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

  She shook her head. “Not if he let us in that easily. But just in case we’re wrong, and he’s got her drugged or tied up so she can’t make any sounds, let’s look carefully.”

  I nodded. “And even if she isn’t here, maybe there’s some clue as to where he’s taken her.”

  “Mrs. Mullinax is away from the house,” Grimaldi said, as we walked into the foyer. “Yung could be with her.”

  “Put out a… what did you call it? BOLO?...on her car. If she’s doing something legit, it’s probably parked at the spa or the country club.”

  Grimaldi nodded. “Go that way.” She pointed with the hand that held the phone. “I’ll go this way. Open all the doors, look into all the closets.”

  “You don’t have to tell me how to snoop,” I told her. “I’m an expert at this.”

  Looking through other people’s houses has always been a guilty pleasure of mine. It’s why I went into real estate, so I’d have an excuse to go into other people’s houses to see how they lived.

  This was the first time I’d searched a house looking for a missing person, though. I opened all the doors, including the ones of the wardrobe in the spare bedroom, and even lifted the lid of the heavy steamer trunk that sat in the middle of the parlor with a flower arrangement and a stack of magazines on it. But the gravity of the occasion didn’t keep me from enjoying the experience. Mrs. Mullinax, or maybe it was Mr. Mullinax, had great taste, and enough money to indulge it. I grew up with antiques, so I’m used to seeing them. I’m also pretty well versed in assessing how much they’re worth, and Mrs. Mullinax hadn’t spared any expense. Daffodil Hill Farm was a lovely specimen of Victorian farmhouse.

  But it didn’t contain Leslie Yung.

  “She’s not here,” I told Grimaldi when we met on the upstairs landing. “I checked under the beds and everything.”

  She nodded. “Would this place have a basement?”

  “You didn’t come across it in the kitchen?” The access stairs are usually there. I guess in the old days, before refrigeration, the cook probably kept things like potatoes and onions in the cool darkness below the house. “Then there’s most likely just an outside hatch somewhere. Let’s look.”

  Art Mullinax gave us a look when we came back out of the house empty-handed, but he told us, nicely enough, that the access to the area under the house was on the side. “Look out for the spiders,” he adviced us, with a semi-malicious smirk.

  I’m not a fan of spiders, and part of me wanted to call Rafe over so he could do the honors. But Grimaldi wasn’t the type to let fear of a few creepy crawlies keep her from doing her job. She pulled open the small door in the foundation and went down on all fours to go through.

  “Do you see anything?” I wanted to know, bent in half as I tried to peer through the low aperture.

  “Too much. A lot of rotted planks, some old windows, an old plastic tarp—we might want to take that with us, just in case he wrapped Jurgensson’s body in it for the trip into the woods—what looks like a raccoon skeleton…”

  “No sign of Yung?”

  “No,” Grimaldi said, crawling back through the hole. “It’s all open under there, so nowhere to hide anything. It doesn’t look like anyone’s been there in decades.”

  “It doesn’t seem like a good place to hide an abduction victim, anyway. Too exposed, with all these people here, and if she woke up, or got free, she could just crawl away.”

  “He didn’t know the place would be crawling with cops,” Grimaldi said, brushing herself off. “I’m sure Bob didn’t warn him they were coming back with a warrant. But you have a point.”

  “The outbuildings next, then?”

  “And the trunk of the car,” Grimaldi said. “I should have checked there first.”

  Well, yes. That was the logical place to look. If Mullinax had been driving the gray car when he picked up Leslie Yung, the trunk of the gray car was probably where he would have stashed her.

  “Would you mind opening the trunk of your car, Mr. Mullinax?” Grimaldi called up to him.

  He stared at her a moment, and I thought he was going to refuse. Then he shrugged, and pulled a keychain out of his pocket. He pointed it at the sedan and pushed the button. The car beeped, and the lid unlocked.

  Grimaldi headed for it. I scurried behind, and even Rafe moved over to us to see.

  “Nothing in the house?”

  Grimaldi shook her head. “There’s an old tarp in the crawlspace that could be related to Jurgensson, though. It looks old enough, and I imagine they must have wrapped him in something for the trip into the woods. But that’s just a guess.”

  She grabbed the bottom edge of the car door and lifted.

  We all leaned forward.

  “Empty,” Grimaldi said. As if either Rafe or I needed it spelled out.

  Art Mullinax must have had enough, or maybe he was curious. In either case, he had left the porch and was coming across the grass toward us. “Can I ask what you’re looking for? If I knew, maybe I’d be able to help.”

  I glanced at Rafe. He glanced at Grimaldi.

  She squared her shoulder. “I believe the bones the sheriff is currently removing from the woods—your woods!—belong to Kent Jurgensson, and I believe you killed him and put him there.”

  Mullinax didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then he opened his mouth. “Kent’s been gone almost thirty years. Even if I did have something to do with his disappearance—and I’m not saying I did—why are you looking for evidence in a car I bought three years ago? Or for that matter—” he looked over his shoulder, “in an RV my wife and I have owned for seven years? These vehicles both post-date Kent by a decade or two.”

  “Where have you driven the RV, Mr. Mullinax?” Grimaldi wanted to know. “On I-65?”

  Mullinax blinked. Hard to say if it was because of guilty conscience or just surprise. “Of course on I-65. It’s the closest interstate to us.” He didn’t add, ‘you twit,’ but it was clearly implied.

  “Indiana?” Grimaldi asked. “Kentucky?”

  “We mostly take it down to the Florida Keys. We have a piece of land there, where we plug in for a few weeks and enjoy the water. Although we’ve taken it out west once, to see the Grand Canyon. And up to New England two years ago, for the fall colors. We drove up through Virginia and New York, though. Not Kentucky and Ohio.” He looked from one to the other of us, and if he had any idea what we were getting at, he showed no sign of it. “What’s any of this got to do with Kent?”

  “Nothing,” Grimaldi said. “We’re missing a federal agent.”

  Mullinax blinked again. “Excuse me?”

  “An FBI agent named Leslie Yung,” Rafe told him. “Pretty. Long, black hair. Went into the woods with the other two this morning. And vanished.”

  “In my woods?” Mullinax chuckled. “They’re not that big. She couldn’t have gotten lost. Either she’d have wound up here, or she’d have found a road or a field.”

  “She found the road,” Grimaldi said. “Someone picked her up.”

  Mullinax shook his head. “Wasn’t me. I’ve been here all morning.”

  “Can you prove that?”

  He looked at me, since I was the one who had asked. “My word isn’t good enough?”

  I opened my mouth to explain that under the circumstances, it really wasn’t. But before I could, he’d continued. “I had breakfast with my wife. Then Jacob stopped by to work on the RV. It was making a sort of grinding noise on the way home from Key West last week. Then you showed up with the sheriff…” He glanced at Rafe.

  My husband nodded. “You were in Key West last week?”

  “Came home Thursday afternoon,” Mullinax said, and moved on to the next thing. Or maybe in his mind it was the same thing. “I understand about Kent. There are bones in my woods, and there’s the connection to Noah, and you gotta ask questions. But why’d I want to make an FBI agent disappear? That’d be stupid. And wouldn’t do much to help my case anyway. The bones are still there, right?�
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  Probably not anymore, but I got what he was saying. And what’s more, if he’d been in Key West last week, he couldn’t have been in Nashville picking up Ramona Mitchell.

  But just for form’s sake I asked, “Which way do you travel to and from Key West?”

  “I-65 to Montgomery,” Mullinax said promptly, “331 to I-10, and I-10 across to I-75.”

  I nodded. Much the same way Rafe and I had traveled on our honeymoon, as it happened.

  You’ll notice Nashville wasn’t mentioned. That’s because it’s in the opposite direction, north of Columbia. But just to make sure… “You didn’t go by Nashville?”

  He gave me a look like I’d lost my mind. “No. What kind of fool would do that?”

  Rafe’s lips curved, and he put his free hand on my shoulder. “The body of a prostitute was dumped at the truck stop out by the interstate Wednesday night.”

  Mullinax nodded. “Heard about that. Saw the crime scene tape when we drove by.”

  “We think the killer might be local,” Grimaldi said. “Someone who travels up and down I-65. Someone with access to a truck or a motor home.”

  She avoided rather ostentatiously looking at it, but Mullinax got the point.

  “Oh, no.” He took a step back and lifted his hands. “No, no. You’re not pinning that on me. Kent, that’s one thing. I get why you have to look at me for that. Noah was my nephew, and what Kent did to him was terrible. Ruined the boy’s life. But not this other thing. And not the FBI lady. I had nothing to do with that. You ask my wife. She was with me in Florida, and on the way home. She’ll tell you we didn’t go by Nashville, and that we didn’t pick up any hitchhikers.”

  None of us pointed out that the dead woman hadn’t been hitchhiking.

  “Where can we find your wife?” Grimaldi wanted to know, and Mullinax turned to her.

  “She went to do her volunteer work at the homeless shelter. Every Monday and Thursday when we’re here, she and Bonnie go to the homeless shelter and cook and read to the kids.”

  “Bonnie?” Grimaldi said.

  “Drimmel. Jacob’s wife.”

  Of course. She hadn’t mentioned her first name when we’d been there on… must have been Friday.

  “So that was Jacob Drimmel,” Grimaldi said, “who was here, working on your RV?”

  Mullinax nodded. “He left about an hour ago. Needed a part before he can finish the job, and it won’t be in for a couple of days.”

  “His wife told us he’s a diesel mechanic. That’s a diesel engine, I assume?”

  Mullinax nodded. “Much better mileage with diesel.”

  “That’s what I hear.” She smiled at him. “You two go back a ways, don’t you? Was it Jacob who helped you carry Kent Jurgensson’s body into the woods back then?”

  Mullinax took a step back, and she added, “You were golf buddies, right? You and Jacob, Kent Jurgensson and Sid. I don’t think Sid helped you dispose of the body—”

  I shook my head.

  “—and I don’t imagine your wife would have been able to, even then—”

  Rafe shook his head.

  “—but you must have had help. You were younger then, but he wasn’t a small man. And dead weight—pardon the expression—is heavy.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mullinax said, but his voice was hoarse, like he had a hard time getting the words out.

  “No?” Grimaldi tilted her head. “Maybe Jacob Drimmel can help us.”

  Mullinax cleared his throat. “He isn’t here. I told you, he left. Needed a part.”

  “Where would he have gone, do you think? Home?”

  “How am I supposed to know?” Mullinax demanded. “Probably. He would have stopped somewhere to order the part, and then yes, he’d probably have gone home. He’s got this old car he’s working on fixing up…”

  “Thank you, Mr. Mullinax.” Grimaldi turned to me. “Let’s go.”

  She strode off toward the SUV, leaving me, Mullinax, and Rafe behind. Mullinax didn’t seem to mind—he stood there and stared after her, but didn’t make any move to follow. I scrambled to keep up, and behind me, Rafe didn’t bother to scramble, but managed to keep up anyway.

  “What?” he asked Grimaldi when we were far enough from Mullinax that the latter wouldn’t be able to overhear. “There ain’t no hurry. Jurgensson died decades ago.”

  Grimaldi shook her head. “Jacob Drimmel left here about an hour ago. He might have driven down the road where the car was parked while we were in the woods.”

  Might have. But— “Why would Jacob Drimmel kidnap Agent Yung?”

  And then the picture realigned in my head, and I added, “Oh, my God. But no… he couldn’t have raped and killed his own daughter. And besides, he’s not a truck driver. He’s a mechanic. He wouldn’t be driving up and down the interstate.”

  “He would be if he worked for a trucking company,” Rafe said. “Some of’em keep mechanics on staff to work on the trucks between trips. And sometimes, if a truck breaks down on the road, the mechanic’ll drive out and try to get it started again.”

  “Trucks have diesel engines?”

  “Same as RVs.”

  “But Laura Lee was his daughter. He wouldn’t…”

  “Some men do,” Grimaldi said, her voice even. “But he needn’t have raped her. He might have been there, at the truck stop, for some reason, to talk to her or just because he was passing through. And he could have seen that she was turning tricks. If it made him angry, he could have killed her. She’d refused financial help, it was Frankie’s fault and he didn’t like Frankie, she wouldn’t listen to reason and come home with him… the motive doesn’t matter. He could have found a reason to kill her. And that could have been the trigger for the others.”

  I suppose it could have. “So she had sex with someone else. But her father raped and killed the others.”

  “It’s a theory,” Grimaldi said. “More to the point right now, is that he was here this morning, and drove home around the time Yung went missing. That’s reason enough to talk to him. If he didn’t take her, he might have seen something.”

  Of course. “The outbuildings…”

  Grimaldi didn’t even glance at them. “I like this better.”

  I liked it better, too. “Let’s go, then.”

  “I’m coming, too,” Rafe said, in a tone that brooked no argument. “I need a minute to let the team know I’m leaving.”

  He handed me the baby and walked away. Grimaldi opened her mouth, and then closed it without speaking. I guess she wasn’t any more keen on seeing what would happen if she left without him than I was.

  Besides, if what we suspected was right, and Jacob Drimmel did have Agent Yung, we might need help getting her away from him in one piece.

  And anyway, there’s no one I’d rather have with me on an errand like this than Rafe. I don’t mean to disparage Grimaldi in any way, she’s very capable, but she isn’t Rafe.

  By the time he came back, we had sorted ourselves into the SUV. I had crawled in next to Carrie and left him the front seat, partly because it was more comfortable, and partly because this was an official trip and he was more official than me. It wouldn’t look good for the lead investigator on the case to crawl out of the backseat while his wife lounged in the front.

  Also, his legs are longer than mine.

  “You sure you don’t want me to drive?” he asked Grimaldi when he slid into the front seat. “I can get there faster.”

  She was already revving the engine. “I’ve got it.”

  “Suit yourself,” He pulled the strap across his chest and had barely had time to buckle it before the SUV rocketed down the drive and into the trees. “Whoa.”

  “Told you.”

  She didn’t say anything else, just concentrated on driving. It wasn’t possible to speed down the narrow track, but Grimaldi did her best. Once we hit the paved road, she picked up speed. “Tell me where to go.”

  “They live in Sunnyside,” I sai
d, before Rafe could ask. “If you know a shortcut, now would be the time to say so.”

  He nodded. “Turn right at the next intersection, then left, then right again. There’s not really a quick and easy way to get halfway around town, though. It takes the time it takes.”

  “If we’re lucky,” Grimaldi said, turning right and left and right again, “he had to wait for his wife to leave before he could bring Yung into the house.”

  “If he’s there at all. He could have taken her somewhere else.”

  Grimaldi glanced at him. “Where?”

  “How would I know? He didn’t bring the others home, though. And if it was him, he didn’t have an eighteen-wheeler with a sleeper cab where he could take’em, either.”

  No, he hadn’t. “Any way to figure out who he worked for and what he drove? And whether he even did travel? We’re spinning this out of air, after all.”

  “Not completely outta air,” Rafe said calmly, swaying with the motion of the car as Grimaldi made the second right on two wheels. We were on the backroads now, without having to deal with the traffic of downtown Columbia, and she could let the car go faster. “Remember what your uncle said? He played golf with Mullinax and Jurgensson—and Jacob Drimmel when he was around.”

  “Meaning Jacob wasn’t always around.”

  Rafe nodded. “Meaning Jacob mighta been traveling for work.”

  “Why didn’t we ever suspect him before?”

  “’Cause there was no reason to suspect him,” Rafe said. “He was the first victim’s father. No reason to think he’d be involved.”

  “When she walked out of the restaurant with the trucker,” Grimaldi added, as she kept the SUV zipping around the curves, “Drimmel was at home with his wife. The DNA on her body was no match to anyone she knew. And of course nobody came forward to say he’d slept with her…”

  “I wouldn’t have either,” Rafe said, “if I’d known she’d been murdered.”

  Grimaldi nodded. “Hard to prove a negative. He’d had sex with her. Who’d believe he hadn’t killed her, too?”

  Not many people, I imagined.

  “Right at the next intersection,” Rafe said. “So Drimmel left Daffodil Hill and started home. He ran across Yung a few minutes later. Somehow he convinced her to get in the car with him…”