Scared Money (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 13)

by Jenna Bennett

  It was a three-ton pickup with the Virgin Mary on the rear window. I screamed as it slammed into the little Honda and sent it flying, across the road and into the ditch on the other side.

  Dix said a word I never thought I’d hear from him, and pulled the Volvo to a stop at the gravel shoulder behind the pickup. The driver’s side was already empty. Rafe was on his way across the road toward the Honda. José was making his way down from the passenger side, looking a little shell-shocked. I guess Rafe had talked him into letting him drive, and José had had no idea what he’d agreed to.

  Dix jumped out of the quivering Volvo and followed.

  “Wait!” I called after him. “What about me?”

  But he was already too far away to listen.

  TWENTY-TWO

  An hour later, we were at the Maury County Medical Center. And by ‘we,’ I mean all of us.

  Denise Seaver was in the ICU, handcuffed to the bed. She’d survive to finish out her prison sentence, plus whatever other punishment she had earned for herself with this latest escapade. But she was banged up and had a bad concussion, so she would be spending the night in the hospital before being transferred back to prison tomorrow. It was well deserved, as far as I was concerned. Darcy also had a concussion, if a mild one, and it was only fair that Denise Seaver had suffered the same fate.

  Darcy would be going home later, though. Dix had invited her to spend the night at his house, so she wouldn’t be alone, but given the presence of Dix’s two daughters there, Darcy had said she thought she’d probably get more rest by herself. Part of it might be that she was still a little uncomfortable with her new-found family, but part of it was probably also that she had a raging headache, and spending the rest of the evening with Abigail and Hannah wasn’t likely to help that. I had suggested she could call Audrey and tell her mother what had happened, but she had demurred. So I had told Dix to do it. I had a feeling he would, too, once we were out of here.

  The Honda had been pretty banged up in its encounter with the truck, but Darcy had her fifty thousand dollars back, so she could afford to buy a new car.

  The truck, of course, barely had a scratch on it, and Rafe had assured José that what there was, would be taken care of.

  After the accident, I had watched him, José, and Dix descend on Denise Seaver’s car. They had hauled her out and dropped her on the ground, none too gently, before Rafe had handcuffed her. That seemed like justice, too. “Keep an eye on her,” he told José, handing José the gun Denise had taken from the DOC guard. “If she moves, shoot her.”

  José gave him a look, but nodded. I didn’t think he’d actually do it, though.

  Dix was standing with the phone to his ear, presumably updating the sheriff on the situation, and I was still stuck to my car.

  “Please tell me you have something that can open these handcuffs,” I told Rafe when he opened my door.

  He looked at them. “I could shoot’em off.”

  “You just gave the gun to José. And anyway, I don’t think that’s a good idea. The bullet might go through the seat and hit Darcy.”

  Rafe nodded. “She all right?”

  “She’s been unconscious since Denise Seaver hit her. It must be fifteen or twenty minutes. I’m getting a little worried.”

  “Your brother’s asked for a couple ambulances,” Rafe said, sorting through the keys on his ring. “Sit still.”

  “Do I have a choice?” But I sat still. And when he unhooked the handcuffs, my hands dropped to my lap like they weighted a ton each. Somehow I managed to grasp a half-empty bottle of formula, and turn to the suitcase. Plugging the baby’s mouth with the bottle stopped the increasingly hysterical screams very nicely.

  Rafe bent down and peered past me. “Small,” he said after a moment.

  I nodded. “I think he was probably born a week or two too early. I’m just happy he’s alive and well.”

  He straightened. “He’s got a good set of lungs on him, anyway.”

  I nodded. Yes, he did.

  “The lab called.”

  For a second I froze, then I turned to look at him. I thought I knew what the results had been, just from his demeanor, but I wanted to be sure.

  “The DNA wasn’t a match.”

  “Not your baby.”

  He shook his head.

  “I’m almost a little disappointed,” I admitted. “I know it’s only been a couple of hours. But he grew on me really fast. I would have been happy to have him.”

  “We’ll have one of our own.” He squatted beside the open car door to put his palm against my stomach. “Everything OK in there?”

  “I think so. She pushed me, and I hit my stomach against the edge of the kitchen counter. She said if I didn’t start bleeding, I was OK, but I should probably get checked out anyway. Just to make sure.”

  Rafe nodded.

  “And so should he.” I indicated the baby, now sucking down formula with a blissful expression on his small and wrinkled face.

  Rafe straightened. “If he’s made it through all this, I think he’s gonna be OK. But he should get looked at.”

  “I don’t even know what you’re doing here,” I admitted. “We were following Denise Seaver, and you just came flying out of nowhere.”

  “We went to the bus depot and looked at the video footage. We saw her get on the bus that runs up Potsdam. Then we tracked down the bus driver. He remembered her. And remembered where she got off.”

  “At the bus stop down the street,” I said.

  Rafe nodded. “José and I peeled outta there. But by the time we got to the house, you and the car were gone. We found the broken window, though. So we figured you’d gone to get the money, and that Doc Seaver had invited herself along for the ride.”

  “That’s pretty much what happened,” I agreed. “They were already in the house when I walked in. She said she’d hurt the baby if I didn’t cooperate, so I did. I thought if she got her money, she’d let me take him. I was pretty sure she didn’t want him slowing her down, you know? I just had to keep us all alive long enough.”

  Rafe nodded. “We drove like hell. And we’d made it all the way down here when we saw the Honda coming around the corner. People don’t usually drive that crazy less’n they’re trying to get away from somebody. And then we saw the Volvo. And figured we’d better stop her.”

  “You did a great job.” I peered across the street, at Dix and José and the prone body on the graveled shoulder. “She’s alive, isn’t she?”

  “If she ain’t, it won’t be my fault,” Rafe said. “I just clipped the back of the car. She prob’ly hit her head, but there’s plenty left of her to serve the rest of her sentence.”

  “That’s good.” The baby finished the bottle, and I picked him up and laid him against my shoulder to pat his back. My hands were starting to feel normal again. “I didn’t want her to be dead. I’d much rather have her alive and suffering.”

  “You and me both,” Rafe said, and moved to the front seat to check on Darcy.

  Then the ambulances came, and loaded up Denise Seaver and Darcy, Baby Arroyo and me. Rafe stayed at the accident scene long enough to talk to the sheriff, before he sent José back to Nashville in the truck. He and Dix took the Volvo to the hospital, and here we all were.

  “Everything all right?” I asked when he walked into the hospital room where I was having the baby monitored. My baby, not Carmen’s. Baby Arroyo was somewhere else. I was in a bed, with a strap around my stomach, and various beeping and blinking instruments all around.

  He nodded. “Doc Seaver has a concussion, but she’ll survive. Darcy has a concussion, but she can go home later. The baby’s in the maternity ward getting checked out and cleaned up. They’re saying he looks good for coming a little early and getting dragged around the way he’s been.”

  “That’s great.”

  “I called Bianca and let her know he’s here. They wanna keep him for a couple days, but she can come down and visit. And they know to release him t
o the Arroyos when he’s ready to go. The paperwork’s all on file at the prison. Carmen signed it all before she died.”

  So at least Bianca and Mrs. Arroyo would get Carmen’s baby, even though they’d lost Carmen. And maybe that was for the best. This way, the little guy could grow up as one of Bianca’s children, without the knowledge that his biological mother was incarcerated.

  “Everything good here?” He looked at the various beeping and blinking monitors and machines.

  “It seems to be. I’m not bleeding. There’s no sign of trauma. The baby’s heartbeat is strong.” In fact, it was fairly echoing between the walls.

  “That’s good,” Rafe said and sat down on the bedside, where he could lean down and put his lips against my stomach. “Hi, baby. It’s your daddy.”

  I put my hand on the back of his head and felt the bristly fuzz there. It felt familiar and comforting.

  We were still sitting like that when the sheriff walked in, with my purse dangling from one hand.

  “Oh.” He stopped just inside the door, looking acutely uncomfortable. I don’t think it was Rafe’s posture, or his cooing at the baby, that did it. More likely, it was my naked stomach sticking into the air. The sheriff is a Southern gentleman from a previous generation. “I can come back.”

  “There’s no need for that,” I said, as Rafe straightened. “They’re just monitoring to make sure the baby’s all right.”

  “And is it?” The sheriff kept his eyes firmly on my face as he approached the bed.

  “It seems to be. No signs of anything bad so far.” I reached for my purse. “Thank you.”

  “No problem. We found it on the floor in the kitchen of Denise Seaver’s house, along with Darcy’s. I’ve already given it to her, and gotten her statement.”

  “She’s awake? Good.”

  “Awake and with a killer headache,” the sheriff confirmed. “How about you tell me what happened?”

  “Sure.” I went through it all, from when I walked out of my own bathroom at home, to when we’d come around the corner of the Damascus Road in time to see José’s truck careen across two lanes of traffic and knock Darcy’s Honda into the ditch, and Denise Seaver along with it. “She tried to kill all three of us,” I added, just to make sure he’d caught that point. “Me, and Darcy, and the baby.”

  “And your baby,” the sheriff said, with a reluctant glance at my stomach. “That’s four counts of attempted murder.”

  “I guess, once she killed the prison guard and left Carmen to bleed out, she didn’t think she had anything to lose. And I probably annoyed her. Besides, it was my fault she went to prison in the first place.”

  The sheriff nodded. “I don’t think I need anything more from you. You’re free to go home whenever they release you.”

  “Thank you.” I was looking forward to that.

  The sheriff turned toward the door, but before he could leave, there was the sound of footsteps in the hallway. The clicking of heels, a little uneven. A second later, my mother appeared in the doorway.

  She looked, without putting too fine a point on it, like hell. Her lipstick was smeared, her hair looked like it hadn’t been combed today, and her shoes didn’t match her skirt. If you knew my mother, you’d know how significant each of those things was. Taken together, I could only assume she had given up on life. She was pale, and her eyes were unfocused.

  “Savannah!”

  The sheriff and Rafe both leapt to grab her, and guided her over to the chair the sheriff had vacated. She dropped into it like standing up was too hard. “Darling!”

  “Hi, Mother,” I said. At least she didn’t seem angry with me anymore. Last time I’d seen her, she’d told me to get out of her house.

  Her eyes dropped to my stomach, and the band there. She squinted to get it into focus, and it must have taken her a few seconds to put two and two together. “Is everything all right?”

  “With me, fine. Darcy has a concussion. So does Denise Seaver. But there are no ill effects from the carbon monoxide poisoning. Not that we’ve discovered. I guess we weren’t locked in the garage for long enough.” Carmen’s baby was the main concern in that regard, with his tiny, underdeveloped lungs. But so far he seemed to have come through the ordeal without any lasting damage.

  Mother’s eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry I kicked you out of the house on Monday.”

  “It’s all right,” I said. “It was probably time for me to go anyway. And I understood that you wanted to be alone.”

  “It’s hard,” Mother said.

  “I know.” Believe me, I knew. But if I could get behind raising Carmen’s baby—not that I would have to now, but I’d been willing—then Mother could deal with the fact that her husband had fathered a child before she knew him. “It happened a long time ago, Mom. And Dad never knew. You can’t blame him.”

  “I can blame Audrey,” Mother said, with a snap of teeth. “She was my best friend all your lives. And she never told me.”

  In justice to her, it couldn’t have been an easy subject to bring up. By the way, Margaret Anne, before you married Robert, I slept with him and got pregnant and had a daughter. Surprise!

  I didn’t think Mother was ready to be reasonable, though. She was still hurt and angry. “Just give it some time,” I said. “Audrey loves you. I’m sure she’ll be there when you’re ready to talk about it. And so will Darcy.”

  Mother nodded.

  “For now, maybe you could just try to drink a little less? It really doesn’t help with the problem, and it just creates another one. Besides, I worry about you. You didn’t drive here, did you?”

  The sheriff looked worried, too. Maybe concerned that he’d have to arrest his ladyfriend for DUI.

  Mother shook her head, and kept shaking it a little too long. “I came with Catherine.”

  “I’ll drive you home,” the sheriff said. “Come on, Margaret.” He gave her a hand up, which amounted to pretty much lifting her out of the chair. “You shouldn’t be here. You need to go home and to bed and sleep it off.”

  “I’m not drunk,” Mother protested, but she let herself be led out.

  Rafe looked at me. I looked back at him. “Sorry about that.”

  His lips twitched. “No problem. Never thought I’d see your mama looking like that.”

  “Once she gets herself back together, you never will again. We should have gotten a picture.”

  “I can run after them,” Rafe offered.

  I shook my head. “That’s not necessary. I’d rather have you here. With me. Us.”

  He sat back down on the side of the bed. “Then that’s where I’ll be.”

  I took his hand, and closed my eyes, and listened to my baby’s steady heartbeat on the monitors, and waited to be released so we could go home.

  * * *

  “HAVE YOU HEARD FROM GRIMALDI?” I asked later, when we were in the Volvo on our way back to Nashville. The sheriff had taken Mother home, Catherine had driven Dix and Darcy, and Denise Seaver and the baby were still in the hospital, the former under guard.

  He shot me a look. “I called her. Figured she’d wanna know what was going on even if it isn’t her case.”

  I nodded. “What about Mendoza?”

  “She said she’d update him. He’s prob’ly on his way down, to make sure Doc Seaver is under lock and key and not likely to get away again.”

  Probably. And so he could tie up any loose ends and make it all official with the sheriff. “I’m sure he’s glad this one’s over. And with no other loss of life.” Other than the guard and Carmen, whose deaths were more than enough.

  Rafe nodded. “It coulda been a lot worse.”

  “I did the best I could,” I said. “I was trying to save the baby. I figured, once she got her money, she wouldn’t have a reason to hurt us. She’d gotten what she wanted.”

  “I guess money wasn’t all she wanted.”

  Guess not. I hadn’t realized that my crime of having her arrested for my sister’s murder loomed
so large in her mind that she wanted me dead for it. Maybe I should have.

  “She’s gone now,” Rafe added, “and she ain’t getting back out again. The next time someone has to go to the hospital, it won’t be Denise Seaver going with her. She prob’ly won’t be working in the clinic no more, either.”

  Probably not. And I couldn’t say I was sorry. “Did Grimaldi say anything about the other case? Devon’s murder and the money?”

  “Just that she’s getting close to making an arrest,” Rafe said. I straightened in the seat—or tried to; it had been a long couple of days, and I was tired—and his lips twitched. “She said if you feel up to spending some time with her tomorrow, she can fill you in.”

  I slumped back down, pouting. “She’s arresting someone right now? Tonight?”

  “She didn’t say that,” Rafe said. “Just that she’s getting closer. Oh, yeah, and she got the subpoena for the webmail account.”

  I straightened again. “Tell me!”

  He chuckled. “You don’t wanna wait until tomorrow?”

  “No! Have you lost your mind?”

  “Then I’ll tell you,” Rafe said, as the car moved north on the interstate. “The email came from Devon Knight’s computer.”

  “So Devon sent the spoofed email changing the wiring instructions. On behalf of Magnolia, do you think? Have her cake—her house—and eat it, too?”

  “That’s what it looks like,” Rafe said.

  “So where’s the money? Where did he tell DeWitts to send it?”

  “She’s got the name of the bank,” Rafe said. “But it’s closed by now. Tammy said she’s going over there when they open in the morning to talk to the manager about whose account it is.”

  “And she wants me to come along?”

  He nodded.

  “I accept.” I resisted the temptation to rub my hands together in anticipation. It would look a bit stupid. But I wanted to be part of finishing this up.