Adverse Possession Read online

  You’d think. “I’ll ask Rafe. Or Tamara Grimaldi.”

  Rafe, as I mentioned, works for the TBI. Tamara Grimaldi is a friend of ours, a homicide detective with the Metro Nashville PD. Poison pen letters wasn’t in either of their jurisdictions—Grimaldi’s job was murder and Rafe’s organized crime, pretty much—but I’m sure they both knew the law on something like this.

  “I guess there’s no chance we’ll find fingerprints on any of these,” I said.

  Kylie shook her head. “Between the mailman, and Aislynn and me, and everyone else who’s handled them...”

  “Who else have you shown the letters to?”

  While I asked, I grabbed the first envelope by the sides and wiggled it until the first letter sailed out and onto the surface of the desk. Then I used a letter opener and a Bic pen to unfold it.

  “Just a couple of friends,” Kylie said vaguely.

  That probably hadn’t been a good idea, and the police would have chastised her about it. Since I wasn’t the police, I didn’t say anything, just focused on the letter.

  It was written on your basic piece of copy-paper, the kind you find in printers and fax machines all over the country. Untraceable, pretty much. Anyone can buy a ream of copy paper almost anywhere. The grocery store, the drugstore, the Dollar store, Office Depot, and any number of online stores, delivered straight to your door. The LB&A office was full of them. And there was an open ream sitting on a table in the corner of Kylie’s home office, next to a combination printer/scanner.

  The words were written with black marker, all in capital letters: spiky and oversized, stark against the bright white paper.

  I AM WATCHING YOU.

  I glanced up. “This is the first one? The one that came in early April?”

  Kylie nodded. “We thought it was a belated April Fool’s joke.”

  I might have thought the same thing. The words were almost a cliché, and not so much sinister as roll-your-eyes exasperating.

  Until the second letter said the exact same thing. The envelope was still addressed to Aislynn, and the letter—still on the same basic copy-paper, still written with the same, or a similar, marker in the same spiky block letters—said, I AM WATCHING YOU.

  “It’s a bit more creepy the second time.”

  Kylie nodded. “Wait until you see the next one.”

  I opened the envelope carefully and shook the letter out.

  YOU SHOULD GET OUT WHILE YOU CAN.

  I arched my brows, but didn’t comment. I had once walked into my apartment to find my bed sheets and nightgown slashed to ribbons and the word trollop written on the wall in red lipstick; now that’s something that’ll scare you. So far, this was still just on the edge between a joke and just a bit troubling.

  IF YOU WON’T LISTEN, the anonymous letter writer wrote, YOU HAVE NO ONE TO BLAME BUT YOURSELF.

  “Blame?” I said.

  Kylie nodded. She was biting her lip. I could hear clicking and clanging from the kitchen, where Aislynn was cleaning up.

  “Blame for what?”

  She shrugged.

  LEAVE, the next letter said, BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE.

  The last letter was the most directly threatening.

  THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE. IF YOU IGNORE MY WARNING, SOMEONE WILL DIE.

  “That’s a bit disturbing.” And a bit melodramatic, but I didn’t say that. I just leaned back on the chair, away from the letters laid out in two neat rows on the desktop.

  Kylie nodded. “I’m worried, Savannah. Not so much about this,” she gestured to the letters, “although I guess there are plenty of wackos in the world, and you never know what someone might do.”

  No, you don’t. The world is full of sick people, and sick people do sick things. This might be nothing, just somebody’s sick joke spurred by April Fool’s Day and taken to greater lengths in the months since. On the other hand, it might be something real and dangerous. Ignoring it didn’t seem like a good idea.

  “But I’m more worried about Aislynn,” Kylie said. “She’s totally wigged out. Jumps at the least little thing. Sleeps with the light on. I’m afraid she’s going to leave.”

  I tilted my head to look at her. “Do you think that’s what the letter writer wants?”

  “I don’t know what he wants!”

  Her voice was shrill enough to break glass, and I glanced at the snow globe paper weight on the corner of the desk to make sure it was holding up under the strain. Anyone who’s ever broken one knows the mess that results when the water and all that glitter goes everywhere.

  Kylie took a breath, and when she spoke again, her voice was calmer. “I don’t know whether this is someone’s idea of a joke, or whether this person, whoever it is, will actually hurt Aislynn.”

  “Or you.”

  She shrugged, as if that possibility didn’t matter. Her voice was low and intense. “I want her to be safe, and I want her with me. And if I have to sell the house and move somewhere else for that to happen, then that’s what I’ll do!”

  Chapter Two

  “Give me a little time to look into it,” I said. “I’ll talk to Detective Grimaldi and Rafe. Between them, I’m sure they’ll have some ideas about what’s going on and whether it’s something you need to worry about.”

  We had moved back into the dining room for kheer, and were sitting around the table spooning it up.

  “I don’t know, Savannah,” Kylie said. “Maybe we just need to do what this nutcase wants, and put the house on the market.”

  Aislynn nodded, spoon in her mouth.

  “But that’s the problem,” I pointed out. “You don’t know what the nutcase wants.” They didn’t even know that the letter-writer was a nutcase. The whole thing could be a joke. Or it could be someone totally sane, who wanted to separate the two of them for one reason or another. It wasn’t necessarily that he or she wanted them to move out of the house. To me, it sounded more like he or she wanted Aislynn gone.

  “The letters started after we moved in,” Kylie said. “If we leave, they’ll stop.”

  I dipped my spoon back into the rice pudding, but left it there. “You don’t know that. They didn’t start for several months after you moved in. Chances are, it wasn’t you moving in here that set someone off. Whatever gave this person the idea to do this probably happened just before the first letter came. Can you think of anything that happened in late March or early April? Anything out of the ordinary?”

  Neither of them said anything, so I started throwing out ideas. “Did someone new move in nearby? Did you argue with one of the neighbors? Block someone’s driveway? Let your dog poop on someone’s grass?”

  Aislynn’s lips twitched. “We don’t have a dog.”

  “Maybe you should get one,” I said. “It might make you feel safer.”

  Nobody responded to that. Nor to the other questions.

  “No arguments? Nobody new in the neighborhood?”

  “Nobody we’ve talked to,” Kylie said. “Although there are always houses changing hands around here. You know how it is.”

  I did. Historic East Nashville is a hot neighborhood, with rapidly increasing property values. There are always people wanting to move in, and people wanting to cash out.

  “The people two doors down are moving,” Aislynn said. “We have new neighbors on the next block in either direction, and new people on the next street over.”

  I’d have to find out who they were. Not too difficult, with access to the Multiple Listings Service and the Courthouse records, to learn which houses had changed hands in the past few months, and which were about to.

  “Anything else? You guys go out occasionally, I’m sure. Any weird conversations with store clerks or bartenders? Parking disputes? Argument over the check?”

  They shook their heads.

  “How about at work? Any weird co-workers? Or could a customer have followed either of you home and discovered where you live?”

  “Kylie doesn’t have customers,” Aislynn said. “I
do, but I wouldn’t know if anyone followed me.”

  “But you don’t remember anyone acting weird? Staring at you? Trying to pick you up and getting upset when you said no?”

  She shook her head.

  “How about you?” I turned to Kylie. She was watching Aislynn and looking worried, and it took her a second to meet my eyes.

  “I can’t think of anyone.”

  They both said the words, but I didn’t think either of them meant them. It was like earlier. They both had ideas, but it was obvious that they were both reluctant to talk in front of the other. I’d just have to talk to them separately sometime.

  “I’ll talk to Rafe when he comes home tonight,” I said, going back to spooning up the kheer. “If he thinks it’s a good idea, I’ll call Detective Grimaldi in the morning. How long do you want to wait before you decide whether or not to put the house on the market?”

  They glanced at one another.

  “Twenty-four hours?” Aislynn suggested.

  Cripes. Nothing like a little pressure to make a girl do her best.

  “How about we make it through the weekend instead?” That’d give me a few days, at least.

  “I don’t know...” Aislynn said, glancing at the dusk gathering outside the windows.

  “I’d like to know something sooner than that,” Kylie told me. “How about you come over Saturday morning and tell us what you’ve found out? And then we’ll see whether it’s worth continuing. Nine o’clock?”

  She sounded determined, so I told her I’d be here. And since there didn’t seem to be a whole lot more to say just then, I asked whether they wanted my help in cleaning up after dinner. When they said they didn’t, I excused myself and headed home, to wait for Rafe and ponder what I’d learned.

  By the time he walked in, I was already in bed. It takes a lot of effort to create a baby from scratch, and I was tired almost all the time. It was rare that I managed to stay up past ten o’clock anymore.

  I was still awake, though, if barely, and only because I had both the light and the TV on. If I fell asleep before he came home, I wouldn’t be able to talk to Rafe about Aislynn and Kylie’s predicament, and since I’d probably sleep through the alarm in the morning, and he’d leave without waking me, I wouldn’t be able to talk to him then, either.

  No, it had to be now. Hence the glaring light and reruns of Full House.

  I heard the rumble of the engine first, and the crunch of gravel as he guided the Harley-Davidson up the circular driveway. Then the engine shut off, and there were muffled footsteps on the porch. The front door opened and closed, and I heard the snick of the deadbolt and the rattle of the security chain as he pulled it across the door. Then came his steps on the stairs. By the time he appeared in the doorway, I was sitting bolt upright in bed, waiting.

  We had been married less than three weeks. Since we’d been living in sin for six months prior to that, I hadn’t expected the marriage certificate and the ring on my finger to make much difference. We’d already made the commitment to one another, after all. I loved him. He loved me. We were having a baby together.

  But being married was different. I can’t explain it, but somehow the knowledge that he was mine, that we were stuck together for better or worse until one of us died of old age (or something else) made all the difference.

  And unlike my brief but unhappy marriage to Bradley Ferguson, being married to Rafe for life didn’t sound like a death sentence.

  He stopped in the doorway, with the light from the hall behind him giving him a halo, and as usual, my breath went away at the sight. It had always been that way, and I hoped it always would be.

  It isn’t just because he’s gorgeous, although he is. Tall, dark, muscular. Handsome, with dark eyes, dusky skin, and a great smile. One he was flashing at me right now. “Darlin’.”

  “I wanted to talk to you,” I said, answering the unspoken question I knew he was asking. “I knew if I fell asleep, you’d leave before me in the morning, and I wouldn’t get to.”

  The smile dropped off as he took in the papers strewn across the comforter. I had made Kylie give me copies of each of the letters. I wanted to have them to show him and Grimaldi in the morning, but I didn’t want to handle the originals any more than necessary. I was pretty sure we wouldn’t be able to get fingerprints or DNA off them, not after so many people had handled them, but better safe than sorry.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Kylie called me,” I said. “Just before I left the office. She invited me to dinner to talk about selling the house.”

  He tilted his head and left the doorway, after flicking off the hallway light and removing that undeserved halo. “Didn’t they just buy their house?”

  I said they had. “Beginning of the year. We were going around looking at properties while you were hanging out with Carmen and trying to nail Hector last year.”

  Carmen Arroyo was an employee of Hector Gonzales’s, and Hector had been running the biggest SATG—South American Theft Gang—in the Southeast until Rafe stopped him. It had taken ten years to do it, and things came to a head just before Christmas. Aislynn and Kylie had closed on the house in late January, if memory served. Things take a little longer over the holidays.

  Anyway, Carmen and Hector were both in prison now. Hector somewhere in Georgia—he’d been operating his criminal empire out of Atlanta—and Carmen in Southern Belle Hell north of Nashville, since her crimes had been committed here.

  “What’s going on?” The bed moved when Rafe sat down on his side of the mattress and reached for one of the letters.

  I snatched it out of his reach. “This one came first.”

  I handed him I AM WATCHING YOU. And watched him as he looked at it.

  Not that there was much to see. His face was impassive, except for, perhaps, an almost imperceptible tightening of his lips.

  “It came in early April,” I said. “They figured it was an April Fool’s joke.” I gave him the rest of the letters. “Until the next one came. And the one after that.”

  He flipped through them. I watched. Until he dropped them all to his lap and looked at me. “What’s this gotta do with you?”

  “The letters started coming a couple months after they moved into the new house. They think if they sell, the letters will stop.”

  Rafe nodded. “Makes sense.”

  “I don’t want them to sell.”

  He quirked a brow.

  “They’re one of my success stories,” I said. “One of my few success stories. I want them to be happy in the house they bought.”

  “You could have another success story if you sold the house again.”

  I could. Maybe. However... “What if the next person who moves in starts getting letters, too? That would be horrible. And is this a material fact? Something I’ll have to disclose? The sellers are moving because someone is sending them creepy, anonymous letters. That’ll really help the resale value!”

  “I dunno about material facts and what you gotta disclose,” Rafe told me. “But if the new buyer starts getting anonymous letters, too, at least you’ll know your friends are safe.”

  “I’ll still feel bad!”

  He shrugged. “Somebody else’s problem.”

  “Unless I get both the buyer and the seller. Then it’ll be my problem.”

  “What are the chances?” Rafe wanted to know.

  Slim to none, if you want to know. It happens. One realtor often has both the seller and buyer under contract, and gets twice the commission, or gets to build goodwill with the seller by taking a percentage—higher than the single broker commission, but lower than the double—instead of the full, negotiated fee. It just doesn’t happen to me. I have problems enough snagging one party to the transaction, let alone both.

  “I told them I’d ask you about it. And Grimaldi.”

  He didn’t respond immediately, and I added, “They don’t really want to sell. Or at least Kylie doesn’t. Aislynn is so scared that I think she’d be ha
ppy to move out tomorrow if she could. Kylie is afraid she will.”

  Rafe nodded.

  “I don’t want to be responsible for them breaking up.”

  “Unless you’re the one sending the letters,” Rafe pointed out, “you ain’t gonna be responsible.”

  “You know what I mean. I told them I’d look into it. Just for a day or so. We’re getting together on Saturday morning so I can tell them what I’ve found out. I need you to tell me what to do.”

  “Stay out of it,” Rafe said.

  I rolled my eyes. “I can’t do that. I just explained why.”

  He didn’t answer, and I continued, “You don’t think there’s anything to worry about, do you? I mean, I know there’s a little escalation on the messages and the timing...”

  His eyebrow rose again.

  “You told me what escalation means,” I told him. “Last month, when we were dealing with Hernandez. The letters are coming faster now, so whoever is sending them is escalating.”

  He nodded.

  “But they’re still just letters. And could just be a joke.”

  “But if he don’t get the reaction he wants,” Rafe said, “eventually he’ll stop writing letters and do something else instead.”

  “Not to me, though. I’m not involved in this.” It wasn’t my house. And nobody was sending me letters.

  “Until you get yourself involved.”

  Sure. But... “How would he know that? Or she? It’s not like I’m going to be living there with them. And anyway, they just got a letter. There probably won’t be another in the next thirty-six hours.” And by then I’d have done my initial investigating and would be reporting to Aislynn and Kylie over breakfast on Saturday.

  “I don’t like it,” Rafe said.

  I blinked. “Do you think this person is dangerous? It might just be a joke.”

  He ran a hand over the top of his head. It’s his version of shoving his fingers through his hair. “It could be a joke. But it don’t feel like it.”

  I glanced at the letters in his lap. “How can you tell?”

  He shook his head. “Dunno. Just a feeling.”