A Done Deal Read online

  “It’s Maybelle’s spare key,” Alexandra said. “I took it from her house.”

  I blinked. “Don’t you think she’ll miss it?”

  She shook her head. “I borrowed the key she keeps at our house to go across the street to her house to pick up one of the spare keys from over there—she has a couple of them in a junk drawer in the kitchen—and then I took the original key back to our house and put it back. Unless she goes looking for her spare, she won’t notice it’s gone. And she’s hardly ever in her own house anymore. She’s moved into ours.”

  Right. Maybelle must be well-off if she could afford to let her house just sit there gathering dust without anyone living in it. Why didn’t she put it on the market and get rid of it?

  “What do you want me to do with it?”

  Alexandra had folded her hands so hard her knuckles showed white. “I thought maybe you could go over there and have a look around.”

  Breaking and entering? It wouldn’t be the first time, although last time I’d known what I was looking for. And I’d had had company.

  “What is it you’re hoping to find?” I asked.

  “Not sure,” Alexandra answered.

  “Well, how would I know what to look for?”

  “You wouldn’t,” Alexandra said. “I figured you’d just recognize it when you saw it.”

  With my vast experience in all matters criminal and murderous, I suppose.

  “Hasn’t your dad been in Maybelle’s house? Wouldn’t he have noticed if there was anything criminal sitting around?”

  “It wouldn’t be just sitting around, Savannah. If it was just sitting around, I’d have seen it this morning. You’ll have to search for it.”

  “But you don’t know what it is.” And around and around we went.

  Alexandra widened her eyes and leaned forward. “Please help me. I can’t have Maybelle for a stepmother. I can’t. Just go there and look around. Please. Maybe you’ll notice something.”

  I sighed. “Fine. But if I’m going to break and enter, you’re going to have to make sure I don’t get caught.”

  “I’ve got it all figured out,” Alexandra said and sat back, in full possession of herself again. “You said you’re not doing anything this afternoon, right? You can go over there then. Maybelle and I are going Christmas shopping. Girl time.” She grimaced.

  “So you’ll keep her away from her house?”

  “I don’t think we’re coming back until late,” Alexandra confirmed. “Maybelle has her pottery class this morning. When she gets back, we’ll get ready to go. She’s taking me to lunch first, and then we’re going shopping. It’ll take hours.”

  “What about your dad and Austin?” They lived right across the street from Maybelle’s house; they might notice me.

  “Austin has a basketball game,” Alexandra said. “Dad’s taking him. They’ll be gone most of the afternoon, too.”

  So the Puckett house would be empty. And Maybelle’s cottage would be empty. That left only the other neighbors to worry about. It was broad daylight, after all. They’d be awake, and around.

  “I’m not sure about this,” I said.

  Alexandra widened her eyes again, and I capitulated. “All right, I’ll do it. But if I go to jail, you’d better raid your piggy bank to bail me out.”

  Alexandra held up two fingers in a solemn Girl Scout oath.

  Once our business was settled, I expected her to get up and leave, to get ready for her date with Maybelle. She has a habit of being abrupt like that. But instead she settled into the chair for a chat. “How did it go last month with David Flannery?”

  I sat back too, in a sort of instinctive rejection of the subject.

  Last month, when I’d been helping Dix track down Elspeth Caulfield’s heir, I’d used the logo on the boy’s shirt, the only clue we had as to where to find him, to trace him to Montgomery Bell Academy, one of Nashville’s premier prep schools. As it happens, Austin Puckett attends MBA too, and when the office staff refused to help me, I contacted Alexandra, and through her, her brother. When I showed him the photograph I’d found in Elspeth’s bedside drawer, Austin identified the boy in the picture as David Flannery. And Alexandra, once she got a good look at him, identified David’s father.

  I’m talking about David’s biological father, not Sam Flannery, the man who adopted him. Sam and Ginny Flannery have been David’s parents for as long as the boy’s been alive. But he’d been conceived during a one night stand in Sweetwater almost thirteen years ago, when Rafe had been drunk and Elspeth used it to take advantage of him.

  Alexandra Puckett has always had a sort of crush on Rafe. Not seriously, because—as I’d made sure to point out—he was too old for her and not the kind of man a nice girl should get involved with. But she liked him a lot. And because David looks a lot like Rafe, she’d had no problem guessing the relationship.

  I should have been prepared for the question this morning. I wasn’t.

  “It went OK, I guess.” Apart from the fact that David had run away when he got the news that the people he thought were his parents weren’t really his parents, and Rafe had come back from Atlanta to help look for him, and I hadn’t told him I was pregnant, and then I’d had a miscarriage and my life had fallen apart.

  Talking about David Flannery opened up wounds I preferred not to have to deal with.

  “I’m sorry about Rafe,” Alexandra said.

  “Me, too.” Although at the moment I was more angry than anything else. I’d resisted him as long as I could, and I’d finally given in and slept with him, and I’d gotten pregnant and gone through hell trying to decide whether to keep the baby, only to lose it after all... and during all of that, he’d had another girlfriend? The bastard.

  But how did Alexandra know any of that? I hadn’t told her.

  And then I realized what she was talking about. The last time we’d spoken, I’d told her Rafe was dead.

  It’s a long story. Back in September, a hired gun named Jorge Pena showed up in Middle Tennessee to kill Rafe. At this point, I still didn’t know who had hired him, and I had no idea whether Rafe did. In the process, Rafe got shot and Jorge got dead—along with Elspeth Caulfield—and in the aftermath, the powers that be at the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations dreamed up a rather convoluted plot in which Rafe was declared dead in Jorge’s place and then Rafe became Jorge while trying to figure out who had sent Jorge after him. Everyone was told he was dead. I was told he was dead. For eight interminable hours—an eternity—I’d thought he was. Then I’d found out the truth: that in order to protect his cover and his life, it was important that everyone believed he was dead. So that’s what I’d told Alexandra.

  By now, my family, along with Todd and Bob Satterfield, had seen him and knew he was alive and well. But I hadn’t heard that the investigation was over, so I didn’t think I should tell Alexandra the truth. Much as I wanted someone to talk to about what had happened last night.

  “I should go,” Alexandra said. “Are you OK, Savannah?” She looked at me with concern.

  I forced a smile. “I’m fine, thank you. I’ll go over to Maybelle’s after I leave here at noon. If anything changes between now and then, let me know. You have my number, right?”

  Alexandra nodded. “Text me when you’re done. That way I know it’s safe to come back home.”

  I said I would and she put on her jacket and wrapped her scarf back around her throat and headed out. I went back to Cosmo while I waited for the phone to ring.

  Chapter 4

  The Pucketts live in a big brick Tudor on a winding suburban road some fifteen minutes from the office. I’d been there twice before. Once for the aftermath of Brenda’s funeral—a catered affair where her friends and colleagues gathered to commiserate and celebrate—and once to drop Alexandra off at home that night she’d called me in despair after finding out that her unsuitable boyfriend may have had something to do with her mother’s death.

  Maybelle’s house was across the street f
rom the Pucketts’, a much smaller English cottage in gray stone. I’d never been there, other than to get into her car once when it was parked in the driveway. This was while she was still making a pretense of living there, before she’d moved right into Brenda’s life—and Brenda’s home.

  The driveway ran along the right side of the property. Luckily, it curved around to the back, and I was able to pull my Volvo all the way behind the house, so it couldn’t be seen from the street. That wouldn’t save me from the piercing glances of the neighbors on either side, let alone if Maybelle came home earlier than expected and decided to tuck her Christmas purchases away in her own house for safekeeping, but it was better than nothing.

  I got out and slammed the car door behind me, taking a thorough look around as I wandered slowly toward the back door, fumbling in my pocket for the key.

  The house on the left was a 1940s brick bungalow: it had the half-timbered Tudor accents on the eaves and porch, but apart from that it had the shape of a story-and-a-half cottage. I couldn’t see the house on the other side too well; it was farther away, and there were a few trees and bushes along the property line. Most were bare now in December, but one or two were evergreens, which effectively blocked my view. I could see glimpses of red brick, and I was pretty sure what was over there was a classic mid-century cottage, but I couldn’t actually see it, or any sign of life in that direction.

  The key Alexandra had given me fit perfectly in lock of the back door. I held my breath as I twisted it and pushed the door open. If Maybelle had an alarm system, and kept it armed, I was in trouble.

  She didn’t. There was no telltale red or green light blinking, and no threatening wail cutting through the silence. I started breathing again, and stepped over the threshold, closing the door behind me before looking around.

  I was in Maybelle’s kitchen. White cabinets, many of them with glass fronts. Granite counters. Stainless steel appliances. Tile floor and backsplash.

  It was beautiful, and bespoke excellent taste and enough money to indulge it. It wasn’t ostentatious, but it was tasteful and costly, and I knew a lot of people who wouldn’t be able to afford a kitchen like this. If it came to it, my own kitchen was nowhere near as nice. I didn’t own my apartment, and it was fairly basic in design, with maple cabinets and a laminate counter. Nothing wrong with laminate, although granite does look a lot nicer. My appliances weren’t stainless steel either, but plain white.

  Anyway, Maybelle didn’t look like she was hurting for money. She wasn’t marrying Steven Puckett for his. Unless she subscribed to that old adage that a woman can never be too rich or too thin.

  Leaving the kitchen behind, I wandered into the dining room, taking in the antique table and chairs, gleaming with polish, and the matching sideboard sporting a bowl of fake fruit, a pair of candle sticks in what looked like real silver, and a few photographs in matching frames.

  Outside, a car door slammed, and I jumped. After a minute, when nothing had happened—no knock on the door or anything—I slunk over to the window and peered out, while making sure to keep behind Maybelle’s sheer curtains.

  There was nothing to be seen. No car in the driveway, no sign of life. Shaking off the instant of panic, I went back to the sideboard and picked up one of the pictures.

  It was Maybelle, a few years younger than now, standing on what looked like the Great Wall of China. Other than being younger, she looked exactly the same. Fluffy blonde hair, sweet smile, short stature and a little too much junk in the trunk. Maybelle is what’s usually called pleasingly plump, and the man who had his arm around her in the picture seemed to be getting in a good squeeze.

  It was probably her late husband, whatever his name was. I didn’t think I’d ever heard it. Whenever she’d talked about him, Maybelle had just called him her husband. They hadn’t had any children, I knew that; that was probably why she was so determined to glom onto Alexandra and Austin.

  The other photographs were of Maybelle and Mr. Maybelle, as well. They had traveled extensively, not only to the Far East, but to Egypt and Venice and what looked like Hawaii. There was a volcano in the background of one of the pictures, anyway. He was always keeping an arm around her, and she always had her hands in her pockets or folded across her front, which seemed telling. I had seen a few pictures like that of myself, while I was married to Bradley. He kept a possessive arm around my waist or shoulders, and I smiled at the camera and endured.

  Not that I minded Bradley, you understand. I’d married him. He was everything I was brought up to look for in a husband, and we got along reasonably well. Everywhere except in bed, anyway. But because that aspect of our marriage was questionable—with Bradley telling me it was all my fault and me assuming it was just the way sex was supposed to be: bad—I didn’t like for him to touch me, and I liked less to touch him, since I was afraid it would lead to more bad sex. Maybe Maybelle and her husband had had a bad sex-life too.

  Hopefully hers and Steven’s was better.

  And then I cut off the train of thought before it could go any further. I had no need to speculate on Steven Puckett’s prowess or lack thereof in bed.

  I opened the drawers in the sideboard, but there was nothing of interest there, just folded tablecloths and napkins, silverware and the like. I recognized the pattern. Old Master by Towle. Introduced in 1942; current value $120 per dinner fork. My ex-mother-in-law, Bradley’s mother, had owned a set, jealously guarded. I dare say, if John had threatened to divorce her, she would have let him keep the antebellum mansion and the Cadillac before she would have parted with the Old Master.

  The two doors on either side of the drawers held flat- and hollow-ware. Genuine Wedgwood, with the traditional blue stripe. Expensive and lovely. Only the best for Maybelle.

  The living room was next to the dining room, and was a lovely creation in cream, brown, and more blue. Maybelle had excellent taste. There were a couple more photographs, as well as an almost life-sized oil painting of Maybelle hanging above the marble-trimmed fireplace. She was wearing a dress in what must be her favorite blue—the same blue she’d worn to Brenda’s funeral, and the same blue that was in the chair and sofa pillows—and she was smiling serenely out of an ornate gold frame.

  I went from the living room down a short hall to the bedrooms. It was a small house, so there were only two. One opposite from the hall bath, outfitted as an office-cum-guestroom, and one at the end of the house. It was large, with a king sized bed—blue bedspread, of course—and a sitting area over by the front bay window. Like everything else in the house it was exquisitely lovely, expensive, and unlived-in.

  I checked the drawers in the bedside tables, but there was nothing there worth mentioning. Maybelle didn’t read romances; I found a book on do-it-yourself financial planning on one side of the bed and a true crime on the other. Either could have belonged to Maybelle, just like either could have belonged to whoever shared her bed last. Steven or her late husband, or for all I knew, someone else entirely.

  There was an attached bath, which held only what you’d expect a bath to hold—including a lot of marble; Maybelle must be a fan—and a huge walk-in closet with a lot of summer clothes, the majority in shades of blue, and a few cardboard boxes and plastic containers. Maybelle must have moved her winter clothes over to Steven’s house. I checked a couple of the boxes and found, among other things, a sewing machine, old issues of Southern Living, Christmas and Halloween decorations, and extra linens. It was just over a week until Christmas, and the decorations were still in the box: I assumed Maybelle wouldn’t be decorating her home for Christmas this year. She was probably too busy decorating Steven’s house.

  The last room was the office, and I walked in and stopped in the middle of the floor, hands on my hips, looking around.

  It was much smaller than the master bedroom. Must have been intended as a kid bedroom, maybe, when the house was first built. Or perhaps Maybelle and her husband had done renovations to the house at some point and combined two smaller bedro
oms into the master. Maybe all the bedrooms had been smaller originally.

  There was a futon against one wall: fake suede and stainless steel. A glass-topped desk sat under the window with a container of pens and pencils on one corner and another photograph on the other. There was no paperwork and no computer. If Maybelle owned one, she must have taken it across the street to Steven’s house. The picture was a portrait of Maybelle with the ocean in the background. Maybe the husband had taken it.

  There were no drawers in the desk, nowhere to hide anything. I looked around.

  A filing cabinet stood in the corner, matte black in color. The top drawer yielded to my pull, and turned out to hold the usual kind of domestic paperwork. Bank statements—Maybelle was well off, although she wasn’t what I’d call filthy rich; her bank balance was in the low six figures. Considerably higher than mine, yes, but hardly anything suspicious. Tax returns, IRA reports, a file for medical information which yielded nothing of interest, mortgage statements, old bills, and so forth. The tax returns from more than three years ago told me that Mr. Maybelle’s name had been Harold and that he’d been a CPA. The financial planning book in the bedside table must have been his. Or maybe Maybelle had pretended an interest in her husband’s work by reading it.

  The bottom drawer was locked, and refused to open when I pulled on the handle. Frustrated, I looked around for the key. There had to be one. And if Maybelle was like most of us, she’d keep it nearby. Even if she kept a key to the filing cabinet on her key ring, and took it with her when she left the house, she’d want a spare just in case the other got lost.

  I checked the desk, inside the pencil container and behind the photograph. Along the windowsill. I felt around the edges of the filing cabinet in case it was taped underneath.

  Nothing.

  Straightening, I scowled at the pristine room. Where else could it be?

  Alexandra had mentioned finding the spare house key in the junk drawer in the kitchen. Maybe the file cabinet key was there, too.