We finally did get our second round of dessert, although by then it
was more like a midnight snack. Or not midnight, exactly—I don’t
last until midnight these days—but it was bedtime. And when I woke
up the next morning, Rafe had already left. I had a vague memory of
being kissed goodbye, although it could just have been in my
mind.
I staggered into the shower, and once I came out—considerably more awake—I sent him a text to let him know I was up and everything was all right. You?
It took a minute, and then I got a message back. Meeting w/ brass re Jamal. Can’t talk now.
Of course not. I continued dressing.
By the time I had dried my hair and had breakfast, he still hadn’t called back, so I picked up the phone and made another call, this time to Vanderbilt Hospital. The duty nurse told me that yes, indeed, Kylie Mitchell would be released as soon as Doctor Ramsey finished his rounds, and her ‘sister’ was welcome to come pick her up. I asked to talk to her, just to make sure she hadn’t made other arrangements—just in case Aislynn had showed up—and was connected to her room.
It took a moment, and then I heard Kylie’s voice. “Hello?”
“It’s Savannah,” I said. “The nurse said you’re getting to go home today. Do you have a ride?”
She hesitated, but eventually admitted, “No.”
“I’d be happy to come get you. Once the sales meeting is over, I’m not doing anything else.”
She hesitated again, but finally said, “That would be great. Thanks.”
“It’s no problem. I guess Lauren had to work?”
“I didn’t call her,” Kylie said. “I just want Aislynn back. And that’s not going to happen as long as Lauren’s around.”
Probably not. “It might not have been that good of an idea to leave Aislynn at home while you went to warn her about the police on Friday night.” Since that had pretty much cemented Aislynn’s fears about Kylie and Lauren.
I could practically hear Kylie’s eyes rolling like marbles. “Is that what she thought I was doing?”
She didn’t wait for me to confirm it, just kept going. “When she first told the detective that she thought Lauren might be sending the letters to get rid of her, I didn’t believe it. And I said so, and it probably sounded like I was defending her. But Detective Mendoza seemed like he took Aislynn seriously, and he kept asking me questions about mine and Lauren’s relationship and how she took being dumped, and of course she didn’t take it well. Although I didn’t really dump her. We weren’t serious. Or at least I wasn’t. I’d just gotten divorced from Damian, and I guess I was experimenting, you know?”
I murmured something appropriate while I glanced at my watch. If she didn’t stop talking soon, I’d be late for the meeting.
“So I started thinking that maybe Aislynn had a point,” Kylie said. “And that maybe Lauren might have had something to do with it. I wasn’t going there to warn her. I was going to confront her.”
“Does Aislynn know that?”
I imagined her shaking her head. “I didn’t get a chance. When I got home, she wasn’t there.”
“So you do remember coming home.”
“I guess I do,” Kylie said, sounding surprised. Hard to tell whether it was real surprise, or whether she was putting me on.
“Do you remember what happened when you got there?”
“I parked the car in the garage, since I knew we wouldn’t be going out again that night. And I came in through the back door. Out through the side door in the garage and up on the deck. The light was on in the parlor, so when I came through the door, I called Aislynn’s name and told her it was me.”
I nodded, not that she could see me.
“She didn’t answer, but I heard a noise from the parlor, so I headed that way. I turned into the doorway... and that’s the last thing I remember.”
“Because someone hit you,” I said. “I don’t suppose you saw who?”
She hadn’t. Of course not. That would have been too easy.
Although the narrative had taken care of one lingering possibility. Kylie had identified herself when she came into the house, and had called Aislynn’s name. If Aislynn had hit her, it had been deliberately. No chance of an accident at all that I could see.
“You haven’t heard anything from Aislynn, have you?”
“No,” Kylie said. “I guess she’s still with her mom and dad. Maybe they talked her out of wanting anything to do with me. She probably thinks I prefer Lauren.”
I murmured something noncommittal. I could have broken the news that Aislynn wasn’t at her mom and dad’s, I suppose. That she hadn’t gone to her mom and dad’s in the first place, and that they hadn’t seen her in more than a month. But I had to get to my meeting, and it wasn’t the kind of news I wanted to impart over the phone. Better to wait until she’d been released from the hospital and we were face to face—or side by side—in the car, going home. Better done in person.
So I said, “I have to get going. But I’ll be there around ten-thirty to pick you up, OK? Don’t go anywhere without me. And if Aislynn shows up—” which she could conceivably do, “just have her text me that she’s there and I don’t have to come.”
Kylie said she would, but her voice said that she wasn’t holding her breath. I wasn’t, either, as I headed out and over to LB&A for the weekly sales meeting.
It was something Walker Lamont, the former broker of LB&A, had instituted. Every Monday morning, every agent in the office—the ones selling real estate full time and the ones selling real estate only on the weekends, the ones selling millions of dollars worth of inventory a year and the ones selling very little—got together in the conference room and talked about new listings and new clients, what properties had closed since last week, and anything else of consequence.
The big deal this time, not surprisingly, was the news that one of our clients had passed away. “Virgil Wright,” Tim said, from his throne at the head of the table. “He and his partner sold a property last January. Savannah,” he nodded to me, “had the buyers.”
Everyone turned to me, and I saw surprise on several faces. Heidi stopped masticating for a moment before taking another bite of the iced donut someone had brought in. I smiled politely. Yes, even a blind bird occasionally finds a worm.
“What happened?” someone wanted to know.
“He was mugged,” Tim said, sounding for all the world like this was his deal and not mine; like he’d known anything at all about it before I brought it to his attention. “Jogging in Shelby Park last Wednesday night. Someone hit him over the head with a rock. It might be a hate crime.”
There was a pause. “That’s terrible,” someone said. “Is there anything we can do?”
“The funeral has already taken place,” Tim said.
I added, “Although an official condolence card might be nice.” Especially since Tim hadn’t bothered to show up, and since I hadn’t actually had time to pay my respect and let Kenny know I was there before the scene with Stacy took place.
Tim said, “Have Brittany take care of it.”
Sure. As if Brittany was likely to do anything I told her to do.
However, I just nodded and said I would.
“Anything else?” Tim wanted to know, looking around the table. Everyone was quiet. Heidi’s chewing was very loud in the silence.
Tim rapped on the table. “Meeting’s adjourned. Savannah, stay for a minute.”
Uh-oh.
The last time he’d told me to stay after a meeting, he’d fired me, because he said my meddling in crime put LB&A in a bad light. Rafe had talked him into rehiring me a week or two later. I hoped we weren’t going to go through that again.
But no. He just wanted to explain to me why he hadn’t made it to the funeral on Saturday. “See, there was this guy I met...”
I raised my hand. “Say no more.” It made perfect sense that Tim would prioritize sex with a stranger over going to a client’s funeral. If it had been a well-attended funeral—well-attended by media, I mean—I’m sure he would have been there, ready to get his face on camera, but since this hadn’t been that kind of occasion, this didn’t surprise me at all.
And anyway, to give him the benefit of the doubt, he might not like funerals. I don’t either, particularly, but I’ve been well-brought-up, so I attend against my own desires.
He leaned back on the chair. “You went?”
I nodded.
“How was it?”
“It was a funeral,” I said. “Lots of sad and angry people.” And then a knock-down, drag-out fight.
“I heard the police were called.” His blue eyes glittered maliciously.
Great. So what he wanted was an eye-witness account. “Who told you that?”
He shrugged. “Is it true?”
“I didn’t see them,” I said, even though I’d called them myself and knew they’d arrived.
“I hear there was a fight.”
I sighed. “Where did you hear that?”
Tim waved his hand airily. “I had a drink at South Street last night. Stacy was there.”
Of course he was. “Was he damaged?” Part of me wished he was. I could excuse his behavior if I had too—overcome by grief, still in love with his former lover—but he had behaved atrociously. If he couldn’t control himself, he shouldn’t have been there.
“A bruise,” Tim said, waving an elegant hand in the direction of his cheekbone. “He said the police chased them off before they could hurt him.”
Good for Stacy.
“So were you there? Did you see it?”
I said I was, and then I had to give Tim a detailed description of what had happened. If I tried to fluff over a point, he asked me questions until he’d gotten every morsel of information out of me. When I was wrung dry, he giggled.
“Is that it?” I wanted to know. “Because I have to go pick up a friend from the hospital and take her home.”
“Sure. Go.” He waved his hand.
“Thank you ever so.” But I didn’t say it loudly, just took my purse off the floor next to my chair and got out of there. I didn’t even backtrack to the front desk to tell Brittany to arrange for that condolence card for Kenny. It would wait. At the moment, I just wanted to get as far away from Tim as I could, in record time.
Kylie was waiting when I got there, in a wheelchair in her room,
dressed in the same clothes she’d worn Friday night when we brought
her here. I looked closely, but I didn’t see any blood. Still, I
could imagine she was quite ready to go home, take a shower, and
change.
I gave her my best smile. “Ready?”
She nodded. And although she was ready to go, she didn’t look great. Her face was pale, and she looked like she were in pain.
“Let’s go talk to the nurse and get you out of here.” I moved behind the chair and wheeled it into the corridor and down to the desk. There, a nurse took over and came down to the parking garage with us. She helped me get Kylie transferred from the chair to the front seat of the car, and got her seat reclined, and then she wheeled the empty chair back into the elevator and was gone.
I got in and started the car. “I bet you can’t wait to get home.”
Kylie nodded weakly.
“Are you going to be OK by yourself, or do you want me to stay with you?”
“I want Aislynn,” Kylie said.
I’m sure she did. “I haven’t heard from her. Have you?”
She shook her head. Carefully.
“After I drop you off, I can go down to Brentwood and see if she’s at work. Is she supposed to work today?”
Kylie shrugged. “Go now.”
“Now?” I looked both ways before heading right on Hillsboro Road. It was the way to Brentwood, but I could still take Kylie to East Nashville. I just had to choose one direction over the other when I got to the interstate.
“Sure. We’re halfway there.”
“But don’t you want to go home and to bed?” I signaled to turn on Wedgewood Avenue.
“I want Aislynn,” Kylie said.
OK, then. I headed for the interstate, and took the exit south, for Brentwood. It wasn’t even ten minutes before we pulled into the Brentwood Crossings shopping center.
I cut the engine on the car and turned to her. “Do you want to wait here?”
Kylie shook her head. “I’ll come with you.”
“I wish you wouldn’t. You look like you should rest. Why don’t you just let me go in and see if she’s there? It’ll only take a minute.”
“I want to come,” Kylie said, and unbuckled her seatbelt.
Fine. I unbuckled mine, and walked around the car to help her get out. We headed for the door to Sara Beth’s. Slowly.
Very slowly.
I held it and let Kylie go in first. And then I moved to grab her, since there was nothing to hold on to just inside the door, and the last thing I wanted was for her to collapse on the hard stone floor.
She turned to me. “She’s not here.”
I looked around.
No, she wasn’t. Or not where I could see her.
“When I was here on Friday, she was in the back room.” Eating French fries.
Kylie glanced at me. “You were here on Friday?”
“You turned me down for lunch,” I said. “I had to eat somewhere, and this seemed like a good choice.”
The waitress from Friday’s lunch was working again today, and when I beckoned, I got the very distinct feeling she wasn’t happy to see me. Instead of coming over, she called out, “Sit anywhere you like.”
“We’re looking for Aislynn,” I called back. Hey, if she was going to be impolite, I’d be impolite right back. There was a time when I wouldn’t have considered yelling across a half-full restaurant, but those days were gone.
“She’s not here.”
The waitress turned away. I arched my brows. “Excuse me a moment,” I told Kylie
She nodded. She looked ready to drop, honestly. I put her on a chair at the nearest empty table to wait until I got back, and then I wove my way through the tables over to where the waitress was pouring organic green tea in glasses for two of her customers. “Excuse me.”
I resisted the temptation to tap her—rather harder than necessary—on the shoulder, but my voice was laced with a fair amount of attitude.
“I told you,” she said over her shoulder, “Aislynn isn’t here.”
“Is she supposed to be here?”
The waitress glanced at me. “What do you mean?”
It wasn’t a particularly difficult question. At least I hadn’t thought so. “Is she on the schedule?”
“No,” the waitress told me.
“Have you heard from her?”
She shook her head.
“Do you have any idea where she is?”
She said she didn’t.
“Are you sure?”
She gave me a glare. “Go check behind the curtain if you don’t believe me.”
I checked behind the curtain, just because she told me I could. I didn’t expect Aislynn to be there, and she wasn’t.
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“What are you?” she demanded. “The relationship police?”
I wanted to say something cutting—just as soon as I’d come up with it—but I kept my temper. Shrieking like a fisherwoman is uncouth, and probably wouldn’t get me the information I wanted. “Just a concerned friend. We haven’t heard from her since Saturday afternoon.”
“Maybe she wanted a break,” the waitress said.
“Break from what?”
“Duh.” She rolled his eyes. “Her life.”
“What was wrong with her life?”
But she retreated back into herself. “It’s not for me to say.”
“Actually,” I told her, “if you know something, I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me. There’s an APB out on her, and if she doesn’t show up soon, I’m sure it’ll turn into a full-fledged alert.”
She stared at me as if I’d suddenly sprouted a second head.
“She’s been gone almost forty-eight hours. Her parents haven’t heard from her. Her girlfriend hasn’t heard from her. Her friends haven’t heard from her. So if you know anything about where she is, you’d better tell her to get in touch with someone before the police bring out the big guns.”
I meant it as a metaphor, but she turned a shade paler. Since she was already pale—one of those vampire types—she turned almost transparent.
“Do you know where she is?” I pressed.
“No.” Her voice cracked. “How would I know anything about that?”
“I don’t know. You work together? Maybe she confided something in you?”
She shook his head, but I wasn’t sure I believed her. “Listen,” she added, “you gotta go. I have work to do. And if the boss hears that the service was slow, she’s gonna be mad.”
“Fine.” I dug a business card out of my bag and put it on the counter. “If you hear from Aislynn, would you let me know?”
“Sure.” The waitress didn’t even look at it, or at me. “Excuse me.”
She took her two glasses of green tea and pushed past me, leaving the card there. I turned to watch her, and caught Kylie’s eye. She was listing to one side, almost like she was sliding to a prone position. I hurried back to her.
“Come on. Let’s get you home.”
“I’m fine,” Kylie said, but I had to take half her weight on our way out the door. “I’ll be fine once I get in the car.”
She’d be better once she got in the car, but I didn’t think she’d be fine for a few days, at least. Although I didn’t argue about it. I just supported her over to the Volvo and got her arranged in the passenger seat. Once I had the car started, and the air conditioning blasting, and was ready to back out of the parking space, Kylie said, “Wait a minute.”
“What?” I put the car back in park but left the engine (and AC) running. “Are you feeling sick?”
She shook her head. “Just tired. And in pain. What did she say?”
“Who...? Oh, the waitress? That she hadn’t heard from Aislynn and didn’t know where she was.”
“Do you think she was telling the truth?”
“I have no reason to think she was lying,” I said. And added, “Although she might have been lying about something else.”
She rolled her head on the seat to look at me. “What’s that?”
“I asked her if Aislynn was on the schedule today. You know, scheduled to work. And she said no. But she’s alone in there. On Friday, it was the two of them. And she said something about the boss being upset if she learned that the service was slow.”
“There’s supposed to be two of them,” Kylie murmured. “Aislynn’s had to do it alone before when someone’s called in sick, and she always comes home wiped out. It’s too much work for one person.”
So either someone else had called in sick today, or Aislynn was supposed to be there.
“I wonder why she lied.”
“Maybe she didn’t,” Kylie said. “Maybe it was someone else’s day to work and they called in sick.”
“A bit of a coincidence, though, don’t you think?”
She shrugged.
We sat in silence for a moment.
“I guess I should get you home,” I said. And then I’d come back here, and lurk in the parking lot until the waitress left. And follow her. Just in case she’d take me to Aislynn.
“I’m all right here for a while,” Kylie said. She snuggled into the seat.
I squinted at her. “Do you know something I don’t?”
“I don’t think so. But I want Aislynn back. Maybe she’ll show up here.”
Maybe. Or maybe the waitress would lead us to her, once she left.
I snuggled into the seat, too, and prepared to wait.