Busman's Honeymoon (Savannah Martin Mystery #10.5) Read online

  Another door just beyond it was closed, and that’s where Rafe was headed. I watched as he applied his knuckles to the wood. “Miz Wallin? Are you there?”

  This time he didn’t bother to wait for an answer. He just stuck his hand into his T-shirt once more, and twisted the knob.

  Like the front door, this door—to the bedroom, I assumed—opened without a problem. Frenetta was either very trusting, or someone else had left all the doors open.

  There was no squeak this time. And no chill creeping down my spine.

  “Stay here,” Rafe told me as he crossed the threshold into the bedroom.

  This time I listened. The bedroom was tiny. I could see from where I was standing that Frenetta was in bed, curled up on her side under a blue blanket, and that she wasn’t breathing. I had no need to go any closer. Rafe did, and although I’m sure he could see, just as well as I could, that there was no movement in the body under the blanket, he put two fingers against Frenetta’s throat. After a few seconds, he shook his head.

  “Died in her sleep?” My voice was soft.

  Rafe shrugged and took a step back, stuffing both hands in the pockets of his shorts. “No idea.”

  I moved a stop closer and looked up at him. “They’ll have to do an autopsy, I guess.”

  He nodded.

  “Any sign of what killed her?”

  “If I was a coroner,” Rafe said, “I might could tell you that. But so far, I’ve made more corpses than I’ve treated.”

  “That’s a horrible thing to say! You haven’t killed that many people.”

  “More than you,” Rafe said, which was true. Then again, my record wasn’t hard to beat. I’d killed one person, and a week later, was still struggling with that fact. It had been him or me, I knew that. I’d been trying to defend myself, as well as Mother and David, but I hadn’t been trying to kill him.

  But I digress. Rafe had killed two people that I knew of, because I’d been there, and he had come close a third time. The guy had survived, though, and was serving twenty-five to life in a Georgia prison. I thought there might have been someone in the line of duty at some point as well, but I’d never asked. There were a lot of things Rafe had done before I met him again, that I figured I’d just as soon not know about.

  Mostly because I figured his past included rather a lot of women.

  “Her lips are blue. That means something, right?”

  “Usually means hypothermia.” He glanced around. “It’s cold in here, but I don’t think it’s that cold.”

  It wasn’t. Frenetta had kept her apartment at a chilly sixty-nine degrees, but that’s not cold enough to freeze anyone to death.

  “What else?”

  “Some kinds of poisoning,” Rafe said. “Alcohol, I think.”

  “Alcohol poisoning?”

  He nodded.

  “There’s a wine glass on the side table.”

  There was, with a smear of red in the bottom. The way the light hit it, made it look like blood, but I knew it was just residue from red wine. There was no blood anywhere in the bedroom, and no sign of anything untoward. Frenetta was curled up on her side like she were asleep—to the degree that the dead ever look like they sleep—with her eyes closed and the blanket pulled up to her chin. If anything criminal had happened here, and she hadn’t just died peacefully in her sleep, it had happened very quietly, without leaving any hint that it had happened at all.

  Rafe sighed. “I guess we’ve seen enough.”

  He reached for his pocket, and I assume his phone, and that’s when a voice said, “Hold it right there.” It cracked on the last syllable, either from excitement or fear, and its owner had to clear his throat before he added, “Hands in the air and turn around slowly.”

  Chapter Five

  “Is this really necessary?” I asked three minutes later.

  We were downstairs in the parking lot, and the young sheriff’s deputy—who was probably wishing with all his might that he was off-duty today—had told Rafe to assume the position against the hood of the Volvo.

  He had patted me down already—very gently and politely, probably because Rafe had been staring at him with that patented ‘would you like to die now, or later?’ look on his face the whole time. Now it was his turn, and although Rafe was obeying without much of a fuss, the young cop looked reluctant to venture any closer.

  I couldn’t blame him. He looked eighteen, although he was probably a few years older, if he was a full-fledged sheriff’s deputy, and he was no taller than me. Since he was of Asian ancestry, that wasn’t surprising, but standing next to Rafe’s muscular six-foot-three, he looked like a child. My husband could break him like a twig.

  And Rafe was unhappy. “Listen, kid,” he said, legs apart and hands braced on the hood of the car, so the muscles in his upper arms stretched the sleeves of the T-shirt, “I ain’t carrying. We’re on our honeymoon. I left my gun at home.”

  This assurance didn’t seem to make the young man any happier.

  “He’s a TBI agent,” I explained. “The Tennessee Bureau of Investigations. He’s allowed to carry a gun. And if you ask nicely, I’m sure he’ll show you his badge.”

  Rafe glanced at me over his shoulder. “That’s at home too, darlin’. I didn’t figure I’d need my gun and badge this weekend. I know your mama don’t like me much, but I didn’t think things’d go far enough that I’d need to shoot nobody.”

  “He’s a TBI agent,” I told Deputy Chang. “You can trust me.”

  Rafe rolled his eyes and turned back to the car. “Been a while since I had to deal with this shit. I forgot how much I don’t like it.”

  I hadn’t particularly liked it, either, despite the deputy’s polite manner. There’s just something inherently demeaning about being patted down. And for Rafe, who had been on the receiving end of that kind of treatment more than anyone should be, I’m sure it was doubly annoying. After ten years of having everyone in the world believing he was a criminal, he was finally in a place where things were working well. He had a good job, everyone knew he was an upstanding citizen, even my mother had grudgingly admitted that I could do worse. He had a new wife and a baby on the way... and this kind of thing kept happening to him.

  “C’mon, kid,” he growled. “I ain’t wearing nothing but a T-shirt and a pair of shorts. There’s nowhere to hide a weapon in this getup. Just do it. I don’t wanna spend the whole day standing here.”

  Chang swallowed, but approached. Although he kept his hand on the butt of his gun. In case Rafe made a sudden move, I guess. I could have told him—although I didn’t—that if Rafe made a move, that gun wouldn’t have a chance to clear the holster. Hopefully Rafe wasn’t thinking of doing anything that stupid.

  He didn’t. Just stood there, visibly simmering, while Chang made sure that he wasn’t hiding anything lethal in his board shorts.

  Then Chang stepped back to a safe distance. “OK. You can turn around.”

  Rafe turned around. I wandered over to him, now that we both were cleared, and he put an arm around me. “What’s going on?” he asked Chang.

  “We got a call,” Chang said. “About a B&E in progress at this address.”

  Rafe’s lips tightened. “Who called it in?”

  “Don’t know,” Chang said. When Rafe didn’t bother to look like he believed him, Chang added, “I didn’t talk to them. The dispatcher took the call and told me to go check it out. I got here in time to see the two of you go inside Miz Wallin’s place.”

  “We’re guests at the inn,” I explained, although we’d already been over this upstairs in Frenetta’s apartment, before Chang had hustled us down the stairs and into the parking lot. “She didn’t show up for breakfast this morning. We thought we’d check on her.”

  “So you went up to her apartment and broke in.”

  “The door was open,” Rafe said. “Misdemeanor trespass. I ain’t carrying.”

  This time it was Chang’s lips that tightened. I deduced that Rafe knew more than Chang
liked about the legalities of the situation.

  “Besides,” I added, “we weren’t planning to commit a crime. We were concerned.”

  “Because Miz Wallin didn’t show up for breakfast.”

  “Because Ms. Wallin didn’t show up to cook and serve breakfast. She runs a B and B, Deputy. Cooking and serving breakfast is part of the job.”

  Chang sighed. “Tell me what happened.”

  I told him what had happened. Our arrival yesterday, and the fact that Frenetta hadn’t been here to greet us. “Although it was pretty late. Nina wasn’t happy about having to come downstairs to open the door for us.” At least not until she’d seen Rafe.

  “Nina?”

  “One of the other guests. There are four guest rooms upstairs. We’re in number 2. Nina and Chip are in 1, Hildy and Gloria are in 3, and Groot and Vonnie are in 4.”

  Chang looked overwhelmed.

  “Write it down,” Rafe growled, and Chang gave him a resentful look.

  “Be nice,” I told him. Rafe, not Chang. Chang and I weren’t on those terms. Not yet. “He’s just doing his job. And he’s probably not used to dealing with dead bodies. Pretend he’s one of your boys. You don’t yell at them, do you?”

  “Sure I do.” But he made a visible effort to calm down. “Listen, kid...”

  “And don’t call him that. I don’t think he likes it.”

  Rafe gave me a look that said he didn’t like being told what to do, either, but he followed the advice. “Listen, Deputy,” he said, with a sideways glance at me to make sure I appreciated how restrained he was, “my wife and I got here late last night. We never even met Miz Wallin. All we did was check and see if she was all right, since everybody else was just sitting around waiting for something to happen.”

  “He’s used to taking charge,” I told Chang, and earned myself another look from Rafe. “Well, you are. And anyway, we just wanted to make sure she was all right. Nobody answered when we knocked, but the door was open, so we went in. And we found her in bed. Dead.”

  “How did you know she was dead? Did you touch her?”

  “I checked for a pulse,” Rafe said. “The body’s cold, and rigor mortis has set in.”

  For someone who isn’t used to dealing with dead bodies, he sure sounded official.

  “Of course the body’s cold,” I said. “It’s like a meat locker up there.”

  And maybe that wasn’t the best analogy, because they both turned to stare at me.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’ll just stand here and be quiet, shall I?”

  “Thanks, darlin’,” Rafe answered, and turned back to Chang. “There was no sign of anything suspicious, other than the open door. And she coulda forgotten to lock it. Or maybe this is the kind of town where people don’t bother to lock their doors at night.”

  “The B and B door was locked,” I reminded him.

  He glanced at me, but didn’t answer. “I don’t know nothing about this woman. For all I know, she coulda been in the habit of leaving her door open. She coulda been expecting someone. She coulda been planning to go out, and forgot.”

  Chang nodded. “You arrived last night? How long are you staying?”

  We told him, and answered a couple more questions—the lights had been out in the parking lot last night; no, we hadn’t noticed any lights on in the apartment, either; no, we hadn’t seen anyone but Nina—and then Chang said we could go. “But don’t leave town.”

  “I know the drill, Deputy,” Rafe said. “We ain’t going nowhere for the next couple days. Like I said, we’re on our honeymoon. Is it OK if we go down to the beach?”

  “You can go anywhere in town,” Chang said expansively, as if that included more than just a square half mile, “just don’t leave.”

  We said we wouldn’t, and walked away. Chang went into the B and B, I assume to talk to the other guests and give them the news that Frenetta was no longer among the living.

  “This is awkward.”

  Rafe glanced down at me. “Not sure that’s the word I woulda used.”

  “I meant that our hostess is dead. How can we stay on in a house where the hostess is dead? It seems like very bad manners.”

  “I don’t think Chang’s gonna let us leave,” Rafe said.

  “But we never even met Frenetta. Why would we want to kill her?”

  “Why would anybody?” He didn’t wait for me to answer, just added, “What do you mean, kill? You don’t know that she didn’t die peacefully in her sleep.”

  No, I didn’t. I guess I’d just gotten used to the corpses I encountered getting that way as a result of unnatural circumstances. But he was right. There’d been no evidence of foul play—other than that unlocked door, and Frenetta could have forgotten to lock it. And the blue lips... well, I’m sure there are lots of reasons why someone’s lips might turn blue, and not all of them unnatural.

  “She didn’t look very old, though. Too young to die in her sleep for no reason.”

  Best guess, I’d put Frenetta’s age at somewhere between sixty and sixty-five. And while people die at that age, it’s usually because something’s wrong with them.

  “You dunno that something wasn’t wrong with her,” Rafe said, and stopped as we came out between the last two houses and stood opposite from the beach. “There it is.”

  There it was. And we could see it so much better than last night. The sand was almost white, sugary, and the ocean a light turquoise or teal, bluer than the sky, with tiny, froth-capped waves.

  “It’s gorgeous.”

  Rafe nodded. When he turned to me, his eyes were lit up like a kid’s. “Let’s go.”

  “You go.” I was wearing a sundress. I wasn’t about to throw myself into the waves.

  “You sure?”

  I nodded. Rafe whipped the T-shirt over his head and tossed it to me with a grin, and started running, straight for the water.

  I watched him for a few seconds, and then wandered off to find shade. Being burnt to a crisp is unladylike, and tanning gives you wrinkles. So I found an empty umbrella, pushed a couple of quarters into the slot in the stem to get it to open, and settled in a lounge chair to watch Rafe play in the waves.

  He was like a little kid seeing the ocean for the first time. If he’d had a bucket and spade, I think he would have built a sand castle.

  He seemed blissfully unconcerned with the cross-stitch of healing scars across his chest and abdomen, and with the two-inch stab wound going straight through his lower arm, still pink and puffy. The bandage had come off just in time for the wedding. They weren’t his first scars, by any means, so I guess he just regarded them as par for the course, but I felt a little shiver go down my spine every time I looked at him. For a horrible eighteen hours or so, I hadn’t been sure I’d ever see him again. The fact that he had acquired another twenty or thirty scars during that time, didn’t bother me in the least. The fact that the person who gave them to him—the person whose name was carved into his skin along with that crazy-quilt pattern—could have, and had, every intention of killing him when he was finished amusing himself, upset me a lot more.

  Rafe seemed to have shaken it off. He didn’t talk about the experience, and didn’t seem to dwell on it. And if the scars bothered him, he didn’t show it. He did get a few sideways glances, though. Some of them, I’m sure, just because he’s exceptionally gorgeous half-dressed, but I caught a few double-takes and shocked expressions thrown his way, as well. If those bothered him, he didn’t let that show, either.

  I let him play for as long as I could stand it, and the next time he came back to the umbrella, I told him, “I’m starving. Any chance we could go get some early lunch somewhere?”

  “Christ.” He looked immediately chastised. “Course, darlin’. You shoulda said something sooner.”

  “I didn’t really notice until now,” I fibbed. He gave me a jaundiced look, and I added, “Fine. You were having so much fun I didn’t want you to have to stop. But now I really do need to eat something. I think the ba
by’s starting to gnaw on my stomach lining.”

  “Let’s hope not.” He held out his hand for his T-shirt, and I handed it over and watched as he pulled it down over muscles, scars, and everything else. “What’re you hungry for?”

  It took me a second to drag my gaze up to meet his, and he chuckled. “If you want some of that, you gotta keep your strength up. Let’s get you fed first.” He reached out a hand to haul me to my feet.

  “I don’t really care what I eat,” I told him as I put my hand in his. “It depends on what’s available.”

  “Then let’s take a walk and see.” He kept my hand in his as we wandered off down the beach, eying the store fronts on the other side of the street, and the food carts parked on the beach walk.

  It didn’t take long to find something acceptable, probably because I was so hungry that almost anything would have sounded good to me. Rafe likes pizza, so we ended up in a pizza parlor where he grabbed a couple of slices, and I ordered a salad. The baby had given me a tendency toward heartburn, so I was trying to avoid both spicy—tomato sauce—and greasy—melted cheese—foods for the time being.

  It was while we were sitting there, chomping on pizza and lettuce leaves, that Deputy Chang came back into our lives. The bell above the door rang. Rafe glanced up, and I could see his expression become resigned. When I turned to look over my shoulder, I saw Chang bearing down on us. “Mr. Collier? I’m going to have to ask you to accompany me to the sheriff’s office.”

  “Found out about my record, did you?”

  Chang didn’t answer, and Rafe added, “Just gimme a minute to finish lunch with my wife, Deputy. I’ll be right with you.”

  Chang nodded and went to take up position next to the door. I guess he wanted to make sure that Rafe wouldn’t have a chance to make a break for it.

  “I thought your record was expunged,” I told him as soon as Chang was out of range.

  He shook his head, conveying the last few bites of pepperoni pizza to his mouth. “Nothing I did undercover stuck. But I earned that stretch in Riverbend all on my own.”

  Five years for aggravated assault and felony battery with the intent to cause harm. Two years served before the TBI talked him into going undercover for them. He was barely eighteen when it happened, and just twenty when they let him out.