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

by Jenna Bennett

  “Not sure,” Rafe said, shutting the door behind me, “but something about this house don’t feel right.”

  I sent out my own spider senses in every direction, but if something felt wrong, it was too subtle for me to pick up on. My instincts aren’t as finely tuned as his. Everything looked and felt normal to me. There were the usual small sounds in the background: the white noise of modern life. A clock was ticking faintly. The refrigerator was humming. So was the air conditioning. It was a little colder in here than it ought to be, and the place smelled strongly of pine cleaner. There was no sense that anyone was standing just out of sight, holding their breath.

  “I’ll take another look around,” Rafe told me. “You can look around, but don’t touch nothing.”

  He disappeared through a cased opening into the living room. I stayed where I was and looked around.

  The place was small and nothing fancy. Tan builder-grade carpets covered the floor in the living room. They probably hadn’t been replaced since the house was built. There was a border with magnolia leaves and flowers running along the ceiling in lieu of actual crown molding. The furniture had seen better days, too, and consisted of a brown corduroy recliner sofa and a dark brown coffee table with a couple of remotes on it. The TV was neither new nor particularly impressive: a smallish flat-screen sitting on a pressed wood console in front of the window that overlooked the street. The blinds were pulled down.

  Beyond the living room, Rafe’s footsteps moved from carpet to something hard, probably sheet vinyl or fake hardwoods, or maybe more of the ugly tile. I heard him move around behind the wall. And since he’d told me I could, I made my way into the living room and from there, into the eat-in kitchen on the back of the house.

  As I had surmised, the flooring back there was more of the ugly tile, and the cabinets were cheap oak with picture-frame doors. Not all that different from the shaker fronts that were popular now, but different enough that they looked outdated and kind of tired.

  “This isn’t very pleasant,” I said, looking around.

  Rafe gave it a blank look, like he hadn’t really noticed. He probably hadn’t. He looks at these things from a very different perspective than I do.

  Instead, he waved me over to where he was standing, next to the refrigerator. “Take a look at this.”

  Jennifer, like a lot of other people, used her fridge to hang pictures, recipes, reminders for doctor’s appointments, and the like. Rafe was pointing to a photograph of a man in camouflage, with streaks of black and green on his face, cradling a rifle.

  “That’s the guy from yesterday,” I said. “A hunter?”

  He shook his head. “Military. Iraq or somewhere like that. Look at all the sand.”

  There was a lot of sand in the picture. “Maybe there’s a name on the back.”

  I reached out and, when Rafe didn’t tell me not to, grabbed the picture by the edges, very carefully, and flipped it. “No.”

  I scanned the fridge. “Any other pictures of him?”

  Rafe shook his head. “This is her.” He pointed to a photograph of a woman in a chunky, knit sweater who peered myopically out of a pair of square glasses.

  “You recognize her from the DMV photo?”

  He nodded. “No pictures of her with the guy.”

  No. That could mean something, or nothing at all. There are very few pictures of me and Rafe cuddled up together, and none of them are on the fridge, either in Nashville or in Sweetwater. Rafe is camera-shy, from all those years of being undercover. It was hard to get him to stand still for the wedding photos.

  “The spec ops guys aren’t supposed to have their photos taken, either,” he told me when I commented on it. “Safer for them if nobody knows who they are.”

  “So you think he’s in special operations, not just a regular soldier.”

  “I know an operator when I see one,” Rafe said. “Could be a SEAL or a Ranger or Delta Force or something else, but he ain’t a grunt.”

  “If you sent the picture to someone in the military, could they tell you who he is?”

  “It’d be easier if we knew which branch of the military he was from, but I imagine I could find out. Put it back up there.”

  He pulled out his phone while I nudged the photograph back under the magnet that had held it in place.

  “Fort Campbell’s only about thirty minutes away,” he added while he focused on the picture and snapped a shot of it. “Home of the 101st Airborne. The Screaming Eagles.”

  And more like forty-five minutes away, if someone who wasn’t Rafe was driving.

  “Also the 160th Special Aviation Regiment. The Night Stalkers.”

  “You seem to know a bit about it.”

  He dropped the phone back into his pocket and looked around the kitchen. “I spent a couple months in Clarksville once.”

  “That’s right.” It was all coming back to me now. “It was in that PI report Todd paid for. Back when he was trying to convince me you were big and bad and I should stay away from you.”

  He nodded. “Military grade weapons walking off the base and showing up with gangs in Nashville and Memphis.”

  “And Todd thought you were part of it.”

  “I was part of it,” Rafe said. “Just not the way Satterfield thought.”

  “But this guy wasn’t.” I glanced at the photograph on the fridge.

  He shook his head. “I got a good look at him last night. He ain’t somebody I’ve ever seen before. And anyway, we got everybody who was involved in that mess back then. It’s six or seven years ago now. I don’t imagine he was old enough at the time.”

  Maybe not. Although he couldn’t be a whole lot younger than Rafe was, now and then.

  “I’ll take a look around the living room,” I said. “Check the name on any mail sitting around and stuff like that.”

  He nodded. “I’ll check the bedrooms. I still got a bad feeling about this.” He walked in one direction while I walked in the other, trying to wrap my brain around what might be setting his finely honed radar tingling.

  There was nothing much to look at in the living room—no piles of junk mail on the table, no convenient bills sitting around—so I ended up standing by the front door, up on my toes, peering out of the small window in the top of the door.

  Willow Springs seemed to be made up of people who went to work in the morning and didn’t come back until the afternoon. Nothing stirred outside, except for a mail truck that crept slowly up one side of the street, circled the cul-de-sac, and came down the other side. It rolled to a stop next to the mailbox, and the carrier spent a few seconds shoving another handful of mail into the box before the truck continued on down the street. Looked like maybe Jennifer hadn’t picked up her mail in a while. Maybe she was in Columbia with her boyfriend, or significant other. Or brother or whoever he was. A bird swooped down from above the house and started pecking at the lawn. A few seconds later it was joined by another one.

  A phone rang nearby, sort of muffled, and I reached into my purse to grab it before it could wake Carrie.

  It wasn’t my phone that was ringing, though. The ring tone was the same as mine: a standard version of the Hallelujah-chorus I use for people I don’t know. But my phone was silent, and I withdrew my hand again while I looked around, trying to isolate the sound.

  By the time I had traced it to the pocket of a coat hanging on a hook in the entry, the phone had fallen silent. I reached into the pocket anyway, and drew it out. And realized, as I was doing it, that I was leaving fingerprints on the plastic shell.

  The screen was still lit up, proclaiming Missed Call in green letters. I peered at the number, but of course it didn’t mean anything to me.

  As I stood there, the phone dinged, and the New Voicemail icon came up. Nudging it was almost automatic. I might have spared a single thought to whether it was a smart thing to do or not, but by then Rafe was coming toward me from the back of the house. “Did something happen?”

  “It wasn’t my phone,�
� I began, but then the voicemail began playing, so I closed my mouth again to listen.

  “Hi, Jennifer. It’s Gwen. It’s ten, and you’re still not here. Call me. Barry will have your hide if you skip work again without a good excuse, so call me and give me one.”

  She hung up without leaving a number, or for that matter without saying goodbye.

  “Barry,” I said. “Do you suppose…?”

  He shook his head. “Barry must be her boss. Gwen’s a coworker. And Jennifer didn’t show up to work this morning.”

  “Maybe she’s in Columbia with her boyfriend and her car.”

  “Without her phone?”

  Well, no. Probably not. Unless… “Maybe she’s afraid someone will track her down if she carries a phone. It has GPS, right? Or something?”

  He nodded.

  “So if she wanted to make sure she couldn’t be traced, maybe she’d leave the phone at home.”

  “If she wanted to make sure she couldn’t be traced, don’t you think she’d leave the car at home, too?”

  Well… yes. If she was trying to disappear, she probably wouldn’t do it in the car that was registered to her.

  “New theory,” I said. “Maybe she’s trying to get away from the boyfriend. Or brother or Führer or whatever he is. The guy on the fridge. Maybe he took off in her car for Columbia, and she took the opportunity to go in the other direction. And she isn’t afraid the police will track her down, but she’s trying to make sure the guy won’t know where she is.”

  “Possible,” Rafe admitted, peering out the window at the sound of an engine outside.

  “Anything we need to worry about?”

  He shook his head. “Lady across the street coming home. From the gym, looks like. Maybe you’d like to go over there and ask her when’s the last time she saw Jennifer, and whether she knows who the guy is.”

  I supposed I could do that. “What are you going to do?”

  “Take one more look around,” Rafe said. “I didn’t spend any time in the garage yet. I turned around when I heard your phone.”

  He peered out the window. “There she goes, into her house. Out you go.”

  He opened the door, and I slid sideways, Carrie’s car seat still clutched in my hand. Through it all, the baby had stayed asleep.

  “Let me see that phone,” Rafe said, extending a hand for it. I gave it to him, and then he shut the door behind me, and Carrie and I made our way down the driveway and across the street to talk to the lady there.

  The house was identical to Jennifer’s across the street. The woman who opened the door looked nothing like Jennifer, or at least not the Jennifer in the picture. She was half a century older, for one thing, with bright magenta lipstick and a frizzy cap of dark hair. A pair of hot pink tights bagged around her scrawny legs, under an oversized T-shirt proclaiming her too sexy for her shirt.

  “Yes’m?” She looked me up and down.

  “Sorry,” I said, dragging my eyes away from the disastrous fashion sense. “Um… I was across the street, and saw you drive up. I’m looking for Jennifer. She didn’t come to work this morning, and Barry sent me to look for her.”

  She cut her eyes to the house across the street before looking back at me. “What’s your name, sugar?”

  “Oh,” I said, wondering whether I dared to claim to be Gwen. Probably best if I didn’t, since she might have met Gwen before. “I’m Arlene.”

  “Nice to meet you, Arlene.” She looked me up and down. “Don’t meet a lot of girls with that name these days. Family name?”

  “Grandmother,” I said brightly. “You?”

  “Dorothy Mangrum. You can call me Dot.” She grinned, showing off a set of gleaming white dentures.

  “Nice to meet you, Dot,” I said politely. “So about Jennifer… She’s not answering the door, and when I called, I heard her phone ringing inside. Have you seen her lately?”

  “Saw her yesterday morning,” Dot said promptly. “I was going to Jazzercise, and she was going to work, I guess. It was half past eight or so.”

  “And that was the last time you saw her? She didn’t come home in the evening?”

  “I’m sure she did. Leastways her car did. I saw it in the driveway when I went out to dinner with my gentleman-friend.”

  I nodded. “Speaking of gentleman-friends…”

  She rolled her eyes. “Just come right out and ask, Arlene. You wanta know about the soldier, right?”

  “If you’d like to tell me,” I said politely.

  Dot clearly wasn’t impressed, because she rolled her eyes eloquently. “You gotta ask for what you want in life, Arlene, or you’re not getting squat.”

  Fine. “Tell me about the soldier, please. Was he Jennifer’s boyfriend?”

  “I guess he was,” Dot said readily, “although I can’t imagine what somebody like him would want with somebody like her.”

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “She’s a little mousy,” Dot said, “ain’t she?”

  “Is she?”

  She looked at me. “Didn’t you say you worked with her, sugar?”

  Well, yes. I had said that. “Different department.”

  She put her hands on her skinny hips. “They have departments at the daycare now?”

  Oh. Um… “Fine,” I said. “I don’t actually know her. But you can call over there and check if you want. She didn’t show up to work this morning, and Gwen did call and ask where she was.”

  She dropped her gaze to Carrie, still sleeping in the baby seat over my arm. “You one of the mothers, or something?”

  “Something.” And definitely one of the mothers. If not one of the mothers who took my child to Jennifer’s daycare. “Tell me about the soldier. Does he have a name? When was the last time you saw him?”

  “I’m sure he has a name,” Dot said, leaning a shoulder against the door jamb and settling in for a chat, “but I don’t know what it is. He wasn’t friendly, if you know what I mean.”

  “And she never mentioned his name to you?”

  “Between you and me, she ain’t that friendly, either.”

  OK, then. So no name. “How long has he been coming around?”

  She thought about it, pursing those magenta lips. “Couple months, maybe?”

  “Were they dating? Or old friends? Brother and sister?”

  “Not brother and sister,” Dot said definitely. “Don’t look much alike. Think they were probably romantic, but he didn’t seem that into her.”

  “Did he seem into someone else instead?”

  She shook her head. “Just seemed like a cold fish. Good-looking, though.”

  Yes, he had been decent-looking. What I’d seen of him through the windshield last night.

  “But you don’t know anything about him. Where he came from? How they met?”

  “No,” Dot said, glancing past me. “Who’s that?”

  She straightened. I figured I knew, but I looked over my shoulder anyway. “That’s my husband.”

  The look she gave me was approving. “Good for you. What’s he doing in Jennifer’s house?”

  “Looking for her,” I said.

  “He work at the daycare?”

  No. The idea was ludicrous. Not that he doesn’t do a perfectly fine job taking care of our daughter.

  But I didn’t want to tell her that he was law enforcement, not without his say-so, so I just ignored the question. “I should probably go. Thanks for your time.”

  “Anytime,” Dot said, her eyes still on Rafe. “If he has any more questions, he can knock on my door anytime. You tell him that.”

  I said I would. “You said you saw Jennifer yesterday morning. When was the last time you saw the boyfriend?”

  “He was headed out when I started book club last night,” Dot said. “Must have been around six, maybe.”

  “What does he drive?”

  I already knew he’d been in Columbia in Jennifer’s car, of course, but he might have a vehicle of his own, too.

&n
bsp; “He was driving her car.”

  “Was he alone?”

  “Not sure, sugar. I only saw him, but the car was already driving away. She mighta been in there, too.”

  I nodded. “Thank you. I should go.”

  “He’s looking upset.”

  I shot another glance over my shoulder. Yes, he did. Not with me, though. He had his phone out, and was talking fast.

  “Excuse me,” I told Dot, and turned away.

  “You’re excused, sugar.”

  But I didn’t hear the door close. And when I reached Rafe, standing at the bottom of Jennifer’s driveway, and glanced over my shoulder, Dot was still standing there in the open doorway. She gave me a little finger-wave.

  Rafe was dialing again.

  “Something wrong?” I asked him.

  He held up a finger, and I waited while the phone rang on the other end. It was on speaker, so when it was picked up, I heard both sides of the conversation.

  “Agent Collier.” The voice was male, warm and friendly and a little bit familiar, but not familiar enough that I was able to place it. It wasn’t Wendell, nor Bob Satterfield, nor my boss, Tim Briggs, who always sounded very friendly indeed whenever Rafe said anything to him.

  “This is an anonymous phone call,” my husband said.

  I arched my brows, and from the sound of the voice when it came back, the guy on the other end of the line was doing the same thing. It was less warm and friendly now, more crisp and businesslike. “Go ahead.”

  Rafe rattled off the address to Jennifer’s house. “You’re gonna wanna get over here. There’s a dead body in the freezer.”

  Sixteen

  I felt myself sway, and he put out his free hand to steady me while he kept talking. “You’re gonna wanna confirm the identification, but it looks like the owner, Jennifer Vonderaa. She didn’t show up for work this morning.”

  “Go on,” the voice said. I assumed its owner was taking notes.

  “You’re also gonna wanna coordinate with Chief Grimaldi in Columbia and Sheriff Satterfield in Maury County, and probably the TBI, too.”

  “Funny coincidence,” the voice said dryly, “I know someone at the TBI I can call in.”