Chapter 13 #2
“Oh, yeah,” Sol said from her desk. “I spoke to Officer Montero, who checked with the patrol. From the looks of it, someone is there. More lights on than usual, though the garage doors were shut, so if Archer’s car was there, it wasn’t seen.”
She was looking at her computer screen and sipping some kind of tea. “What’ve you come up with?”
“So far, no connection to Huber. Still hunting for a will, but most likely everything is held jointly with her husband.”
“She’s from money, so he would inherit,” she surmised aloud.
“Presumably. Unless she made some special arrangements. Like a trust or whatever.”
“But no kids?”
“None of her own. Stepkids, of course. Archer has a daughter, and Mavis has one brother who lives out of state, and her mother is still alive.”
“Ooh. That’s a hard one. Outliving your kids,” Sol said.
“Yeah.” Reed thought of his own little girl and couldn’t imagine losing her. He wasn’t all that great at reaching over an emotional chasm as proven by the text he’d received from Toby Yelkis just last night: Fuck off.
Not likely.
But he’d give Sylvie’s kid some space.
For now.
“I can run down the exes,” Sol offered, finishing her tea and crumpling the paper cup.
“You got names? Addresses and numbers?”
“Yep. They’re both still in Savannah. Radley Bowers, her first husband, is the golf pro at the country club where Mavis was a member.
He’s the senior pro, probably close to retiring.
There’s a younger guy who gives most of the lessons, especially for the kids.
Junior instructions and the like. But Bowers still gives a few to the older guys, the senior members, I guess.
And he works in the pro shop.” She checked her notes.
“Bowers has a family. Grown daughters who’ve moved away—one in Augusta, the other in Myrtle Beach, and his second wife, Kelsey.
As for Mavis’s husband number two? Leonard Armstrong.
He’s still single. Never remarried. He works down at the First Coastal Bank and Trust, handles high-end accounts.
From what it looks like, Mavis was still married to him when she hooked up with Archer Greenlee, another wealthy client of the bank’s investment department. ”
“She always had money, and Billy Huber barely had a pot to piss in,” Reed muttered.
“I checked his finances. He didn’t just owe that brother, Robert. He’d taken out a loan on his property.”
“Don’t suppose it was with First Coastal?” Reed said, hoping for some kind of thread connecting the victims, no matter how fragile.
“A bank wouldn’t touch that mess of a place. Private lender: Horace Denton Investments. Super-high interest rate. Personal loan. The deed to the property was put up as collateral.”
“Let me guess,” Reed said. “Billy was behind in his payments.”
Sol nodded. “I talked to Gina Mercado, the receptionist, who told me that Horace Denton was ‘unavailable’ and that he would call me back. So far, he hasn’t.
” Her lips twisted downward. “I have this sneaking suspicion he won’t pick up the phone, so I’ll pay him a personal visit.
” Her cell rang, and she snagged it from the desk, looked at the screen, and said, “Gotta take this. It’s the bartender from the Stag and Boar, the one who was on duty last night when Archer Greenlee claimed he was there.
I went by the place last night, and he’d gone home.
” She answered, and Reed turned back to his computer, where a picture of the two stones was now visible.
Therein lay the connection. Somehow those rocks, with their cryptic messages etched in blood, were the answer.
“Mavis Crawford was two-faced,” Charlene admitted with a scowl.
She was sitting on a tufted chair near the French doors of her apartment while sipping tea from her favorite Hermès teacup.
She cradled the cup, decorated with fanciful horses and a shiny gold interior, as if it were precious.
But then Charlene always had a tender affection for some of her most prized possessions.
Nikki didn’t argue with her mother as she sat on a barstool at the peninsula separating the kitchen from the living area.
No reason to try to sugarcoat the truth, she thought, as she forced a smile at the woman who had raised her.
Frail and thin, Charlene was still concerned about her appearance.
Her snowy hair was neatly wound in a French braid, her slacks pressed to a knife’s edge, her creamy sweater without a snag, a pearl necklace lying gracefully around her throat.
The same attention to detail went into her living space.
Her apartment was spacious and airy, with a bank of wide windows facing the garden.
Blooming azaleas looked as if they were on fire, and beyond her private patio, a manicured lawn rolled down to a lake, where a pair of swans swam lazily past scattered lily pads.
Charlene watched them glide through the water. “Beautiful, aren’t they?”
“The swans? Yes,” Nikki agreed. “But, Mom, Mavis’s name was Greenlee.” She checked her watch. It was after eleven, as she’d spent some time at the newspaper office before deciding to visit her mother. “Mavis was married to Archer Greenlee.”
Charlene snorted. “She traded husbands like baseball cards.”
“Mom!”
“Well, it’s true. Just ask your brother. He knew her, you know. Did all her yard work.”
“Kyle?” Nikki was surprised. Her brother was a loner, and though he lived in the same town, she rarely saw him. He barely even showed up for Christmas gatherings. In fact, she wasn’t certain he’d ever met Chloe.
“Of course Kyle.” Charlene seemed perturbed, her thin eyebrows colliding. “He held a very low opinion of Mavis.”
Nikki felt the unlikely need to defend the woman she’d barely known. “Being married three times isn’t that big of a deal these days, and certainly not a sin.”
“Not a faithful bone in that woman’s body.”
“Aren’t you the one who always said you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead?” Nikki asked. She’d given her mother the news about Mavis, and Charlene hadn’t seemed surprised. And now this disparagement.
“I always told you to tell the truth,” Charlene countered, “and Mavis was nothing but a headache for her mother. Oh, Blanche would never admit it, but that’s the way it was.”
So much for needing to console Charlene. “If you say so.” Nikki’s gaze moved to the swans; one had peeled away from its mate and was chasing after an intruding mallard. The swan’s neck was extended, his wings stretching wide, as he gave off a hissing growl. The duck quickly took flight.
“Tundra swans,” Charlene said. “Very territorial and, like Mavis Crawford, beautiful but hostile.” She sipped from her cup.
“Unlike her, though, tundras mate for life.” And then setting her cup on a small, glass-topped table, she added, “You probably don’t need to know this.
Few people do. But Mavis and your father”—her fingers fluttered a little—“they … they were involved a long time ago.”
Nikki gave her mother a long stare. “What?”
“I don’t mean to shock you, but it’s the truth.”
“But—”
“It was a long time ago,” Charlene cut her off. “Water under the bridge, you know.”
“I … didn’t know,” Nikki admitted, a bit stunned. In a town the size of Savannah, with Ronald Gillette having been active in local politics, there had been bits and pieces of rumors surrounding him all of Nikki’s life. But she’d never heard Mavis Greenlee’s name attached to him.
“Oh, neither of them thought I knew about their little affair, but I did.” She pinned a cold smile on her lips.
“So, no, I’m not overly grieving about her, though it is sad for Blanche.
It’s never easy to bury a child. I know about that.
” Sorrow stole over her features as it always did when something said or done touched on her remembrance of Nikki’s brother, Andrew, gone so many years.
His death had been a tragedy, a combination of cocaine, booze, and a faulty deck from which he’d tumbled to his death years before.
“Nonetheless,” Charlene continued, “I call them as I see them, and Mavis was not a kind soul, no matter how many charity events she put on through the church. She may have fooled Reverend Stark and all of the rest of the women’s aid society, but she didn’t fool me. ”
With that, she picked up her delicate cup again and took a sip. “Not once.”