Huh.
So Virgil was gone but Kenny still had his phone.
Shit. I mean... shoot. I had obviously misinterpreted something. Something vital.
When Kenny said that Virgil was gone, and wasn’t coming back, he didn’t mean that Virgil had left him.
He meant that Virgil was dead.
I drove back to the office in something close to shock—not only had
I not known, and not expected it, I had unwittingly broken all
rules of proper conduct by intruding on Virgil’s nearest and
dearest in their time of grief, not to mention that I had chalked
that grief up to Kenny being hung over.
Not a stellar afternoon on my part.
But at least I could break the news to Tim. Depending on when it had happened, he might already know, but maybe he didn’t. I hadn’t heard any talk about it, and considering that Virgil had been one of our clients, someone ought to have mentioned it.
Tim’s car was back in the lot, and he was in his office. I knocked on the open door and waited for him to acknowledge me.
“Oh,” he said. “It’s you again.”
I stepped through the doorway. “Do you have a minute?”
He had been in the process of writing, and now he put the pen down. “Is this about your anonymous letters again?”
Yes and no. “It’s about one of your clients.”
“My clients?”
I nodded. “Remember that transaction we did together over Christmas? The Victorian house?”
“Virgil and Stacy’s place,” Tim said. “Are those two girls the ones getting the letters?”
There didn’t seem to be any sense in lying about it anymore. “Yes. But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”
Tim’s brows drew together.
“I went to talk to Virgil and Stacy,” I said. “To see if they’d ever gotten any weird letters. If maybe that was the reason they’d decided to sell.”
Tim sounded offended. “They’d have told me if they did!”
Maybe, maybe not. Besides, I couldn’t trust that Tim would have told me. Client-realtor privilege, and all that. Confidentiality.
“Did you know that they aren’t together anymore?”
“Sure,” Tim said readily. “That’s why they were selling the house. Virgil was moving in with his new boyfriend, and Stacy couldn’t afford to keep the place by himself.”
Right. “Well, I tried to track them both down today. And I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, but...”
“Oh, my Lord Jesus!” Tim exclaimed, turning pale. He slapped a hand to his chest, right on top of the baby blue silk shirt. “He’s dead!”
I nodded. “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news...”
Tim was palpitating. Visibly. “I feel so guilty. It’s just a couple days since I saw him. If I’d had any idea...”
“I’m sure there was nothing you could have done,” I said, although I had no idea.
“How did it happen?”
“I’m not sure. I thought maybe you...?”
Tim shook his head. “I had no idea. He didn’t seem like anything was wrong. Certainly not like he was thinking of...” He swallowed.
I wasn’t sure if Virgil had taken his own life or not. I had hoped maybe Tim knew something, but it seemed not.
“I feel like I should have realized something was wrong,” he whimpered. “Nothing seemed off the other night. He seemed happy. He flirted with me! But he was so distraught back then. Losing not just his boyfriend, but his home...”
“Wasn’t it his decision?” If Virgil was moving in with Kenny, surely it was Virgil who had wanted the breakup to happen?
“Of course not,” Tim said. “It was Virgil’s decision.”
“That’s what I meant.”
We stared at one another for a second, across the desk.
“Isn’t it Stacy who’s dead?” Tim asked.
I shook my head.
“Virgil’s dead?!”
I nodded.
“Oh, my God!” Tim slumped.
“So let me get this straight. You thought it was Stacy who was dead? That he’d killed himself because Virgil dumped him?”
Tim nodded, fanning himself with his hand.
“He was that distraught?”
“Back when it happened, he was pretty upset. He was crazy about Virgil. And yeah, maybe he liked Virgil’s money, too. And the house. But he was devastated when Virgil kicked him to the curb.”
“It’s no fun to find out that your significant other is cheating,” I said, since I’d been in just that position with my first husband. Bradley had married his paralegal, Shelby, less than two weeks after our divorce was final.
“No kidding,” Tim told me. “I figured if one of them had died, it would have been Stacy. Virgil had no reason to end it all. He was happy. New boyfriend. New house. Plenty of money.”
While Stacy lived in a crappy rental in South Nashville and poured drinks for a living. Tim must have spent the night at South Street Bar recently, and seen him there.
“I’m not sure anyone ended anything,” I told Tim. “I have no idea what happened. Kenny—the new boyfriend—wasn’t forthcoming. He said he’d call the cops if I didn’t leave him alone. But for all I know it was a traffic accident. Or an aneurism. Or a heart attack.”
“He was my age!” Tim said.
So maybe not a heart attack. Although I guess it could happen to a man in his mid-thirties. I’m sure it has sometime, somewhere.
“I really don’t know,” I said. “And I didn’t know Virgil,” or Kenny, “so I’m sure he won’t tell me anything.”
“Maybe he’ll tell me,” Tim said, and started flipping through his Rolodex. I sank onto one of the chairs in front of the desk. He hadn’t invited me to stick around, but if he found out something, I’d like to know about it. I mean, that’s partly why I’d told him, so he could try to figure out what had happened.
I guess it was sort of crazy to wonder if Virgil had been driven to suicide by anonymous letters, but under the circumstances, it might not be as crazy as otherwise. And if there was a connection to Aislynn and Kylie, I wanted to know about it.
So I sat and waited while Tim found the number and dialed. And then I waited for the phone to be answered. And after that I waited for Tim to introduce himself. And that was all it took for the person on the other end of the line to start yapping. I couldn’t make out the words, but the thrust of the monologue was pretty obvious, especially when Tim glanced at me with a grimace. “Yes. I’m sorry about that.”
Kenny—I assumed it was Kenny—talked some more.
“I’m sorry,” Tim said again. “I just wanted to verify something she told me...”
Kenny kept talking.
“About Virgil,” Tim said loudly. “What happened to Virgil?”
Kenny talked. And this time Tim didn’t try to interrupt him, just listened. I shifted on my chair, annoyed that I couldn’t hear anything. Kenny’s voice was a whining drone, but I couldn’t make out the words he said.
“When?” Tim asked.
Kenny talked for another minute.
“When?” Tim said again.
Kenny answered.
“Is there anything I can do?”
Kenny must have said no, or maybe he told Tim that the best thing he could do was not call back, because Tim’s lips tightened and his eyes turned hard. “Thank you for your time,” he said, and stabbed the disconnect button with his finger. I just won’t repeat the word he directed at the phone after turning it off.
“I’m sure he’s distraught,” I said apologetically, as if it were my fault. In a sense, maybe it was. I had contacted Kenny first, and now Tim was bearing the brunt of the temper I had stirred up.
Tim scowled at me.
“What did he say?” I added.
Tim looked like he wasn’t sure he wanted to share it with me—I mentioned we don’t always get along—but in the end, he did. “Virgil died two days ago. Hit over the head with something while he was out jogging in Shelby Park. The police think it’s random violence.”
So not only was Kenny devastated, it was fresh devastation. Two days ago. Wow.
And then my mind started ticking.
“Why would anyone mug a jogger? It’s not like he’d be carrying any money.” Or even be wearing a fancy Rolex. I’ve heard of people getting killed for their sneakers, but that was a while ago, and surely didn’t apply to grown men out for a run in a city park.
“Hate crime,” Tim said.
“How would anyone know he was gay?” It isn’t like you can tell by the way someone jogs. “Did he look gay?”
“Not particularly,” Tim said. “Stacy was definitely the twinkie in that relationship.”
Thanks to a visit to a gay leather-bar once—don’t ask—I knew what that meant: a young, pretty gay guy. Nice to look at, but no substance.
“Or maybe he saw something he shouldn’t have seen,” Tim added. “Like a drug deal gone wrong.”
Quite possible. All sorts of shady dealings go on in the parks.
“But he didn’t kill himself.”
“No,” Tim said, and sounded disappointed.
So there was probably no connection whatsoever to my—or to Aislynn and Kylie’s—threatening letters.
“The funeral’s tomorrow,” Tim added.
“Someone should go.”
He looked at me, and I added, “He was a client. Of the brokerage. If you don’t have time, I can do it.”
Tim shrugged. “Knock yourself out.”
“You don’t want to?”
“I’ve got better things to do on a Saturday,” Tim said. “I don’t even know Kenny. And it’s not like Virgil cares.”
Maybe not. But— “What about Stacy?”
“Ooooh,” Tim said, his eyes lighting with maliciousness. “Now that might be fun. Stacy and Kenny facing off over the body.”
I winced. That wasn’t what I had meant, and secondly, the picture his words had painted was quite vivid and uncomfortable. But now that he had put the image in my mind, I could sort of see the appeal of it. However— “I’m sure it won’t be an open casket.”
“I don’t care,” Tim said. “I might have to make time for this after all.”
And so might I. I hadn’t known any of the parties involved, but aside from the sheer ghoulish appeal of seeing Stacy and Kenny squaring off over their dead lover, I was curious. The letters to Aislynn and Kylie had threatened physical harm. And now the previous owner of the house where the letters were sent had been killed. Violently.
I got to my feet. “Thanks for finding out what happened. Maybe I’ll see you at the funeral.”
Tim nodded. And although he didn’t say anything else, I could feel his speculative gaze on my back as I made my way to the door and out.
I left the office after that. I wanted to get away from Tim, and I
didn’t really want to make the next phone call from a place where
he could overhear me. So I got into the car, turned the AC on, and
told myself I was waiting for the interior to cool down before I
drove away, and in the interrim, I might as well call Tamara
Grimaldi and ask her what, if anything, she knew about Virgil
Wright’s death.
It took a couple of rings before she picked up. Then—“Ms... Savannah.”
“Detective,” I said.
“Everything OK?”
“Fine.” I told her what had transpired so far today, since the last time I talked to her. My talks with Kylie and Aislynn, my visit to Stacy’s apartment. For good measure, I threw in Rafe’s appearance, too. She didn’t say anything about it, but I’m pretty sure she was amused. I figured she would be; that’s why I’d mentioned it.
“I wanted to know if you could tell me anything about what happened to Virgil,” I added. “If he was mugged—or beaten up, or hit over the head—in the park, that’d be suspicious circumstances, right? And you’d be involved?”
“Not personally,” Grimaldi said, and I could hear the sound of a keyboard from the other end of the line, “but I can check and see who caught the case and maybe have a word with him or her. And maybe mention the letters.”
“Do you think there’s a connection?”
“Not likely,” Grimaldi said, “but you never know. That’s why you called me, right?”
She didn’t wait for me to answer, just added, “Here we go. Detective Mendoza got that one.”
The name sounded familiar, but it took me a second to place it. “That really good-looking guy my mother suggested I marry when Rafe didn’t show up at the courthouse? We met him at the Germantown Café for lunch?”
Grimaldi’s voice was dry. “That’s him.”
“Sorry. But he is good-looking.”
“Believe me,” Grimaldi said, “I know it.”
Uh-oh. “You don’t have a thing for him, do you?” That wouldn’t make my brother happy. “Or a past with him, or anything like that?”
“He’s married,” Grimaldi said, which didn’t answer either question.
“He’s going through a divorce.” At least that’s what he’d said on that memorable occasion when my mother had asked him whether he wanted to marry me: that he’d better wait until his divorce was final. “He probably cheated on his wife, didn’t he?”
“Undoubtedly,” Grimaldi said. “Women commit crimes just so they can get arrested by Jaime Mendoza.”
I wasn’t surprised. I’d only met him that one time, but it was no problem bringing the image to the forefront. He’d looked like an old matinee idol. Drop dead gorgeous. One of the best-looking men I’d ever seen. A bit too clean-cut for my taste—I wouldn’t have considered marrying him even if I hadn’t still been convinced that Rafe would turn up—but unquestionably handsome. “Is he any good?”
Grimaldi’s tone was frosty. “Excuse me?”
I rolled my eyes. “Not in bed.” Sheesh. “As a detective. Is he any good?”
“Yes,” Grimaldi said. “He’s very good.”
“So if there’s something fishy about Virgil’s death, he’d know?”
“If there’s something fishy about Mr. Wright’s death,” Grimaldi said, “I’m sure he’ll figure it out. He isn’t someone who takes the easy way out.”
Good to know. “Can you ask him about it?”
“I was just about to do that,” Grimaldi said. “Do you want to hang on, or do you want me to call you back?”
“I’m on my way home from the office. Why don’t I just drive,” without holding the phone to my ear, “and you can call me when you find out something.”
Grimaldi said she would, and we hung up. I put the car in gear and rolled out of the parking lot toward the house on Potsdam.
It wasn’t even five minutes before the phone rang. Not unexpectedly, it was Grimaldi calling back.
“Good news?” I wanted to know.
“Depends on what you consider good news. And I can’t give you any confidential details.”
Of course not.
“And all I have are the basics from the file. I tried to call Jaime, but he didn’t answer. So these are just the basics.”
“OK,” I said.
“The murder happened Wednesday night, sometime between seven-thirty and eight. Mr. Wright was seen entering the park a couple of minutes after seven-thirty. He’d jogged from his home on Warner Avenue. His car was still parked there, and one of the neighbors saw him leave.”
So far, so good.
“He took the route around the baseball diamonds,” Grimaldi said. “That doesn’t mean anything to me, but it might to you.”
It did. I lived in East Nashville, and was familiar with the park. However, I had thought the detective was, as well. “You were there in February, weren’t you? When what’s-his-name was killed? The guy in the sheet?”
“Only in the area where the body was found,” Grimaldi said, “and that was nowhere near the baseball diamonds.”
“Where was this body found? Virgil’s?”
Grimaldi must have consulted her notes, because it took her a second to answer. “He went around the lake, past the duck habitat and the public restrooms, and then he chose a smaller path that ran through the woods back in the direction he’d come.”
“That’s interesting.” The smaller paths weren’t anywhere near as comfortable to run on as the paved roads. And by then—close to eight o’clock—the path through the woods must have been getting dark. The roads had lights, but the paths didn’t. “I wonder why.”
“It might just have been what he did,” Grimaldi said. “Or maybe he saw someone he knew. Or had an assignation with someone.”
Maybe. “So that’s where he was killed? On the path?”
Grimaldi said it was. “When he didn’t come home by nine, the boyfriend went looking for him.”
“And found him?”
“No,” Grimaldi said. “The boyfriend was in his car. He couldn’t drive the path. So Mr. Wright wasn’t discovered until the next morning, by a man walking a dog.”
Poor Kenny. No wonder he was distraught.
On the bright side, he hadn’t been the one to find his dead lover. But on the other hand, he must be thinking that if he’d only found Virgil the night it happened instead of the next morning, maybe there would have been a way to save him.
I tried to shake it off. “Does Detective Mendoza have any suspects?”
“That’s something I can’t tell you,” Grimaldi said.
“Why? Because you don’t know?”
“That. And also because it’s none of your business.”
There wasn’t much I could say to that. She was right. Still, I wasn’t ready to give up. “Tim said it might have been a hate crime.”
“It’s possible,” Grimaldi said.
“Is Detective Mendoza investigating it as a hate crime?”
“I just told you,” Grimaldi said, “I don’t know what Jaime’s doing. But I’m sure he’s looking into all the possibilities.”
He probably was. “I just want to know if there’s a connection, you know? I mean, it’s suspicious, isn’t it? Aislynn and Kylie get threatening anonymous letters, and the guy who lived in their house before them ends up dead.”
“Do you think Aislynn and Kylie killed him?” Grimaldi wanted to know.
“No!” God, no. Of course not. “Why would they?”
“Maybe he wrote the letters,” Grimaldi said.
“Why would he do that?”
I think Grimaldi shrugged. I got the impression she shrugged. “Why would anyone?”
I had no idea. It seemed singularly pointless. Unless the point was getting between Aislynn and Kylie to break them up. But Virgil would have had no reason to do that. “Does Detective Mendoza know about the letters?”
“Not yet,” Grimaldi said. “Until you called, I had no idea there was a connection between his DB and your anonymous letters.”
They weren’t my anonymous letters, even if I had sort of claimed them. “Will you tell him?”
“Of course,” Grimaldi said. “It probably won’t be connected—I don’t see how it could be—but as you said, it’s an interesting coincidence.”
“He’ll probably want to talk to Aislynn and Kylie, won’t he?”
“I’m sure he will,” Grimaldi said. “Is that a problem?”
Not for me. And likely not for them, either. Even though Mendoza would be totally wasted on both of them.
“Not at all,” I said. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance he’ll want to talk to me?”
Grimaldi was smiling. I could hear it. “What do you think Mr. Collier would say to that?”
“I don’t think he’d say anything. He isn’t the jealous type.” Nor did he have any reason to be. Detective Mendoza was good-looking, but he had nothing on Rafe. “Will you let me know what he says?”
“I’ll tell you everything I can,” Grimaldi said, and since that was the best I could expect, I had to be satisfied with it.
I pulled up in front of the house on Potsdam a couple of minutes later, and lingered in the circular driveway to admire the view.
Not the house, although it’s a very nice, three-story red-brick Victorian with white gingerbread trim on the porch and a circular tower on one corner. You don’t see a lot of those around, especially not in this neighborhood. Most of the big, fancy, brick mansions are on the other side of Main Street, in the Edgefield neighborhood. This one was surrounded by rinky-dink 1940s cracker-jack boxes and the occasional new construction infill, where some intrepid builder with more hope than sense had bought a vacant lot and ventured into the ‘hood. The area was, as we say in the real estate business, ‘transitional,’ which is another way of saying that it has a long way to go, but that a few brave souls have moved in and started renovating.
Rafe was one of the first. The house was his grandmother’s, and he’d moved in with her last August, and started fixing the place up. No one had done any work to it for at least thirty years before that, so it had been in desperate need of some TLC.
Mrs. Jenkins was in a home now, sad to say. She had dementia, and we couldn’t trust her not to wander off and get lost, so Rafe had found her a lovely facility that she enjoyed, and we went and visited her on the weekends. Half the time she knew us, and half the time she didn’t, but she was happy to get visitors either way.
The house looked a lot better now than the first time I’d seen it, all decrepit and overgrown. But that was not the reason I slowed the car to a crawl to admire the scenery.
No, my husband was mowing the lawn. Stripped to the waist, with a pair of worn jeans hanging low on his hips, with his upper body glistening with perspiration and muscles bunching under smooth skin, he was pushing an ancient lawn mower back and forth across the front yard.
My tongue got stuck to the roof of my mouth.
After a second, he shot me a glance over his shoulder. I eased my foot off the brake and crept forward. He went back to mowing. Down to the edge of the driveway and back. But when I stopped the car at the bottom of the steps, behind the Harley-Davidson parked there, but didn’t cut the engine—why lose the air conditioning?—he dropped the handle of the mower and put his hands on his hips.
I powered down the window. “What?”
“What’re you doing?”
“Admiring the view,” I said.
He grinned. “Gimme ten minutes. I’ll meet you upstairs.”
“I think I’ll just stay here and watch until you’re done,” I said.
The grin widened. “Or maybe I’ll just finish later. When it cools down.”
“Maybe you should do that.” I rolled up the window and turned the car off. By the time I’d opened the door and swung my legs out, he was standing next to me. A minute later we were inside the house, with the door locked, the lawn mower abandoned on the lawn, and my clothes strewn from the front door all the way up the stairs to the master bedroom. Rafe’s jeans and boots were in a tangle at the foot of the bed, and we were in a tangle on top of the covers.
And that’s when the doorbell rang.
We both froze.
“Expecting someone?” Rafe asked, his voice a bit breathless.
I shook my head. “Ignore it.” I was breathless, too.
And we tried, we really did. But when the doorbell rang again a minute later, Rafe muttered a curse and rolled off me. “Hold that thought.”
No problem. “Put something on before you go downstairs.”
“I ain’t going downstairs.”
He stalked over to the window, which happens to be above the front porch, and yanked the sash up. And stuck his head and upper body through the opening. “Hey!”
I tried to suppress a smile, although I didn’t try all that hard, since he had his back to me and couldn’t see what I was doing. But the sight of him—upper body outside the window, and his naked butt and muscular legs inside the bedroom with me—was funny.
A few moments passed, while—I assume—the person downstairs tried to figure out where the voice had come from, and then backed up off the porch to see him. I heard a voice—male—say something, and then a snarl from Rafe.
The voice said something else. It sounded soothing.
“Grrr,” Rafe said, and pulled his head and torso into the room. He slammed the window shut so hard I was afraid it would break, and turned to me. “We gotta go downstairs.”
“We?”
“The cops are here.” He yanked his jeans on and tucked himself away, wincing, before pulling up the zipper.
Cops? “Tamara Grimaldi?”
He shook his head as he stalked toward the door. “Put some clothes on. He wants you, too.”
He disappeared into the hallway.
“Pick up my clothes on your way down!” I called after him as I scrambled out of bed.