Survival Clause: A Savannah Martin Novel (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 20) Read online

  She was in the yard when we pulled up outside the fence, kneeling on some sort of little foam board—easier on aging knees than the hard ground, I figured—and she was pulling weeds from one of the flower beds. In addition to gossip, gardening is one of Aunt Regina’s passions.

  She turned when she heard the car pull up and stop, and shaded her eyes from the late afternoon sun still hanging above the rooftops across the street. “Oh,” she said after a second, “it’s you two.”

  “Three.” I pulled Carrie’s seat out of Rafe’s—or the police department’s—Chevy and headed for the gate. Rafe was there before me, and swung it open, gallantly, before he sauntered across the grass—his saunter can cover ground about as quickly as I can run—and extended a hand to Aunt Regina.

  She contemplated it, contemplated her gardening glove, and decided to hell with it. She put her hands in his, both of them, and let him haul her to her feet. “Thank you.”

  “The pleasure was all mine,” my husband assured her, with a wink. “Savannah has a couple questions.”

  “You want to come inside?” Aunt Regina trotted toward the steps to the porch, pulling her gardening gloves off as she went. “I have some lemonade, or I can make tea or coffee.”

  “It won’t take long,” I said, “and it’s nice out here.”

  “Then have a seat.” Aunt Regina gestured to the porch swing. “You two sit there. I’ll take this precious bundle.” She fell on the car seat and extricated Carrie while Rafe and I made ourselves comfortable in the swing. He pushed off with his foot, and while the swing squeaked ominously, it didn’t creak like it was about to give way.

  “Uncle Sid golfing?” I asked, while Aunt Regina held Carrie on her lap and cooed at her.

  She nodded, and spared me a single glance before turning her attention back to Carrie. Aunt Regina and Uncle Sid married late, and never had kids of their own, so they’ve more or less adopted us and ours. Between Catherine and Jonathan, Rafe and me, and Dix, there are now six grandchildren. Plus David, but he’s rarely in Sweetwater.

  Catherine and Jonathan are probably done. Dix may not be. He’s only thirty, and if he gets remarried, his new wife might want kids of her own. And Darcy has no children at all so far. If she and Nolan figure out their relationship, Aunt Regina might end up with a few more.

  But all of that was beside the point at the moment. I cleared my throat. “I wanted to ask you something.”

  “Go ahead,” Aunt Regina said.

  “I guess you heard about the dead woman found down by the interstate?”

  She made a face. “Terrible doings. But she was from Nashville, wasn’t she?” And no problem of ours, in other words.

  I nodded. “Rafe’s investigating.”

  Aunt Regina arched her brows at him. “I thought it was the sheriff’s case.”

  “It’s everybody’s case,” Rafe said. “Just this morning, we had an FBI agent drive in.”

  “Goodness gracious.” Aunt Regina turned Carrie around and cradled her, the better to pay attention to what we were saying. “That’s a lot of manpower for a dead prostitute.”

  “It’s a serial killer case,” I told her, and watched her eyes widen while Rafe’s brows lowered.

  “Darlin’—”

  “We have to tell her,” I said. “Otherwise, how is she going to understand why we want to know?”

  He didn’t say anything, but he shook his head. “You can’t publish nothing,” he told Aunt Regina sternly. “Some of this is information we don’t want to get around. Right now, nobody’s made the connection between this murder and any of the others, and the longer we can sit on that, the better.”

  Aunt Regina nodded, as innocently as if butter didn’t melt in her mouth. “Of course, Rafe.”

  He gave her a narrow-eyed stare—I didn’t blame him—but she added, “You can trust me. I won’t betray a confidence from a family member. I promise.”

  “Then go ahead,” he told me, “ask her.”

  I turned to Aunt Regina, but she was already talking. “Serial killer?”

  “Eighteen women,” I said, “that we know of—”

  Her eyes widened.

  “I’m serious, Aunt Regina. This is a huge case. A really big deal. You can’t leak it.”

  “I promised I wouldn’t, Savannah.” She bounced Carrie up and down as the baby started to fret. “Just tell me what I can do for you.”

  “She wants food.” I reached for her. “Do you mind…?”

  Aunt Regina shook her head and handed the baby over. “So eighteen dead. What is it you want from me? I didn’t know this woman. And to the best of my knowledge, I don’t know any serial killers.”

  “The first victim,” I said, while I hoisted up my blouse and got Carrie situated, “was local. Laura Lee Matlock.”

  She leaned back, a sort of instinctual recoil. “Laura Lee.”

  “You remember her.”

  She glanced from me to Rafe and back. “Yes, of course. We don’t have that many murders around here. I went to the funeral. But there was no talk about a serial killer back then.”

  “She was the first,” Rafe said. “It took a couple more victims for anyone to see the pattern.”

  “Was there any talk at the time?” I wanted to know. “Anything anyone was saying that might pertain?”

  Aunt Regina didn’t answer immediately, and I added, “The sheriff is pulling the old records, of course, and sharing them with the TBI and FBI and Chief Grimaldi. But I was wondering whether you remembered anything that wouldn’t be in the official reports.”

  Aunt Regina leaned back, and her eyes—dark like Catherine’s and Dad’s—grew unfocused. “She was working at the truck stop down by the interstate. Picking up extra cash because her husband was in prison. Can’t remember what he did to land himself there… got drunk and in a fight, maybe.”

  I exchanged a glance with Rafe, who’d landed himself in prison after getting in a fight, too. His lips twitched, but he didn’t say anything, just nodded to Aunt Regina. Pay attention, Savannah.

  “Her kids were with her mama,” Aunt Regina said. “She had two, I think. An older girl and a baby boy. They’d be in their teens or early twenties now.”

  They would, and I didn’t know why I hadn’t thought about them.

  But they were too young to be involved in this, and probably wouldn’t be able to remember much about what had happened. Nor would anyone have shared many of the details, I imagined, with the victim’s young children.

  “Frankie got out of prison, but the kids stayed with the Drimmels. He hung around for a while, and then disappeared. Not sure whether he moved away, or something happened to him. I know he went to prison at least a couple more times.”

  I nodded. There was nothing there that Grimaldi and Millie Ruth Durbin hadn’t already told me. “Can you remember a Latin teacher at Columbia High whose name was Jurgensson? That would have been a decade and a half earlier, probably.”

  “A Latin teacher?” She thought about it. “Can’t say that I do. Why?”

  “He lost his job for sexual misconduct,” Rafe said, and Aunt Regina’s eyes widened.

  “Of course. Why didn’t you say so?”

  I had my mouth open to tell her that I had said so, but she barreled right over me. “It was a very big deal when it happened. That kind of thing was less common twenty-five or thirty years ago, or maybe we just didn’t hear about it as much.”

  Maybe not. “But you remember it?”

  “Of course,” Aunt Regina said. “I just didn’t remember the man’s name. But everyone knew that a teacher from the high school had been let go for improper attentions toward a student.”

  Improper attentions… “Do you know which student?”

  “Not Laura Lee Drimmel,” Aunt Regina said, “if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  No? “Are you sure?”

  “As sure as I can be,” Aunt Regina said.

  “So you know who it was?”

  She shook h
er head. “But I know it wasn’t Laura Lee.”

  “How?” If she didn’t know who the student was, how could she know definitively that it hadn’t been Laura Lee?

  “Because it was one of the boys,” Aunt Regina said. And added, when I just sat there with my mouth open, “This was about a decade into the AIDS epidemic. Gay relationships weren’t as accepted as they are now.”

  No. And it’s not like they’re always accepted now, either. Legally, yes. Legally, a gay couple can get married as easily as a straight couple these days. But there are plenty of people who still aren’t OK with it in practice.

  Besides, statutory rape is still statutory rape, whether the victim is male or female.

  “One of the boys,” I said.

  Aunt Regina nodded. “There was a lot of talk, and a lot of concern about a lot of things. Whether the teacher had AIDS and had given it to the boy. Whether the teacher would be arrested. Whether the teacher had turned the boy gay. Whether anyone could turn someone else gay.”

  “I don’t think that’s possible,” I said. Next to me, Rafe made a soft sound of amusement.

  “I know, Savannah,” Aunt Regina said. “I’m just telling you what was being said. And why I’m sure this was a boy, and not Laura Lee Drimmel.”

  Yes, it sounded like we could be reasonably sure about that. “But you don’t know who it was.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think I ever knew. Some of the kids might have known, and whispered about it, but nobody told me. And it wasn’t someone local. He was from elsewhere in the county, not Sweetwater.”

  “Who would know?”

  “Someone who went to school with him,” Aunt Regina said. “Although I don’t understand why this matters, Savannah.”

  I didn’t, either, when I thought about it. “If it had been Laura Lee…”

  “But it wasn’t,” my aunt said.

  I nodded. “Any idea where Jurgensson ended up?”

  “Not a clue. He wasn’t local, either. I guess he went back to where he came from.”

  That made sense. Although he hadn’t. Grimaldi had told me that Jurgensson’s social security number hadn’t filed taxes since he worked at Columbia High. “Anything else you can think of?”

  “Nothing pertaining to this,” Aunt Regina said. “I’m interested in the videos, though.”

  “The… oh. The ones of Rafe?”

  She nodded. My husband smirked.

  “We don’t know who’s behind those,” I said. “I’ve been trying to find out, but with no luck so far.”

  “Could be anybody, I imagine,” my aunt said.

  “Oh, sure.” I nodded. “Anyone with two X chromosomes—or an X and Y, if it comes to that—with access to a cell phone and social media. There isn’t a woman—or gay man—in existence who doesn’t think my husband’s hot.”

  Rafe chuckled. “Thank you, darlin’.”

  “I was being sarcastic,” I said, although there was a certain amount—a rather large amount—of truth to it. “I think it’s probably a woman, and not just because she calls herself Jessica Rabbit. It doesn’t sound like a moniker a man would choose. But there’s a female feel to the whole thing.”

  “Could just be ’cause you remember Elspeth,” Rafe said.

  I nodded. “It could. But I’m going to be very surprised if it turns out to be anything but a woman. Or girl. I wonder whether Agent Yung would give me a profile of your stalker if I asked nicely?”

  “Couldn’t hurt to ask,” Rafe said. “You prob’ly wanna be prepared for Yung turning her nose up, though.”

  “At me? At you? At the idea that this person could have a profile?”

  “Oh, I’m sure there’s a profile. I’m just not sure Yung’s gonna wanna share it.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “You don’t think it’s her, do you?”

  He laughed. “No, darlin’. She was in Memphis yesterday, and inside the police station when I was kissing you. She couldn’t have taken that video.”

  Right. “I forgot,” I said. “Besides, if she had any kind of obsession with you—”

  “It’d be for dragging me off to jail.” He shook his head. “Don’t worry about it, darlin’. But ask her for a profile, by all means. I wanna be there to see her face when you do.”

  I turned back to my aunt, who’d been following this exchange with interest. “Agent Yung?”

  “The FBI agent who showed up this morning. She recognized Rafe from the first video, and from when he was doing undercover work in Memphis. Except she didn’t know he was undercover…”

  “Good grief,” Aunt Regina said. “So she came haring out here hoping to arrest him?”

  I nodded. “Grimaldi set her straight. But it looked pretty tense when I walked in on them this morning. Face to face and yelling at each other.”

  Aunt Regina shook her head, and then looked past me to the street. “Here’s Sid.”

  Yes, indeed. There he was, pulling up to the curb and hoisting his golf clubs out of the trunk of his car. “What are you two planning to do tonight?” I wanted to know. “It’s a Friday. Do you have a big night planned?”

  “I’m cooking chicken,” Aunt Regina said, “and then I imagine we’ll watch some TV.”

  She looked at my face and laughed. “What are your plans, Savannah?”

  “I imagine I’ll be cooking chicken, too,” I said, since that’s often what I do, “and we’ll end up watching TV…”

  “I like TV,” Rafe informed us both. “None of the guns are pointed at me, and none of the bullets are lethal.”

  He had a point. “What kind of chicken?” I asked my aunt.

  She smiled. “Enough for four, if you want to stay.”

  But— “Rain-check,” Rafe told her, and made it to his feet just as Uncle Sid reached the front porch and noticed us. “Sid.”

  “Rafe.” Uncle Sid waved him back into the chair and turned to me. “Savannah.”

  I waved. “Hi, Uncle Sid. I’d get up and give you a hug, but as you can see…”

  He nodded, looking from one to the other of us. “Family meeting? Something going on that I need to know about?”

  We all hastened to assure him that nothing whatsoever was going on, or nothing he needed to worry about. “A name came up in one of Rafe’s cases that we thought Aunt Regina might know something about.”

  Uncle Sid fitted himself in next to his wife, with a grin at her. “And did she?”

  “Not much,” Aunt Regina admitted, her tone disgruntled. “It was about that teacher at the high school in Columbia who had sex with the student…”

  Uncle Sid was nodding long before she finished the sentence. “I remember that.”

  “Do you know who it was?”

  Rafe and I asked at the same time, and exchanged a look.

  “The kid?” Uncle Sid shook his head. “I don’t think that was ever revealed. I remember the teacher, though.”

  “Jurgensson?”

  “Kent,” Uncle Sid said. “Nice guy. Played golf.”

  “Do you have any idea what became of him?”

  But Uncle Sid didn’t. “Haven’t seen him since it happened. Poor bastard lost his job, of course, and had a hard time finding another. Last I heard, he was working some menial job in Tupelo or Tucson or someplace like that.”

  “Who told you that?” Rafe wanted to know.

  Uncle Sid turned to him. “He made up part of a golf foursome. One of the other players stayed in touch with him for a bit.”

  “Name?”

  “Art Mullinax,” Uncle Sid said. “I just played a round with him this afternoon. But if he’s heard anything from Kent in the past ten years, he hasn’t said anything about it.”

  “It’s worth checking,” Rafe said easily. “Where can I find Art Mullinax?”

  Uncle Sid sighed. “He lives on the other side of Columbia, not too far from that house you blew up.” He glanced at me. I wanted to protest that I hadn’t blown up the house; other people did that, but I decided it was better
not to derail him. “Big spread called Daffodil Hill Farm. Him and his wife and about fifty acres.”

  “I’ll have a look,” Rafe said. “Don’t worry, Sid. I’m not looking to rake up old scandals. And I won’t mention your name.”

  “It won’t matter,” Uncle Sid said. “Everyone knows who you are, and that you married my niece. When you show up, he’ll know who you talked to.”

  Maybe someone else could go talk to Art, then. Someone other than Rafe. Someone like… oh… Leslie Yung, for instance.

  Before I could open my mouth to say so, Rafe had gone on. “I’m just trying to track down the teacher, Sid. Nothing to do with your friends at all.”

  I lifted Carrie to my shoulder and patted her back while Uncle Sid looked unhappy. “What’s the use of dragging it all back out after all this time?” he wanted to know. “Just let bygones be bygones, is what I say.”

  “I wish it was that easy,” Rafe told him, “but if there’s a connection to my murder case, I need to know about it.”

  “What kind of connection?” Uncle Sid threw both hands up. “He wasn’t a murderer, for God’s sake. He was a gentle scholarly guy who taught Latin and played golf. Not the type who would have forced himself on anyone.”

  I opened my mouth to mention that force doesn’t have to enter into a statutory rape charge, but before I could, Uncle Sid went on, a little more calmly. “Yes, he got off easier than he should have. No question. There should have been charges files and he should have gone to jail, or at least had his name added to the sexual offender registry. Instead, he vamoosed before any of that could happen. But he wasn’t a murderer!”

  “Nobody’s thinking he is,” Rafe said. “It’s just a loose end I have to tie off. His name came up, and I’ve gotta check it off the list. That’s all.”

  Uncle Sid nodded. Reluctantly.

  “We appreciate it,” Rafe said. He glanced at me. I nodded, too. I was ready to go. My clothes were back together and Carrie had been burped.

  I lowered her into the car seat. “Enjoy your evening. Maybe we can do dinner together some other time. At the Wayside Inn or Beulah’s or somewhere, so no one has to cook.”

  “I’d like that,” Aunt Regina said and got to her feet to buss my cheek. Then she bussed Rafe’s. “Take care of your girls.”