Past Due Page 5

  His brows arched, and I added, “Not literally. A centerfold. Playboy or something.”

  The sheriff’s lips pursed, but he didn’t actually comment. He didn’t have to. Those lips made his opinion of centerfolds—and men who looked at them—abundantly clear.

  “It’s been hanging there since Rafe was a teenager,” I said. “It isn’t like he’s looking at dirty magazines these days.”

  Bob Satterfield’s voice was carefully neutral. “So you moved on.”

  “To LaDonna’s room. I guess it must have been LaDonna’s room. On the other side of the hall, anyway.”

  “Did you go in?”

  I shook my head. “We could see him from the door. It was obvious that he was dead. There was no need to go any closer.”

  “Did you recognize him?”

  “No,” I said. “Was I supposed to?”

  He turned to Charlotte. “You?”

  She shook her head.

  The sheriff turned to me. “When was the last time you spoke to your boyfriend?”

  “Rafe? Last night. After dinner.”

  “You haven’t heard from him this morning?”

  I shook my head, my heart starting to thud dully. I could hear the reverberations in my ears.

  “Any idea what his plans were for the day?”

  “He was going to visit his grandmother,” I said. “Why?”

  “I’ll need to have a chat with the boy.”

  “Why?” Was it just because this was—or used to be—the Colliers’ home, or was there another reason?

  My eyes flickered toward the trailer and back. “Did he... I mean, the guy inside... was he someone you recognized?”

  “Yep,” Bob Satterfield said.

  “Someone I should recognize?”

  “I wouldn’t think so, darling. But your boyfriend would.”

  It was hard to get the single syllable past the lump in my throat. “Why?”

  The sheriff’s eyes were hard, the color and consistency of gunmetal. “That’s Billy Scruggs in there.”

  Chapter Five

  “Who’s Billy Scruggs?” Charlotte asked as we drove away.

  I had to swallow the great, big chunk of fear lodged in my throat before I could answer. “Remember last night, when we talked about Rafe going to prison when he was eighteen?”

  She nodded.

  “He spent two years in Riverbend Penitentiary for assault and battery.”

  “Oh,” Charlotte said.

  “The guy he beat up was Billy Scruggs.”

  She turned to me, eyes wide in her pale face.

  “Billy was LaDonna’s boyfriend, and he’d hurt her. Rafe was standing up for his mother. But now the sheriff will probably try to pin this on him.”

  “But he’s in Nashville,” Charlotte said. There was a beat before she added, “Isn’t he?”

  “Of course he is!”

  Wasn’t he?

  “Maybe you should call him,” Charlotte said.

  I should definitely call him. But my hands were wrapped so tightly around the steering wheel that my knuckles showed white, and I couldn’t find it in myself to let go. “Later. I’ll drop you off at home first.” My voice was as rigid as my spine.

  Charlotte slanted a look my way. “Are you OK, Savannah?”

  I managed a laugh, but it didn’t sound very good. “Not really.”

  “If he’s in Nashville, he couldn’t have shot what’s-his-name Scruggs.”

  “It’s barely an hour away.” Less, the way Rafe drives. Bat out of hell doesn’t begin to cover it. He and the Harley could probably make the trip to Sweetwater and back, with a little time left over for shooting Billy Scruggs, in two hours flat. He could have driven here half a dozen times since I’d spoken to him last night, and still had time to catch a nap.

  Of course he hadn’t. But he’d been alone, so he wouldn’t be able to prove it.

  The trip back to the Albertsons’ Victorian home in the Sweetwater historic area felt like it took forever. It didn’t, really. The dashboard clock just moved so slowly that it was as if each minute lasted an hour.

  When I pulled up in front of the picket fence, I pulled myself together to ask a question. “Do you want to ride to the party together later?”

  Charlotte hesitated, one hand on the door handle. “I think maybe I’d better take the rental car. Just in case.”

  She didn’t say in case of what, and I didn’t ask. But I figured it was either in case I didn’t make it to the reunion at all, or in case I got dragged away and slapped in handcuffs in the middle of it.

  Not that I supposed the sheriff really thought I’d had anything to do with Billy Scruggs’s death. But the person who discovers the body is always a suspect. And with my connection to Rafe, Sheriff Satterfield could probably make a case for my having dispatched Billy.

  It would depend on when Billy had been shot, I guess. I’d woken up at the mansion, with Mother in residence. We’d gone to Audrey’s and stayed together until I’d departed to the café to wait for Charlotte. And then Charlotte and I had been together until we found the body.

  Unless Billy had been shot before Mother got up this morning, I couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with it.

  But rather than saying anything about that—Charlotte might just be wanting to distance herself from me, and if so, I certainly wasn’t going to stand in her way—I just nodded. “I’ll see you there, then.”

  She nodded back. And it might have been my imagination, but I thought she looked relieved when she opened her door and slipped out. “See you.”

  I waited until she’d walked through the gate in the picket fence and was on her way up the walk toward the house, before I took my foot off the brake and pulled away from the curb.

  When we’d left Sheriff Satterfield in the Bog, he’d been waiting for the crime scene techs to arrive. It had only taken a few minutes to get here. Chances were I was still in time. He hadn’t asked me for Rafe’s number, and he probably hadn’t had time to track it down himself yet.

  I fished my phone out of my purse with one hand while I steered the car with the other, and punched in the numbers one-handed.

  It took a couple of rings, and then Rafe’s voice came on. “Afternoon, darlin’.”

  “Rafe.”

  That one syllable was all it took for his voice to lose the flirtatious warmth and become brisk and businesslike. “What’s wrong?”

  “Billy Scruggs is dead.”

  There was a moment of silence. “I don’t imagine you’re suggesting we throw a party?”

  “That’s a little premature,” I said. “The body was found in your trailer in the Bog.”

  “What was he doing there?” He sounded calm. A lot calmer than I felt.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “What were you doing there?”

  “Oh. Um... sightseeing?”

  When the silence stretched, I continued, “They’re supposed to start tearing things down next week.”

  “Yeah?”

  “They haven’t started yet. But we were there, so we went inside.”

  “We?”

  “Charlotte,” I said.

  He made a noise. It sounded like a smothered laugh, but it might just have been exasperation. “You took your snooty girlfriend sightseeing in my old bedroom?”

  “Um... yeah. Sort of.”

  “Bet that went over well.” His voice was definitely amused.

  “Better before we found the body,” I said.

  “You sure it was Billy?”

  “Positive.”

  “And you’re sure he’s dead.”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “In my room?”

  “Your mother’s room. Or so assume. The other one. Not the one with the naked blonde on the wall.”

  “She wasn’t naked,” Rafe said mildly, “as I recall.”

  “Close enough.”

  “I was sixteen, darlin’. All sixteen-year-old boys look at naked women.
But if she bothers you, you can take her down.”

  “She doesn’t bother me.” Much. And she’d be gone soon, anyway. “Billy Scruggs was in your mother’s room. Dead. Shot, as far as I could make out. Although he could have been stabbed. I didn’t look all that closely at him.”

  “I’m surprised you’d know Billy Scruggs to look at, darlin’.”

  “I don’t,” I said. “I told the sheriff I’d never seen him before. I don’t think I have. It was Sheriff Satterfield who told me who it was.”

  His tone was flat. “You called the cops.”

  “Of course I called the cops. What did you expect me to do?”

  It took him a second to answer, and before he could, I continued. “Charlotte was there. She saw the body, too. I couldn’t very well suggest going away quietly after that.”

  “It ain’t your fault, darlin’. You did what you had to do.”

  Glad to hear it.

  “You want I should come down there?”

  “No.” God, no. “No, stay where you are. Far away from Sweetwater.”

  He didn’t say anything, but the silence that rolled down the wire—or across the air waves—spoke volumes.

  “The sheriff asked about you,” I said.

  I hadn’t thought his voice could go any flatter, but somehow he managed. “No kidding.”

  “Unfortunately not. He was making sure you were in Nashville. That you hadn’t come to Sweetwater with me.”

  “He gonna try and pin this on me?”

  “Not if you’re in Nashville.”

  He was silent a moment, obviously thinking about the repercussions of staying where he was versus coming here. “You gonna be OK, darlin’?”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. “It was ugly—there was a lot of blood—but it has nothing to do with me. Or with you. With us. It isn’t personal. I don’t care who killed him, and I have no plans of getting involved.”

  “Better that you don’t.”

  “I won’t. I promise. And I don’t want you to get involved, either. So even though I miss you, I’m glad you’re not here.”

  There was another moment of silence. “You could come home. Skip the reunion. I’ll keep the bed warm.”

  I didn’t doubt it. “Are you in bed right now?”

  “Would you drive home if I said yes?”

  Tempting. But— “Probably not,” I admitted.

  “Then it’s just as well I ain’t.” I could hear the smile in his voice. “Take care, darlin’. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “When the sheriff calls, make sure you let him know you’ve been in Nashville all day.”

  “I’ll go arrange my alibi right now. Have fun tonight, darlin’.”

  “You, too,” I said, and hung up, feeling better about the whole thing. He’d been in Nashville all day—of course he’d been in Nashville all day!—and there was nothing Sheriff Satterfield could do to stick him with Billy Scruggs’s murder.

  And once the sheriff stopped looking at Rafe, he’d probably figure out pretty quickly who had done away with Billy.

  Billy Scruggs had been a nasty specimen, by all accounts—including the old police report Dix had dug up last year, when I’d asked for information about Rafe’s past. Billy had beaten LaDonna to a pulp all those years ago, and it wasn’t his first time doing something like that. He’d been arrested for brawling and domestic violence before, too. And when he and Rafe went at it, Billy had given almost as good as he got. Rafe had had youth and righteous wrath on his side, but Billy had been bigger and stronger and had gotten in his own licks. The only reason he didn’t go to jail was because everyone agreed that Rafe had started the fight.

  There was no reason to think he had changed his spots in the past thirteen years. There had to be plenty of other people in Sweetwater who would be happy to see Billy Scruggs dead.

  All I had to do was figure out who he had been involved with lately. And then I’d be able to nudge the sheriff in the right direction.

  My brother Dix lives in a subdivision called Copper Creek, on the outskirts of Sweetwater, in an area that were fields when I was a girl. The house is a big brick McMansion that he and Sheila bought just after they got married. Now that Sheila’s gone, Dix lives there with Abigail and Hannah, my nieces.

  There was no answer when I rang the doorbell, but Dix’s car was in the driveway, so I walked through the grass to the gate in the privacy fence and knocked there instead.

  “Dix? It’s me. Savannah.”

  There was a pause. Then I heard footsteps approaching, rustling through the grass. “Savannah?” my brother’s voice said.

  “Yes. It’s me. What are you doing back there?”

  “Just hanging out,” Dix said and opened the gate. “The weather’s nice.”

  He glanced up and down the road in front of the house before stepping back to let me in. “Are you alone?”

  “Yes. Who are you worried about seeing?”

  “No one,” Dix said and closed the gate behind me, taking care that it latched.

  “Sure.”

  He made a face. “I thought maybe you’d brought Mother. You spent the night with her, didn’t you?”

  “I did. But I left her with Audrey. What are you doing, that you’re afraid your mother will find out about?”

  “Nothing,” Dix said, leading the way across the grass toward the back deck. “I’m an adult. I’m not afraid of my mother.”

  “Of course not.” I rolled my eyes at his back.

  He headed up the steps to the deck with me right behind. “You want a beer?” he asked over his shoulder.

  I stumbled over the top step and had to catch myself on the banister to stay upright. My brother was sitting at home in the afternoon on a Saturday drinking beer?

  “No, thank you.” We walked onto the deck and I looked around. There were two bottles on the table, along with a tray of what looked like nachos.

  My stomach growled and Dix glanced at me. “Skip lunch?”

  “No. Just hungry again.”

  “Have a seat. I’ll get you a plate and a glass of lemonade.”

  He didn’t wait for my answer, just headed for the glass doors into the house. “It’s Savannah,” I heard him say before he closed the door again.

  Uh-oh. He wasn’t alone. Something I should have gathered from the two bottles of beer, I guess. Each was half full. If Dix had been alone, at least one would be empty, or so I’d assume.

  The guest was probably Todd Satterfield. The sheriff’s son, my brother’s best friend, and the man my mother wanted me to marry.

  I dithered, trying to decide whether to leave before he could come outside to greet me, or whether to brazen it out.

  The nachos beckoned. After all the rolls at lunch, I shouldn’t rightly be able to eat again until tonight, but I was practically salivating at the thought of the salt and cheese.

  What the heck. I wouldn’t be able to avoid him forever. Might as well face the music now.

  I sat down at the table and pulled a chip toward me, trailing cheese.

  By the time the back door opened and Dix came back out, lemonade in hand, I was happily blissed out on food. So much so that when I saw his companion, I wasn’t able to muster more than a blink. “You’re not Todd.”

  “No,” Tamara Grimaldi agreed.

  “What are you doing here?”

  She arched her brows. “It’s my day off. I’m spending it with a friend.”

  Right. Shut up, Savannah.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “That was rude. I just didn’t expect to see you.”

  I knew she and Dix kept in touch, but I didn’t know the detective was in the habit of driving to Sweetwater to spend time with my brother on her day off.

  Or maybe she wasn’t in the habit. Maybe this was the first time, and I was interrupting.

  I made to get to my feet. “I’m sorry. I’ll just...”

  “Sit.” She took the chair opposite from me. I dropped back into my own. Such is the power of the voice
of authority.

  Not that she looked particularly like a cop this afternoon. I think it was probably the first time I’d seen Tamara Grimaldi in anything but her usual severe business attire, or slightly less severe jeans and Kevlar vest.

  She looked good. Relaxed. Comfortable, in white Capri pants and a navy blue top, with sandals on her feet. There was even nail polish. Not on her fingernails—they were unadorned and businesslike, as usual—but on her toes, where it wouldn’t normally show, she had flame red polish with—I squinted—little suns.

  “Nice toes.”

  The look she shot me was quelling, but there was a hint of color in her cheeks. “What are you doing here, Ms.... Savannah?”

  “The same thing you’re doing,” I said, leaning back on the chair and folding one leg over the other. “Visiting my brother.”

  “It’s a long drive from Nashville just for a visit.”

  Just as long for her, although I didn’t point it out. “I came down yesterday. I’m staying until tomorrow. It’s my ten year high school reunion this weekend.”

  She glanced toward the gate in the fence. “Are you alone?”

  “You mean, is Rafe here?” I shook my head. “No. Thank God.”

  They both arched brows. “Trouble in paradise?” Dix asked. He sat down next to Grimaldi, close enough that their knees brushed under the table. Neither seemed to mind, or even notice. Maybe it wasn’t the first time their knees had brushed.

  “Not with Rafe and me. He just doesn’t like to come to Sweetwater when he doesn’t have to.”

  “So what’s the trouble?” Grimaldi picked up her bottle and took a swig of beer.

  I glanced at Dix. I wasn’t sure whether the detective would remember the name, but my brother certainly would. “Billy Scruggs is dead. Shot. I found him an hour ago. In the Colliers’ trailer in the Bog.”

  There was a beat. Then Grimaldi put her bottle on the table with a click. “Billy Scruggs. That’s the man Mr. Collier fought with before he went to jail thirteen years ago, isn’t it?”

  “You can call him Rafe,” I said. “Under the circumstances, you probably should. After all, he calls you Tammy.”

  Dix turned to look at her, sandy brows arched. “Tammy?”

  The detective turned ever so slightly pink. “Can we stay on task, please?”