Right of Redemption Page 17

  Rafe nodded.

  “Meanwhile, Natalie had a boyfriend. The boyfriend is always a suspect, right?”

  I didn’t wait for him to tell me I was right. “Maybe she wanted to break up with him, and he didn’t want her to. Maybe that’s who Mrs. Burns heard argue. Why wasn’t he a suspect?”

  “Maybe he was,” Rafe said. “Maybe he had an alibi.”

  Maybe so. The defense hadn’t brought him up during the trial, not even to create reasonable doubt, so maybe he hadn’t been even a remote possibility. “I just don’t think Morris did it. The jury didn’t think Morris did it, either. They deadlocked the first time and acquitted the second. He probably shouldn’t have been charged at all, since there was very little evidence against him. I’m just worried that Jarvis will do the same thing to Charlotte. Get it in his head that she’s guilty, and not consider anyone else.”

  I turned the burner off under the pot of spaghetti and carried it to the sink, where I dumped it. Water sloshed down the drain with a gurgle, and steam rose. Angel hair pasta slithered smoothly from the pot into the strainer.

  “Smells good,” Rafe said, and slipped another hand under the dish towel I had draped over the garlic bread to keep it warm for the couple of minutes it would take me to finish making dinner.

  “You keep that up, there won’t be enough left for later.” I shook the strainer.

  He grinned at me as he chomped into the piece of bread. “Don’t much matter if I eat it now or later, does it?”

  I guess it didn’t. And I wasn’t supposed to have garlic bread, anyway. Or pasta, for that matter. But one deprivation at a time.

  “I’m just trying to come up with another suspect before Jarvis arrests Charlotte.” I poured the pasta into the pot and began mixing angel hair and sauce. “At this point, I have to assume he’s thinking about it. It’s been almost three days, and we all know that cases are supposed to be wrapped up in seventy-two hours.”

  Rafe opened his mouth, and closed it again without speaking.

  “There has to be someone,” I said. “I mean, I know Charlotte didn’t do it…”

  Rafe didn’t answer, and there was something in his silence that made me turn to look at him. He met my eyes, but didn’t say anything.

  “You can’t be serious!” I said.

  “I dunno that I am serious, darlin’. But hear me out for a second. Say Charlotte went back to the house on Friday night, to look for that earring she’d lost during the day.”

  “That’s what she said she did.”

  “And say she walked inside and found Morris there.”

  “She can’t have,” I said. “Mrs. Oberlin would have seen him arrive.”

  “If he came through the backyard?”

  Well, no. Maybe not then. “If she’d walked in and he was there, Charlotte would have run back out, screaming. Mrs. Oberlin would have noticed that.”

  Rafe ignored me. “And say Morris really did kill Natalie Allen three years ago. And say he attacked Charlotte. And she picked up the screwdriver and stabbed him with it so she could get away.”

  “Self defense,” I said.

  “If it happened something like that, you think she woulda called the cops? Or just left him there and acted like nothing happened the next morning?”

  My hands had stilled on the pasta, and I realized it and started stirring again. “Hard to say. I mean… I’d like to think she would have called 911 and asked for an ambulance. I’d hope I would have, if it were me. But it’s possible that she might have run out of there to get away from the whole thing. Pretend it didn’t happen.”

  It would explain why she’d been late getting to the house the next morning. Reluctance to go back to the crime scene. Unlike Darcy and me, she knew what we’d find once we walked inside.

  “Something to think about,” Rafe said.

  “Don’t you think Mrs. Oberlin would have noticed something amiss, though? I mean… you don’t really think it happened that way, do you?” I put a plate full of angel hair and clam sauce in front of him.

  He gave me a look at he picked up his fork. “It mighta happened that way. On the evidence, it’s as likely as anything else. She was there. Nobody else had a reason to be.”

  No. And that included Morris.

  “What do you think he was doing there?” It wasn’t his house anymore. And all his belongings were gone.

  “Looking for a dry place to sleep?” Rafe said, winding angel hair around his fork.

  Maybe so. I wound spaghetti around my own fork and tried to picture the scenario. Morris inside the dark house, and Charlotte pulling up to look for her earring. She would have opened the front door with her key, and turned on the light. She had no reason to hide.

  So why hadn’t Morris, if he was there, just scooted out the back until she was gone? He must have known she wasn’t going to stay. There was nothing there to sleep on. Why confront her, when he could have just faded into the dark in the yard and waited for her to leave again?

  But maybe he hadn’t heard her coming. Maybe he’d conked out, and she had walked in on him sleeping, and he hadn’t had time to get out. And then he had attacked her?

  It was possible, but if all he was doing was sleeping, surely it was also—pardon my pun—overkill?

  On the other hand, he had just been released from prison. He might have had powerful incentive not to want to go back there. Maybe he had tried to talk to Charlotte, and she had refused to listen to reason…

  But in that case, wouldn’t it have been Charlotte dead on the floor, and not Morris?

  “Eat.” Rafe’s voice cut through the thoughts looping through my brain. “Your food’s getting cold.”

  I glanced at him, and he added, with a wink, “You gotta keep your strength up. I got plans for later.”

  Good to know. “I’m just worried,” I said, lifting my fork and picking at the pasta. “Prison wouldn’t agree with Charlotte.”

  “Prison don’t agree with most of us,” Rafe agreed. “That’s the point of it.”

  I slanted a look his way. “You did all right, didn’t you?”

  “I managed to keep outta Big Ned’s bunk, if that’s what you mean.” He looked at my face and grinned. “Yeah, darlin’. I did all right. But I was eighteen, and acted like I was tough…”

  He’d done more than act like it. Even at eighteen, he had been tough. He hadn’t looked like someone you wanted to take on. He was bigger now, more muscular, but he’d never been small or weak. And he’d been at Riverbend for assault and battery with intent, after putting his mother’s boyfriend in the hospital, so it was understandable that even Big Ned—had he existed, which he hadn’t—would have given Rafe a wide berth.

  “Charlotte wouldn’t end up where I was, though,” he added.

  No. If she were convicted of murder, she’d end up at Southern Belle Hell, the Tennessee Women’s Prison, out in West Nashville. Not the same as Riverbend, but no picnic, either. There’d be no Big Ned, although possibly a Big Bertha. And there’d definitely be Denise Seaver, who hated me for putting her there, twice, and who wouldn’t be above taking revenge on someone I cared about.

  “Charlotte ain’t gonna end up at Southern Belle Hell, darlin’,” Rafe said. “You and I wouldn’t let that happen. And Satterfield wouldn’t prosecute her, anyway.”

  Possibly not. “So you don’t think there’s anything to worry about?”

  “Till I find out otherwise,” Rafe said, “I’m gonna give Jarvis the benefit of the doubt. And if it looks like he’s gonna come close to wanting to arrest Charlotte, I’ll talk to him.”

  “Will he appreciate that?”

  “No,” Rafe said, “but I’d do it anyway. And if he don’t listen to me, I’ll talk to Tammy. He’ll have to listen to her.”

  I nodded.

  “But Jarvis is a reasonable guy. I don’t think he’s gonna arrest Charlotte without making damn sure she’s guilty.”

  I opened my mouth, and closed it again when he continued. “And
if she ain’t, then you got nothing to worry about.”

  Right.

  “Now eat your food.” He devoted himself to his own.

  “Any luck on tracking down the two guys from Beulah’s?”

  He swallowed. “The guy who owns the truck, yeah. Name of Kyle Scoggins. Lives in an apartment complex north of Columbia. I spent part of the day in the parking lot, waiting for him to show up.”

  “Did you see him?”

  “The truck pulled in just before I had to leave for the day. I guess he was coming home from work. I left Lupe Vasquez to keep an eye on him.”

  “Is that safe?” Lupe is young, female, and Hispanic, all of which sounded like a bad idea when it came to keeping an eye on a guy we suspected was a white supremacist.

  “It’s the job,” Rafe said. “But yeah, she’ll be fine for a couple hours. And I’m working on something more permanent for tomorrow.”

  Good to know. “So you’ll be keeping an eye on this guy for a few days, to see what he’s up to?”

  “And who he meets with. We still gotta identify the other guy.” He bit into a piece of garlic bread and took his time chewing and swallowing. “I’ll have to leave early tomorrow. I’m picking up the surveillance at six. Hopefully he’ll head out to work, and that’ll give me his place of employment.”

  “Maybe the other guy will be there. Maybe they work together.”

  Rafe nodded. “We’ll be keeping these guys under observation for a while. Pulling in people from Lawrence and Lewis and Giles as needed. Less chance they’ll recognize any of’em that way, too.”

  There was. “You’ll be careful, right?”

  “Always,” Rafe said, and gave me a grin.

  I rolled my eyes but didn’t say anything.

  Fifteen

  Detective Jarvis released the house to Darcy on Tuesday morning. Darcy called and told me we could go back to work. I called Charlotte and told her to meet me there at ten. For the first few seconds I thought she was going to refuse, but then she sighed. “OK.”

  “I know it’s unpleasant,” I said. “But it’s still our house. We can still sell it and make some money.”

  “Even after someone was murdered there?”

  “Yes,” I said firmly. “We’ll be able to sell it and make money. We’ll get you out from under Richard’s thumb. I promise.”

  She sighed. “It might not matter. Not if I end up in prison.”

  “Do you have reason to think you’ll end up in prison?”

  “No,” Charlotte said.

  “Then let’s not worry about it for now. I’ll see you at ten.” I hung up before she could say anything else, or change her mind, if she were planning to.

  She was there at ten, though. Waiting outside the house, like she was afraid of going inside on her own. But dressed in old jeans and sneakers, looking like she was ready to work.

  I parked the Volvo at the curb and pulled the baby seat out, and headed over to her. “Problem?”

  She shook her head. “I just don’t want to go in on my own.”

  The body was long gone, and there was nothing inside to worry about. I thought about saying so, but then I bit my tongue. Just because I was blasé about dead bodies now, didn’t mean I’d always been. For quite a while after I moved in with Rafe, into Mrs. Jenkins’s house, the site of Brenda Puckett’s murder, I’d given the library sidelong looks when I walked down the hallway, just in case I should happen to catch some kind of echo of what had happened there. I don’t believe in ghosts, not really, but Dix had scared the crap out of me all through our formative years, and I guess some of the old superstitions still hung on.

  I’d never seen anything out of the ordinary, though, and eventually I’d stopped being afraid of the library, but it still wasn’t my favorite room in the house. You wouldn’t find me in there by myself after dark, snuggled up with a good book, for instance.

  “It’ll be fine,” I told Charlotte. “You don’t have to go in the den. We’ll work in the kitchen today.”

  “There’s nothing left to do in the kitchen,” Charlotte said.

  “Living room, then. Or bathroom.”

  “There’s nothing left to do there, either.”

  Of course there were things left to do, everywhere in the house. It looked like a bomb had gone off inside, with all our tearing out and down.

  The problem was that we weren’t really ready to start building up again. I had planned to spend the weekend prepping for that, and instead, I had spent it worrying about Steve Morris’s murder and the possibility that Charlotte might be arrested.

  But we were going to make a start on it today. “The cabinet guy from Leiper’s Fork is coming this afternoon, to give us a quote on the kitchen cabinet doors. After that, we can start taking them off.”

  Charlotte nodded.

  “We also have to figure out how much wood we need for the den, to get the floor up to the same level as the rest of the house. But I’ll do that. You don’t have to come in there with me.”

  “You’ll need someone to hold the other end of the measuring tape,” Charlotte said. She was pale, but looked determined.

  It was probably good for her to push through her feelings, anyway. If she hadn’t killed Morris, there was no reason to be afraid of the den.

  So we measured, and the cabinet guy showed up, and was kind of cute with dark curly hair and bright green eyes. He flirted with Charlotte—she flirted back, sort of half-heartedly, but maybe she was out of practice—and then he left, after telling me he’d be back in a week with the doors.

  “Nice guy,” I said to Charlotte.

  She looked at me for a moment, blankly, before she nodded. “Sure.”

  “He flirted with you.”

  “I’m married,” Charlotte said.

  “You’re not wearing a ring.”

  She glanced down at her empty ring finger, still sporting a paler line where her wedding band must have been. “That doesn’t mean I’m not still married.”

  I tilted my head. “You’re not still hoping to work things out with Richard, are you?”

  “No,” Charlotte said, flushing. “After what he did? No, I’m not going back to him. I don’t care if he cuts off all the money and sues for custody of the children. I’m not going back to him. But I’m not ready to get involved with anyone else yet, either.”

  And small wonder. By the time I met Rafe, it had been two years since Bradley and I broke up. I sometimes wonder whether things would have worked out differently if I’d met him—Rafe—sooner. Whether, if I had, I would have been ready for him.

  When you lose a spouse in the usual way, there’s a mourning period, and it’s the same thing when you lose a spouse to divorce. Maybe even more of one. When you love someone and they die, all you have to do is deal with the loss. And while that’s enormous, there’s not the same self-doubt and self-examination as when your spouse leaves you for someone else. When that happens, you question everything about yourself and the relationship, what you might have done differently, whether you’re unlovable, if it was your fault… in a way you certainly don’t when your spouse up and dies.

  “Anyway,” Charlotte said, “even if I were ready, he wouldn’t be my type.”

  Maybe not. An honest carpenter—assuming he was honest, and I guess we’d find out when he presented us with the bill for the cabinet doors—wasn’t what either of us had been brought up to look for.

  “There’s a lot to be said for a man who’s good with his hands,” I responded, and had to laugh when she flushed delicately. “Sorry to be blunt, but it has to be said. Maybe you got lucky and Richard was great in bed. Bradley wasn’t. He was a lousy lover, and on top of it, he told me it was my fault. And because I didn’t know any better, I believed him. It wasn’t until I met Rafe—” who’s very good with his hands, and various other body parts, as well, “that I realized that there wasn’t anything wrong with me. It was all Bradley. And if I’d stayed with him, I would have spent the next fifty years faking or
gasms and thinking it was my fault that I couldn’t get off.”

  By now Charlotte was beet red and looked like she was having problems breathing. I shrugged. “I know we weren’t brought up to talk like this. Not ladylike. But there’s more to a happy marriage than money and social status. And you could do worse than a carpenter who loves you.”

  “Aren’t you jumping the gun a little?” Charlotte wanted to know. “It was ten minutes. And he probably flirts with everyone.”

  He might. He’d looked like the type who would. Handsome and charming and with that twinkle in his eye that said he knew it.

  “I wasn’t talking about him specifically,” I said. “Just don’t let the failure with Doctor Dick keep you from trying again with someone else. When you’re ready. There are lots of fish in the sea. And having you find someone else and be happy would go a long way toward sticking it to him.”

  “I don’t think Richard would be impressed if I took up with a carpenter,” Charlotte said.

  Maybe not. Bradley hadn’t been impressed when I took up with Rafe, either. More shocked and appalled, and—to his credit—worried about me. Like everyone else I’d known. Although no man likes it when his ex-wife takes up with someone younger and hotter who looks like he’d be better in the sack.

  I didn’t bother saying so. Charlotte would only be shocked again. “Looks like we’ll be able to save some money on the cabinets, anyway,” I noted instead. “Now we can start taking off the old doors and sanding and painting the boxes. When he comes back next week with the new doors, we’ll paint and hang them.”

  Charlotte nodded, looking relieved that the conversation had turned.

  “And we’ll have to make decisions about the backsplash and countertop. The tile we can probably just pick up at the store—there’s a Home Depot out by the interstate, near the Cracker Barrel, and we don’t need much of it; it’s a small kitchen—but we’ll have to order the counters and wait for them to be delivered.”