Scared Money (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 13)

by Jenna Bennett

  She looked up at me, and added, “What happened to you?”

  “I ran into a bush,” I said, as if that explained the scratches on my arms, and the legs she couldn’t see below the counter. “I’ll put something on it when I get home. That was smart of you. And your friends. Starting the store, I mean.”

  She nodded. “We’re not getting rich, but it’s something to do while the kids are in school. And it’s nice to work with friends.”

  I bet it was. For the most part, everyone I worked with at LB&A had a somewhat contentious relationship with everyone else. It probably came from being competitors for the same clients and listings rather than working toward a common goal and trying to accomplish something together.

  She rang up the clothes, and while I dug for my wallet, I told her, “I was actually looking for Mr. Peretti next door. The office is supposed to be open, but no one’s there.”

  “He left about an hour ago,” the shopkeeper said, as she ran the debit card and gave me the slip to sign. “Guess he didn’t have any more appointments today.”

  Guess not. “Do you know Miss Harper? She owns a big antebellum house up on Lickton Pike.”

  The shopkeeper nodded. “The Harpers have been around for generations. Miz Harper taught school until she retired. I had her myself, a long time ago. Is that where you got those scratches?”

  “I walked around the house. It looks like it’s been a while since anyone did any yard work up there.”

  She just shrugged, and I added, “I heard Miss Harper’s thinking of selling. Do you know if that’s true?”

  She stuffed the clothes into a thin plastic bag. “To Magnolia Houston. You know, the country singer?”

  I nodded.

  “Some realtor from the city came up and talked Miz Harper into it.” She pronounced ‘realtor’ ‘reel-a-tor.’ “It’s kinda sad to see it go out of the family, I guess. The Harpers have been here for centuries. But maybe now the place’ll get fixed up. It’s looking pretty rough.”

  I picked up my bag. It crinkled as the contents settled. “There was a guy on a ladder chipping at the paint when I was there.”

  “Probably Magnolia’s boyfriend,” the shopkeeper nodded. “I’ve seen them together a couple of times. They tore past here a few minutes before you came in. I saw her hair flapping as they went by. His, too, if it comes to that.”

  “He has long hair?”

  “Not as long as hers,” my new friend said, “but he looks like a musician, you know?”

  I nodded. I knew exactly. “Do you know if anyone around here was upset about her selling? Someone who didn’t want Magnolia Houston moving in? Or just didn’t want the house sold?”

  “I can’t imagine who. Miz Harper didn’t have any family. The house would have gone to strangers anyway, when she died. Nobody else had a claim on it.”

  “The city didn’t want it because it’s historic or anything?”

  “No money to fix it up or maintain it,” the shopkeeper said. “And it isn’t especially historic. Just old. Nothing exciting happened there.”

  Right. “What about Magnolia? Are people upset about her buying it?”

  She shrugged. “Some of us’ll have to keep an eye on our husbands, I figure. But mostly, folks around here thought it was great. The place has been looking rough. Someone like Magnolia Houston has the money to fix it up right, I imagine. And when word gets out that she lives up here, we might see some more of the tourist types. That’ll help all of us.”

  I must have looked blank, because she gestured to the bag I was holding. “You wouldn’t have been here if not for Magnolia Houston. If there are more like you, I’ll make more money.”

  True.

  I shifted the bag into my other hand. “I don’t suppose you know anything about Mr. Peretti?”

  “I know a lot about Mr. Peretti,” the shopkeeper said. “He’s been in business next door for close to a century. Everyone in town knows Mr. Peretti.”

  “Surely he didn’t start the business in 1928.” He’d have to be more than a hundred years old if so.

  “His father did. Oscar’s been practicing since the 1950s. He never married, never had any kids.”

  “Like Miss Harper.”

  She nodded. “They grew up together. Friends their whole lives. I don’t know what he’ll do now that she’s not right up the street anymore. Retire, maybe.”

  “Does he do a lot of business?”

  “Not much anymore. I hardly ever see anyone go in next door. Just some of the old-timers who want a real, old-fashioned attorney and none of this new-fangled stuff.” She grinned. “He still has a rotary phone.”

  “I saw it. Through the window.”

  “And no computer. Everything done by hand, just the way it’s always been done. If it was good enough for his father, it’s good enough for him.”

  That probably took Mr. Peretti out of contention for having sent the email to DeWitts, then. No computer to send it from, and most likely not enough know-how to do it.

  “I appreciate it,” I said.

  “No problem. You go home and put some ointment on those scratches. And come back and see us if you’re in the neighborhood.”

  I promised I would, and took myself, my scratches, and my gently used onesies out of there.

  FIVE

  Like Mr. Peretti and Miss Harper, Rafe and I grew up together. Or rather, we grew up on opposite sides of the same small town. But we’d never been friends. Different schools, different circles. I was the princess from the mansion on the hill: Robert Lee and Margaret Anne Martin’s perfect youngest daughter. Rafe was the son of a girl from the trailer park who got herself in the family way at fourteen by a colored boy. For a single year—his senior year and my freshman year—we went to the same high school. The summer after that, he went to prison. By the time I graduated and moved on to finishing school in Charleston and law school at Vanderbilt, he’d left Riverbend Penitentiary and gone undercover for the TBI.

  We’d met again last August, outside his grandmother’s house on Potsdam Street. Now we lived there together. Married, and with a baby on the way.

  It’s amazing how much things can change in a year.

  When I pulled up in front of the brick Victorian, Rafe’s big, black Harley-Davidson was parked at the bottom of the stairs. And I admit it, my heart skipped a beat. Not just because, after a couple of months of marriage, I’m still crazy about him and can’t wait to see him at the end of each day, but because today was a special day.

  That sounds sort of nice, but it really wasn’t. I guess what I should have said, is that today wasn’t just any day.

  During the week or so I’d spent trying to help Darcy figure out who her biological parents were, we’d chosen to make a trip to the Tennessee Prison for Women on the north side of Nashville. Not because we had any reason to think Darcy’s mother was there, but because a former doctor named Denise Seaver was a guest of the state. She’s been incarcerated at the TPFW since last November, for two counts of murder and more than a few of kidnapping and selling babies. And thirty-five years ago, when Darcy’s mother had been pregnant, Denise Seaver had been a newly-minted OB/GYN in Columbia, and we suspected she knew who Darcy’s biological mother was.

  She hadn’t been willing to tell us anything, of course. I’d expected that, but we had to try.

  Anyway, while we were at the prison, I’d seen someone else whose face I knew. Her name was Carmen Arroyo, and she’d been a guest of the state since December, when the TBI and the Metro Nashville PD, along with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the Atlanta police, had swept up the remains of the largest South American Theft Gang in the Southeast. The head of the SATG had been a man named Hector Gonzales, and Rafe had spent the past ten years infiltrating Hector’s organization. He had also, on one or more occasions, infiltrated Carmen’s bed.

  Perhaps I should be upset about that. When I thought too hard about it, I was. But we hadn’t been together at the time. Rafe had been laboring und
er the impression that while I’d been sleeping with him, I’d also been sleeping with Todd Satterfield. And since he’d always suspected I would end up with Todd anyway—mostly because he thought I lacked the guts to stand up for him with my family—it was hard to blame him. Especially when I considered that Carmen would have found it suspicious if he’d turned her down. And the last thing anyone would have wanted, was to make Carmen suspicious.

  Anyway, he hadn’t really cheated on me. But he had slept with her. And now she was pregnant. When I’d seen her at the TPFW last week, she’d looked ready to burst.

  I’d told Rafe about it last night, the first chance we’d had to talk privately. He’d promised me he’d look into it today. So my skipped heartbeat wasn’t just because I was happy to see him. It was also because I was afraid of what he’d have to tell me.

  Climbing the steps to the porch and getting the key into the lock was hard. Part of me just didn’t want to go inside. I had managed to avoid this issue all day. I hadn’t called him to find out what he’d discovered, and whenever the thought of doing so had crossed my mind, I had squashed it. Tim’s task had been helpful. It had given me something else to focus on. But now it was time to face the music.

  I pushed the door open and closed and locked it behind me. And kicked off my shoes. My feet cheered, even as I staggered barefoot down the hall toward the kitchen.

  I assumed Rafe would be there, but he wasn’t. As I opened the fridge for something cold to drink, I heard a faint whooshing sound from the pipes behind the wall, and realized he was in the shower upstairs. He must have gotten home just before me.

  Under other circumstances, I might have gone upstairs and joined him. The idea had appeal. But I was too nervous. And anyway, shower sex is more difficult these days. The baby gets in the way.

  So I took a seat at the table, with my bottle of flavored water and a small bowl of nuts, and waited.

  It didn’t take long. It might be a holdover from those prison showers twelve years ago, but he never spends much time under the spray. Not unless we’re doing something together aside from getting clean. Three minutes later, I heard his footsteps on the stairs, and then saw him come padding down the hallway toward me.

  His feet were bare on the worn wood floors, and he was wearing a pair of threadbare jeans hanging low on his hips and nothing else. My tongue got stuck to the roof of my mouth, and I had to peel it off. It took effort. When I could speak again, I told him, “That’s low.”

  He grinned. “I didn’t know you were home until I saw the car through the window. I didn’t hear you come in.”

  I told him I’d only been there a few minutes.

  “Feet hurt?” He went to the fridge and pulled out his own bottle of water. “I saw you kicked off your shoes as soon as you came in.” He cracked the cork and leaned against the counter as he drank half the bottle.

  I sipped my own while I watched his throat move. “I think I’m going to have to stop wearing heels soon. And I’m not sure I have ankles anymore.”

  He bent to peer under the table. “Still there.

  “Good to know.” I took another sip of water. “I had a run-in with a bramble bush, though.”

  “I can see that.” He pulled out the chair on the other side of the table and sat. “Where’d you find a bramble bush?”

  “Outside this house in Goodlettsville that Tim’s trying to sell. Do you know who Magnolia Houston is?”

  “Some kind of country singer, ain’t she?” He reached for my nuts.

  “Country Barbie. She wanted to buy a genuine antebellum home, so Tim found her one. And talked the seller into moving to an old folk’s home. But now the money’s gone missing.”

  He looked up from the nuts. “Scuse me?”

  “The five hundred thousand dollars Magnolia Houston was going to pay for the house. It went astray between her closing attorney and Miss Harper’s.”

  “Miz Harper being the seller?”

  I nodded. “DeWitts was handling Magnolia’s side of the transaction. Tim likes to use them. Or did. I don’t think he will after this. And Miss Harper was using an old friend up in Sumner County to close for her. Mr. Peretti. They signed all the paperwork on Friday. Tim didn’t think anything was wrong. Until Mr. Peretti called him on Monday afternoon and told him the money never arrived. DeWitts say that someone at LB&A sent them an email changing the wiring instructions.”

  “And nobody did?”

  “If somebody did, it wasn’t Tim. The money’s gone. DeWitts is on the hook for half a million dollars, because they didn’t double-check the new wiring instructions with Tim. Their insurance company is probably refusing to pay. And they’re trying to throw it back on LB&A.”

  “And Tim asked you to look into it.” It wasn’t a question.

  I nodded.

  “Any reason you didn’t just say no?”

  “I didn’t think it would hurt,” I said. “He’s pretty freaked out. And it’s not like anything happened to me. It’s just scratches. I wouldn’t even have had those if it wasn’t for the guy on the ladder.”

  “I see.” He leaned back and folded his hands across his stomach. Muscles moved smoothly under his skin, and I smiled. He smiled back. “Tell me about the ladder. And the guy on it.”

  “Oh.” I explained about driving to Goodlettsville to look at the Harper house, and about the young man. “Angie at the consignment store said it was probably Magnolia’s boyfriend. That she’d seen them together a couple of times. I have no idea why he’d avoid me. Unless he thought I was going to give him a hard time about being there. But he just vanished. By the time I got out of the car, he was gone.”

  “What were you thinking he’d tell you?”

  “I’m not sure,” I admitted. “But he was there. It seemed like a good idea to talk to him.”

  Neither of us said anything for a moment.

  “So how was your day?” I added.

  He winced. I took pity on him. “Did you finish up all the reports after the gang war? And the meth lab that exploded?”

  He nodded.

  “Is Jamal OK? Still employed?”

  Since he can’t do undercover work anymore, after blowing his cover sky high before Christmas, Rafe’s current job is training TBI rookies in the tricks of the trade. He’s working with three of them, of which Jamal is one. The other two are Clayton and José. It was Jamal who got them both involved in a gang war a week and a half ago. And Jamal who disappeared in the middle of the operation, making everyone worry that the bad guys had gotten to him.

  “He’s employed,” Rafe said grimly, “for now. But on warning. If he breaks protocol again, he’s out.”

  “There were extenuating circumstances,” I reminded him. “It isn’t every day a man finds out he’s knocked up a teenager.”

  And before you get the wrong impression from that statement, Jamal’s only around twenty or so. Alexandra is seventeen. So really, the age difference between them isn’t any bigger than the one between Rafe and me.

  However, Rafe winced again. “I told Wendell that. He said it was hardly a point in Jamal’s favor.”

  Wendell Craig was Rafe’s handler during the undercover days. Now he’s Rafe’s boss. And the boss of the boys, as well. And I could see his point.

  Maybe this conversation wasn’t any easier than the one I was avoiding.

  I took a breath. It went down hard, and the words took effort to push out. “Tell me about Carmen.”

  He didn’t say anything, and I added, “You did go out there, right? To the prison?”

  He had promised me he would. Although if Wendell had kept him busy at work all day, I guess I could understand it if he hadn’t had the time, especially the day after a finished op, and one with complications. But I really wanted to know something as soon as possible.

  He nodded. “Yeah.”

  “And was she there?”

  “Where else would she be? Not like they’re giving them time off to go shopping.”

  No, alth
ough Carmen would probably appreciate that. She was gorgeous, and knew how to dress. I had run into her at the Green Hills Mall once, and she’d been hauling more bags than I had.

  “Did you talk to her? Or just to the doctor?”

  “I started with the doc,” Rafe said. “I figured, if she’d said something to somebody maybe I wasn’t gonna have to talk to her directly.”

  Yes, I would prefer that, too.

  “They got Denise Seaver working in the clinic over there. Did you know that?”

  “No,” I said, “how would I know that?”

  “I thought maybe she mentioned it,” Rafe said. “When you talked to her.”

  “Oh.” No, she hadn’t. “It wasn’t a particularly friendly conversation.” Although Denise Seaver had been acquainted with Carmen and knew when Carmen was due to give birth, so maybe I should have guessed that former Doctor Seaver was affiliated with the prison clinic. “It makes sense. I mean, she’s an OB/GYN. It seems like a waste to have her peel potatoes in the kitchen. Might as well put her to use doing what she knows.”

  Rafe nodded. “Old witch.”

  That she was. “You two are related somehow, aren’t you? Second cousins twice removed or something like that?”

  “Something,” Rafe said. “On my mama’s side. She don’t like me much.”

  I had gathered as much. “Did you talk to her?”

  “Had to. When I asked about Carmen, the doc called her over. Seems she handles a lot of the female problems so he don’t have to.”

  “You’d think they could have hired a female obstetrician in the first place, for a prison population of women.”

  Rafe shrugged. “He checked her chart. Carmen’s. There was nothing written there about the father of the baby. That’s when he called Doc Seaver over to see if Carmen had said anything to her.”