Right of Redemption Page 4

  Pandemonium ensued, of course. Pearl went crazy, lunging for the figure and barking. It was all I could do to hold on to her leash.

  Rafe, meanwhile—probably afraid the man with the gun was going to use it on Pearl or me, or Carrie—stepped in front of us. “Law enforcement!” his voice boomed. “Lower your weapon!”

  For a second, life seemed to hang in the balance. And that second went on a lot longer than seconds should. But after an eternity, the figure in the doorway relaxed. Enough that I didn’t feel like death was imminent.

  “That you, Collier?”

  “Yes,” Rafe said, his voice tight. “Put the damn gun away.”

  “Sorry.” The guy in the doorway didn’t sound sorry, but he holstered the weapon. “What are you doing here?”

  “The house is going up for auction tomorrow,” Rafe said, his shoulders still tense. “My wife wanted a look.”

  “And you couldn’t do it during daylight?”

  “Got called into a late meeting.” He finally relaxed enough to take a step out of the way. With a glance at me, he added, “Savannah, this is Officer Carl Enoch from the Columbia PD.”

  “Nice to meet you,” I said politely, although between you and me, it hadn’t been a pleasure at all. “Do you live nearby, Officer Enoch?”

  Surely we hadn’t tripped any kind of alarm coming in here? Surely Rafe would have noticed, even if I might not.

  “Down the street.” Enoch nodded in what I assumed was the direction of his house. Beyond the den to the north. “I saw the door hanging open, and figured I’d see what was going on.”

  Pearl was still rumbling deep in her throat, the short fur at the back of her neck bristling, and Rafe took a step closer to her. “Maybe we should take this outside. Give the dog a chance to breathe.”

  That must have made sense to Enoch, or maybe he just wanted to put some distance between himself and the growling pitbull, because he nodded and stepped backward, out of the doorway. Rafe took the car seat with Carrie out of my hand and nudged me on my way. I heard his footsteps behind me as I headed for the front door.

  Enoch had made it off the stoop and into the grass, and in the better light out here, I saw that he was around Rafe’s age, with sandy hair and a buzz cut. He was still wearing his uniform, weapon’s belt and all. There was a truck parked at the curb, blocking the Volvo. I was surprised neither one of us had heard it approach.

  Rafe came through the door behind me, and put the car seat down. I smiled politely at Enoch for the few seconds it took Rafe to lock the door and turn back to me with the keys. “Here you go, darlin’.”

  I took the keys and he took Pearl’s leash out of my hand. Pearl had stopped growling, but the fur on the back of her thick neck was still bristling.

  “So you’re looking to buy the place?” Enoch asked, looking from Rafe to me.

  “A friend of mine is looking for a fixer-upper,” I answered. “We thought this might be a nice house to renovate and put back on the market.”

  “You have a lot of experience with renovation?” His lips twitched like he thought it was funny.

  “I’m a real estate agent,” I said. “My experience is mostly with buying and selling.” And I didn’t have a whole lot of that. “But I know how to paint and decorate.” So did Charlotte. “And it’s a cute little house.” Although it could do with a facelift.

  Enoch nodded. “It’s been sitting empty for a few years. I’m surprised it’s taken this long for the city to foreclose on it.”

  He didn’t wait for me to answer, but turned to Rafe. “The meeting tonight… anything to do with the Morris trial?”

  Rafe shook his head. “That was before my time. I don’t know nothing about it. The meeting was all about Laurel Hill.”

  Enoch looked enlightened. I wasn’t, but I decided not to expose my ignorance, and instead ask Rafe later.

  “Anything to it?” Enoch asked.

  “I’ll be heading down there tomorrow,” Rafe answered. “I guess we’ll find out.”

  Enoch nodded. “I’ll leave you to it. Sorry to have interrupted.”

  He exchanged a nod with Rafe, and a glance with me, and then he moved his truck out of the way while we got the dog and the baby situated in the Volvo. By the time Rafe slid behind the steering wheel, the truck was on its way down the street.

  “Laurel Hill?” I asked, as I made myself comfortable in the back seat. “Who’s she?”

  Rafe’s lips twitched in the mirror. “Nobody, darlin’. It’s the name of a wildlife area in Lawrence County.”

  “Oh.” That Laurel Hill. Fifteen thousand acres of horse trails, ATV roads, lakes, and trees. “What’s that got to do with you?” We were in Maury County. North and a bit east of Laurel Hill.

  “Joint taskforce,” Rafe said, as he put the car in gear and we rolled off down the street after Enoch’s truck. Up ahead, he was pulling into a driveway on the right, a few houses up from ours. Or the one that might be ours after tomorrow.

  “What kind of joint taskforce?”

  “Lawrence, Lewis, Giles, and Maury,” Rafe said.

  All counties, all in a cluster down here in Southern Middle Tennessee.

  “Why do you need a joint taskforce?”

  Rafe hesitated. “Talk has it there’s a group of some sort meeting in Laurel Hill some weekends.”

  “I’m sure there are a lot of groups meeting in Laurel Hill on the weekends.” Hunters and fishermen and family reunions and ATV riders and what have you.

  “Not like this one,” Rafe said. “Nobody’s really sure whether they’re Neo-Nazis or militia or Antifa or what, but we’re thinking they could be a problem if they’re left alone.”

  Yes, I could see where they might be. None of those are types you want wandering around in your backyard.

  “The sheriffs for Lewis and Lawrence contacted Bob,” Rafe said, meaning Bob Satterfield, the sheriff of Maury County and my mother’s boyfriend. “Bob called Tammy and got her involved.”

  “And Tammy—I mean, Grimaldi—got you involved.”

  Tamara Grimaldi is the chief of police for Columbia. She’s also a good friend of ours—maid of honor at my wedding—in addition to being Rafe’s boss and my brother Dix’s girlfriend. Or almost-girlfriend. Semi-girlfriend. Something in the girlfriend line.

  He nodded. “And then Sheriff Jackson down in Giles wanted in. And given Giles’s history…”

  Yes, indeed. The city of Pulaski in Giles County was the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan. If anyone had a vested interest in rooting out racists in our midst, it was the sheriff of Giles County.

  “How did you find out about this?”

  “I found out when Tammy called me in to her office and told me,” Rafe said, taking a right on the Columbia Highway—or in this case the Pulaski Highway—going south toward Sweetwater and the mansion, and beyond that, to Pulaski. "She found out from Bob. And Bob found out from Lewis and Lawrence.”

  Or their respective sheriffs. “And who told them?”

  “Seems somebody reported it to the Wildlife Resources Agency,” Rafe said. “They passed the message on to law enforcement.”

  “So you’re working with the park rangers, too?”

  “I’m working with everybody,” Rafe said.

  Not with Enoch, it seemed.

  “It’s a shame that Clayton isn’t around anymore,” I said.

  Clayton had been one of Rafe’s students at the TBI. My husband had spent the past year teaching him and two others about undercover work, along with other useful skills such as lock-picking, hand-to-hand combat, and spotting someone tailing them. But at the end of December they had graduated, and had started the new year being assigned to different TBI offices across the state. Jamal was still in Nashville, working under Wendell, who had been Rafe’s handler during his own undercover days, while José had ended up in Memphis and Clayton in Chattanooga.

  José, as his name suggests, was Hispanic. Wendell and Jamal were both black. Neither of the boys would be a go
od choice for infiltrating a white supremacy group. But Clayton… Clayton was a stringy white kid with a skinhead haircut and tattoos up and down his arms, who had come to the attention of the TBI when he got swept up in a sting on a chop shop. He favored wife-beater tank tops—not that he had a wife, or even a girlfriend that I knew about, and he certainly wouldn’t beat her if he did—and faded jeans that practically fell off his bony hips, and he’d look just right waving a flag with a swastika.

  The corner of Rafe’s mouth turned up.

  “And you already thought about that,” I said.

  He glanced over at me. “I get paid for thinking about that, darlin’. Thinking about that’s my job.”

  So it was. I settled back in my seat and let the world go by outside the window while he gave some thought to his situation, and while I did the same to mine.

  The little house we’d just come from on Fulton Street had potential. It wasn’t a Victorian or Craftsman or anything like that, so the finishes were pretty plain—no original fireplace tile or mantels, no ornate crown molding or transoms—but it was in decent shape and didn’t look like it would take an extraordinary amount of time or money to renovate. It was small, for one thing, and wasn’t falling down, for another. I liked the street. The fact that a cop lived there meant it was probably pretty safe—and it had seemed safe, too, when we’d been there, other than the sudden appearance of the man with the gun. The neighbors looked out for one another—or at least Carl Enoch looked out for them—and that was a good sign, too.

  All that remained now, was figuring out how much we could afford to pay for it, based on how much Rafe estimated it would take to fix it and the price I thought we might get after it was renovated and back on the market.

  Oh, and to tell Darcy to meet me over there at the crack of dawn tomorrow, so she could yay or nay the purchase before the auction.

  While I was at it, I should probably contact Charlotte, too. She’d be getting her hands dirty fixing the place up, so even though her opinion mattered less than both mine and Darcy’s—mine because I understood real estate and the market, and Darcy because she was footing the bill—I should give Charlotte a chance to give input, as well.

  In fact, I might as well do it now, since I wasn’t doing anything else.

  I fished my phone out of my purse and started texting.

  By the time we reached the mansion, both Darcy and Charlotte had responded to my RSVPs with agreements to meet me at the property at eight-thirty the following morning, and Rafe still hadn’t said a word.

  “You OK?” I asked him when he’d slotted the Volvo back into the garage-cum-carriage house, and he was releasing Pearl from the front seat while I resleased Carrie and her car seat from the back.

  “Yes, darlin’.” He shot me a quick smile. “Just thinking.”

  “That you might get Clayton involved?”

  “It’s something to think about,” Rafe said, “once I figure out who he’d need to get involved with.” He took the car seat with the baby out of my hand. “C’mon, darlin’. You owe me a rain check.”

  So I did. “Just let me get Carrie changed and fed and into bed, and then I’m all yours.”

  “That’s what I like to hear,” Rafe said and whistled for Pearl.

  Four

  Eight-thirty the next morning found me back in Columbia, waiting for Darcy and Charlotte to show up.

  I was alone: Rafe had a date with Tamara Grimaldi and the joint sheriffs of Maury, Giles, Lawrence, and Lewis, to trek through Laurel Hill in the company of a park ranger. Because Bob was busy, Mother was at loose ends, and had offered to stay with Carrie and Pearl while I went to the auction. So she was currently hanging out at the mansion, petting an adoring Pearl and watching Carrie kick her feet and gurgle, and I was here, on Fulton, getting my first look at the place in daylight.

  It didn’t look too bad, all things considered. Fulton Street was just waking up, this early on a Saturday. A few curtains were open, more were still closed. An older woman walked a small dog with short legs down the other side of the street. A couple of houses up on my side—or the side I hoped would be ours—two kids were playing behind the fence in a front yard.

  The house we were trying to buy looked pretty decent in the morning sun. Still a little run-down, with uninspired paint and vegetation in the gutter, and a little sad, with no curtains to brighten the windows, but in halfway decent shape. The roof looked good. The windows were intact. There was no visible sagging. It was what I’d told Charlotte we should look for: a house that mostly needed cosmetic updates.

  A car turned the corner down at the end of the street and I watched as my sister’s blue Honda made its way toward me and parked behind the Volvo. A second later, Darcy swung her long legs in snug jeans out of the driver’s seat and strode over to me. “Good morning.”

  “Morning,” I said.

  She smiled and looked around, into the back seat of the Volvo. “No baby?”

  “Mother offered to stay with her. Bob’s off on a field trip with Rafe and Grimaldi and the sheriffs of Lawrence, Lewis, and Giles.”

  Darcy arched her brows, and I explained what was going on.

  “That’s not good,” she said.

  “Tell me about it.” And upon consideration, which I had done on the way over here, Rafe was probably the last person who should be involved in trying to eradicate a group of white supremacists. Or the first person, from a different perspective. But he was involved, whether I liked it or not, so it didn’t matter one way or the other whether it was a smart move. And I could just imagine his reaction if I suggested that he recuse himself because the job was too dangerous.

  Darcy turned to the house. “This it?”

  I nodded, just as another car turned the corner at the end of the street. We watched as Charlotte’s minivan came toward us and turned into the driveway. The door opened and she hopped down. “Morning.”

  “Good morning,” Darcy and I echoed.

  Charlotte came over and stood next to us, peering at the house. “Is this it?”

  “This is it.” I put on my metaphorical realtor hat and took a breath. “As you can see, it isn’t in terrible shape. The roof looks good. The gutters need to be cleaned out, but hopefully we can get away with not replacing them. We’ll need to do some landscaping, but there aren’t any big trees that need to be taken down, or anything like that.”

  They both nodded.

  “The street looks good. Old people feel safe enough to walk their dogs and mothers leave their children unattended in the yard. There’s a cop a few doors down.”

  “Which cop?” Darcy asked.

  I told her. “Does Nolan know him?”

  Patrick Nolan is Darcy’s boyfriend, and also an officer with the Columbia PD.

  “If he does, he’s never mentioned him,” Darcy said. “But it’s a good sign, that there’s a cop on the street. The neighborhood must be safe.”

  “Exactly.” I beamed at her, because she got it. “Ready to go in?”

  She nodded. Charlotte did, too, and I led the way up to the door while I fished my keychain out of my purse. “This would be the living room/dining room combination,” I told them after I’d unlocked the door and waved them both inside. “The kitchen is through that door on the left.”

  “It isn’t very big,” Charlotte said, looking around. “It would be hard to get a sofa and chairs as well as a dining table in here.”

  She had a point. The living/dining combo was considerably smaller than just the dining room at the mansion, and the same was probably true for the Victorian Charlotte’s parents lived in, in downtown Sweetwater.

  Then again, the dining table at the mansion can seat sixteen. There would be no need for that kind of thing here.

  “At most, you’d probably have six people living here. Two parents in the master, two kids in each of the other bedrooms. More likely there would be less. Two parents, or maybe just one, with two or three kids.”

  Charlotte nodded. So did Dar
cy.

  “It would be a little tight, but we could fit a dining room table down at that end.” I pointed. “Or here’s another option. We knock out most of the wall between the dining room and kitchen, which won’t give us any more space, but it’ll make it seem more open, and maybe we can add an island with seating, and avoid the table altogether. They do that on HGTV sometimes.”

  “How much is that going to cost?” Darcy asked, squinting at the wall.

  I had no idea, and told her so. “It depends on whether it’s load-bearing, first of all. If it is, the opening either has to be smaller, or we have to pay to put a beam up in the ceiling. That count run into some money. But if it’s just a matter of ripping and tearing, we can probably do it ourselves.” Although we’d need to get someone in to reframe the opening and deal with the electrical wires and outlets.

  She nodded.

  “The kitchen needs updating.” I led them through the doorway that might be going away and into the compact U-shaped kitchen. “It has a lot of cabinets and counter-space, though, for being a fairly small room. Rafe suggested that we could save money by refacing the cabinets—putting new doors on them—instead of replacing everything. They look solid, so it’s worth looking into.”

  “New appliances,” Charlotte murmured, and I nodded.

  “New countertops. New flooring. New sink and faucet. New drawer pulls and cabinet handles.” That, on its own, could run into some money.

  Darcy calculated in her head and mentioned a figure that sounded mostly on target. We moved on to the bathroom and the two bedrooms, and finally to the addition. By the time we were done, Darcy had come up with an idea of what the renovations would cost, that meshed reasonably well with the figure Rafe had mentioned last night. And while it wasn’t exactly pocket change, it didn’t sound too bad, either.

  Granted, my only expertise came from watching Flip or Flop on television, but it was something.

  “So what do you think?” I asked when we were back outside on the stoop and I had locked the door behind us. “It’s your money, Darcy. And—” I turned to Charlotte, “your time and effort. I like it. I think if we could get it for fifty or so, we’d stand a good chance of making money.”