A Cutthroat Business (9 page)

“So what were you doin’ there, then? If you don’t mind my askin’?”

I blushed. “I wanted to find out about LaDonna. And I didn’t want to ask Dix or Jonathan, because I didn’t want my mother to find out. She’d probably ground me.”

Bob Satterfield smiled. “Helluva woman, your mother.”

I shrugged, pouting. Easy for him to say; he wasn’t the one who’d get the sharp end of her tongue if she thought I was sniffing around Rafe Collier.

“Why did you want to find out about LaDonna?” Todd wanted to know. I hesitated. On the one hand, I had no real reason to think Rafe had done anything to his mother, any more than I had reason to think he had done anything to Brenda Puckett. Not to mention that I suspected that he could make my life plenty difficult if I caused trouble for him. But on the other hand, it was quite a coincidence that he should be involved, however peripherally, with two possible homicides in the span of a couple of weeks.

In the end I said blandly, “Rafe was with me when I found Brenda Puckett on Saturday morning. If we hadn’t turned up, it could have been a week before anyone found her, too.”

The Satterfields exchanged a look. “That’s right interesting,” mused Bob, “innit?”

“Is it?”

“How corpses keep followin’ the boy around.”

Rafe was hardly a boy anymore, but I refrained from saying so. Something must have shown on my face, though, because Todd glanced at me, then back at his dad.

“Maybe you’d better call for some backup if you’re going out there to talk to him. Or better yet, I can come with you.”

“Don’t mind if you do,” Bob said. Todd turned to me. He didn’t exactly click his heels together and bow over my hand, but the implication was there.

“Sorry to have to leave so soon,
Savannah
. It was nice seeing you again.”

“Likewise,” I answered politely. “Any time you’re in
Nashville
, give me a call, and we’ll have that dinner.”

“I’ll hold you to that.” He nodded and followed his father toward the door. Bob paused beside my mother just long enough to say goodbye, then moved on. Todd smiled apologetically and did the same. Mother turned and sent me a look that could have pinned my ears to the wall.
I delivered him right into your hands,
the look said,
what did you do to make him leave?
I tried to telegraph that I hadn’t done anything at all, but I couldn’t even make myself believe it.

The party wound down around midnight, since the next day was a workday. Mother hires outside help to handle things like clean-up and housework, so we all just left the mess and went to bed. The next morning, after a leisurely bath and breakfast, and a dress-down by mother (the details of which I will spare you), I got in the Volvo and headed back to
Nashville
.

Brenda’s memorial service was scheduled for 2 o’clock, so all I had time to do, was drive home, put my fancy party-dress away in the closet and throw the rest of my clothes into the hamper, and change into mourning attire.
Walker
had made it very clear that he expected us to be on time, dressed appropriately, and I wasn’t about to let him down.

Plus, I love black. It makes me look ten pounds thinner and goes great with my pale skin and blonde hair. And it’s so easy
to accessorize.
Everything
goes well with black. All I had to do was pull my favorite little black dress over my head, hook a pair of pearl earrings through my lobes, step into black sling-backs, and I was ready to go. Not even mother would have found fault with my appearance.

The viewing was going to take place at the Phillips-Robinson Funeral Home in
Inglewood
, which is only a few minutes from my apartment, and I got there with time to spare. I parked the car in the adjacent lot and headed for the entrance to the big, white building, ignoring the humming of the TV-cameras a discreet distance away. I should have realized that Brenda’s funeral would be attended by the media. Someone tried to get me to talk — maybe they suspected I was the same blonde as had discovered the body — but I kept my head down and kept walking. Timothy Briggs, arriving behind me, was not so restrained. He showed all his teeth in a blinding smile and agreed to speak on camera without batting an eye. “Sure. Always happy to help.”

“Yeah,” I muttered, “yourself.” And the worst thing was, Tim would probably get lots of business because of it. After his boyish face and sappy sentimentality had hit the airwaves, people all over
Nashville
would remember him when it came time to sell their houses. If I hadn’t been so well brought-up, I might have reconsidered and said a few words myself.

“...a great loss to the profession,” Tim was saying, with a straight face, “and my very special friend. I’ll miss her.” He smiled bravely and wiped away an imaginary tear. The cameras zoomed in. I grimaced.

Misters Phillips and Robinson had opened every room in the place for Brenda’s viewing, and every nook and cranny was filled with mourners. Or people who had come make sure she was really dead, more likely. Nobody seemed too broken up, not even Brenda’s own family. Steven was somberly dressed in a brown suit that did nothing for his rather horsey face. Their daughter Alexandra, who was sixteen, wore a slinky black dress that would have been better suited for a cocktail party and someone at least ten years older, while Austin, the son, hadn’t even been made to put on a tie, but wore a white shirt, unbuttoned at the neck, hanging over his baggy, black pants all the way to mid-thigh. He kept his hands in his pockets, gazing furtively at the world through shaggy bangs, like a shy woodland creature peering through the brush, while Alexandra’s long hair was swept up in a complicated do that also would have looked more at home after dark and on someone considerably more sophisticated. Neither of them looked particularly grief-stricken. Alexandra looked bored,
Austin
looked fidgety, and Steven looked around. While I stood there in the door and watched, he caught the eye of a plump and pretty fortyish blonde in a blue dress, who walked over and put her hand on his arm. He looked down at her and smiled, and if he was grieving for Brenda, it wasn’t evident at that moment.

“For shame,” Timothy Briggs’s saccharine voice murmured in my ear, maliciously. “Poor Brenda’s hardly even cold yet, and just look at her husband.”

I did. There was an intimacy in the way Steven and the blonde were looking at each other, intimacy that hadn’t sprung up in the past four days. Alexandra and Austin seemed awfully comfortable with her, too. “Who is she?” I asked.

I was hoping he’d say that the woman was Brenda’s sister or something, but of course he didn’t. “Neighbor-lady. Lost her husband last year. Set her cap for Steven shortly afterwards.”

“How long have they... um...?” I flapped my hand.

Tim grinned. “Oh, months!”

I narrowed my eyes. “How do you know? Is it true? And if it is, did Brenda know?”

He giggled. “Sure she did. How do you think I know? She’s been going on about it forever. You know what she was like. Hated to lose, hated to share. She threatened to take the kids and sue him for everything he had if he didn’t break it off.”

“But obviously he didn’t,” I said, looking across the room at Steven and his ladylove. Tim lifted his slim shoulders in an elegant shrug.

“Who knows? He could have, then. But now it doesn’t matter, does it?”

He winked at me and sauntered into the room. A moment later he was swallowed up by the well-dressed crowd. I stayed where I was, pondering what he had just revealed.

Brenda had been — not to put too fine a point on it — a shrew. She had busted her butt for years to get to where she was, and although she had succeeded beyond most people’s wildest dreams, it didn’t surprise me that her family had paid the price. Nor was it surprising that Steven had sought solace elsewhere. Brenda had been approximately as cuddly as a barracuda, and if I’d been married to her, I’d have had an affair, too. However, if she truly had kicked up a huge fuss — which I could totally see her do — Steven had had an excellent reason for wanting to get rid of her. She had probably headed to
Potsdam Street
straight from home on Saturday morning. What was to have kept him from solicitously offering to drive her there and then, when they arrived, slitting her throat...?

“Penny for your thoughts,” a voice next to me said. I turned and looked into the angular face of Detective Tamara Grimaldi. She was dressed for the occasion in a severe, black business suit whose jacket probably covered the butt of the gun she probably carried.

“I thought it was only on TV that murderers attended their victims’ funerals,” I answered, obliquely. Her mouth quirked.

“It’s not unheard of. Most murders are committed by people close to the victim. But more to the point,
I
always attend my victims’ funerals. You never know who you might see.” She looked around the room and added, “Big crowd.”

I nodded. “Anyone who’s anyone in real estate is here. That black guy over there is the head of the real estate commission. The two women he’s talking with are board members. The guy with the beard is the president of the local real estate association. The extremely good-looking man in the gray suit is my boss, Walker Lamont. Brenda’s boss, too. And that’s Clarice Webb he’s talking to. They look upset, don’t they? I hope nothing’s wrong. Nothing more, I mean.”

“I see her husband’s found a friend.” Detective Grimaldi’s voice was carefully neutral.
 

“A neighbor,” I said, “from what I understand.”

“Looks friendly.”

It did. They were smiling and chatting as if nothing was wrong and his wife wasn’t laid out a few feet away.

I had avoided looking at Brenda so far, not being a fan of corpses in general and this one in particular. And Steven had, God knows why, arranged for an open casket. Although I admit it could have been worse. Brenda was dressed in her favorite black, with her plump hands folded across her plump stomach, and a diamond the size of a lima bean on her finger. The undertaker had had the good sense to insist on a high necked blouse, and nothing below the second chin was visible. I breathed a sigh of relief, although I hadn’t really expected anything else. A gaping throat wound isn’t something a loving — or even cheating — husband would want to expose to the world.
 

“Isn’t that Mr. Collier?” Detective Grimaldi asked. I came out of my reverie at the sound of her voice.

“Where?”

“Far wall, half hidden behind the woman in the burgundy dress.”

I stretched my neck as far as it would go. “That’s Heidi Hoppenfeldt, Brenda’s assistant. I guess her mother never told her she shouldn’t wear red to a funeral. And yes, I believe that’s Rafe Collier she’s rubbing herself against.”

Heidi is my age and unattached, and what we, in our younger days, used to call boy-crazy.

“I think I’ll go have a chat with him. Unless you’d like to rescue him yourself?”

Detective Grimaldi arched her brows questioningly.

I shook my head. “I doubt he needs rescuing. But if you want to try, be my guest.”

“In that case I’ll see you later.” Detective Grimaldi gave me a cordial nod and wandered off. I watched out of the corner of my eye as she deftly detached Rafe from Heidi’s breathless attentions and walked off with him. Heidi pouted.

The service itself got underway shortly, and the speeches were alternately bearable and agonizing. Walker was dignified and the real estate commissioner and association president more so, while Steven was composed, at least until he started talking about his and Brenda’s children, and then a single tear rolled down his cheek and trembled on his chin for a moment before plunging to its doom on the expanse of his double breasted suit. And Clarice Webb was a blubbering mess who had to be escorted off the podium by Tim, who patted her hand solicitously while grinning offensively at the rest of us. Heidi was apparently not considered important enough to be allowed to speak.

I left the service as soon as I decently could, without stopping to talk to anyone, and high-tailed it across the parking lot barely ahead of the TV cameras. I was just about to get into my car when someone materialized next to me. I jumped backwards like a flea on a hot griddle, with a little shriek.

“Goddammit!” I added, after I had caught my breath, “can’t you knock or something? You’re scaring a year off my life every time you do that.”

Rafael Collier smirked. His eyes were covered by mirrored sunglasses, and he didn’t say anything, just stood there looking at me. At least I assumed he was looking at me; it was hard to be sure when all I could see was my own reflection.

“Would you mind taking the glasses off?” I asked peevishly. “I like seeing people’s eyes when I speak to them. They’re the mirrors of the soul and all that.”

“In that case my soul’s black as sin,” Rafe said wryly. He removed the glasses. I gasped.

He wasn’t kidding. The skin around his left eye was puffy and tight, and a lovely purple-black. I use that color (sparingly) for evening eye-shadow sometimes. It didn’t look as good on him as I fancy it does on me. I grimaced. “Put them back on, please. It hurts to look at you. What happened?”

“Had a disagreement with someone,” Rafe said. When the dark glasses were in place, he looked back at me, but now I could no longer see his expression. I narrowed my own eyes.