“Who else died?” Epiphany wanted to know; her voice a bit clipped, I thought.
“There was Marquita Johnson,” I said. “We went to school with her, but she was a few years older than us. Her name wasn’t Johnson back then, though. She married Cletus Johnson after high school.”
And left him. And went to work for Rafe, taking care of Mrs. Jenkins. And then she got herself murdered.
“Who killed her?” Darlene asked curiously. “Her husband?”
Mary Kelly shook her head. “Cletus is a deputy sheriff.”
That doesn’t necessarily mean he couldn’t have killed his wife, of course. Law enforcement isn’t above committing murder. Cletus hadn’t, though. What he had done, was find his ex-wife’s dead body. I didn’t envy him at all.
“Then, just a week or two later, there was Elspeth Caulfield,” Mary Kelly said. “Remember her? She was also a year or two older than us. Her father was a preacher in some weird fundamentalist congregation over in Damascus. Remember?”
“Didn’t she have some sort of connection to the Colliers, too?” Darlene wanted to know.
“Slept with the son,” Mary Kelly said. “And had a nervous breakdown when he went to prison.”
Well... not exactly. The nervous breakdown came later, after her fundamentalist father forced her to carry their baby to term and then give it away. I couldn’t even imagine the mental toughness required to go through something like that and come out normal. My couple of miscarriages had been tough enough, and they had happened when the baby was barely bigger than a blueberry. Carrying it inside me for nine months, and going through the birth, only to have the baby taken away against my will, would have pushed me off the deep end too, I’m pretty sure.
Not that I’m trying to excuse what Elspeth did. There’s no excuse for multiple murders and attempted murders. I’m just saying I can understand why she didn’t come out of the ordeal entirely sane.
“And then there was Rafael Collier himself,” Mary Kelly said. “Or so we thought at the time. Until we found out it was just some South American hitman that Collier shot.”
True, so far as it went. Jorge Pena had been a South American hitman, or a hitman on assignment from the biggest South American theft gang in the Southeast, whose job had been to eliminate Rafe. Instead, Rafe had shot him. And Wendell Craig with the TBI and Tamara Grimaldi with the Metro Nashville PD had told Sheriff Satterfield that Rafe had been killed. I’d believed it myself, for about eight hours one day. Some of the worst eight hours of my life.
“A hitman?” Rhonda managed, her eyes huge.
Mary Kelly nodded.
“That’s amazing,” Darlene said, patting Rhonda’s hand. “So did he kill all the others, too?”
“No,” I said, before Mary Kelly could. “Elspeth Caulfield shot Marquita, Jorge Pena shot Elspeth, and Rafe shot Jorge. LaDonna seems to have killed herself. And I have no idea who shot Billy Scruggs.” But I’d like to know. “Did any of you know him?”
There was a universal shaking of heads around the table.
“What about you?” I asked Mary Kelly. She was local, after all. And unlike Jan, she didn’t spend her days bringing up kids.
She shrugged. “I’ve seen him around town.”
“Did he have a job?”
“If he did, I don’t know what it was,” Mary Kelly said.
So maybe he was on disability. Rafe had done some damage to him thirteen years ago, and Billy had had issues before then, too, with drinking and drugs. His liver was probably shot.
“Why do you care, Savannah?” Epiphany wanted to know.
“I don’t, really. I guess I’m just curious. Since I found him and all.”
She seemed to accept that, and since Mary Kelly refrained from opening her mouth and telling everyone that I was dating Rafe, the conversation veered off into a different direction. I devoted myself to eating and listening. Darlene and Epiphany talked about teaching on the high school and university level. Charlotte and Jan talked about their husbands and kids. Mary Kelly and Tina put their heads together and whispered about something that they obviously didn’t want the rest of us to hear.
After dinner and dessert—cheesecake; my downfall!—the action moved to the other side of the ballroom, where the dance floor was. The reunion committee had hired a DJ to play all the songs that had been popular the year we graduated, and everyone got busy gyrating.
I gyrated some too, although as the evening wore on, I noticed I was getting tired. That’s the problem with being pregnant. You eat for two, and you sleep like a hibernating bear. And you can’t indulge in things like coffee or Coke to help keep you awake, since the caffeine isn’t good for the baby. And also, it was getting hot inside the ballroom, with all the bodies jumping up and down.
Charlotte looked like she was having a ball. I guess maybe, with two small kids at home, she didn’t get out much these days. Epiphany danced, looking anything but a staid economics professor. And when the slow songs started, Darlene brought Rhonda onto the dance floor and wrapped her arms around her. A few people gave them a wide berth and some raised eyebrows, but Darlene and Rhonda stayed above the whispering, and eventually, other more traditional couples joined in, as well.
I stayed out of it. When you have a special someone, and you’re not planning to cheat, it’s no fun slow-dancing with anyone else.
Charlotte had disappeared, God knows where, and so had Tina. Maybe they were together, dishing the dirt on someone or other. Maybe they were talking about me.
Mary Kelly was on the dance floor, nestled against some guy’s chest. She had lost the red jacket somewhere along the way, and was wearing a skimpy tanktop underneath, semi-transparent and lacy. His hand kept stroking up and down her arm from shoulder to elbow and back.
Jan was on the phone. It was probably time to put the little ones to bed, so maybe she needed to say good night.
I missed Rafe. This just wasn’t any fun without him. When I’d first RSVPed, I’d been looking forward to seeing Charlotte again, and to walking into my reunion on Rafe’s arm. I’d even gone so far as to imagine him in a tuxedo—not that anyone else was wearing one. But I’d never seen him in a tuxedo, and I wanted to.
But Rafe didn’t want to be here, and now Charlotte had abandoned me, too.
All I wanted to do was go home and to bed. I had nothing in common with these people anymore. I didn’t even recognize most of them. Coming back here was like trying to put on a dress I’d outgrown. The experience just didn’t fit right.
I glanced at my watch.
If I left now, I could be back in Nashville by ten. Maybe before, if Mother was out with the sheriff again, and I didn’t have to go into too many explanations when I picked up my stuff from the mansion.
I pushed to my feet and made my way along the edge of the dance floor, nodding and smiling to the people I passed. It took a few minutes, but eventually I gained the door and made it out into the hallway of the hotel.
Things were a little better out there. Not so crowded, not so hot. I stopped to take a deep breath before heading for the lobby and the doors to the parking lot.
“Are you OK, Savannah?” a voice on my right asked.
I looked over and recognized... someone. One of the women on the reunion planning committee. She’d gotten up to speak earlier, and had mentioned her name then, but I couldn’t remember it anymore. Julie? Judy? June?
I dredged up a smile. “Yes, thank you. I’m fine. Great event. I just need some air.”
She nodded and went back to her conversation with... someone else. I set off down the hallway toward the lobby, trying to look like I was just out for a leisurely stroll—not trying to run away; no ma’am—instead of making my escape.
Old high school friends became fewer and farther between the closer I got to the lobby. I made my way through the sliding doors to the outside with a giddy sense of relief. Free at last!
It was actually cooler inside than out here, thanks to the air conditioning in the b
allroom. But the unprocessed air was sweeter. I breathed deeply as I made my way across the dark parking lot toward the Volvo.
Most people had been here before me, so the lot had been pretty full when I drove in earlier. I’d ended up at the end of a row, half hidden under a weeping willow. There’d been a small hybrid parked on one side of me—it was still there—and in the time that I’d been inside, a big pickup truck with beefy tires had squeezed into the last space on the other side, between the Volvo and the tree trunk.
The space wasn’t really adequate for it, and I had to sidle sideways to reach my door. Good thing I wasn’t any more pregnant. With a stomach, I wouldn’t have had a hope of getting through. As it was, I could feel the metal of the truck’s passenger door brushing against my butt as I stopped in front of my own door and fished in my purse for the key. Hopefully the truck wasn’t dirty, or I’d end up with a smear of mud across the rear of my new purple dress.
The car door unlocked and I pulled it open as far as it would go before twisting my body into an S-shape to fit through the small space. If I shoved a hip in, and then bent at the knees...
While doing all that, I glared at the truck with enough venom that it surprised me how the paint didn’t simply blister off. Stupid idiot. How did he expect me to get into my car if he only left me a foot of space?
Stomach first didn’t work, and I withdrew and tried again, with my butt to my own car this time, facing the truck. And that’s when I realized that the idiot seemed to be inside.
At least I was fairly sure I could see a profile inside, outlined against the far window. The driver’s seat was leaned back a bit, but there was a dark form sitting in it, wasn’t there?
Oops.
He wasn’t looking at me, though. Maybe he hadn’t noticed me being here, hard as that was to imagine, with my twisting and turning. I’d even knocked the edge of my door against the side of his. And he still hadn’t acknowledged me.
A polite person would have rolled down the window and apologized. Maybe even offered to move his car to make it easier for me to get inside my own.
So maybe he was asleep? Too much to drink at the reunion, or something?
Or—ugh—there was a spray of some sort of liquid on the inside of the front window. Maybe he was out here having a romantic encounter with Mary Thumb and her four sisters.
Gross.
I thought about pretending I hadn’t seen him. But if he was here and could move the truck, it would make my life a lot easier. So I rapped on the window.
Nothing happened. The shadow in the driver’s seat didn’t move, not even to turn to look at me. Or at least the protrusion I thought was a nose didn’t change position.
I rapped again. Nothing happened.
I could go around the truck, I supposed, and knock on the driver’s side window. Just in case he was asleep or something. But that’s one of the things they warn women about in parking lots. To stay away from cars where the driver might be in a position to pull you inside the vehicle.
I fumbled through my purse for my tiny lipstick cylinders. One was a Mauve Heather #56, my signature color. The other two were—respectively—a tiny, serrated knife, and a tiny pump of pepper spray.
I’d already had occasion to use the pepper spray a few times. In fact, this was a new canister, purchased just last month to make sure I had enough liquid left to incapacitate someone if I had to. I wouldn’t want to run out of pepper in the middle of dousing a bad guy. I clutched it in a sweaty hand as I made my way around the back of the truck and over to the driver’s side.
It was darker over here, farther below the tree, and I had to push my way through the droopy fronds of the willow. The ground felt slippery under my feet, wet. Which was ridiculous, because we hadn’t had rain in a week.
Sap from the tree, maybe?
Or bird droppings? Wouldn’t those be lovely to clean off my sandals?
I lifted my hand to knock on the window, but stopped with my knuckles an inch from the glass. The inside of the window was spattered with liquid on this side too, just like the front windshield. But with the lights from the hotel shining through the car from the other side, I could see that the spatters weren’t clear, like water, or even whitish, like... well, like that bodily fluid I had surmised.
They were red.
Like blood.
My hand shook as I reached for the door handle. I held the pepper spray at the ready, but I no longer thought I would need it.
Chapter Seven
The police arrived in five minutes flat.
The Columbia police, not Sheriff Satterfield. He’s the Maury County sheriff, but Columbia is a city—a small one—and has a chief of police and a force of its own. When I called 911 to report the murder, the call was routed to the Columbia PD.
This was after I had lost my dinner and dessert on the ground under the weeping willow. That was the first thing I did after opening the door of the truck and getting my first look at the body.
To say he’d been stabbed was an understatement. He’d been hacked to pieces: his whole chest just a mass of blood and shreds of fabric. And that’s as much as I saw before my last meal made a reappearance and I had to turn away so I wouldn’t contaminate the crime scene any more than necessary. Vomiting under the tree was bad enough. Vomiting onto the body would have been unforgiveable.
Once my stomach was empty, I staggered away and pulled out my cell phone. The 911 operator tried to get me to stay on the line with her, but I cut her off mid-sentence by hanging up. I wasn’t going anywhere, but I wanted to make another phone call before the police got there.
I needed moral support.
I wanted Rafe, but of course I couldn’t call him. He’d come to Sweetwater if he thought I needed him, and that would put him within reach of Sheriff Satterfield, who’d probably slap him in lockup while he asked him about Billy Scruggs’s murder.
Instead, I called my brother. “Are you alone?” I asked when he picked up.
“Nice to hear from you, too,” Dix answered. “No, as a matter of fact.”
“Is Tamara Grimaldi still there?”
He sounded affronted. “Of course not. You think I’d have her spend the night? With the girls here?”
Probably not, now that I had time to consider it. “She went home?”
“Yes,” Dix said.
“Damn. I mean...”
His voice changed. “What’s wrong?”
I took a deep breath. “I found another body.”
“You... what?”
“Found another dead body. In the parking lot outside the hotel. In the car next to mine. I thought maybe she was still there, so she could tell me what to do.”
“Sorry,” Dix said.
“What about you? You’re a lawyer.”
“You don’t need a lawyer,” Dix said. “Having a lawyer at this point will make you look guilty.”
And then he hesitated. “You’re not, right?”
“Of course not!” I didn’t even know who the victim was; why would I want to kill him?
“Of course.” Dix’s voice was dry, as if he didn’t quite believe me. “If they decide to charge you, we’ll talk. Although if they do, you’re looking at being prosecuted by the Maury County District Attorney, and you know who that is.”
I did. Or at least I knew who the assistant D.A. was.
Todd Satterfield. Who would probably cut off his right hand before he prosecuted me for murder.
Unless my association with Rafe had negated that automatic immunity.
“Have you called Collier?” Dix asked, reading my mind again.
I shook my head, even though he couldn’t see me. “If I call, he’ll come running and get himself in trouble. But I had to call someone.”
“Lucky me,” Dix said dryly. “Don’t worry about it, Savannah. I doubt they’ll try to make anything of this. Just tell them what you did.”
“I didn’t do anything!”
“You found the body. Just tell them what happen
ed. And if you need me, call back. But I’m alone with the girls. I can’t leave unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
Of course not. I squared my shoulders as a black and white police car flashing blue lights took the turn into the parking lot on two wheels. “They’re here. I’ll call you if I need you, OK?”
“Good luck,” Dix said, and hung up.
I dropped the phone in my pocket and turned to face the music.
The first responders were two uniformed police officers in a squad car. They introduced themselves as Officer Vasquez and Officer Nolan. Nolan was male: tall, skinny, and hawklike, with an oversized nose and a small head on a long neck. Vasquez was female: short, dark, and gently rounded. They looked at the truck, determined that there was indeed a body inside, one that had been violently murdered, and then they called in homicide and the paramedics, or the morgue van or however things were done down here.
That done, Nolan began to string yellow crime scene tape around the truck, while Vasquez came back to me. “Ms. Martin?”
I looked up from where I was sitting, on the ground with my head between my knees. Not the most ladylike position, but it helped with the nausea and dizziness. “Yes?”
She squatted. “You OK?”
Not really. “I’m pregnant. Seeing that—” I gestured to the truck, “upset my stomach. I threw up. Under the tree.”
“We noticed that someone did.” Her expression didn’t change. Maybe I wasn’t the first witness to have tossed her cookies at a crime scene.
And I had felt so superior to Charlotte this afternoon, too!
“Sorry,” I said.
Vasquez shook her head, so the dark ponytail bounced. “I don’t blame you. It’s ugly. Any idea what happened?”
“Someone carved him up,” I said, and swallowed the bile that threatened to rise in my throat.
“Beyond that. Did you see anyone when you came out here?”
Had I?
“I didn’t notice anyone. I didn’t notice him, until a minute or two after I got here. He practically parked me in. I was trying to squeeze into my car when I happened to look over and saw that there was someone in the truck. When he didn’t respond when I knocked on the window, I walked around to the other side for a better look. And that’s when I saw the blood.”
Past Due Page 7