I also couldn’t quite admit that as I was standing here watching him, I wanted to do it again.
As if the thought had somehow communicated itself through the window and down, he turned and looked up. I stepped back, quickly, my cheeks hot. I wasn’t sure whether he’d seen me or not, and I didn’t hang around to find out. I turned my back on the window and went about the business of packing up the rest of my things.
Chapter Eight
I arrived in Sweetwater in the middle of the afternoon. After lunch, but well before dinner.
Saying goodbye to Rafe and Mrs. Jenkins hadn’t taken long. Mrs. J was thrilled to have her ‘boy’ back, and couldn’t have cared less whether I was staying or going. And Rafe didn’t look like he cared much, either. If he’d seen me gazing at him earlier, he didn’t mention it. “Everything go OK with Tammy?” he asked when I came downstairs, carrying my suitcase.
I nodded. “Fine. She doesn’t know much yet. It’s too soon.”
“D’you tell her I’m back?”
I kept my expression neutral. “She knew already.”
“How?”
“She realized she interrupted something this morning. She knew that my date with Todd hadn’t happened, and by process of elimination, she decided you had to be back in town.”
His lips quirked. “No kidding?”
“No. That’s how she knew.”
“You were supposed to get together with Satterfield yesterday?” He sounded pleased. Rafe doesn’t like Todd any better than Todd likes him.
I smiled sweetly. “I’ll make it up to him tonight.”
If I’d hoped for some kind of reaction, I didn’t get one. “You headed to Sweetwater from here?” His voice was perfectly level and perfectly pleasant.
“Detective Grimaldi wants to keep Officer Slater in my apartment for one more night. She thinks that now that you’re home, whoever broke in will leave me alone and concentrate on you instead, but she wants to make sure of it.”
He nodded. “I’ll keep an eye out.”
“I’ll be back in a day or two. As soon as the detective tells me I can move back into my place.”
“I’ll be here.” He turned away. I took it for what it was, a dismissal. Carrying my suitcase, I walked out the door, got into the car, and drove away. Without a kiss, without a goodbye, without anything. Almost like nothing had happened.
It was two o’clock in the afternoon by the time I got to Sweetwater, which is located about an hour south of Nashville. I would have been there earlier, but I stopped at the office on my way out of town, to make sure nothing was going on that I needed to deal with—Tim commented on the blush in my cheeks—and then I stopped again, at Beulah’s Meat’n Three outside Sweetwater, for lunch.
It was just a month and a half since I’d been at Beulah’s, and had realized that an old schoolmate worked there. Yvonne McCoy was two years older than me, the same age as Dix—whom she’d always had a soft spot for—and she was one of Rafe’s old conquests. Or vice versa. The way she’d explained it to me—and he hadn’t contradicted her version—was that they’d been bored and curious one day, and had decided to have sex for something to do. Yvonne had enjoyed the experience and would have been happy to do it again, but Rafe hadn’t offered, so that had been it.
Anyway, she wasn’t ‘our’ sort of people, so Yvonne wasn’t someone I’d known well growing up. She wasn’t from Sweetwater originally—Columbia High is huge, and had students from several different small towns in Maury County—and because she was two years older and hung out with a much rougher crowd than I and my best friend Charlotte, I’d never really spoken to her until that time a month and a half ago when we’d bonded in our mutual dislike of Elspeth Caulfield.
I was annoyed with Elspeth because she wouldn’t tell me what had happened between her and Rafe back in high school. Yvonne was annoyed with her on general grounds, because Elspeth, who was a fundamentalist preacher’s daughter and the kind of girl who talked about being ‘ruined,’ disapproved of Yvonne’s loosy-goosy lifestyle. She’s been married and divorced a couple of times, and she’s still a year shy of thirty.
She’s nice, though, in her brash way. I was happy to see that she was working when I walked through the door to Beulah’s.
She greeted me with a big smile. “Hiya, Savannah! Whatcha doing down this way? Slumming?”
“Coming down to spend the night with my mother and hopefully have dinner with Todd Satterfield.” I slid into a booth by the back wall, under a picture of a mule in a flowered bonnet. Columbia is the self-acclaimed Mule Capital of the world. We have had Mule Days every year since 1840, a huge festival that brings more than two hundred thousand people into the area.
“Oh-ho!” Yvonne grinned. “Anything I should know about? Wedding bells?”
She gyrated her eyebrows, kind of like Groucho Marx. Apparently everyone in Sweetwater knew what was going on. It’s one of the curses of growing up in a small town: everyone knows your business, and everyone’s watching your every move. Especially when you’re Margaret Anne Martin’s perfect younger daughter. There was probably a bet going on when Todd would pop the question. I wondered whether there was one going on what my answer would be, or whether everyone just assumed I’d say yes.
I shook my head. “Not yet. He’s hinted, but he hasn’t come right out and proposed.”
“Think he will? Tonight?” She pushed a hank of obscenely red hair behind her ear. It had been a natural copper in high school; now it was more like merlot, the texture of straw.
God, I hope not. The words trembled on the tip of my tongue. I knew the proposal was coming, but I hoped Todd would put it off a little longer. I didn’t want to disappoint him, but I wasn’t ready to say yes, either.
My marriage to Bradley had been a confidence-shattering experience, both while I was living through it and while it dissolved, and I was afraid to try again. If I hadn’t been able to satisfy one husband, what made me think I could satisfy another? And especially someone like Todd, who already had his own failed marriage to look back on? He may have married Jolynn because she reminded him of me, but obviously she hadn’t measured up. I wasn’t sure I’d measure up either. I was pretty sure the Savannah in Todd’s mind had only a nodding acquaintance with the Savannah who had looked at me from the bathroom mirror in Mrs. Jenkins’s house this morning, and living up to someone else’s expectations is a tough job.
“What’re you having?” Yvonne asked when I didn’t answer. I yanked my mind back to the present.
“Oh. Sweet tea and a Cobb salad. Thank you.”
“You bet.” Yvonne sashayed off to put in my order. Two minutes later she was back, carrying a tall glass of iced tea. “Did you get that thing figured out last month?” Lila Vaughn’s murder. I’d been looking into it last time I was in Beulah’s. “They didn’t arrest Rafe, did they?”
I shook my head. “It turned out to be someone else. Not that I ever really thought it was him.”
“Course not. How is he?”
“Fine.” I couldn’t help the blush that crept up into my cheeks. I’d probably blush every time someone said Rafe’s name for the next week at least.
“Oh-ho!” Yvonne said again, and nudged me with her hip. “What’s going on, hon? Something I should know about?”
“No. Nothing.” Definitely not. I didn’t want anyone in Sweetwater to know what had happened this morning. Or almost happened. If one person knew, it was just a matter of time before word got around, and then I’d be unable to show my face in Sweetwater ever again. “I saw him for a minute this morning. When I had to bring his grandmother to the police station to talk about Marquita Johnson. I suppose you’ve heard?”
Yvonne nodded, snapping her bubblegum. “Bless her heart.”
“Did you know Marquita?”
“Oh, sure.” She leaned against the edge of the table. “We went to school together. Hung out some. Not lately, though. She married Cletus and left Cletus and then she moved to Nashville to work for R
afe. I ain’t seen her in a while.”
“She didn’t come in while she was in town?”
Yvonne shook her head. “I didn’t know she was here till this morning. Suddenly everyone’s talking about the other body in the Bog.”
The first body in the Bog had been Rafe’s mother. LaDonna Collier had died from a drug overdose sometime in July. No one was exactly sure when, since it had taken a week or more before anyone found her, and by then it was more difficult to determine time of death. Sheriff Satterfield had investigated the situation as a homicide for a while, mostly because Todd wanted Rafe to be guilty. But there had been no evidence of anything criminal—and certainly no evidence that Rafe was involved—so eventually the sheriff had had to close the case.
Now I started wondering, though, as Yvonne took in my distracted expression and wandered away to check on my salad.
Two dead bodies found in the Bog within three months of each other? That was quite a coincidence. Was it possible that the sheriff’s suspicions were right, and LaDonna’s death hadn’t been accidental? Or self-administered? Had someone killed her, and gotten away with it, and now that same person had killed Marquita?
Not Rafe, I told myself. Rafe had been in Memphis when LaDonna died, and he’d been in Memphis again now. Five hours away. Of course, I had no way of knowing that positively, but I knew he hadn’t killed his mother. I’d seen his face when I blurted out what Sheriff Satterfield was thinking. That icy menace in his eyes, on top of my knowledge that he’d spent two years in prison for almost killing the man who had beaten LaDonna black and blue twelve years ago, had removed any lingering doubts I may have had. And he had been in Memphis last week. Detective Grimaldi had said so.
My Cobb salad came, and Yvonne left me alone to eat it and to think. She didn’t talk to me again. Not until it was time for me to go. “Say hi to Rafe,” she told me then, as I was taking my credit card back at the cash register. I glanced around, guiltily, worried that someone I knew was nearby and had heard. She grinned, enjoying my discomfiture, and added, “Tell him if he’s ever down this way to look me up. I’m between husbands.”
“I’ll do that,” I said. When hell froze over.
“Here. Take my phone number.” She scribbled it on the back of my receipt for lunch. “Tell him...”
“To call you. I will.” I tucked the receipt into my pocket. Where, hopefully, I’d forget about it by the time I sent the skirt to the cleaners, and by the time I got it back, the ink would have run and the number would be illegible.
“Hey.” She shrugged, grinning. “If you don’t want him, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t throw my hat in. You don’t want him, right?”
“Of course not.”
“So, no problem.”
I smiled back. “None at all. I’ll make sure he gets it.” When pigs fly.
Yes, I was in fact aware of the total incongruity of my feelings. As I got into the Volvo and drove out of Beulah’s parking lot toward the Martin mansion, I tried to justify the discrepancy to myself, but without much success.
The thing is, for as long as Rafe had been gone, I had been able to tell myself that I didn’t really miss him, that I wasn’t worried about him, that I just didn’t want anything to happen to him because I’m a nice person and I don’t want bad things to happen to people I know. That it wasn’t him, specifically, I was worried about.
All of which went out the window when I saw him.
My reaction had, frankly, scared me a little. That overwhelming relief that he was back, that he was safe, that nothing had happened to him.
The sight of him, sitting there on the edge of the bed, had been like a punch to the stomach, leaving me breathless and shaking.
And then that kiss...
I had kissed him. Granted, it hadn’t taken him long to get with the program, but in that first instance, I had kissed him. And surprised him. As well as myself. I’d never kissed him before. He had kissed me a few times; once when I’d responded, once when I hadn’t. But this was the first time I had initiated the kiss.
The Savannah who had launched herself at him this morning was a far cry from the prim and proper Southern Belle who had been afraid of standing too close to him just two months ago.
And I did want him. For as long as he was the one initiating the contact, the one kissing me, I could tell myself that I didn’t, that I didn’t enjoy his kisses, or enjoy being close to him, but after this morning, I hadn’t a leg to stand on. If the phone hadn’t interrupted us, I wouldn’t have lifted a finger to stop things from going much, much farther.
But the thing is, I didn’t want to want him. Wanting him was scary. And would surely end in misery. He wasn’t someone I could have a relationship with. I couldn’t marry him. Couldn’t have his children. Couldn’t even bring him to Christmas dinner at my mother’s house, unless I wanted to make my entire family—and him—uncomfortable.
And I didn’t.
Besides, he wasn’t the settling-down kind, anyway. So even if I were willing to go out on a limb and get involved with him—and this morning, that had definitely been part of what I wanted—he wouldn’t stick around. He might give me a few weeks, or even a few months, but marriage and children weren’t options for him either. Not judging by his lifestyle so far. He might like me, but he didn’t like me enough for that.
So I should just do everyone a favor and leave him alone. No matter how difficult it would be, or how much I just wanted to grab him and hold on. I should give him Yvonne’s phone number and tell him to call her, and then I should sit back and wait for Todd’s proposal.
Or precipitate it. There are things a woman can say to make a man want to propose. I’d gotten a thorough grounding in all the tricks during that year in finishing school. Maybe if I was engaged to Todd, my thoughts wouldn’t constantly turn back to Rafe, to the feel of his mouth on mine, and his hands in my hair, and his body...
When I pulled the car to a stop at the bottom of the steps outside my childhood home, I had to keep the engine—and the air conditioning—running for a few minutes while I waited for the color in my cheeks to calm down and my breathing to return to normal. If I walked in looking like I’d been having pornographic daydreams while driving, Mother would be sure to notice. I forced my mind onto innocuous subjects and waited until I could get out of the Volvo and climb the steps without setting off any alarms.
The Martin mansion is a large antebellum structure built in 1839, back in the days when the Martins grew tobacco and cotton and owned slaves. Rafe once compared it to a mausoleum, and I guess there is a sort of resemblance. It’s big and red, with two-story white pillars out front.
I didn’t bother knocking, just pushed the door open and walked in. This was, after all, my childhood home. “Hello? Mother?”
There was a scuffling sound from the direction of the kitchen, and then my mother’s face appeared in the doorway, topped by her usual halo of perfectly tinted champagne-colored hair. “Savannah? Darling!”
The rest of her looked just as pulled together and amazing as she came down the hallway toward me, her high heels clicking a rapid rhythm against the hundred and seventy year old wood floors. As usual, she was dressed in her version of hang-out-at-home casual wear: elegant slacks and a loose silk shirt. They were covered with an old-fashioned 1950s style apron, green and white check with a bib.
The apron was covered with flour, so I leaned in from the side to peck her cheek. “What are you doing?”
She made a moue. “Didn’t you hear, darling? Poor Deputy Johnson’s wife died. I’m making a casserole.”
Of course. When someone dies, you have to drop off a casserole. Even if the deceased has been murdered, and was separated from the spouse receiving the food. And who might even be a suspect. Usually, the police take a close look at the husband or wife when someone is killed. I wondered if Cletus would be exempt, by virtue of being a deputy, or whether Sheriff Satterfield would investigate him.
And then I wondered if he might b
e involved. They were separated, so obviously there had been some kind of animosity there. He had custody of the children, I knew, since he had the steady job and the income. Detective Grimaldi had told me they were fighting over visitation rights. But what if Marquita had filed some kind of motion to take them back? She had a steady job now, and God knew there was plenty of room in Mrs. Jenkins’s house for couple kids. If something like that was going on, it might have given Cletus reason to want to get rid of her.
It was pure speculation, of course, but it might be worth looking into. I made a mental note to mention it to Bob Satterfield the next time I saw him. Or maybe Tamara Grimaldi would be a better recipient for this particular brainstorm.
“What are you doing here, darling?” Mother had grabbed me by the arm and was towing me toward the kitchen. Now both our sets of heels were clicking on the hardwoods.
“Didn’t Dix tell you? My apartment was broken into. I’ve spent a few nights at a friend’s house, but this morning her grandson came to stay with her, and I decided to leave.”
Mother nodded. “Dix called last night. As did Todd. He was terribly worried, poor boy.”
“I’m sorry. We were supposed to have dinner, and I forgot.”
“Oh, dear.” Mother clicked her tongue disapprovingly. I’m not supposed to forget my manners, and obviously she didn’t think having my apartment broken into was reason enough for the lapse.
[Cutthroat Business 01.0 - 03.0] Boxed Set Page 63