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

  It was a lifetime ago. He was a different person now. It was a damn shame that after everything he’d done, it was still following him around, causing trouble.

  “Do I need to call Dix and get a recommendation for a lawyer?” I wanted to know.

  He shook his head. “I ain’t worried yet. Unless they’re stupid, they’re gonna figure out that I didn’t have nothing to do with it. We’ve never been here before, and didn’t know the lady.”

  I nodded. “Do you want me to come with you?”

  He shook his head again. “No sense in us both sitting at the sheriff’s office. Just go back to the B and B and take a nap. The sun prob’ly made you sleepy.”

  It had, especially coupled with the food. And of course the baby. I was tired all the time nowadays.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m positive,” Rafe said and pushed his chair back. “I’ll see you in a couple hours.”

  He took the time to bend and drop a kiss on my lips, and then he sauntered toward the door, where Chang was still waiting. As they passed through and out into the blinding sunshine, it was hard to say who looked more relaxed, the cop or the ex-con.

  I cleaned off the table and headed out, while people stared and whispered. I ignored it, something I’ve gotten better at since taking up with Rafe. There was a time when the idea of being the center of attention, of having people talk about me, was the worst thing imaginable.

  A lady doesn’t draw attention to herself, darling.

  I could almost hear my mother’s voice.

  But that was all behind me now. Let’em stare. Who cared what they thought, about him, me, or any of it? After tomorrow, we’d never see any of them again anyway.

  By the time I got outside to the sidewalk, Chang’s patrol car was gone, and so, of course, was Rafe. I trudged back to the B and B, but before I made it upstairs and to bed, I was waylaid by Gloria and Hildy, who were sitting on the front porch sipping lemonade.

  “There you are!” Gloria said when she saw me.

  It seemed impolite to simply nod and walk past, so I made myself stop. “Hello.”

  “We wondered where you’d got to!”

  “We went to the beach,” I said. “And then to lunch.”

  “And where’s your handsome husband?”

  She peered down the street, maybe thinking he had let me walk back to the B and B on my own, and was coming.

  “Deputy Chang came and picked him up,” I said.

  That seemed to be the opening they’d been looking for, because they both leaned forward. “He said Frenetta’s dead,” Hildy said, her voice hushed.

  I nodded.

  “What happened?”

  “I have no idea. She was in bed. I guess maybe she just... died.”

  They exchanged a look. “She wasn’t very old,” Gloria said.

  Hildy shook her head. “Old enough that she’d want to retire, but not old enough to die.”

  “Maybe she was ill?” I suggested.

  They exchanged another look. “I didn’t notice anything like that,” Gloria said. Hildy shook her head.

  I decided that since I was here, I might as well get some information. It would keep my mind occupied, and off Rafe, in the process of being grilled by Deputy Chang at the sheriff’s office.

  I was hopeful that Chang and his boss would see that Rafe wasn’t involved in Frenetta’s death, in spite of that arrest record. But the possibility that they wouldn’t was playing with my mind, so I could use a distraction. This one would work.

  I pulled an unoccupied wicker chair closer to the porch swing where Gloria and Hildy sat, and sank down in it. “You said you’d been here a while, right?”

  They nodded in unison. It was weird to see them so in sync, since they looked totally different. Gloria was handsome rather than pretty, with cropped hair, broad shoulders under a striped shirt, and muscular legs in khaki shorts. Hildy, on the other hand, was all girl, with a messy topknot of frizzy gray-streaked brown hair, and a frumpy summer dress with little flowers.

  “We got here late last night,” I continued, “and I think Frenetta may already have been dead. At least she didn’t come down to greet us, and there were no lights on in her apartment.”

  They both nodded.

  “So we never actually met her. And since it was my sister who made the reservation, I never even spoke to her on the phone.” Although maybe I should give Catherine a call and get her impression of the deceased. Or at least let her know what was going on.

  Thanks, sis. Just what we needed. A busman’s honeymoon.

  Like we didn’t have enough crime in our regular lives.

  “This is our third time here,” Gloria said. Hildy made a sort of aborted movement, and Gloria glanced at her, but didn’t stop speaking. “We came down from Massachusetts last summer and fell in love with the place. Then we came back over Christmas, and now we’re back again.”

  “So you must have gotten to know Frenetta pretty well. Any idea who might have wanted to do away with her?”

  There was a pause. “What makes you think someone did away with her?” Gloria asked.

  “Was she...?” Hildy paused delicately.

  I shook my head. “It looked like she’d gone to sleep and never woken up.” Aside from the blue lips. “But if the police are interviewing suspects, they must think she didn’t die a natural death.”

  Or at least they were open to the possibility.

  “And your husband’s a suspect?” Hildy asked. “How awful for you!”

  I shrugged. “I’m used to it.” Not that it ever got any easier, but for a while, every time Rafe showed up in Sweetwater, Sheriff Satterfield tried to pin something on him. By now, I wasn’t even surprised when someone prejudged him based on the way he looked and the fact that he had a prison record. “So any ideas about who might have wanted Frenetta dead? Or why?”

  They exchanged a glance. “She could be trying,” Gloria said. “Indecisive. She’d make up her mind, and then change it five minutes later. You never really knew where you stood. Although I don’t know that that’s enough for someone to kill her...”

  “Do you know if she had any differences with anyone? Any arguments?”

  They looked at one another. “Go ahead and tell her,” Hildy said.

  “Tell me what?”

  Gloria lowered her voice. “Yesterday morning, when we came down to breakfast, she and Nina were in the butler’s pantry. Talking.”

  “Arguing,” Hildy said.

  “Did you hear what they were arguing about?”

  “Chip,” Gloria said.

  “Chip?”

  They both nodded.

  “Why?”

  “We don’t know,” Gloria said. “But we very distinctly heard his name.” She lowered her voice, after a quick look around to make sure no one was listening. “Nina threatened Frenetta.”

  “Threatened her? Really?”

  Gloria nodded. “I heard her say, ‘You’d better do right by Chip, or else.’”

  “Or else, what?”

  “She didn’t say,” Gloria said. “But I could tell it wouldn’t be good.”

  Hildy nodded.

  “Did you tell the police?”

  They both shook their heads. “They didn’t ask.”

  “Did she see you? Nina?”

  They exchanged a glance. “When she came out of the butler’s pantry. Why?”

  “Because if she killed Frenetta, and she knows you overheard her threaten Frenetta, she might decide to get rid of you, too.”

  Hildy gulped, and Gloria paled.

  I got to my feet. “If I were you, I’d tell the police.” Hopefully that’d be enough to remove some of the suspicion from Rafe. “As soon as possible. Better safe than sorry.”

  I left them sitting there, looking a lot less relaxed than when I’d arrived.

  Chapter Six

  Rafe didn’t come back for hours.

  I had finally fallen asleep, after spending what felt like an e
ternity fretting and wondering whether he’d come back at all, or whether I’d get a phone call telling me I had to arrange for bail. But then I woke up an hour later to the feeling of something heavy descending on the side of the bed, and a pair of lips fitting themselves over mine.

  It’s a nice way to wake up. I stretched luxuriously, at the same time as I reached up and wrapped my arms around his neck, all of it without opening my eyes. I knew it was him, from the scent and the taste and the feel of him, achingly familiar by now.

  One thing led to another, and it was thirty minutes later that I finally got around to asking, “How did it go at the sheriff’s office?”

  By now, Rafe was naked and next to me on the bed, flopped on his back catching his breath. It took him a moment to answer. “I’m here.”

  “I noticed. So at least they didn’t arrest you. Is that what you’re saying?”

  He shrugged. Not an easy thing to do, lying down.

  “Was there a chance they would?”

  “Seemed like it for a bit.”

  “That’s not good,” I said.

  He shook his head. “I’m sick of this prison record coming back to bite my ass. Wish I woulda never touched Billy Scruggs.”

  I wished he hadn’t, too. If anything should have the right to bite his posterior, it should be me. And the conviction would probably dog him for the rest of his life. Never mind that it was one single stupid mistake made by an eighteen-year-old kid whose mother had been beaten black and blue by her boyfriend, and that he had spent the past ten years risking his life every day to make up for it. As long as it was on his record, people wouldn’t allow him to forget.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t forget,” he told me when I said so. “I almost killed the bastard.”

  “And he killed your mother.”

  He had no answer for that. Just kept looking at the ceiling. I turned over on my stomach—harder to do these days; a little bit like trying to get comfortable balanced on top of a beach ball—and leaned on his chest. “I love you.”

  He glanced at me. “I love you, too.”

  “I’m glad they didn’t keep you.”

  He nodded. “Me, too.”

  “Did it really look like they might?”

  “It might could,” Rafe said. “Whoever finds the body is always a suspect. Add in two years for assault and battery, and I’m sure they were prepping the handcuffs.”

  “So what happened?”

  “We talked,” Rafe said. “I had’em call Wendell, but since it’s the weekend, ain’t like there’s anybody at the TBI who could verify that I work for them. And Wendell could be anybody.”

  “We could ask Grimaldi to go to the house and find your ID and scan it here. She’s able to get in. She packed our bags.”

  “I’m sure Tammy’s still in Sweetwater,” Rafe said. “And I ain’t calling her to save my butt. Anyway, they let me go.”

  “No evidence?”

  “That,” Rafe said. “And they got a phone call.”

  “What kind of phone call?”

  “From somebody saying that Nina Hickman had been arguing with Frenetta yesterday morning.”

  Looked like Hildy and Gloria had come through. I smiled.

  Rafe eyed me. “You know something about that?”

  “I might. Hildy and Gloria were sitting on the porch when I came back here after lunch. I stopped to talk to them.” I told him what they had told me. “I advised them to call the cops.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I didn’t do it just for you,” I told him. “If Nina killed Frenetta, she wouldn’t be above killing Gloria and Hildy, too.” Or any of the rest of us.

  “Big step from arguing with somebody to killing them.”

  Sure. But— “I just wanted to give the cops another suspect to concentrate on. Someone actually viable. It’s stupid for them to focus on you. We weren’t even here until ten o’clock last night. We never met Frenetta. They need to look at people with a reason to want her dead.”

  Rafe nodded.

  “And as long as they were wasting time on you, they weren’t looking at anyone else.”

  Rafe shook his head.

  “Out of curiosity, did they determine that it was murder? That she didn’t just die in her sleep?”

  “They think she was asphyxiated,” Rafe said. “Maybe with something in the wine first, to knock her out and make her sleep. And then someone walked right in and smothered her.”

  I suppressed a shudder. I’d just been in here, sleeping, dead to the world, until he walked in. Someone—someone else—could have come in and asphyxiated me, as well. “That’s horrible. But at least she didn’t know it was happening.”

  “Not sure that makes it any better,” Rafe said, and I guess that was true. He’d certainly want a chance to fight back when it was his turn. Me, I thought I might just want to sleep through it.

  But hopefully it would be a lot of years before either of us had to worry about that.

  Fat chance, my subconscious told me. I ignored it. Or tried to.

  “Do you think Nina killed Frenetta?”

  “Dunno,” Rafe said. “They coulda been arguing about the mattress. Or the towels. Or something else that don’t mean nothing.”

  Of course they could have. Maybe the mattress had aggravated Chip’s lumbago, and Nina wanted a discount on the room rate to make up for it.

  Or they could have argued about something important. But there was no way to know, and no way to find out. If we asked, Nina probably wouldn’t tell us. Especially if she really had killed Frenetta.

  “I’m hungry,” I said.

  “We just had lunch,” Rafe answered.

  “We had lunch five hours ago. You’ve just been so busy you haven’t noticed. And I just worked out hard.”

  “Then let’s go get you food.” He rolled over to the edge of the bed and sat up. I watched for a second—there were no scars on his back; just beautiful smooth skin over hard muscles, and two dimples above his butt—and then I rolled on my side, too, and sat up.

  Five minutes later we were on our way down the stairs to the foyer.

  “You know,” I told Rafe, “I feel really weird about being here. It’s like we’re just carrying right on with our honeymoon, but our hostess is dead.”

  He glanced at me, one hand under my elbow to make sure I didn’t slip on the steps. “The sheriff told me not to leave, darlin’. And we don’t have nowhere else to go in a town this size.”

  No. Unlike many of the Gulf Coast communities, Davenport hadn’t succumbed to the highrise-condo-building-on-the-beach craze. There might be another motel or B and B somewhere in town, but I hadn’t noticed one. If we had to stay in Davenport, we might as well stay where we were. However— “As soon as we can, I’d like to go home. I don’t care if Catherine paid for our stay up front. Frenetta’s dead. I would prefer not to stay here any longer than we have to.”

  He shrugged, and let go of my arm as we hit the downstairs foyer. “Works for me.”

  “I’d rather just go home and have my way with you in the privacy of our own house. Where nobody’s knocking the bed against the wall all night.” Except the two of us.

  His lips quirked. “Maybe they’ll be too overcome by guilt to do that tonight.”

  “We weren’t,” I said.

  “We didn’t kill her, darlin’.”

  Well, no. But— “They may not have, either. You don’t kill somebody over towels or cinnamon rolls.”

  “Some people kill other people over fifty cents,” Rafe said, as we passed through the foyer.

  “Well, if they didn’t, who d’you think did?”

  He shrugged.

  “It had to be someone with a motive. Maybe one of the townspeople. They’d know her better than a guest. The better you know someone, the more likely you’ll be to want to kill them, right?”

  “Not sure I like the sound of that, darlin’,” Rafe told me, as he closed the door behind him.

  I stuck my hand through his a
rm and rubbed my cheek on his shoulder as we headed down the stairs. “I’m sure I’ll end up wanting to kill you at some point. Although I haven’t yet. From where I’m standing, you’re pretty much perfect.”

  “Awww.”

  “I love you,” I said.

  “I love you, too. And I promise I won’t ever kill you.”

  “I didn’t think you would. Like I said, you’re perfect.”

  “Not hardly,” Rafe said, as we approached the white picket fence. “But hold that thought.”

  He opened the gate and waited for me to pass through before closing it behind me. Then he offered his arm again, with a little bow. “Ma’am.”

  “Don’t mind if I do,” I said, hooking on. “So what kind of food are you in the mood for?”

  “We’re by the ocean. We should probably look for seafood.”

  “I suppose.” I wrinkled my nose. I’m not terribly fond of seafood, to be honest. It smells fishy, and sometimes it has an unpleasantly rubbery consistency, too.

  “Burger?” Rafe said. “I’m sure there’s a McDonald’s around. There are McDonald’s everywhere.”

  “No, thank you.” To the burger and to McDonald’s. Neither sounded appetizing in my current condition, either.

  “Pizza parlor for another salad?”

  It was nice of him to offer. However—“If you want seafood, we’ll get you seafood. I’m sure I can find something to eat.”

  “There’s a place a couple blocks down I heard good things about.”

  “That’s fine. Who told you good things about it?”

  “The sheriff,” Rafe said.

  I arched my brows. “You and the sheriff got to a point where you were friendly enough to exchange restaurant recommendations?”

  “The recommendations only went one way. Sheriff Engebretsen wants people to have a good time in town. And spend money.”

  “Isn’t that the mayor?”

  “They all do,” Rafe said and pointed. “There it is.”

  I followed the direction of his finger. “Where?”

  “There. On the beach.”