Contract Pending Page 22

  He greeted me first, although I could tell that he was a whole lot more interested in Rafe. “Savannah.”

  “Sheriff.” I was still sitting on the top step, woozy all over again from watching Yvonne go by.

  The sheriff turned to Rafe. Didn’t say anything, just watched him for a few moments. A few long moments. Just as I was about to break the silence, he finally spoke. “Been a while.”

  “Not that long.” Rafe’s face was composed. “Just a couple months since you and your son and Cletus Johnson came knocking on my door in the Bog. To talk.”

  This was the occasion when Cletus and Rafe had exchanged black eyes.

  Bob Satterfield looked past him into the house. “What happened here?”

  Rafe shrugged. “Don’t know. Someone shot her, looks like. Sometime overnight. No idea who or why.”

  Sheriff Satterfield turned to me. “Savannah?”

  “I went to have breakfast at Beulah’s,” I said. “Yvonne works there. I wanted to ask her something. But she wasn’t there. The other waitress said she didn’t come to work this morning. I thought something might be wrong, so I left there and came here.”

  “Alone?” Bob Satterfield’s gaze skimmed over Rafe.

  “We came together. Sort of. Separately, but together.” I could tell the explanation made things worse, so I started over. “Rafe was at Beulah’s when I got there. When I said I wanted to come here to check on Yvonne, he came along. On the bike. While I drove the Volvo.”

  Like I said. Separately, but together.

  The sheriff turned back to Rafe. “How d’you know Yvonne McCoy?”

  “We all went to school together,” I said, “remember? Todd and Dix, me and Charlotte, Yvonne McCoy, Rafe... All in different years, but together.”

  The sheriff nodded, but continued to interrogate Rafe. “When was the last time you saw her?”

  I could see a muscle jump in Rafe’s jaw, but he answered calmly enough. “Yesterday. At the funeral.”

  “You were there?”

  “Marquita Johnson worked for me,” Rafe said, his voice tight. “I’d known her for fifteen years. Yeah, I was there.”

  “I saw him,” I contributed. “So did Dix. And Yvonne.”

  The sheriff kept his eyes on him. “The two of you talked?”

  “For a minute.”

  “What about?”

  That muscle jumped in Rafe’s jaw again. “She came over to say hello. I hadn’t seen her for twelve years. She told me to stop by sometime, if I was planning to stay in town.”

  “And did you? Stop by?”

  Rafe shook his head.

  “Where were you last night?”

  Rafe said he’d spent the night in the Bog.

  “In the trailer? I don’t suppose anyone can verify that?”

  “Don’t suppose anyone can,” Rafe agreed. “I didn’t see nobody, so I don’t imagine anybody saw me.”

  I certainly hadn’t, when I knocked on the door.

  “I think you’d better come down to the sheriff’s office with me, son.”

  “Wait a second,” I said. “You’re arresting him? For what?”

  The sheriff turned to me. “I ain’t arresting him, darlin’. I just have some more questions I need to ask. And I think we’d all be a lot happier away from here. Especially when the crime scene unit comes in.”

  “The Sweetwater sheriff’s office has a crime scene unit now?”

  “They’re comin’ from Nashville. Soon’s I heard you were involved,” he looked at both of us, but I think he directed it more to Rafe than to me, “I called’em in. Figured maybe there’s a connection to Marquita’s murder.”

  Oh, God. My mind hadn’t quite put the pieces together yet, but I saw what he was getting at. Except he was getting at something totally different than I was getting at. As usual, the Sweetwater sheriff was perfectly happy to believe Rafe guilty of anything that happened anywhere in or around Sweetwater.

  I was more concerned that Jorge Pena had struck again. What if he’d been at the cemetery after all yesterday? Just because I hadn’t seen him, didn’t mean he couldn’t have been there. What if he’d seen Rafe and Yvonne kiss? Maybe that was his little white car I’d seen Yvonne lean into when Dix and I drove out of the lot. Maybe he’d come knocking on her door later in the evening, hoping that Rafe would be there and he could finally finish the job I assumed he was getting paid to do. Yvonne would have opened the door to him. Jorge was male and fairly good-looking, and Yvonne wasn’t known for her good sense. And then maybe he’d told her what he had planned, or maybe she figured it out on her own, and when she tried to take the gun away from him, he’d shot her. And then he’d left, thinking she was dead.

  “Come along, son,” Bob Satterfield said, not unkindly. “Let’s go.”

  He gestured for Rafe to precede him down the stairs.

  “What about me?” I asked, as Rafe brushed by, holding my eyes for a second on the way past.

  “You can go on home, darlin’. Tell your mother I’ll call her later.”

  “This isn’t fair,” I said, watching as the two of them walked through the yard. Rafe got on his bike, over the sheriff’s objections, and then headed down the street while the sheriff scrambled into the police car. By the time Rafe turned the corner where I had parked last night, the sheriff had caught up. They went off together.

  Chapter 18

  For a second I just stood there, dithering. The door was locked—the sheriff had locked it behind him—although the back door was still open, since Rafe had kicked it in. The sheriff might not realize that, as none of us had told him. I had no desire to go back into the house. If there were any clues to be found, Tamara Grimaldi’s team of crime scene investigators would find them when they got here.

  After a moment, I sat back down on the stoop and dialed her number. “Detective? Savannah Martin.”

  I could hear from the background, the low buzz, that I’d caught her in the car. Her voice sounded far away. “Where are you?”

  “Sitting outside Yvonne McCoy’s house in Damascus.”

  “We’re on our way. ETA thirty minutes. Tell the sheriff.”

  “He’s gone,” I said. “He took Rafe with him down to the sheriff’s office. To ask him more questions.”

  I thought I was calm, but my voice wobbled on that last sentence. Tamara Grimaldi was silent for a second. “Sheriff Satterfield thinks Mr. Collier had something to do with this attempt on Ms. McCoy’s life?”

  “Sheriff Satterfield is perfectly happy to lay anything criminal that happens anywhere in Maury County at Rafe’s door. It’s a habit.” From the days when Rafe lived here and was in trouble more often than he was out of it.

  “You don’t have to tell me that,” Tamara Grimaldi said. “I’ve seen his record. Juvenile and adult.”

  “I didn’t know he had a juvenile record.”

  “It’s small stuff. Some joyriding and drunk and disorderly conduct. Misdemeanors, mostly. Nothing serious enough to land him inside.”

  Under different circumstances I might have tried to find out more. At the moment, I couldn’t care less about Rafe’s juvenile record. “What do I do now?”

  “Sheriff Satterfield didn’t want you?”

  “He’s got Rafe,” I said, “so no. Of course not.”

  She sighed. “What do you want me to do, Savannah?”

  “I’m not sure. I just feel like someone should do something. Should I call my brother? He’s a lawyer. So is my sister. And my brother-in-law.”

  “Do you think Mr. Collier needs representation?”

  “I have no idea. But I know he didn’t do this.”

  “Maybe he can prove that,” Detective Grimaldi said. “Maybe he has an alibi for last night.”

  “He doesn’t. He spent the night in the Bog. The trailer park where he grew up. It’s deserted now. The houses are all condemned. Nobody is supposed to be there. And when I stopped by at nine o’clock last night, he wasn’t, either.”

  “W
onderful,” the detective said grimly. “All right. I’ll contact Wendell Craig and tell him what’s going on. Between the TBI thing and this new development with Jorge Pena, there may be good reasons why Mr. Collier is safer behind bars.”

  An icy fist wrapped around my stomach and closed. “What new development?”

  “Nothing you don’t already know. That we’ve identified Mr. Pena and that he’s a contract killer. Mr. Craig has put out some feelers and confirmed the contract, by the way. Jorge Pena is in Middle Tennessee to kill Mr. Collier.”

  The news didn’t come as a shock. Even so, my voice was a little shaken when I asked, “Who wants him dead?”

  “We haven’t gotten that far yet. Let me get off the phone so I can call Mr. Craig, OK?”

  “What do I do?”

  “Just act normally,” Detective Grimaldi said. “When I know anything, I’ll call you.” She hung up.

  I did the same, groaning. Act normally. Great.

  When a voice spoke out of the blue, I jumped. I’d been so involved in my phone call I hadn’t noticed one of the neighbors sneaking across the grass toward me.

  All right, so maybe I shouldn’t say that she snuck. She was a big woman, with a friendly round face and a low, pleasant voice. “I’m sorry to bother you.”

  “That’s OK.” I tried to convince my heart rate to return to normal.

  “I’m Millie Ruth Durbin.” She held out a plump hand.

  “Nice to meet you. I’m Savannah Martin.” We shook.

  Millie Ruth tucked her soft paws into the pockets of her capacious house coat. “From Sweetwater? Catherine and Dixon’s little sister?”

  I’m not that small anymore, but I nodded. “Do you know my siblings?”

  “I used to teach high school, sweetie. At Columbia High.”

  “How come I don’t remember you?” I said. If I hadn’t been so rattled, I wouldn’t have. Admitting you don’t remember someone is very rude. Much nicer to pretend you do even when you don’t.

  “I imagine I left a year or two before you started. I just managed to see Dix through ninth grade science.” Millie Ruth lowered her voice another decibel. “What’s wrong?”

  “You saw the ambulance?”

  “And the sheriff. Who was that he left with?”

  I suppressed a sigh. “That was Rafe Collier. Also from Sweetwater.”

  Millie Ruth nodded. “I remember him.”

  You and everyone else in these parts, I thought.

  “Grew up to be a good-looking boy, didn’t he? Not that he wasn’t good-looking back then, too, of course. And a real charmer when he wanted to be. I used to see him around here sometimes when he was younger.”

  “He was friends with Yvonne. More than friends for a time.”

  “What’s he doing back here?”

  I explained that he’d come down from Nashville for Marquita Johnson’s funeral. Of course Millie Ruth remembered Marquita too, and we discussed what had happened for a minute before she returned to the reason she’d come across the grass from her house next door. “Is Yvonne OK? What happened?”

  “I’m not entirely sure,” I said apologetically. “Someone shot her, I think. She’s lost a lot of blood, but she’s still alive. Hopefully they can keep her that way.”

  “Oh, dear.” Millie Ruth’s smooth, round face paled.

  “I don’t suppose you saw anyone hanging around late last night? Or anyone visiting?”

  Millie Ruth shook her head. “I saw a woman walking down the street in the evening. It was dark, though, so I didn’t see her real well. All I noticed was that she had long, fair hair. Like yours.”

  Big surprise. “That probably was me,” I admitted. “I was here about eight thirty. Yvonne was fine then.”

  “Oh.” Millie Ruth bit her lip. “I thought it was later than that, but OK. I didn’t see anyone else.”

  “No men? A tall guy with black hair, maybe wearing a pair of jeans and a T-shirt?”

  “The Collier-boy?” She glanced toward the street, where Rafe’s Harley had been parked.

  I shook my head. “Someone else. Someone who looks a little like him.” Although if she’d seen Rafe around Yvonne’s house last night, I’d like to know that too.

  “Can’t say I did, precious.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Guess I’d better get back inside. The kitties are waiting for breakfast.”

  “There’ll be a crime scene investigation unit from Nashville showing up within the next thirty minutes. Just so you know.” And sooner or later, someone from either the Metro Nashville PD or the Sweetwater sheriff’s office would stop by to ask Millie Ruth what, if anything, she’d seen last night. She’d mention having seen me, of course, and then someone would figure out the connection between me and Rafe and the connection between Rafe and Yvonne, and before I knew it, I’d be a person of interest in the case. Someone might think I’d been jealous enough to hurt Yvonne, just because she’d kissed Rafe yesterday. Just because I’d been jealous enough to drive all the way to Damascus last night, to make sure he wasn’t here.

  It wasn’t a comfortable thought. And I don’t mean the possible murder rap. Nobody in their right minds—and I included Tamara Grimaldi and Bob Satterfield among those—would think I would try to kill anyone. Especially over something like a kiss. No, it was the realization that I was jealous that was uncomfortable. I hadn’t put a name to it yesterday. Now I did. And scared myself half to death in the process.

  Millie Ruth said goodbye and wandered back toward her own house, her steps light in spite of her bulk. I sat on the stoop and watched her and tried to convince myself that I couldn’t possibly be jealous and faced the fact that yes, jealous was exactly what I was.

  And had been for quite a while, too.

  As far back as August, the first time I met Marquita, that day in the Bog, when she’d stepped between me and Rafe and essentially laid claim to him... she’d been loud and obnoxious and very disrespectful, but my dislike had been at least in part because I didn’t want her to be involved with him. And that slip of paper with Yvonne’s phone number, that I had conveniently left in my pocket in Sweetwater when I drove to Nashville... I couldn’t very well deny that I hadn’t wanted to hand it over. And that white-knuckled, fingernails-into-palms reaction yesterday in the cemetery, when he kissed her... I hadn’t called it jealousy then, even though I’d gone as far as to imagine storming up the hill and telling her to keep her hands off him because he was mine...

  Really, how much more obvious could it be?

  Jealous.

  Of Rafe Collier.

  Lord have mercy.

  I was still sitting in the same spot when the crime scene van from the Metro Nashville PD pulled up to the curb. The passenger side door opened and Tamara Grimaldi’s boots hit the pavement. She stood and looked around for a second, taking in the sleepy street and the general air of nothing at all happening that all small towns share, before turning toward the house.

  And seeing me.

  I must look about as rattled as I felt, because she hurried up the walk toward me, her aquiline face concerned. “Savannah? What are you still doing here?”

  I managed a smile. “I realized that the back door can’t be locked. Rafe kicked it in. I didn’t want to leave the place open. Plus, I have something to tell you.”

  Her eyes came back to mine. “What?”

  “I was here last night. At about eight thirty. I parked on the corner and walked down to the house. And then I walked around the house and looked through the windows.” My cheeks burned and I had a hard time meeting her eyes.

  Tamara Grimaldi tilted her head to the side. “Why’d you do that?” Behind her, a crew of three began unloading the crime scene van.

  “I wanted to see if Rafe was here,” I admitted.

  She furrowed her brows. “What made you think he would be?”

  “He and Yvonne were involved in high school. Yesterday, at the funeral, she told him to stop by if he was planning to spend the night in Sweetwater
.”

  “And you thought he would?” Her tone supplied the question, why?

  I squirmed. “He told me he might.”

  “He was lying,” Tamara Grimaldi said. “OK. So you were here at eight thirty. Sneaking around looking through the windows. What did you see?”

  “Nothing at all. The problem is that someone saw me.”

  “Ah.” She smiled. “Who?”

  I made a face. “The lady next door. Her name is Millie Ruth Durbin. She came over to ask what was going on, and I asked her if she’d seen anyone around the place last night. I was hoping maybe she’d seen Jorge Pena, but she hadn’t. She said she’d seen a woman with fair hair walking down the street last night, though.”

  “And you’re a woman with fair hair.”

  I nodded.

  “Although there are other women with fair hair too, you know.”

  “I know that. But I was really here. And I was afraid that if I didn’t tell you myself, it’d look like I’d come here to try to kill Yvonne.”

  “Because of Rafe Collier?” Tamara grinned. “However jealous you were, Savannah, I don’t think you would have tried to kill anyone. Especially if he wasn’t even here. And he wouldn’t have been.”

  “Glad to hear it. I didn’t, as a matter of fact. I just looked through the windows, saw that Yvonne was alone—she was sitting on the sofa with a bowl of popcorn watching TV—and then I walked back to the car and drove to the Bog.”

  “But Mr. Collier wasn’t there?”

  I shook my head.

  “Guess I’ll have to ask him about that. Are you headed back to Sweetwater now, by any chance? Can you drop me at the sheriff’s office?”

  “Sure. But don’t you want to stay and work on the crime scene?”

  She shook her head. “They’ll take care of that,” indicating the crew of three making their way toward us from the street. “I want to talk to Sheriff Satterfield and the doctors. See what they can tell me about what happened.”