Right of Redemption Page 15

  “Turns out there are.” I explained about the number 8.

  “I never knew that,” Darcy said.

  I shook my head. “Me, either. Rafe said he didn’t, either, until last week. I guess they’ve all been getting crash courses in recognizing all things Nazi.”

  “Well, the guy sitting with his back to us had a swastika tattooed on his head,” Darcy said.

  My eyes widened. “Seriously? How did I not notice that?” I mean, it didn’t seem like something you’d overlook.

  “You had your back to him,” Darcy said. “And it was under his hair. Only half visible. But I was staring at the back of his head the whole time we were sitting there, and I saw the outline of it.”

  “I don’t doubt you,” I said. “I just didn’t notice. And I’m shocked that I didn’t.”

  After a second I added, “Hard to believe that anyone would be that stupid. I mean, that’s like tattooing ‘loser’ on your forehead, isn’t it?”

  “Or a serial number on your arm,” Darcy said, which shut me up for a second.

  “Yes, but they—the Jews—didn’t do that to themselves. And anyway, what kind of moron grafts into his own skin—in permanent ink, no less—a symbol that shows he’s a Nazi?”

  “Someone who’s proud of it,” Darcy said.

  Clearly. “If you want to sport an offensive symbol, why not put it somewhere you can cover it with clothes? Why flaunt it where everyone can see it and know what a jackass you are? That doesn’t seem smart.”

  “I’m sure it’s partly to shock,” Darcy said. “And to make people uncomfortable. And probably because it makes them feel good about themselves when people look at them with fear and give them a wide berth. The people who do this kind of thing are the kind who confuse fear and loathing with respect.”

  Yes, indeed.

  “Rafe will find them,” I said. “He’ll find them, and follow them, and figure out who their friends are, and eventually he—and Nolan, and Grimaldi, and Bob Satterfield, and the sheriffs of Lawrence and Lewis and Giles—will arrest them and put them behind bars.”

  “And it won’t be any too soon,” Darcy said.

  I shook my head. No, it wouldn’t. “In happier news, I checked at the county clerk’s office, and it doesn’t look like Morris had time to do anything about his statutory right of redemption. Nothing was filed on Friday afternoon, before or after he spoke to us. So the house is still ours. Yours.”

  “It’s a shame that he had to die in order for us to keep the house,” Darcy said, “but I’d rather have it than not.”

  So would I. But I agreed. “If we help Jarvis figure out who killed him—so he doesn’t arrest Charlotte for it—maybe it’ll go a little way toward making up for the fact that we took the man’s house.”

  “Maybe so,” Darcy said and turned toward the printer.

  * * *

  Charlotte and I spent the rest of the day in the Victorian’s parlor, reading court transcripts, in between feeding Carrie, taking care of Charlotte’s two children, and fielding questions about what we were doing from Mrs. Albertson, who seemed worried. It was one of the more boring days I’ve ever spent, at least lately, and once we’d finished one, we switched transcripts and started over. By the end of it, we’d both struggled through the accounts of both trials, and looked as pale and wan as two people who hadn’t seen sunlight or fresh air in a couple of weeks.

  “Have you ever been called for jury duty?” I asked Charlotte as I gathered the paperwork preparatory to taking it home. I didn’t expect Rafe to read it all, but I did plan to run a few sections past him.

  She shook her head. “You?”

  I hadn’t. “I think, if I’d been on the jury for this trial—either of them—I would have found him not guilty.”

  “Really?”

  I nodded. “Wouldn’t you?”

  “I don’t know,” Charlotte said. “He was there when she died. Nearby. He knew her. The neighbor said she’d heard them argue…”

  She had. But she was old, so there was a chance she’d been wrong about what—or who—she’d heard. No one else had come forward to admit to arguing with Morris, and Morris hadn’t named anyone else he’d had a conversation with on the day the neighbor said she’d heard the arguing, so maybe it had been another man and not Morris.

  That man hadn’t come forward either, of course, but that wasn’t surprising, especially if he had killed Natalie Allen.

  Or maybe the neighbor had been right, and she had heard Morris. At this point, there was no way to know for sure, and no way to find out, since she’d gone to be with her maker more than a year ago, in the time between the first and second trial.

  The first had ended in a locked jury. The second had ended with acquittal. And the elderly neighbor not being there wasn’t the only reason for the different verdict. While the first trial had included a police report filed in Florence, Alabama, when Steve Morris was seventeen, charging him with the statutory rape of a fourteen-year-old unnamed girl, in the second trial, that fourteen-year-old girl—all grown up now, and with a name and everything—had shown up to testify on his behalf, and had put the police report in context.

  “Had you ever heard of a Romeo and Juliet defense before?” Charlotte asked.

  I shook my head. “I wasn’t sexually active in high school. I had no need to know.”

  She opened her mouth, and I raised my hand. “If you were sleeping with my brother back then, I’d just as soon not know.”

  Charlotte smirked, but didn’t say anything. “Did you believe her?” she asked instead.

  “Steve Morris’s girlfriend? No reason not to. She was testifying under oath. She probably wasn’t lying. And she drove a couple of hours to be here, to make sure the jury knew that the case was thrown out because they were both underage and dating.”

  And why would she go to all that trouble if it wasn’t true?

  There wasn’t much to link Morris to the murder other than hearsay and innuendo. No DNA on the body, none of Natalie’s DNA anywhere on Morris’s person, in his car, or in his house. No motive anyone had come up with for why he’d want Natalie Allen dead. So between the nosy neighbor not being there to testify about the quarrel, and the old girlfriend—now a happily married mother of three—testifying that Morris never had been a sexual predator, the jury found him not guilty of Natalie Allen’s murder. And that’s how he’d ended up on our doorstep.

  “I feel better,” Charlotte said. “At least he wasn’t a sex offender.”

  He’d still been dead in our den, so I didn’t feel much better, although I supposed I was happy that he’d been found not guilty in the end, since it sounded like he had, in fact, been not guilty.

  None of this made a difference as to why he was killed, though. Just because I—and a jury of his peers—thought he’d been innocent, didn’t mean someone else hadn’t thought he was guilty—and had killed him because of it.

  “We need to talk to Natalie’s family,” I said. “Her boyfriend, if she had one. Any girlfriends she might have had. Any of them might have killed Morris if they thought he’d gotten away with murder.”

  “We can’t do that!” Charlotte said, shocked. “What will people think?”

  “I suppose we could sit here and wait for Jarvis to figure it out on his own. Is that a chance you want to take?”

  “He doesn’t really think I did it!” Charlotte said. After a second she added, with a lot less certainty, “Right?”

  “Of course he does. Or he might.” He should. If I didn’t know her, and it was my case to solve, I would. “You had motive, means, and opportunity. You were there, your fingerprints were all over the murder weapon, and you had a good reason to want Morris gone. I’m surprised he hasn’t arrested you already.”

  From the other side of the wall came a sort of gasp, and I deduced that Mrs. Albertson was out there in the kitchen, and could hear us. I waited a few seconds, to give her time to show up in the doorway and ask questions if she wanted to. When she d
idn’t, I continued, “It makes more sense to build a case against you than look for someone else that may or may not be out there.”

  “What do you mean,” Charlotte asked, outraged, “may not be out there? Of course he’s out there! Or she. I didn’t do it, so someone else must have!”

  “Right.” Of course. “I just meant that from the police’s perspective, they’ve got a suspect with motive, means, and opportunity. Why bother to look for someone else?”

  “Because I didn’t do it!” Charlotte said.

  “Yes, but from Jarvis’s point of view…” I gave up. “Just work with me here. If we do a little sleuthing of our own, maybe we’ll discover something we can share with him. While he focuses on looking for evidence to prove you did it,” which he would probably be doing, since it was his job and made sense, “we’ll look for evidence that someone else did. And when we tell him, he’ll have to admit that someone else had motive, means, and opportunity, too.”

  And if that didn’t work—and naturally I didn’t mention this to Charlotte, certainly not while her mother was around the corner, listening—we’d have some information we could turn over to the defense for trial later. If Jarvis got as far as to charge Charlotte, at least we could make the prosecution’s case hard to prove. And it wouldn’t hurt to get a head start on that, since the case against Charlotte was pretty open and shut—a lot more open and shut than the case against Morris—and there was no reason why Jarvis would dilly-dally when it came to arresting her if he thought she did it.

  “I suppose,” Charlotte said reluctantly. “What do you want to do first?”

  “I want to talk to Natalie’s family. I can go on my own, or you can come with me. Your choice.”

  “You can go alone,” Charlotte said.

  I looked at her. Yes, of course I could. But I’d thought maybe she’d want to take a little more initiative to clear this up, since it was, after all, her criminal record on the line here, and not mine.

  She stared back without budging, though, so I said, “If you prefer.”

  Charlotte nodded.

  “I’ll let you know what I find out,” I said.

  “Thank you,” Charlotte answered.

  I opened my mouth, and closed it again. And opened it again. “Is there some reason you can’t be bothered to do a little legwork in your own best interest?”

  “I’m not a detective,” Charlotte said.

  And I was? “Are you afraid to talk to these people?”

  “I’m afraid to make Detective Jarvis angry,” Charlotte said. Which I suppose was a somewhat valid concern.

  “Fine. I’ll go by myself and talk to the neighbors. I’ll call you tonight.”

  “Thank you,” Charlotte said again, and on that note, I scooped up the baby and headed out.

  By now it was mid-afternoon, and I figured some of the neighbors might still be at work. Natalie Allen’s parents probably wouldn’t be at home. She’d be in her early twenties now; they were too young to be retired. But the old lady with the dog was probably home. I could start with her.

  So I loaded Carrie back into the car and we headed from Sweetwater back to Fulton Street, and pulled to a stop in front of our house. Or Darcy’s house.

  Steve Morris’s house.

  I sat for a second and looked at it. It didn’t look any different than it had last week, the last time I’d been here. The dumpster was still full of the same junk, the door was securely closed—and hopefully locked. A string of yellow crime scene tape draped across the porch. There was still greenery growing in the gutter, because neither of us had ventured onto the ladder to rise that high yet.

  I opened the door and swung my feet out. Carrie had fallen asleep on the way here, her long lashes dark against her cheeks and her pink lips pursed. I grabbed the car seat, hoping the change in temperature between the toasty car and the chilly February day wouldn’t wake her, and hoofed it up the driveway and around to the rear of the house.

  Another string of yellow tape ran from one side to the other of the French doors. And as Jarvis had promised, someone had taken the time to tape a piece of cardboard across the broken pane. I went all the way up to the glass and cupped my hands around my eyes, peering through.

  Nothing looked any different than it had on Saturday morning. A little more gray and dusty, maybe. Fingerprint powder. I wondered whether they’d found any that belonged to anyone but us and Morris, and then I realized that if they had, it wouldn’t mean anything. Fingerprints can last a while if they’re not cleaned off, and no one had done any cleaning here for a very long time. Morris’s prints, and Morris’s guests’ prints, could still be on the door jambs from four years ago.

  With the crime scene tape still festooning the doors, the police clearly hadn’t released the crime scene yet. I picked up my baby and headed back around the house, preparatory to talking to the neighbors.

  I started with the lady with the dog.

  She lived in a house that was pretty much a carbon copy of Morris’s house—our house—but on the other side of the street. It was much better maintained, too, but perhaps I shouldn’t hold that against Morris, since he’d had his hands full with other things these past few years.

  It was painted a crisp white, with a watermelon-red door and black shutters: your most traditional American look. Unlike Morris’s house, the front yard was immaculate, even before anything had started to bloom for the season. There were enough evergreens—small holly bushes with glossy leaves, and some spindly-looking fir-type things—to give brightness and color, and there were also several ornaments sitting around, that obviously stayed out all year. A concrete turtle sat next to an old-fashioned garden gnome, and in the other bed, some sort of brass ornament—maybe the kind you could hook up to a garden hose and turn into a sprinkler—gleamed in the late afternoon light.

  There was a bell next to the door, with the name Oberlin in a small frame above it, and I put my finger on it. A conservative ding-dong rang through the house. The dong didn’t even have time to fade before I heard the scrabbling of nails and furious barking coming closer.

  Pearl does the same thing, so it didn’t bother me. Besides, I’d seen Mrs. Oberlin’s dog, and it was a lot smaller and less scary than Pearl.

  It took half a minute, but then I heard human steps inside, too, and a voice telling Chester to be quiet. The peephole in the door darkened for a second—I put a non-threatening smile on my face, and gave it a wave—and then the lock tumbled. The door opened a crack. “Can I help you?”

  “Hi,” I said brightly. “Mrs. Oberlin, right? My name is Savannah Martin. Collier. My friend and I are working on the house across the street.”

  She gave me an up-and-down look before she opened the door wider. “I remember seeing you.”

  “I wondered if you had a couple of minutes to talk to me,” I said. “If it isn’t too much trouble.”

  “I’ve already spoken to the police.”

  I nodded. “So have I. I’m not expecting you to tell me anything you didn’t tell them. I’m just trying to work things out in my own head. I mean, I didn’t even know about Natalie Allen until after this happened…”

  I trailed off invitingly. Mrs. Oberlin nibbled her bottom lip, looking unsure for a second, before she opened the door. “You better come on in.”

  Excellent. I stepped across the threshold and into the house.

  It was set up in exactly the same way as our house across the street. The front door opened directly into a combination living/dining room, and I could see the kitchen beyond. It had been updated with oak cabinets in, at a guess, the nineteen-eighties or –nineties. If I continued, I’d surely find the same bathroom and two bedrooms as across the street.

  Mrs. Oberlin’s furniture was as traditional as the house. Dark wood with glass tops on the tables, chintz furniture. Beige wall-to-wall carpet on the floor.

  “Have a seat.” She gestured me toward the sofa.

  “Would you mind if I put the baby on a dining room chair
?” I didn’t want to put her on the floor, or even the sofa, in case Chester the Shih-Tzu jumped on her and woke her up. If I could keep her asleep during my conversation with Mrs. Oberlin, that would probably be best.

  She flapped a hand in that direction, which I took as permission. And gave Carrie a sharp look when I walked past. “Yours?”

  I nodded. “She looks more like my husband. Although she has my eyes.” Which you couldn’t see now.

  “I didn’t realize any of you girls were married,” Mrs. Oberlin said. “I haven’t seen any men coming and going over there.”

  “Mine’s come by once or twice. He has another job, though, so he isn’t helping us with the renovations. Darcy’s dating a guy who works for the police department, and Charlotte left her husband in North Carolina when she moved back here.”

  “Dear me,” Mrs. Oberlin said, clicking her tongue. “Trouble in paradise?”

  Trouble, certainly. I didn’t think Charlotte’s marriage to Doctor Dick had ever come close to being a paradise, and the more I learned about it, the surer I became about that assessment.

  But it wasn’t any of Mrs. Oberlin’s business, so I just made a non-committal kind of noise and took a seat on the sofa.

  “So what can I do for you?” Mrs. Oberlin wanted to know.

  “I wanted to ask what you saw the night Steve Morris was stabbed. I know you saw Charlotte get here. My friend with the brown hair.”

  “She arrived when I was taking Chester out for his evening tinkle,” Mrs. Oberlin nodded.

  “And you didn’t see her leave again?”

  She shook her head.

  “Did you see anyone else around the house? Before or after that?”

  She didn’t answer immediately, so I added, “We were working there all day. Around four o’clock, this guy knocked on the door and introduced himself as Steve Morris and said the house used to be his. I spoke to him for a few minutes, and then he left. Fifteen minutes later or so, Charlotte and I left, too.”

  “I saw Steve,” Mrs. Oberlin said. “In the afternoon. I didn’t recognize him at first.”

  “You knew him when he lived here?”