Right of Redemption

by Jenna Bennett

  She nodded. “He’d changed a lot. Lost some weight, shaved his head…”

  A couple of years in prison can do that to a man. Rafe had gone in with cornrows and come out shaved, too. Or so I assumed. I hadn’t actually laid eyes on him until ten years later, so it could have happened anytime in that period, I guess. But the braids he’d had as a teenager were long gone when I saw him again at thirty.

  “Were you friends? Before?”

  “Friendly,” Mrs. Oberlin said. “Neighborly. Not much in common other than that we lived on the same street. He worked at home. I’d see him come and go sometimes. Always had a friendly word for Chester.”

  She glanced at the small dog, that had settled in with a slobbery nylon bone on the carpet.

  “You can tell a lot about someone from how they treat animals,” I said. “And vice versa, too. We have a rescue dog, and she was kept chained under a trailer up in the hills by her owner.”

  “Poor thing.” Mrs. Oberlin clicked her tongue again.

  “It’s a few months ago now. She’s doing fine. Settling in. But I know, when she likes someone, they have to be a decent person. She knows when they’re not.”

  “Chester liked Steve,” Mrs. Oberlin said.

  “I guess it must have been hard to believe that Steve would have done what they said he did, then.”

  A shadow crossed her face. “To Natalie? It was. Ida kept saying she’d heard arguing coming from Steve’s place, but I told her she had to be wrong.”

  Ida Burns was the neighbor who had testified in the first trial and was dead by the second. I glanced out the window. “Where did Ida live?”

  Mrs. Oberlin pointed across the street, to the house next to ours. “Been dead more than a year now, poor thing.”

  “I heard about that.” I nodded sympathetically. “Were you close?”

  “Close enough that she talked to me about it. I kept telling her it couldn’t have been Steve she heard that night, that Chester would have known if Steve had been capable of something like that.”

  Chester looked up at the sound of his name, slapped his tail once, and went back to gnawing the nylon.

  “If not Steve,” I asked, “who could it have been?”

  She shrugged. “Ida probably heard the TV and thought it was a real conversation. She wasn’t the brightest bulb in the chandelier.”

  Maybe so. Hard to imagine the defense wouldn’t have brought that up at trial, though.

  “I was starting to make some headway,” Mrs. Oberlin added, with a shrug of skinny shoulders inside flowered polyester, “but then she died.”

  I felt a tingle go down my spine, the same way it had when Todd had mentioned Ida Burns’s death this morning. He had dismissed my concerns, but— “Natural causes, right?”

  She gave me a look. “Heart attack.”

  “No suspicious circumstances?”

  “None I noticed.” She sniffed. Not in an offended way, in a sort of sad one. “I was the one who found her. She was on the floor next to the bed, still in her nightgown. The police said it looked like she’d had a heart attack in the middle of the night.”

  The description reminded me of something, but it took a few seconds for me to place it. Then it came back to me: Beulah Odom had also died of a heart attack, and been found on the floor next to her bed in the morning. In that case, she’d been discovered by one of the employees at the restaurant, who came to check on her when she didn’t show up to unlock the door in the morning.

  In spite of the Otis Odoms doing everything they could to turn it into murder, both the autopsies had been inconclusive. If Beulah had been murdered—as the Otis Odoms claimed—she’d been killed in a way that looked a lot like a heart attack.

  “Which detective?” I asked Mrs. Oberlin.

  She glanced across the street. “I ran and fetched Carl.” Officer Enoch. “He called his friend. The same detective who investigated Natalie’s murder. And now Steve’s.”

  Paul Jarvis. “And he said he thought it was a heart attack?”

  “Carl said it looked like one,” Mrs. Oberlin said. “But I’m sure they investigated.”

  Hopefully they had. Given how assiduously Jarvis had investigated Beulah’s murder, I guess it made sense that he’d give poor Mrs. Burns equal shrift.

  “Who did you think killed Natalie?”

  Mrs. Oberlin shook her head. “Probably some bum. Or maybe that no-good boyfriend of hers.”

  “She had a no-good boyfriend?” This was the first I’d heard of any no-good boyfriend. He hadn’t featured in the transcript of the trial at all. The first or second.

  “Name of Rodney,” Mrs. Oberlin said, with a sniff. “Been dating since their junior year of high school. She even put off going to college so they could keep seeing each other.”

  “Why would he kill her?” Had she gotten tired of him, or something? It wouldn’t be the first time some guy killed his girlfriend so he wouldn’t have to watch her date someone else. Or maybe she’d decided to go to college after all, that waiting tables in a sports bar wasn’t how she wanted to spend the rest of her life, and he hadn’t wanted her to go?

  Mrs. Oberlin shrugged. “Maybe he did something and she knew about it. So he killed her to shut her up.”

  And maybe Mrs. Oberlin had watched too many episodes of True Crime.

  “I appreciate you talking to me,” I said, and got to my feet. “I should get going. Would you happen to know which house the Allens live in?”

  She gave me a long look, but eventually she told me. “The yellow one. With the picket fence.”

  “I appreciate it.” I gathered up my baby and car seat. “I’m sure I’ll see you around again soon. The police will probably release the crime scene any moment now.”

  Mrs. Oberlin nodded and got to her feet to trail me to the door. Chester glanced up from the nylon bone, but didn’t jump to his feet to follow. I guess now that I was inside the house, he had decided I was no threat and no problem. He didn’t even bark when Mrs. Oberlin unlocked the door and held it open for me.

  I stepped across the threshold and out on the stoop. “I don’t suppose you’d have any idea why Morris came back here that night? Was he meeting someone? Maybe an old friend he was hoping to stay with?”

  He couldn’t expect to be able to stay in our house. He had to assume we’d be back the next day. For that matter, he couldn’t really know that we wouldn’t be there overnight. Not unless he kept an eye on the place.

  “Any friends he used to have, stopped being his friends when he was arrested for killing Natalie,” Mrs. Oberlin said. “No one on this street would have been happy to see him again.”

  “So why did he come back?”

  “Maybe he wanted to clear his name,” Mrs. Oberlin said. “If he didn’t kill Natalie, someone else did.”

  She waited a second, and when I didn’t say anything, added, “Good evening, Mrs. Collier.”

  She shut the door. I stared at it for a second before I walked down the steps to the grass and headed for the road.

  Fourteen

  At the yellow house behind the white picket fence, there was no response to my knock. I knocked again, and stood there for a second thinking about the possibility of wandering back behind the house in case there was a door back there I could knock on—or peer through.

  It turned out to be a good thing that I didn’t, because out of the blue, a voice behind me inquired, “What are you doing?”

  I jumped about a foot and clapped a hand to my chest. And turned on my heel to see who had scared a couple of years off my life. “Oh. Officer Enoch. What are you doing here?”

  “I live here,” Enoch said.

  “Here?” In this little yellow house that belonged to the Allens?

  He shook his head. “I saw you when I pulled into my driveway. What are you doing?”

  “Just seeing if anyone’s home,” I said.

  Enoch arched his brows skeptically.

  “Really. I just wanted to say hello. I
haven’t met many of the neighbors, and since I can’t work on the house until Detective Jarvis releases it as a crime scene, I figured I might as well get to know people.”

  He looked like he didn’t believe me, and who could blame him?

  “I knocked on Mrs. Oberlin’s door, and spoke to her for a bit, and now I’m up here. I don’t suppose there’s any word on when I might get my sister’s house back?” So I could stop doing what Enoch clearly didn’t like—walking door to door, talking to the neighbors—and get back to doing something useful.

  “You’d have to ask Paul,” Enoch said.

  “I would, but I haven’t spoken to him for a couple of days. And I’m sure he’s busy.” I glanced around, and spotted the pickup truck from the other night parked in a driveway across the street. “Is that where you live?”

  He nodded.

  Across the street from the Allens and three doors up from us. “If you knew Steve Morris from before, you must have known Natalie Allen, too.”

  His face closed. “I knew who she was. Of course.”

  There was a very distinct ‘but’ at the end of that sentence. It was also a silent ‘but,’ but it was definitely there.

  I tilted my head inquiringly, doing my best to look harmless and just like I was politely interested, not nosy.

  “She was young,” Enoch said grudgingly.

  “Nineteen.” He was around thirty, and had been younger back then. “Mrs. Oberlin told me she had a boyfriend.”

  “Rodney Clark,” Enoch nodded. “Little pissant.”

  “Did anyone look at him for Natalie’s murder?”

  “I’m sure Paul did,” Enoch said. “Like I told you before, it wasn’t my case.”

  After a second he added, “Why do you care?”

  “No particular reason.” I smiled brightly. “Detective Jarvis seems suspicious of my friend Charlotte. I thought maybe I could come up with another suspect to give him.”

  “For Natalie’s murder?”

  Of course not. “For Steve Morris’s. Maybe Rodney killed him because he thought Morris got away with Natalie’s murder. Or maybe someone in Natalie’s family did. Her parents, siblings if she had them…”

  His expression turned stern. “Now, Mrs. Collier, I don’t want you going to the Allens with nonsense like that. They lost their daughter, and had to deal with her murderer being set free last week. They don’t need you knocking on the door accusing them of killing him.”

  “I wasn’t going to accuse them,” I said. I mean, I’m not stupid. You don’t knock on someone’s door and accuse them of murder. You smile and talk your way inside, and then you chatter around the subject and observe their reactions.

  But Enoch shook his head. “Not on my watch. I want you to leave the Allens alone.”

  I sighed. “Fine. Nobody’s home anyway.”

  And then what he’d said registered, a little belatedly, and I added, “So you still think Steve Morris killed her? Even if a jury found him innocent?”

  “They acquitted him,” Enoch corrected. “And only because Mrs. Burns wasn’t there to give her testimony.”

  “I thought she was rethinking that,” I said.

  Enoch’s brows lowered. “Where did you hear that?”

  “From Mrs. Oberlin. She and Mrs. Burns were friendly. Mrs. Oberlin thought Mrs. Burns must have been mistaken. She didn’t think Steve killed Natalie.”

  “There weren’t any other suspects,” Enoch said.

  No, and that was a little strange, wasn’t it? Why focus all the attention on Morris when Natalie had had a boyfriend, and surely other people around her, too, who might have made good suspects? Why the immediate focus on Morris?

  “What about Rodney?” I suggested. “Maybe she was breaking up with him and he didn’t want her to. Or maybe it was another boy she knew, who wanted her but she wasn’t interested. Or just some random stranger who saw her walking home from work, and decided to approach her. And when she turned him down, he got upset. Or it could have been another girl. Maybe one who wanted Rodney but Natalie was in the way.”

  “No one else would have wanted Rodney,” Enoch said tightly. “Rodney was a waste of oxygen. Still is. And anyway, Natalie was raped.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything. There was no DNA on the body.” And it wouldn’t be the first time someone had tried to make a murder look like something it wasn’t.

  Hell—heck—maybe this hypothetical other girl wanted Rodney, but Rodney used Natalie as an excuse for why she couldn’t have him, and she decided to get rid of Natalie and throw suspicion on Rodney, all at the same time.

  Not that Rodney had fallen under suspicion. But he should have.

  “How do you know that?” Enoch asked.

  “What?”

  He sounded long-suffering. “That there was no DNA on the body. That wouldn’t have been in the papers.”

  No, probably not. “I read the court transcripts.”

  His brows lowered. “Where did you get those?”

  “From the county clerk’s office,” I said. “They’re public record.”

  He didn’t say anything to that, but it didn’t look like he was happy. “I don’t know that you should get involved in this, Mrs. Collier.”

  “I’m not involved,” I protested. “I’m just curious. He died in our house, after being acquitted of a murder he didn’t commit. Or maybe didn’t commit. And if he came back to clear himself...”

  “Who told you he did?”

  “Mrs. Oberlin suggested it,” I said. “Anyway, it’s natural that I should take an interest.”

  “It’s rarely healthy for a civilian to take an interest in a murder investigation,” Enoch told me darkly. “I’d hate to have to tell your husband that something happened to you, too.”

  Yeah, yeah. “What will happen to Natalie’s case now? Will the police continue to investigate, or will it be closed?” With the understanding that Morris was guilty and now that he was dead, justice had been served?

  “No idea,” Enoch said, and he was starting to sound impatient. “Take your baby and go home, Mrs. Collier. This is none of your concern.”

  He was getting agitated, so I decided not to push my luck. “Sure thing.” Hard to blame him, anyway. I wouldn’t have wanted to tell Rafe that his wife was dead, either. “I have to go make dinner in any case. It was nice to see you again, Officer Enoch.”

  I hopped off the stoop and into the grass.

  “You, too, Mrs. Collier.” Enoch followed me down the driveway and onto the sidewalk. “You and your husband have a good evening.”

  He gave me a polite nod and sauntered across the street to his own driveway. I wandered down the street to the Volvo and got Carrie situated in the back seat. When I drove slowly up the street, Enoch was in the process of unlocking his front door.

  * * *

  ”Darlin’,” Rafe said about an hour later, when he came home from work and found me in the kitchen preparing dinner, “what’ve you been up to?”

  “What do you mean?” There was that mixture of amusement and warning in his voice that made the question more than just a request for information.

  “Enoch called me,” Rafe said, and draped his leather jacket over the back of one of the stools. “He told me my wife’s playing detective and putting herself in danger.”

  I scoffed. “I wasn’t in any danger. I had a conversation with Mrs. Oberlin. The woman on Fulton Street who owns the Shih-Tzu. She saw Charlotte go into the house on Friday night, so I wanted to know what else she saw. But she’s hardly dangerous. The dog isn’t, either. And then I knocked on the Allens’ door, to see if maybe I could get an idea of whether they’d wanted to kill Morris, but they weren’t home. And then Enoch found me on the Allens doorstep and warned me off.”

  I gave the clam sauce in the pan an irritated swipe with the wooden spoon. “He actually called you?”

  “Said he was worried my wife was meddling in things that didn’t concern her,” Rafe said, his lips twitching.


  I sniffed. “If Jarvis is planning to arrest my best friend, it concerns me.”

  He smirked. “’Course it does.”

  I slanted a look at him. “All I’m doing is talking to some of the neighbors. I’m not doing anything dangerous. And I’m not meddling.” At least not so far. Or very much.

  “I ain’t worried,” Rafe said. “Just try to stay outta Enoch’s way. He ain’t used to you, the way Tammy and I are.”

  “I’m not in his way,” I protested. “It’s not even his case. What business is it of his if I’m asking questions?”

  “It’s his neighborhood,” Rafe said.

  Yes, of course it was. “So shouldn’t he want to know what’s going on?”

  “I’m sure he wants to know what’s going on. He just doesn’t want you to figure it out.”

  I tapped the spoon against the edge of the pan to get the excess sauce off, and put it down. “Enoch already thinks he knows what’s going on. He thinks Morris killed Natalie and got away with it. And he probably thinks one of the Allens killed Morris, and he doesn’t want me to figure it out.”

  Rafe nodded pleasantly.

  “Is Jarvis going to look at that possibility?”

  “That’d be up to him,” Rafe said. “It’s his investigation.”

  Sure. “Any chance he’ll look at the possibility that Morris didn’t kill Natalie? Or will the police department proceed on the assumption that Morris killed her and then was killed by someone who thought he got away with murder?”

  “At the moment,” Rafe said blandly, “looks like Jarvis is going on the assumption that Charlotte killed Morris.”

  Ugh. I picked up the wooden spoon and gave the sauce another stir. “I understand that she’s the obvious suspect. She was actually at the house that night. Her fingerprints are on the murder weapon. So it makes sense that Jarvis has to look at her.”

  Rafe nodded.

  “But like when Natalie was killed, it’s like he’s picking a suspect and focusing all his energy on proving that that person did it, instead of looking for other people who might have had motive and opportunity.”

  Rafe didn’t answer, and I added, “Morris was acquitted. Enoch still thinks he did it, but there was no physical evidence to tie him to Natalie’s murder. No DNA. No witnesses. The neighbor who heard him argue with Natalie was reconsidering. She ended up dead anyway, so she wouldn’t have been able to testify again in any case, but Mrs. Oberlin said that Mrs. Burns probably didn’t hear Morris and Natalie, but someone else. Mrs. Oberlin never thought Steve Morris was guilty.”