Adverse Possession Page 15

  Rafe, bless him, can always be trusted to think on his feet. He gave her a smile. “Hi, Kylie. I’m sorry this happened to you.”

  Kylie moved her attention back to me. I think she approved.

  She also looked exhausted, so I let go of her hand. “We just wanted to stop by and see how you were doing. You’d probably like to rest some more.”

  She managed a nod. The tip of her tongue came out to moisten her lisp. “Aislynn,” she whispered again.

  “I’m sure she’ll be here soon. It’s a long drive from Kentucky.”

  Kylie looked frustrated.

  “Take a nap,” Dr. Ramsey told her, patting her hand on top of the covers. “By the time you wake up again, I’m sure she’ll be here. And you might remember more about what happened after some more rest.”

  Kylie looked like she wanted to argue, but she lacked the strength. So she just closed her eyes and relaxed back into the pillows.

  Dr. Ramsey headed for the door, waving us ahead of him. Outside in the hallway, he turned to face us. “That went better than I expected.”

  Really? “She doesn’t remember anything.”

  “I didn’t think she would,” Dr. Ramsey said, and went into a long explanation about how the brain and memory are affected by trauma. “She might remember something later, or she might never remember exactly what happened.”

  “That’d be a shame,” Rafe remarked, and I nodded.

  “As of right now, the police have no idea who attacked her. It would be great if she could identify someone. Or at least give a description, if she didn’t know the guy. Or woman.”

  “Only time will tell,” Dr. Ramsey said philosophically, which wasn’t a whole lot of help. I mean, I liked the guy, but he wasn’t telling me what I wanted to know at the moment.

  “Are you going to call the police and tell them she’s awake?”

  “I figure they’ll show up here sooner or later,” the doctor said. “Until then, my first responsibility is to my patient. And she needs to rest.”

  So the answer was no. I glanced at Rafe, who gave me an almost imperceptible nod. He’d call Mendoza. Why, I didn’t know, since Kylie didn’t seem to know anything, but the police needed to know that she was awake and mostly aware.

  “We might stop by again later on,” I told Dr. Ramsey, who informed me that I was on the approved visitor list and could come by anytime I wanted. “If I’m not here, just let the duty nurse know you’re here to see Ms. Mitchell.”

  I nodded. “Any idea how long you’re planning to keep her?”

  “At least another day,” Dr. Ramsey said firmly. “I’ll be here in the morning tomorrow. I’ll check on her then, and see how she’s doing. If she’s better, and has someone at home who can take care of her, she might be able to go home tomorrow afternoon. If not, we’ll repeat the process on Tuesday.”

  She could come stay with us for a few days, I supposed, if nothing better came along. We had plenty of room. Although Kylie would probably prefer to be home in her own bed. Hopefully Aislynn would be back from Kentucky soon, and would take care of it.

  We said goodbye to Dr. Ramsey and made our escape. I waited until we were in the elevator before I leaned into Rafe and told him, “Thanks for backing me up in there.”

  He put his arm around my shoulders. “You told him you’re Kylie’s sister?”

  “Back in December, when she had her car accident. They wouldn’t tell Aislynn anything about what had happened. Two gay girls, you know how it is. Or maybe you don’t. They can’t be each other’s legal next of kin. Or at least they couldn’t back then. Maybe they can now.”

  Rafe nodded.

  “But Kylie and I look enough alike to be related, so I told them I was her sister. It wasn’t like they could prove otherwise. And she looks more like me than Catherine does.”

  My sister Catherine takes after my father’s family. The Martins tend to be short and dark. Dix and I take after Mother’s family, the Georgia Calverts. We’re taller and blond. Like Kylie.

  Rafe nodded. “You’re sure this didn’t have nothing to do with you, right?”

  “This?” I peered up at him. “You mean, Kylie being hit over the head and ending up in the hospital? I don’t see how it could. She was at home. Her home, not mine. There’s no way anyone would expect me to be there.”

  Rafe nodded, but still looked worried. The elevator lurched to a stop at the garage level, and the doors slid open. We stepped out, right into the path of a woman with messy brown hair and a worried look, dressed in dumpy jeans and a frumpy T-shirt. It took me a second—all right, more than a second—to recognize the put-together business woman I’d seen two days ago. The elevator doors were closing when I swung on my heel and stuck my arm into the narrowing crack.

  “Lauren!”

  “Shit,” Rafe muttered, probably at the sight of my arm in danger of being crushed by the sliding elevator doors.

  The woman inside blinked. “Do I know you?”

  Not yet, but that was about to change. I reached in and yanked her out of the elevator.

  “Hey!” she protested.

  “Sorry,” I said, “but you’re Lauren, right? I saw you on Friday. You were going out to lunch with Kylie.”

  She folded her arms across her chest. “So?”

  “So you’re going up to see her, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” Lauren said, the single syllable laced with a heavy dose of ‘what’s it to you?’

  “We just came from there,” I said, “and we have a couple of questions.”

  She sneered. “Why should I answer questions for you?”

  I looked at Rafe. He rolled his eyes, but pulled his TBI identification out of his pocket and showed it to her. She sneered at it, too. “What’s the TBI got to do with this?”

  “Not much,” Rafe told her, “but my wife is a friend of Kylie’s. And I do have the power to arrest you, so it would probably be best if you’d just tell her what she wants to know.”

  “You don’t worry me,” Lauren said, but she didn’t walk away. Behind her, the elevator doors shut and the car started moving as someone else summoned it from another floor. “Well? What do you want to know?”

  It’s hard to think when someone’s that pushy.

  “I guess first of all what you’re doing here.”

  “My friend was attacked,” Lauren said. “Why wouldn’t I be here?”

  “Did the police contact you?”

  She nodded.

  “I guess they asked you about Friday night?”

  “I didn’t see Kylie Friday night,” Lauren said. “I had a date.”

  “So when Kylie came to your place, you weren’t home?”

  “If she came to my place,” Lauren said. “You don’t know that she did. I don’t, either. I wasn’t there.”

  Point taken, even if she sounded a touch defensive about it.

  “When did you find out what had happened?”

  “The police called me in the middle of the day yesterday. I would have been here then, but the detective I spoke to said she’d be unconscious until this morning, so I should wait.”

  “And you did?”

  She shrugged. “No sense in sitting beside her bed if she’s out cold.”

  I guess not, although if it had been Rafe, I would have been here. Even if only to watch him breathe. They’d have had to throw me out when it was time to close up for the night.

  I glanced up at him and saw that his eyes were amused. He knew what I was thinking.

  I turned back to Lauren. “I don’t suppose you have any idea who knocked her out? I know you didn’t speak to her on Friday night,” or so she claimed, “but you did have lunch together. Did she mentioned anything that was going on?”

  “Just about the letters,” Lauren said, and sneered again when I looked surprised. “We were friends. We talked about things.”

  “You used to be more than friends, didn’t you? Until she met Aislynn?”

  “We dated,” Lauren said with a
n off-handed shrug that didn’t quite come off. “It wasn’t really serious on either of our parts. And when she met the little waitress, they clicked.”

  That sounded like something my mother would say. Calling Aislynn ‘the little waitress’ instead of using her name—which she had to know; Kylie and Aislynn had been together for a while—reduced her to something instead of someone. Or so it seemed to me. “I guess you didn’t approve,” I said.

  Lauren tossed her head. “Of their relationship? I thought she was too young and immature. That Kylie would regret getting involved with her.”

  “They seem to be doing OK so far. It’s been almost a year, hasn’t it?”

  “Something like that,” Lauren said, in a tone that indicated she wasn’t happy to have that fact pointed out.

  “I don’t suppose you have any idea who might have written the anonymous letters?”

  “Kylie thought it was her girlfriend’s parents,” Lauren said.

  “What about you?”

  “I figured it was the waitress,” Lauren said with a shrug. “It seemed like something she’d do. Immature and spiteful.”

  “Why would she?”

  But Lauren had no answer to that. She just didn’t like Aislynn, and that was the only reason she needed. We let her head upstairs to see Kylie. And while I’d wondered when Aislynn was going to get there—since I thought it was sort of strange that she wasn’t—now I hoped that she’d take her time instead. The thought of the two of them—Lauren and Aislynn—coming to blows over Kylie’s hospital bed was a frightening, and very real, possibility. And Kylie—like the corpse of Virgil Wright—might go flying, with direr consequences. Virgil had been beyond pain when he’d tipped over. Kylie was still very much alive, and breakable.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “What did you think?” I asked Rafe when we were in the car and headed up Hillsboro Road toward downtown.

  He glanced at me. “About?”

  “Any of it. Kylie. Lauren. The fact that Aislynn isn’t here.”

  “The fact that your friend kept saying her name?”

  “She was just wondering if Aislynn was OK,” I said. “Wasn’t she?”

  Rafe shrugged.

  “You don’t think Lauren was right, do you? That Aislynn wrote the letters, and when Kylie figured it out, she tried to kill her?”

  “Dunno,” Rafe said. “You’re the one who knows them. You’d know that better than me.”

  I should. But he’s got that criminal mind, always suspicious of other people’s motivations, while I tend to take things at face value. I rarely look for hidden agendas, and Rafe always does.

  “Would they have called me to talk about the anonymous letters if Aislynn was the one who wrote them?”

  “You told me,” Rafe said as he made the turn onto Division Street, “that Kylie was the one who wanted to contact you, and that Aislynn didn’t want her to.”

  Yes, Kylie had said that.

  “I’m confused,” I said. “Why would Aislynn write threatening letters to herself?”

  “It happens. Kids do it sometimes to get attention. Or write love letters to themselves so the other kids will think someone’s interested in them.”

  “She’s not a kid,” I said.

  “Young, though. And Lauren said she’s immature.”

  “I think that might be because Lauren is older than Kylie,” I said, “and she probably felt threatened by Aislynn.”

  Rafe thought about that for a moment as we made our way past the Music City Center—the new convention center downtown—toward the bridge linking East Nashville to the SoBro area. “Could be she was worried that her girlfriend’s feelings had changed. She mighta started writing the letters just so Kylie would pay her more attention.”

  “Possible,” I allowed. “I know she was worried about that. Lauren thinks Aislynn is immature and that Kylie needs someone older. And Aislynn thinks the same thing. That Kylie thinks she’s immature and wishes Aislynn was older. More like Lauren.”

  “Tangled web,” Rafe said.

  I nodded. “Confusing. And I don’t see where Virgil’s murder comes into it at all.”

  “Maybe it don’t,” Rafe said, as we headed up and over the bridge. To the left was the downtown skyline and to the right the old Metro General Hospital, perched on a cliff overlooking the Cumberland River; now the site of a couple of new condo buildings. “Maybe they’re two different things.”

  That made a lot more sense. Although at the same time, it didn’t. “Isn’t that too much of a coincidence?”

  “Dunno,” Rafe said, cresting the bridge and heading down the other side, toward Nissan Stadium, where the Tennessee Titans play. Thank God it wasn’t football season yet. Sunday mornings in East Nashville during football season are gridlocked.

  We crossed the interstate and headed up Shelby Avenue.

  “Where are we going?” I inquired, when he didn’t signal to make the turn on South Fifth.

  “I thought we’d take a walk in the park.”

  “You mean you want to look at the crime scene?”

  He shrugged. “I thought maybe you did.”

  I did, as a matter of fact. And for a change, I was even dressed for it, in Capri pants and a T-shirt and semi-sensible shoes.

  We entered the park at the Shelby Avenue entrance, and drove around the baseball fields, the same route Grimaldi had said Virgil had taken the night he was killed. We found a parking space in the lot at the bottom of the hill, on the edge of the lake and across from the small island with the duck habitat. Rafe turned the car off and got out to open my door. “You OK walking from here?”

  “Of course,” I said, and took the hand he extended. “It’s just up the hill, isn’t it?”

  He nodded. “If it’s the path I’m thinking of, it is. Let’s go take a look.”

  We went, hand in hand along the edge of the water and then around the side of the hill. About halfway up, before we got to the golf course at the top, a path snaked into the growth on the right.

  “This?” I asked Rafe.

  He nodded. “You OK?”

  “Fine. Let’s do it.” I let go of his hand and headed into the trees.

  The path was narrow, so we had to go single file. The ground was mulched, but not paved like the road we’d just been on. And there were tall trees all around, blocking out the morning sun, casting us into semi-darkness. It wasn’t cool, though. It never is in Tennessee in July. The moisture in the air made the T-shirt cling to my back and made little pieces of mulch stick to my feet.

  “This is nasty,” I told Rafe over my shoulder. “I’ll never understand why people choose to be outside in this.”

  He chuckled. “Some people like to sweat.”

  “Some people sweat nicely.” Like him. He glistens. I turn pink and moist, like a pig’s snout. “Some people don’t.”

  We walked another few feet.

  “Dark in here,” I added.

  “The better to kill you,” Rafe told me. I shot a startled look over my shoulder, and he grinned. “Not you. But it’s a nice, private place if you wanted to get rid of someone.”

  It was. And that was probably why the murderer had chosen this path to commit his dastardly deed. Especially if it was part of Virgil’s usual route.

  “So it was probably premeditated.”

  “Looks that way,” Rafe agreed, trudging along behind me, looking around. “I don’t see a lot of rocks. He had to go find one and then wait for Virgil to come running up the path. Not like anybody would be hanging out in here otherwise.”

  “Drug deal gone wrong? Virgil accidentally came upon something criminal, and the criminals killed him?”

  “No drug dealer in his right mind would wanna do business here,” Rafe said. “It’s outta the way, and there’s kids and dogs and people jogging. Besides, you’ve seen’em. They hang out on the street corners where we live.”

  They did. The buyers, anyway. And then the dealers would drive by and do business out of the
windows of their cars.

  “So whoever killed Virgil was waiting for him,” I said. “Unless it was just some nutcase who wanted to commit murder and didn’t care who he killed.”

  “Those don’t come along that often,” Rafe told me. “Most killers have a type. Even Huron,” the serial killer from last month, “only killed young women.”

  “So maybe this was a serial killer who only kills 30-something gay guys. Or joggers. Men with muscles. Watch out.”

  He arched a brow. “How d’you know he had muscles?”

  “He jogged,” I said. “I assumed he kept in shape. Stacy had muscles.”

  Rafe scowled.

  “He was wearing a towel,” I said.

  “I know.”

  “It’s not like I could avoid noticing what he looked like.”

  “I know.”

  “He’s gay. I’m sure he was more excited to see you than me.”

  “No doubt,” Rafe said, “but he still shouldn’ta opened the door like that.”

  “He probably likes to stir people up. I told you what happened at the visitation yesterday, didn’t I?”

  He shook his head.

  “It must have slipped my mind in the excitement.” I gave him the rundown and watched him, unsuccessfully, try not to laugh.

  “Wish I coulda seen that.”

  “It was quite something. Horrible, of course. That poor coffin. Talk about undignified.”

  “It didn’t feel nothing,” Rafe said, his voice uneven. “The guy inside didn’t, either.”

  “I know that. It’s still awful. Anyway, Stacy started it. Probably on purpose.”

  Rafe arched a brow, and I added, “It took guts—or stupidity, or something—to show up there in the first place. It was Kenny’s memorial for Virgil. Stacy’s the ex. He must have known he wouldn’t be welcome.”

  “He mighta been telling the truth,” Rafe said. “Maybe he still cared.”

  “That doesn’t mean he had to behave inappropriately. And crashing someone else’s funeral for a dead ex-lover, is inappropriate.”

  Rafe just shrugged, so I guess he didn’t see the big deal. Maybe I thought the deal was bigger than it was, being my mother’s daughter. Mother has a lot to say about inappropriate behavior. Especially mine.