Scared Money (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 13)

by Jenna Bennett

  “You were together then.”

  “We’d been together. But after the miscarriage, we weren’t together for a while. And anyway, he was undercover in Atlanta. And then he came back here and got involved with Carmen.”

  It took Dix a few seconds to process the information. “This is the inmate who gave birth in the woods? So what you’re saying is that your husband—before he was your husband—slept with a suspect?”

  “It’s a long story,” I said. “And we don’t know that it’s his baby. We’re still waiting for the paternity test. But if it is—hell... heck, even if it isn’t—I can’t just tell Denise Seaver to do her worst. She will, and her worst is pretty bad. If she can’t make money from it, that baby will probably end up floating down the Cumberland River with its throat cut by tonight.”

  And the mental image of that was enough to bring on a wave of nausea. I put my hand to my stomach, and my own baby turning cartwheels inside, and swallowed hard.

  “I don’t have fifty grand just sitting around, Savannah,” Dix said. “I could probably come up with that much, given a couple of days, but it’s all tied up in time deposits and IRAs and mutual funds and things like that.”

  “I don’t have a couple of days. She’s calling back in an hour. And if I don’t have the money—or the promise of the money—God knows what she’ll do to that baby.”

  “Then I can’t help you,” Dix said. “It’s going to be the same thing for Catherine, by the way. We don’t keep that kind of money just sitting around. We’ve got kids. We’ve got investments and college funds and stuff like that, but not a lot of liquid cash.”

  There went my second phone call. “I don’t suppose Mother...”

  “No,” Dix said. “And if you call her and take advantage of the fact that she’s drunk as a skunk right now...”

  “Darcy told me she’s been throwing back mimosas.”

  “Liquid breakfast,” Dix said. “At least she’s getting some vitamin C with the booze. But if you call and bother her with this, I’ll kill you.” He hung up.

  “OK, then.” I hung up, too.

  “What?” Grimaldi asked. I told her what Dix had said, and she nodded. “Good call. And anyway, your mother probably won’t be sympathetic to a sob story about your husband’s love child right now. Not with what she’s dealing with herself.”

  No. And she had just started liking Rafe, too, after almost a year of not liking him at all. I wasn’t about to do anything to change that. “So what do I do now? Try to fake her out with a duffel bag full of newspaper?”

  Grimaldi grimaced. “I’m not sure that’s going to work. Or that it’s a good idea, with the life of the baby on the line.”

  Me, either.

  “Do you think maybe it’s time to call your husband?”

  Shit. I mean... shoot. I’d been hoping to avoid that. Even though I realized it was unreasonable to think I could. “I guess.”

  “I’ll do it.” She dialed. After a moment, she asked, “Where are you?”

  Rafe said something.

  “There’s been a development. Can you talk?”

  The response must have been yes, because Grimaldi laid out the development in a few words. “Seaver just contacted your wife. She wants fifty thousand dollars in exchange for the baby.”

  I could hear Rafe’s voice get louder. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I didn’t need to. We didn’t have fifty thousand dollars, and didn’t know anyone who did.

  In the midst of Grimaldi talking the situation over with Rafe, my own phone rang again. I glanced at the display—the Martin and McCall law office. My heart skipped a beat; maybe Dix had changed his mind or come up with some sort of solution? Maybe if he and Catherine and Jonathan pooled their resources, and borrowed a little from the firm...?

  I opened the door and slipped out of the car. No sense in having both of us sitting side by side carrying on two different conversations. “Dix?”

  “No,” Darcy said. “It’s me.”

  “Oh. Hi.” I leaned my butt against the warm side of Grimaldi’s unmarked sedan. “What can I do for you?”

  “I heard about what happened,” Darcy said.

  I grimaced. “Was Dix loud?”

  “That, and I was curious, so I asked.” She hesitated a moment. “I’ll give you the money.”

  I blinked. “You have fifty thousand dollars?” She was my brother’s receptionist, for God’s sake. Why work for Dix, if she had that kind of money just sitting around?

  “Insurance payout from my parents’ accident,” Darcy said. “They died at the same time, so I became the beneficiary for both of their life insurance policies.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t let you spend your parents’ money on this. You may not get it back. I’m sure Grimaldi will try to figure out a way to use this to arrest Denise Seaver again, but the money may be lost.”

  “You asked your brother for help,” Darcy said. “And you would have asked your sister and your mother if your brother hadn’t told you not to.”

  She was right. I would have.

  “I’m your sister, too. And I want to help.”

  I wanted to thunk the back of my head against the roof of the car. Way to go, Savannah, making your new sister feel left out. “I’m sorry. It’s still new. And I didn’t want to assume you’d be interested in helping.”

  “And you didn’t think I’d have any money.” Her voice held a hint of amusement, so at least it didn’t seem like she was unforgiving.

  “That, too,” I admitted. If my lawyer brother didn’t, how was I to guess that his receptionist would? “I sure don’t. And I don’t feel great about taking yours.”

  “You would have taken Dix’s.”

  “That’s...” Different.

  “I don’t see that you have much of a choice,” Darcy pointed out. “And I’m happy to do it.”

  “But your parents’ life insurance...”

  “You’re my sister,” Darcy said firmly. “If it hadn’t been for you, I’d still be alone. I want to help. Please let me.”

  Since she put it like that... “I’ll do my best to get it back to you. If there’s any way to keep it safe and return it, I will.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Darcy said, which is not what I would have said about the potential loss of fifty thousand dollars. “Just go keep that baby safe. And get that bitch back behind bars.”

  I promised I would. “She’s calling back within the hour. After I speak to her again, I’ll drive to Sweetwater and pick it up.”

  “I’ll be ready,” Darcy said. “The bank is just across the square and the money’s sitting in an account. It shouldn’t take long. I’ll go there now.” She hung up before I could say anything more, even thank you.

  I took a second to pull myself together and to send a thank-you up above for Darcy before I opened the car door again and slid in. “We have the money.”

  Grimaldi stopped in the middle of a sentence—presumably still talking to Rafe—to stare at me. “What did you say?”

  “We have the money. My sister is giving it to me.”

  “Remind me to thank Catherine next time I see her,” Rafe’s voice came tinnily from out of the phone.

  I shook my head. “Not Catherine. Darcy.”

  By now Grimaldi had put him on speaker. “Darcy gave you the money? Where did she get that kind of cash?”

  “Life insurance policy from when her parents died,” I said. “Her adoptive parents.”

  Everyone was silent for a moment while we all contemplated Darcy’s generosity. Then Grimaldi shook it off. “Hopefully we can get it back to her.”

  Hopefully. But— “We’ll have to risk the money. We can’t risk the baby. The baby is most important. Then getting Denise Seaver back in prison. If we can do that, we can probably get the money back, too. But keeping the baby safe is the first priority.”

  For a second, nobody said anything. Then—

  “Darlin’...” Rafe said.

  “What?�
�

  “Are you sure you wanna take your sister’s money for this? If we lose it all...”

  “I warned her that might happen,” I said. “She said it was OK. And it’s not like we have a choice. You and I certainly don’t have that kind of cash.”

  “But this ain’t your family’s problem. It’s mine.”

  “Which makes it mine,” I said, “since you’re my husband. Which makes it theirs, since they love me. And you. They’re not just my family, you know. They’re yours, as well.”

  He didn’t say anything at first. Then— “Your mama’s gonna go back to thinking I’m the scum of the earth, ain’t she?”

  “At the moment,” I said, “she’s deep in her own problems and a blender of mimosas. She might never hear about it. And anyway, she has no room to talk.”

  He didn’t respond to that, and I added, “We don’t have a choice. Denise Seaver made it very clear that if we didn’t come up with the money, we could kiss that baby goodbye. We have to get it back, whether it’s yours or someone else’s. Darcy is willing to help. Let’s just be grateful. If we lose all her money, we can always promise to take care of her in her old age, or something.”

  Rafe snorted, but didn’t answer.

  “By now, we probably have forty-five minutes before she calls back and tells me where and when she wants me to meet her. If there’s anything we can do to find her and the baby—or just the baby—before we have to hand over the money, we should do it.”

  “We’ve been trolling the thrift stores,” Rafe said. “Looks like she bought some stuff in one of’em earlier this morning, just after they opened. A skirt, a blouse, a bag, and a pair of sandals. And she talked the clerk down to twenty-five bucks on a baby stroller. Said she only had fifty dollars total.”

  “She must have found some money somewhere—”

  No sooner were the words out of my mouth than I wanted to smack my own forehead. “Never mind. I know where she got it.”

  “Where?” Grimaldi asked.

  I glanced at her. “I wondered where she’d gotten my cell phone number. I bet if we check the fingerprints on the window sill in the office, they’ll be hers. Mr. Sullivan knows where I work. It’s just a few blocks from where I used to live. What do you want to bet he mentioned it? She probably went there, broke the window, took the petty cash, and found my phone number in Brittany’s Rolodex.”

  Grimaldi nodded. “There were sixty-four dollars there the other day, you said?”

  I nodded. Rafe probably did, too, on the other end of the line.

  “That would leave her with fourteen dollars after what she spent. What do you suppose she did with that?”

  I tried to put myself in her position. Homeless, newly escaped from prison, carrying a baby. Chances were she would have wanted something to eat. I hadn’t thought to ask anyone in the office whether there was food missing from the fridge, but it would be an interesting question at some later point. Chances were, she’d found something in the fridge or freezer last night. Maybe the Lean Cuisine Chicken Pot Pie I had offered Heidi yesterday for lunch. The baby had formula she’d gotten from the Catholic church, so she was good there. But by this morning, she might have been hungry again.

  “Say ten dollars for food,” Grimaldi said, when I put the suggestion forward. “She’s expecting to get paid today, so she has no reason to conserve her money. And she’s been locked up for a while, with no access to nice things. She was a doctor, so reasonably well off. Rather than go to a gas station or grocery store to buy something cheap, she might have gone somewhere where she could indulge in a nice breakfast. Not somewhere too nice—she had the baby—but maybe a coffee shop or something like that.”

  “Brew-ha-ha,” I said. “It’s a coffee shop on Main Street just a few blocks from the office. Good coffee. Nice pastries.”

  “I’ll check if they’ve seen her,” Rafe said, from the other side of town. “It’s right down the street from where we are.”

  Grimaldi nodded. “We’re on our way.” She pulled the car away from the curb and flicked on the lights and siren.

  “We’ll see you soon,” I yelled at Rafe. He yelled something back, but I couldn’t hear what it was. Hopefully it was nice.

  NINETEEN

  Grimaldi broke not only the sound barrier, but also a lot of laws on our way back to East Nashville. We hit the interstate ramp at seventy miles per hour, and by the time we were on the highway, the speed had gone up. By a lot. We averaged between ninety-five and a hundred all the way to the Shelby Avenue exit, where we screeched down the ramp like something out of an action movie. It couldn’t have been more than three minutes after that, that we pulled into the parking lot outside Brew-ha-ha and cut the engine.

  Blessed silence descended. I shook my head to stop the ringing in my ears. “How do you stand that?”

  “You get used to it,” Grimaldi said, throwing her door open and scanning the parking lot. “There they are.”

  There they were. José’s truck was parked at the other end of the lot, and its owner was leaning against the tailgate sipping from a cup with the Brew-ha-ha logo.

  I looked around. “Where’s Rafe?”

  “Let’s ask,” Grimaldi said and headed across the lot on long legs. I scurried after her, still looking around for my husband.

  José was pointing him out before we could ask. “He’s over there, talking to the bus driver.”

  A bus had stopped across the street, and Rafe had engaged the driver in conversation. She was female, naturally; otherwise, I’m sure the bus would be gone by now.

  “What about?” Grimaldi wanted to know.

  “The barista said Seaver was here this morning. Came in wearing the scrubs, came out of the bathroom in the skirt and sandals. Ordered a caramel macchiato and a banana muffin. Sat and ate it. Then ran across the street when the bus came, and got on.”

  “What about the baby?” Grimaldi asked.

  “She had it in a stroller. It must have been asleep. The barista said it didn’t make noise.”

  Hopefully asleep was all it was. It was a newborn. It couldn’t be good for it to be dragged all over creation like this.

  “And she took it on the bus?”

  José nodded. “That’s what the barista said.”

  Across the street, the bus pulled away. Once it had, Rafe sauntered back toward us. Naturally there was a gap in traffic right then, so he could just mosey across. If it had been me, I would have had to dodge between the cars the whole way.

  “Was that the same bus driver?” Grimaldi asked.

  Rafe shook his head. “But she told me who to call. And she said there are security cameras all over the bus depot downtown.”

  “Are you sure she went to downtown?”

  “It seems likely,” I put in. And added, as they all turned to me, “I mean, here we are at Main Street and Tenth. Main Street and Fifth is the last block before the interstate and the river. If she was going to Fifth, she’d probably just walk. It’s five blocks. But if she’s going all the way into downtown, it makes sense to take the bus. Especially if she wants to get off the street.”

  Grimaldi nodded. “Bus depot it is. Let’s go.”

  We went. She and I piled back into the sedan, Rafe and José climbed into the truck. And we headed toward downtown.

  We were almost there when my phone rang. I pulled it out and looked at it. “It’s her. What do I do? What do I say?”

  Grimaldi pulled off to the side of the road, right in the middle of the bridge, and put on her blue lights so no one would bother us. Rafe and José were already far up ahead, and didn’t notice us stopping. Or if they did, they didn’t turn around.

  Grimaldi’s voice was calm. “Take a breath, then answer the phone. Tell her you have the money. Make sure she knows that first. And then ask her what she wants you to do with it. Anything else you can get out of her is a bonus.”

  I nodded.

  “Do it now. Before she gets tired of waiting.”

  Right.
I turned on the phone. “I have the money.”

  Denise Seaver sounded amused. “I thought you’d be able to figure something out.”

  “I found someone who’ll give it to me. She’s gone to the bank.” I wished I could stop babbling, but I was too nervous. “As soon as you tell me where to meet you, I’ll go to Sweetwater and pick it up.”

  She didn’t answer, and I added, brightly, “It’ll take me about three hours to get there and back. I assume you’re still in Nashville?”

  She didn’t answer that, nor had I expected her to. “Once I have the money,” I added, “I can meet you somewhere. I give you the money, you give me the baby. And we both go on our merry way.”

  Denise Seaver allowed as how that would work.

  “You want to tell me where to meet you?”

  “No,” Denise Seaver said. “I’ll call you in two hours. By then, you should have the money and be on your way back to Nashville.”

  I should. Unless there was a delay at the bank, or somewhere else. Roadwork, or a traffic accident. “It could take a little longer than that. I have to go home and get my car first. And pick up a suitcase or something to put the money in.”

  It wouldn’t fit in my handbag, I assumed. I’ve never actually seen fifty thousand dollars in tens and twenties, but it seemed like it would take up more space than that.

  “Two hours,” Denise Seaver said. And hung up.

  I turned to Grimaldi. “You have to take me home so I can drive to Sweetwater and get the money. And I have to call Darcy back.”

  I started to dial, but before I had completed the number, the phone rang again. “It’s Rafe.”

  “Answer it,” Grimaldi said.

  “What the hell happened to you?” the love of my life asked. I guess they’d arrived at the bus depot, just a couple of blocks on the other side of the river, and realized we weren’t behind them.

  “Sorry. Denise Seaver called back. I have to drive to Sweetwater to pick up the money. Grimaldi’s going to drive me home so I can get my car and a suitcase to carry the money in when I get it.”