“All of Sweetwater will know by tonight,” I told Rafe.
He looked back at me. “D’you care?”
I opened my mouth, and then closed it again. There was something in his eyes, something more than just the simple question.
Surely he wasn’t still worried that I was ashamed of him?
“We talked about it,” I said. “Remember? We weren’t going to tell anyone until we were past the first trimester. Just in case.”
He nodded.
“That’s the only reason I’m upset. Now we’ll have to share, and if I lose this baby too, everyone will be disappointed. Not just me.”
“And me.”
Of course.
After a second, he added, “And I bet your mama won’t be disappointed. Or Satterfield, either.”
“I’m sure Todd wouldn’t want me to lose my baby.” Or my mother, either.
“Maybe not,” Rafe said, “but I bet he wouldn’t mind if you lost mine.”
“You know what I mean.” I turned my attention to the menu, and then back to him. “It’s no big deal. I just wanted to keep it to ourselves until we were sure. But this is OK, too. We’ll tell everyone later.”
He nodded.
“I love you,” I said. “I can’t wait to have your baby.”
He didn’t answer, but something in his face, something tight, loosened, and he smiled. “Me, neither. So what d’you wanna have to eat with your milk, darlin’?”
“Something healthy.” Which probably meant a salad.
“Healthy for you, or healthy for Junior?”
“Isn’t it the same thing?”
Rafe shrugged. “I’m having fried chicken.”
Of course he was.
“With mashed potatoes and green beans and macaroni and cheese.”
Of course.
“I’m thinking of getting a Cobb salad,” I said.
Rafe looked at me. Just looked.
“What?” I said.
“How about you let me order for you?”
“If I let you order for me, I’ll get fat.”
“You’ll get fat anyway. You’re eating for two.”
“That’s not fat,” I said. “That’s pregnant.”
He grinned. “Have whatever you want, darlin’. But you know what usually happens. You spend the whole time wishing you were eating what I’m eating.”
True. When I’m virtuous and order a salad, I usually end up gazing longingly at his burger and French fries.
But perhaps there was a way I could do both: be virtuous as well as eat something I’d enjoy. “Maybe I’ll have the meatloaf. Ketchup is a vegetable, right?”
“Used to be,” Rafe said.
“Maybe I can have it with corn and green beans and potatoes.” All vegetables. All healthy. A little less healthy when cooked with ham hocks and butter, but still. Vegetables.
“Sounds good to me.” He turned to smile at Yvonne as she arrived with the drinks.
We placed our order and watched Yvonne walk away again to notify the kitchen.
“Do you think there’s anything to what she said?” I asked. “About Ethan and a student at the high school?”
Rafe shrugged. “He always did like sex.”
“You like sex.” And just saying the word ‘sex’ out loud in a public place made me blush, even though I made sure to lower my voice to just above a whisper.
His eyes laughed, although his mouth didn’t. “And I’ve slept with my share of Columbia High students.”
I rolled my eyes. “More than your share, if the rumors I heard were true. And that was when you went to Columbia High yourself. It’s different.”
“Sure. Anyway, if he did, might be a reason why someone would wanna kill him.”
“Like the girl’s father. Or her boyfriend, if she had one.”
“Or the girl herself,” Rafe said. “Teenage girls can get obsessive.”
No question. Just look at Elspeth.
“Then again, motives ain’t usually that hard to find. You look at the wrong person the wrong way, and they may wanna kill you.”
True. “The way he was killed, though...”
All those stab wounds. And all that blood. Blood everywhere.
My stomach did a slow turn.
“Sounded personal,” Rafe agreed, and then focused on my face. “How about we find something else to talk about? We’ll just have a nice lunch and talk about Ethan later.”
I nodded gratefully. “That would be good. Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” Rafe said and lifted his tea.
The food arrived after just a few minutes, and it was quite appallingly decadent, in a homemade, soul food sort of way. Horribly fattening and artery-clogging, but delicious. I’d be paying for it later, but as I dug my fork into the meatloaf, I couldn’t feel too bad. So what were a few extra pounds I’d have to lose after the baby was born? I was never going to get my figure back anyway. Might as well enjoy it.
Which I did. Thoroughly. Rafe cleaned his plate, and I managed to make a good dent in mine. “You want a box to take that home?” Yvonne asked when she came to clear the dishes at the end of the meal.
I leaned back, aghast. “God, no. My mother would have a fit if she knew buttered potatoes and corn had passed my lips.”
Yvonne winked at Rafe as she gathered the plates. “You’re a bad influence, ain’t you, handsome?”
He grinned back. “You know it.”
“How about some dessert? Peach cobbler’s fresh.”
“Oh, I really couldn’t,” I said, even as the idea of peach cobbler with ice cream wrapped insidious tendrils around my brain.
Rafe chuckled. “Definitely.”
“Just one?” Yvonne glanced at me.
“Yes,” I said firmly. “One’s enough.” More than enough.
Yvonne took herself off to get the cobbler, and I turned to Rafe. He was already grinning, so instead of saying what I’d been planning to say—what he obviously expected—I said, “See if she’ll tell you who Ethan was bragging to.”
“Why?”
“Because whoever it was might know who the girl is.”
“This ain’t your problem, darlin’.”
It wasn’t his, either, but I refrained from saying so.
“We’re not doing anything else. It’s this or going back to the mansion.” And back to my mother.
He glanced at Yvonne. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Chapter Twelve
“Do you know Matt Perkins?” I asked Rafe as we walked back to the Volvo after paying the bill.
He was brushing at his T-shirt and not listening to me. “Wish I woulda thought to bring a change of clothes.”
I eyed him across the hood of the Volvo. “You do look a little worse for wear. Maybe we should stop by Dix’s house and ask if he has a change of clothes you can borrow.”
“No offense, darlin’,” Rafe said, “but your brother’s clothes ain’t gonna fit me.”
I guess not. He was three or four inches taller than Dix, with broader shoulders and a smaller waist. Or at least smaller comparatively speaking. Dix lacks the shoulder to hips ratio. Besides, my brother’s pants would hit Rafe above the ankles.
Although one of Dix’s T-shirts might look rather fetching on Rafe. Short and tight and clingy, outlining every one of those hard muscles...
Pregnancy really was doing a number on my libido.
“Maybe we can stop at a Walmart and pick something up,” he added.
I wrinkled my nose, and then told myself to stop. I’ve endeavored to become less of a snob lately, as I’ve become more aware of just how far (or not far enough) a dollar will stretch. “Sure, why not? There must be a Walmart around here somewhere. There are Walmarts everywhere.”
“We’ll have a look around when we’ve talked to Matt,” Rafe said and opened the car door. “C’mon.”
I slid into the passenger seat, and then continued the conversation. “You didn’t answer my question. Do you remember M
att Perkins?”
He glanced at me as he started the car. “Sure. Don’t you?”
“Not very well.” My mind threw up a vague picture of a brown-haired boy in a uniform with shoulder pads. Another of the jocks. “I didn’t have anything to do with that crowd in high school.” I glanced at him. “I’m surprised you did.”
He shrugged. “They weren’t as hung up on the race thing as you and your friends were, darlin’.”
Ouch. “Still, I wouldn’t have thought you had a lot in common.”
“You’d be surprised,” Rafe said. “They liked to party. There was a lot of booze and drugs on the weekends. And a lot of girls.”
Huh.
I glanced over at his profile. “Did you ever... you know...?”
“Drink?” He quirked a brow at me. “Sleep around?”
“No.” I knew he’d done those things. “Drugs. Did you ever do drugs?”
The corner of his mouth turned up. “D’you remember asking me if I ever smoked?”
Vaguely.
“Remember what I said?”
I turned my brain inside out and came up with the answer. “That you didn’t want anything having that much power over you.”
He nodded.
“So you never tried drugs.”
“I didn’t say that. I’ve tried almost everything once.”
“I never have,” I said.
He glanced at me, and this time his expression was amused. “I know that, darlin’. You’re as pure as the driven snow.”
“Not anymore. Agent Collier.”
It was a sly reference to the things we do in bed, and how they can’t exactly be described as pure. As I’d hoped, I teased an unguarded laugh out of him. They come more frequently these days, but not so often that I don’t count it as a personal victory each and every time I manage to amuse him enough.
“I never was as bad as folks said, you know,” he told me.
“I’m sure you weren’t.” Except for that night he almost killed Billy Scruggs. But there was no point in bringing that up. Everyone else he’d hurt or killed—that I knew of—had been justified. As far as I knew. “Do you know where you’re going?”
“He used to live on Maple.”
“He might not anymore.” Neither of us lived where we used to, after all. And Matt Perkins was my age. Chances were he’d moved out of his parents’ house at some point between high school and now. “It’s been ten years.”
“Can you check and see? Call information or something?”
“I can do better than that.” I fished my phone out of my bag and opened up a search window. One of the beauties of being involved in real estate is that you have access to all sorts of property records, and these days, when most people no longer have telephone landlines on record with the phone company, that can come in handy.
“Looks like he’s still on Maple,” I announced after a couple of minutes of manipulating buttons. “Maybe he’s one of those kids who ended up living in his parents’ garage.” From smoking pot. Like on TV.
“You’ve been watching too many commercials,” Rafe said.
“You said he did drugs in high school.”
“We all did drugs in high school.”
I shrugged. “Guess we’ll find out when we get there.
Rafe nodded. “Hang on.” He pressed on the gas, and the car surged forward. I dropped the phone in my lap and held on.
The Perkins house turned out to be an old Craftsman bungalow close to downtown Columbia. It had a garage, but it was an equally old one-car detached structure that showed no signs of having been turned into living quarters. Rafe looked at it. “No way he’s living there.”
I shook my head.
“His folks musta moved out and left the place to him. They were older, as I recall. Maybe they retired to Florida or something.”
Maybe. Then again, anyone’s parents would seem old compared to LaDonna, who must have been all of... I counted on my fingers: oh, maybe thirty-one or thirty-two at the time Rafe was talking about.
“Maybe he just never moved out,” I said. “Maybe he’s still in his room upstairs, and his mom makes him sandwiches with the crusts cut off.”
He shot me a look. “Your mama used to do that?”
“When I was little. Didn’t yours?”
“My mama expected me to make my own sandwiches,” Rafe said. “And the old man woulda knocked me into next week if I’d thrown away food.”
Right. I cleared my throat and looked around. “Tell me again why we’re here.”
He did the same. “We thought Matt mighta known who Ethan was sleeping with.”
“I know that. But why do we care?” Wouldn’t it make more sense, if we were going to look for a killer, to try to figure out who had shot Billy Scruggs instead? Nobody suspected us—or Rafe—of having had anything to do with Ethan’s murder.
“Can’t get involved in that,” Rafe said, when I asked. “The sheriff would have my hide.”
True.
“And we’re stuck here for the time being. Might as well do something useful.”
“We could have spent the day in bed.”
The corner of his mouth tilted up. “Those baby hormones got you pretty wound up, ain’t they?”
I shrugged. It wasn’t just the baby hormones. It was the knowledge of everything I had been missing in my marriage. It was learning that making love—or at least making love with Rafe—could be fun. But he was right. We couldn’t spend all our time making love. Even though being here, in my hometown, sleeping in my old room in my mother’s house, made me even more determined to thumb my nose at all of Sweetwater.
I squared my shoulders. “Looks like he’s home. Or maybe he has a visitor.”
A red truck was parked in the driveway. A big, manly one with big, beefy tires. It had a Maury County license plate.
“Let’s go knock on the door,” Rafe said, “and hope he doesn’t punch me in the nose.”
He set off up the driveway.
“Wait a minute!” I trotted after him. “Why would he punch you in the nose?”
He grinned down at me. “I’m just kidding. He probably won’t even remember the last time he saw me.”
I had to hustle to keep up with his much longer legs. “What happened the last time he saw you?”
“He wanted to punch me in the nose,” Rafe said. “I wouldn’t let him.”
“Good for you,” I said, hooking my hand through his arm. “I don’t suppose it’ll do me any good to ask why?”
“Something about a girl.” He shrugged.
“Which girl?”
“Not you.” He flicked my nose with a grin.
“I know that. I never went to any of those parties.” I waited for him to elaborate, and when he didn’t—he’d told me once before he didn’t kiss and tell—I continued, “How long ago would that have been? Fourteen years? Fifteen?”
“Something like that.”
“He’s probably forgotten.”
“Could be,” Rafe said and knocked on the door.
We waited.
Nothing happened. After a minute, and another knock, Rafe glanced at me. “Let’s go around the back.”
Sure. We made our way off the front porch and around the side of the house. There was nothing to see, and no sign of life.
“Maybe he went out.”
Rafe flicked a glanced at the red truck. “Without his ride?”
“We don’t know that it’s his truck. Maybe it’s his dad’s truck. Or his mom’s.” Women drive pickup trucks sometimes, too, after all. “But even if it is, he could have gotten picked up by someone. Maybe he’s at the police station. Maybe he killed Ethan, and they arrested him. Or maybe he’s at the funeral home, arranging Ethan’s service. Or maybe he went for a run.”
Or maybe he’d gotten lucky last night—hooked up with an old flame at the reunion—and he’d spent the night with her. Maybe they were still in bed inside the house and just didn’t want to be bothered.
The rear of the house looked just as one might expect. There were flowerbeds where dahlias and black-eyed susans rubbed elbows with weeds, and a couple of concrete steps leading up to an old-fashioned screened porch.
Rafe bounded up the steps and tried the storm door. It opened, and he disappeared into the porch. I saw him reach for the handle of the back door, and hesitate. After a second, he wrapped the bottom edge of his shirt around his hand before trying the knob. The gap between jeans and fabric showed a tantalizing couple of inches of smooth, golden skin and hard muscles, and my mouth turned dry.
“It’s locked.”
I dragged my mind out of the gutter and nodded. I had assumed it would be. Nobody leaves their doors open anymore. Not even in a small town like this.
He eyed my head. “Got any hairpins I can borrow?”
I shook my head. My hair was down today. No pins necessary. “Did you leave your lockpicks in your other pants?”
“I was in a hurry last night,” Rafe said. I blinked. “But don’t worry about it. I can make do.”
He turned back to the lock. I couldn’t see exactly what he was doing, but at one point he pulled out his wallet and, I think, extracted a credit card.
“One of these days you’ll have to teach me to pick locks,” I told his back as I watched the muscles in his shoulders flex and bunch.
“Not sure that’s a good idea, darlin’. You might get into trouble.”
“And you don’t?”
He shot me a look over his shoulder. “I have a license to pick locks. You don’t.”
“You do not! This is breaking and entering.” If the police caught us, we’d be in deep trouble.
I looked around, guiltily. Everything appeared quiet. Nobody was hanging over the fences on either side of us to see what was going on.
“Not if I think Matt’s inside and in grave danger,” Rafe said.
I snorted. “You think no such thing. You think he’s gone and the house is empty. You just want an excuse to nose around.”
He didn’t answer, but that may have been because the lock finally gave.
“Looks to me like you’re losing your touch,” I told him as he straightened and pushed the door open. “This took at least a minute longer than when you broke into the Stor-All on Dickerson Road back in August.”
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