Right of Redemption Read online

  But there was no point in telling Enoch that. The whole right of redemption situation would only make us—and Charlotte—look more suspicious.

  “We left at the same time,” I said. “I saw her get into her car and drive away.”

  Enoch didn’t say anything to that.

  “We were just about to call 911,” Darcy added, “when you showed up. Would you like us to do that now, or will you take care of it?”

  “I’ll take care of it.” Enoch looked her up and down. “Haven’t I seen you before?”

  “I’m dating Patrick Nolan,” Darcy said. “Lupe Vasquez’s partner.”

  “And what’s your connection to—” He gestured; it took in the house, the dead body, and me, “all this?”

  “I put up the money for the house,” Darcy said steadily. “Savannah’s my sister.”

  Enoch looked at me, and back at Darcy. “Don’t you mean sister-in-law?”

  I shook my head. “She’s Rafe’s second cousin once or twice removed,” which explained the resemblance, “but my sister.”

  Enoch thought about it for a second, and then shrugged, like it didn’t matter. And for his purposes, it didn’t. “I have to call this in.” He reached for the phone in the holster on his belt, but before he could pull it, there was a sound in the front of the house, followed by rapid footsteps coming down the hallway. Instead of the phone, Enoch smoothly pulled his gun from the holster and, putting himself between Darcy and me and whoever was coming, moved into firing stance, legs planted and gun trained on the doorway.

  Eight

  Charlotte stopped in the doorway with a startled squeak, her lips forming into an O and her eyes widening. Enoch’s finger twitched on the trigger, and I took a step forward before I made myself stop.

  “I think it’s safe, Officer. You can put the gun away.”

  He shot me a look like he didn’t like me telling him what to do, but I guess he saw the absurdity in keeping a pistol trained on a twenty-eight-year-old mother of two who looked about as threatening as June Cleaver, because he lowered the weapon.

  Charlotte looked beyond him to me and Darcy. “Savannah! What’s going on?”

  And then she saw the dead body, and her eyes bugged out and her cheeks turned pale. “Oh, my God. Is that—?”

  “Dead body,” I said, before she could speak Steve Morris’s name and let on that we knew who he was. Enoch hadn’t asked that question yet, and if he did, of course I’d answer truthfully. But until then, it didn’t seem like a good idea to volunteer the information that Morris was trying to take our house away. Enoch might get ideas about motives for murder. “We should get out of here. The longer we stay here, the more DNA we’re dropping on the crime scene.”

  Enoch nodded, holstering the gun. “Yes. Out. You can wait in your cars while I call this in.”

  No problem. “Come on.” I nudged Charlotte out the door ahead of me, while Darcy brought up the rear. We scooped up the baby seat with Carrie on the way past, and headed out. The last thing I saw was Enoch pulling out his phone before we passed out of sight.

  We ended up in the Volvo. Charlotte started to ask questions as soon as we’d left the den, but I shushed her until we were outside. There, I snapped Carrie’s seat back into the base while Darcy crawled in next to her and Charlotte opened the passenger door. Since only the driver’s seat was available, I made myself comfortable there. It was my car, so maybe it made sense.

  Charlotte still looked a little pale. “Was that who I think it was?”

  “The guy from yesterday,” I said. “Steve Morris.”

  “And he’s dead?”

  “I didn’t touch him, but he looked dead.” I met Darcy’s eyes in the mirror. “I’d be very surprised if he turns out to be alive.”

  “Where did the cop come from?”

  “He lives down the street,” I said. “He showed up when Rafe and I were here last Friday night, too. And pointed his gun at me. Pearl went ballistic, and Rafe wasn’t too happy, either.”

  I turned to Darcy. “You mentioned Lupe Vasquez. Something going on?”

  “Who’s Lupe Vasquez?” Charlotte shot in.

  I turned to her. “She’s Nolan’s partner. Nolan is Darcy’s boyfriend.”

  “I asked them about Enoch,” Darcy said. “After you mentioned what happened when you and Rafe were here. They both said they knew who he was. Lupe said he’s asked her out a couple of times.”

  “They’ve gone out?”

  She shook her head. “She said he isn’t her type.”

  “What’s her type?” I mean, on the surface of it, she could do worse than Enoch. He was decent-looking, gainfully employed, and he owned a home. All the things Mother had taught me to look for in a man.

  “Not a cop,” Darcy said with a grin.

  “Ah.” Yes, when you’re in that line of work, it’s probably nice to go home to someone who isn’t steeped in the same kind of world.

  “How did he get in there?” Charlotte asked.

  We were back to Morris again, I assumed, since Enoch had found the door open and walked in. Both last Friday night and this morning.

  “One of the panes in the fifteen-light door was broken. I guess he waited until dark, snuck around the back of the house, busted the window, reached through and unlocked the door, and came inside.”

  “And someone stabbed him,” Charlotte said with a shudder.

  I nodded. “With one of our screwdrivers. The one you used on the ceiling fan a few days ago.”

  We sat in silence a moment. In the backseat, Carrie gurgled.

  “You didn’t come back here after we left yesterday,” I asked Charlotte, “did you?”

  She shook her head.

  “Can you prove it?”

  A flush of red rose in her cheeks, the first sign of color I’d seen in her face since Enoch pointed his gun at her. “Are you insinuating that I might have killed him?”

  “Of course not,” I said. “Although someone else might. Because someone did. Someone who was in our house last night along with Steve Morris. That—” I nodded to the house, and the crime scene inside, “wasn’t an accident. Someone picked up that screwdriver and stabbed him with it deliberately.”

  I waited a second to let that sink in before I added, “I was home with Rafe last night. Darcy was with Nolan. They both work for the police department, so we both have solid alibis.”

  “It sounds like you’re saying you think I killed him,” Charlotte said steadily.

  “I’m not.” I refrained from rolling my eyes, but it took effort. “I know you wouldn’t kill anyone. But the murder weapon—”

  “The screwdriver,” Charlotte said.

  I nodded. “It probably has your fingerprints all over it. You used it a couple of days ago. Between that and the fact that he was threatening to take our house back, you had means and motive. If you can’t prove that you were somewhere else when he was murdered, someone could make a good case that you killed him.”

  There was a moment’s silence. “I didn’t,” Charlotte said.

  “Of course you didn’t,” I answered, while Darcy added, “No one thinks you did.”

  “He might think so.” Charlotte directed a scowl at the house, and at Enoch, behind the wall.

  I nodded. “He might.” In fact, he had intimated as much. “Although it won’t be his case. Enoch’s an officer. They don’t investigate murders. The police department will send out a detective.” And not Rafe, who had his hands full in Laurel Hill. “That’s why it would be good if you could prove that you were somewhere else when it happened.”

  “I’ll talk to my parents,” Charlotte said, and in the rearview mirror, I saw Darcy’s brows wing up.

  I looked away from her and to Charlotte. “When you say you’ll talk to your parents… are you saying that you weren’t home last night?”

  Because if she had been, what would be the point of talking to her parents? If she’d been there, naturally they’d say that she’d been there.


  “I was home most of last night,” Charlotte said.

  “When were you not home?”

  She squirmed. “I put the kids to bed and went for a drive.”

  There was a beat of silence.

  “A drive?” I said.

  Charlotte nodded, her cheeks pink and her lips pressed together.

  “Tell me you didn’t drive here.”

  She didn’t, and I added, “You didn’t drive here, right?”

  “I drove past here,” Charlotte said.

  “Why would you…?!” I stopped myself and lifted a hand. “Never mind.”

  “I was upset,” Charlotte said, “OK? This isn’t a big deal to you.” Her glance over her shoulder took in Darcy. “You’ve got money, and husbands, or boyfriends. You’re all set. I don’t have either. My husband cheated on me and won’t pay alimony, and the kids and I have to eat. I need to figure my life out. I thought renovating this house was going to take care of that. But then that… that man showed up, and said he was going to take the house away…!”

  I nodded sympathetically while I thought that, at this point anyway, chances were that we didn’t have to worry about that anymore. Now that Steve Morris was dead, and probably before he’d had time to take steps to invoke his statutory right of redemption, chances were the house would remain ours.

  Although this didn’t seem like an opportune time to mention that. Charlotte might appreciate hearing it, but with Morris lying dead in the den, it seemed a bit tactless.

  “Did you happen to notice anything when you drove by last night?” Darcy wanted to know. “A car? Anyone breaking in? Someone walking down the street?”

  She shook her head. “Everything looked normal. Lights on on the porches. TVs on. The old lady was walking the little dog. I didn’t see anyone else.”

  “What time was it?” Probably too early for B&E. If Morris was going to break into our house—even if he might have thought of it as his own house—he probably would have waited until most people were in bed.

  Or at least that’s what I would have done, had it been me.

  “Ten?” Charlotte said, and made it a question. “Ten-thirty?”

  So the small dog had probably been out for a tinkle before bed.

  “Did the lady with the dog see you?”

  “Probably,” Charlotte said. “I mean, she was right there.” She pointed up and across the street.

  “Good.”

  She squinted at me. “What’s good about it?”

  “If she saw you, she can tell the police that you just drove by. You didn’t stop or didn’t leave you car. If you didn’t leave your car, you couldn’t have killed Morris.”

  Charlotte nodded, sinking her teeth into her bottom lip and looking pensive.

  We seemed to be at the end of this particular subject, unless we wanted to go back to the beginning and hash it out again. And I didn’t see the need.

  “So what’s Nolan up to today?” I asked Darcy, to have something else to talk about while we waited.

  She shrugged. “Just the usual. He and Lupe are patrolling.”

  “What about Rafe?” Charlotte asked.

  “He’s down in Lawrence County, at Laurel Hill Wildlife Area, with Tamara Grimaldi and Bob Satterfield and the sheriffs of Lawrence, Lewis, and Giles.”

  Charlotte arched her brows, and I added, “Rumor has it there’s a neo-Nazi group meeting down there on the weekends. They’re trying to figure out if it’s true, and who those people are.”

  Charlotte stared at me. “Are you sure your husband should be part of that?”

  Because he was the kind of person those kinds of people targeted? “When the police come to arrest them, I don’t think they’re going to care about the skin color of the cop holding the handcuffs. Besides, Sheriff Jackson in Giles County is black, too.”

  More black than Rafe, in fact, since Rafe’s mother had been as blond and blue-eyed as I am.

  “Still,” Charlotte said. “Aren’t you worried?”

  Of course I was worried. I was always worried. But I’d been more worried when he’d gone undercover as Ry’mone the gun dealer, with saggy pants and dreadlocks and a gold front tooth, and put himself in the middle of a brewing gang war. Not to mention when he’d dressed up as Jorge Pena, international hit man—the same hit man who had been hired to kill him—and walked into the middle of Hector Gonzales’s South American Theft Gang.

  And if he’d survived those, he’d survive this.

  “He’ll be fine,” I said. “They’re just looking around. They did it last weekend, too. Nobody was there then. If somebody’s there now, they’ll keep them under surveillance and probably follow some of them home. If not, they’ll go back next weekend.”

  Charlotte nodded.

  “Anyway, he was wearing soft clothes—not that he ever wears anything but soft clothes, really—so it isn’t likely that anyone’s going to look at him and think, ‘there’s a cop.’ He doesn’t look like law enforcement.”

  More like the other type of person who frequents a police station.

  Darcy hid a smile, and I smiled back in the mirror. “You know it’s true. He’s getting a little older, but other than that, he still slides right in with the gang bangers and drug dealers and thieves.”

  “I’m not arguing,” Darcy said. “Although for the record, he looks more like a TV criminal than a real one. Most real criminals are ugly. He’s not.”

  No, he wasn’t. But he still carried that edge of danger with him. That sense that if you did something he didn’t like, he had the capacity to hurt you.

  Not that he’d ever hurt me, or Darcy or Charlotte, or anyone else who didn’t deserve it. But the capacity was there, and palpable.

  Outside on the street, an unmarked sedan pulled past us, executed a neat turn, and parked in front of the house on the other side of the street. A man got out, and I groaned.

  “What?” Charlotte said, while behind us, Darcy smirked.

  “That’s Detective Jarvis. It figures he’d be the one to get this case.”

  Charlotte looked from him—early forties, slick, dark hair, trench coat; the stereotype of the TV detective—to me. “Don’t you like him?”

  “I don’t dislike him,” I said. And amended it to, “I used to dislike him. He’s the one who had Beulah Odom exhumed last fall.”

  Charlotte’s eyebrows rose, and I continued, “I guess that’s probably unfair. Mrs. Otis Odom, Beulah’s sister-in-law, wouldn’t accept that Beulah had died from a heart attack, so she talked Chief Carter into ordering an exhumation. Jarvis just got the job of standing next to the digger.”

  “Beulah owned the restaurant on the Columbia Highway?”

  I nodded. “Now Yvonne McCoy owns it, which was part of what upset the Otis Odoms, and the reason why Mrs. Otis Odom wanted Beulah exhumed. She was trying to prove that Yvonne killed Beulah.”

  “And did she?” Charlotte looked fascinated. Meanwhile, Jarvis crossed in front of the Volvo, without realizing that we were here, and walked across the lawn and into the house.

  I shook my head. “Of course not. It’s possible someone did, but it wasn’t Yvonne. The second autopsy was inconclusive.” Just as the first one had been.

  After a second, I added, “I personally think that if anyone did it, the Otis Odoms probably did. I don’t think they realized that Beulah had written a will leaving the restaurant to Yvonne. But I don’t know if anyone will ever prove it. Or if there’s anything to prove. It might just have been a heart attack.”

  Charlotte nodded. “So Detective Jarvis…”

  “Couldn’t arrest Yvonne. He doesn’t like her much, though. A few weeks ago, he and Rafe cooperated on a case, or two cases that turned out to be related, and we met him at Beulah’s Meat’n Three to talk about things. Jarvis and Yvonne took one look at each other and bristled. Do you remember Yvonne?”

  Charlotte nodded. “Slutty redhead with big boobs and a thing for Dix.”

  Which would naturally bother Charlotte, wh
o had been dating my brother in high school. That was a long time ago, though.

  “She slept with Rafe once,” I said. “As far as I know, she never slept with Dix. And she’s not a slut. Just a bit less worried about the proprieties than some of us.”

  Some of us who, frankly, had been a little too worried about the proprieties. Speaking mostly about myself here, although Charlotte hadn’t been a whole lot better.

  “If you say so,” Charlotte said.

  “I do say so. I like Yvonne. Anyway, she and Jarvis don’t get along. But since she’s not involved in this, that shouldn’t matter for our purposes.”

  I glanced at the house, where Jarvis had disappeared.

  “Is he good at his job?” Darcy asked, and I moved my attention from the front door to the rearview mirror to meet her eyes.

  “Hard to say. He solves cases and makes arrests. Hopefully he arrests the right people. Although he’s obviously a little hung up on Yvonne…”

  “Do you think he’ll look past Charlotte and try to figure out if someone else killed Morris?” Darcy asked, putting it all on the table with cheerful efficiency.

  Charlotte gasped and lost some color. I shrugged. “I hope so. He didn’t seem unreasonable when I spoke to him about that other case. We’ll just have to hope for the best. And if he doesn’t look like he’s going to investigate well enough, we can always do some investigating of our own.”

  Neither of them looked particularly pleased about that idea.

  “Hey,” I said, “it beats going to trial for a crime you didn’t commit.”

  Up at the house, the door opened again, and Jarvis came out, followed by Enoch. They looked around for a second, and then Enoch indicated the Volvo. Jarvis scowled at it—at us—before he stepped off the porch and stomped across the grass.

  “Here we go,” Darcy said.

  Nine

  I opened my car door and gave Jarvis my best smile. “Good morning, Detective.”

  He grunted. “What are you doing here, Mrs. Collier?”

  “It’s my sister’s house.” I indicated Darcy, who had followed my example and gotten out of the car. “Do you know Darcy? She’s dating Patrick Nolan.”