Survival Clause: A Savannah Martin Novel (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 20) Page 18

  His eyes were still twinkling, but the look was intent.

  “Not much,” I admitted, with a glance at Grimaldi. This was her interview; shouldn’t she be asking the questions and answering them?

  She didn’t say anything, though, just arched her brows at me, so I added, “Someone told me he was the boy involved in the… um… incident with Mr. Jurgensson.”

  Mullinax nodded. “So he was. But he’s dead now, rest his soul. And we shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.”

  No, we shouldn’t. Or so Mother had always told me.

  I glanced at Grimaldi. She still wasn’t speaking up. “Uncle Sid said you’d been in touch with Mr. Jurgensson since he left here. We thought maybe you’d be able to tell us where he is.”

  Mr. Mullinax tilted his head to look at me, like a plump sparrow. “Now, why would you be looking for Kent?”

  “We have some questions,” Grimaldi said, finally. Mullinax turned to her, and she added, “Not about what happened back then. Or not specifically.”

  “About what, then?”

  “Another case,” Grimaldi said. “With a Latin connection.”

  Mullinax’s bushy eyebrows rose. “A Latin connection?”

  “We just wanted to discuss some former students with him.” After a second she added, “Not Noah Trent.”

  Mullinax nodded and looked thoughtful.

  “Uncle Sid said he heard that Jurgensson worked some menial job in Tupelo or Tucson,” I contributed. “I guess it must have been you who told him that?”

  “I imagine it might have been. Although it might just as well have been Toledo or Toronto as Tucson. It’s a long time ago. Not sure I can remember the particulars.”

  “I don’t suppose you have any letters or postcards he might have sent you?”

  “Oh, I don’t imagine I do,” Art Mullinax said cheerfully. “The last time I heard from Kent… it must be a dozen years ago, at least. Probably more. Just Christmas cards, you know, or a note whenever he moved to a new place. He found it hard to find employment that lasted, poor bastard. And not surprising, either.”

  No, it wasn’t surprising. Even if he had avoided being listed on the Sexual Offender registry, the kind of thing that had happened here is apt to follow a man around. People talk.

  “So you have no idea where we’d be able to find him,” Grimaldi said.

  Mullinax shook his head. “I’m afraid not, my dear. Chief Inspector. Um…”

  “Chief is fine,” Grimaldi said. “We appreciate the time.”

  She gave me a look. I smiled politely. “Thank you, Mr. Mullinax. Our best to your wife.”

  Mullinax beamed pleasantly as he let us out, and then he stood in the open door and waved as we piled back into the SUV.

  “Nice place,” I said, giving it one last look as Grimaldi put the SUV in gear and we rolled off down the track toward town. Behind us, Art Mullinax disappeared inside the big, white house and shut the door.

  Grimaldi grunted.

  I turned in my seat and looked at her. “What’s wrong?”

  She glanced over before she turned her attention back to the—I use the word in its loosest sense—road. “Just wondering which part of the acreage I’d have to dig up to find what’s left of Jurgensson.”

  My jaw dropped, and it took me a few seconds to hike it up. “You’re kidding. Right?”

  She didn’t answer, and I repeated it. “You’re kidding. You must be.”

  “I’m not sure what I am.”

  The trees closed behind us, and we drove on in a tunnel of green leaves. The sun, starting to wane now, slanted late-afternoon spears of light through the branches in front of us.

  “You think he killed Jurgensson? Why? He didn’t say anything suspicious, did he?” If he had, I hadn’t noticed. “What makes you think he killed Jurgensson?”

  She didn’t say anything, so I continued, figuring it out in my head as we went down the track. “It makes for a nice theory. I’ll give you that. He’s the only one who’s heard from Jurgensson since he—Jurgensson—left. If he left. There’s no real proof that he ever heard from him at all. If anyone killed Jurgensson and buried him, Mullinax is at the top of the list. But you have no reason to suspect that he isn’t telling the truth. Jurgensson could be bagging groceries in Toledo or Toronto or Tucson as we speak.”

  “Not Toronto,” Grimaldi said. “He’d have had to make it across the border to Canada, and there’s no record of that.”

  “Surely there are ways to sneak across the border where nobody will check your papers? People come across the border from Mexico all the time.”

  Grimaldi shrugged. “He could be in Toledo or Tupelo or Tucson. Or somewhere that doesn’t start with a T. Or he could be buried on Art Mullinax’s back forty.”

  The track ended and we reached the paved road again. The SUV picked up speed heading back to downtown Columbia. I settled a little more comfortably into the seat and added, “Why would Art Mullinax kill Kent Jurgensson?”

  “Motive’s easy,” Grimaldi said, and brought on an echo of Rafe, who had told me the same thing, not just once but multiple times. “Maybe he knew the Trent family. Or maybe he was just disgusted that Jurgensson committed statutory rape in general. Maybe he has sexual abuse in his own past, and this brought it back. Maybe he was angry because he and Jurgensson—and your uncle and Laura Lee’s father—played golf together, and Jurgensson had fooled them all into thinking he was a nice guy. Any one of those might be reason enough to kill him.”

  I supposed. But— “There’s no way to prove any of that.” Except maybe for a connection to the Trents, if one existed. Or any sexual abuse, if it had happened and there was a record of it. But even if a connection to the Trents or a record of sexual abuse existed, it wouldn’t be proof of murder.

  “No,” Grimaldi agreed. “And I’ll never get permission to dig without more than I’ve got.”

  “But you think he did it. Why?”

  She shrugged. Or maybe it was more like a squirm. “It might just be that I want to find someone guilty of something. I’m not any closer to figuring out who killed Laura Lee Matlock, and my mother, and Ramona Mitchell, and everyone in-between. We don’t know who’s stalking your husband—although we will figure that out eventually. But if Mullinax killed Jurgensson, at least that’ll be one thing I’ll know for sure.”

  “Except there’s no proof.”

  “No,” Grimaldi said regretfully, as the first stoplight in Columbia rose up in front of us. “And after so many years, it’s not likely I’ll find any, either.”

  Probably not. Especially if no one had suspected anything back then.

  “I guess you’ll be going back to the police station and digging up the old files on Jurgensson.”

  “I already have them on my desk,” Grimaldi said. “Now I’m going to look at them again and see if Mr. Mullinax’s name shows up anywhere.”

  Better her than me. “Drop me off at home first,” I told her. “I have some work of my own to do.”

  She glanced over, and I added, “Nothing to do with this. We’ve got an open house scheduled tomorrow on Fulton. I should print out some fliers and sign-in sheets, and make sure we’re ready.”

  And I should also prepare some dinner for my husband, so he wouldn’t suggest going to Beulah’s again. At this point, my instinct was to keep Carrie under lock and key and out of the public eye as much as humanly possible.

  Fifteen

  Rafe made it home in time for dinner. The fact that he was able to stop working to go home for a meal with his wife probably indicated that the case was going cold, as the previous seventeen had done.

  He grunted when I said so. “We’re trying.”

  “I’m sure you are,” I said, ladling out chicken and broccoli. “We didn’t do any better. The biggest surprise of the day was that Curtis is the first victim’s son. Although I don’t see where that could have anything to do with anything.”

  “No,” Rafe agreed, picking up his fork.


  “If Frankie was black, though, I guess he’s off the suspect list for the other murders. Grimaldi said the profile Agent Yung provided said the killer is definitely white.”

  “Not sure there’s anything definite about it.” He poked at some of the chicken before he stabbed a piece of broccoli. Instead of lifting it to his mouth, he added, “Look at me.”

  “I am looking at you. You’re not eating.”

  He popped the broccoli in his mouth and chewed. “What I meant,” he said when he’d swallowed, “is that I’m black.”

  I opened my mouth to say that he’s as much white as he’s black, maybe more, and he added, “Or as near as makes no difference.”

  Maybe so. At any rate, I didn’t debate it, because I knew what he was getting at. “And most of the women you’ve slept with—at least the ones I know about—have been white. Or Hispanic, in Carmen’s case.”

  Yvonne, Elspeth, me, Carmen, me again… And I knew there had to be others, even if I couldn’t put names or faces to them. The ones I knew about were one redhead, two blondes, and Carmen. The pinup girl he’d had on the wall of his bedroom in the trailer in the Bog growing up, she had been white, too. A platinum blonde with china blue eyes and lacy white lingerie.

  “If somebody tried to make a profile of me,” he said, “based on the women I’ve taken to bed, they’d prob’ly conclude that I’m white, too.”

  “And they’d be half right.”

  He shrugged.

  “So what are you saying? That it could be Frankie after all?”

  “’Course it could,” Rafe said, sounding irritated. “He married a white girl, didn’t he? Don’t that tell you what his type is?”

  I guess it did, now that he mentioned it. “So we throw the profile out?”

  “Not necessarily. I’m just saying that sometimes the profile’s wrong. Or sometimes people interpret things wrong. A lot of people don’t think outside the box.”

  He forked up another piece of broccoli.

  “I guess that’s true,” I said slowly. “And speaking of thinking outside the box…”

  “Yeah?”

  “Grimaldi and I went to see Art Mullinax. He lives on the old Daffodil Hill Farm, up on the north side of Columbia. You should have seen it, Rafe. It was gorgeous. This big, white Victorian house, and flowers and flowering trees everywhere…”

  His lips curved. “We got a big, white house and flowers and flowering trees, too, darlin’.”

  I guess we did. Even if it wasn’t, technically, our house.

  “He say anything helpful?” Rafe wanted to know, and I dragged my mind from architecture and landscaping back to the case—or cases—at hand.

  “Mullinax said he hadn’t heard from Jurgensson for years, and he wasn’t sure whether Jurgensson had been in Tupelo or Tucson or Toledo or somewhere else the last time he wrote. He didn’t hang onto any of the letters or cards, of course.”

  “No reason why he’d keep’em,” Rafe said.

  “That’s what I thought. But Grimaldi was acting a little weird when we drove away, so I asked what was wrong. And she told me she was trying to figure out which part of the property she’d have to dig up to find Jurgensson’s remains.”

  Both Rafe’s eyebrows elevated this time. “She got a reason for thinking that?”

  “Nothing beyond an evil mind,” I said. “Or a lot of experience. And that might be enough. I didn’t hear Mullinax say anything suspicious. But she might have heard something I didn’t. And even if she didn’t notice anything specifically…”

  Rafe nodded. “It makes sense. If anybody did away with him, it’d be the guy who claimed to have heard from him.”

  “There’s no reason to think he’s not alive and well somewhere, though. Is there?”

  “Not other than that his social security number ain’t been used in thirty years,” Rafe said.

  Well, yes. There was that.

  “Well, it’s a big property. And Grimaldi said she wouldn’t get permission to dig any of it up unless she had more evidence than she has currently. So she went back to the police station to read the file again.”

  “She musta taken it home,” Rafe said, “’cause she was gone when I got there.”

  “It’s not even her case. Or for that matter a case at all. You’d think she’d have enough to keep her busy between the serial killer and your stalker, and she wouldn’t need to invent more murders.”

  “Speaking of my stalker,” Rafe said, and forked up another piece of chicken. “Vasim’s cleaned up the video. He’s spending second shift trying to match the license plate to a car.”

  Great.

  “Problem is, it’s Saturday night, and things can get a little rowdy. So he might not have time. But if we get lucky, by tomorrow we could have a name and address to go with the car.”

  “That would be great,” I said enthusiastically. “It’s probably nothing to worry about.” Or at least I kept telling myself that, repeatedly. “It’s probably just some woman with a crush on you. But I’d feel better if we can figure out who she is and warn her off. I don’t want to have to keep looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life, just in case someone’s trying to sneak up behind me.”

  “You won’t have to. Another day or two at the most, and we’ll have her.” He plunged the fork back into the casserole. Now that he’d started eating he must have realized he was hungry.

  “Just out of curiosity,” I said, as I picked at my own food and as Carrie kicked her feet in the bouncy seat and Pearl snored on her pillow, “what’ll happen when you figure out who it is? I mean… you can’t really arrest her, right? Is it illegal to take pictures of other people and posting them on social media?”

  “Gray area,” Rafe said. “If they’re in public, you don’t need permission. There’s no reasonable expectation of privacy.”

  “So someone could take a picture of us holding hands at Beulah’s because they thought we were cute, and that’d be OK.”

  He nodded. “But anybody standing outside the house right now, shooting through the window, would be violating our privacy. We’re in our own home and have the right to expect to be by ourselves.”

  Not an issue so far, although I cast a nervous glance at the back door. “You don’t think anyone’s out there, do you?”

  “You’d see’em if they were,” Rafe said calmly. “It’s still light out. Besides, Pearl would be having a fit.”

  And she was lying quietly on her pillow, napping.

  “All of the pictures and videos so far were taken in public places. So it wasn’t illegal to take any of them. And I guess, if it’s legal to take them, it’s legal to upload them to social media?”

  “More or less,” Rafe said.

  “So she hasn’t done anything illegal.”

  “Depends on your definition of illegal. And on the DA. I’m sure Satterfield’d be happy to charge her with something if you asked him to.”

  Perhaps. Perhaps not. Todd wasn’t so enamored with me anymore, now that I was married to Rafe and he was engaged to Marley.

  “What we can do,” Rafe said, “once we figure out who she is, is we can get a protection order and tell her to cease and desist. Once she’s been served, if she keeps doing what she’s doing, it’ll be felony stalking, and she can go to prison.”

  “That’d work.” She’d be behind bars, and I wouldn’t have to worry about anyone trying to take my baby away.

  “That’s unless she does something more now.”

  Right. I grimaced.

  We had finished eating and Rafe had taken Carrie into the parlor and was playing with her while I was filling the dishwasher under Pearl’s watchful eye when we heard the sound of tires on the gravel outside.

  Or rather, what I heard—and saw—was Pearl’s ears twitch before she took off like a bullet across the kitchen and down the hallway toward the foyer, barking hysterically.

  I grabbed a dish towel and followed. By the time I was halfway down the hall, Rafe had emerged from the parl
or. Pearl was dancing in front of the door, her barks reverberating through the house.

  “Knock it off,” Rafe told her, sternly.

  She danced out of the way, still yipping. By now, I was close enough to hear the sound of a car door slam outside. When I peered through one of the sidelights, I saw a small, blue car pulled up to the bottom of the stairs, and a man starting to climb.

  He wasn’t anyone I knew. Medium height and sort of weedy, he might have been in his mid-twenties, with a scrubby little goatee and a faded T-shirt sporting a picture of the Beatles.

  “Hold the dog back,” Rafe told me.

  I wrapped my hand around her collar and held on. “It’s OK, sweetheart. Daddy’ll take care of the bad man.”

  She stopped barking, but the rumble in her throat made my hand vibrate.

  Rafe, meanwhile, pulled the door open and blocked it. “Something I can do for you?”

  The young man looked at him, up and down, and rather than look intimidated, he grinned. “Got a kid in the car who says you’ll pay the fare.”

  I peered through the window again while I held onto Pearl. She had stopped growling now, so I thought it might be safe to let her go. As soon as I did, she bulleted up next to Rafe and stuck her face outside.

  “Whoa.” The guy outside took a step back.

  “Thought I told you to hold her,” Rafe said without turning his head.

  “You did. But I figured he wasn’t a threat.” I stuck my head outside, too. “Uber?”

  He nodded.

  “Let me guess. The kid looks like him,” I gestured to Rafe, “only smaller.”

  He gave Rafe another up and down. “Pretty much.”

  “How’d he con you into driving him from Nashville to Maury County?” Rafe wanted to know. He was already reaching for his wallet, but it didn’t keep him from adding, “It’d serve the little bastard right if I refused to pay and sent him back home.”

  “Then Ginny and Sam would have to pay,” I pointed out, “twice the distance.”

  “That’s the only reason I’m not doing it.” He held out his card.

  The young man shook his head. “It’s gotta be cash, man.”