Contract Pending

by Jenna Bennett

  “In that case, I’ll be happy to drive you.” And maybe pick up a few tidbits of information along the way.

  We exchanged few words on the way back to Sweetwater. Tamara spent most of the time on the phone talking to other people while I focused on driving the car. And on listening.

  The first call was to Nashville to report the team arriving in one piece; I guess that one was to her boss. The second was to Sheriff Satterfield to tell him she was on her way to see him.

  “Savannah Martin is driving me,” she added, with a sideways glance at me, “but I’ll probably need a ride back to the crime scene later.”

  Sheriff Satterfield allowed how that would be no problem. It would be no problem for me to drive her back either, for that matter.

  “She tells me you took Rafael Collier in for questioning,” she said next. “Has he admitted anything?”

  I sent her a look. She sent me one back and half turned toward the window. “Well, don’t let him leave. I’ll want a word with him when I get there.”

  The sheriff’s voice quacked, and Tamara rolled her eyes. Her voice stayed polite, though. “No, I don’t really think he did it. I just want to talk to him.”

  The sheriff said something else, and Tamara responded. “Yes, sheriff, I’ve seen his record. In this case, though, I don’t see how he can be involved. The caliber of the bullet they dug out of Ms. McCoy matches the one that killed Marquita Johnson, as well as the one that was fired at Mr. Collier earlier this week. He had a witness at the time, who testifies to the incident. He did not shoot at himself. A ballistics test will confirm that the bullet that was used on Ms. McCoy came from the same gun as the others, but for now, we’re going on the assumption that the same person fired all the shots. And it wasn’t Mr. Collier.”

  This was news to me, and apparently it was news to the sheriff as well, because he quacked again, sounding a little frantic. I turned my attention to driving and waited for the conversation to end.

  “You didn’t tell me that,” I said when Tamara Grimaldi had disconnected the call, and before she could dial again. “That you’ve matched the bullets.”

  She glanced at me, distracted. “Sorry. I’ve had a lot on my mind.”

  “No problem. So the bullet that killed Marquita and the bullet that came at me and Rafe were from the same gun? Probably the same gun that someone used to shoot Yvonne?”

  Tamara nodded. “No fingerprints on any of the bullets, of course. Although we have confirmed that the knife you found in your desk drawer is the same knife that was used to cut up your nightgown. The fiber thread caught in the handle matches.”

  “Good to know.” Or not. “Why do you think he left it there? Or she? Was it Jorge Pena, do you think? Or someone else?”

  “No idea,” Tamara admitted. “It was meant as some sort of warning, probably, but why Jorge would target you, and why he’d want you to know that he did—if he did... I can’t explain it.”

  “Rafe said that Jorge either wanted me to convey the message to Rafe that he was coming, or it was because he got off on the look on my face. I’m sure it was entertaining.”

  Tamara suppressed a smile. “Scared you, did he?”

  “He would have scared you too, if he was there to kill someone you...” I stopped.

  She glanced at me, but didn’t ask me to complete the sentence. I’m not sure I could have. “Did Mr. Collier have a suggestion for why the knife was in your office?”

  “I haven’t mentioned it to him.” We had reached Sweetwater, and were on our way down Oak Street toward the sheriff’s office. “Feel free to ask him when you see him.”

  “You don’t want to wait?”

  “I’m having lunch with my mother and my Aunt Regina,” I said steadily. “We’re talking about the Sweetwater Christmas Tour of Homes. You have my phone number if you need me. If you need a ride anywhere else.”

  I pulled the car up to the steps outside the sheriff’s office. Tamara reached for the handle.

  I snagged the sleeve of her jacket. “You’ll call me, right? If anything happens?”

  “Sure.” She twitched free of my grasp and swung her legs out. “As soon as I know something. And in the meantime, your boyfriend’s safe inside.” She got to her feet.

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” I said, but I don’t think she heard me. If she did, she didn’t respond, just shut the car door. I watched her lope up the stairs on long legs, and let herself in through the door, and then I drove away, white-knuckling the steering wheel the whole way.

  “You’re late, darling,” mother chided when I walked into the café in the middle of lunch. Then she took a closer look at me, and her expression changed. “What happened, Savannah?”

  “My friend Yvonne, the one who works at Beulah’s?” I pulled out a chair and sat down. “She didn’t come to work this morning. Hi, Aunt Regina. Nice to see you. So I drove over to her house to make sure she was all right, and found her on the floor. Someone had shot her.”

  “Oh, dear!” Mother waved for the waitress. “A sherry, please.”

  “I’m afraid we don’t...”

  “White wine.” I managed a gracious smile. “Thank you.”

  She scurried off while I composed myself.

  Truth be told, I wasn’t as upset as I let on, since I’d had a little time to process what had happened and since so far at least, Yvonne was holding on to life, if only by her fingernails. She had been upgraded from critical to stable, and the doctors—along with Tamara Grimaldi—were cautiously optimistic. I, however, was late, and I was brought up to believe that keeping someone waiting is a sin. I knew I needed an excuse, and as it happened, I had one readymade.

  “By the way,” I added, “Bob Satterfield said to tell you he’d call later.”

  Mother flushed. “I hope you didn’t subject him to the kind of third degree you gave me last night, darling.”

  “I had a few other things on my mind.” I accepted the glass of white wine from the waitress and took a healthy swallow. For once, mother didn’t tell me it was unladylike to guzzle.

  “What happened to your friend, Savannah?” Aunt Regina asked in her soft Southern voice. “A robbery?”

  I turned to her. She looks like an older version of my sister Catherine, who takes after our father, Aunt Regina’s sister. They’re both short and dark, with grayish eyes, although Aunt Regina’s hair would be gray now too if she didn’t color it. Dix and I, on the other hand, take after the Georgia Calverts, mother’s family, with our fair hair and blue eyes.

  “I don’t think so. The place wasn’t messed up, and I didn’t notice anything missing. The TV and computer were still there. She was just lying on the floor in a pool of blood.”

  Mother shuddered delicately. “I don’t suppose you feel up to eating, darling, but perhaps you should put something in your stomach with the wine.”

  “That’s a good idea.” I reached for the basket of bread and snagged a roll. She was right, I didn’t have much appetite. But I hadn’t managed to eat anything for breakfast, and the wine on an empty stomach would probably not help the situation.

  “Who did it?” Aunt Regina wanted to know. “The same man who killed Marquita Johnson?”

  I turned to her, but since I’d just taken a bite of roll, and since mother definitely wouldn’t approve of me talking with my mouth full, I couldn’t answer. Mother got in first.

  “Bob told me his deputies have been canvassing for a tall, dark-haired man in his early thirties.”

  Aunt Regina tsked. “That Collier-boy again, I suppose.”

  I swallowed, just as mother opened her mouth to agree. This time I got in first. “Not this time.”

  They both looked at me. “Pardon?”

  “Not this time. This is a guy named Jorge Pena. He’s a couple of inches shorter than Rafe, and not as good-looking. Also very scary.”

  Mother and Aunt Regina exchanged a look.

  “Good-looking?” mother said.

  “How do you know this,
Savannah?” Aunt Regina wanted to know.

  I ignored mother to focus on Aunt Regina. “I met him once. In Nashville. He’s a contract killer.”

  “And you met him?” Mother forgot all about my slip of the tongue in her shock that I’d met a hired assassin. She paled. “Darling, are you sure you shouldn’t move back to Sweetwater, where it’s safe?”

  “Two women my age have been shot here in the past week. I’m not sure how safe that is.”

  There was nothing she could say to that, of course, but she looked unhappy. “What is a hired killer doing, going around shooting young women in Sweetwater? And what did he want with you?”

  I explained that Jorge had been hired to kill Rafe. “I guess he thought I might know where Rafe was.”

  Mom’s eyes narrowed. “And did you?”

  At the time? “Absolutely not,” I said.

  Mother smiled, relieved.

  Chapter 19

  Tamara Grimaldi called just before five, to give me an update on everything.

  “I’d love an update.” I smiled sweetly at mom across the parlor; we were having a pre-dinner drink while we waited for Sheriff Satterfield to pick her up for dinner. “Please tell me you’ve found Jorge Pena and locked him up, so we can all sleep safely in our beds tonight.”

  “No such luck. And I’m not sure he’s who we’re looking for, anyway.”

  “What do you mean?” I heard my voice turning shrill and focused on getting it back down to the low, sweet register that befits a Southern Belle. Breathe, Savannah. “How can he not be who you’re looking for?”

  “Remember those fingerprints we found on the romance novel in your apartment after the break-in?”

  Yes.

  “We found the same prints in Yvonne McCoy’s house.”

  I felt my jaw drop. “Yvonne broke into my apartment?!”

  Tamara’s voice sounded exasperated. “Of course not. They aren’t her prints. They’re someone else’s.”

  “Whose?”

  “Unfortunately, I have no idea. Someone without a criminal record.”

  “So Jorge didn’t break into my apartment.”

  “No.”

  “And Jorge didn’t shoot Yvonne.”

  “Well...” She hesitated. “We don’t know that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Let me make it simple, OK? The same person who shot Marquita Johnson, shot Yvonne McCoy and tried to shoot you and Rafe. Or if not the same person, then at least the same gun. And the same person who tore up your apartment and left the knife in your desk at work, has at some point been in Yvonne McCoy’s house. We have no idea whether that fingerprint was left last night or some other time. We don’t know if this is one person or two. But we do know the person who broke in at your place isn’t Jorge Pena. His fingerprints are on file.”

  “Maybe he has an accomplice,” I suggested. “Someone who broke into my apartment while Jorge was stalking Marquita.”

  “That’s possible,” Tamara admitted. “I’ll look into it. Known associates. Meanwhile, I thought you’d like to know that your boyfriend’s out of jail.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  The denial was automatic. If I’d thought about it, I would have kept my mouth shut. Mother looked at me, her eyebrows raised, and I flushed.

  Tamara chuckled. “I got him out without giving away the fact that he’s informing for the TBI, too. Wendell Craig was adamant about that. If I couldn’t do it, I’d have had to let the sheriff keep him in jail overnight.”

  “That’s good. I guess.” I got up and wandered out into the hallway, away from mother, with an apologetic smile and the phone still stuck to my ear.

  Tamara’s voice turned serious. “Part of me wanted to keep him locked up until we have Jorge Pena in custody. The problem is, Jorge will just bide his time until Rafe gets out, and then it starts all over. It’s a matter of putting off the inevitable.”

  A chill went down my spine. “When you say inevitable...”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t let anything happen to him.”

  “Thank you.” I wasn’t sure I could believe her, or whether she could actually do anything to affect the outcome—and whether anyone could really keep Rafe safe with a contract killer on his tail—but her assurance made me feel marginally better.

  “What are you planning to do tonight? Are you still in Sweetwater?”

  I said I was. “I guess I’ll just stay another night and go back to Nashville tomorrow. Mom and Sheriff Satterfield are going to dinner, so it’s just me. I don’t suppose you want to get together for a bite to eat?”

  “I’m afraid I have plans.”

  “Oh.” She was probably on her way back to Nashville already. “All right, then. Call me if anything happens, OK?”

  Tamara promised she would, and we both hung up.

  “Everything all right, darling?” mother called out from the parlor.

  I walked back there and stuck my head through the door. “Fine, thank you. I think I’ll go to the kitchen and make myself something for dinner. Since you’re going out.”

  “Oh, no, darling.” My mother is too dignified to jump to her feet, but she did get up rather fast. “Don’t do that. Why don’t you come with me and Bob tonight?”

  “To dinner? I don’t think so. I don’t want to intrude on your date.”

  “Don’t be silly, darling. Bob adores you, you know that.”

  I wasn’t so sure. Bob had liked me for as long as he thought I’d end up being his daughter-in-law one day, but now that I’d turned down—or not accepted—Todd’s proposal, I had a feeling he didn’t like me quite as much anymore.

  Mother was insistent, though, and wouldn’t take no for an answer. When Bob arrived at the door, I realized why: Todd was with him.

  By then it was too late to back out, although I tried. “I can’t do this.”

  “Do not embarrass me, Savannah!” mother hissed. “Smile!” She pinched me.

  “Ow!” I moved away, holding my arm.

  “Are you all right?” That was Todd, of course, rushing to grab my elbow.

  “I’m fine, thank you. Um... mosquito.”

  Mother smiled.

  “I’m glad you decided to come,” Todd said softly as he guided me toward the car in mom and Bob Satterfield’s wake. Since I couldn’t exactly say that I was here under duress, I kept my mouth shut. “I’m sorry my proposal upset you the other night. If I had realized...”

  He trailed off.

  “It’s OK. It’s just... I’m not ready.”

  Todd nodded. “I understand that now. And I promise I won’t ask again until you let me know that you are. I guess I never realized how much your marriage to Bradley affected you.”

  I blinked. He’d been married to Jolynn for a couple of years himself, and yet he thought it strange that my failed marriage had affected me? It made me wonder what their marriage had been like. And how shallow it must have been if Todd could go through two years of it, and then through the divorce, without being affected at all. I mean, Bradley and I may not have had the greatest marriage in the world, and in the end I’d been more humiliated than hurt when it ended, but I hadn’t felt nothing.

  I had to fall back on the manners mother—and finishing school in Charleston—had drummed into me, in order to make it through dinner. Todd was unfailingly polite, and so were mother and Bob Satterfield. The only bad moment came when the sheriff mentioned, I’m sure innocently, that he’d had Rafe in his office most of the day. I could see Todd’s mood change.

  “He’s in Sweetwater?” He glanced at me across the table. We were at the Wayside Inn, sharing a table for four.

  “Came down for the funeral yesterday,” his father grunted. “Stayed the night in the Bog.”

  “Oh, dear.” Mother took a dainty bite of her salmon. “Isn’t that place condemned?”

  Bob Satterfield shrugged. “Supposed to be. I guess with the economy, the contractor’s draggin’ his heels. The place is just sittin�
�� there.”

  Todd looked from one to the other of us, ending with his dad. “What was he doing in your office?”

  “Found him at Yvonne McCoy’s house in Damascus this morning,” Bob said. “With Savannah. You heard about that, right?”

  “Yvonne McCoy getting shot? Of course. Everyone’s heard. How is she?”

  “Seems to be doin’ all right. Still unconscious. But the bullet missed anything vital.”

  “That’s good.” Todd turned to me. “What were you doing in her house this morning, Savannah? With Rafe Collier?”

  “I went to Beulah’s for breakfast,” I said, concentrating on keeping my voice even. And it wasn’t even because I was afraid of saying the wrong thing. I was angry, pure and simple. Bad enough that Todd talked to me in that tone of voice, and interrogated me like this, when it was just the two of us; but I didn’t appreciate him doing it in front of my mother and his father. “I asked mother to come along, but she didn’t want to.” And if I mentioned that, at least they’d all know that I hadn’t planned to run into Rafe. “He was there. Yvonne wasn’t. When I drove to her house to make sure she was all right, he followed me.”

  It had been the other way around, technically, but I didn’t think Todd needed the mental picture of me chasing Rafe. He was already upset enough about Rafe chasing me.

  “You didn’t mention that during lunch, darling,” mother said.

  “That I’d run into Rafe? It didn’t seem important.” In light of what had happened to Yvonne, I’d forgotten all about my worry that people had seen me and Rafe together at Beulah’s and that they’d talk and mother and Todd would be upset.

  Todd turned to his dad. “What did you talk to him about?”

  Bob shrugged. “Just stuff. What he’s doin’ here, what he was doin’ in Damascus, what he’s been doin’ with himself since the last time I saw him. How well he knew Marquita Johnson and how well he knows Yvonne McCoy. The detective from Nashville had some questions ‘bout things that had happened up there, as well.”

  “Detective from Nashville?” Todd glanced at me.