My phone was on the bedside table, charging. I ran to it, yanked it
out of the charger, and ran back to the window, terrified I’d miss
something. Only to realize when I got there that the glow from the
screen was probably visible outside, and might show them—whoever
they were—that I was standing there watching them. So I ran back to
the bed and crawled under the covers for long enough to dial the
number I wanted.
“There are two people in my yard,” I told Grimaldi when her sleepy voice picked up on the other end of the line, “and Rafe isn’t here.”
“Shit.” She was wide awake immediately. “I’m on my way. Did you call 911?”
“I called you first. I’m in bed, under the blankets. I was afraid they’d see the light from the phone and realize I was awake.”
“Get out from under there,” Grimaldi said, “and get dressed.” I could hear scuffling from the other end of the line as she was already doing what she was telling me to do. “Don’t worry about making any more calls. I’ll get the nearest black-and-white on its way to you. Put on some clothes and find a weapon. I don’t care what kind. Knife, gun, fireplace poker.”
The knives and fireplace pokers were downstairs. So was my lipstick-canister pepper spray, along with my lipstick-canister serrated blade. And there was no gun in the house. Not without Rafe.
“Shit,” Grimaldi said again when I told her so. “Can you get downstairs and out the back door?”
“Probably not. They were on their way toward the house a minute ago. Besides, I don’t know who’s back there. The two in the front might have split up. Or there might be more than two. Someone could be outside the back door already.”
Grimaldi muttered something. I don’t think it was critical. Or at least not critical of me. “I don’t suppose you have any secret rooms or staircases in the house?”
We didn’t. “There’s a third floor with a big ballroom. But other than that it’s just the usual bedrooms and bathrooms and common rooms and closets.”
“Just do your best to stay alive,” Grimaldi said. “I’m on my way.” She hung up.
OK, then. I slithered from under the blankets—slithering was becoming more difficult as my pregnancy progressed—and padded back over to the window. I know Grimaldi’s instructions had been to get dressed—and I would, since I didn’t want to face burglars (or whoever I was dealing with) in my nightgown—but first I wanted to see how far they’d gotten, and whether they were actually on their way into the house. Maybe they were just cutting through the yard or playing war games or something.
Maybe they weren’t after me at all. Or after Rafe, which was much more likely.
It took a few seconds for my eyes to focus outside the house again. At first everything looked quiet, but then I saw movement among the trees in the yard. They were taking their time, gliding smoothly toward the house, sticking to the shadows under the leafy branches.
There were still just two of them, or at least I didn’t see any more. And it was too dark for me to make any kind of identification. They were dressed in dark clothes, and they either had dark hair or dark caps or hoods covering their heads. It was impossible to see faces, or anything other than just moving patches of darkness. I watched as one of them made it out from under the cover of the trees and scurried around the front end of the Volvo. Three seconds later, the other one followed.
They disappeared from sight as they approached the stairs to the porch.
Time to move.
My hands were shaking so badly that it was hard to dress. I choose a pair of black yoga pants, thinking they’d be easy to pull on, but it was like fitting my legs into a pair of control-top pantyhose: slow and agonizing. All the while I struggled with my uncooperative hands and the uncooperative fabric, I kept my ears peeled for sounds from downstairs.
For the first few seconds there was nothing. Then a small sound, followed by the tinkling of glass.
A very small sound. Much smaller than I’d expected.
Once upon a time, last fall, someone had shot out one of the front windows of the house, trying to kill me. The sound had been deafening. Both the shot itself, and the sound of the pane of glass shattering onto the floor. By comparison, this was so small it was almost comforting.
At least until I heard the front door open and footsteps on the floor downstairs.
I pulled one of Rafe’s black T-shirts over my head and tip-toed out into the hallway.
They were both inside now. I heard murmurs, but no words. Certainly not voices I could recognize.
Then I heard the scuff of a foot on the bottom step of the stairs, and it was the kick in the pants I needed to get going.
As I’d told Tamara Grimaldi on the phone, we have a ballroom on the third floor of the house. Not that we ever have balls, but in the days when this house was built, during the Victorian era, wealthy families did just that. Invited friends over, had dinner, and waltzed the night away. Many of the big Victorian houses in East Nashville and Germantown have ballrooms.
If we ended up having more children, I figured the big room on the top floor, from which you could see the downtown skyline, would make a good playroom.
At the moment there was nothing much up there. Just a cavernous room full of shadows and boxes, with a dusty floor and a bit of starlight floating in above the treetops.
I scurried across the expanse of floor and crouched behind a stack of boxes, trying to regulate my breathing.
The door had shut behind me—thankfully without squeaking. I made a mental note to thank Rafe for keeping the hinges oiled, if I got out of this alive.
And then I hunkered down and waited to see what would happen.
Time dragged on. I keep my ears peeled for noises from downstairs, and for the sound of sirens outside. Grimaldi had said she’d call 911; surely someone was on their way? She lived on the other side of town, at least twenty minutes away, and while time felt like it was dragging, I knew it hadn’t been that long. She wasn’t anywhere close. But surely there was a squad car within a few minutes of me? And the East Precinct was just up on Trinity Lane, no more than five minutes away.
Why wasn’t anyone coming?
A brush of a foot on the stairs brought my head up, and suddenly the idea of cowering here, behind my stack of boxes, seemed like a bad idea. I was a sitting duck, just waiting for my burglar—whoever he was—to come and find me.
Maybe I should be proactive instead.
Praying that the closed door between us would mask the sound of my movements, I slid out from behind the boxes and along the wall. My bare feet didn’t make a sound, and I held my breath, hoping the old floorboards wouldn’t squeak and alert him to my location. If he’d been through the second floor, he would know I wasn’t there, and that it was likely I was up here somewhere, but I didn’t want him to know my exact position.
The doorknob turned.
I started moving faster.
By the time the door opened, I was five feet away.
And by the time a dark shadow stepped up into the doorway, and starlight glinted on the barrel of the gun in his gloved hand, I threw myself forward and propelled him back.
I’m almost five-eight, and I’ve always carried a few pounds extra.
Not that I’m fat, but I’ve always been a bit broader in the beam
than I’d like to be. I’d gained a few more pounds since getting
pregnant, too.
In other words, I’m not a small person. And I was terrified, on my own behalf and for the baby. Terror, combined with rage—how dared these people come into my house in the middle of the night and threaten me?—combined with my physical attributes, might not have been enough to take on someone like Rafe. He’s a lot bigger than me, and he fights dirty. He’s also prepared for any eventuality, and it isn’t easy to take him off guard.
That was not the case with the burglar. This guy—whoever he was—wasn’t any bigger than me. And he obviously wasn’t prepared for a hundred and forty-five pounds of terrified female.
My palms slammed into his chest—which was a lot squishier than I had expected.
A woman?
By the time that thought registered, it was much too late for it to do any good. And honestly, I don’t know if it would have made any difference anyway. A person with a gun is a person with a gun, no matter the gender. And anyway, that first push had taken her back a step, and then it was too late. Her heel came down beyond the edge of the step outside the door, and when her weight landed on it, she tipped over backwards and tumbled down the stairs.
A shrill scream rang in my ears. Simultaneously, the gun went off with a deafening bang. The bullet whizzed past me and buried itself in the wall above my head. A trickle of plaster dust floated down.
I clapped my hands over my ears, so I didn’t hear the sound of her body hitting the steps and sliding the last few feet onto the second story floor, but I did hear the silence when her scream was cut off. My ears were still ringing, but not so loudly that I didn’t hear the wild scramble from the first floor. Running footsteps in the hallway downstairs, the sound of the front door being yanked open, and then the slamming of said door again as burglar number two took to his heels down the porch steps and through the yard.
I let him go. No way was I going to jump over the body—dead or alive—at the foot of the third floor stairs to give chase. I didn’t want to catch anyone. I wouldn’t know what to do with him—or her—if I did. I just wanted to be safe.
It took at least a minute before I had calmed myself down enough that I was able to make it down the stairs, clinging to the banister the whole way.
At the bottom of the stairs, I clicked the light switch. Bright light seared my eyeballs for a moment. My pupils protested, but then adjusted. The body didn’t twitch. She was either out cold, or dead.
I had to force myself to creep over to her, to check whether she was still alive. And before I did it, I looked around for the gun, to make sure she wasn’t going to suddenly rise, like a phoenix from the ashes, and shoot me.
The gun had fallen from her hand and landed several feet away. She would have to scramble to get to it, and to be honest, she didn’t look like she was in any condition to scramble. Just to be sure, though, I moved in the direction of the gun and nudged it a little farther away with my foot before I turned back to the body.
She was lying on her back, with her neck at a very uncomfortable angle.
Broken, my mind supplied, and I swallowed.
It was just a month since I’d killed someone. He would have killed me—and my mother, and David—if I hadn’t, and he’d also killed a few other people and been well on his way to killing Rafe, so I couldn’t regret it too much, but it still bothered me, deep inside. I had taken someone’s life. I—Margaret Anne Martin’s perfect little girl, who had been brought up to be a gracious hostess, devoted wife, and elegant Southern Belle—had killed a man.
And now I might have done it again.
She wasn’t moving. Not so much as a finger twitched. And I couldn’t see her chest moving. It had been long enough that it wasn’t likely she was holding her breath to fake me out, either. Not without turning blue.
I crept closer and knelt next to the body.
She was dressed in black. Black sneakers, black jeans, black hooded sweatshirt. And under the hood...
“Shit,” I said. “I mean... shoot. I mean...”
It was Terry Dixon. She looked different now—more dead—but there was no mistaking her.
She didn’t stir when I spoke. I reached out and gingerly put two fingers against her throat. And moved them around when I didn’t feel anything. I don’t know anything about where to find someone’s pulse, after all. This isn’t something I do every day.
I had found Kylie’s pulse without a problem Saturday morning. So why couldn’t I do it now?
I fumbled up the black sleeve of the sweatshirt instead, and stuffed my fingertips under the top of the rubber glove she was wearing.
Still nothing.
Downstairs, the front door slammed against the wall, and I froze. But only for a second. “Savannah!”
“Rafe!”
I scrambled to my feet, away from the corpse, and headed for the stairs. He was faster, taking the steps two or three at a time. I’d only reached the top of the stairs when he burst into the second floor hallway.
I’m not sure he even took the time to look around, although I imagine he must have. It wouldn’t be like him not to make sure we were safe. But he took in the scene in a fraction of a second, and then he wrapped his arms around me and pulled me in. I could feel his body shake, and his voice, when he spoke into my hair, was rough. “Can’t leave you alone for a minute, can I?”
“I couldn’t help it,” I protested, my voice muffled against the front of his shirt. “I was just minding my own business, being asleep. It wasn’t my fault that someone tried to break in.”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t have time, because now there were more footsteps downstairs. His body stiffened for a second, and then relaxed again when he heard a voice call out. “Savannah!”
This time it was Grimaldi’s voice.
I lifted my head from Rafe’s chest. “Up here.”
She took the stairs almost as fast as he had, but rather than grabbing me—not that I’d expected her to—she stopped at the top of the stairs and took in the scene a lot more slowly.
She only gave the two of us a glance in passing. Just to make sure I wasn’t bleeding or anything, I guess. I’m sure she figured that if Rafe was just standing there, holding me, I was all right. If something had been wrong with me, he would have been hustling me down the stairs.
So she brushed past and headed for the end of the hallway, where the body lay. We both watched as she crouched and put her fingers against its throat.
“Dead?” Rafe asked softly.
“I think so. I couldn’t find a pulse.”
“What happened? Did he fall down the stairs?”
“I pushed him,” I said, with a shudder. “I was going to hide upstairs, but then I decided I didn’t want to cower like a scared rabbit, so when the door opened, I pushed him. And he’s a she.”
His brow arched. I nodded. “Terry Dixon. She works with Aislynn as Sara Beth’s. Mendoza thinks she killed Virgil.”
“Why?”
“She knows Stacy,” I said. “He was here, too. Or at least she wasn’t alone. There were two of them. But when she fell... when I pushed her, he ran. Or whoever was downstairs, ran.”
“Damn.” He raised his voice. “D’you hear that?”
Grimaldi shook her head. “She’s gone.”
“So’s her buddy,” Rafe said. “Savannah says he ran when she fell.”
Grimaldi straightened and came toward us. “Did you see him?”
Rafe dropped his arms from around me, but kept a hand on the small of my back to steady me.
I shook my head. “He—or she, whoever the other person was—stayed downstairs. I heard them come in, and heard them whisper. Then one of them came up the stairs, so I headed to the third floor. And when the door opened, I pushed her.”
I shuddered, at the thought of the body tumbling backwards down the steep stairs, and Rafe’s hand moved in a soothing circle.
“She had a gun,” Grimaldi remarked.
I nodded. “It discharged when she fell. There’s a bullet buried in the wall up there. She screamed, but then she stopped when she hit the hallway floor.”
“Her neck’s broken,” Grimaldi said. “I’m sure she was dead on impact. It could have gone a lot worse. If she had survived the fall, she might have become a paraplegic.”
Rafe muttered something. I didn’t ask him what it was, since I could guess.
“I didn’t mean to kill her,” I said. “Maybe I should have waited until she came into the room. Maybe I could have done something different. Hit her with a box, or something. I just didn’t want to hide, and wait for her to find me.”
Rafe shook his head. “You didn’t do nothing wrong. You were defending yourself.”
“I killed her.”
“The fall killed her,” Grimaldi said. “And she had a gun. She probably planned to kill you.”
She put a hand on my arm. For Grimaldi, that’s pretty much the equivalent of a warm hug. “Don’t worry. There isn’t a judge in the world who’d find you guilty of anything other than self-defense.”
Maybe not. But that wasn’t my concern. “This is the second time I’ve killed someone. I’m not sure what that says about me.”
“That you’re strong enough to do what’s necessary,” Rafe said. “She threatened you.”
“She didn’t have time to threaten me. I pushed her as soon as she opened the door.”
“She came into your house with a gun,” Grimaldi said. “In the middle of the night, when you could be expected to be sleeping. That’s a threat, whether she told you she was going to shoot you or not. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
She fumbled for her phone. “I better call for transport.” She went past us and down the stairs. A few seconds later, we could hear her in the downstairs hallway, identifying herself and explaining that she needed a van from the medical examiner’s office to come by and load up a body.
I glanced down the hallway and shivered.
“C’mon.” Rafe pulled me in the direction of the stairs. “Let’s go downstairs. We can’t do nothing for her, and I don’t wanna have to keep looking at her.”
I didn’t, either. So I let him lead me to the top of the stairs and steady me down.
Grimaldi was standing in the foyer, nudging the pieces of broken glass on the floor with her toe and examining the jagged hole in the front door window. When we reached the bottom, she looked at us over her shoulder. “Somebody knew what he was doing. Or she.”
Rafe nodded. “Have Mendoza run some background on the two of’em. And check for juvie records. This whole letter writing thing sounds like a high school prank to me.”
“It wasn’t a prank,” I said, and he nodded.
“I know, darlin’. Somebody coming into my house with a loaded gun had better not try to tell me he was just trying to be funny. But it’s the kind of thing high school kids do to get attention.”
It was. At least up until the point when people started dying and bullets started flying.
Rafe turned to Grimaldi. “Did you send somebody after Stacy?”
“Not yet. It isn’t my case, for one thing, and for another, I don’t have anyone to send. I don’t know why someone didn’t get here before the two of us. There should be cars in the area. Spicer and Truman are working tonight.”
And Spicer and Truman always jump when Grimaldi calls.
“I’ll go get Stacy,” Rafe said, and Grimaldi shook her head.
“No, you won’t. It isn’t your case, either, and if I send you after him, I’d be afraid he wouldn’t make it to interrogation.”
“I wasn’t gonna kill him. Just rough him up a little.”
“No. The last thing we need is for him to cry police brutality and then get all the gay rights organizations involved.”
“I ain’t stupid,” Rafe told her. “I wasn’t gonna hit him for no reason. I woulda made sure he resisted arrest first.”
“And how were you going to make sure of that?” She rolled her eyes. “Don’t answer that. No. You may not go and pick up Mr. Kelleher. What you may do, is stay here with your wife until we’ve got him into a box in downtown. And then you may come and observe the interview.”
“That won’t be as much fun.”
“No,” Grimaldi agreed. “But we’ve already killed one suspect tonight. I don’t want us to kill another. At least one of them should survive to answer questions, don’t you think? And go to prison.”
“I told you I wasn’t gonna kill him,” Rafe said. “Maybe put him in the hospital for a few days. He can go to prison later.”
“No. I’m not going to tell you again. And if you don’t start listening, I’ll recant my invitation.”
“Fine.” But he sounded like a petulant five-year-old who’s been told he can’t stay up to watch another episode of Scooby-Doo. “Just go get him. Before he goes in the wind and you lose him.”
“He won’t,” Grimaldi said. “He thinks he’s got us all snowed. Besides, he’s got an alibi for Virgil Wright’s murder. There’s no way we can pin it on him.”
“You can’t?”
This was from me, of course. I’m sure Rafe knew better than to ask.
Grimaldi shook her head. “He didn’t kill Mr. Wright. He was pouring drinks in front of multiple witnesses when the murder took place. And as far as we can tell, he didn’t pay Ms. Dixon to do it, either. That makes it not a murder for hire.”
“Conspiracy to commit?” Rafe ventured.
“Sure. But how do you prove it? She’s dead.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Rafe’s arm tightened around my shoulder, but it was Grimaldi who spoke. “Don’t be. You did what you had to do. And we’ll get him for something. Somehow.”
There was a moment while no one said anything. Then Rafe told her, “Let me know when you get him in the box. I’ll come down and watch. And if you can’t get what you need from him, I’ll get it for you. I ain’t leaving the bastard free to come back here one more time.”
“I don’t think he will,” Grimaldi said, “but we’ll get him and make sure of it.”
She turned toward the door and the yard beyond as the van from the medical examiner’s office—right down the road from the TBI—pulled into the driveway.