We were standing by the car, ready to get in, when someone ran
past. I caught a glimpse of red, and turned. “Kenny!”
The jogger slowed and glanced over his shoulder. When he saw it was me, for a second I thought he might keep going—and then it would be interesting to see whether Rafe would let him go, or whether instinct would kick in and he’d go after Kenny and bring him back. But then Kenny slowed down. Reluctantly, but he slowed.
“Oh,” he said. “It’s you again.”
“What are you doing here?”
He was bent over, hands braced on his thighs as he tried to catch his breath, and the sun lit up that head of red hair and made it gleam like a copper penny. “What’s it look like I’m doing?” he wanted to know. “I’m running.”
Yes, but... around the same park where his lover had been killed just a few days ago?
My disbelief must have communicated itself to him even though I didn’t say a word, because he straightened and moved his hands from his thighs to his hips. “What are you doing here?”
“Walking,” I said, with a look at Rafe. He arched a brow at me.
Kenny glanced at him, but didn’t say anything.
“I’m sorry about what happened at the funeral home yesterday,” I added.
His face darkened. “You were there?”
“Someone had to represent LB&A.” And I hadn’t seen Tim in the throng chasing Stacy out the door. “Virgil was one of our clients.”
“Bastard,” Kenny muttered, probably not in reference to his dead lover.
“It was awkward,” I agreed
He sent me a fulminating glance. “It was a freaking disaster.”
That, too. “I hope everything turned out OK with the... um... deceased.”
“No thanks to that nutcase!” Kenny growled.
“When I left, he was barricaded in his car. Did he get away?”
“The police came,” Kenny said. “Two cars. With sirens and everything. I tried to get them to arrest him, but they said they couldn’t. That he hadn’t done anything illegal. As if knocking over a coffin isn’t illegal!”
Technically, it was Kenny himself who had knocked over the coffin trying to wrap his hands around Stacy’s throat, although I’d readily admit he’d been driven to it.
“I don’t suppose there was any truth to what he was saying?”
“No!” Kenny said. “We were in love! We were talking about making it legal!”
“Getting married?”
He nodded. “We’ve been waiting for that for a long time.”
‘We’ meaning the gay community, I assumed, since he and Virgil had only been living together for six months or so.
“So there was no problem with your relationship.”
“No,” Kenny said. “We were happy. My family liked him. We got along well.”
“So why would he tell Stacy he was unhappy?”
“He wouldn’t! He didn’t!”
“So you’re saying Stacy lied?”
“Of course he lied!” Kenny shrieked. “Virgil and I were happy! Stacy was jealous!”
That was certainly possible. Although going to his late ex-lover’s funeral to tell the grieving boyfriend that the deceased had been tired of him... that argued for something more than just jealousy. It was malicious and vindictive, and as we say in the South, ugly. Kicking Kenny while he was down.
“But the police let him go.”
Kenny nodded, disgusted. “They said there was nothing they could do. That he hadn’t broken any laws. That I could get a restraining order if I wanted, but that they couldn’t do anything about him otherwise.”
There probably wasn’t much point in that. And I didn’t think Stacy would be bothering Kenny again. The funeral had just been too tempting for him, probably. And maybe he’d told the truth: he still did care about Virgil, and wanted to be there. And then he’d seen the chance to take some of his own grief out on Kenny, and had taken it.
“I never met Virgil,” I said. “When he and Stacy were selling the house, Tim Briggs represented them. I represented the buyers. So I never met him. What did he look like?”
Kenny looked at me like he suspected I’d lost my mind, but he answered. “He looked like a black guy. You know, brown skin, black hair.”
Huh. It hadn’t even crossed my mind that Virgil wasn’t Caucasian.
“So he looked like the friend you were with at the FinBar the other night?”
“Claude?” Kenny shook his head. “Virgil was taller. And thinner. He was a runner.”
“He wasn’t getting anonymous letters, was he?”
“No,” Kenny said.
“Sending them?”
“Of course not! What’s that about?”
“One of the girls who bought his and Stacy’s house was attacked Friday night. And hit over the head with a paperweight.” A rock, pretty much. “They’ve been getting anonymous letters.”
“That’s crazy,” Kenny said. “And anyway, Virgil was dead on Friday. He didn’t hit anyone over the head with anything.”
“That’s why I asked if he’d been getting anonymous letters.” Since he’d also been hit over the head with something.
Although that could just be a coincidence. Lots of people are killed with blunt force trauma to the head. Very few of the homicides are related. It’s just an easy way to get rid of someone, I guess. Just snatch up the nearest blunt instrument and swing it.
“No,” Kenny said. “We haven’t been getting anything weird in the mail. Not before he died, and not after.”
He looked around. “Are we done here?”
“We’re just talking,” I said. “Feel free to push off anytime you’re ready.”
He pushed off, without so much as a goodbye. I turned to Rafe, who’d been very quiet throughout this whole conversation. “That was interesting.”
He nodded. “Ready to go?”
“I suppose we should.” I opened my door and slid into the car. “What did you think?”
“That you oughta give up real estate and become an interrogator,” Rafe said and turned the key in the ignition. A blast of hot air burst from the air conditioning vents, and then turned cool.
“No, thank you. And anyway, he didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know.”
“He told you Virgil didn’t get, or write, anonymous letters,” Rafe said, pulling the car out of the parking space and rolling off down the road. I kept an eye out for Kenny, and saw him ahead of us, going up the hill toward the path.
“I’m not sure we can trust what he says. He might not even know if Virgil was getting anonymous letters. Virgil might not have told him.”
“Why wouldn’t he tell him?”
“Maybe Stacy was right,” I said. “Maybe Virgil was tired of Kenny.”
“You think?”
“It’s more likely that Kenny was telling the truth and Stacy was upset and jealous, but it’s possible.”
Halfway up the hill, Kenny turned onto the path through the woods. “Does that strike you as odd?” I asked.
“That he’s out here running the same path where his lover was killed a few days ago?” He shrugged as he turned the car in the opposite direction around the lake. “Makes me wonder why they weren’t running together Wednesday night, if they both ran. But grief takes people different ways. Could be his way of coping. Getting back on the horse.”
I supposed. Maybe Kenny was planning to stop in the middle of the path and say a prayer for Virgil.
Or maybe he was a murderer returning to the scene of the crime. Stacy could be telling the truth about Virgil being tired of Kenny. He might have told him so on Wednesday night, then gone for a run thinking he’d give Kenny time to process the news. But instead of staying home and processing, Kenny got in his car, got to the park first, parked, hid, and bashed his lover over the head before returning home to pretend he hadn’t left at all.
“I wonder who inherits Virgil’s money,” I said.
“Did he have money?”
“Grimaldi said he had a good job and had some savings from selling the house. It’s probably not a lot, but it could be enough for someone to want it.”
“He don’t look like he’s hurting,” Rafe said, nodding in the direction of the path and Kenny.
“No. But you can’t always judge by what someone looks like. He lives in a nice house, but it could be mortgaged to the rafters.” Although I hadn’t found any evidence of that when I’d looked him up the other day. “Or,” I added, “he could have a gambling problem and owe a fortune to loan sharks.”
“Gambling’s illegal in Tennessee,” Rafe said.
“All the more reason to keep it quiet. For Kenny to inherit, Virgil would have had to make a will benefitting him, though. They aren’t married, so they aren’t each other’s next of kin.”
Rafe nodded. “If something happens to me—”
“Don’t say that!”
He glanced at me. “Something’s gonna happen to all of us sooner or later, darlin’.”
“Later,” I said. “Much, much later. You aren’t undercover anymore. You’re safe now.”
“Shit happens to people who ain’t undercover, too. Just look at Virgil.”
“I’m not going to get tired of you and hit you over the head,” I told him. “If I do get tired of you,” and I didn’t see that happening soon, or ever, “I’ll divorce you, like civilized people do. Give me a break, Rafe. We haven’t even been married a whole month yet. Just let me enjoy it for a while without having to worry about something happening to you so I inherit, all right?”
He shrugged. “I was just gonna say that if something happens to me, you gotta make sure my grandma’s taken care of. And David. And the baby.”
“Ginny and Sam will take care of David,” I said, “but of course I’ll make sure your grandmother and the baby are taken care of. And if something happens to Ginny and Sam, I’ll take care of David, too. And if something happens to me, you’ll have to make sure my family gets to know the baby, all right?”
“Nothing’s gonna happen to you.” He turned the car out through the big stone gates marking the entrance to the park.
“Something could happen to me. I could die in childbirth. Or a traffic accident. Or get sick or something. Promise.”
“If something happened to you, your mama would get her hands on that baby so fast your head would spin. I wouldn’t stand a chance of keeping it.”
“Don’t be silly,” I said. “My mother would never take our baby away from you.”
“You wanna bet?” He shook his head. “I don’t wanna talk about it. Nothing’s gonna happen to you. To either of us. You’re gonna have the baby, and we’re gonna raise him—or her—together. Nobody’s gonna take him away from either of us.”
“I’ll drink to that,” I said, although there was nothing whatsoever to drink in the car. “Let’s just go back to Virgil and Kenny. They weren’t married when Virgil died, so Kenny doesn’t inherit whatever Virgil owned.”
Rafe nodded.
“Whoever Virgil’s next of kin is, inherits. Unless Virgil had a will, and then it’s whoever he named in the will.”
Rafe nodded. “No way to figure out if he did or not, I guess.”
“Detective Mendoza might know,” I said. “And he might be willing to share if you ask nicely.”
“Me?”
“He seems to like you. Fellow law enforcement and all that.”
He slanted a disbelieving glance at me, as if I’d accused him of inappropriate behavior, and I added, “The two of you seemed to find plenty to talk about the other night.”
“He was telling me about his kid,” Rafe said. “The ex-wife has primary custody, but he gets to see him pretty much whenever he wants. But he’s afraid she’s gonna marry again once the divorce is final, and what’s gonna happen when she does.”
I could well imagine. That would worry me, too. I’d had a miscarriage while I was married to Bradley, and had been devastated at the time, but once we split up, I was very glad that we didn’t have children together. And now that he was in prison, I was even happier about that. “I’m sure she won’t keep his son from him.”
“Depends on how pissed off she is about what he did,” Rafe said.
“What did he do?”
He glanced at me. “Cheated. She hired a private eye to catch him, and the guy did. And now they’re engaged and just waiting for the divorce to be final so they can get married.”
“Sheesh,” I said. “So the guy who proved to Mendoza’s wife that Mendoza was cheating is going to be her next husband and the kid’s stepfather? That’s got to hurt.”
“You know it,” Rafe said, and turned on the signal for the turn onto Potsdam. “Anyway, we were talking kids. His, mine, and the one on the way.”
Male bonding over children. Who’d have thought?
“The one on the way is also yours,” I reminded him.
“I know. It just don’t seem real yet.”
“Maybe when we have the ultrasound and find out if it’s a he or a she, it’ll seem more real to you.”
He shrugged and changed the subject. “Almost home. Whaddaya wanna do the rest of the day?”
“I promised you sex,” I said, “so we should probably get that out of the way first.”
He arched a brow. “Don’t do me any favors.”
“I was looking at it more like you doing me the favor.”
The corner of his mouth turned up. “Yeah?”
“If you’d oblige.”
“I think I might could do that,” Rafe said, and turned into the graveled drive.
So we had sex, and then we had a nap, and then we had something to
eat, and while we were doing that, Rafe’s phone rang. He answered,
and I spent a minute or two nibbling on turkey and Swiss cheese
while I listened to him say things like, “What the hell?” and “Have
you lost your fucking mind?” and “That ain’t gonna end well.”
The conversation ended with, “Don’t do nothing till I get there. Nothing. You hear me?”
The phone quacked, and I assumed the answer was in the affirmative, because Rafe didn’t say anything else, just stabbed the End button with enough emotion to make me suspect he’d rather be drilling that finger into somebody’s chest while he screamed in his face.
“What?”
He got to his feet. “Sorry, darlin’. I gotta go.”
“What happened?”
He grimaced. “That was Jamal. He’s got himself a situation.”
“What kind of situation?” I put my sandwich down, the better to concentrate on the conversation. It wouldn’t be a long one, I could tell, so I’d have to get what I needed quickly.
“Gang,” Rafe said, shoving his feet into sneakers.
“That doesn’t sound good.” Jamal’s brother had died as a result of gang violence, and that was why Jamal had wanted to join the TBI.
Rafe shook his head. “Somebody approached him. Somebody from the neighborhood, who knew his brother.”
He pulled open the kitchen drawer where he’d stashed his gun when he came in. I watched as he shoved it into the holster at the small of his back. While he did that, I thought about what I knew about Jamal, other than the dead brother thing.
It wasn’t much. We’d only met a few times. He’d worked just as hard as everyone else when Rafe went missing in June, and had been willing to do whatever it took to find Rafe and bring him back. He seemed like a nice kid, outgoing and a natural leader.
“It was something about an action against another gang,” Rafe said, adjusting the T-shirt he was wearing so it covered any sight of the gun and holster, “the one that was responsible for killing Deondre.”
“Deondre being Jamal’s brother?”
He nodded. “This guy from the neighborhood thought Jamal might wanna be a part of it. Jamal said yes, and now he’s calling me to tell him what to do.”
“You don’t know anything about gangs, do you?”
“Not much,” Rafe said.
“What are you going to tell him?”
“I already told him he’s lost his mind. And I’m gonna tell him again when I see him. But he thinks this could be a chance to put some of these guys behind bars.”
“The ones who didn’t shoot his brother?”
“He blames them just as much,” Rafe said, stuffing a last few bites of sandwich into his mouth and washing them down with milk. “If Deondre hadn’t been in a gang, none of it woulda happened.”
He had a point. Or Jamal did.
“But is he ready for this?”
“Hell, no,” Rafe said.
“So are you going to talk him out of it? Or offer to help?”
“Right now I’m just gonna talk to him.” He put the empty glass on the table with a decisive thunk. “Don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone.”
“I might go back to the hospital,” I told his back as he headed for the door. “See if Aislynn ever showed up. And if Kylie remembers anything more about what happened Friday night.”
He glanced at me over his shoulder. “Just be careful.”
“Always,” I said, and waited for the front door to latch and lock before I got to my feet and began to clean up after lunch. Outside, the Harley roared to life and, a second later, tore down the driveway with a spurt of gravel.