Contract Pending Page 26

  I blinked. Why would Elspeth Caulfield have the cover art for a Barbara Botticelli romance on display in her house? Maybe it was just a painting, or a photograph, that looked a little like it.

  But no, I was pretty sure it was the real thing. I even knew which Barbara Botticelli novel it came from. The debut, released about four years earlier. I’d read it, of course. In one sitting.

  As with all the BB books, the plot was a variation on the blonde and beautiful, well-bred heroine and the dark and dangerous, not-at-all-well-bred, bad-boy hero. It was called “Slave to Passion” and was set during the Civil War. In the Deep South. With a Southern Belle heroine named Elizabeth, who was irresistibly drawn to a man she couldn’t have, not only because she was engaged to someone else, but because Benjamin was a Yankee, and a soldier for the North, who was occupying her family’s land, and most of all because he was colored: the product of a union between Elizabeth’s fiancée’s father, the owner of a neighboring plantation, and the father’s slave, who had run away and made it all the way to the North before giving birth to Elizabeth’s fiancée’s half brother.

  The cover was the usual confection: the swooning heroine, her long blonde hair undone and the bodice of her hoop-skirted gown ditto, clasped in the hero’s brawny arms, her soft white hands clutching his muscular shoulders and his dark head buried in her neck. He was naked to the waist, of course, the way Union soldiers always were. The two of them were up against a background of glossy-leaved magnolia trees, obviously hiding from Elizabeth’s family in the big white plantation house in the distance.

  She—Elizabeth—looked a lot like Elspeth.

  I took a couple of steps closer and squinted.

  She looked a lot like Elspeth. Funny I hadn’t noticed that when I read the book.

  Then again, I hadn’t seen Elspeth for years at that point, so maybe it wasn’t that funny, after all.

  I noticed now, though. And my brain hiccupped.

  There was a sound from the room to the left of the front hall, and I went over to a pair of sliding pocket doors and peered in. It was an office, and Dix was sitting at the desk busily sorting through paperwork. Of which there was plenty. Papers everywhere. Stacks and folders on the desk, piles on every flat surface, including the floor. Built-in bookshelves on one wall, floor to ceiling, and along the wall next to them, some sort of clothesline with a row of small colored index cards held up by clothes pins. There were also more Barbara Botticelli covers, small ones this time, framed and hanging on the wall. Along with what looked like—I squinted—awards?

  Definitely awards. Given to Barbara Botticelli for excellence in the romance genre.

  “Holy cow,” I said.

  Dix looked up from the paper sorting. “What?”

  “I think she’s Barbara Botticelli.”

  “Who?”

  “Elspeth. I think she’s Barbara Botticelli.” Or was.

  “Who’s Barbara Botticelli?” Dix wanted to know.

  I stared at him. “Only my favorite romance author. Doesn’t Sheila read Barbara Botticelli?”

  “I have no idea,” Dix said, and went back to his papers.

  Maybe his and Sheila’s sex life was exciting enough without the aid of romance novels, but speaking for myself, I’d found them a great comfort during my short-lived marriage to Bradley. Who was about as far from a dark and dangerous Botticelli hero as it’s possible to get.

  If Elspeth was Barbara Botticelli, it explained why all her books were variations on the theme ‘sweet, innocent, blonde good girl falls for dark, dangerous, mysterious bad boy,’ anyway. If she’d been obsessed with Rafe since high school, he’d obviously been the hero of every book she’d ever written. I guess she’d been imagining herself redeeming him. Over and over and over. Rewriting their story so they got their happily ever after.

  It also explained why I’d pictured every Botticelli hero—at least recently—with Rafe’s face. I truly wasn’t going crazy.

  Or maybe that was just because I had fallen in love with him.

  And now he was gone.

  I blinked back another round of tears and turned to Dix. “Anything?”

  “Not yet. There’s a lot to go through here. Would you mind walking through the rest of the house, just to see if anything jumps out at you? Most likely any information would be here in the office, but have a look around.”

  “Sure.” I left the room and wandered back into the hallway, sparing Elizabeth/Elspeth and Benjamin/Rafe a glance on the way past.

  Unlike the Martin mansion, which is symmetrical with a central foyer and long hallway straight through to the back door, Elspeth’s house was a Queen Anne Victorian: asymmetrical and quirkily charming. The foyer was in the front right corner of the house, with the parlor to the left, and a short hallway down the middle, ending in the master bedroom. On the right side, beyond the foyer, the house widened, and another room—the dining room—flowed into the kitchen. I walked through it all, but didn’t see anything of interest. The dining room was pristine, with dark, heavy furniture, while the kitchen was updated with stainless steel appliances and a tile floor. There were no kid drawings fastened to the fridge, the way there were in many of the houses I’d seen over the past few months. There were a few photographs, but they were of Elspeth herself. Hidden under a big picture hat, wearing some kind of fairy costume, maybe from a party or something. There were no telephone numbers or addresses tacked to the fridge, either; the only thing worthy of note was the books everywhere. There was at least one bookcase in every room, including the kitchen. They were stuffed full, and the small bedroom between the master and the parlor had been turned into a library, with shelves on all four walls.

  Upstairs was mostly unused, it seemed. Several of the rooms had dust covers over all the furniture. The room where I’d seen the light on the other night, when I drove over to Yvonne’s house, was Elspeth’s bedroom, just as I had suspected. And like my bedroom in the mansion, it didn’t look like it had changed since she was a teenager. Mine hadn’t either, but that was because I didn’t live there anymore. And because it hadn’t changed appreciably in the past hundred years before I was born, either.

  Elspeth’s bedroom was sweet and girly: pale blue walls, white canopied bed, frilly lace curtains. White furniture and a fluffy rug on the floor. Like she hadn’t grown or changed since she was fifteen.

  There were books here, too, and a stack of paper next to the bed. A manuscript, I saw when I got closer. A new Barbara Botticelli. I’d have to make sure Dix sent it back to the publisher in New York on Elspeth’s behalf.

  It was called “Prisoner of Love,” which seemed a worthy follow-up to “Apache Amour” and “Pirate’s Booty,” not to mention “Highland Fling” and “Slave to Passion.”

  I couldn’t resist sitting down on the bed and leafing through a couple of pages, and before I knew it fifteen minutes had passed. I put the manuscript down, guiltily, and looked at the rest of the room. And froze.

  There were a couple of photographs on the night table, next to the stack of printed pages. I’d been so busy honing in on the manuscript that I hadn’t noticed them. There was Elspeth, with her big, black dogs. She owned a half dozen of the beasts, which must have been removed to a facility somewhere before we arrived, probably by the sheriff’s department. Two months ago, when I was here, they’d tried to lick me to death. Another framed picture showed an older couple, probably Elspeth’s parents, on the porch outside. Her mother was small and blond and looked harassed, with a tense smile and worried eyes, while Elspeth’s father was big and beefy with an uncompromising look to his thin lips and straight brows.

  Those were not what interested me, although a closer study of the picture of the parents might give some insight into Elspeth’s psyche. At the moment I didn’t care. I reached for the last photograph with a hand that was shaking.

  For a moment I thought I was looking at Rafe. Not Rafe the way I’d ever seen him; Rafe long before we ended up at Columbia High together. Nine or te
n years old, maybe. With a couple of oversized front teeth and a big grin, dancing eyes and a boyish face.

  And for a second it hurt, and I thought I might start crying again. But then I saw the car in the background, behind the boy. An SUV. Fairly new. This picture had been taken within the last few years. Not twenty years ago, when Rafe was this age.

  “Your phone rang,” Dix said when I came back into the office, photograph in hand.

  I glanced at my purse, which I had left on the chair next to him. “Why didn’t you answer it?”

  “I did. It was Detective Grimaldi from Nashville.”

  God. “What did she say?”

  “She didn’t say anything,” Dix said. “Just that she was returning your call and to try her again later.”

  “That’s it?”

  “I asked her if it was true that Rafe Collier had died.”

  My heart stuttered. “And?”

  Dix shook his head, his eyes somber. “I’m sorry, sis. She said yes.” He caught sight of the photograph I had put on the desk and added, “Whoa. Where did you find this?”

  I struggled to get myself together as I told him it had been on the night table upstairs, next to Elspeth’s bed.

  “This isn’t Collier, is it?”

  I shook my head.

  “Looks like him, though.”

  I nodded. “But the car...” My voice was barely audible.

  “I see it. This could be the son. If Elspeth did get pregnant in high school, after that one-night-stand with Collier, her son would be... twelve or so now?”

  I nodded. “In that case, this picture would be a couple of years old.”

  “And that’s about the time Chrysler started making these cars. This could be him.”

  “Did you find anything down here?”

  He shook his head. “Not so far. This picture is our best clue.”

  “Glad to help.” I looked around. “This is going to be a big job.”

  Dix nodded. “The information is here somewhere. Someone knows what happened and where this boy is. We can check Elspeth’s financial records and her travel itineraries and her phone records. Whatever it takes to find this kid.”

  I nodded. “Do you have to do it now?”

  He looked up at me. “You ready to go, sis?”

  “I’d like to get home. To my apartment. To Nashville.” Where I might be able to corner Tamara Grimaldi. And where I could hibernate in bed with a box of Kleenex and cry my heart out without worrying about what anyone would think. I knew Dix loved me, and he hadn’t seemed too surprised at my reaction to the news that Rafe was dead, but I had been more subdued than I would have been had I been alone when I found out. I wanted to be by myself, to howl and mourn in peace.

  “I’ll take you back to your car,” Dix said. “I can always come back here later.” He looked around, and added, “I’ll have to. There’s enough work here for a couple of days, at least.”

  “I can stay and help if you want.”

  He shook his head. “Go home. Take care of yourself. Do you want me to let you know what I find out?”

  “Please,” I said. There was no Rafe to tell anymore—Elspeth hadn’t told him she was pregnant, and now he’d never know he had a son—but I’d still like to know. At least that the boy was well taken care of and happy. Although what I’d do if he wasn’t, I didn’t know. “I’d like a copy of the picture, too, please. If you don’t mind.”

  “I’ll send it to your phone,” Dix promised and put his arm around my shoulders. “And keep you posted about everything else. Including the funeral.”

  “Funeral?” What made him think I’d want to go to Elspeth’s funeral?

  “For Collier? He’ll probably go in the ground up on Oak Street, don’t you think? Where his mother is buried?”

  I shrugged. I didn’t want to think about it. And Dix, bless his heart, must have realized it, because he kept his mouth shut on the drive from Damascus back to Sweetwater.

  Chapter 22

  I cried most of the way back to Nashville. Not loudly, not in a way that made me a menace to the other people on the road, but quietly, softly, with tears running down my face. By the time I reached Nashville, my eyes were puffy and sore, and my face was swollen. I looked awful. That didn’t stop me from driving directly to 101 Potsdam Street to knock on the door. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I had this crazy hope that once I got there, maybe it would all be OK. It would turn out to have been a misunderstanding, and Rafe would be there and everything would be all right.

  But of course he wasn’t. There was no answer to my knock, and the house was locked up tight while the driveway was empty. I got back in the car and drove downtown to Police Plaza, where I demanded to see Tamara Grimaldi.

  The guard on duty seemed a little leery of letting me upstairs, and paid extra special attention to the contents of my handbag—including confiscating my lipstick pepper spray and miniature lipstick knife—but eventually he let me in. By the time the elevator opened on Tamara’s floor, she was standing in the hallway waiting for me.

  And she looked almost as bad as I felt. Her eyes weren’t red from crying, but they were bloodshot and puffy from lack of sleep. Her face was drawn, her color was bad, and she was still wearing the same clothes she’d worn last night. I deduced she hadn’t been to bed yet.

  She was on the ball, though. One look at my face, and she dragged me into an empty interrogation room away from everyone else, pushed me down on a chair, and sat down across the table from me. “What’s wrong?”

  “You told me he’d be OK. You said you’d take care of him.”

  “What?”

  “You told me he’d be OK. You said you’d take care of him.” My mouth seemed to be stuck on instant replay.

  She shook her head, not in negation but to clear it. “What are you talking about?”

  “Rafe. You told me he’d be OK. You said you’d take care of him. That nothing bad would happen if he didn’t get to the hospital right away.”

  “So?”

  So?

  “So you lied.” My voice was shaking, and I grabbed the edge of the table to steady myself. “And I can understand why. I really can. I mean, if you’d told me the truth, I would have had a gibbering meltdown right there; I realize that. So I understand why you did it. But I didn’t get to say goodbye. And now...”

  I was crying again. Tamara looked at me for a second before getting up and leaving the room. When she came back, she was carrying a can of Diet Coke and an economy-sized box of Kleenex. She put both on the table in front of me. “Listen.”

  I sniffed into a tissue.

  “I have no idea what you’ve heard, or from whom—”

  “I left you a message,” I said.

  “I know. I tried to call you back. Your brother answered.”

  “You told him Rafe was dead.”

  “Of course I did. I...”

  “ You told me you’d take care of him. You said he’d be OK!” I snatched another tissue.

  “Whoa! Whoa!” She was waving her hands. “Of course he’s OK. I told you he would be. Did you think he died?”

  She looked at me, and her face changed. “You did think he died.”

  “You mean he didn’t?”

  “Of course he didn’t! I told you he wouldn’t. He told you he wouldn’t. He took a bullet to the shoulder. The doctor dug it out and slapped a Band Aid on the hole. You thought he died?”

  “Dix told me he died!” I said. Shrieked, really. “He said Todd told him, and that the sheriff had told Todd. And then he asked you, and you said Rafe had died!”

  “Ah.” She nodded.

  Ah? What the hell? “You sound like that makes sense to you.”

  “That’s because it does. See, it’s like this...”

  She explained. By the time she was finished, I had to admit it did sort of make sense. If word got out that Rafe was dead, that would protect him from whoever had sent Jorge after him, as well as from anyone else who might be tempted to t
ake him out in the future. And if Rafe was dead, then Jorge would have to be alive. But...

  “Sheriff Satterfield doesn’t know? How did you manage that?”

  “Told him that Mrs. Jenkins would want the body taken to Nashville to bury next to his father.” Tamara shrugged.

  “And... that was Jorge Pena’s body?”

  She nodded. “We made sure the sheriff didn’t get a good look at it. There’s a resemblance, but not so strong that someone who knew Mr. Collier wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference.”

  “Oh, believe me, Sheriff Satterfield knows Rafe. He arrested him often enough as a teenager.”

  “That’s what you said. Mr. Craig had thought ahead and brought a van, so we loaded the body in there and he took it with him. Along with Mr. Collier, of course. We picked him up on the road; he walked through the woods from the trailer so the sheriff wouldn’t see him. Ms. Caulfield’s body we left for Sheriff Satterfield. To give him something to do to keep him busy.”

  “I’m sure he appreciates that.” My voice was a little weak, both from the crying and from the relief. “So where is he now?”

  “The sheriff is in Sweetwater. Mr. Pena’s body is at the morgue, with Mr. Collier’s name on it. As for Wendell Craig...”

  “You know that’s not what I meant.”

  Tamara grimaced. “He’s in Jorge’s motel room.”

  “Where?”

  She shook her head. “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if we want people to believe that he’s dead, he can’t have you showing up at his motel.”

  “I’ll dress up as a hooker,” I said. “And pretend that Jorge called for some company.”

  She looked at me, up and down, for a second, before her mouth quirked. “It’d be worth it, just to see that. I’m almost tempted to let you.”

  “Please. I really need to see him. He’s going to be leaving town again, isn’t he?”