Wrongful Termination: A Savannah Martin Novel (Savannah Martin Mystery Book 16) Read online

  It’s a long story.

  We called 911, of course, and ended up being taken into downtown, to police headquarters, for an audience with Tamara Grimaldi, who was the homicide detective on call that weekend.

  She intimidated me from the get-go. She’s everything I’m not. Brisk and capable and businesslike and not in the least concerned with my feelings.

  That’s not to say she goes out of her way to hurt me, or for that matter anyone else. She’s actually very nice. As I’ve gotten to know her over the past year and a half or so, she’s become a good friend—maid of honor at my wedding—and I can’t count the number of times she’s talked me off some ledge or other, at least in the early days, because I was worried about Rafe’s safety, or about whether he truly loved me.

  We owe her a lot. But she’s still everything I’m not, and she still manages to intimidate me from time to time.

  This was one of them. With any other friend, I would have squealed and given her a hug. Grimaldi doesn’t invite to that kind of thing. She shook hands with Rafe and nodded to me—and gave the sleeping baby a glance—before she turned back to the door. “Come on back.”

  She keyed in the code that would let us back into the sanctum while Rafe picked up the baby carrier with one hand and put the other on my back. “Go on, darlin’.”

  I went, following Grimaldi down the hallway behind the door, while he and Carrie brought up the rear.

  We went past a lot of offices and an open area full of cubicles, to the back of the building. Through one of the open doors I saw a detective I recognized, although it took me a few seconds to come up with the name. It wasn’t until Grimaldi had ushered us into her office, with a big window looking out the back of the building, and gestured to two chairs in front of her new desk, that I said, “I see Jarvis is still here.”

  Grimaldi gave me a look as she seated herself behind the desk. It was already covered with paperwork, and it was only her third day on the job.

  Or maybe this was how she’d found it—maybe the paperwork had piled up during the months Columbia had been without a police chief—and she was working on clearing it off. At the moment, I couldn’t even see surface on much of the desk.

  At any rate, she gave me a look. “Any reason he shouldn’t be?”

  “None I know of,” I admitted, as I seated myself and folded one leg over the other. Next to me, Rafe put the baby carrier on the floor—Carrie was still sleeping—and took a seat in the other chair.

  “You knew enough to mention it,” Grimaldi pointed out.

  I shrugged. “I just remember him from a couple of months ago, when Rafe was down here to help the sheriff with the Skinner investigation. Jarvis was in charge of exhuming Beulah Odom.”

  Not himself. The city or county did that. But Jarvis had been the detective standing next to the digger at Oak Street Cemetery. Next to Beulah’s sister-in-law and niece, whom I suspected of having done away with her.

  Not that any of that was Jarvis’s fault. At least I didn’t think so. Patrick Nolan, who also worked for the Columbia PD—and for Grimaldi now—and who happened to be dating my sister Darcy, had said that while Detective Jarvis was just as fond of clearing cases as the next cop, he wasn’t a bad guy. If Jarvis thought, or suspected, that Mrs. Otis Odom and her daughter had done something to hasten Beulah’s demise, Nolan was pretty sure Jarvis would do something about it. He certainly wouldn’t stand by and be quiet.

  “I haven’t had much to do with him yet,” Grimaldi said, getting comfortable behind the desk. “He’s working on cases he was working on while Sheriff Satterfield was running the department. So far, he hasn’t asked for help or input. And I haven’t started interviews of my new department yet. This week I’m just getting the feel for how things work, and clearing the paperwork off my desk.”

  “There’s a lot of it.”

  She nodded. “Most of it is just busywork that’s been piling up while the position’s been empty. It’ll take me a few days, and then it’ll be done. Not much got done around here between the time the old chief left and when I came in.”

  “Sheriff Satterfield could probably only do so much,” I said, “as he had his own sheriff’s department to run, too.” Not to mention my mother to propose to.

  Grimaldi made an agreeing sort of noise and switched her attention to Rafe.

  “The TBI fired him,” I said, and Grimaldi turned back to me, her eyes wide. “Tuesday morning. As soon as he came in to work after the holidays.”

  “You wouldn’t know nothing about that, would you?”

  This was Rafe’s contribution, of course, delivered in a deceptively even tone, the kind that sounded a lot like the noise a knife makes when it’s drawn from a scabbard.

  Grimaldi recognized the tone, as well as what it meant, I’m sure. She shook her head. “Of course not. If I’d known they were thinking about letting you go, I would have mentioned it. Not let them spring it on you without warning.”

  “The boys are being promoted,” I said. “From rookies to real undercover agents. They’re all leaving this weekend. Chattanooga, Memphis… And the TBI decided to wait and see how they do before they take on anyone else. So Rafe’s out of work.”

  Grimaldi turned back to him. “I had no idea. I figured the boys’d go off soon. It’s been a year. But I didn’t think they’d let you go. That wasn’t why I offered you a job.”

  “Why did you?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Grimaldi said. “I have a department of people I don’t know here. My whole support network’s gone. You and I work well together. I’m going to miss you, now that I’m here.” She glanced at me, lest I misunderstand and think she was talking about him, not both of us. “And I thought Savannah might appreciate a chance to come back to Sweetwater, now that the baby’s here.”

  Rafe didn’t answer.

  “You were good at your job,” Grimaldi added. “I thought that might translate to you being good at mine.”

  “Detective?”

  She nodded. “I wasn’t going to ask you to put on a uniform and patrol the streets. I didn’t figure that would go over well.”

  She didn’t specify whether she thought the not going over well applied to Rafe or to the people he might meet in his uniformed patrolling. Maybe both.

  “Most of your patrol officers prob’ly have a better education than I do,” Rafe told her, the corners of his mouth curling.

  “You have ten years of undercover work and a year of employment at TBI headquarters. Not to mention that we’ve collaborated on a lot of cases in the past year and a half. I’ll take that over a college degree any day.”

  So would I. Not that anyone asked me. But I could have married Todd Satterfield, with his law degree and job at the D.A.’s office, and I’d picked Rafe.

  Not that that had any bearing whatsoever on what we were talking about. I’m just mentioning it because formal education isn’t everything, and in Grimaldi’s shoes, I would have been thrilled to have Rafe, too.

  “I can offer you a halfway decent salary and full benefits,” Grimaldi added, and mentioned a sum that, while not exactly exorbitant, would be more than enough to live on if we didn’t have to pay rent. “You’d get the use of an unmarked car if you needed it. Twenty days paid vacation. I know better than to tell you that you’d get weekends off, and you know better than to believe me, but there’s a rotation, so unless you were on call, you’d get to sleep in on the weekend. And you’d have lots of time to spend with Savannah and the baby. And your grandmother, now that she’s here.”

  Rafe nodded. I did, too.

  “If you’d agree, I’d want to put you in the criminal investigations department. It’s either that or narcotics. I figured you’d be more comfortable in criminal investigations.”

  Rafe shrugged. “I ain’t uncomfortable with drugs.”

  Grimaldi shot him a look, and he smirked. “Not something I’m supposed to tell the chief of police?”

  Grimaldi shook her head. “If you’d prefe
r narcotics…”

  “I ain’t even sure I want the job yet. All I’m saying is I haven’t had much experience with either. No more with murder investigations than with drugs, really.”

  Grimaldi nodded. “If you decide you want the job, we’ll figure it out. Both departments are divided in two. The narcotics and gang intel unit in narcotics, with a K-9 unit for support. I don’t imagine I have to explain what each does?”

  Rafe shook his head. It was pretty self-explanatory, even to me. The narcotics unit dealt with drugs, and the gang unit was under narcotics because there’s often drug activity involved in gangs. It sounded similar to the TBI, at least if Jamal’s being partnered with a handler in narcotics meant anything.

  “The criminal investigations unit consists of general investigations—that’s your murder, robbery, assault, rape—and a special victims unit, which is mostly domestic abuse.”

  Rafe nodded.

  “In addition to investigations, we’ve got a patrol unit and support services. K-9 is a support service. So is training, and record keeping, and hazardous devices—” the bomb unit, I assumed, although what a small town in Middle Tennessee needed with that, I had no idea, “and evidence room clerks, and crossing guards, and SWAT.”

  My husband’s lips curved.

  Grimaldi gave him a stony look. “Really?”

  Rafe’s smile widened.

  Grimaldi sighed. “Sorry, but I’m not putting you in Special Weapons and Tactics. You’d be wasted there.”

  I wasn’t sure I agreed. I’ve seen my husband in SWAT black, and he’s quite a sight.

  On the other hand, I could see Grimaldi’s point, too. He has abilities in other areas, as well, and I couldn’t blame her for wanting to make use of them.

  Silence reigned for a minute, while they watched each other. I looked from one to the other, wondering who would break first.

  “Are you serious?” Grimaldi wanted to know, her voice exasperated. “I’m going to have to bribe you with SWAT to get you to come to work for me?”

  “Let’s call it an added inducement.” Rafe leaned back on the chair and folded his hands across his stomach. His very flat stomach, under a nicely snug T-shirt paired with faded jeans.

  No, he hadn’t bothered to dress up for what was essentially a job interview. I guess he knew he didn’t have to. She’d grab him if he was willing to work for her, however he was dressed. He was the one who had to decide.

  And obviously the Special Weapons and Tactics unit had appeal. In some ways, he’s a typical guy.

  The upside to it, as far as I was concerned, was that in a place like Columbia, population under 40,000, the chances of the SWAT team getting much of a workout, especially on anything dangerous, were probably pretty slim.

  “I’d rather you take a nice, safe, investigative job where you’d be home at five every afternoon,” I told him. “But if SWAT would make you happy, go for it.”

  “You make me happy,” Rafe said, with a glance from me to Carrie and back. “But a man’s gotta have a little fun sometimes, too.”

  And since he’d married me and given up the other sorts of fun he might have had without a wife and baby at home, I guess I couldn’t very well deny him the chance to join the SWAT unit if Grimaldi agreed.

  She sighed. “If the only way I can get you to work for me, is if I put you on the SWAT team, I’ll put you on the SWAT team. But it wouldn’t be my first choice.”

  Rafe nodded. “Coming back to Maury County ain’t my first choice, either. Guess we both gotta figure out if it’s something we wanna do.”

  Grimaldi nodded back. “Think about it and let me know. If the TBI fired you, you have to do something. And you could do worse than come here. At least there are people here who care about you.”

  “And plenty who’d be happy to see me six foot under,” Rafe said.

  “But surely that’s true everywhere?”

  He turned to me with an arched eyebrow, and Grimaldi smothered a laugh.

  “I just mean,” I said, “that you did undercover work in a lot of places.” Nashville, Memphis, Clarksville, Knoxville, to name a few. “And you made sure people were arrested in all of them. There are probably people all over Tennessee who’d like to see you dead. Being here isn’t any different.”

  Rafe shrugged. I guess he had to concede my point, however badly put. “Maybe I should join Wendell in that shack on the river. We could fish all day and eat what we caught and not have to work anywhere else.”

  “It’d be tight in that shack with all four of us,” I pointed out, and saw the corner of his mouth lift.

  “Maybe we’d just get a shack of our own.”

  “You’ve already got the choice between two mansions,” Grimaldi pointed out, looking from him to me and back. “Your grandmother’s house in Nashville and Savannah’s mother’s house in Sweetwater.”

  No arguing with that. Mrs. Jenkins’s Victorian might not be a mansion in the sense that Mother’s house was, but it wasn’t too far off, either.

  “What’s this about Mr. Craig?” Grimaldi added.

  “He quit,” I said. “When he found out that Rafe had been fired. But unlike Rafe they’re giving him his thirty days notice.”

  Grimaldi’s eyes had gotten wide again. “Mr. Craig is leaving the TBI?”

  “The end of the month. He wants to sell his place in Hermitage and buy a shack on a river somewhere, and spend his time fishing.”

  Grimaldi got a calculating look in her eyes. Maybe she was thinking of hiring him, too. Or maybe she thought, if she could convince Wendell to put his shack on the Duck River, Rafe would be more likely to want to come to work in Columbia.

  Into the silence the phone buzzed.

  “Excuse me,” Grimaldi said and pushed the button for the speaker. “Yes?”

  “Chief Grimaldi?” It was the voice from earlier, that belonged to the young woman in the lobby. “Sergeant Tucker would like a word when you’re finished with your current appointment.”

  “Tell him to wait five minutes,” Grimaldi instructed, and added a “Thank you,” before she hung up. Or pushed the disconnect button.

  “We should go,” I said, with a glance at Rafe.

  He nodded.

  “Any other questions?” Grimaldi looked from him to me and back.

  I shook my head. I knew all I needed to know. But this wasn’t my decision to make. If it had been, I would have already made it. I’d been inclined this way as soon as Grimaldi offered him the job. When he lost his position with the TBI, as far as I was concerned, it was a done deal. But obviously Rafe was less sure.

  “Can’t think of any,” he said. And thought of one. “You available for dinner?”

  Grimaldi arched her brows, but nodded.

  “I figured maybe we could talk somewhere that ain’t the local pokey.” He looked around as if the office—and by extension, the rest of the building—made him uncomfortable.

  “I can’t imagine that bodes well for you going to work in the local pokey,” Grimaldi said dryly, “but sure. When and where?”

  “I heard Beulah’s was gonna open after the holidays. Six-thirty?”

  Grimaldi nodded, and pushed back from the desk. “I’ll see you out.”

  She came around the desk while I got to my feet and scooped up the carrier with the baby, who had slept through the whole interview. “Thanks for your time.”

  Rafe rolled to his feet, too. “I’ll take her.” He reached for the carrier.

  “It’s all right. I’ve got her.” I was already halfway to the door.

  Grimaldi got there first, and held it open. I passed into the hallway with the baby carrier, and with Rafe behind me. At the end of the hall, Grimaldi moved in front to unlock the door into the lobby and held it while we passed through.

  An older man was leaning on the reception counter, and when we came through the door, he straightened. He glanced at Grimaldi and gave me a quick up-and-down look, but it was just a second before he moved his attention beyo
nd both of us to Rafe. The expression on his face was sneering. So was his voice. “Well, lookee who’s here. That’s a face I ain’t seen in a long time.”

  Chapter Three

  For a moment, nobody said anything.

  I had never met the man before, although I assumed he was Tucker, still talking to the receptionist. Grimaldi’s greeting clinched it. “Sergeant Tucker. I’ll be with you in a moment.”

  Her voice was even, almost pleasant, but I’ve known her long enough to recognize the steely undertone. I also recognized the way she unobtrusively put herself between Tucker and Rafe, as if she were worried my husband was about to pounce on the sergeant.

  She didn’t have to worry. Not only is Rafe unlikely to attack a man twice his age—not without a lot more provocation than he’d been given—but his voice was perfectly pleasant, if with that same edge of steel as Grimaldi’s, when he nodded politely. “Tucker.”

  Tucker smirked. “You gotten yourself in trouble again, boy?”

  Grimaldi opened her mouth, and seemed to think better of what she’d been about to say. Instead she looked at Rafe, who replied, fairly nicely under the circumstances, “Every day.”

  Tucker switched his attention to Grimaldi. “Need any help, Chief?”

  “No,” Grimaldi said. “The Colliers were just leaving.” She gave Rafe a nod and me a tight smile. Neither of us mentioned anything about seeing one another later. The details were already worked out, and I guess no one wanted to mention it in front of Tucker. “Come on back.” She gestured for him to precede her into the sanctum.

  He strutted across the lobby, and would have clipped Rafe in the upper arm with his shoulder had my husband not moved out of the way. I could see his eyes fire for a second as he did it, but the flicker died down immediately.

  The door closed behind Grimaldi and Tucker, and he turned to me. “Let’s go.”

  I nodded. I had questions, but they could wait until we were in the car. No sense in talking in front of the girl cop on duty at the desk. She’d probably report whatever we said back to Tucker.

  By the time I had her car seat clicked into the back of the Volvo, Carrie was starting to make noises, and as I slipped into the passenger seat, I told Rafe, “Let’s go to the mansion. She’s going to be hungry when she wakes up, and I can feed her in peace and quiet.”