why I was calling. “Yes, Ms. Martin. What can I do for you?”
“I just wanted to say hello,” I said. A disbelieving silence greeted this announcement, and I grimaced. “All right, I wanted to ask you something.”
Another beat passed. “Does this have to do with your boyfriend?”
“What boyfriend? Todd?”
“Who’s Todd? I’m talking about Mr. Collier.”
Of course. Tim isn’t the only one who thinks Rafe and I have something going on.
“He’s not my boyfriend.” Although I couldn’t stop myself from adding, “What has he done now?”
“Nothing I know of,” Tamara Grimaldi said.
“So why would you think I’m calling about him? No, never mind. Don’t answer that. I wanted to ask you about these open house robberies. You know, when a bunch o
f guys tie up a Realtor and steal everything in the house?”
“Can’t help you there, I’m afraid,” Detective Grimaldi said. “Until someone gets killed, it’s not my problem.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. So you don’t know anything about it?”
“No more than you do, I expect. Just what’s in the news. From what little I’ve gathered, it doesn’t seem as if the robbers are trying to hurt anyone. Neither Realtor was harmed, and Ms. Vaughn said the man who tied her up, told her it was for her own protection.”
“That’s good to know, anyway,” I said. “Tim has asked me to host an open house for him this weekend.”
Tamara Grimaldi’s voice turned serious. “Be careful. Bring a friend with you if you can. And if you encounter these people, the best thing you can do is exactly what they tell you. Don’t give them a reason to harm you, or – God forbid – take you with them when they leave. Once you’re on their turf, your chances of survival fall to almost nil.”
I promised I wouldn’t, with a shudder. “But you don’t think they’re dangerous?”
“Everyone’s dangerous,” Detective Grimaldi said, “under the right circumstances. Even you. But so far, this particular group hasn’t exhibited any particularly violent tendencies. Unless you gave them a reason, I don’t think they’d treat you any differently than they treated Mr. Greene or Ms. Vaughn.”
I nodded. “Do the police have any... um... leads?”
“None I’m at liberty to discuss,” Detective Grimaldi said. And relented. “As I said, it isn’t my case. But between you and me, I don’t think there’s much. They’re good. The vans have been from different companies, and so far, no one has seen their faces well enough to identify them. The neighbors assumed they were hired by the homeowners to move the furniture out, so no one paid attention, and the robbers wore masks inside the house. We’re not even sure how many of them there are. Mr. Greene was too shook up to notice details, and because they were all wearing the same thing, and for all intents and purposes looked exactly the same, Ms. Vaughn couldn’t be certain. We’re going on the assumption that there are four.”
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