Elspeth nodded. “I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.” she said.
I stared at her. “Excuse me?”
The dogs were rooting around in the yard, and now one of them stuck its enormous snout through two pickets and put its cold nose on my leg. I jumped.
“I’m sorry,” Elspeth said again. “But surely you can understand why I can’t talk about it. About him. You’re a lady, and we don’t discuss things like... that.”
Well, no. We didn’t. Not usually. But even I made exceptions in dire straits. And as long as I felt fairly certain my mother would never hear about it.
Elspeth turned to walk away. “I’m sorry you had to drive all the way down here for nothing.”
It wouldn’t have been for nothing had she just had the – pardon me – balls to overcome her ladylike vapors, but there didn’t seem to be any sense in pointing that out. All I could do was watch, with my hands curled into frustrated fists, as she walked away with all four hounds on her heels. The ornately carved door closed behind her with a thud.
I ended up going to Beulah’s Meat’n Three by myself. It was on the way back to the interstate, I was hungry, and frankly, I was so angry I had a hard time seeing straight. A break for some food and time to gather myself might do me good. So I pulled into the graveled lot beside the cinderblock building, and walked in.
Beulah’s Meat’n Three has been a fixture for longer than I’ve been alive. Nobody named Beulah has anything to do with the place anymore, or has for as long as I can remember, but when I sat down at a table by the window, I saw another familiar face.
Yvonne McCoy was someone else I’d gone to school with, but whom I’d barely known. Like I’d told Lila that last time we’d gotten together, my mother had been particular about the schoolmates Catherine, Dix and I were allowed to associate with. Rafe was unacceptable because he was a Collier, with all that that embodied, as well as because he was a handful in his own right. Drinking, fighting, joyriding… he’d been in trouble with Sheriff Satterfield practically from the moment he could walk. Elspeth was unacceptable because her father was a weird, fundamentalist preacher, while the Martins and the Calverts – mother’s people in Georgia – were good old-fashioned Southern Baptists. And Yvonne had been unacceptable because she was, not to put too fine a point on it, common as dirt, and a tramp to boot. Not that I’d ever considered the possibility of becoming friendly with any of them. Rafe was three years older than me, and Trouble with a capital T. Even at the tender age of fourteen, I had been aware of that. Elspeth had been so quiet and unassuming that I’d barely noticed her existence, and Yvonne was her total opposite. There was nothing shy and retiring about Yvonne. She was loud, raucous, and fun-loving, with flaming red hair and the dubious distinction of having had the biggest breasts at Columbia High. She was also, in her own way, a decent person who’d never take advantage of another human being or deliberately hurt anyone. And at the moment, she was exactly the person I needed. I greeted her with a brilliant smile.
“Hi, Yvonne.”
She squinted at me for a moment or two, or even longer, before she seemed to recognize me. Not the sharpest tool in the shed, Yvonne. “Hiya, Savannah. It’s Savannah, ain’t it? Dix Martin’s little sister?”
I nodded. “I didn’t realize you knew my brother.”
Yvonne grinned. “Not as well as I’d like. We were in the same class in school, but he’d never look twice at somebody like me. How’s he doing?”
“He’s fine,” I said. “Married, of course. He and his wife have two little girls. Abigail and Hannah. They live just outside Sweetwater, in that new subdivision. Copper Creek.”
Yvonne nodded. “Shoulda known he’d be married. How ‘bout you? I remember your wedding. Never saw such a to-do. How’s your hubby?”
“Remarried,” I said succinctly. “You?”
“Oh, I’m single again. Can’t seem to keep a boyfriend to save my life. But you don’t wanna know ‘bout that. What can I get you, sugar?”
Actually, I did want to know about that, so I ordered quickly – “Water with lemon and a Chef Salad, please,” – and returned to the previous subject. “Would you mind if I asked you a question?”
“Shoot,” Yvonne said, without hesitation.
“You remember Rafe Collier, right?”
“Who could forget?” She said it with what I can only describe as a lascivious grin.
I smiled. Just as I’d hoped. “How about Elspeth Caulfield?”
“Sure. Saw her just a coupla weeks ago, down at the post office. Mailing a book or something to New York City.”
“I just came from her house,” I said. “I was trying to find out what happened between them back in high school, but she wouldn’t tell me.”
Yvonne squinted at me. “Between Rafe and Elspeth?”
I nodded.
“Hang on a second.” She turned and walked away. I watched her walk across the floor and go behind the counter, where she placed my order on the little wheel in the kitchen window. Then she filled up a glass with water and popped in a lemon wedge and carried it back to me. “What d’you wanna know that for?” she asked, as if she’d never left. “You thinking of getting involved with him?”
“Lord, no!” I said.
“I didn’t think so. So why?”
I took a breath. “A friend of mine in Nashville was raped and murdered last weekend. She knew Rafe. The police think he might have done it.”
“Lord’a-mercy!” Yvonne said, and crossed herself piously, although I doubted very much that she was a Catholic, let alone a practicing one.
“Someone suggested that whatever happened between them wasn’t consensual.”
“You mean he raped her?” Yvonne shook her head. “Knowing him, I can’t imagine he’d have to. Usually, she was the one running after him, not the other way around. Although she did keep moaning about being ruined, afterwards.”
“Yikes,” I said, although my mind was, regrettably, tangled up elsewhere. “When you say you knew him, do you mean…?”
Yvonne grinned. “Hell, yeah.”
“You were… um… intimate?”
“Sugar,” Yvonne said confidingly, “were we ever.”
“Wow,” I said. “So… there was no persuading necessary? For you?”
She put her head back and laughed, red curls bouncing. “Are you kidding?” A couple of the other customers turned to look at her, curiously. Yvonne didn’t seem to notice. “I wasn’t about to say no to him, sugar. Although Elspeth was different. She didn’t sleep around. I never saw her so much as look at anybody else.” She fixed me with a stare. “You sure you’re not wanting him for yourself?”
“Positive,” I said. “So when he slept with Elspeth – that was after you and he slept together, right? – didn’t it bother you that he was with somebody else?”
She smiled, and it was a particularly patient smile, the sort of smile one gives a slow but well-intentioned student who just doesn’t get it. “It wasn’t like that. It was just sex. Something to do one night when nothing else was happening. He never suggested it again, and then there was the whole thing with Elspeth, and then summer vacation, and then he went to jail. I ain’t seen him since. How’s he looking these days?”
“Good,” I said, and then caught myself. “I mean… healthy, you know?”
Yvonne nodded. “You used’ta date Todd Satterfield, right?”
I nodded.
She didn’t say anything else about it. “I guess I’d better go get your salad. Unless you got something more you wanna ask?”
I shook my head. “I think that’s it. Although if you remember anything else, or hear anything, would you mind getting in touch with me?” I handed her my business card. She squinted at it.
“Realtor, huh? I always figured you’d end up marrying Todd and driving a station wagon with three kids in the back. But good for you, sugar.” She stuffed the card into her apron pocket, where I hoped it wouldn’t get lost among the credit card slips and tip
s, and wandered off.
When the phone rang shortly after I arrived home, and Tamara Grimaldi’s number appeared on the display, I accepted the inevitable with nary a grimace. “Hi, Detective. I was just thinking about you.”
“You don’t say? Do you have a minute?”
“Do I have a choice?” I muttered, and added, more loudly, “Of course. What can I do for you?”
I could hear the shuffling of papers in the background. “I just received the results of the physical evidence from the Fortunato residence.”
“Anything surprising?” I asked, my voice reasonably level.
“Actually, yes. Your fingerprints are all over the place, of course – we took them back when Mrs. Puckett was murdered, so they’re in our files – and so are Mr. Collier’s.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything different,” I said. “He was there, he helped me close up, and he wasn’t wearing gloves, so it’s not surprising he should have left prints.”
“Of course.” The detective’s voice was smooth. “The DNA in the bedroom is the most interesting, however.”
Oh, Lord! My heart stuttered for a second, or maybe it just felt that way. Maybe it was indigestion. “How so?”
Tamara Grimaldi hesitated. “We found traces of semen on the carpet in the master bedroom. It didn’t match Mr. Fortunato’s. Would you happen to remember anything about a young man by the name of Hodges, who visited your open house?”
I blinked. “Gary Lee? Of course. He and his wife are clients of mine. Why?”
The detective’s voice was studiously unemotional. “The sample matched his DNA.”
“You found Gary Lee’s semen in Connie Fortunato’s bedroom? But...”
And then the brick dropped, as I recalled the giggling and whispering behind closed doors, and Charlene’s misbuttoned blouse and their search for the most mind-blowing bedroom in Nashville. I had to resist the temptation to thunk my head against the kitchen counter. The bump that would result, wouldn’t be worth it. “Oh, God!”
“What?”
“Oh, nothing. Just damning myself for a fool. Again.”
“So you can explain the semen?”
“I can try,” I said, with a wholly unladylike giggle, “although you may want to give them a call yourself, and talk to them about it. They’d be more likely to come clean with you than with me, I think. But for what it’s worth, here’s what I think has been going on: I’ve spent the past week showing them houses, and I think they’ve been having sex in all the bedrooms.”
The detective was silent for a beat or two. “I see,” she said. “Why would they do that?”
“No idea. They’re newlyweds, so maybe they just can’t keep their hands off each other. Newlyweds do that, I hear. Or maybe they read about it somewhere and decided to give it a try. Like people having sex in airplane lavatories and elevators and dressing rooms. Or maybe there’s an internet chat-room for maniacs who lead their realtors on in order to have sex in other people’s houses.” As I was speaking, my initial amusement was giving way to annoyance.
“I’ll find out,” Tamara Grimaldi said soothingly, “and have a stern chat with them at the same time.”
“Thank you. By the way, how did you come by Gary Lee’s DNA? Originally, I mean? Does he have a criminal record, too?” He had brown eyes, anyway, although no one could mistake his scrawny bass-playing frame for Rafe’s, not even in padded coveralls.
“Someone sued him for child support. There was paternity testing done.”
“And was it his baby?” I caught myself and blushed. “Never mind. It’s none of my business. I was actually thinking about someone... I mean, something else.”
“I see,” Tamara Grimaldi said. “Is this imaginary pregnancy of yours taking on a life of its own, Ms. Martin?”
She waited politely while I ground my teeth. A few weeks ago, when I first met her, I had told the detective that Tondalia Jenkins, Rafe’s grandmother, was confused as to who I was, and for that matter who he was. Some of the time she had no idea that she knew him at all. Other times she knew exactly who he was, and the rest of the time she thought he was his father. During those times when she thought Rafe was Tyrell, she also thought I was LaDonna, and that I was pregnant with Rafe. Horribly confusing, I know. Also untrue, of course, but the detective liked to yank my chain.
“No,” I said eventually, when I had pried my teeth apart. “It’s just that my... um... Todd told me about someone who supposedly got pregnant back when we were in high school, and there were some rumors at the time about the paternity of the child. It’s on my mind, that’s all.”
“I see.” She waited. I knew what she was doing, and I really didn’t want to respond to it, but eventually I felt compelled to speak.
“Todd is worried that I’m developing an interest in Rafe. He’s been telling me horror-stories. One of which concerns a girl named Elspeth Caulfield, who had some association with Rafe back in high school. She won’t tell me what it was.”
“She might tell me,” Tamara Grimaldi suggested.
“She might. Or not. It happened twelve years ago, and I’m sure you have more important things to do than tracking down something like that. It’s not like I care.”
“Of course not,” the detective said.
“You said you were going to have another talk with Malcolm Rodgers. With everything that’s been going on, I don’t suppose you’ve had a chance to do that?”
“Actually, I have.” She shuffled some more papers. “Mr. Rodgers has an alibi for last night. He was with his buddies at a local bar, waking his ex-wife until closing time. They poured him into bed at three in the morning. He has an alibi for the robbery, too.”
“Well, phooey! I liked the idea of Malcolm doing it.”
“You like the idea of anyone but Mr. Collier doing it.”
“No, I...” I stopped when it became apparent I couldn’t even convince myself. “Well, yes. I’d rather have it be someone else. Someone I don’t know. I mean, I spend time with him. I don’t like the idea that he’s capable of something like this.”
“Understandably,” Detective Grimaldi conceded. “The M.O. for yesterday’s theft of the O’Keeffe was different from the other robberies. It might be the same group of people, who have decided to change their modus operandi now that everyone is aware of the open house threat, or it could be a copy cat, someone who decided that he or she would take advantage of the open house robberies to stage a small coup of their own. I’m looking for links.”
“Like the fact that Rafe visited the Fortunatos’ house on Sunday?”
“Or like the fact that Heather Price worked for both the other sellers, and was a friend of Connie Fortunato’s.”
“Did she really?” I said. “I started to ask her about it at the funeral yesterday, but we were interrupted.”
“She did. And her boyfriend Julio is connected.”
I wrinkled my forehead. “Connected to what? The robberies? The murders?”
“The mob,” Detective Grimaldi said. “Or rather, since we don’t have a true mafia here in Tennessee, a large criminal organization with ties to a lot of different illegal enterprises.”
“You’re kidding!”
“I wish I were.”
“Why don’t you arrest him?”
“Other than that I work homicides, you mean? And until the time he kills someone, he’s none of my business?”
“Well, yes. Aside from that.”
Detective Grimaldi hesitated for a moment. “It’s a TBI thing,” she said. “The Tennessee Bureau of Investigations. We handle local law enforcement, but they handle anything statewide, just like the FBI handles anything that crosses state lines. I’m sure they’re working on it. But in the meantime, we leave him alone. Unless he trespasses on our turf, of course. If I can pin Lila’s or Connie’s murder on him, I’ll nail him to the wall, and the Teds can just learn to live with it.”
“The Teds?”
“You’ve heard of the Feds? It’s what the
y call FBI-agents. A Ted is a TBI-agent.”
“Oh,” I said. “Funny.”
“No, not really. Anyway, Julio Melendez has connections. He owns an import/export business, so he’d be able to move the merchandise that was stolen from the two houses. Maybe even the O’Keeffe, although that may be a little out of his league. Still, I’m not certain it was stolen by the same group. I think I’m going to have to have a talk with Julio.”
“That sounds like it might be a good idea. Is he by any chance tall and dark with brown eyes?”
“Now that you mention it,” Detective Grimaldi said, “I do believe he is. Interesting.”
I nodded. “I’ll talk to you later, Detective. Good luck.” And I hung up, leaving the detective to think happy thoughts of putting one over on the Teds.
.
Chapter 15
A quick check of the phone book showed me that Julio Melendez’s import/export business was located not too terribly far from my apartment. I got in the car and headed out.
As I had explained to Todd a week or two ago, Historic East Nashville no longer enjoys the distinction of being the worst neighborhood in the city. People don’t take their lives in their hands whenever they cross the Cumberland River anymore. At least not usually. We still have our share of murders, rapes, burglaries, and thefts, but no more than any other part of town.
Demographically, East Nashvillians are a diverse bunch. There’s a high concentration of gays of both sexes, and various sorts of artists and musicians, with a growing population of young professionals and families with kids of school age. Racially, it’s also a mixed bag. Old-time blacks and poor whites still cling to the neighborhood where they were born, trying to withstand the onslaught of the terminally young and hip. They’re fighting a losing battle; East Nashville has been ‘discovered’ by the upwardly mobile, and the old guard is being squeezed out by higher property taxes and dirty looks.
Julio Melendez’s business was located beyond the renovated areas, in an industrial park down by the Cumberland River. And in contrast to the picture in my head, all it was, was a warehouse. No storefront, no fancy sign, no architect-designed landscaping; just a square box with a single door and no windows. A tractor trailer was parked on the side of the building, being loaded. I pulled into the parking lot across the street – it belonged to a charitable organization –nosed the car into a spot facing the import/export business, and killed the engine. Then I slunk low in my seat and stared at the front door of Melendez Import/Export.
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