A Cutthroat Business (5 page)

“You’re talking about what happened to Brenda Puckett, right? She was universally disliked, bless her heart. There must have been at least a dozen people who would have liked to murder her.” Including myself, on that day I was tying ribbons. “But there’s nobody who wants to murder me, so don’t worry.” And as none of the papers had mentioned my name, mother must be unaware that I’d been involved in the discovery, and I wasn’t about to tell her.

“A mother always worries, darling,” my mother said smoothly. I suppressed an unladylike groan. I knew what was coming, and it didn’t help to realize that I had walked right into it. She continued, on cue, “Especially when her daughter is all alone. It’s been almost two years since the divorce, darling; don’t you think you should find someone else...?”

“I’m not interested in finding anyone else,” I said. “One failed marriage was enough, thank you.”

Mother thought for a moment. Her next remark might sound like a
non sequitur
, but only to someone who didn’t know her well. “You’re still coming down for the birthday party, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am.”

“I’ve invited Todd Satterfield to join us. He’s back in town, you know, and working for the district attorney’s office. You would like to see Todd, wouldn’t you, darling?”

I mentioned Todd in passing earlier, when I was talking to Detective Grimaldi. Todd’s daddy has been Sweetwater’s sheriff for as long as I can remember — he was the one who arrested Rafe Collier back then — and Todd and I have known each other our whole lives. We’d even dated for a while in high school, more to please our families than because there were any real feelings between us, but we had lost contact when Todd left for college and I went to finishing school and then married Bradley. I knew that Todd had gotten married too, but if mother was trying to fix me up with him, it was a safe bet the marriage was a thing of the past.

“Of course,” I said. “How is he? And his wife?”

Mother clicked her tongue. “He’s not married anymore, darling. That little gold-digger wife of his — I always suspected that he married her because he couldn’t have you; she looked quite a lot like you the one time I saw her, although without your breeding of course, darling — anyway, she left him. I thought, now that you’re both single again...” She let the sentence trail off suggestively. I rolled my eyes.

“It’ll be nice to see Todd again. Thanks, mother.”

Mother hung up, well contented, and I flopped back on the sofa with a groan. Now I’d have to spend all of Tuesday night swapping war stories with Todd, who had probably been very fond of his wife, despite the fact that my mother didn’t like her, and I’d have to commiserate and comfort while the entire rest of my family and Todd’s daddy shot us covert glances out of the corners of their eyes to judge how we were getting along. Marvelous.

The phone rang again, and I picked it up with a snarl. If it was my mother calling back with a suggestion for what I should wear to the party, in order to make the best possible impression on Todd, I was going to kill her. “Yes?!”

“Ms. Martin?”

Oops. “Yes, Detective,” I said smoothly, while my mind started running probabilities. “What can I do for you?” Had they arrested someone? Were they about to arrest
me
?

“I was wondering if you might do me a favor, Ms. Martin.”

“Of course,” I said blithely.

“The forensic team is finishing up at the house, but we haven’t been able to find the key to lock up. It wasn’t on the body or anywhere else in the house. I thought you might be able to help.”

I hesitated. There was probably a spare key at the office, but the idea of digging through Brenda’s belongings was unpalatable. Plus, I didn’t want to go back to
Potsdam Street
. I’ve always been a little afraid of the dark — I grew up being fed ghost stories by my older brother Dix;
true
ghost stories, the South is rife with them — and discovering a corpse hadn’t helped matters. And in addition to the fear of meeting Brenda’s angry ghost, there was the even less appealing possibility of meeting her murderer. I’ve seen enough TV shows to know that the killer often returns to the scene of the crime, and occasionally kills someone else who happens to be hanging around.

On the other hand, I couldn’t in good conscience say no.

“Sure.” My voice was a lot less happy this time, and Detective Grimaldi noticed.

“If you prefer, I can meet you somewhere and get the key from you. That way you don’t have to go back there.”

She didn’t even bother to try to hide her scorn.

“No,” I said, stung, “that won’t be necessary. I’ll take care of it.”

She reverted to her cordial manner. “Thank you, Ms. Martin. I’ll be in touch.”

She hung up before I had time to say anything else.

So that was how I came to be driving up
Potsdam Street
around 8 o’clock that same evening. I drove slowly, looking around, ignoring the drug deal taking place on the corner, but inspecting the grounds of 101
Potsdam
for lingering forensic experts. The drug dealers ignored me and everything else was quiet as I turned the car into the circular drive and crunched up to the front steps. The gravel was a mess from all the cars that had come and gone, and there were cigarette-butts and empty gum wrappers littering the front yard. I grimaced. I would have thought cops had better sense than to clutter up their own crime scene with garbage. Or maybe the droppings had come from the reporters or the general public, who had probably stopped by to gawk at the scene of the crime because of all the publicity Brenda’s case had received in the media.

I was already a little jumpy from something that had happened earlier. I had stopped by the office to look for Brenda’s spare key, and while I was there, someone had walked in, and I had ducked down behind the desk to avoid talking to them. I was planning to come into the office in the morning, to tackle everyone’s questions at the weekly sales meeting, but until then I was rather avoiding people. So when I heard a key in the back door, I switched off the desk lamp and crouched behind Brenda’s desk, holding my breath.

The steps, light and quick, went past, and into another office further up the hall. The light came on down there, and spilled out into the hallway. I could hear drawers opening and closing, the rattling of keys or maybe coins, and singing. Then the light was shut off again, and the steps came back. They halted outside Brenda’s open door. A hand snaked around the doorjamb and flicked on the overhead light. I held my breath and squeezed my eyes shut.

That brassy tenor voice couldn’t belong to anyone but Timothy Briggs, who had spent a couple of years in
New York City
, trying to get on Broadway, before returning to
Tennessee
and becoming a realtor. I could even make a pretty good guess as to what was going through his sleek, blond head as he stood there, and it wasn’t that he thought he had heard a noise and wondered if someone was hiding behind the desk. No, he was admiring the office, the second largest in the building, with a solid mahogany desk and a leather chair bearing the permanent imprint of Brenda’s broad butt, and imagining the day when it would be his.
 

I guess I should be grateful that he didn’t decide to try it on for size. Attempting to explain why I was hiding behind the desk would have been even more awkward than explaining what I was doing in Brenda’s office in the first place. Luckily, after a moment Tim turned the light off again, leaving me crouched in darkness, before he pranced on down the hall and out the door, whistling merrily. Just before the back door opened again, I heard his voice. “Hey, Larry? It’s me, Tim Briggs. Do you have a minute? There’s something I’d like to talk to you about.”

The door closed with a dull smack, but I waited until I heard the growl of his Jaguar’s engine outside before I crawled out from behind the desk.

And now I was standing outside the door of
101 Potsdam Street
, preparing to do my duty and then get out of there ASAP. There was only one problem. There was a light on in the library, spilling out into the front hall. The forensic team must have forgotten to turn it off when they left.

I suppose I could have decided to come back the next day to deal with it, but that would mean another 20 minute drive. It was easier, if more unpleasant, just to take care of it now. After all, I had a key.

A piece of yellow police tape hung across the front door, and I had to snake my hand under it to find the doorknob and insert the key in it. I took a deep breath before I pushed the door open.

It had gotten darker in the thirty minutes it had taken me to get here — I hadn’t driven hell for leather this time, so the trip had taken a few minutes longer — and the interior of the house was pitch black, except for the glow from the library, casting a yellow square on the dusty hall floor. I took a tentative step into the foyer and stopped. Silence and darkness enveloped me like a shroud. My heart started beating faster. I reached out and flicked the ancient light switch, on the wall next to the door. It turned over with an audible click, but no light came on. The bulb had probably burned out.

The next second, as if in response, the light in the library went out, too. I stopped breathing, and I had the dizzying feeling that at the end of the hallway, someone else was doing the same as I: peering in my direction just as I was peering in theirs, and blinking at the sudden absence of light.
 
 

The way I saw it, there were two things I could do. I could run right down there and investigate, like a good little girl-detective. Maybe one of the forensic experts had discovered that he was missing his petrie dish or wedding band or something, and he had come back to look for it. There might not be any danger at all.

On the other hand, it could be someone a lot worse. I could end up with my head partially severed from my body, like Brenda.

It wasn’t much of a contest. I’ve never hankered after being the next Nancy Drew, and I wanted even less to be the next Brenda Puckett. I exercised option 2: swung around on my heel and ran for safety, down the rickety steps and across the gravel, without bothering to secure the door behind me.

As soon as I was safely locked in the car and on my way down
Potsdam Street
, I dialed Tamara Grimaldi. “Detective? Sorry to bother you so late, but I was just over at the house on
Potsdam
to lock up, and someone else was there.”

“Did you see someone?” Detective Grimaldi wanted to know. I said no. “So how do you know someone was there, if you didn’t see them? Was there a car parked outside? Or nearby?”

I explained about the light in the library. “When I opened the front door, it went off. I didn’t hang around.”

“And you don’t think it was just a malfunction? That you accidentally tripped a switch?”

I contemplated, then shook my head. “It didn’t go off the same instant I flipped the hall switch, like they were on a circuit. It was more like someone heard the click, and then turned off their own light.”

Detective Grimaldi didn’t sound like she was convinced, but she agreed to dispatch a squad car. “By the way,” I added, just as she was about to hang up, “since you mentioned cars… I was wondering about Brenda’s. A navy blue Lincoln Navigator, brand new. It wasn’t in the driveway yesterday. Have you found it?”

Detective Grimaldi hesitated for a moment. “As a matter of fact we have. In a parking lot a few blocks away.”

“I see,” I said. Although I wasn’t sure I did. “Um... was it intact?”

“There didn’t seem to be anything missing. It was wiped clean of fingerprints, of course, and the only DNA we found is accounted for. Herself, her husband, her children, a co-worker or two...”

“It wasn’t because someone wanted the car, then?”

“It doesn’t appear that way.” Detective Grimaldi was remarkably forthcoming tonight. I decided I might as well push my luck and see if it held.

“Why would someone drive her car a few blocks and then leave it?”

“Afraid it might attract attention sitting in the driveway?” Grimaldi suggested. “Anyone who saw it — like you or Mr. Collier — would know that Mrs. Puckett was somewhere about.”

I nodded.
Nashville
is not the kind of place where anyone sane would walk, especially in the area surrounding
Potsdam Street
. “So what did the murderer do with his own car while he was moving Brenda’s?”

“We’re looking into the possibility that he or she may have arrived in Mrs. Puckett’s car.” Detective Grimaldi’s voice was carefully neutral.

I blinked. “You mean, Brenda picked him up? Or her? But why?”

“For protection?” Grimaldi suggested. “If she was concerned about going to meet Mr. Collier on her own?”

“And then the person she asked to come along to protect her, killed her instead?” Talk about irony...

“If she were to ask someone to ride with her, who would she ask?”

My response was automatic. “Not me. I told you we weren’t that friendly.”

“So who?”

I thought about it. “Her husband, I suppose. It
was
the weekend, and he wasn’t home yesterday morning. At least he didn’t answer the phone when I called.”