He nodded, his mouth relaxing a little. “You told me.”
“It’s a long distance from here, though. I mean, we could make it there in an hour, the way you drive. But they’re two women on foot—unless they planned it beforehand and arranged for a ride. And if they’re dependent on the kindness of strangers, it could take them all day to get to Sweetwater.”
Rafe nodded. “Not sure Carmen has all day.”
I wasn’t, either. “We should keep it in reserve. If we don’t get any leads anywhere else, we could head down there. Or I could call Dix and ask him to go take a look.”
“Safer to call the sheriff,” Rafe said. “They’ve got a gun.”
“How?”
“Took it off the guard they killed.” He moved into the right lane and flipped on the turn signal. We must be getting close.
“With that, they could flag someone down and force them to drive to Sweetwater. Or anywhere else they wanted to go.”
Rafe nodded. “Call Bob Satterfield, please.”
I dug out my phone and dialed. “Do you want to explain?” I asked while I listened to the ringing on the other end.
He shook his head. “You do it. You can ask him about your mama and Audrey at the same time.”
I could. I settled back into the seat and waited for the phone to be answered while I watched a neat and tidy neighborhood of small, mid-century ranch houses move past outside the car.
“This is Bob,” a voice said in my ear, and I straightened.
“Hi, Sheriff. It’s Savannah Martin. Collier.” After more than two months, you’d think I’d have gotten my new name down, but I’ve been Savannah Martin for twenty-eight years, and habits are hard to break. It isn’t just Tamara Grimaldi who’s struggling.
The sheriff’s voice got a degree warmer. “Afternoon, darlin’.”
“Same to you. How are you?”
“Been better,” the sheriff said, while Rafe gave me a sardonic sideways look.
I rolled my eyes. So I’ve been trained to be polite. Sue me. “Have you seen Mother?”
“Not since that scene in your brother’s office on Monday morning. I figure when she’s ready, she’ll call me.”
Maybe so. “What about Audrey?”
“She’s holding up,” the sheriff said. “Tough situation for her, finding her daughter and losing her best friend all in the same day.”
No kidding. “She hasn’t spoken to Mother, I assume?”
“Not as I’ve heard.”
“What about Darcy? Have they been in touch?”
“Not yet. But they’re getting there. Less baggage between the two of them.”
Couldn’t argue with that. Darcy’s only crime had been being born. She had some resentment toward her biological mother for giving her up for adoption, but I believed she’d be able to get past that, now that she understood the circumstances. But Audrey and my mother had been friends more than half their lives. It was no wonder Mother felt betrayed.
“I need a favor,” I said, as Rafe came to a stop outside a tidy little bungalow with yellow shutters.
“I ain’t pushing your mother, darlin’. When she’s ready to face this, she’ll let me know.”
“This doesn’t have anything to do with Mother,” I said. “Denise Seaver escaped from prison this afternoon.”
“What the hell?”
That thought had crossed my own mind. “Another inmate went into labor. I think Doctor Seaver probably induced it. While the two of them were on their way to the hospital in a Department of Corrections van, somehow they managed to kill the driver and take off.”
“In the van?”
“No.” And now that I thought about it, that was strange. They had a vehicle at their disposal. Why not use it? “The cops found the van abandoned a few miles from the prison, with the dead guard inside. People are out combing the hills to see if they’ve sheltered there. Carmen probably couldn’t walk far. But they might have flagged down another car.”
“And you think they might be coming here?”
“Denise Seaver still has her house,” I said. “It’s sitting empty.”
“So it is.”
“Any chance you could run by once or twice in what’s left of today and see if anyone shows up?”
“How come you’re the one asking me this, darlin’, and not the police? Or that husband of yours?”
“Rafe is sitting next to me,” I said. “If it’ll make you feel better, he can tell you the same story.”
I handed off the phone without waiting for the sheriff’s response, and sat there while Rafe confirmed everything I’d said. “Appreciate it,” he said after a minute or so. “Let me know if you see’em. Or if you’d rather deal with the cops, you can call Tammy Grimaldi. You need her number?”
The sheriff must have informed him he had it, because Rafe didn’t read it off. “Thanks, Sheriff,” he said, and handed me the phone.
I dropped it in my bag. “So this is the place?”
Rafe looked at it and nodded, his jaw tight.
“Have you been here before?”
“Dropped Carmen off once. Didn’t go in.”
“Does her mother know that you... um...”
“Was sleeping with her daughter? I imagine she mighta guessed.”
“I was thinking, does she know that you arrested her daughter?”
Rafe grimaced. “I imagine so. Yeah.”
Great. This should be fun. I opened my car door. “What do you want to do? Knock on the door and ask her about the last time she saw her daughter? Or sneak around the house and peer in the windows?”
“Both,” Rafe said. “She don’t know you. You go to the front door and knock. Pretend to be a reporter or something. You look like you could be on TV.”
Awww. “That’s so sweet,” I said, and felt tears well up in my eyes. “Sorry. Hormones.” I flapped a hand in front of my face.
He grinned, and grabbed it to pull toward him so he could kiss the back of my hand. Then he turned it over and kissed the palm, which always makes me a little short of breath.
I closed my hand around the kiss. “I love you.”
He smiled. “Love you, too. And while you take your gorgeous self up to the door and keep her there as long as you can, I’ll go around the house and see what I can see.”
It sounded like a plan. All I had to do now was figure out what to say.
As I swung my legs out and headed up the driveway, I decided that pretending to be a reporter probably wouldn’t work. Where was my camera? And my camera man? So maybe I could simply ask her whether she’d seen her daughter lately. Chances were nobody else had been here yet, and if I was the first person to give her the news that Carmen was on the run, that ought to give Rafe enough time to walk the perimeter of the house.
He was already crossing the lawn. I waited on the bottom of the two steps until he’d ducked behind the corner, and then I stepped up in front of the door and pressed the buzzer.
The sound cut through the house like a siren.
I waited, then, when nothing happened, pressed the buzzer again.
Rafe came walking around the corner from the other side of the house. “No answer?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think she’s here. Anyone in their right mind would answer the door just so whoever is out here wouldn’t buzz again. What a horrible noise.”
He smiled. “I didn’t see nobody inside. Looks like the place is empty.”
“Are any of the curtains closed?” Because if so, someone might be in that room.
He shook his head. “I looked in every window. Nothing but empty rooms.”
“It’s just as well.” I started to step off the porch, and took his hand to help me down. Not because I needed it, but because it was nice of him to offer. “If I’d told Mrs. Arroyo that her daughter’s escaped, the first thing she’d do, I’m sure, is call her other daughter. And if Carmen’s there, she’d be gone before we could get there.”
Rafe nodded. “Let’s j
ust go take’em by surprise.”
That had a vaguely ominous ring to it, and I told him so as we walked hand in hand down the driveway toward the car.
He chuckled. “I ain’t talking about an ambush, darlin’. Besides, in her condition, Carmen prob’ly couldn’t run very fast.”
Probably not. Whether that condition was pregnant and in labor or just post-birth by the time we caught up with them.
He took the driver’s seat again, and I climbed into the passenger side. We drove a couple miles east, closer to the lake. The neighborhood out here was less manicured, probably a bit less affluent—young married couples with kids versus retirees—and the houses were bigger. Rafe checked the address on his phone and pulled up in front of a 1960s split level. The driveway was cracked and the wooden parts of the house could do with a coat of paint. It looked old and sort of tired, even with the colorful big wheel and assorted toys strewn across the grass.
I glanced at him. “Have you met Carmen’s sister?”
He shook his head.
“But you know this is her house?”
He nodded.
“Am I still going to be a reporter while you go around back?”
He shook his head. “This time we’ll just knock. There are a lot of cars here.”
There were. A beige mini-van. A big truck, one I recognized from Sunday. I’d seen it parked outside the women’s prison when we arrived. I recognized it from the painted beach scene with the buxom young woman in a bikini on the tailgate.
Finally, there was a shiny, red Mercedes, just a couple years old. I recognized that, too. Last time I’d seen it, Carmen had been behind the wheel.
Rafe lips tightened.
“Carmen’s car?”
He nodded.
“You think that means she’s here?”
He glanced at the house and shook his head. “She prob’ly signed it over to her mama when she went to prison.”
That made sense. However— “Wouldn’t they have sold it to get money to pay the defense lawyer?”
“No point in a defense lawyer,” Rafe said, his eyes back on the car. “Besides, she had plenty of other money.”
“Didn’t they—you—freeze her accounts? Ill-gotten gains, and all that?”
“The prosecution offered her a deal if she’d testify against Hector,” Rafe said. “She took it, and got off with a lighter sentence. They didn’t charge her with any of the murders. Just the financial crimes.”
I blinked. “Did she murder someone?”
“Personally?” He shrugged. “Maybe not. But she knew it was going on. Accessory.”
Right. I looked back at the house. “So we just walk up to the door and knock?”
“That’s the plan. You can stay in the car.”
I shook my head. “Absolutely not.” If he was going, I was going.
“It ain’t gonna be pretty.”
I hadn’t supposed it would. “Does she know you... um...”
“Arrested her sister?”
“That. But I was thinking more, ‘does she know you slept with her sister and may have knocked her up?’” If she hadn’t told her mother, she might have told her sister. I had told Dix about Rafe before I’d told anyone else. He and I have always been closer than Catherine and I.
“Guess we’ll find out.” He opened the car door. I squared my shoulders and did the same.
The walk up to the front door took forever, and if it felt that way to me, I could only imagine how it felt to Rafe. This had to be hard for him. He didn’t say much, and I would guess that was in direct proportion to how much he felt. I could see him brace himself before he reached out and knocked on the door.
The woman who opened it was the same one I had seen on Sunday, visiting Carmen in prison. Mid-thirties, shorter than me by several inches, a bit broader in the beam—or so I’d like to believe. She had straight black hair pulled back in a ponytail, and while I could see a resemblance to Carmen in her features, she wasn’t as pretty.
Behind her stood an almost exactly replica, twenty or twenty-five years older. This was how Carmen’s sister would look when she got to be my mother’s age. A little older, with touches of gray at her temples and wrinkles around her eyes, with traces of Carmen in her features, as well.
Neither of them seemed to even notice me. They were both staring at Rafe, with expressions like Old Nick himself had materialized on the doorstep.
He was the one who broke the silence. “We need to talk.”
Carmen’s sister’s eyes narrowed. “We have nothing to say to you.”
She made to slam the door, and couldn’t, when Rafe stuck his boot in the gap. I’ve tried to do that, and it hurts. He didn’t flinch. Just pulled out his badge and showed it to them. Without a word. I guess just the reminder that he was law enforcement was supposed to be enough.
Carmen’s mother said something in Spanish, and her daughter turned to answer her. Before she could, Rafe had rattled off a sentence or two. I didn’t catch any but the most common words. This form of street-Spanish was far removed from the upscale Castilian I’d been taught.
Ten years of infiltrating a South American organized crime syndicate had done wonders for his language education.
Mrs. Arroyo said something back, and then the two women got into it. The back-and-forth was so rapid I didn’t understand a word. “What’s going on?” I asked Rafe.
He spared me a quick look. “Mrs. Arroyo wants to hear what I have to say. Bianca’s angry.”
“And Mrs. Arroyo isn’t?”
He shrugged.
This exchange had put me on their radar, possibly for the first time, and now they both looked at me. “Who are you?” Bianca demanded.
I lifted my hand. The one with the wedding band on it. And no, I didn’t raise my middle finger.
Bianca looked at it. The ring, not the finger. Then she turned back to Rafe and let loose with another irate spate of Spanish. It ended with a wad of spit. Luckily, she spat on the ground in front of his feet, and not directly at him. Even so, her mother expostulated, and the two of them went off on another back-and-forth.
“What did she say?” I asked Rafe.
“I had her sister arrested. I seduced her. I played with her affections. I betrayed her. Take your pick.”
His face was impassive and his voice even, but he was just a shade or so paler than usual.
“This is bullshit,” I said bluntly, and managed to surprise him. For a second, his eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. “Sorry,” I added, “but it is. Let me talk to them.”
The corners of his mouth twitched, as he took a step out of the way. “Be my guest.”
“Thank you.” I moved closer to him, in front of the door, and raised my voice. “Listen. Listen!”
They both shut up and turned to me.
“My name is Savannah,” I said. “Rafe and I got married two months ago.”
They didn’t say anything, just looked from me to him and back.
“He wasn’t married when he knew Carmen. But he had to arrest her. It’s his job. And she was breaking the law.”
Bianca’s face darkened, and her fists clenched. Her mother didn’t speak, though.
“That doesn’t matter right now. Your sister—” I moved my attention to Mrs. Arroyo, “your daughter, is missing. She went into labor this morning, and—”
“The baby?” Mrs. Arroyo said, her Spanish more deeply accented than her daughter’s. Than either of her daughters’. I had spoken to Carmen back in December, and she hadn’t had any more of an accent than I did. “Carmen’s baby is coming?”
“They left the prison to go to the hospital. They never got there. They stabbed the guard who was driving them, and left.”
Both Bianca and her mother turned pale, and Mrs. Arroyo crossed herself.
“We need to come in and search your house,” Rafe said.
They looked at each other, and Bianca started to look mutinous. Her mother, however, said something, and she took a step ba
ck.
Rafe turned to me. “Wait—”
...here? I shook my head. “Wither thou goest.” And not only because we were married, but because I wasn’t about to have him walk inside with the two of them, and perhaps with Bianca’s husband, while I was locked out. They could kill him in there, while I stood on the step like a dutiful wife and waited.
“I’d feel safer if you stayed outside.”
“I’d feel safer if I came in,” I said, and that was the end of it. He shrugged and crossed the threshold, and didn’t say anything when I slipped in after him.
The front door opened into a foyer, with stairs on the left going up and down to the other levels. Rafe headed down the stairs, hand on his gun, and I followed. After a quick glance at each other, so did Bianca and her mother.
The back of my neck felt creepy all the way down the stairs.
At the bottom, there was just one big room. It looked like a combination TV room and play room, with a big screen TV on one wall, above the gaping maw of a fireplace, and with sofas and recliners arranged in a semi circle for viewing. Behind the sofas was an open area where two children played. A boy and a girl, maybe two and four years old, with their mother’s straight, black hair and broad, brown face.
They gaped at Rafe when he came into sight, but they didn’t seem nervous. After a moment, they just went back to playing.
We went back upstairs, with Mrs. Arroyo first this time. She had been whispering worriedly to Bianca, but I didn’t get the feeling that we were in any immediate danger. And if Carmen was here, they made no move to get to her and get her away from us.
The first floor boasted the usual common areas: living room, dining room, and kitchen, plus a bathroom for guests. It was all pretty open concept, with no sign of life other than the four of us.
“Bedrooms?” Rafe gestured with his thumb up the second staircase.
Bianca nodded. “My husband’s up there. He works nights.” She sounded hostile, but at least she was somewhat polite. Or if nothing else, she was answering questions.
Rafe didn’t answer, just took the stairs two at a time. They ended in a little hallway with two doors on either side. The first on the left opened into a bathroom. It was shabby, but clean. Across the hall from it was the open door to what might have been the smallest bedroom I’d ever seen. Hardly bigger than the bathroom, it only had room for a big crib and a chest of drawers. The bedding was blue, and someone had painted a race car above the crib. Perhaps the same person who had painted the beach scene on the back of the truck.
Scared Money (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 13) Page 12