[Cutthroat Business 01.0 - 03.0] Boxed Set Page 34

  I took a couple of shaky steps toward the table. She added, “I’m going to go to the soda machine. Do you still prefer Diet Coke?”

  “Under the circumstances, I’d prefer a stiff drink, but Diet Coke will do.” She turned to go, and I added, belatedly, “Thank you.”

  “No problem. Have a seat at the table, and when you’re ready, open the folder. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  She disappeared. The door shut behind her with a soft click. I eyed the manila folder as if it were a snake preparing to bite me.

  I don’t enjoy being involved in violent crimes. Finding Brenda’s butchered body had been the grossest experience of my life, and the thought of it still had the power to turn me woozy and nauseous. I was brought up to be a lady. I’m delicate and squeamish and sensitive, and the sight of blood – especially that much blood – bothers me. I wasn’t looking forward to whatever the folder had to offer.

  Better get it over with. I sank onto the chair and pulled the folder across the table toward me. This didn’t involve a family member; the detective had said so. And if it wasn’t Todd, and it wasn’t Rafe, exactly how hard could it be?

  Taking a deep breath, I opened the folder and looked at the first picture. And felt the room start to spin slowly while colored confetti began raining down in front of my eyes.

  When Rafe and I had found Brenda, I had taken one look at her and promptly passed out. Rafe had had to carry me outside. This wasn’t quite as bad. No blood, for one thing. Or none I could see. Still, good call on Detective Grimaldi’s part to make me look at pictures rather than the real thing. If I had come nose to nose with this bloated, discolored face down in the morgue, I would have collapsed on the spot. And while Detective Grimaldi might be more capable than most men, she was no match for Rafe.

  “Here.” She had come in without my hearing her through the buzzing in my ears, and now she placed an ice-cold can of Diet Coke on the table in front of me. I popped the top and took an unladylike swig. My stomach objected, and then settled a little.

  “Do you recognize her?” Tamara Grimaldi sat down on the other side of the table with her own can of Dr. Pepper.

  “Who’d recognize that?” I responded, hoarsely.

  “Try again. Look at the other picture.”

  I glared at her, but slid the first photograph out of the way so I could see the second. It showed a hand, brown, with long fingers and long nails, and what looked like abrasions around the wrist. The nails were painted with tiny flowers, each set with a rhinestone chip. I put the picture down.

  “Lila Vaughn.”

  My voice was flat. Detective Grimaldi eyed me. “Are you sure?”

  “Those are her nails. They were painted like that yesterday. Or whenever it was I saw her.”

  “Can you manage to look at the other photo again? Just to make sure? I can’t accept a positive ID based on fake nails, even from a professional such as yourself.”

  I was too far gone even to object to this jab at my previous job behind the make-up counter at the mall. Instead I steeled myself and looked at the picture, fighting the nausea that was rising in my throat. This second look didn’t last more than five seconds, but it was enough. I shut the folder with as much of a bang as a manila folder can make, and pushed it across the table toward the detective. “It’s Lila. The hair, the face shape, the nose... God, what happened to her?!”

  “From the evidence,” Detective Grimaldi said, “she was strangled.”

  “No kidding?” I’m no detective, but even I could have figured that out. Lord!

  I took another long drink of soda and leaned back, closing my eyes. Now I understood why I had found Detective Grimaldi in that same position down in the lobby. Strange as it sounds, it helped me to keep from regurgitating the salad I’d had for lunch.

  “I need a formal statement from you regarding everything Ms. Vaughn said during your lunch the other day,” the detective said, from far away. I opened my eyes.

  “Why?”

  “In the event that she said anything that could shed some light on what happened to her.”

  “She didn’t. All we talked about was business. And what happened on Sunday, of course.” I paused as a thought struck me. “Oh, my God! You don’t think…?”

  “We’re considering the possibility. Whoever did it, tied her to the bed first.”

  I felt myself blanch. “And raped her?”

  “There’s some evidence of trauma,” Detective Grimaldi said, her voice even, “but not so much that it couldn’t have been consensual. Some people like rough sex.”

  “Not this rough, surely?”

  “There have been cases of death during autoerotic asphyxiation.”

  I must have looked blank, because she added, “Some people practice self-strangulation during masturbation. They say it enhances orgasms.”

  “Yikes!” I was fighting not to blush. In the circles where I travel, people don’t throw words like “masturbation” and “orgasm” around, let alone “autoerotic asphyxiation.”

  Tamara Grimaldi shrugged. “Not something you’ve ever been introduced to, I daresay.”

  I shook my head. Mercy, no. “My ex-husband was pretty traditional in bed. Not that I’m complaining. He was an adulterous jerk, but at least he never suggested we try something like that. That’s just nasty. Although this... um... auto-asphyxiation wasn’t how Lila died, was it?”

  Grimaldi shook her head. “She had a partner. One she let into her apartment. There was no sign of forced entry, so she must have opened the door for him. Either that or he followed her home and pushed inside before she had a chance to lock the door.”

  Scary.

  “Of course, there’s the possibility that whoever she had sex with wasn’t the person who killed her,” Grimaldi said judiciously. “However, our theory is that one man did both, and that it’s connected with the robbery. That’s why I need you to go over your conversation with her again, in detail. As much of it as you can remember. Anything, however little, may help us find the person who did this.”

  I nodded. “Of course. Anything I can do.”

  “I’m going to tape you, if you don’t mind. That way, I can get someone to transcribe the tape later, and I won’t have to worry about taking notes now. I don’t want to miss anything.”

  “Sure,” I said. She pulled out a small recording device, pushed a button, told it her name and the date and time, and asked me to introduce myself. “Interview regarding Vaughn, Lila Jeanette. Case H-5927694. Go ahead, Ms. Martin. Tell me about your lunch with Ms. Vaughn. I’ll interrupt if there’s anything I want to clarify; it not, just keep going.”

  I took a sip of Diet Coke and a breath, and threw myself into it. “I had lunch with Lila two days ago, at Fidelio’s Restaurant...”

  An hour later, we were still going strong. Detective Grimaldi had made more interruptions and repeated more questions than I would have thought possible, making me answer different variants of the same thing in different ways – I guess to see if my answers changed – although there was no denying she covered all the bases. Her detailed questioning kept my mind occupied, too, and I was grateful. I wasn’t looking forward to being alone with my thoughts. Already, the numbness was starting to wear off and I was beginning to shake.

  At the end of the interview, Detective Grimaldi shut off the recorder. “I’m sorry to put you through that, Ms. Martin.”

  “That’s OK. Lila was my friend. I want to help.” I swallowed and added, reluctantly, “I feel like this is my fault.”

  She leaned back. “How can it be your fault?”

  “I told her not to worry,” I said wretchedly. “I didn’t think she was in any danger.”

  The detective arched a brow. “That doesn’t sound like you, Ms. Martin. I would have expected you to tell her to be careful.”

  “I did! I mean, I did at first. But then…”

  I trailed off. There was a thin line here, and it was one I wasn’t certain I wanted to cross. Of course I wa
nted the detective to know anything that might help her find Lila’s killer, but telling her that I suspected Rafe of being involved in the robberies surely wouldn’t make a difference when he couldn’t have killed Lila. And he couldn’t have. He just couldn’t.

  “You know, Ms. Martin,” Detective Grimaldi said as she handed me a tissue, “it’s always better to tell the truth. The whole truth. And let us worry about what’s important and what isn’t. It’s our job.”

  She sat back in her chair and started taking notes on a yellow legal pad. I sniffed into the tissue a few times before I mopped my eyes.

  “It’s not that I didn’t tell you. I did. Just now. I just didn’t…” I just hadn’t spelled it out. I hadn’t wanted to. But now I felt like I should. “It’s about the man Lila met. The one she propositioned.”

  “Let me guess. You’ve realized the description sounds a lot like someone we both know.”

  It wasn’t a question. And she wasn’t looking at me, but kept her eyes on the legal pad, where she was doodling something. From the other side of the table and upside down, it looked like a hanged-man in the game that little children play. Gimme an R, I thought, gimme an A, gimme an F...

  When I didn’t answer, she added, with a glance at me from under her own lashes, “Did you ask him about it?”

  I grimaced. “Yes.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d care to share his answer with me?”

  “He said that if the open house robbers show up at my open house tomorrow, I shouldn’t tell them the same thing that Lila did.”

  “A threat?” Detective Grimaldi said interestedly.

  I shook my head. “Just a joke. You know Rafe. He never tells the truth if a lie will do, and there’s no telling what the truth is in this case. There are a lot of men out there with brown eyes. Every black, mixed-race, or Hispanic man in Nashville has dark eyes, and most of them have long, thick eyelashes, too. At least a few hundred must be over six feet tall, and I’m sure a lot of them call women darlin’. This is the South, after all.”

  “True.” She didn’t say anything else. I waited until I couldn’t handle the silence any longer.

  “So is that it? Can I go?”

  “Unless you’d like to look at the rest of my crime scene photos. Or you’ve remembered something else. Or have any questions. Or you’d like to try again to convince me why Mr. Collier couldn’t have strangled Ms. Vaughn.”

  She looked up, her eyes like knives slicing right through me. I shook my head. I had questions, but none that couldn’t wait. Right now, I just wanted to get out of this place, with its crime scene photos and dead bodies and bad memories. I’d save my breath for later, when it might do more good.

  For the record, I didn’t think Rafe had strangled Lila. There was a time, not too long ago, when I’d been worried that he might strangle me; but he didn’t, and I wasn’t about to suspect him of strangling anyone else. If he had managed to control himself under the circumstances I’d put him in, he would have managed to control himself with Lila. But if I tried to convince Detective Grimaldi of that, I’d probably only make him sound worse than he was. It wasn’t difficult to do. As Todd Satterfield’s paranoidal background check a few weeks ago had revealed, Rafe didn’t have a job, didn’t have any visible means of support, didn’t own property or borrow money or pay taxes; he hadn’t even had a verifiable address before he moved in with his grandmother. It all added up to someone living slightly below the radar, which – considering his history – probably meant that he was involved in something illegal. If Todd could come up with that information, chances were the police could do even better. And although I didn’t think Detective Grimaldi was the type to arrest someone without the necessary proof, I might be wrong. Better to wait until then to argue my case.

  Chapter Six

  As soon as I was out of the Center for Forensic Medicine parking lot, I made a beeline for Potsdam Street. My hands were shaking and I wanted nothing more than to go home and curl up and cry, but there was something I had to do first.

  101 Potsdam is a run-down Victorian house on a couple of acres in what isn’t the best part of town. It’s also Tondalia Jenkins’s house, where Brenda Puckett was killed a few weeks ago. As I had explained to Kieran Greene yesterday, Brenda had taken advantage of old Mrs. Jenkins’s dementia to con the woman into selling her home. Brenda signed Mrs. Jenkins to an illegal net-contract, under which Mrs. J would receive a paltry $100,000, with the rest of the profit from the sale going to Brenda. Who then listed the property for sale for three or four times what Mrs. Jenkins was due. Walker was aware of it, but it wasn’t until Rafe showed up and started asking questions, that Walker decided that Brenda had been a liability long enough. After the murders and Walker’s arrest, and with Steven Puckett’s help, it had been a fairly easy task to have the property returned to Mrs. Jenkins. Rafe had moved her out of the nursing home where Brenda had stuck her, and had hired a full-time nurse for her. This was the person who answered the door when I knocked, with a glare and an unfriendly greeting.

  “What you want?”

  Marquita and I had met before. We had gone to high school together, for one thing, although we hadn’t had any contact that I could remember. But she had been hanging around Rafe ever since he came back to Middle Tennessee, so I’d encountered her on a few occasions lately. She was a black woman a year or two older than me, with breasts the size of watermelons and a derriere that strained the fabric of the hot pink nurse’s scrubs she had on. She was fiercely possessive of Rafe, whom she had known (and wanted) since they were both teenagers, and she didn’t like me because she thought he was paying me too much attention. It didn’t seem to have crossed her mind that I would never, ever view him in the light of a potential boyfriend and thus wasn’t a threat to her plans of snagging him for herself. (Although I have to admit I haven’t always been above yanking her chain.) I wasn’t surprised at her tone of voice, or her aggressive stance, with hands on her hips and her chins jutting out.

  I smiled sweetly. “Hello, Marquita. So nice to see you. You look lovely today. That bright pink is a good color for you.”

  She folded her massive arms across her super-sized chest and scowled. “What you doing here?”

  So much for softening her up. “I’m looking for your employer.” I glanced past her ample shoulder into the dusky interior of the hallway. She moved to block my gaze.

  “He ain’t here.”

  “And you wouldn’t tell me if he was. When do you expect him back?”

  Her shrug was eloquent.

  “Well, when was the last time you saw him?”

  “He ain’t been here much lately,” Marquita said grudgingly.

  “Surely he comes home to see his grandmother?”

  Marquita shrugged again.

  “It’s important that I talk to him,” I said. “When you see him, would you tell him I’m looking for him? Someone’s dead, and the police are going to want to talk to him. Believe me, you don’t want him to get arrested so he can’t pay your salary. I know you don’t like me, but really, it would be best to tell him that I was here and what I said.”

  Marquita didn’t answer, just took a step back and slammed the heavy oak door in my face. I thought she’d taken my point, however. Especially the one about her salary. I felt reasonably confident that I’d hear from Rafe at some point during the evening.

  * * *

  In all the hoopla, I’d forgotten that tonight was Saturday night and that I had a date with Todd. By the time I remembered, it was too late to head him off. I didn’t feel much like going, but he had reserved a table for dinner, and bought tickets to the theatre, and was probably already on his way up from Sweetwater, so I didn’t have much choice. Mother would never let me hear the end of it if I stood him up. And it might just help to take my mind off things. I rushed home and got ready in record time. In black, as a tribute to Lila. (And also because black is quite slimming and goes well with my blonde hair and pale skin. Not to mention how easy it
is to accessorize.) I pulled my favorite little black dress over my head, threw on a pearl necklace and some matching earrings, pulled my hair back in a sleek (and easy) chignon, and stepped into strappy sandals. When Todd knocked on the door at 5 o’clock sharp, I was touching up my lipstick in front of the hall mirror.

  We ended up at Fidelio’s again, of course. I don’t know why Todd kept insisting on bringing me there, but I’ve been too well brought up to inform a gentleman that I don’t like his choice of restaurant. I went along without demur. If nothing else, I could always count on the cuisine to be first-rate. No telephone calls interrupted the peace of our meal this time, and Todd was suitably sympathetic about Lila’s death and my interrogation by the big, bad detective.

  “And they think her ill-advised remark last Sunday is to blame?”

  “They think there’s a connection between the robbery and the murder, yes. That the murderer was one of the robbers, or maybe someone she told about the remark she made.”

  “Or someone they told,” Todd suggested.

  I nodded, even as the chicken piccata turned to sawdust in my mouth. “I’ve certainly told enough people, and there’s no telling whom they told. Gosh, I hope I didn’t inadvertently give someone the idea to kill her...!”

  “Who did you tell?” Todd wanted to know.

  I answered without thinking. “First there was you, of course, and Detective Grimaldi, and Rafe Collier, and Kieran Greene...”

  Todd fixed on the only name in the litany that interested him. “When did you see Collier?”

  I could have kicked myself, but I did my best to make my own voice sound calm and even. “The same night I spoke with you.”

  Todd’s eyes narrowed. “I brought you home at ten o’clock!”