Wrongful Termination: A Savannah Martin Novel (Savannah Martin Mystery Book 16) Read online

  “I’ll see what I can find out,” Wendell said. “Somebody’s gotta know something. And I still work at the TBI, so maybe they’ll tell me.”

  Maybe. “Goins isn’t likely to tell Rafe, anyway, so anything you can discover will be helpful.”

  Wendell looked from me to Rafe. “You got an alibi, don’t you? You were in Columbia last night, right?”

  Rafe nodded. “Not sure Goins believed me, though. And he made sure to let Savannah know he knew she’d lie if she had to.”

  I sniffed. Rafe grinned.

  “I’m going to go call Grimaldi,” I said. “Enjoy the pizza.”

  I took the baby with me down the hall. Behind me, the conversation continued. “What kinda car did Brennan drive?” Clayton wanted to know. He was the group’s vehicular specialist, so if there was anything to know about it, Clayton would know.

  I don’t know what the answer was, though, as by then I’d made it down to the kitchen and out of range.

  I put Carrie in the bouncy seat and sat at the table to pull out my phone. Grimaldi picked up after the first ring. “Ms…. Savannah.”

  “Quick question,” I said, circumventing the whole issue of what to call her. “Are you somewhere with Dix?”

  “No,” Grimaldi said. “That’s the quick question?”

  “No. It’s Friday. Why aren’t you?”

  “None of your business.”

  I didn’t say anything, and after a moment she relented. “I’m going with him and the girls to the movies tomorrow. Was that the question?”

  “No. I just wanted to make sure you had time to talk and I wasn’t interrupting anything. What do you know about a detective named Goins?”

  There was a beat of silence. “Rick Goins?”

  “Stocky guy, early forties, looks like muscle gone to fat. Thinning hair, beady eyes.”

  “Sounds like Rick Goins,” Grimaldi said. “Where did you come across him?”

  “He came to the house, looking for Rafe.”

  Grimaldi sounded resigned. “What did your husband do now?”

  I sniffed. “Nothing. He was in Sweetwater when this happened. Not that Goins seemed inclined to believe it.”

  “He has a suspicious nature,” Grimaldi said. “When what happened, exactly?”

  I told her what had happened.

  “And Goins came to talk to your husband?”

  “Brennan fired him,” I said. “Or let him go, rather. Eliminated his position. It was Goins’s contention that Rafe was upset about it, and too stupid to realize that killing Brennan wouldn’t have gotten him his job back, but would instead have sent him back to Riverbend for a stretch of twenty-five to life.”

  “That must have gone over well,” Grimaldi said dryly.

  “Rafe was polite. Coldly polite. He refused to go downtown for questioning, and when Goins told him not to leave town, he told Goins it doesn’t work that way.”

  Grimaldi didn’t say anything. “You told me not to leave town after Brenda Puckett’s murder,” I said.

  “Sometimes it works,” Grimaldi answered, with no sign whatsoever of a guilty conscience.

  Sure. “So what can you tell me about Goins? Is he as much of an idiot as he seems? Do I have to worry that he’ll arrest Rafe even though Rafe spent last night in Sweetwater and can prove it?”

  Grimaldi took a second to think about it. “He isn’t the most imaginative cop,” she said. “Very much by the book. Doesn’t take many chances. Tends to leap to the obvious solution early on and then spends a lot of time making a case to prove it.”

  “And in this case, Rafe’s the obvious solution.”

  There was no need for Grimaldi to confirm it, so she didn’t. “Detective work isn’t brain surgery,” she said instead. “Ninety-nine percent of the time, the obvious suspect is guilty.”

  “Except this time.” Grimaldi didn’t answer, and I added, “Why does he have a suspicious nature? Just a result of the job, or some other reason?”

  “I shouldn’t be telling you this,” Grimaldi said, and proceeded to tell me anyway. “Rick and I rubbed along all right, and would have gotten along better if I hadn’t been a woman, and I didn’t close a lot of cases.”

  “So he’s a misogynist. And jealous.”

  “Not so much of me,” Grimaldi said, “although you probably won’t be doing yourself any favors by mentioning me.”

  Too late. “We already did. You’re one of Rafe’s alibis for last night. And while Goins might not like you much, I’m sure he’ll trust you when it comes to being someone’s alibi.”

  Grimaldi admitted, a bit grudgingly, that he probably would.

  “So if not you, who’s he jealous of?” Surely not Rafe, since I hadn’t gotten the impression that Goins had ever laid eyes on him before.

  “Remember Jaime?” Grimaldi said.

  How could I forget? Homicide detective Jaime Mendoza, another of Grimaldi’s colleagues in the MNPD. I’d met him for the first time on what should have been my wedding day, after Rafe didn’t show up, last summer, and Mother had asked him—Mendoza—whether he wanted to marry me instead.

  He’s just the type Mother appreciates. Very handsome, very well dressed, extremely charming. He’d handled the question, and having to reject me, beautifully. Rafe and I had met him a few times since, too, and I could well understand why someone like Goins would be jealous of someone like Mendoza, who’s not only drop-dead gorgeous, but very smart, and also quite a good cop.

  “Not just that,” Grimaldi said when I said so. “When Jaime cheated on his wife, it was with Goins’s girlfriend. Who slept with Jaime because she knew it would drive Rick crazy.”

  “That’s ugly.”

  Grimaldi agreed. “In Jaime’s favor,” she said, “I don’t think he realized that that was the reason. But all that aside, Rick doesn’t have a habit of arresting the wrong man. And he does close cases. It just takes him a bit of time to get there sometimes.”

  “So he’ll be investigating Rafe for a while, while the real killer—if there is one—has time to cover his tracks. But when it comes right down to it, he isn’t likely to arrest Rafe.”

  “Probably not,” Grimaldi agreed.

  That was good to know, anyway. Not that Rafe would be happy to sit around and wait while Goins came to that conclusion. “I don’t suppose he’s likely to share information.”

  “No,” Grimaldi said. “Especially when your husband no longer works for the TBI and Rick thinks that’s the reason for the murder.”

  That made sense. I thought for a moment. “You don’t have access to that information, do you?”

  “No,” Grimaldi said again, firmly. “And I have cases of my own to deal with. And a department of officers, detectives, and support personnel I don’t know if I can trust.”

  Right. “Just hold on until Rafe gets there. I’m pretty sure he’ll decide to come lend a hand. But at this point you’ll probably have to wait until this Brennan thing is figured out.”

  “I’m still getting situated,” Grimaldi said. “I’ll probably be spending the best part of next week getting to know my staff. Individual interviews and the like. But when he gets around to it, if he decides to, I can use him.”

  I told him I’d let him know, although I figured he already did.

  “Keep me updated on what happens,” Grimaldi said. “And if Rick calls to check your husband’s alibi, I’ll do what I can to set him straight.”

  “We’d appreciate that,” I said. “Have a good time with Dix and the girls tomorrow. Enjoy the movie.”

  Grimaldi said she was sure she would. “It’s an animated Disney feature about a princess. What’s not to like?”

  Let me count the ways.

  Not that I particularly mind Disney princess movies. I’ve watched my share of them—more than my share—babysitting Abigail and Hannah. But Grimaldi is a whole lot less girly than I am, and would probably prefer the latest action thriller featuring The Rock or Bruce Willis or someone like that. Explosions and
car chases and weapons discharging, not to mention fight scenes that weren’t choreographed right. Rafe likes those, too, and likes to point out everything that’s wrong with them.

  Although in another couple of years, he’d be watching his own share of Disney princesses, as our own daughter grew up.

  I glanced at her, where she was sitting in the bouncy seat watching her toes wiggle inside the pink one-piece with little Minnie Mice all over it, and tried to picture her in a couple of years, curled up next to her daddy on the sofa watching Sleeping Beauty. It was surprisingly easy. “I should go.”

  “Stay in touch,” Grimaldi said and hung up. I did the same.

  * * *

  The boys and Wendell stayed until midnight. By then, I’d given up the fight and gone to bed. When Rafe climbed in next to me, I snuggled close and went back to sleep. For the little bit of time I had before Carrie woke up hungry, and I had to stagger into her room to feed her.

  She had nursed herself to sleep and I had put her down in her crib, careful not to wake her, and was on my way back to my own room when I glanced out the window into the side yard and saw a shadow moving between the trees there.

  It was shades of déjà vu. A couple of months ago, just before Carrie was born, this same thing had happened. It had been Mrs. Jenkins showing up in the middle of the night, in the front yard that time, with blood all over her, and just the memory of it sent a chill down my spine.

  I scurried across the hallway, the bottoms of my feet cold on the hardwood floors, and hissed my husband’s name.” “Rafe!”

  “Mmm?”

  “Somebody’s outside.”

  He went from asleep to awake in the span of a second, just as always. “Who?”

  “Can’t tell. But something was moving around down in the side yard. Behind the gazebo.”

  He was already out of bed and pulling a pair of faded jeans up over nothing, tucking himself away efficiently and pulling up the zipper. “Stay here.”

  That’s what he’d told me last time, too.

  “Be careful,” I said, as he headed for the stairs. “You don’t even have a gun anymore.”

  “If this kinda shit’s gonna happen, I’m gonna have to get one.”

  He didn’t wait for me to speak, just headed down the stairs two steps at a time. I heard the front door open and close. I made my way back into Carrie’s room and over to the window while he made his own way around the outside of the house a floor below. When I peered out, I could see him come around the corner, still shirtless and barefoot.

  He stood for a second and looked around. My heart was knocking against my ribs, waiting for that hypothetical shot to come, but nothing happened. I peered beyond the gazebo, where I’d seen movement earlier, but there was nothing there now.

  After a few moments, Rafe moved away from the corner of the house and into the grass. I watched as he wandered beyond the gazebo, between the dry bushes, until he turned back toward the house. He disappeared around the corner again. I stayed where I was, looking at the yard, just in case whoever had been down there would come out of hiding now that Rafe was gone.

  But nothing happened, and a few seconds later I heard the front door open and close, followed by the deadbolt and the security chain. I left Carrie’s room for the second time and waited for Rafe at the top of the stairs.

  “Sorry,” I told him when he started climbing. “Must have been my imagination.”

  He shrugged, as if sending him outside at the beginning of January, barefoot and bare-chested, in the middle of the night, was no big deal. “I didn’t see nobody. But that don’t mean somebody wasn’t there.”

  “What else would it mean? You looked, right? And nobody was there.”

  “Nobody was there now,” Rafe said, reaching the top of the stairs and pausing in front of me. I could feel the chill from outside clinging to his body. The viper tattoo that curled around his upper arm flicked its little forked tongue out at me. “That don’t mean somebody wasn’t there earlier.”

  He dropped his hand to the button in his jeans. My eyes dropped with it, and he grinned. “I’m awake. How about you?”

  I was awake, too. No question about it.

  He flicked open the button and pulled down the zipper, but made no move to get out of the jeans. Instead he reached out and snagged me around the waist, and pulled me up against him. The fabric of the jeans was cold against my legs, but the heat of his chest and stomach was warm through my nightgown.

  I ran my hands up over arms, across the viper, to his shoulders. Smooth, warm skin covering hard muscles. “I love you.”

  “Love you too, darlin’.” His voice was easy as he turned me toward the bedroom. We did a sort of dance—shuffle, step, turn—through the door, and ended up at the foot of the bed. The corner of his mouth curled up. “Remember the first time we did this?”

  “Not something I’d forget,” I said. And not just because the sex had been good—or more than good; life-changing—but because everything else about the encounter had changed my life, too.

  He bent to nuzzle my neck, just below my ear. “Sometimes I can’t believe it, you know?”

  “Believe what?” My voice was breathless.

  I could feel his lips curve. “That you’re still here. I figured I’d wake up the next morning and you’d be gone.”

  “I did leave.” Just not first thing in the morning. I’d wanted a repeat performance first. Or if I hadn’t thought about it quite that clearly, I hadn’t been ready to leave. I’d known, or thought I knew, that I should, but I hadn’t wanted to.

  “You came back.”

  Not to his bed. Not then. The next time we made love, it was in my bed, in the apartment I used to live in over on Main Street.

  But we were back now. And married. And I wasn’t going anywhere.

  “I don’t think you understand just how crazy about you I am,” I told him.

  “The sex, sure.” He lifted his head to give me a grin. “I figured I could make you come back for that. But I thought for sure you’d wise up before you actually hitched yourself to me permanently.”

  “There’s nowhere I’d rather be permanently,” I said. “And nobody I’d rather be hitched to.”

  And on that note he tumbled me onto the bed and followed me down, and if someone was outside in the yard, skulking around, neither one of us gave them a second thought.

  Chapter Nine

  Rafe left in the morning to help first José and then Clayton load up and leave. I didn’t tag along. Partly because I was meeting Alexandra for lunch, and partly because I figured he needed the time on his own, surrounded by his friends, to deal with this. His life was changing. He would never be working with either of these men again. His time with the TBI had come to an end. He and Wendell were done as a team. And as far as José and Clayton were concerned, he might never see them again. They were going into dangerous situations in other places, and nobody knew better than Rafe that every day could be the day when someone figured out what they were doing and ended them for it.

  He didn’t need me tagging along and trying to make light of anything. So I kissed him goodbye, and let him go off on his own to deal with things in his own way.

  After he left, I straightened up from the debauchery of last night. All the empty pizza cartons went into the trash and the empty bottles into recycling.

  We have bins for both outside by the fence. I put on my coat for the trip, and left Carrie inside for the minute or two I figured it would take me to cross the yard. Then I headed across the porch and down the steps and over the grass with a stack of greasy pizza boxes under one arm, and a bag full of empty beer bottles in the other hand.

  Mrs. Jenkins’s house—an 1880s three-story Victorian with a tower on one corner—sits on a pretty big lot for one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city. The original mansions in the area, the antebellums, had acreage and fields, of course. Same as the Martin Plantation in Sweetwater. But Mrs. J’s house was one of the ‘summer cottages’ of the
elite of the post-Civil War era. They had their big houses on the west side of downtown, and in the summers, they’d travel across the river, to Edgefield and East Nashville, to stay in their summer cottages. And those—most of them not what we’d call a cottage these days—were all lined up neatly on urban-sized lots.

  All except for Mrs. J’s house. It sits on a corner, and it has a lot of space on three sides. There’s enough room for a second house, actually, but instead, in the place where a second house might be, there’s a gazebo. And just before Thanksgiving, I’d discovered—or Mrs. J had shown me—the tunnel that runs from the basement of the house to the underside of the gazebo.

  Carrie had been born a few days later, and I hadn’t had any time since to look into the tunnel and how it came to be there.

  It wasn’t part of the Underground Railroad. I did know that much. Not only was the house built too late for that, but most of the Underground Railroad activity in Tennessee took place in the eastern part of the state.

  At any rate, as I was making my way across the grass with my pizza boxes and empty bottles, the thought crossed my mind that for anyone who knew that it was there, the gazebo, and the tunnel below it, made for a dandy second entrance into the house.

  Or at least as far as the basement. After I showed it to him back in November, Rafe had made sure to nail the entrance shut on the inside, just so no one could get in that way. We kept the basement door locked, too, just in case. And he’d also been out here in the yard and nailed the entrance to the tunnel shut in the gazebo floor.

  And I didn’t really think anyone was down there. I didn’t think anyone knew about it, other than us and Mrs. Jenkins. Rafe had lived in the house for the best part of a year without knowing that the tunnel existed, and I’d been there almost as long, so the chances of anyone else knowing about it were slim to none.

  Nonetheless, after I’d put the pizza boxes in the trash and the beer bottles in recycling, I made my way across the dry grass, crunching under my feet in the cold weather, and up into the gazebo. Just to make sure that the entrance to the tunnel was still nailed shut, and that our nocturnal visitor last night hadn’t made it into the tunnel and was either lying at the bottom of the shaft nursing two broken legs, or had dragged himself all the way down the tunnel to the house, and was even now scratching on the inside of the basement door with his fingernails.