A Cutthroat Business (16 page)

“Right,” I said, hiding a smile.

“I just came to pick something up.” She turned on her heel and made for her own desk, in the adjoining room. I sauntered to the door and watched as she unlocked a desk drawer and pulled out a plain manila envelope and a piece of paper.

The key went into her pocket, and then she handed me the piece of paper and smirked. “Are you ready to go,
Savannah
? Have everything you need?”

I glanced down at the form in my hand. It was a Buyer Representation Agreement.

“Yes, thank you.” I snagged my handbag from the corner of Brenda’s desk. We walked out together, and Clarice set the alarm and locked the door behind us quite ostentatiously, as if to ensure that I couldn’t get back inside. It didn’t bother me, since I had no plans to go back.

“Have a nice night,
Savannah
.” She smiled, obviously pleased with having ruined what was left of my evening, before trotting briskly across the street toward the parking lot. The envelope bobbed in her hand, and the one-and-a-half inch heels on her sensible shoes went click-click against the pavement. Her late-model, white Cadillac was parked two spaces over from my Volvo, but she didn’t suggest that we walk together. I stayed where I was until she had gotten into her car and pulled out into traffic, and then I crossed the street and got into my own car. My thoughts were rattling around in my head like peas in a tin can the whole way home.

It was still reasonably early by the time I got to the apartment, so I kicked my shoes off, picked up the phone, and called Sweetwater. “Hiya, Dix. This is your sister
Savannah
.”

“What’s this I hear about you and that Collier-guy?” my brother answered, without so much as a how-do first.

“Yes, it’s nice to talk to you, too,” I said, pulling a half-eaten half gallon of ice cream out of the freezer. Chocolate Mocha Fudge. Yum. “I don’t know. What is it you’ve heard about me and the Collier-guy? And from whom?”

“Oh, come on, sis!”

“No, I mean it. How am I supposed to prove or disprove anything, if I don’t know what you’ve heard?” I rooted around in the silverware drawer for a spoon, and finally managed to find one. Stainless steel, part of a set I’d bought for $10.99 at Target two years ago, after having left all my wedding silver for Bradley and the new Mrs. Ferguson.

This reasoned argument resonated with my legal eagle brother, who admitted, “I had lunch with Todd Satterfield today, and he told me you’ve been seeing Collier.”

“Todd said that? What’s wrong with him?” I curled up on the couch, spooning ice cream straight out of the cardboard container and into my mouth. All my fancy china was back at the Fergusons’ townhouse, too. Including my crystal ice cream bowls. “I haven’t been seeing Rafe. That is, I’ve
seen
him, but I haven’t been seeing him. Not as in
seeing
, seeing.”

“You’ll never be a lawyer if you can’t express yourself better than that,” Dix said.

“I don’t want to be a lawyer,” I retorted. “I’m the black sheep, remember? The only Martin-child who didn’t get a law degree.”

“You could have had a law degree if you wanted. You dropped out and married that jerk
Ferguson
instead.”

“That’s exactly my point,” I answered. “I didn’t want a law degree. That’s why I dropped out to marry that jerk
Ferguson
.”

“At least you admit it,” Dix said. “There was a time...”

“He didn’t seem like a jerk when I first met him. Now I know better. And real estate isn’t that different from lawyering. I still deal with privilege and fiduciary responsibility and legal signatures and things like that. My real estate classes were pretty much the same as Property Law 101 back in college. Except now I get to go look at houses every day, and you know how I’ve always enjoyed that.”

I was one of those little girls who always opened doors when I visited my friends’ houses, to see where they went. And growing up in an antebellum mansion in the middle of a town full of Victorians and foursquares and craftsman bungalows hadn’t hurt, either.

“But to get back to the point,” I continued, “the
real
point, which is that I have not been seeing Rafael Collier. I have no idea why Todd would tell you that I have.”

“He’s probably worried about you,” Dix said. “Like the rest of us when we heard. Collier’s bad news. Stay away from him.”

“Believe me,” I answered sincerely, “that’s exactly what I plan to do. I just don’t understand how anyone who knows me could think that I’d get involved with someone like him.” I dug a chunk of fudge out of the ice cream container and popped it in my mouth.

“Well, you
are
the black sheep of the family.”

“There’s a big difference between dropping out of law-school and becoming romantically involved with a criminal,” I said, around the fudge.

Dix drew breath. “So you admit he’s a criminal?”

“Enough of the cross-examination, OK? I have no idea what he is or isn’t. I’ve tried to find out, but I can’t. And that leads me to the reason why I called you.”

“You want me to look into Collier?”

I blew out an exasperated sigh. “No, Dix. I don’t. This has nothing to do with Rafael Collier. Or only indirectly. You know a little bit about tracking down people, right? Heirs and such?”

“A little,” Dix said cautiously, and went on to expound on what he only knew a little about. I cut him off after a couple of minutes.

“That’s great information, but what I really want to know is how to go about finding someone, if I’ve got nothing to go on but a name and a location where they lived at one point.”

Dix thought for a moment. “I’m not sure you could, without more. Who are we talking about?”

“The son of a woman named Tondalia Jenkins.” I told him about the house on
Potsdam Street
. “It’s just not right, Dix. I haven’t figured out how yet, but Brenda Puckett must have taken advantage of that poor old woman somehow, and now she’s stuck in a nursing home that would turn your stomach if you could see it, let alone smell it, and she’s got Rafe Collier breathing down her neck...”

“He probably thinks she’s got something worth stealing,” Dix said.

“If so, he must be crazy. She’s clearly as poor as a church mouse, bless her heart. The only thing of value she owns, is the house, and even that isn’t worth much in its present condition. Nowhere near as much as Brenda listed it for. Or if it is, it’s only because of the land. But that’s beside the point. I’d just like to find out if her son is still around and can help her. There’s nothing I can do about it personally; I’m not a family member, and it would probably be a conflict of interest or something anyway, but she ought to have someone looking out for her.”

“Fine,” Dix said, “I’ll see if I can get a line on him. I’ve done this kind of thing before. But just to be safe, I think I’ll check out Collier, too. I’ll get back to you tomorrow.”

I told him I appreciated it, and we both hung up.
 

The first thing I did the next morning, after the usual morning ritual of make-up and hair, coffee and cereal, was to pull out the Yellow Pages and look up
Storage — Household & Commercial
. As I should have expected, there was page after page of storage companies, from A-1 Self Storage to U-Stor-It, and without some idea what I was looking for, there was no way I could find out which of them Brenda had used. I toyed with the idea of calling them all, to ask if Brenda Puckett was a customer, but there were too many. It would take forever, and they probably wouldn’t tell me anyway. There had to be a simpler solution.

My father always used to say that the easiest way to get something you want, is to ask for it. I decided that his advice made sense, and headed for the office. Someone there would be able to tell me where Brenda kept her stuff. But when I walked in, with a cover story all developed and rehearsed, I was brought up short just inside the door by loud wailing and lamentations.
Brittany
looked up from the reception desk with red eyes and quivering lips. When she saw that I wasn’t anyone important, like a potential client, she looked down again without a word.

“Good grief,” I said, “what’s the matter?”

She didn’t answer, just sniffed and pointed down the hall. I headed in that direction. And I’ll admit that I was, rather self-centeredly, wondering if this had something to do with my late-night search of Brenda’s office and Clarice’s threat to report me to
Walker
. Was I about to get fired? It seemed incredible that
Brittany
would expend this much effort and this many tears on my own humble person, but I admit it, the thought crossed my mind.

The loud wailing came from Clarice’s and Heidi’s shared office, and when I arrived at the door, I saw that it issued from Heidi, who was sitting behind her desk, clutching a sodden tissue and having her hand patted by Walker. Tim was perched on the edge of Clarice’s desk a few feet away, watching the proceedings. His features were unusually solemn, although he couldn’t quite hide the gleam at the bottom of his bright, baby-blue eyes.

“What on earth is going on?” I said. All three of them turned to me, and
Walker
opened his mouth. Heidi’s wailing drowned out anything he attempted to say.

“Oh,
Savannah
! It’s so awful!” She subsided into blubbery hiccups.

“What’s awful?” I looked from Tim to
Walker
. Tim gave a tiny, almost imperceptible, one-shouldered shrug, as if to say he was sure
he
didn’t know.
Walker
gave Heidi’s hand a final pat before he gave it back to her, and turned to me.

“I’m afraid I have some bad news,
Savannah
.”

Oh, God. “Before you say anything else,” I said, “let me explain. I wasn’t really doing anything wrong. I just wanted to look at the file for
101 Potsdam Street
, and I wasn’t sure Clarice would let me. That’s the only reason I was here last night.”

I had to raise my voice to get the last sentence out, because Heidi had started howling again.
Walker
raised his own voice. “You were here last night?”

I nodded. “Clarice said she was going to tell you. Isn’t that what this is about?”

Tim giggled, and
Walker
sent him a quelling look. “I’m afraid not. I have bigger concerns right now than you looking at Brenda’s files without permission. Although I wish you hadn’t. Why didn’t you come to me first?”

“I didn’t want to bother you,” I said. “With everything else that’s going on, I figured you had enough to worry about. And I didn’t think anyone would ever know, but then Clarice came in and caught me, and...”

An ear-splitting howl from Heidi cut me off in mid-sentence. I turned to her. “Do you mind? Whatever it is, it can’t possibly justify this much noise.”

“Clarice is dead,” Tim said. I turned to stare at him, and then at
Walker
, speechlessly.
Walker
nodded.

“But I saw her last night,” I protested. “She was fine.” More than fine, in fact. Excited and eager, like a kid on Christmas Eve; certain in the knowledge that good things were coming her way. “What happened?” A car accident on her way home, maybe?

“We don’t really know,”
Walker
said, with a glance at Heidi. “I don’t know if you know this,
Savannah
, but in all the years she’s worked for Brenda, Clarice has never once been absent without prior notice. When she wasn’t here by nine this morning, and didn’t call to say she’d be late, I had
Brittany
call her. I was...” He hesitated briefly, then seemed to reach a decision. “I have been concerned about her mental state. You two weren’t close, so you may not have noticed, but Brenda’s death has been hard on Clarice.”

To be quite honest, I hadn’t noticed. Clarice had been upset, naturally, but I didn’t think her behavior had been anything out of the ordinary. A murder in the office is enough to make anybody jittery, and Clarice had been closer to Brenda than anyone else. Still, I hadn’t seen any behavior that had led me to worry about her mental state. Then again, as
Walker
said, we hadn’t been close.

“When she didn’t answer,” he continued, “I drove over to her house to make sure she was all right.”

“So you’re the one who found her?”

Walker
nodded. “I called the police, and they sent a detective out. The same one who is handling Brenda’s case.”

“So was Clarice murdered, too?” Tamara Grimaldi was a homicide detective, so it seemed like a reasonable question. Heidi squealed like I had stuck a knife in her. Tim sent her a dirty look.

“I don’t think we can assume that,”
Walker
said. “It seems to me that the police would do it this way simply because there’s a connection between Clarice and Brenda. It doesn’t necessarily follow that they think both women were murdered.”