Wrongful Termination: A Savannah Martin Novel (Savannah Martin Mystery Book 16)

by Jenna Bennett

  “Then you can think about it now. And maybe talk to Grimaldi about it, and see what she thinks.”

  Rafe nodded. “Maybe I’ll do that. For now, we got a little B&E to do.”

  He turned the car off the road and onto a smaller road, or maybe just a long driveway, that would its way down into the woods.

  “B&E?” I repeated.

  He grinned. “You know what B&E means. Not like it’s your first time breaking and entering.”

  It wasn’t. Or wouldn’t be. But it just might be my first time breaking into the home of a recently deceased murder victim.

  If we got caught, this would look extremely bad. Especially to Detective Goins.

  On the other hand, it was so quiet and deserted out here, that the chances of anyone seeing us were slim to none. Or so I hoped. Sincerely.

  The driveway went on for a while. Several minutes. Finally we got out of the trees and found what I assumed was Brennan’s house.

  It was, as Wendell had said, a log cabin. Not the old kind that’s been in the same spot forever, though. This was fairly new, built within the past twenty years, maybe, of gleaming golden logs, heavy with shellac, and a wraparound porch on what looked like all four sides. A huge stacked stone fireplace protruded through the porch roof on either side of the house. Behind it, the landscape fell away to a rolling view of fields and trees. It wasn’t quite Gatlinburg—not high enough up for that—but if you were looking for a peaceful country setting with a view, you could do a lot worse.

  And best of all, there were no other houses in sight. Not even in the far distance.

  Rafe stopped the car and turned off the engine, and silence ensued. Water trickled somewhere out of sight, and the dry tree branches made crackling noises where they knocked against each other when the wind rustled through. Otherwise it was quiet. Very, very quiet.

  “I think I’d be a little worried being out here by myself,” I said, looking around.

  Rafe nodded, and opened his door. “Let’s go.”

  “Do you want me to bring Carrie?”

  “I don’t figure this’ll take that long,” Rafe said. “It’s a small house. But yeah. Bring the seat and set it inside. I don’t wanna leave her in the car. And I want you inside with me.”

  Fine by me. I unhooked the car seat from the base and carried it onto the porch. Carrie stayed asleep, as if nothing was going on.

  Rafe is quite adept with a set of lock picks—as well as with a couple of hair pins, or anything else he can find—and it took less than a minute before we were inside Doug Brennan’s house. I held my breath when Rafe turned the knob and pushed the door open—what if Brennan had a security system? And what if someone had armed it?—but nothing happened.

  Rafe shut the door behind us and looked around. “Nice place.”

  It was. Not big, but plenty large enough for one man.

  The ceilings were vaulted, and bisected with beams. In the part of the cabin where we were standing, there was total open concept: I could look around and see a sofa and two chairs in front of the fireplace, a dining table with four chairs, and the kitchen, all from where I was standing. A door in the back wall either went to a bathroom, a laundry room, or some combination. Or maybe a coat closet.

  A wall separated us from the other half of the house. When Rafe opened the nearest door, it went into what looked like a combination guest room and office. There was a daybed, but also a desk and chair, and a filing cabinet in the corner. An empty space on the desk looked like where a computer might have been sitting. Chances were the police had taken it, maybe to see whether there was something on it that would tell them who had killed Brennan, although I suppose it was possible that someone else had been here before us and had made off with it.

  The filing cabinet was left, though, and there were papers scattered over the rest of the desk, too.

  “Knock yourself out,” I told Rafe, since I figured this would be what he’d be most interested in. “I’m going to take a look at the rest of the place.”

  He nodded. “Don’t touch nothing.”

  I stuck my hands in my pockets. “What about you. Aren’t you— Oh.”

  He’d already put on a pair of gloves. Probably while I was taking Carrie out of the Volvo. I hadn’t even noticed it when he was finessing the lock.

  He grinned. “Enjoy, darlin’.”

  “You, too,” I said, and left him to his investigating while I took myself off to indulge my own love for other people’s dwellings.

  I’ve always enjoyed seeing how other people live. I appreciate architecture, too, and good design and all that. But the main reason I became a real estate agent, was because I like to go into other people’s houses and look around. Not in the same detail that Rafe was currently doing—I wouldn’t make a good crime scene tech—but I do enjoy seeing other people’s spaces.

  In this case, I got the impression that Doug Brennan—a man I’d never met—was someone who enjoyed his privacy (the house was in the middle of nowhere, with no neighbors in sight), but who also liked his comforts. This was definitely no off-the-grid dwelling. The living room furniture had looked comfortable, facing a TV that rivaled Rafe’s, and he had a king size bed situated so he’d see the view first thing when he woke up in the morning. The comforter was a fluffy and masculine plaid, and the sheets a hundred percent cotton, navy blue. There were no curtains on the windows, and no alarm clock, so either Brennan used his phone for that, or he let the sun wake him when it rose. The room faced east and took advantage of the view out the back.

  He used Ban deodorant and Head & Shoulders shampoo, moisturizing, on what little hair he had left. There were no fancy face creams or aftershaves in the attached bathroom, which was also masculine, with a large, tiled shower but no tub. There was no sign he entertained women in this space. The bedside table held no sex toys and no condoms. The only pictures were of himself and what I assumed were his children: a boy and girl in their mid- to late teens.

  I wandered back out, after a last look at the view. And found Rafe standing in the middle of the office-slash-guest room, with his hands on his hips and a frustrated expression on his face. “Nothing?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t wanna take the time for a real thorough search. Don’t wanna spend any more time here than we have to. So there could be something hidden somewhere, that I didn’t find. But everything looks like it’s just what it says it is. Stationary and checkbooks in the desk, old bills and bank statements in the filing cabinet.”

  I nodded. “Nothing out of the ordinary on the bank statements?” Once upon a time, when he and I had broken and entered somewhere else, we’d found bank statements going a long way toward solving another murder. It can happen.

  But not this time. He shook his head again. “There could be a piece of paper in one of these files that has something about something else on it, that might be a clue why somebody’d want him dead, but I don’t have the time to turn everything inside out looking for it. And chances are it ain’t gonna be here anyhow.”

  I nodded.

  He gave one last, frustrated look around before he headed for the door. “Let’s get outta here.”

  * * *

  “What type of thing were you looking for?” I wanted to know when we were back in the Volvo, with Carrie safely deposited in the back seat again, and on our way back toward the interstate and town.

  “If I knew that—”

  “Right. I get it. But you were looking for something. You would have known it if you saw it.” Kind of like Goins had told me about the knife in the bin. “What was it?”

  “Something that would explain this,” Rafe said, with frustration leaking through his voice. “Something that didn’t belong. Something that somebody woulda killed for.”

  “So maybe he wasn’t killed. Maybe it was just a tragic accident, and Goins is making it into something it’s not.”

  Rafe shook his head. “I don’t think so. He ain’t stupid. Or not that stupid.” He glanced at me. �
�Remember when Brennan called me on Thursday night and asked me to stop by?”

  Of course I did. Not that I’d given it much thought since it happened.

  “He sounded like something was going on. Something he wanted to talk to me about. If I’d been in Nashville Thursday afternoon, and I coulda met him, maybe he’d told me. And maybe this wouldna happened.”

  “It’s not your fault,” I said.

  “I know that, darlin’. But I’m wondering if he didn’t see something, or hear something, or realize something. And that something’s what got him killed. And if he’d had the chance to tell me, maybe it wouldna happened.”

  Maybe. But there was no sense in thinking about it that way. “If he realized something during the day on Thursday,” I said, “it wouldn’t be here. He was on his way home when he died. If he had it with him, the police have it. But he wouldn’t have had the chance to bring it home yet.”

  Rafe nodded.

  “More likely it’s at the TBI. Or just in his head. He might not have written it down anywhere.”

  “Safer when you don’t write nothing down,” Rafe said. “Nothing for nobody to find.”

  “Until you die, and then nobody knows what you discovered.”

  “Which woulda been the reason for getting rid of him,” Rafe said, and shook his head. “If he left something at the TBI, somebody woulda found it by now. So chances are he just kept it in his head. And now it’s gone.”

  “So what are we going to do?”

  “Eat,” Rafe said, and pulled the Volvo into the parking lot of a roadhouse with a flashing light in the window advertising Beer – Food – Dessert in blinking neon lights.

  Chapter Twelve

  There was family style dining at long tables, food cooked with lots of grease and served on pitted metal plates with rolls of paper towels instead of napkins, but it tasted good enough that I would have licked the plate had I not been worried about word getting back to my mother.

  Not that there was any danger of that. This was a place Mother would never, ever set foot. I was a little worried myself, to be honest. Racism still lingers in some of the nooks and crannies here and there, and not everyone is comfortable with a mixed race couple. But I needn’t have worried. People were as nice as could be. The waitress snuck glances at Rafe, who’s definitely worth looking at, and gushed over Carrie, who was awake and on her best behavior.

  After catfish and slabs of cherry pie with whipped cream out of a can, we staggered back out to the car and headed for home. By then it was after seven, and by the time we cruised down Potsdam Street toward Mrs. Jenkins’s house, closer to eight.

  “Should have left some lights on before we left,” I muttered, as the house came into view, looking like something out of a scary movie.

  “You just stay in the car,” Rafe said. “I’ll go open up. I can see pretty well in the dark.”

  He could. As I could attest to. However— “I didn’t mean it that way. Just that it would have been convenient to have some light. The house looks kind of forbidding when all the lights are off.”

  Rafe nodded and turned the car into the driveway. The headlights lit up the gravel and the tree trunks, and beyond, the gazebo in the back yard. I peered in that direction, but could see no sign of life. “If we end up going to Sweetwater, what did you want to do with the house? I guess we should probably keep it, right, in case we don’t end up staying?”

  “For now,” Rafe said, and pulled the Volvo to a stop behind the Harley-Davidson. He cut the lights and reached for the door. “Stay here.”

  “I told you I didn’t mean it that way.” I pushed open my own door, too, and swung my legs out. And barely had time to register what I was looking at before I heard a “Shit!” from the other side of the car, and then Rafe came sliding across the hood rather than taking the time to run around.

  He took the steps to the porch two at a time. “Call 911.”

  I was already fumbling for my phone while scrambling up the steps after him. “Who is it? What happened?”

  Rather than answering, Rafe shoved the key in the lock and pushed the door open. He reached around the door jamb and flipped the light switch at the same moment as the heavy front door slammed against the wall in the foyer from the momentum. And at that point it was only too obvious who and what had happened.

  Or at least who. The what was a little less clear, aside from the obvious fact that it was bad.

  “Oh, my God!” I took a step back, and almost fell of the edge of the stairs. “Malcolm! Is he alive?”

  Rafe fell to his knees next to the body, and I heard another muttered, “Shit.” But then the 911 operator picked up, and I got busy talking to her.

  “We just came home, and there’s a body on our front porch.” My teeth were chattering, and I had to focus on slowing down so I could continue. “Or maybe it’s not a body. Maybe he’s still alive. My husband’s looking at him. He’s been shot. Or maybe stabbed. Either way, there’s a lot of blood.”

  A whole lot of blood. Malcolm’s narrow chest was covered with it. It soaked the polo shirt he wore under his winter jacket, turning the multicolored logo of the gas station where he worked a uniform red, and it had stained the fleece inside the jacket and run onto the porch floor under him into a pool.

  Hard to imagine that anyone could have lost that much blood and still be alive, but Rafe was fumbling his hands over Malcolm’s chest, trying to compress the wounds, so maybe there was hope.

  “We need an ambulance,” I managed. “To 101 Potsdam Street in East Nashville. As fast as you can. Or I don’t think he’s going to make it.”

  Rafe shook his head. His face was grim.

  “Anything I can do?” I asked, over the 911 operator’s exhortations that I needed to stay on the line with her. I wasn’t going anywhere, and my hands could be put to better use trying to keep Malcolm alive than holding the phone to my ear.

  “No.” Rafe didn’t look up, just kept trying to staunch the bleeding. “He’s either gonna bleed out or he’s not. Depends on how fast they can get here. Nothing we can do but wait.”

  “Hopefully it won’t be too long,” I said. “Skyline Hospital isn’t far.” Rafe had gotten me there in eight minutes flat once. The ambulance could probably do even better. “And the nearest fire station is even closer than that.”

  He nodded. “I’m just gonna sit here and put some pressure on this.”

  “Need help?”

  He shook his head. “Just pray. And you should probably get Carrie out of the car.”

  I probably should. She was starting to make noise.

  I made my way back down the stairs. My knees were a little unsteady, but I got there. As I reached into the Volvo to haul the seat out, something caught my eye a few feet away. I hadn’t noticed it earlier, in the dark, but now the porch light was glinting on it.

  I left Carrie where she was for another moment and walked closer. “There’s a knife over here.” With blood on it. But there was probably no need to mention that.

  “Don’t touch it,” Rafe said.

  “I wasn’t planning to.” In the far distance, I could hear the sound of sirens. “It looks like yours.”

  There was a beat. “Mine’s in my pocket.”

  “I didn’t think it was anywhere else. Are you sure you don’t want me to pick this one up and get rid of it?”

  “Positive,” Rafe said. “We haven’t been here. We can prove it.”

  “We were breaking and entering into Doug Brennan’s house!” And that wasn’t the kind of alibi I wanted to share with Detective Goins.

  “This happened after that,” Rafe said, his hands still pressed to Malcolm’s chest. They were bloody up to the wrists. “No more’n fifteen or twenty minutes ago. Or he’d be gone already.”

  We might have passed whoever did it on our way down to the house. And if we’d been fifteen or twenty minutes earlier, we’d have seen him. “We’ll just tell them we drove out there for dinner, then.”

  “Just
what I was planning to tell’em,” Rafe said.

  The sirens reached an earsplitting crescendo as the ambulance—from south of us, so the nearest fire station instead of the hospital—came into view. It shrieked into the driveway and came to a quivering stop behind the Volvo. I stepped aside as two paramedics burst from the car, bags in hand, and ran past me and up the stairs.

  Rafe moved out of the way, and they got busy. Since they definitely didn’t need my help now, and since I couldn’t very well pick up the bloody knife and slip it into my pocket while they were watching, I went back to the Volvo and removed the car seat with the baby. By now she wasn’t just making noises, she was full on wailing. I carried her up the stairs, across the porch, and into the house, making sure to keep her on the side of me that was away from the body.

  Away from Malcolm, who—please, God—was still hanging on.

  And I realize that Carrie was probably much too young to even register what was happening, let alone understand it. But the subconscious is weird, and I didn’t want to be responsible for her being traumatized and having problems later in life.

  Inside, I removed my coat, and removed Carrie from the seat, and—after a quick grope and sniff to make sure she wasn’t in desperate need of a diaper change—did the one thing that I knew would calm us both down: sat down on the sofa and lifted my shirt and proceeded to feed the baby.

  The door was still open, and I could feel the cold air on the back of my neck, although the back of the sofa protected most of me, and all of Carrie, from getting cold. And I didn’t want to close the door and leave Rafe out there, so he’d have to twist the knob to get inside. I also didn’t, in a weird way, want to cut myself off from what was going on. So I sat there, with my neck getting colder and colder, while the central heat kicked on to combat the chill and while the EMT’s voices came to me less in words than in cadences.

  After a few minutes, there were more sirens. Then the crunch of gravel, and the sound of heavy cop shoes on the porch. “What the hell happened here?” Lyle Spicer’s voice said.