After we left Merijoy Rucker’s house, Jonathan took me back to Uncle James’s to pick up my truck. The Mercedes was gone, so we assumed he’d left on his visit to Gerry Blankenship.
“Do you really think we’ll be able to save Beaulieu?” I asked Jonathan.
“I do,” he said. “Those photos Merijoy gave us, plus the affidavit she’ll swear to, will document the fact that Coastal Paper Products, or their agents, deliberately engaged in fraud by stripping the house of elements that contributed to its landmark status. And,” he said smugly, “Gerry Blankenship is toast. I’m sure we’ll be able to nail him on the matter of the Mullinax will, as well as the foundation. He’ll at least be disbarred, and if everything falls into place like it should, I’ll be able to pursue criminal charges too.”
“How long will all of that take?” I asked. “What’s to stop Coastal Paper Products from firing up those bulldozers today and knocking the house down?”
“As soon as I leave here I’m heading in to the office,” Jonathan said. “I’ll call a judge and ask for a temporary restraining order to keep their demolition permit in abeyance at least until we finish gathering all the facts.”
“Can you get a judge to do that?”
He took his glasses off and polished them on the hem of his golf shirt. “Merijoy is at home right now, working the preservation league’s phone list. At the top of her list is Bea Gunther, who is a very preservation-minded person. I think Judge Gunther will give us our TRO without batting an eyelash.”
“Jonathan,” I said, “do you think Phipps Mayhew killed Caroline?”
“It’s possible,” Jonathan said. “But in light of what we’ve just heard, I’m more inclined than ever to believe that Tal was involved.”
I opened my mouth to defend him, but I could think of nothing to say. What did I really know about my ex-husband after all? He’d cheated on me for years, and I’d been blissfully unaware of his betrayal. He’d gotten involved in the Coastal Paper Products deal too, and it was impossible to believe he hadn’t condoned the stripping of Beaulieu.
“Detective Bradley’s medical leave doesn’t take effect for another couple of weeks,” Jonathan said. “I’m going to call him right now to see if we can get together this afternoon so I can bring him up to speed on all I’ve learned today.” He looked suddenly and unexpectedly stern, like the prosecutor he was.
“I can trust you to keep quiet about all this, can’t I?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I don’t suppose you can put one of those TROs on Lewis Hargreaves while you’re at it, can you?”
“Only if you can prove he acquired those antiques through a criminal act.”
I was halfway back to the carriage house when it struck me; Tal could be a killer. Not just a rat-fink liar and a cheat and a sloppy drunk; he very well could be the one who put a bullet in Caroline DeSantos.
It was ninety-five degrees outside, but the memory of her body sliding out of the closet at Beaulieu sent cold shivers up my spine. What if I had totally underestimated Tal? What if he was the killer? He’d known she was having an affair. He’d admitted to me that he’d followed her halfway out to Beaulieu. By now I knew he was a skilled liar. Maybe he was lying about everything else too.
And if he’d killed Caroline in a jealous rage, what was to stop him from killing a second time? He’d seen me at least once with Daniel. Maybe Daniel was right. Maybe Tal was watching me. Stalking me. I’d changed the locks on the carriage house, but if Tal decided to come after me, a little thing like a lock wouldn’t stop him.
I detoured over to BeBe’s house.
“What now?” she asked when I barged in the back door.
I went straight to the refrigerator and found the chocolate fudge sauce where I’d left it the night before. The spoon was still in the jar. I dipped in and started finishing it off.
“Don’t tell me,” BeBe said. “You made up with Daniel after you left here last night, and now you’re broken up again? Weezie, sweetie, you need to pace yourself with these things.”
“It’s not Daniel that’s got me stressed out,” I said between bites. “It’s Tal. Jonathan and James think Tal killed Caroline. Think about it, Babe. Tal, the man I slept beside for ten years, a killer.”
“No,” BeBe said. “He doesn’t have the guts.”
“What if that gutless-WASP thing is just an act? I’m serious, BeBe. I could be living right next door to a stone-cold killer.”
“Look at the bright side,” BeBe said. “Maybe they’ll arrest the SOB and throw his ass in prison. And then you can move back into the townhouse.”
“Maybe.” I put the cap on the fudge sauce and started to put it back in the refrigerator. BeBe took it and handed it back to me. “You keep it,” she said. “Since you’ve basically licked it clean.
“Hey,” she said, brightening. “I almost forgot to ask about the estate sale. How did it go? Did you get the cupboard?”
“No,” I said. “It wasn’t even listed in the sale catalog. Lewis Hargreaves beat me to the punch again.”
Her face fell. “Are you sure?”
“Who else?”
She stood up and grabbed her purse and car keys. “Let’s go.”
“Go where?” I asked. “Not home. Not right now. I’m too spooked.”
“Not home,” she said. “To L. Hargreaves. My money’s as good as anybody else’s. If he’s got the cupboard, what’s to stop me from buying it?”
“Money,” I said. “If Hargreaves bought it for fifteen thousand, that’s his wholesale price. He’ll have it marked up to thirty thousand or even forty-five thousand or more. Retail. If we pay that much for it, there’s very little margin for profit left.”
“Weezie, Weezie, Weezie,” she said, shaking her blond curls. “This is BeBe Loudermilk you’re talking to. I never paid retail in my life. And I don’t intend to start now.”
I looked around the kitchen for my own pocketbook, but I couldn’t find it. Panic set in. All my cash—more than seventeen thousand dollars—was in that purse. “Oh my God,” I said slowly, and then it hit me. I’d taken it into Uncle James’s house. It must still be there.
I called his house, but there was no answer. At least it was locked up safe and sound, I thought. BeBe and I could retrieve it later.
The front window at L. Hargreaves featured a typically spare Hargreaves tableaux: against a backdrop of wrinkly unbleached muslin he’d set a spindly-legged heart-pine huntboard in original paint.
“Ugh,” BeBe said, stopping dead in her tracks in front of the window. “I thought you said Hargreaves has exquisite taste.”
“I did. He does. That huntboard has the original faux-grained blue paint, and dovetailed drawers. It’s definitely Southern, late nineteenth century. He’s probably asking around eight thousand dollars for it.”
She sniffed. “My granddaddy’s got a table just like that out in the hen-house at his farm.”
“Tell him I’ll give him five hundred bucks for it,” I said.
“Let’s go in and browse,” BeBe said. She pushed against the glass door, but it didn’t give. We stood back, and that’s when we noticed the Closed sign on the door.
“Since when does an antique shop close down on a Saturday afternoon?” BeBe asked.
“If you’re Lewis Hargreaves, you can afford to keep banker’s hours,” I said. “He’s mostly open by appointment. Let’s go. This is pointless, anyway. He’s probably already sold the Moses Weed.”
We were starting to cross the street to get to the car when I happened to turn around. A tall, thin girl with waist-length red hair came out of L. Hargreaves and locked the door.
“Look,” I said, clutching BeBe’s arm. “That’s Zoe Kallenberg. She’s Hargreaves’s assistant.”
She walked quickly down the street until she got to a white van parked at the curb along Liberty Street. She unlocked the van and got in.
“I’ll bet she’s going back out to Beaulieu to fetch another load of furniture,” I griped.
“Come on,” BeBe said, quickening her pace until we were both at her car. “Let’s follow her and see what she’s up to.”
“I was kidding,” I said, but I got in the car and BeBe fired it up and swung easily into traffic behind the white L. Hargreaves van.
We followed Zoe Kallenberg to a hardware store on DeRenne Avenue. When she got out of the van she had a cell phone clutched to her ear.
BeBe and I trailed along behind her as she pushed a shopping cart up and down the aisles.
Zoe’s long tresses swayed slightly as she minced along in tiny little steps, which were necessitated by the three-inch heels on her black mules. Her lacquered fingertips fluttered over the shelves while she consulted with the person at the other end of the phone, who was obviously dictating the shopping list.
Our decoy cart stayed empty, except for a can of spray paint we added for effect, but Zoe’s cart was piled high with paint and brushes, steel wool, sandpaper, lacquer, mineral spirits, and other assorted hardware-type goods.
“She doesn’t look like Ms. Fix-it to me,” I said as we watched her pay for her purchases with a Platinum American Express card.
“Not with those nails and that outfit,” BeBe agreed.
We tagged after Zoe to her car.
“Keep going?” BeBe asked as she started her car.
“Yeah,” I said. “This is kind of fun.”
We followed the van easily through the light Saturday-afternoon traffic toward the east side of Savannah, where the neighborhoods were more run-down, and the look more urban industrial than residential.
“The shipyards?” BeBe asked as we approached the sprawling Port Authority complex.
“Maybe it’s the hot new Gen-X stomping grounds,” I said.
“Uh-uh,” BeBe said. “There aren’t any nightclubs over here. Motorcycle clubs, maybe.”
But we passed by the shipyards and kept going until Zoe swung the van unexpectedly into the parking lot of a grimy warehouse complex.
BeBe drove on past, pulled into a convenience store, and turned and cruised slowly back past the warehouses.
The white van was now parked next to a loading dock. Zoe stood by the open back doors, talking to two men standing on the dock above her. One of them was Lewis Hargreaves.
I slid down in the seat until my chin was touching the dashboard.
“Keep going,” I told BeBe. “I don’t want Hargreaves to spot us snooping around here.”
“What do you suppose they’re up to?” she asked, craning her neck to see in the rearview mirror.
“I don’t know,” I said, sitting up again. “But I think it bears looking into.”