Adverse Possession Page 16

  “Anyway,” I said, “that’s what happened. And whatever Stacy’s motivation for being there, he started it. When Kenny challenged him, he could have backed down. Left. Said something conciliatory. But instead he egged him on. Deliberately. I heard him giggle when Kenny charged him.”

  “Maybe he was just squeaking,” Rafe said. “In fear.”

  Sure. “When I left there, he was barricaded in his Jeep, and the rest of them were trying to tip him over. I called Mendoza, and he said he’d send a couple of cars to break it up. I wonder if they arrested anyone.”

  “You saw him last night,” Rafe said. “Why didn’t you just ask?”

  I’d forgotten, truth be told. In all my concern over Grimaldi’s possible date with someone other than my brother, I’d forgotten all about Stacy’s plight.

  “We should probably call him anyway. And tell him that Kylie is awake, and that Lauren came to see her.”

  “And that Aislynn didn’t,” Rafe said. But instead of digging out his phone, he looked around. “This looks like a good spot.”

  While I’d just been moving forward, intent on putting one foot in front of the other and on the conversation, he’d actually been looking around. I stopped, too. “For what?”

  “Murder,” Rafe said. “See how the path curves around this big tree?” He reached out and put his palm against it. “If I was gonna kill somebody, here’s where I’d wait. On the other side of the tree. And when the guy I was waiting for came up the path, I’d step out.”

  I tried to picture it. It made sense.

  “A couple words,” Rafe said, “maybe an argument, and as the guy tries to brush past me, or run back the way he came, a quick tap to the head.”

  He lifted his arm and mimed a quick strike down.

  “It was probably more than a tap,” I told him. “I don’t think a tap would kill someone.”

  “Depends on who’s doing the tapping,” Rafe said. “You can kill somebody with a single blow if you’re strong enough. And if the angle’s right.”

  “Angle?”

  He motioned me down the path ahead of him. “You ever meet him?”

  “Virgil?” I shook my head. “Not to my recollection. We didn’t close together in January. And I don’t remember either him or Stacy being home when we were at their house. Although I admit my mind was on other things then.”

  Namely, the fact that Rafe had shown up at my mother’s house on Christmas Eve to tell me that he’d retired from undercover work and was ready to settle down. We’d lived together from then on, and my days—and nights—were filled with much more pleasant concerns than real estate. I’d done my job, of course, making sure that Aislynn and Kylie did their due diligence in home inspections and surveys and the like, but I’d walked around in a haze of love and lust, and couldn’t remember many of the details of most of the month of January.

  “Does it matter?” I added.

  He shrugged. “If he was tall, and he was hit standing up, whoever hit him had to be pretty tall, too. Especially if it took only one blow to kill him. It’s hard to get that kind of velocity if you’re a half a foot shorter and hitting up.”

  I’d take his word for it. “But?”

  “If he was on the ground,” Rafe said, “anybody coulda killed him. It’s a lot easier to hit down than up. You get some help from gravity.”

  That made sense. “What makes you think he was on the ground?”

  “Couple things,” Rafe said, as I saw the end of the path ahead of us. “Did you see the handprints in the dirt on the side of the path?”

  I shook my head.

  “That prob’ly happened the night of the murder. It’d stopped raining by then, but the ground woulda been wet. By the next morning, it woulda been dry.”

  I nodded. “That could have happened if someone hit him from behind, though. Couldn’t it? One blow to drop him, and another to kill?”

  “Could,” Rafe agreed. “I dunno whether he was hit more’n once. Did anyone ever tell you?”

  I didn’t think anyone had, and said so.

  “Also, there was some bark rubbed off a couple trees. One on each side of the path. Like somebody’d strung a wire, maybe.”

  “You think the police noticed?”

  “Mendoza don’t strike me as stupid,” Rafe said, “so he musta seen it, too.”

  I nodded. “So someone may have strung a trip wire across the path, and when Virgil came running, he fell. And caught himself on the edge of the path. And then someone picked up a rock and killed him.”

  We passed from the mulched path onto the paved road, and from under the canopy of trees into sunlight. I took a deep breath, and it wasn’t until I did that I realized how much the atmosphere under the trees had affected me.

  “Something like that,” Rafe said, and took my hand now that we could walk side by side again. “You all right?”

  “I will be. It’s just sad, to think of that happening. Just where we were standing, someone died. Someone killed someone else. In a very nasty way.”

  Rafe nodded. “Sorry, darlin’. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea.”

  “I’m all right,” I said. “It’s just disturbing to think about. Who’d do something like that?”

  Mine had been more of a philosophical question, but Rafe took it literally.

  “Someone who couldn’t do it while he was standing up,” he said. “When we practice hand-to-hand in the gym, it’s all about taking your opponent down. If you can get him on the ground and get on top of him, it don’t matter how much bigger and stronger he is.”

  “That’s interesting. So the killer could have been someone much smaller and weaker.”

  “Coulda been,” Rafe agreed. “I’m bigger and stronger than you are, but if you could drop me, you’d have the advantage over me.”

  “I can drop you anytime I want to,” I informed him.

  He grinned. “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yes.” I smiled back. “Want to have sex?”

  “Sure. Now?”

  I looked around. “I’m sure there’s a private spot around here somewhere. I get to be on top, right?”

  “Whatever you want,” Rafe said.

  “See how easy that was?”

  It took him a second—it’s that male brain; once you dangle the prospect of sex in front of it, it’s all it can focus on—and then he chuckled. “Touché. So no sex?”

  “We can have sex. Let’s go home first, though. There are too many people here.”

  He nodded.

  “Do you think somebody might have offered Virgil sex, and that’s why he was on the ground on his hands and knees?”

  “You never know,” Rafe said and hustled me toward the car.

  Chapter Fourteen

  We were standing by the car, ready to get in, when someone ran past. I caught a glimpse of red, and turned. “Kenny!”

  The jogger slowed and glanced over his shoulder. When he saw it was me, for a second I thought he might keep going—and then it would be interesting to see whether Rafe would let him go, or whether instinct would kick in and he’d go after Kenny and bring him back. But then Kenny slowed down. Reluctantly, but he slowed.

  “Oh,” he said. “It’s you again.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  He was bent over, hands braced on his thighs as he tried to catch his breath, and the sun lit up that head of red hair and made it gleam like a copper penny. “What’s it look like I’m doing?” he wanted to know. “I’m running.”

  Yes, but... around the same park where his lover had been killed just a few days ago?

  My disbelief must have communicated itself to him even though I didn’t say a word, because he straightened and moved his hands from his thighs to his hips. “What are you doing here?”

  “Walking,” I said, with a look at Rafe. He arched a brow at me.

  Kenny glanced at him, but didn’t say anything.

  “I’m sorry about what happened at the funeral home yesterday,” I added.

>   His face darkened. “You were there?”

  “Someone had to represent LB&A.” And I hadn’t seen Tim in the throng chasing Stacy out the door. “Virgil was one of our clients.”

  “Bastard,” Kenny muttered, probably not in reference to his dead lover.

  “It was awkward,” I agreed

  He sent me a fulminating glance. “It was a freaking disaster.”

  That, too. “I hope everything turned out OK with the... um... deceased.”

  “No thanks to that nutcase!” Kenny growled.

  “When I left, he was barricaded in his car. Did he get away?”

  “The police came,” Kenny said. “Two cars. With sirens and everything. I tried to get them to arrest him, but they said they couldn’t. That he hadn’t done anything illegal. As if knocking over a coffin isn’t illegal!”

  Technically, it was Kenny himself who had knocked over the coffin trying to wrap his hands around Stacy’s throat, although I’d readily admit he’d been driven to it.

  “I don’t suppose there was any truth to what he was saying?”

  “No!” Kenny said. “We were in love! We were talking about making it legal!”

  “Getting married?”

  He nodded. “We’ve been waiting for that for a long time.”

  ‘We’ meaning the gay community, I assumed, since he and Virgil had only been living together for six months or so.

  “So there was no problem with your relationship.”

  “No,” Kenny said. “We were happy. My family liked him. We got along well.”

  “So why would he tell Stacy he was unhappy?”

  “He wouldn’t! He didn’t!”

  “So you’re saying Stacy lied?”

  “Of course he lied!” Kenny shrieked. “Virgil and I were happy! Stacy was jealous!”

  That was certainly possible. Although going to his late ex-lover’s funeral to tell the grieving boyfriend that the deceased had been tired of him... that argued for something more than just jealousy. It was malicious and vindictive, and as we say in the South, ugly. Kicking Kenny while he was down.

  “But the police let him go.”

  Kenny nodded, disgusted. “They said there was nothing they could do. That he hadn’t broken any laws. That I could get a restraining order if I wanted, but that they couldn’t do anything about him otherwise.”

  There probably wasn’t much point in that. And I didn’t think Stacy would be bothering Kenny again. The funeral had just been too tempting for him, probably. And maybe he’d told the truth: he still did care about Virgil, and wanted to be there. And then he’d seen the chance to take some of his own grief out on Kenny, and had taken it.

  “I never met Virgil,” I said. “When he and Stacy were selling the house, Tim Briggs represented them. I represented the buyers. So I never met him. What did he look like?”

  Kenny looked at me like he suspected I’d lost my mind, but he answered. “He looked like a black guy. You know, brown skin, black hair.”

  Huh. It hadn’t even crossed my mind that Virgil wasn’t Caucasian.

  “So he looked like the friend you were with at the FinBar the other night?”

  “Claude?” Kenny shook his head. “Virgil was taller. And thinner. He was a runner.”

  “He wasn’t getting anonymous letters, was he?”

  “No,” Kenny said.

  “Sending them?”

  “Of course not! What’s that about?”

  “One of the girls who bought his and Stacy’s house was attacked Friday night. And hit over the head with a paperweight.” A rock, pretty much. “They’ve been getting anonymous letters.”

  “That’s crazy,” Kenny said. “And anyway, Virgil was dead on Friday. He didn’t hit anyone over the head with anything.”

  “That’s why I asked if he’d been getting anonymous letters.” Since he’d also been hit over the head with something.

  Although that could just be a coincidence. Lots of people are killed with blunt force trauma to the head. Very few of the homicides are related. It’s just an easy way to get rid of someone, I guess. Just snatch up the nearest blunt instrument and swing it.

  “No,” Kenny said. “We haven’t been getting anything weird in the mail. Not before he died, and not after.”

  He looked around. “Are we done here?”

  “We’re just talking,” I said. “Feel free to push off anytime you’re ready.”

  He pushed off, without so much as a goodbye. I turned to Rafe, who’d been very quiet throughout this whole conversation. “That was interesting.”

  He nodded. “Ready to go?”

  “I suppose we should.” I opened my door and slid into the car. “What did you think?”

  “That you oughta give up real estate and become an interrogator,” Rafe said and turned the key in the ignition. A blast of hot air burst from the air conditioning vents, and then turned cool.

  “No, thank you. And anyway, he didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know.”

  “He told you Virgil didn’t get, or write, anonymous letters,” Rafe said, pulling the car out of the parking space and rolling off down the road. I kept an eye out for Kenny, and saw him ahead of us, going up the hill toward the path.

  “I’m not sure we can trust what he says. He might not even know if Virgil was getting anonymous letters. Virgil might not have told him.”

  “Why wouldn’t he tell him?”

  “Maybe Stacy was right,” I said. “Maybe Virgil was tired of Kenny.”

  “You think?”

  “It’s more likely that Kenny was telling the truth and Stacy was upset and jealous, but it’s possible.”

  Halfway up the hill, Kenny turned onto the path through the woods. “Does that strike you as odd?” I asked.

  “That he’s out here running the same path where his lover was killed a few days ago?” He shrugged as he turned the car in the opposite direction around the lake. “Makes me wonder why they weren’t running together Wednesday night, if they both ran. But grief takes people different ways. Could be his way of coping. Getting back on the horse.”

  I supposed. Maybe Kenny was planning to stop in the middle of the path and say a prayer for Virgil.

  Or maybe he was a murderer returning to the scene of the crime. Stacy could be telling the truth about Virgil being tired of Kenny. He might have told him so on Wednesday night, then gone for a run thinking he’d give Kenny time to process the news. But instead of staying home and processing, Kenny got in his car, got to the park first, parked, hid, and bashed his lover over the head before returning home to pretend he hadn’t left at all.

  “I wonder who inherits Virgil’s money,” I said.

  “Did he have money?”

  “Grimaldi said he had a good job and had some savings from selling the house. It’s probably not a lot, but it could be enough for someone to want it.”

  “He don’t look like he’s hurting,” Rafe said, nodding in the direction of the path and Kenny.

  “No. But you can’t always judge by what someone looks like. He lives in a nice house, but it could be mortgaged to the rafters.” Although I hadn’t found any evidence of that when I’d looked him up the other day. “Or,” I added, “he could have a gambling problem and owe a fortune to loan sharks.”

  “Gambling’s illegal in Tennessee,” Rafe said.

  “All the more reason to keep it quiet. For Kenny to inherit, Virgil would have had to make a will benefitting him, though. They aren’t married, so they aren’t each other’s next of kin.”

  Rafe nodded. “If something happens to me—”

  “Don’t say that!”

  He glanced at me. “Something’s gonna happen to all of us sooner or later, darlin’.”

  “Later,” I said. “Much, much later. You aren’t undercover anymore. You’re safe now.”

  “Shit happens to people who ain’t undercover, too. Just look at Virgil.”

  “I’m not going to get tired of you and hit you over th
e head,” I told him. “If I do get tired of you,” and I didn’t see that happening soon, or ever, “I’ll divorce you, like civilized people do. Give me a break, Rafe. We haven’t even been married a whole month yet. Just let me enjoy it for a while without having to worry about something happening to you so I inherit, all right?”

  He shrugged. “I was just gonna say that if something happens to me, you gotta make sure my grandma’s taken care of. And David. And the baby.”

  “Ginny and Sam will take care of David,” I said, “but of course I’ll make sure your grandmother and the baby are taken care of. And if something happens to Ginny and Sam, I’ll take care of David, too. And if something happens to me, you’ll have to make sure my family gets to know the baby, all right?”

  “Nothing’s gonna happen to you.” He turned the car out through the big stone gates marking the entrance to the park.

  “Something could happen to me. I could die in childbirth. Or a traffic accident. Or get sick or something. Promise.”

  “If something happened to you, your mama would get her hands on that baby so fast your head would spin. I wouldn’t stand a chance of keeping it.”

  “Don’t be silly,” I said. “My mother would never take our baby away from you.”

  “You wanna bet?” He shook his head. “I don’t wanna talk about it. Nothing’s gonna happen to you. To either of us. You’re gonna have the baby, and we’re gonna raise him—or her—together. Nobody’s gonna take him away from either of us.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” I said, although there was nothing whatsoever to drink in the car. “Let’s just go back to Virgil and Kenny. They weren’t married when Virgil died, so Kenny doesn’t inherit whatever Virgil owned.”

  Rafe nodded.

  “Whoever Virgil’s next of kin is, inherits. Unless Virgil had a will, and then it’s whoever he named in the will.”

  Rafe nodded. “No way to figure out if he did or not, I guess.”

  “Detective Mendoza might know,” I said. “And he might be willing to share if you ask nicely.”

  “Me?”

  “He seems to like you. Fellow law enforcement and all that.”

  He slanted a disbelieving glance at me, as if I’d accused him of inappropriate behavior, and I added, “The two of you seemed to find plenty to talk about the other night.”