Bad Debt (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 14) Read online

  He raised a hand to show me he’d heard me, and then he disappeared inside the trailer.

  I waited, gnawing on my cuticles.

  He wasn’t gone long. Of course, there wasn’t much space that had to be searched. It wasn’t much more than a minute before he appeared in the doorway again, this time carrying a bowl. He jumped down, somehow managed to keep the dog food inside the bowl, and squatted to put it on the ground just within the dry section of the underside of the trailer. Then he backed up. The dog waited until he was ten feet away before creeping over to the bowl and starting to eat.

  Rafe walked backward the whole way to the car, but the dog made no move to follow. Too busy wolfing down food.

  “I feel bad for it,” I told Rafe when he’d opened the door and slid behind the wheel. “It looks really hungry.”

  He nodded, his face grim. “I don’t think he was starving it. But if you keep it hungry, it’ll be more likely to attack.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  Rafe shrugged, but I could tell from his expression that he wasn’t happy, either.

  “Is anyone else inside? Or anything valuable, that the dog might have been guarding?”

  He shook his head. “Nobody else. He either slept alone, or whoever he slept with, shot him.”

  “Is that likely?”

  “At this point, anything’s likely,” Rafe said. “Or at least it’s possible.”

  We sat in silence a moment, and then he added, “I didn’t see nothing valuable. I didn’t expect to. People who live in trailers don’t usually have the Mona Lisa hanging on the wall.”

  I guess not. “Someone must have had a reason for killing all these people, though.” Six—no, seven now. You don’t do that kind of thing unless there’s something valuable at the end of it.

  Or unless you really, really hate those six or seven people.

  “What do you think happened?”

  Rafe rolled his head on the seat to look at me. “Here?”

  “Here. There. Everywhere.”

  The corner of his mouth pulled up. “Doctor Seuss?”

  “Not on purpose.” Although in the next year or two, we’d probably get our fill of Doctor Seuss. I tried to imagine Rafe sitting on a small bedside in the nursery at home, reading Green Eggs and Ham to a small, faceless, genderless child whose curly, black hair spilled out over the blankets. (Yes, while I might not know yet whether we were having a boy or girl, I was pretty sure it would have dark, curly hair.)

  The mind boggled. I shook it off. “The same person shot Robbie as shot everyone else, right?”

  “Maybe,” Rafe said. “Maybe not. Coulda been two shooters. Or more. Two strike teams going to two different places at the same time.”

  Strike teams? “Six people were shot at the other location, right?”

  “Couple locations,” Rafe said. “And yeah, that’s what the sheriff said when he called.”

  “Who were they?”

  “Mostly Skinners. Art and his wife Linda. Their daughter Cilla and her boyfriend. Their son A.J.”

  My stomach clenched. “Someone shot children?”

  “Cilla was eighteen,” Rafe said. “A.J. sixteen.”

  Someone had started the family early, then. Although sixteen was far too young to die. So was eighteen. So, for that matter, was thirty-five or forty.

  “Art was the oldest brother?”

  Rafe nodded. “Darrell was two years older then me, like I said. Robbie was a couple years older than Darrell, and Art was the oldest. He woulda been thirty-seven or thirty-eight, maybe.”

  After a moment, Rafe added, “Cilla had a baby.”

  “Someone shot a baby?”

  He shook his head. “The baby was left alive. Still in bed with its mama and daddy.”

  God. I didn’t know whether that made it worse or better. I mean, who kills an innocent baby?

  But to kill the baby’s mother and father, and leave the infant there, still in bed, maybe between them, maybe spattered with their blood... that was pretty bad too.

  “God.” I leaned my head against the seat and closed my eyes. If I hadn’t, I’m afraid I would have fainted. Under my palm, I could feel my own baby moving around. “That’s... I don’t have the words to describe it. Who does something like that?”

  Rafe didn’t answer. When I slitted my eyes and peered at him, his face was grim.

  I straightened. “You know who did this?”

  He gave me a glance. And a head-shake. “No.”

  “Do you suspect something?”

  He shrugged. “It’s hard not to think.”

  Yes, it was. And while my thoughts were unpleasant, his were likely to be worse. He knew more about this—about all of it—than I did. Than I ever would.

  “What are you thinking?”

  He gave me another look. And a pause. But eventually he told me. “It’s likely gonna be one of two things. Either it’s personal, somebody with a beef against the Skinners, who drew the line at killing the baby.”

  “Or?”

  “Or it’s business. Somebody got hired to take out the Skinners, and there wasn’t a price on the baby’s head, so it was left alive.”

  And again, hard to wrap my brain around which was worse.

  “If there had been a price on the baby’s head, would a professional hitman have killed it?”

  He glanced at me. “Maybe.”

  Yeah. Maybe. I had made the acquaintance of one of Hector Gonzales’s minions a year ago. And I had no problem imagining him shooting a baby.

  “Why would anyone send a hitman after a family of Middle Tennessee rednecks?”

  “Can’t imagine,” Rafe said blandly, in a tone that indicated otherwise.

  “Sure.”

  He slanted me a look. “It’s too soon to tell.”

  I nodded, and waited for him to continue, since I doubted he was finished. After a second, he admitted, “Something about it feels off. One way or the other. But I don’t know enough about anything yet, to even guess at a motive.”

  “It would have to be something big, to wipe out a whole family.” Or most of one.

  “You’d be surprised,” Rafe told me, “what people’ll do for not much profit. But right now, I can’t tell you who did this and why. After I’ve seen the other crime scenes, maybe I’ll have a better idea.”

  I nodded. “Let’s just wait for Sheriff Satterfield to get here. Then you and he can talk, while I take the car and drive to Columbia. You can update me over dinner. If you get to take a break.”

  “I’m sure he won’t let me starve,” Rafe said and settled into his seat to wait for the sheriff.

  Three

  The other crime scene mustn’t be far away, because it couldn’t have been much more than five minutes before we saw the headlights of the sheriff’s SUV cut through the gloom.

  Of course, at first we didn’t know that it was the sheriff. For all we knew, it might be the shooter coming back to make sure the job was finished. Rafe tensed in his seat and got a better handle on his gun, which he had kept readily available in his lap. But then the vehicle exited the narrow path between the trees and pulled left to park beside us, and we saw the green stripe along the side that said Maury County Sheriff.

  Rafe relaxed again, and when the sheriff opened his door, he did the same. So did I, since I didn’t want to miss the conversation.

  Sheriff Satterfield waved us both back into the car. “I’m already wet. No sense in y’all standing out here in the rain.”

  I was wet, too, but I obeyed the command to stay in the car. Rafe did not. He and the sheriff faced one another across the roof of the Volvo. “You made good time.”

  “The first crime scene isn’t far,” the sheriff said, looking around. His gaze snagged for a second on the blue tarp. “That Robbie under there?”

  Rafe nodded. “I didn’t turn him over, but I’m gonna guess he was gut shot. A slug to the chest and he never woulda made it out of the trailer.”

  The sheriff n
odded back. “But with a bullet in the gut, he mighta lived a couple minutes. Long enough to think he might have time to go for help.”

  “Long enough to know he was gonna die,” Rafe said. “And long enough to feel it.”

  I fought back a shiver. It might have been that my clothes were still damp from earlier and the open window was giving me goosebumps. But I think it was more that that cold anger penetrated and made me feel chilled to the bone. There’s a difference between shooting a man dead, and shooting a man in the gut so he’ll stay alive a couple of minutes, feeling the pain and knowing he’s going to die.

  “Was it on purpose?”

  I wasn’t aware of having spoken out loud, but they both bent to peer in at me.

  “Sorry,” I added.

  The sheriff shook his head. “It’s a good question. Did someone want him to have a couple minutes to think about what he’d done—and he musta done something to someone to end up like this.”

  “Maybe it was an accident,” I suggested. “Maybe whoever it was, meant to shoot him in the chest, but he moved.”

  I waited. They both shrugged. Maybe it was a stupid question.

  “You didn’t tell me much about the others,” Rafe said, and the sheriff nodded.

  “The M.E.’s gonna have to make the determination on who was shot first and last. But mostly I saw single shots to the head. No signs of struggle with most of’em. Looked like they were asleep when it happened.”

  “Someone just walked right in, shot them, and walked back out?”

  The sheriff nodded. “Looks like.”

  We sat in silence a moment. I sat, they stood. “So maybe they didn’t know it was happening?” I asked, optimistically.

  “Maybe so,” the sheriff agreed. I have no idea whether he actually thought so, or whether he just said so because he thought it was what I wanted to hear.

  “Time for you to go,” Rafe informed me.

  “I don’t mind waiting.” I was curious now. It was horrible, of course, but fascinating, too, in a gruesome sort of way.

  I mean, who would wipe out every member—or almost every member—of an entire family in one night?

  “I don’t suppose the Skinners were in any kind of family feud with anyone?”

  Rafe’s lips twitched. The sheriff’s didn’t, although he looked like he found the question amusing. “The Hatfields and McCoys?” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t think so, darlin’. If there was that kind of thing going on in my county, I think I woulda heard about it.”

  I nodded. “It just seems like it would have to be a pretty big reason for someone to do this. Seven dead... that isn’t just because someone beat someone else at cards. Or stole someone’s girlfriend. Or even murdered someone else. I mean, even if one of the Skinners killed somebody—not that I’m saying they did, although I expect you’ll look into it—but even if they killed someone, it wouldn’t justify this.”

  “Nothing would justify this,” Rafe muttered.

  I glanced at him. “You know what I mean.”

  “It’s overkill. Sure. Even if it was retaliation for someone’s death, it’s still too much. But that’s assuming whoever did this was rational. And there ain’t nothing rational about murder.”

  He had me there. “I’m just going to let you do your job,” I said, and opened my car door. The sheriff moved out of the way, politely, and gave me a hand up. I made my way around the car to the driver’s seat, where Rafe bundled me back inside. “Call if you need me. Or the car. I’m just going into Columbia, so I won’t be far.”

  “What’re you gonna do in Columbia?” the sheriff wanted to know, and I turned to him.

  “If I remember correctly, they started the competency hearing on Beulah Odom today. I want to see if I can find out how it’s going. Beulah’s sister-in-law and niece are trying to take the restaurant away from Yvonne.”

  The sheriff nodded. “I never saw no sign that Beulah wasn’t all there. Getting older, like we all are. And she had some health problems. But diabetes don’t make you lose your mind.”

  Not usually, no.

  “I think they’re probably saying that Yvonne exerted undue influence,” I said. “You know, convinced Beulah to leave the restaurant to her.”

  The sheriff scoffed. “Never knew Beulah to do what anybody told her without a fight.”

  “Sounds like you knew her well.”

  “Wouldn’t say that,” the sheriff said. “She was a good ten years older than me. But she lived and died in Maury County. And I’ve worked for the sheriff’s department most of my life. It’s part of the job, knowing the people.”

  I guess it was. “So you don’t think they’ll be able to convince the judge that Yvonne shouldn’t have the restaurant?”

  “Depends on the judge,” the sheriff said. “If he knew Beulah, I doubt it.”

  “I’m a little worried,” I admitted. “Not that it’s any of my business. Yvonne and I aren’t that close. But she’s had some bad luck in her life.” Some of which I felt a little bit responsible for, since it involved Rafe. “And she’s worked for Beulah since high school. She told me once that she didn’t have much of a relationship with her mother, and that Beulah kind of became a substitute. If this doesn’t work out, she’ll be devastated.”

  The sheriff nodded. “I’ll keep my fingers crossed.”

  I told him I appreciated it. And then they both stepped away from the car. “You know where you’re going?” Rafe asked, as I put the Volvo into reverse. I guess he must have noticed that I hadn’t paid a whole lot of attention on our way here.

  “Down the hill.” I waved a vague hand in the direction of the road. “And then straight down the road.”

  “Call if you get lost.”

  “I’m not going to get lost,” I told him. “I grew up here. I can find my way to the courthouse in Columbia.”

  He nodded, but didn’t look convinced. Or maybe there was something else that had put that expression on his face.

  “Good luck,” I added. “Let me know how it goes and when I can expect to see you, OK?”

  He said he would, and then he went to join the sheriff by the blue tarp. I negotiated a careful sixteen-point turn in the wet grass, without hitting either the sheriff’s SUV or the tarp, or—God forbid—what was under it, and then I headed back down the pockmarked dirt road with the No Trespassing signs.

  I was just slowing down to negotiate the turn from the dirt onto the paved road when another car—big, with bright headlights that blinded me—zoomed across the road and onto the track. I stood on the brake, literally, and while the brakes didn’t squeal, I did. To be honest, it was more like a high pitched scream. I thought for sure we were going to meet head to head—or front to front—but the Volvo came to a quivering stop less than a foot from the grille of a big, white truck.

  For a second, nothing happened. My ears were ringing, probably because I’d been screaming so loudly.

  Then the truck engine cranked, and it began to move slowly backwards, back toward the road. I crept along behind it—or in front of it, more accurately, as it backed away.

  It took just a few seconds for it to reach the road and back out. As it made a forty-five degree turn, I saw the insignia on the side. Maury County Animal Control. The back of the truck was full of small doors with holes in them, and I could hear yipping and barking.

  I rolled down my window. “Sorry.”

  “No problem.” The driver was a woman my age, or a year or two older, with short, sandy hair and no makeup. “I didn’t expect anyone to be here.”

  “My husband and I found the body,” I said. “He’s up there with the sheriff.”

  She nodded.

  “Are you here to pick up the dog?”

  Her face clouded. “Yeah. How bad is it?”

  “The dog? It doesn’t seem all that bad.” I told her about how it had scared me at first. “It barked and came lunging out from underneath the trailer. But as soon as it figured out we weren’t a threat, it wen
t back where it was dry. My husband gave it some food, and it settled down to eat. I’m not sure it got fed enough.”

  “Bastards,” the woman in the truck growled.

  “The sheriff said there were other dogs at the other crime scenes. Were they hungry, too?”

  “More than hungry,” the woman told me, her voice tight. “The bastards used them for dog fighting.”

  The bastards being the Skinners, I assume. “That’s illegal, isn’t it?”

  She nodded. “But there’s a lot of money in it. And some people just don’t give a damn about illegal. Or about the animals.”

  She revved the engine and glanced up the dirt road.

  “I should let you get to it,” I said. “I’m Savannah, by the way. Martin. Collier.”

  She arched a brow. “Can’t make up your mind?”

  “I haven’t been married that long. But I’m getting used to it. You’ll see my husband up there, with the sheriff.”

  She nodded. “I’ll be sure not to poach.”

  “I wasn’t warning you off,” I told her. I’ve stopped worrying about women drooling over—and sometimes on—my husband. And anyway, no way was she Rafe’s type. “Be nice to the dog, though. It didn’t seem like a bad dog.”

  “I’m always nice to the animals,” the woman told me, and put her truck in gear to climb the track to Robbie Skinner’s place. I pointed the Volvo down the road in the other direction.

  * * *

  The Columbia city limits weren’t far, and as I’d told Rafe, I had no problem finding my way. It helped, of course, that there was only one main road, and once I got on it, I just followed it. Between you and me, I will admit that I had never, to my knowledge, been up in the foothills by the Devil’s Backbone before.

  Columbia, however, was familiar. I found a parking spot just off the square, under the Martin & Vaughan Hardware and Building Supplies sign, and made my way across the square to the courthouse.

  From there, a guard directed me to the small courtroom where the hearing was taking place. I opened the door as quietly as I could, thinking I’d just slip quietly into the back row without anyone being the wiser—only to have everyone in the room turn to stare at me when the door opened.