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

  Rafe sighed. “’Course it does.”

  “I’ll go get some,” I said. “How much is the fare?”

  The driver mentioned an amount that made me wince, but I nodded gamely. “I’ll be right back.”

  “You can let him out,” Rafe said, as I headed toward the kitchen, where we keep the emergency stash of money.

  By the time I got back, with the exorbitant fare plus tip, David had been rescued from the confines of the small compact and was standing in the foyer grinning up at Rafe. Not for the first time, the resemblance between them struck me. David looked very much like Rafe had when we’d gone to high school together, and the older he got, the stronger the resemblance became.

  If he felt bad for showing up unannounced and setting us back several hundred dollars, he showed no sign of it. “Hi, Savannah,” he told me, with a flash of that grin that wasn’t just his own.

  “David.” I tried to sound stern as I handed the driver the money we owed him and watched him take off down the stairs like he was afraid we were going to call him back. “Did you tell your parents you were leaving?”

  It was hard to be firm, though, when he looked so much like Rafe.

  The latter had no such problems. “You little delinquent,” he told his son, “why do you keep doing this to your parents?”

  He wasn’t talking about us. I didn’t feel like David’s mother, and although Rafe was, biologically, his father, I’m not sure he felt much like it, either. Their relationship, since they first met a year and a half ago, had been more fraternal than fatherly.

  No, Rafe was talking about Ginny and Sam, David’s adopted parents. This wasn’t the first time David had left home on his own to visit us here, without his parents permission or knowledge. Each time, Ginny had called me in hysterics, letting me know he was gone. I wondered why I hadn’t heard from her this time.

  “They don’t know I’m gone yet,” the delinquent said calmly. “They don’t even know I know enough to leave.”

  Rafe sighed. “What d’you do? Eavesdrop?”

  David shrugged, not the least discombobulated. “How else am I going to find out what’s going on? Nobody ever tells me anything.”

  If this was a dig at Rafe (as well as at Ginny and Sam) it didn’t come off. “That’s because there’s nothing going on you need to worry about,” Rafe told him, sternly.

  David scowled up at him. He was almost as tall as me now, but had quite a few inches to go before he reached Rafe’s height. And he might never get there. Elspeth had been on the short side. “Dad told Mom you have a stalker. ‘Again,’ they said. And that this somebody’s talking pictures of you, and of Savannah, and of Carrie, and posting them online.”

  “I suppose you looked’em up?”

  “You suppose right,” David said. “What did you think I’d do, ignore it? You’re my dad, whether you like it or not, and Carrie’s my sister. If something’s happening, I want to know about it.”

  “So you can put yourself in danger, too?” Rafe didn’t give him a chance to answer, just went on, “You moron, the reason I called Sam is so he and Ginny could make sure you were safe. The last thing I wanted was for you to show up here. We were all much better off with you in Nashville.”

  “I can take care of myself…” David began.

  “You think I don’t know that? So can I. That don’t mean I put myself in danger when I don’t have to. That’s not brave. That’s stupid.”

  David flushed, and until he spoke I wasn’t sure whether it was from embarrassment or anger. Once he opened his mouth, there was no doubt. “You think you’re in a position to lecture me on stupidity? Or weren’t you the one who—?”

  “Enough,” I said. With enough force to shut him up. Or maybe he’d just been brought up to be quiet when a lady’s talking. Rafe looked at me, too, and I was happy to see enough amusement in his eyes to know that he wasn’t really angry. “Go sit in the parlor. Both of you. Have you had dinner, David?”

  “No,” David said, with his lower lip stuck out. “I had to cause a scene and be sent to my room without supper in order to get away.”

  “Of course you did.” I resisted the temptation to roll my eyes, but just barely. “For the record, I hope Ginny and Sam ground you for real when they find out what you’ve done. Is chicken and rice all right?”

  “Fine,” David said, with another of those angelic smiles that popped out every so often. “I’ll eat anything.”

  “Then go sit in the parlor and I’ll bring you a plate. Are you going to call Sam, Rafe?”

  Rafe sighed. “I guess I’d better.” He glanced at David, who was smiling brightly as if all was well with the world. “And I agree with Savannah. I hope your parents ground you for a month when you get back home.”

  “That’s mean,” David said, but without rancor. The two of them headed for the parlor, with Pearl dancing in front of them, while I walked back toward the kitchen to dish up another plate of chicken casserole.

  David bedded down in Dix’s old room for the night. By then, he knew as much about the case—as he called it—as we did. He realized, because Rafe had taken pains to explain it to him, that his showing up here tonight had made him more of a target rather than less, but that didn’t seem to faze him much.

  “She’s not going to be interested in me,” he’d said confidently. “I’m bigger, and hard to manhandle, and I know who I am. I can tell anyone who asks my name and my social security number and who my parents are and where I live. If she’s after anyone, it’s Carrie.”

  We all looked at the baby, who was kicking her feet on the floor. Small, easy to grab, and with idea who she was or who she belonged to. If someone wanted to take her, there’d be nothing stopping them. Except us.

  “Nonetheless,” Rafe told David, “I’m taking you back home tomorrow, and I want you to promise me you’ll stay there.”

  He waited. David squirmed. “Fine,” he said eventually, when it became clear that Rafe wouldn’t accept any other answer. “Can I at least stay long enough to see the rest of the family? I don’t have to be back at school until Monday morning.”

  We agreed that that would be acceptable to us if Ginny and Sam said it was OK, and Rafe got on the phone.

  “They already knew he was gone,” he told me later, after David had been installed in Dix’s room and we were in our own, getting ready to sleep. “They were about to call, since they figured he’d be on his way here.”

  “It’s not exactly the first time he’s pulled this stunt.”

  Rafe shook his head. “He’s getting better. Or more diabolical. Before, he always left on foot, or on his bike, and it would take him hours, if not days, to get here. This time he called a car, and was here in an hour. They barely had time to figure out he was missing before he arrived.”

  “He’s a smart kid.” I lifted the comforter and crawled in before I added, “A little too smart for his own good, maybe.”

  Rafe nodded gloomily. “I’m gonna leave the door to the hallway open. Just in case he’s in there thinking about sneaking out. I don’t think he wants to go back to Nashville before this is over.”

  That was the very distinct impression I’d gotten, too. And he might be thinking that he could run away from us and go to ground somewhere and flush out the stalker himself. I wouldn’t put it past him. “He’s amazingly like you for having been brought up by someone else.”

  “All my worst qualities,” Rafe said, and climbed into bed next to me after leaving the door ajar.

  “I wouldn’t say that. He’s brave, and clever, and determined—”

  “And stupid,” Rafe said, “if he thinks he can get past me and outta here.”

  Right. “There’s a back staircase, you know. The servants’ stairs. They fetch up in the kitchen. He doesn’t have to come this way to get downstairs.”

  “Dammit,” Rafe said. “He wouldn’t know about those, though.”

  “Actually—” I sounded apologetic, even in my own ears, as if the servants’ st
airs were my fault, “I think he does. Back in June, when Hernandez had David and my mother tied up in the master bedroom, I’m pretty sure the servants’ stairs came into play.”

  Rafe was flat on his back staring up at the ceiling. “Well, I can’t lock him in.”

  No. “We could rig a warning system,” I said. “Tie a thread to his door knob, and a bell to the thread, and if he pulls his door open in the middle of the night, the thread will snap and the bell will fall…”

  “And Pearl will give us both a heart attack when she goes after what she thinks is a burglar.” He turned and gathered me in.

  “She wouldn’t hurt David,” I said sleepily, as I found a comfortable spot for my head against his shoulder.

  “She might bite first and ask questions later. Better not risk it.” He still sounded wide awake.

  “You are going to go to sleep,” I asked, “aren’t you?”

  Because if he wasn’t, I would feel compelled to stay awake and keep him company.

  “Sure, darlin’.” He ran a hand up and down my back, warm and hard under the blankets. “Don’t worry about it. I’m a light sleeper. I’ll hear him if he tries to leave.”

  I didn’t doubt it. I don’t sleep that heavily myself these days, what with having to wake once or twice a night to feed Carrie.

  “Good night,” I told him sleepily.

  “Night, darlin’.” The last thing I remember is the feeling of his lips against my forehead.

  Sixteen

  David must either be OK with the status quo, or else all the activity—Pearl walking around, Carrie waking up in the middle of the night, me getting up to feed her—dissuaded him from making a break for it during the late hours. He was up at one point, and stuck his head through the nursery door when I called out to him, to tell me he was thirsty and was going downstairs for something to drink. I told him to be careful of the dog, and three minutes later he was back upstairs. Of all of us, Rafe was the only one who spent a quiet night. He bounded out of bed bright and early, and headed down to the kitchen for his first shot of caffeine. I stayed in bed until I heard Carrie wake up, and by then David had gone downstairs, too. The two of them brought me pancakes—a little burnt, but otherwise not bad—in bed while I fed Carrie.

  It’s family tradition to meet for Sunday Brunch at the Wayside Inn after church. Some of the time we’re all there—and there have become a lot of us over time—while sometimes just a few of us show up. Today, Dix was there with his girls, and Catherine, but Jonathan had taken their kids home, since Cole, the youngest, had a stomach ache. Audrey and Mrs. Jenkins graced us with their presence sometimes, but not today, so I suggested that Rafe could take David and Carrie to Audrey’s house while I headed to my open house later. Mother was there, though, with the sheriff, and she lit up when she saw David. The two of them had bonded over that experience with the serial killer last June, and she’s always delighted to see him.

  Rafe and I sat down with Bob while Mother interrogated David about his life and school this year.

  “Any progress on the investigation?” I wanted to know.

  Bob shrugged. He’s a tall, rawboned man who looks like the sheriff in an old Western. “We’re whittling it down. Tracking down trucking companies and drivers and finding out who and what they saw, and when. So far, nobody’s seen anybody who looked like they didn’t belong at that truck stop.”

  “Were you part of the investigation into Laura Lee Matlock’s murder way back when?” I asked, while Catherine descended on the baby, took her out of the car seat, and bounced her. Carrie gurgled.

  Bob grinned. “It ain’t that long ago, darlin’. Sixteen years? Maybe seventeen?”

  Something like that. More than half my life. But maybe it didn’t seem that long ago for him. “So you remember it.”

  He nodded. “Sure. We don’t get so many locals murdered that any of them get forgotten. But she disappeared from here, remember, and was found somewhere else. The police there did all of the work on the body and dump site.”

  Right. “What did you think had happened?”

  “The same thing we still think happened,” Bob said promptly. “She went out to somebody’s truck with him, and ended up dead. At that time, we just didn’t see the pattern.”

  “There wasn’t a pattern at that time.”

  Bob nodded. “Took a couple more victims for that.”

  “So at the time you just thought it was random.”

  “At first we didn’t know what it was,” Bob said. “We checked on her husband, and anyone else she might have gotten involved with while Frankie was inside—”

  “Was she involved with anyone else while Frankie was inside?”

  “Not like that,” Bob said. “Her mama told us that sometimes she went outside with a trucker for a little extra money…”

  Mrs. Drimmel had told Grimaldi and me the same thing.

  “—but other than that, there was nobody in particular. So we figured she’d gone outside with the wrong guy. That’s still what I think.”

  I nodded.

  “You and Tamara getting any closer to figuring anything out?”

  I guess she must have run her own investigation by him, to get permission or just to let him know she was asking questions. “Not much,” I admitted, as Dix shifted closer, maybe attracted by the mention of Grimaldi’s name. “We got off on a tangent about the Latin teacher and the kid he molested.”

  “Because of the numerals.” Bob nodded.

  “Grimaldi thinks Jurgensson is buried somewhere on Daffodil Hill Farm.”

  Bob’s eyebrows rose. “What gave her that idea?”

  “She didn’t tell me. I didn’t notice anything suspicious, so it might just be instinct on her part. Or imagination.”

  “Instinct,” Dix said. I glanced at him, but he didn’t say anything else.

  I turned back to Bob. “I don’t imagine there’s any reason to think he’s dead at all, really, other than the social security business. But if he is…”

  “Daffodil Hill Farm’s a better place to look than many others,” Bob concluded. “Plenty of land up there to hide a body. And Art Mullinax has had plenty of offers to sell off parts of the woods in the past few years, but he’s always said no.”

  “Could be he just wants to keep urban sprawl from creeping in,” Dix suggested.

  Bob spared him a glance. “Could be. No reason to think otherwise. Except…”

  He went into thinking mode, his gray eyes distant. I glanced at Rafe. “What do you think?”

  My husband shrugged. “If Tammy says so, I wouldn’t be surprised if she was right.”

  Sure. But… “Surely she isn’t in the habit of accusing totally unrelated people of murder? I mean, I get why she might think that Jurgensson is dead. Nobody’s heard from him in years, other than Mullinax. Or at least nobody admits to having heard from him. But to go from there to thinking that some random guy murdered him and buried him in the pasture…”

  I ran out of breath and had to stop for a moment. Bob shook his head. “He’s not just some random guy, Savannah.”

  “I know he and Jurgensson played golf together. Uncle Sid told me.”

  “He’s Judy Trent’s brother,” Bob said. “Judy was Noah’s mother.”

  I blinked. “So Art Mullinax is—was—Noah Trent’s uncle.”

  Bob nodded.

  “Well, that would explain it.” Or would at least explain it better. “Does Grimaldi know that?”

  “I don’t imagine so,” Bob said. “She hasn’t been here long enough to know the ins and outs of the personal relationships.”

  No. Not if I didn’t know, and I’d lived here most of my life.

  “If Noah and Jurgensson are both dead, though,” Dix said, “they can’t be involved with your serial killer case.”

  Rafe and Bob both shook their heads. “We gotta look for those Roman numerals somewhere else,” Rafe added.

  “You don’t suppose Mullinax…?”

  I trailed off wh
en the waitress showed up to take our drink orders. “Hi, Lynn. I’ll have sweet tea, please.”

  Lynn nodded. “Did I hear you mention Judy Trent?”

  I glanced at Bob, and at Dix and Rafe, before I nodded. “Do you know her?”

  “She lives down the street from me,” Lynn said, taking down Rafe’s drink order. Bob and Dix had been here when we arrived, and were taken care of already. “Everything all right?”

  “Fine.” The sheriff smiled at her. “Nothing to worry about.”

  “That’s right,” I said lightly, “you live in Sunnyside, don’t you?” It wasn’t really a question. I knew very well where she lived. It was just a couple of months since I’d broken into her house, or at least her garage. “I guess you know the Drimmels, too.”

  She nodded. “Nice folks. Well, she’s nice. I don’t know him well. And the kids are OK. Horrible, that video of Curtis the other night. Good thing you got there in time to stop anything from happening to him.” She glanced at Rafe from under her lashes.

  “He woulda been fine without me being there,” the latter said calmly. “Tucker wasn’t gonna hurt him. But maybe you have some idea who his friends might be, that ran off and left him there?”

  Lynn looked at him for a second before she admitted, “I might.”

  “If you wanna come to the police station one day and tell me about it, I’d be happy to listen.”

  “I might do that,” Lynn told him. And added, “I’d better get these drink orders in. I’ll be right back.”

  We all nodded, and waited until she was out of range before we went back to the conversation. “You don’t suppose Art Mullinax,” I said again, “is the serial killer? Maybe he and Noah Trent killed Jurgensson together back when Noah was in high school, and Laura Lee found out about it? She dated Noah for a while, her mother said. I’m not sure exactly when, but Mrs. Drimmel said he was the boyfriend before Frankie, so it would have been after the episode with Jurgensson.”

  “And then maybe Noah told his uncle Art what Laura Lee had figured out,” Dix added, getting into the spirit of the thing, “and Art decided that Laura Lee had to go. So he killed her, and it either broke him, so he started killing other women too, or he killed the others to cover up Laura Lee’s murder.”