“No,” Rafe said, and now his voice had a hint of... something. Warning, maybe? “I didn’t have another woman in my bed while my girlfriend was outta town, Sheriff.”
Bob Satterfield had the decency to look guilty. He didn’t apologize, though, just focused on the papers on his desk and shuffled them. I reached out and gave Rafe’s hand a squeeze. He glanced at me, but didn’t smile, and I could see anger simmering in his eyes.
And small wonder. Whatever the history between them, and Sheriff Satterfield’s first inclination to blame Rafe for anything that went wrong in town, Rafe was now a fellow law enforcement professional, and for the sheriff to treat him like a common criminal was beyond rude and well into insolent.
“Can we go?” I asked, and didn’t bother to sound sweet or conciliatory. I was upset and disappointed, and I didn’t mind if the sheriff knew it.
He looked up at me, and then looked at Rafe. “For now. But don’t leave town.”
“What do you mean, don’t leave town? We can’t keep staying here!” One night in the mansion had been more than enough. I had no desire to subject Rafe to my mother, or her to him, any longer.
“Sorry, darlin’,” the sheriff said, sounding not sorry at all, “but until I come up with another suspect, your boyfriend ain’t leaving Sweetwater.”
“But he wasn’t even here when Billy Scruggs was shot!”
“He can’t prove that, now can he, darlin’?”
“He shouldn’t have to prove it! He’s a TBI agent. Law enforcement, same as you. If you needed help with your investigation, he’s who would come and help you!”
“No offense, darlin’,” the sheriff said, “but just cause a man’s in law enforcement, don’t mean he’s a better man than any other.”
“Of course not. I don’t mean that. Cops commit murder, too.” I paused for just a second to let that sink in before I added, “But you have no evidence that he’s involved. And the fact that he and Billy Scruggs got into a fight more than a dozen years ago doesn’t really mean anything.”
“It was a little more than just a fight, darlin’.”
“I’m sure Billy must have fought with other people since then. Why aren’t you talking to them?”
“We are,” Sheriff Satterfield said. “Cletus is out there interviewing people right now.”
I sat back on my chair with a sniff. “Fine. But you have to break the news to my mother, Sheriff. Because she won’t be pleased to find out she’s not getting rid of us yet. And I don’t want her to think it’s my idea to stick around.”
The sheriff contemplated me for a second. “I’ll make sure she knows,” he said eventually.
“Thank you.” That was one thing off my mind, anyway. I got to my feet. “You know where to find us if you need us again.”
The sheriff shifted his attention from me to Rafe. “You carrying, son?”
Rafe pressed his lips together, but he nodded.
“Mind if I take a look?”
Rafe minded, very obviously, but he pulled his gun out of the holster and handed it across the desk without a word. The sheriff turned it over in his hands. Checked whether it was loaded, and even lifted it to his nose to smell it.
“That the kind of gun that was used to shoot Billy?”
The sheriff hesitated, but shook his head. He handed the gun back across the desk. “Gimme your phone number. In case I need to talk to you again.” He armed himself with a pen.
Rafe rattled off the digits and the sheriff wrote them down. “Don’t go too far, now.”
“We wouldn’t dream of it,” I said, and headed out with my head held high.
Once outside the building, however, I turned to Rafe. “How dare he talk to you like that?”
He scowled, and as it turned out, it wasn’t because the sheriff had offended him. “I don’t need you running interference for me, darlin’. I can fight my own battles.”
I blinked. “Why are you yelling at me? I wasn’t the one who treated you like a criminal.”
“I’m used to being treated like a criminal. Especially here.” He looked around, taking in the sheriff’s office, Sweetwater, and probably my mother, before turning back to me. “What I ain’t used to, is my girlfriend acting like I can’t take care of myself!”
“It’s not that I don’t think you can take care of yourself.” How could I possibly doubt that he could take care of himself? He took care of himself just fine, and of me too, most of the time.
He put his hands on his hips. “Yeah?”
“Of course. I’m sure you’ve been through a lot more police interviews than I have. From both sides.”
His lips quirked at that.
“He just made me angry. He has no reason to suspect you. You weren’t even here.”
“He has to finger somebody,” Rafe said.
“It doesn’t have to be you!”
He shrugged. “Might as well be me. I have history with Billy.”
“Ancient history. If you were going to kill Billy Scruggs, surely you would have come back and done it before now.”
“Dunno about that. Now’d be a good time. I’m in Nashville. You’re here. Everybody knows you’re here alone.”
“I’m not alone. You’re here, too.”
“Only because Ethan Underwood got killed.”
Well, sure. But— “If you’d shot Billy Scruggs, you wouldn’t have come down even if someone else got killed.” He would have made sure to stay far, far away.
“Not like I had a choice,” Rafe said. “Your brother called and said I had to drive down. Not like I coulda said no.”
I tilted my head and contemplated him. “Are you telling me you had something to do with shooting Billy Scruggs?”
“Course not. But if I’d shot him, I’d still have come down when your brother called.”
“But you didn’t do it.”
“No, darlin’. I was in Nashville Friday night. I didn’t know he was dead until you called.”
I nodded. “So now what?”
“Now we go pick up your car,” Rafe said.
I guess we may as well. We wouldn’t be going home, but at least the car could be parked outside the mansion instead of outside the Wellington Hotel. That would make it easier to get in and make tracks once the sheriff gave us leave to get outta Dodge.
Chapter Eleven
The car was just where I’d parked it, and by now, the police cordon was gone, and so was Ethan’s truck. The space under the weeping willow was empty, but just in case, someone had situated a couple of orange cones there to prevent anyone from actually parking in the space. I guess maybe the police thought there was a chance they’d have to come back, and it was best not to have the crime scene cluttered up with extra tire tracks and unrelated cigarette butts.
Rafe looked at it, hands on his hips, before he turned to look at me. “Was the truck here when you parked?”
I swallowed. There were still a few spatters of blood on the blacktop—it hadn’t rained since last night—and (not that I’d be so uncouth as to mention it) evidence of my reaction to the body under the tree. “No.” My voice was froggy, and I had to clear my throat. “There was a car on the other side of the Volvo,” where the bike was parked now, “but no one on this side.”
“So he got here late.”
“After I did, anyway.” And a lot of the others had been there when I arrived. “I guess he was one of the later arrivals.”
“Did you see him? Inside?”
I shook my head. Or if I had, I hadn’t recognized him. “Although Charlotte said that Mary Kelly was talking to the police because she’d danced with him. Remember? So he must have made it inside at some point. I probably just didn’t notice him.”
Rafe nodded again.
“I don’t remember having anything to do with him in high school. I stuck with Charlotte and Dix and Todd, mostly. Didn’t make many friends among the kids from other parts of the county.”
“Or even those of us from Sweetwater who weren’
t up to your mama’s standards.”
“Sorry.” I don’t think I imagined the edge in his voice.
We stood in silence a few seconds.
“Anyway,” I said, “I’m not sure I’d remember him well enough to recognize him if did see him. I didn’t know who he was until Officer Vasquez told me who the car was registered to.”
Rafe nodded.
“We can go now,” I added, “if you’re ready.”
He glanced at the orange cones again. “We may as well. Ain’t nothing to see here.”
“Did you think there would be something to see?”
“You never know.” And he still seemed reluctant to leave.
I hesitated, angling my body toward him. “How well did you know Ethan, anyway?”
This time it was me he gave a quick glance. “Well enough to mind that somebody carved him to ribbons.”
“I can drive the car home,” I offered, “back to the mansion, while you go introduce yourself to the Columbia PD. If you want to get involved.”
“No,” Rafe said, although he didn’t sound entirely sure. “I don’t think they’re gonna be any happier than Sheriff Satterfield that I’m here. They’re happy to see us when they call us for help, but they don’t like us butting into their cases when they don’t.”
I nodded. “Ready, then?”
“Go ahead. I’ll follow you.”
But he looked back at the orange cones one more time, as if maybe there was something there he’d missed.
“I’ll see you back at the mansion.” I headed for the driver’s side door of the Volvo, doing my best not to step over the line painted on the blacktop, separating my parking space from the one Ethan’s truck had been parked in.
Rafe grinned. “Careful now.”
I rolled my eyes, but refrained from comment.
I had thought he might want to hang around a little longer, to brood over the cones and the blood spatter. He knew the way back to the mansion, after all. He knew this area as well as I did, so it wasn’t like he needed to follow me in order not to get lost. But while I cranked over the engine of the Volvo, he headed for the bike, and when I reversed out of the parking space and headed for the entrance to the lot, he stayed on my tail.
I drive more sedately than he does, so it took us the whole fifteen minutes to get back to Sweetwater. I pulled the car to a stop outside the mansion and got out. “Now what?”
Rafe hung his helmet on the handlebar. “It’s past lunchtime. We could go get something to eat.”
“I can always eat.” It wasn’t very long since breakfast, but the baby was already making me feel sort of hollow.
“Then Beulah’s it is,” Rafe said, and plucked the keys out of my hand. “I’ll drive.” He brushed past me.
I wrinkled my nose. “Beulah’s?”
But he’d already gotten behind the wheel. I walked around the car, opened the passenger door, and slid in. “Beulah’s? Really?”
“Something wrong with that?”
“I guess not.” If you like country cooking. Chicken fried steak and collard greens swimming in butter.
“Good,” Rafe said, and set off down the driveway with a spurt of gravel.
Beulah’s Meat’n Three is a Southern style diner on the outskirts of Sweetwater. It’s been there as long as I can remember, plus a few decades before that, but I’ve never spent much time there. In Mother’s parlance, it isn’t ‘our sort of place.’ (You’ll have noticed that a great many places aren’t ‘our sort of places’ and a great many people aren’t ‘our sort of people.’)
I had been there a handful of times in the past year, though. An old schoolmate, Yvonne McCoy, was a waitress at Beulah’s, and back before Rafe and I worked things out—while Elspeth was still stalking him—I’d spoken to Yvonne occasionally, since she knew them both.
I didn’t expect to see her today. She’d gotten herself knifed and almost killed last fall, and for some reason, I had thought she’d be taking a different job when she got out of the hospital. Goes to show how wrong you can be. When we walked in, she was there, her hair as brassy as ever, and her skirt as short and tight.
She lit up when she saw Rafe. “Sugar!”
She threw her arms around him and planted a kiss on his mouth. I refrained from comment. The two of them had had a one night stand in high school, and it would have been more had he been willing. But according to Yvonne he hadn’t been, so I figured it was no big deal if she kissed him hello.
“Savannah!” She turned to me and gave me a hug too, but minus the kiss. “Good to see you!”
“You too,” I managed. That kind of enthusiastic hugging isn’t ‘our kind,’ either. A restrained air-kiss on each cheek is more what ‘we’ do.
“Come in. Sit down.” She grabbed two menus off the counter and headed for an empty booth. I followed, and Rafe brought up the rear. We were halfway through the restaurant by the time I thought to look around and realized that people were watching us.
Six months ago, that would have been the first thing I worried about. I’d been desperately afraid that anyone would realize we were together and that word would get back to my mother.
And now I’d almost forgotten. I gave myself a mental pat on the back.
“I heard about Billy Scruggs,” Yvonne said as Rafe slid past her and into the booth. “You OK, handsome?”
“Fine.”
“Anywhere near here when it happened?”
He shook his head. “Still in Nashville. I didn’t come down until I heard about Ethan Underwood.”
“Lord.” Yvonne clutched her chest. Maybe it was the reminder that Ethan had been carved up much the same way she had been. Or maybe just the shock. “I heard about that.”
“I found him,” I said, sliding into the booth across from Rafe. “I found both of them, as a matter of fact.”
Yvonne stared at me. “Hon....”
“It was horrible. Not Billy Scruggs so much—he’d just been shot—but Ethan looked as bad as you did last year.” I paused a second and then added, as I realized what I’d said, “Worse. He looked worse. You’re still alive.”
“Thank the Lord,” Yvonne said piously, one hand still flattened against her chest above a pair of sizable breasts. After a second she added, more prosaically, “And thanks to you, too.”
I was about to tell her she was welcome when Rafe spoke up again. “Did Billy used to come in here, sugar?”
Yvonne snorted. “Not him. If he ate at all, he did it down at Dusty’s Bar.”
A shadow passed over Rafe’s face, although it was gone so quickly I wondered whether I’d really seen it. “Still spending his paycheck there, huh?”
“If he had one.” Yvonne seemed to recall that she was clutching a pair of menus, because she took her hand off her chest to give one to Rafe. “But it ain’t like I spent my time with Billy Scruggs, you know.”
Rafe nodded.
“Ethan, now.” She handed the other menu across the table to me. “Ethan used to come in here all the time.”
The plastic felt sticky, and I put it down rather than hold on to it. “Did he have a family?”
“Wife and kids, you mean?” She shook her head. “Still catting around, far as I know.”
I glanced at Rafe, who glanced back. “Anyone I’d know?” he asked.
She tilted her head, and the flame-red ponytail tilted, too. “Why? It ain’t your job to figure out what happened, is it? To either of’em?”
He shook his head. “The Columbia PD got Ethan. They got no reason to ask the TBI for help. And Sheriff Satterfield’s got Billy. I’m the last person he’s gonna involve.”
“So why d’you care?”
Rafe’s lips quirked. “Maybe I just wanna shake the hand of the man who rid the world of Billy Scruggs.”
Yvonne snorted. “Can’t blame you there. That ain’t what you asked about, though. Why d’you wanna know about Ethan?”
Rafe shrugged. “Call it curiosity. We hung out some.”
; “Who didn’t?” Yvonne said.
Rafe chuckled. “You do him, too?”
“Honey,” Yvonne said, “I did everyone.”
Goodness, I thought. And asked, “Recently?”
It was Yvonne’s turn to chuckle. “Hell, no. Back when I was young and stupid. These days, I ain’t his type any more than he’s mine.”
Something about the way she said it sounded significant. I tilted my head. “What’s his type?”
“Young,” Yvonne said succinctly.
“Young?”
She lowered her voice. “Sounded like he’s been involved with someone at the high school.”
Someone at the high school? A fellow teacher? Or—
“A student?” Rafe said.
My nose wrinkled involuntarily. Ewww.
Yvonne nodded. “That’s what I thought. They’d come in here and talk, you know. Ethan liked to brag. He was talking about this cheerleader who came knocking on his door last night, and if she offered, why was he gonna say no?”
She shook her head. “I dunno if it’s true. He could just have been stringing the others along. And he hasn’t been fired or anything, so it might just have been talk.”
“When was this?”
She shifted to her other foot as she thought, shooting a hip out. “Couple months ago?”
I had my mouth open to ask who Ethan had been bragging to, but the front door opened, and Yvonne glanced over her shoulder as she was recalled to her duties. “You need a minute with the menus?”
“Yes, please,” I said.
“What can I get you to drink?”
Rafe ordered sweet tea. My usual standby for this time of day is Diet Coke, but under the circumstances I couldn’t indulge. The artifical sweeteners aren’t much better for the baby’s development than the alcohol last night would have been. And coffee was out, too. I hesitated. “Do you have skim milk?”
“You expecting, sugar?”
I blinked, and Yvonne took a closer look at me. “You are!”
I lowered my voice to just above a whisper, hoping she’d follow suit. “We’re not talking about it yet.”
“Oh, of course.” Yvonne nodded. “I’ll get you those drinks now.” She walked away, but not without a look over her shoulder at us.
Past Due Page 11