A Cutthroat Business (4 page)

“Interesting,” Detective Grimaldi said. “But if that was the last time you saw him, I guess you can’t tell me anything about his life now? Where he lives? What he does for a living?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know anything about him at all anymore. Why don’t you ask him? He’s around here somewhere, isn’t he?” I glanced around the gray concrete walls of the interrogation room.

“He’s not being forthcoming.” Detective Grimaldi made another note in her folder. “Let’s go back to what happened this morning. Mr. Collier called your office and you drove to
101 Potsdam Street
to meet him. Then what happened?”

I recapped the talk with Rafe and our trip through the house, doing my best to remember the details.

Yes, the front door had been unlocked.

No, only members of the Association of Realtors could open the lockbox; it took a special key card and an individual code. The cards are not available to the
general public, and even if a member of the public were to get their hands on one ― by bashing the agent over the head and stealing it, for instance ― said member of the public wouldn’t be able to use it without knowing the agent’s personal code. Joe Blow
coming in off the street wouldn’t have a prayer.

No, I hadn’t seen anyone else around, except for a lady at the bus stop and a few cars that had gone by down on the road.

Yes, I’d probably recognize the young man in the green car if I saw him again; I’d gotten a pretty good look at his face.

Sure, I’d be happy to look at mug shots.

No, I hadn’t noticed that the contents of Brenda’s purse had been strewn over half the library floor. But I hadn’t noticed much of anything; just Brenda’s face and the gash across her throat, and then I had fainted.

Yes, Rafe had gone back inside after dropping me on the porch.

No, I had no idea what he’d been doing; I’d had other things on my mind.

Sure, it was possible that he had gone back to look through Brenda’s purse; there was no way I could say definitely whether the contents had already been scattered or not. Then again, he didn’t know that. But it was more likely he’d just gone back to get me a wet paper towel and to make sure she was really dead.

No, I hadn’t actually meant that the way it came out...

“What was your relationship with Mrs. Puckett?”

“I didn’t have one,” I said. “We worked for the same company, that’s all.”

“So you worked together?”

I shook my head. “She had her own team of assistants to do her bidding. I’d see her at the weekly sales meeting, or pass her coming and going, and once she came into my office with a stack of fliers she wanted me to sort and package for her…”

It had involved tying every three sheets neatly together with a pretty, color-coordinated ribbon which fought my attempts to finish it in a tidy bow. As if I didn’t have plenty of my own work to do! Kick-starting a real estate career is hard even in the best of times, and in the current economic climate, with foreclosures and short-sales running rampant, with people choosing to stay in their houses rather than selling them, it’s harder. Yes, I resented Brenda for making me do her work for her, and with every knot, I had pictured pulling the string tighter around her plump neck and watching her eyes — small, piggy,
mean
eyes — bug out of her skull. I smiled.

Detective Grimaldi contemplated me for a second. “You didn’t like Mrs. Puckett much, did you?”

I opened my mouth to do the proper thing — sugarcoat the truth, i.e. lie — but I thought better of it. There was probably perjury or something involved here. “Is it that obvious?”

This wasn’t good. I was supposed to be better than this at hiding my feelings.

“Can I ask why?”

I shrugged. “She was just difficult to get along with, is all. Self-centered. Bossy. Demanding. I wouldn’t have killed her, though. You don’t kill somebody just because they’re common and loud and make more money than you do.”

“Murder has been committed for less,” Detective Grimaldi said.

“Maybe, but not by me.”

Grimaldi didn’t answer. “Did you know she was going to be at
101 Potsdam Street
this morning?” she asked after a moment’s pause.

I shook my head. “She didn’t tell me what she was doing. Except for when she was rubbing something in. Like yesterday, when she had five closings and made sure we all knew it. She might have told Clarice, her assistant.”

“Would Clarice have written it down somewhere, if she did?”

“There’s an appointment book, I think. You’d have to ask her.
I’m
not on the Brenda Puckett Team, you see.”

“I’ll do that.” Detective Grimaldi made a note in her folder. She didn’t say anything else, and after a few moments, I broke the silence.

“So is that it? Can I go?”

“Unless there’s something you’d like to add.”

I shook my head.

“Take my card, in case you remember something you haven’t told us.” She handed it across the table to me. I picked it up and glanced at it.

“Thank you. Um... when will the funeral be?”

“There’ll be an autopsy,” Tamara Grimaldi said, as I got to my feet. “The next of kin will be notified when it is completed and the body can be released. Would you happen to know who Mrs. Puckett’s next of kin is?”

“She’s married,” I said, my mind still on the autopsy. “His name is Steven. And there are a couple of kids. Teenagers. I guess I should call and ask if there’s anything I can do...”

“Give it some time,” Detective Grimaldi said firmly. “Go home and take care of yourself first. Officer Truman will drive you back to your car. And don’t leave town in the next week or two.”

I was almost to the door, walking in a daze, but this last statement made me stop and turn around. “Excuse me?”

She looked up from the folder. “Don’t go anywhere. In case we need to talk to you again.”

“But it’s my mother’s birthday on Tuesday. She’ll have a fit if I’m not there!”

Detective Grimaldi thought for a second. “Sweetwater?” she said. I nodded. “All right. You may go to your mother’s birthday party. Just don’t go anywhere we can’t get hold of you.”

I promised I wouldn’t, and opened the door. Young Officer Truman escorted me to the parking lot and drove me back to
Potsdam Street
, looking less green and more like himself again.

I, on the other hand, must have looked about as shaky as I felt, because he offered to follow me home, to make sure I didn’t get into an accident on the way. He was very sweet and solicitous, as if I were his aged, white-haired grandmother, and I wanted to swat him upside the head and tell him to save it for someone who’d appreciate it, but of course I’m far too well brought-up to do something like that.

My car was parked where I left it, and the house and grounds were swarming with cops, both uniformed and plain-clothed, just like Officer Spicer had said. None of them paid any attention to me. Rafe’s black Harley-Davidson was still there at the foot of the steps when I drove slowly down the graveled drive and turned right onto
Potsdam
.

I spent what was left of Saturday in my apartment, curled up on the sofa staring miserably at the TV. Usually my cozy one-bedroom rental, with its view of East Main Street through the glass doors of the patio and the comfortable furniture I had gathered from consignment stores and estate sales over the past two years, made me feel safe and relaxed. Not so today. After what had happened, I jumped every time I heard a noise in the hallway, and the running of water in the pipes made me break into a cold sweat. I went to bed before nine, just because I couldn’t stand being awake any longer.

Not surprisingly, I had bad dreams. The corridors and rooms at 101
Potsdam
seemed to go on forever, and I ran from room to room calling Brenda’s name, ever more hysterically, and all the time I knew that someone else was in the house with me, trying to find me the way I was trying to find Brenda, but a lot more silently. The dream ended in the library, with Brenda lying on the floor in front of the fireplace. But unlike that morning, she wasn’t dead yet. Her eyes were fastened on my face and she was trying to speak, but couldn’t because her throat was slit from ear to ear. Blood was bubbling out of the wound and dripping onto the dusty floor. The part of me that was aware I was dreaming, wished I would faint again, so I wouldn’t have to look at it. And then I saw her eyes shift, and felt a presence loom up behind me, and I swung around on my heel, just as the knife came up, and the last thing I saw was Rafe Collier’s face; dark eyes narrowed in concentration as he prepared to cut my throat.

I woke up with a scream, so wrapped around with nightgown and sheets that I resembled a mummy. It was five o’clock in the morning, and just beginning to turn light outside. I put away any thoughts of going back to sleep — I’d rather have bags under my eyes than another such nightmare — and swung my feet over the edge of the bed. And watched some more TV. And managed to choke down a piece of toast and a couple of sips of coffee.

By mid-afternoon I was starting to feel a little more human again. I even went outside for a walk, down to the corner market to pick up the Sunday paper. Mostly I wanted to know whether any of the papers had mentioned my name, but I admit that I was a little curious, too.

The murder was front page news, just as it had been the lead story on all the news shows the night before. TOP REALTOR MURDERED IN EMPTY HOUSE!
was the headline in the
Nashville Banner
, with a sidebar on the crime statistics in the neighborhood around
Potsdam Street
. (The
Banner
is a conservative, factual kind of paper.) The stats were staggering. Home invasions, muggings, drive-by shootings, gang violence... The reporter suggested that Brenda’s death could have been the result of a robbery gone wrong, and called for the mayor to do something about the criminal underclass preying on upstanding citizens.

REAL ESTATE QUEEN ASSASSINATED! screamed the headline in the
Tennessean
. (The
 
Tennessean
is less conservative and more widely read than the
Banner
.) Not to be outdone, the
Tennessean
reporter suggested, none too delicately, that maybe Brenda had been the victim of a sexual crime. Rapes, too, were prevalent in the
Potsdam Street
area, and the ripe Mrs. Puckett — his word, not
 
mine — might have caught someone’s eye. The article was accompanied by an archive photo of Her Highness busting out of a strapless gown, and ripe didn’t even begin to cover it.

The last paper was the
City Paper
, which had sent a photographer with a telephoto lens to
Potsdam Street
to take pictures of the police cars and medical vans. Rafe’s black motorcycle had made it into one of the shots, but my Volvo had escaped that honor. Maybe I had left before the photographer got there. It made me wonder how long the police had kept Rafe downtown, and why they had kept him longer than me.

The
City Paper
reporter had had the brilliant idea to interview some of the neighbors, and between them, they managed to give a pretty good description of both Rafe and myself. I hadn’t noticed anyone hanging out of any windows watching us, but someone must have, because the descriptions were spot-on. ‘A classy-looking blonde in a tight skirt’ was how they described me, while one witness called Rafe ‘tall and dangerous-looking,’ and added, “I wouldn’t have been surprised if
he’d
had something to do with it.”

The phone rang just as I was contemplating this last statement, and I steeled myself before picking it up, certain it would be the grieving husband. Steven Puckett hadn’t answered the phone when I called yesterday, and I wasn’t surprised; if the light of my life had been snuffed out — and Steven might well have considered Brenda the light of his life, difficult as that was for the rest of us to fathom — I wouldn’t want to talk to all the well-wishers, mourners, and just plain nosy-parkers, either.

“Hello,
Savannah
,” a smooth voice said in response to my greeting. I managed to bite back a heartfelt “Oh,
God!
”, but only just.

“Hi, mother,“ I said instead, politely, “What can I do for you?”

“How are you, darling?”

“I’m fine,” I said, not entirely truthfully.

“You sound tired, darling. You’re taking care of yourself, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am,” I said. “I eat right, I get enough sleep, I give my hair a hundred strokes with a brush every night...”

“And you’re being careful, aren’t you, darling?”

“Of course I am,” I said.

Mother hesitated. “It’s just that one hears such stories...”

I smothered a sigh. I should have known this was coming. Brenda’s death would be news all over the state, and quite possibly to the ends of the earth. Wasn’t it just too ironic for words? All the notoriety she could possibly desire, and she was dead and couldn’t take advantage of it!