Adverse Possession Read online

  “There,” Kylie said.

  At the end of the row, a small, seen-better-days economy car buzzed across the aisle, headed for the exit. It was too far away for us to see the driver, but the car had appeared in approximately the right spot at the right time, so I was willing to take a chance that this was our quarry. I slid up behind her at the light, and signaled to take a left.

  “Can you see her?”

  Kylie shook her head. I couldn’t, either—or just as a rounded outline over the top of the seat. But the car itself gave a couple of clues to its owner. The bumper stickers—and there were many—proclaimed slogans like ‘Bikes, not bombs,’ ‘Share the road,’ ‘Buy fresh, buy local,’ and ‘No farms, no food.’ From that, I surmised that the owner might indeed be someone who would work in a health food restaurant.

  The light changed, and off we went down Old Hickory Boulevard. I’d driven this same way on Friday, after lunch, on my way to see Stacy Kelleher. Imagine my surprise when we followed the exact same route this time.

  When we approached the brick gates where Aislynn and Kylie had crashed last year, Kylie held her breath.

  “It’s OK,” I said. “The brakes are fine today.”

  I tapped them to show her that the car responded by slowing down. She nodded, but didn’t start breathing again until we were at the bottom of the hill, past the gates, and still proceeding at a safe and steady pace.

  When the car ahead of us pulled into the same apartment complex where Stacy lived, I was only marginally surprised. Somehow it made perfect sense that it would. Here, after all, was the connection we’d been looking for. Aislynn’s coworker knew Virgil’s ex-boyfriend, thus tying the murder and the anonymous letters together. How, I didn’t know, but at least it was a connection, and a place to start.

  But then the compact went in the other direction beyond the gate.

  “Huh,” I said, staying back while I watched it disappear between two buildings. Two other buildings; not the one where Stacy lived.

  “Aren’t you going to follow?”

  “In a second. I don’t want her to see us.” The Volvo crept forward, with my foot barely touching the gas pedal. “This is the apartment complex where Stacy Kelleher lives.”

  “Who’s Stacy Kelleher?”

  I glanced at her. “The guy who lived with Virgil Wright when they sold you the house you’re living in. Virgil’s boyfriend.”

  “Stacy’s a man?”

  I nodded. Up ahead, the compact came to a stop in a parking space. The engine shut off and after a second, the door opened. I held my breath, and let it out again when the waitress from Sara Beth’s shoehorned herself from the small car. “At least we followed the right car.”

  “She could just be coming home for lunch,” Kylie said.

  Of course she could. However— “She was the only waitress there. Why didn’t she just have the cook put something together and keep the place open? If there’s one thing they had plenty of, it was food.”

  “Maybe she needed a break?” Kylie suggested.

  Maybe. Or maybe there was something here that she needed to check on.

  I tried not to imagine Aislynn chained to the wall in this woman’s dungeon—aka second bedroom—but couldn’t get the picture out of my head.

  “Did Aislynn ever mention this girl?”

  “I have no idea,” Kylie said. “I’ve never met her. I don’t know her name. She has mentioned this one girl she’s worked with a lot, though.”

  “What has she said about her?”

  I watched as the waitress locked her car and headed for the nearest building.

  “Just that they end up working together a lot. Like, it always ends up being the two of them.”

  “Is that a problem? Doesn’t Aislynn like the other girl, or something?”

  If so, she certainly wouldn’t be here. Not unless this woman really did have Aislynn chained to the wall in the spare bedroom.

  “It isn’t that,” Kylie said as the waitress reached the bottom of the stairs and started climbing. “They get along just fine. I think they even lived together for a month or two when Aislynn first came to town. Before she moved in with me. She just thinks it’s a little weird that she never ends up working with anyone else.”

  While we’d talked, the waitress had reached the top of the staircase and now she stopped and fumbled in her pocket. We watched her knock on the door before she inserted the key in the lock.

  “That’s weird,” I said.

  Kylie shrugged. “Maybe she has a roommate.”

  Or a guest. Or maybe she was the guest. We didn’t know whether this was her apartment or someone else’s. Maybe she’d had a booty call from her boyfriend, or for that matter from her girlfriend, and that’s why she left work in the middle of the day and ran over here.

  The door shut behind her, and I reached for my door handle. “Time to go.”

  And hopefully I wouldn’t catch the waitress and her significant other in the act.

  Kylie opened her door and twisted on the seat.

  “You can stay in the car,” I told her. “You shouldn’t even be here. You should be home in bed. Dr. Ramsey would kill me if he knew I’d been dragging you all over creation like this.”

  “I want to come,” Kylie said, grabbing the top of the car door and hauling herself to her feet. She stood there for a second, swaying, before she caught her balance. “If Aislynn is there, I want to see her.”

  Fine. She was an adult; she was responsible for her own actions. I closed my own door, walked around the car to offer an arm to lean on, and closed hers. Then we made our slow way across the parking lot to the stairs.

  I don’t mind admitting I didn’t think she was going to make it. Standing at the bottom of that staircase looking up, made the second floor look as far away as the top of Mount Le Conte. Kylie must have thought so, too, because she just stood there for a second, obviously bracing herself, before she squared her shoulders and grabbed the railing. And hauled herself up, one slow step at a time.

  I followed, thinking that by the time we got to the top, any booty call would have concluded, and we wouldn’t have to worry about interrupting anything.

  It took a small eternity, but finally we made it onto the second floor landing. Kylie hung onto the railing for a long time, breathing heavily, before she straightened. “OK.”

  “OK.” I walked to the door and rang the bell. By the time I had stepped back to wait for it to open, Kylie had joined me.

  It took a minute, but then the door opened a crack and the waitress’s face peered out at us. “Oh,” she said. “It’s you again.”

  I smiled sweetly. “We’d like to see Aislynn, please.”

  The waitress looked from one of us to the other. “What makes you think she’s here?”

  Many reasons, most of which I have already detailed. And then there was the fact that she didn’t come right out and say that Aislynn wasn’t there.

  My expression must have told her what I thought of the prevarication, because she added, “What if she doesn’t want to see you?”

  “Then she can tell us so,” I said, and raised my voice. “Aislynn! Come out here!”

  For a second I thought the waitress would slam the door in my face. I saw the thought flicker through her eyes, and I prepared myself to stick my leather wedge sandal into the gap.

  At least the door would squeeze the sole of the shoe, and not my foot. I’ve had my foot stuck in a door before, and let me tell you, it can hurt.

  But then there was a scramble inside, and the next second, Aislynn’s face appeared next to the waitress’s in the doorway. “Savannah!”

  And a second later. “Kylie?”

  At least she wasn’t handcuffed to the wall.

  “We were worried about you,” I said mildly, when what I wanted to do was grab her by the shoulders and shake her until her teeth rattled. “You didn’t come to the hospital yesterday. And you didn’t answer our calls or texts.”

  She hung
her head. “I didn’t want to. I was afraid he’d follow me.”

  “He?”

  “The creepy guy writing the letters,” Aislynn said. “I got another one.”

  I nodded. “I know. I saw it. The one you left in the mailbox, right? The police have it.”

  Her friend jumped like she’d been stung by a bee, but she didn’t say anything. When I looked at her, her pale face flushed.

  “So how are you involved in this?” I wanted to know.

  She shook her head. “I’m not.”

  “What’s Aislynn doing here?”

  “She called me,” Aislynn said. “It seems I was supposed to work the dinner shift on Saturday, and with everything that happened,” she glanced at Kylie, then away again, “I guess I forgot. Until Terry called.”

  “You told Detective Mendoza you were going to spent the night with your parents.”

  “I was,” Aislynn nodded. “But then Terry called, and I had to go to work. And it got late, and I didn’t want to go home to an empty house, and besides, I was afraid that whoever hit Kylie would be back, because he said I was next, so Terry said I could stay with her.”

  Nobody said anything. Terry looked uncomfortable.

  “Kylie said you’d spent a couple of weeks living with a friend last summer, too. Is this that same friend?”

  They both nodded.

  “Kylie’s on her way home,” I said, with a glance at her. She looked awful. “The house won’t be empty anymore, if you want to come with us.”

  Aislynn hesitated. She glanced at Kylie, maybe hoping that Kylie would say something to her. So far, this conversation had been mostly on me.

  “The police have the last letter,” I added, repeating myself to drive home the point. “They’re checking it for fingerprints and anything else they can find. And I’m sure Detective Mendoza wouldn’t be opposed to having the local patrol cars drive by from time to time tonight to make sure everything’s OK. Although by tonight they may already know who the culprit is, and have arrested him.”

  Terry twitched, and I added, “Are you sure you didn’t have anything to do with this?”

  “Positive.” She nodded. “I’d never write creepy letters to Aislynn.”

  “How do you know they’re creepy?” I wanted to know.

  “She told me,” Terry said. I glanced at Aislynn, who nodded.

  “I’ll just get my stuff.”

  She bounced back inside the apartment.

  We stood in awkward silence until she came back out, with her oversized satchel flung over her shoulder. On her way out the door, she stopped to kiss Terry on the cheek. “Thanks for letting me stay.”

  She flitted past her, and probably didn’t see the look on Terry’s face. Kylie didn’t, either; she was looking at Aislynn.

  I did. But of course I wouldn’t be so uncouth as to say anything about it. Although it did explain why they were always scheduled to work together. Terry probably made the schedule. Or switched shifts with anyone else who was scheduled to work with Aislynn, so she could work with her instead.

  Aislynn and Kylie headed down the stairs, slowly and carefully. I lingered a moment, to ask Terry a question. “Do you know Stacy Kelleher?”

  She tore his gaze from them. “Who?”

  “One of your neighbors,” I said. “He lives in a building over there.” I pointed. “Guy about your age. Drives a Jeep. Works at South Street as a bartender.”

  “Oh.” Terry’s eyes cleared. “Sure. I know Stacy.”

  “Seen him around lately?”

  She gave me a look. “I see him every couple of days, coming and going. When our schedules work out that way.”

  “What about last Wednesday?” The night Virgil was killed.

  “No,” Terry said, without even thinking about it.

  “Did you work?”

  She shook her head. “He did.”

  “What about Friday?” The night Kylie was attacked.

  “I worked,” Terry said. “I didn’t see him then, either.”

  “Aislynn wasn’t on the schedule?”

  “Not on Friday night. She doesn’t like to work nights.” She shot a betraying glance down the stairs. Aislynn and Kylie were on their way across the parking lot to the car. Aislynn had her arm around Kylie, and Kylie’s head was on Aislynn’s shoulder.

  “They’re in love,” I said.

  She looked at me, a look of defiant, deliberate disbelief.

  Not much I could do about that. “Thanks for taking care of her,” I said.

  The look I got this time was full of dislike. Nothing I could do about that, either. So I just nodded politely and turned to go down the stairs. The back of my neck crawled, and I grasped the handrail and turned around again quickly, but it must have been my imagination, because Terry was still standing in the doorway, making absolutely no move to push me down the stairs. Nonetheless, I did move a little faster than usual as I scrambled down a story to what felt like the safety of solid ground.

  Aislynn was very apologetic about not coming to the hospital yesterday. “I was scared,” she told us from the backseat. “And Terry said it was probably safer if I didn’t go out. That if someone was following me, I didn’t want to lead him back to Kylie.”

  “But Kylie had already been attacked,” I pointed out. “What made Terry think she was in danger again?”

  “I don’t know.” Aislynn sounded surprised, like that thought hadn’t crossed her mind before. “Maybe she really just didn’t want me to go anywhere?”

  Maybe so. “What did the two of you do all day yesterday?”

  “Watched movies,” Aislynn said. “Played video games.”

  “Sounds nice and relaxing.”

  She shrugged. “I’d rather be home.”

  “I’m taking you there now,” I told her. “There’s a little bit of work to do when you get there, I’m afraid. The cops left a mess of fingerprint powder everywhere, and the office is still in chaos.”

  “That’s all right. I’ll clean it up.” She sounded perky and not bothered in the least.

  We drove in silence a few minutes.

  “Are you going to be all right by yourselves?” I asked.

  They glanced at one another. “We’ll be fine,” Kylie said.

  Aislynn nodded. “We’ll just hole up and have a movie marathon, or something.”

  “Didn’t you see enough movies at Terry’s place yesterday?”

  “She doesn’t like the same kinds of movies I like,” Aislynn said.

  “What kinds of movies do you like?”

  Aislynn admitted she liked British costume dramas, which was the last thing I would have expected.

  “What kinds of movies does Terry like?”

  “She’s usually into Star Wars and stuff like that,” Aislynn said. “Nerdy action stuff. But yesterday she made me sit through a marathon of old CSI episodes.”

  Crime scene investigations? “That’s interesting. Did she say anything about it? Why she wanted to watch something different?”

  She shook her head. “I guess she just got tired of the usual stuff. Or maybe she thought I’d like it better.”

  “Any comments about the episodes?”

  “She asked me if I thought some of what they were doing was possible,” Aislynn said. “Like, there was an episode about handwriting analysis, and Terry asked me if I thought it was possible to match somebody’s handwriting to them.”

  Even more interesting. Although she’d sounded very adamant about not having written the anonymous letters. Not that I’m always adept at picking up on a lie, but she hadn’t sounded like she was lying.

  Maybe she knew who’d been sending the letters, and was worried about their handwriting instead?

  Aislynn’s? Or someone else’s?

  “There was another one about DNA evidence,” Aislynn added. “How it doesn’t take saliva or semen,” she scrunched up her nose, “to get DNA. Sometimes, all it takes is a skin cell or two left behind.”

  I nodded.
I had heard that, too. “And Terry thought that was interesting?”

  “She seemed worried,” Aislynn said, which was the most interesting information of all.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I took the two of them home and made sure they got safely into the house. “Where does Damian work?” I asked Kylie on my way back out the door.

  She blinked, but told me the name of her bank.

  “You work together?” Even after the divorce?

  Kylie shook her head. “I’m in downtown, in lending. Damian’s a branch manager.”

  That made it easy. Anybody can just walk into a bank branch and ask to speak to the manager. I made her tell me which branch and where to find it, and then I said my goodbyes and headed out.

  As soon as I was in the car, I pulled out my phone and dialed Detective Mendoza. And when he didn’t pick up, I tried Tamara Grimaldi instead. “What’s wrong with Mendoza?”

  “Nice to hear from you, too,” Grimaldi said dryly. “A lot of things, I imagine. Why do you ask?”

  “He’s not taking my phone calls. I tried to call him yesterday—you said he was spending time with his kid—and I tried to call him now, and he didn’t pick up.”

  “He’s probably busy,” Grimaldi said.

  “Has there been a break in the case?”

  “Not that I know of. But there might have been a break in another case. The Wright homicide isn’t the only case he has.”

  “It isn’t?” I guess I’d never thought about that. Whenever Grimaldi had been working on a case that involved me, I’d always assumed it was the only thing she had to deal with.

  “We handle anywhere from two to ten cases at one time,” Grimaldi told me. “Some are on the back burner, some are hot and needing immediate attention. But there are too many murders in Nashville for us just to deal with one each. Unfortunately.”

  Wow.

  “So is Virgil’s case hot? Or not?”

  Grimaldi hesitated. “At this point, I’d say it’s probably a little less than hot. We like to solve cases within forty-eight hours or so. If we don’t, it usually takes a while. Other cases pile on, and we end up working them while they’re hot, so something like the Wright homicide gets pushed to the back.”