Home Stretch

by Jenna Bennett

  “I’ll fill the tub for you,” I told her, as I nudged her toward the stairs. “We’ll both feel better once we’re clean.”

  And so it was that when Rafe burst in, we were sitting at the kitchen table eating ice cream, while the washing machine was humming away in the laundry room.

  He stopped in the doorway and arched a brow.

  “Pregnancy comfort,” I told him, and was happy to see a corner of his mouth quirk.

  “You sure you’re all right?”

  “We’re fine. Did you know there’s a tunnel from the basement to that old, overgrown gazebo in the backyard?”

  This time both eyebrows went up. “No.”

  We hadn’t spent a whole lot of time on the yard. It had been a busy summer, between getting married and going on the honeymoon—and Rafe going missing—and everything else that had happened. Not to mention being pregnant. I hadn’t wanted to mess around outside in the heat. And Rafe had had other things on his mind.

  “There is,” I said. “Under the staircase in the basement.”

  He glanced at the basement door.

  “Feel free to go look. We didn’t close the door behind us, so I don’t think you can miss it. And by the time you come back upstairs, Grimaldi will probably be here, and then we can talk.”

  He didn’t need another invitation, just headed across the kitchen floor to the basement door and turned the key in the lock.

  “Don’t go into it,” I told him. “I’m not sure you’ll fit. And I don’t want to spend the time having to dig you out. Not today.”

  He gave me a look, but headed down the stairs without comment. I heard his footsteps on the wood, and then heard them disappear as he reached the dirt floor. I went back to my cold comfort.

  He came back up three minutes later. There were cobwebs stuck to the top of his hair. “I never saw that before.”

  “I haven’t, either. But your grandmother knew where it was.”

  She gave him a grin, and he grinned back. “You all right?”

  She nodded. “We did good.”

  Yes, we did. Or at least she did. I was the one who was snookered by the lure of a new real estate client, into leaving her alone here. If I hadn’t, none of this would have happened.

  “Or he’d’a killed both of you,” Rafe said, when I said so out loud.

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. When I came home, he hid until I’d gone down into the basement, and then he locked me in. If he’d wanted to hurt me, he had plenty of time to do it.” And lots of kitchen knives available for the job, in case he hadn’t brought something of his own for the purpose.

  The doorbell rang, and Rafe glanced over his shoulder, his eyes narrowing.

  “Probably Grimaldi,” I said.

  “I’ll get it.” He headed down the hallway toward the front door. Hopefully it really was Grimaldi, because anyone else was likely to run screaming from the look on his face.

  * * *

  It was Grimaldi, and since Mrs. Jenkins and I had finished our ice cream, and since the other two declined to partake, we took the party into the dining room. The table was a bit bigger than the one in the kitchen, and the chairs a bit more comfortable, with padding. And unlike the parlor, there was no TV to distract Mrs. Jenkins from answering Grimaldi’s questions.

  I laid it all out, from Mrs. Jenkins’s bloodstained arrival in the early hours of Sunday morning, to crawling through the tunnel and emerging through the floor of the backyard gazebo this afternoon. Grimaldi looked grimmer and grimmer as I went along, but she kept scribbling notes until the bitter end, and didn’t start asking questions until I was all the way finished.

  “So Mrs. Jenkins was covered with blood on Sunday morning?”

  “I wouldn’t say covered...” I glanced at Rafe. He rolled his eyes.

  Grimaldi looked up. “That’s what you said. ‘Covered with blood.’”

  “She wasn’t covered. OK? But there was a lot.” I looked at Mrs. Jenkins, who was sitting on the other side of the table with a beatific look on her face. She didn’t seem to feel any need to interrupt, or defend herself. I’m not sure she had any idea what we were talking about. Down in the basement, she’d seemed alert and aware and with it. Now, she’d slipped back into this vague, not-quite-here state she seemed to be inhabiting most of the time. “At first we worried that it was her blood. When we realized it wasn’t, we knew something must have happened to someone. The problem was that Mrs. Jenkins couldn’t tell us who.”

  “So you had the dress analyzed.”

  Rafe nodded.

  “When were you going to tell me the results?”

  “I wasn’t,” Rafe said. “If this hadn’t happened, I wouldna told you nothing.”

  Grimaldi didn’t seem surprised. I guess she’d expected it. “But it was Julia Poole’s blood?”

  “Lab confirmed it yesterday. Human blood and river water. I had’em check for that, too.”

  Smart move. I’d already guessed Mrs. J had been in the car when it went into the river, but it was nice to have it confirmed. Especially since it made it less likely that she was the one who had killed Julia.

  Grimaldi made a note. “Tell me about the funeral again.”

  I told her about the funeral again. About the—very truncated—argument over the coffin and about Doctor Fesmire almost running us down in the parking lot. “He sounded like he wasn’t afraid they were going to sue. Or that they’d win if they did. But Beverly Bristol probably really shouldn’t have been out and about walking around at that time of night, should she? Someone should have been there to take care of her if she needed something, right?”

  Grimaldi nodded.

  “Let me guess. Julia Poole?”

  “She was on the schedule for that night,” Grimaldi said. In a voice that said nothing at all, yet managed to convey a whole lot.

  “So... bear with me for a minute here, but let’s say that this wasn’t the first time the Bristols, or whatever their names are...”

  “All sorts of things,” Grimaldi said. “Beverly Bristol was a spinster. Never been married. But she had an older brother—dead now—who had a couple of daughters. They’re married, and have different names. And there was a sister, who had twin boys, who of course have their father’s name. None of them are named Bristol.”

  Whatever. “So let’s say that at some point prior to this morning, someone in the Bristol family had floated the idea of suing the nursing home. In Doctor Fesmire’s hearing.”

  Grimaldi nodded. So did Rafe. Mrs. Jenkins looked like she wasn’t listening.

  “And let’s say that Doctor Fesmire knew that if they did, they might win. That’s not how he sounded this morning, but if Julia Poole was out of the building on the night Beverly Bristol fell—the way she was on the night she died—and he knew or suspected that she was, and that’s the reason Beverly Bristol died...”

  I had to stop because I ran out of breath. Grimaldi nodded. Rafe’s lips were twitching. I gave him a quelling look before I finished my thought, and the sentence. “Then is it possible that he might have killed Julia? I know that sounds crazy, but if he knew she was responsible for Beverly Bristol’s death—or if not exactly responsible, she was negligent—and the Bristol family is thinking of suing, and the nursing home’s reputation—and his reputation along with it—would be dragged through the dirt... do you think he might have killed Julia in a fit of rage?”

  “Anything’s possible,” Grimaldi said.

  “It would explain why he didn’t kill Mrs. Jenkins. He wouldn’t want the death of another resident to reflect badly on the nursing home.”

  “Safer to take her back inside and convince her she’d been wrong about Julia,” Rafe said. “Keep her medicated. Tell her Julia’s in the hospital and is coming back. And in a week or two, put her to sleep. Gently.”

  I glanced at Mrs. Jenkins. She was humming. I lowered my voice anyway. “He’d probably be signing the death certificate, so I guess that could work. Although he did try to
run her down this morning.”

  “Careless of him not to stick around and make sure the job was done, though.”

  It had been.

  “So go over what happened this afternoon,” Grimaldi said, yanking the conversation back on track. “You got a call?”

  I nodded. “From the payphone on Ulm and Dresden. Although I didn’t know that until later. When I tried to call back and some kid picked up.”

  “The caller was a woman?”

  I had thought it was. “I don’t think I would have gone if it had been a man. You have to be careful in this business.”

  Grimaldi glanced at Rafe. “Isn’t that how she met you?”

  A corner of his mouth turned up, and he nodded.

  “That was a lucky break,” I said. “And frankly, it didn’t seem like one at the time. You both scared me to death.”

  Rafe chuckled. “And now look at us. Your husband and your maid of honor. And you barefoot and pregnant.”

  I was barefoot and pregnant. And a cliché. “So it worked out that time. Realtors go to meet clients sometimes, and end up dead. Look at that nutcase in North Carolina.” Or maybe it was South Carolina.

  “I think he was the realtor in that case,” Grimaldi said, but abandoned the subject. “So you think it was a woman. Any chance you could be wrong?”

  I’m sure I could be. “It sounded like a woman. But some men sound like women. Especially when they try. So I guess it could have been a man throwing his voice.”

  “Fesmire?” Rafe suggested.

  I thought back. I hadn’t heard him say much at the funeral. Just a few words. He hadn’t had a deep voice. I mean, there was no way I could mistake Rafe for a woman, even on the phone. In that first phone call, more than a year ago, he’d been oozing testosterone down the line.

  He smiled when I said so. Not that last part; the one about him not being mistaken for a woman. “Thank you, darlin’.”

  “No problem. I guess it’s possible it could have been Fesmire. If he was trying. It wasn’t a long conversation. Or he could have gotten someone to call for him. Is he not at the nursing home?”

  Rafe shook his head. “Both José and Clayton came up empty. He hasn’t been home or at work since you saw him this morning.”

  So he could have been here in the house trying to silence Mrs. Jenkins. Once he realized that Mrs. Jenkins was alive and well, and after he heard me introduce myself, it wouldn’t have been hard to figure out that she was staying with me, with us, and where we lived. All he had to do was call the nursing home and have someone look up the records. Rafe’s in there as next of kin, with phone number and address and everything nice, and since we got married, I’m sure so am I.

  So it could have been Fesmire. Or let’s say I couldn’t rule him out.

  “He drives a pretty distinctive car. At least for this neighborhood. If he was parked around here somewhere, someone may have noticed it.”

  Grimaldi nodded. “We’ll talk to some of the neighbors. So you didn’t get a look at him?”

  I shook my head. “There was nobody at the other house. Nobody parked outside or anywhere nearby. A green car parked across the street. It was there when I came and still there when I left. It didn’t move the whole time I was there. And I didn’t see anyone inside.”

  “And when you came back?”

  “I was too preoccupied to look around much. There was no car in the driveway. Nothing parked on the street—although you can’t really park on Potsdam, anyway.”

  Rafe shook his head.

  “I didn’t check any of the nearby driveways. I’m sorry. I just got here as fast as I could. But if there was a convertible BMW parked anywhere nearby, I didn’t see it.”

  Grimaldi nodded. “And when you came inside?”

  “The door was open. I figured the house was empty. That whoever had called to get me out of the house, had taken her.” And it had been scary. And the reason why I hadn’t been more careful when I burst in. “I called her name. And I heard a sound from back in the kitchen, so I ran down that way. The basement door stood open, and I thought Mrs. Jenkins might be down there.”

  “And she was,” Grimaldi said.

  I nodded. “I guess the bad guy must have been waiting on the back porch for me. As soon as I was at the bottom of the stairs, he slammed the door and shut off the light. I could hear him running away, but I couldn’t see a thing. I never saw him. But...”

  Something struck me, and I tilted my head sideways as I thought about it. “I heard Doctor Fesmire hurry out of the funeral home this morning. He was wearing dress shoes with hard soles. They slapped against the marble floor in the foyer.”

  Grimaldi nodded.

  “This didn’t sound the same. Heavier treads. Heavier soles.”

  “The footsteps might sound different because they were above you,” Grimaldi said.

  “And he mighta been carrying a pair of boots,” Rafe added.

  I tried to imagine Alton Fesmire in his nice suit and heavy boots, and couldn’t. Although if he’d been carrying a change of footwear, he might have been carrying a change of clothes, too.

  “I can’t identify him one way or the other, anyway. I didn’t see him. And when we got up above ground again, there was no one around.”

  Grimaldi nodded and closed her notebook. “I’ll have a crime scene crew stop by and get some fingerprints. Stay away from the light switch to the basement and anything on the back porch.”

  No problem. “We’ll probably just spend the rest of the day in front of the TV.”

  It wasn’t exciting, but it was safe.

  Grimaldi turned to Rafe. “I’m going to call in a squad car to help us do a door-to-door, just in case someone saw something. It’s too much for just you and me.”

  “I can call the boys in,” Rafe offered, “unless you want’em sitting on Fesmire’s work and home for now.”

  Grimaldi hesitated. “Keep them there. Between us, you and I and two officers can handle the knocking on doors.”

  Rafe pushed his chair back. “Prob’ly won’t be many folks home, anyway, in the middle of the day.”

  Probably not. Most people work for a living. But it had to be done. And it might lead somewhere.

  He turned to me. “I think you oughta leave, darlin’.”

  “Excuse me?”

  He elaborated. “We were gonna go to Sweetwater for Thanksgiving anyway, right?”

  We were, but not until Thursday morning. Now it was Tuesday afternoon. And I hadn’t counted on Mrs. Jenkins coming along, although I probably should have. It wasn’t like we could leave her here. Especially after this.

  I just hadn’t had time to think much about Thanksgiving since she showed up. I’d had other things on my mind.

  “I think the two of you oughta pack a couple bags and go now,” Rafe said. “Spend the day tomorrow helping your mama, or stay outta her way, or whatever she wants you to do. But somebody’s already come after you once. I don’t want’em to do it again.”

  It was nice of him to include me in the concern, since nobody had really come after me. It was Mrs. Jenkins who was in the bull’s eye. Although it was certainly possible I might be hit by a stray bullet, if I stood next to her. And anyway, if I’d gone into labor down in that basement earlier, with no phone and no way out, and something had gone wrong, something really bad could have happened.

  However— “Surely he won’t come back here. Not after this.”

  “Probably not,” Grimaldi agreed. Just as I was starting to feel better, she added, “But there are plenty of other places he can go and things he can do. You can’t barricade yourselves in the house forever, after all.”

  Hopefully it wouldn’t be forever. But I saw her point. What would keep him from waiting until we were all asleep, and then setting fire to the house?

  But if I took Mrs. Jenkins to Sweetwater early, it might give Rafe and Grimaldi time to work things out before we came back. I hadn’t planned to drive back until Friday afternoon. Surely by
then, they’d have the culprit in custody.

  “I’ll go pack,” I said.

  Grimaldi nodded. And turned to Mrs. J. “Did you know the man who came here?”

  I lingered in the doorway for a second to hear what she said. “He hurt Julia.”

  “Did you see Julia leave the house? Did you follow her?”

  Mrs. Jenkins looked sly.

  “It’s all right,” Rafe told her. “You can tell.”

  She nodded.

  “Did you see the man who hurt Julia?”

  “He said Julia got hurt,” Mrs. Jenkins said. “We have to help Julia.”

  I headed off down the hallway and up the stairs. They were going in circles in there. The chances of Mrs. Jenkins being able to tell them anything definitely were slim to none in my estimation, and I had packing to do.

  By the time I came downstairs with the two bags—one with Mrs. Jenkins’s meager wardrobe, one with my own cherry-picked clothes, they had given up.

  “I’ll call in the crime scene crew,” Grimaldi was telling Rafe. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and get a print off a doorjamb or the light switch. Meanwhile, we should start knocking on doors.”

  Rafe nodded. “Just let me see my wife off first.”

  Grimaldi had no problem with that. “Have a good trip,” she told me.

  “Have fun working on Thanksgiving,” I retorted. “Would you like me to take a message to Dix?”

  Her face closed. “No.”

  I gave her a closer look. “You two are all right, aren’t you?”

  “We’re fine.” Her expression dared me to disagree.

  “If you say so. But don’t think I won’t ask Dix when I’m there.”

  “Ask away,” Grimaldi said, in a tone that said something different.

  I tilted my head to look at her. “What’s wrong?”

  She scowled back. “Nothing.”

  And then she relented. “It’s been a year since your sister-in-law died. Your brother’s having a hard time with the anniversary. The last time we spoke, he told me he was feeling guilty.”

  “For?”

  She shrugged. “For not grieving, I guess. For getting on with his life.” After a second, she added, “It’s normal.”