Collateral Damage: A Savannah Martin Novel (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 19)

by Jenna Bennett

  “Thanks for coming down and seeing me,” I said, even if I’d realized that the biggest part of the reason had been to establish Clayton’s bona fides with Rodney. “Let me know how things go with you. With the baby and all.”

  She nodded.

  “And be careful driving home. Chances are the car is just fine. But in case the owner here is part of this mess, and he allowed the car to go out with something wrong with it…”

  “We’ll stop in a minute or two and check,” Alexandra assured me. “As soon as we’re up the road a little bit. But if there’s something wrong, Clay would have found a way to tell Jamal about it.”

  Hopefully so. But just in case… “Just be careful. And let me know you got home safe.”

  “Will do,” Alexandra said, and shut the car door before skipping across the blacktop over to the Miata. She curled herself into the front seat—Miatas are very small, and not built for pregnant women—and Jamal revved the engine. The Mazda responded with a roar, and over in the open garage bay, a slight figure in blue overalls ambled toward the opening. The sunlight hit on cropped, fair hair as he reached the end of the enclosure and stopped. I watched as he lifted one hand, two fingers pointed, and mimed shooting at the Miata.

  The Miata’s moon roof opened and Jamal shot up a middle finger. And kept it there as the Miata squealed out of the lot and onto the road going north. Clayton gave me a scowl—but no gun hand—and turned back into the bay. I put the Volvo into gear and left the auto shop, a lot more quietly and more sedately than Jamal and Alexandra, and headed south.

  The emergency clinic where we’d taken Pearl the night before was between me and home, so I pulled into the parking lot and dragged Carrie and her seat inside. Where I was told that Pearl was doing all right, and although it was a little early in the day, they’d be willing to let me take her if I promised I wouldn’t leave her alone for the rest of the night, but keep a close eye on her and bring her back immediately if I thought anything was wrong. I said myself willing, handed over my credit card (and considered myself lucky they didn’t ask for Carrie, too), and waited for the credit card machine to emit sneering noises. When it didn’t, I scribbled my signature on the bottom of the receipt, pocketed my copy, and took Carrie over to a chair to wait for a vet tech to bring Pearl to me.

  A few minutes later I heard the scrabbling of nails on the floor inside. The door opened, and Pearl stuck her head out. It was encased in a plastic cone of shame. She let out a deep joyous bark, and launched herself across the floor toward me, cone bobbing. She was towing a girl in blue scrubs who couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds soaking wet, barely more than Pearl herself. The girl was hanging onto the leash for dear life and was sliding across the floor behind Pearl.

  She slammed into my knees—the dog, not the girl—and then tried her best to crawl into my lap. Being anything but a lapdog, she had to settle for putting both huge paws on my thighs and dancing on her hind legs instead. The vet tech peered worriedly at her, probably concerned that Pearl’s wound would open up again and start bleeding.

  “Good girl,” I told her. “Good girl, Pearl. Calm down, sweetheart. We’re going home, and if you open up your stitches again, you won’t get to. You have to calm down, baby.”

  She wasn’t listening. Of course not. She kept throwing herself at my legs, and then she tried to stuff her head, cone and all, into the baby carrier to greet Carrie. The cone got stuck, but Pearl managed to slurp her long tongue across Carrie’s face. The baby let out a protesting chirp, and then giggled. Pearl wagged her hind-quarters and panted.

  “I’ve got her,” I told the tech.

  She looked worried. “You sure?”

  I was, but if she wasn’t, that was OK. “You can walk her out to the car with me, if you’re concerned. Why don’t you take the baby, and I’ll take the dog.”

  She didn’t look strong enough to handle Pearl. And Carrie was protected by the hard plastic and soft cushion of the seat, so even if the girl dropped her, she’d be OK.

  Outside in the parking lot Pearl darted back and forth, tugging on the leash, obviously happy to be in the fresh air again. She scented the weather, threw her head back and sniffed at the sky, and gave a couple of joyous barks as she pranced toward the car.

  “It’s the blue Volvo,” I told the vet tech, who followed behind with Carrie.

  She nodded. “Your dog’s very happy.”

  “She’s going home,” I said. “Why wouldn’t she be happy?”

  “How did she get hurt?”

  “Somebody shot her. Somebody in the fields across from the house. We don’t know who, or what they were doing there.” Might have been hunting rabbits. Might not. And our chances of ever figuring it out, aside from a lucky break, were probably slim.

  Hopefully it was just someone taking potshots at rabbits, someone who freaked out when they saw and heard Pearl coming, and not something worse.

  I opened the front door for Pearl. She eyed the seat for a moment, and I could see her haunches bunch as she thought about jumping. “I’ll give you a hand,” I told her, since I could see the hesitancy. Normally, she would have bounded right into the seat. Instead, she waited while I wrapped my arms around her middle and hauled her, not too easily, into the seat. She’s solid muscle, and not small, so she weighs a good bit.

  I shut the door on her and then took the car seat with my daughter out of the vet tech’s hand. “Thanks for the help.”

  She nodded, her eye on my hand for a second. The one with the wedding ring on it. “The guy who brought her in last night… was that your husband?”

  “Yes,” I said. Mine. All mine.

  She nodded. “Have a good day.”

  I wished her the same, and then I buckled Carrie into the backseat while I tried not to smirk too widely.

  “I picked up Pearl,” I told my husband two minutes later. We were back on the road, still going in the direction of Sweetwater, and I figured an update was in order. “I dropped Jamal and Alexandra off at the auto shop—you didn’t tell me Clayton was working there—and since the emergency clinic was on my way home, I stopped to check on her. They said I could take her home if I promised to make sure she didn’t exert herself.”

  “She doing all right?”

  I glanced over at Pearl, riding with her head out the window and her tongue lolling. My hair was going to be a snarled mess by the time we got home, but it was worth it. “She’s fine. Enjoying the ride. I had to help her up onto the seat, but otherwise she seems fine.” The wound was ugly, and I kept my eyes from dwelling on it, but it didn’t look infected or anything like that. “She’s wearing a cone so she won’t lick at herself. Right now the air’s getting stuck in it and flapping her ears around. She’s having the time of her life.”

  “Good,” Rafe said, sounding pleased.

  “The vet tech asked if you were my husband. And Yvonne says hi.” And then there was Felicia Robinson, who hadn’t said anything, but who’d been there, and so had focused my attention on her again. “You’re just breaking hearts left and right, aren’t you?”

  He chuckled. “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, darlin’.”

  “Well, Alexandra and Jamal got off OK. Clayton pretended to shoot them as they drove off, and Jamal gave him a middle finger through the moon roof. I don’t know whether that means that the car is safe, or the opposite.” Or whether it meant anything at all.

  “The car’s fine,” Rafe said.

  Good. I waited a second to see if he was going to elaborate, and when he didn’t, I added, “It all looked very nice. I’m sure Rodney has no doubt that Clayton is a kindred spirit.”

  “Good,” Rafe said.

  “You sound busy.” Or like he didn’t want to talk to me. Although it was probably nothing personal.

  “Just finished talking to Eddie Tremayne. He swears he had nothing to do with vandalizing your house and apologized for his wife’s comments. He was hanging out with friends Sunday night, and gave me a list of
four names I’m gonna have to check out.”

  “And his wife?”

  “Home watching TV,” Rafe said. “But I don’t see her having the strength—or the footwear—for kicking in the door and busting up your house. Do you?”

  I didn’t, to be honest. “I don’t think she’d be tall enough to reach the fan, either. Even if she stood on the tallest thing in the house. I guess we’re back to Rodney and Kyle.”

  “I’m gonna talk to Eddie’s friends,” Rafe said. “But if they alibi him, then yeah. It’s gonna look more like Rodney and Kyle.”

  “I’ll let you get to it. Dinner at six?”

  “I’m gonna be late,” Rafe said. “SWAT’s meeting tonight.”

  And he was part of the SWAT team when they needed him. Not that they had needed him in the past two months. Nothing had happened that required a SWAT team. But they were all staying on their toes in case this thing with the neo-Nazi group blew up into something bigger. And that included weekly practice sessions that usually went late.

  “I’ll keep something warm for you,” I told him. “Be careful.”

  “You too, darlin’. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.”

  Since that didn’t include a lot, I assured him there was very little chance of that. And then we hung up and I focused on keeping the car on the road and the air whistling through Pearl’s cone as we headed for home.

  While the baby was taking her last nap of the day, I let Charlotte and Darcy know that Michelle had removed her damaged staging and that the house on Fulton was once again empty. Darcy would be working, of course, but Charlotte and I arranged to meet the next morning, to clean up the damage and to start assessing what we needed to buy and order, so we could get started on fixing the mess. I made dinner while I waited for Carrie to wake up, and left Rafe’s portion in the stove while I gave Carrie tummy-time and Pearl special love and scratches on the floor in the parlor.

  She was still not feeling great. I could tell now that the first exuberance of getting out of the vet clinic and home had worn off. She moved more slowly, and was less alert. Normally, she’d hear me coming from the other side of the house, and now she’d still be asleep when I came through the door. I had a supply of pain killers I was supposed to feed her every day until she got well, and the vet had warned me that they didn’t just numb the pain but also had a mild sedative so an active dog wouldn’t be as energetic as usual and do anything to hurt herself.

  So it was a quiet evening. Carrie gurgled on the floor, Pearl snoozed on her pillow, and I had HGTV on, and was watching reruns of Hometown, wondering whether HGTV would be interested in a show about me and Charlotte, or about Darcy, Charlotte, and I, renovating houses in Maury County. Considering my usual experiences with renovations and houses for sale—I’d caught killers in them, had had them set on fire and vandalized, and even found dead bodies—it would be the most exciting show on HGTV, no question.

  By eight, Rafe still wasn’t home, and I was starting to get… not worried. And not exactly annoyed. But a little irritated, maybe. If he was going to be this late, couldn’t he have let me know? The chicken parmesan probably looked like charcoal briquettes by now, and wouldn’t be good for anything by the time he got here.

  When the phone dinged with a text, I pulled it closer. And arched my brows at the message.

  Unknown Caller: Something is going on at your house on Fulton Street.

  Oh, really?

  I tried to call Rafe, of course. I’m not stupid. But his phone went to voicemail—he was probably busy flexing his muscles in the black SWAT gear, and making Felicia Robinson, and any other female cops who were there, weak in the knees—and I didn’t bother leaving a message, because half the time he didn’t listen anyway, he just called me back to ask what I’d said. Instead, I tapped out a quick text of my own—Went to Fulton. Got text from unknown caller saying something going on—and called my sister. “Are you home?”

  “Where else would I be?” Darcy wanted to know.

  “I thought you might be at your mother’s house. Or out with Nolan.”

  “Patrick’s at SWAT practice,” Darcy said, which I should have known. And would have, if I’d thought about it. “What’s wrong?”

  “Not sure.” I told her about the message. “Rafe’s going to kill me if I go there by myself. And I don’t want you to go there by yourself, either. But I thought I could pick you up on the way—you’re between me and Fulton—and we could go together.”

  The house on Fulton belonged to Darcy. If something was going on with or inside it, she had the right to know.

  “Sure,” she agreed readily.

  “I have to load up Carrie. It might be as long as thirty minutes.”

  “Take your time,” Darcy said. “I’m sure, if the place is burning to the ground, someone has already called the fire department. And if someone’s inside, destroying things, I’d just as soon not come face to face with them.”

  Me, either. So while I didn’t dilly-dally, I didn’t scramble to get out the door as quickly as I could. I checked Carrie’s diaper before getting her into her suit, and when Pearl lifted her head and gave a hopeful wag, I stopped to scratch between her furled, little ears. “Sorry, sweetheart, but it’s better if you stay here and guard the house. I don’t want you to have to get in and out of the car again for a day or two.”

  She gave a sigh, but settled back down on the pillow. I grabbed Carrie and headed out.

  As a result of all that, it wasn’t quite thirty minutes, but more than twenty, before I pulled up in front of Darcy’s cute little rental house on the south side of Columbia. She was keeping watch, and came out to meet me as soon as I pulled into the driveway.

  “Any more messages?” She slid into the passenger seat and pulled the seatbelt across her chest.

  I shook my head. “Someone either doesn’t care whether I get there or not, or it’s someone very patient.”

  “Could just be one of the neighbors,” Darcy said, as I reversed back out of the driveway and continued up the road toward Columbia proper. “Your number’s on the sign in the yard.”

  “That’s what I assumed.”

  That someone on the street or in the neighborhood had looked out the window or walked by the house, and seen something going on inside. And had sent a text message to the phone number on my For Sale sign, hoping it would get to me.

  “A little strange that they didn’t introduce themselves, maybe.”

  Yes, that was a little strange. A quick, “Hey, I’m Stella from 105 Fulton and something is going on in your house,” might have been nice. That way I would have known what to expect.

  Of course, the other explanation was that someone wanted me there—wanted us there—for another reason. And I was prepared for that, too. “Just stay in the car,” I told Darcy when we came around the corner and approached the house at a slow crawl. “Let’s see if we can see what’s going on from here.”

  She nodded, looking left and right. “I’m not seeing anything. Are you?”

  I wasn’t. Fulton Street looked just as peaceful and friendly as it usually does in the evenings. Cheerful lights on the porches up and down the street, cars parked in driveways, and people watching TV and hanging out behind warmly lighted windows. It’s a nice neighborhood. Our porch light was on, but the rest of the windows were all dark, just the way it was supposed to be. Nobody was moving around inside the house, or for that matter in the yard, and the front door was shut, also as it should be.

  “There’s a package on the stoop,” Darcy said.

  I squinted. So there was. A small box, maybe the size of a shoe-box, sat on the welcome mat. “Guess I should go see what it is.”

  I reached for my door.

  “Hold on.” Darcy grabbed my arm, but without taking her eyes off the box. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

  “What, you think someone left us a bomb?”

  I tried to make it sound like a joke, but it actually wasn’t funny. Darcy wasn’t smiling when she
looked at me, either. “I don’t think you ought to touch it.”

  “Maybe just go over and try to get a look at it?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t like it being there at all. Or us being here. Did you call Rafe?”

  I had called Rafe, but he hadn’t answered.

  “Try again,” Darcy said, fishing for her phone. “I’m going to call Patrick.”

  If there was a bomb on the doorstep, I didn’t want either my husband or Darcy’s boyfriend to go near it, either. But I agreed we could use some backup here.

  Rafe’s phone went straight to voicemail again, though. I listened to his voice tell me to leave a message with one ear, while the other followed Darcy’s conversation with Patrick Nolan, who had answered the phone. Did that mean that the SWAT practice was over, and Rafe just wasn’t picking up my calls? Or was Nolan crazy enough about Darcy that he’d actually take her calls in the middle of a maneuver? And what did that say about Rafe’s and my relationship, if so?

  “We’re sitting here outside the house on Fulton,” Darcy explained. “Savannah got a message saying that something was going on, so she picked me up and we drove over. And we can’t see anyone or anything. But there’s a box sitting in front of the door.”

  Nolan must have asked what kind of box, because Darcy went on to describe it. “Looks like just your basic cardboard box. Big enough for a loaf of bread or a pair of shoes. Nothing outsized.”

  Nolan’s voice quacked faintly, and Darcy glanced at me, at the same time as she shook her head. “No, nobody ordered anything. We weren’t expecting any kind of delivery.”

  I shook my head, too. No, we certainly hadn’t.

  And then my own phone rang, and I glanced down at it. And saw Rafe’s number.

  “Rafe! I’m glad you called. Listen—”

  “Get outta there,” Rafe said, his voice tight.

  My jaw dropped. “Excuse me?” He didn’t even know where we were. Did he?