Past Due

by Jenna Bennett

  “Don’t mention it.” He turned to the car.

  “That was nice of you,” I said when we were on our way down the street again, away from Matt Perkins’s house.

  He shrugged. “I don’t imagine a small-town beat cop in a place like this gets faced with a lot of bloody corpses. Now she’s had two in two days.”

  “She’s doing better than I was. I fainted.”

  His brows lowered. “Yesterday?”

  “My first time. Last August. Brenda. Remember?” I didn’t wait for him to concur. “Yesterday, I just threw up.” Although truth be told, I’d felt a bit woozy, too. It was probably better not to say anything about that, though. With me being pregnant, he was a bit more worried than usual.

  “Let’s go get that ginger ale,” I said. “And find a change of clothes for you. Looks like we might be stuck here a while, if this goes on.”

  “Let’s hope it don’t,” Rafe answered and stepped on the gas.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Going shopping with a guy is very different from going with a woman. Women like to look at and fondle everything. We get distracted by pretty colors and nice fabrics.

  Rafe walked straight through the store to the men’s section. He walked to the shelf with the Fruit of the Loom and Hanes. He pulled down a six-pack of T-shirts. Then he pulled down a package of sports socks, and finally a package of boxer briefs. All of it unrelieved black.

  Clutching the haul to his chest—since he hadn’t taken the time to stop for a basket or shopping cart—he turned to me. “OK.”

  I relieved him of the burden and put it into my own basket, since I’d had the foresight to get one. “Perhaps you should pick up a pair of pants, too? The ones you’re wearing won’t last forever. And I imagine you’re not going to want to walk around my mother’s house in your new underwear while you wait for me to wash and dry them.”

  He shuddered at the thought.

  “Although you could always spend the time it took in bed. Naked.”

  “No, thanks,” Rafe said. “Not with your mother in the house.” He glanced around, at the shelves and racks with jeans, dress pants, and sweats. “Any preferences?”

  I shook my head. “You look good in anything.” Or nothing. I wouldn’t mind at all if he had to spend the time in bed while I washed and dried his jeans. Mother probably wouldn’t appreciate it, though. Nor would Rafe.

  “These’ll do.”

  He plucked a pair of pants off the nearest rack. Black, of course. Cargo pockets. Some sort of heavy-duty workwear. They’d probably last longer than I did.

  “Won’t they be too warm?” It was May, and getting warmer every day.

  “They’ll be OK.” He stuffed them into the basket. “Let’s go. Get you that ginger ale.”

  “Don’t you want to try them on?”

  He looked puzzled. “Why?”

  “Maybe you won’t like the way they feel.”

  “They’re pants.”

  “Sometimes they’re too tight across the butt. Or too loose in the thighs. Sometimes the waist is too high or the fabric too stiff.”

  Rafe muttered something. I assumed it was a comment on my sanity—or lack thereof—so I didn’t ask him to repeat it.

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t like a pair of jeans instead?” I suggested.

  “I’m sure. Let’s go.” He took the basket out of my hand. “You shouldn’t be carrying that.”

  “It only weighs a few pounds.” But I let him have it. It had all his things in it, after all. “Can we stop in the women’s section for a minute? I didn’t come prepared to stay here more than a couple of days myself.”

  Although we could spend the time in bed together. Naked.

  Or not. “If you hurry,” Rafe said.

  Fine. I did what he did, and picked up a package of cotton underwear—not exciting, but cheap and comfortable—and a couple of short sleeved shirts that were just over five dollars each. I tossed in a cotton skirt with an elastic waist, since I’d likely need that before long anyway, and called it a day. “That’s it.”

  Normally, I’d try it all on before I paid for it—minus the underwear, of course—but with him standing there practically tapping his foot at me, I just put it in the basket. Cotton’s soft and forgiving, so I’d probably be OK. Mother would be shocked, of course—ladies don’t wear cotton T-shirts and skirts with elastic waists, especially when said T-shirts and skirt cost less than twenty dollars all told—but at the moment, Mother was the least of my concern. I had blown the budget for the month on the purple dress from yesterday, and I wasn’t about to turn my nose up at cheap, new clothes. “Just don’t complain that I look frumpy when I put on a hundred percent cotton panties with little pink hearts.”

  “When do I ever complain about your underwear?” Rafe wanted to know.

  Never, but then I usually manage something a bit better than this.

  He shook his head when I said so. “When I see your underwear, all I wanna do is take it off you, darlin’. It don’t matter what it looks like.”

  “So what do you want to do now?” I asked when we were back in the car.

  He glanced at me, in the process of maneuvering out of the parking lot without getting hit by some rapid shopper. As it turned out, rather a lot of people were spending Sunday afternoon at Walmart. “Remember the picture on Matt’s fridge?”

  I had forgotten about it, to be honest, in the discovery of Matt’s body, and of hustling outside before the cops arrived. “The three guys with the beer bottles on the boat?”

  He nodded. “I wanna find the last guy.”

  Uh-oh. “You don’t think he’s dead too, do you?”

  “I hope not. Maybe he’s the killer.”

  “I thought the killer was a woman.”

  He shrugged. “Matt’s dead, so he can’t tell us nothing. But maybe this other guy knows who Ethan pissed off.”

  Maybe. That was assuming this case hinged on Ethan’s murder, of course. It might hinge on Matt’s.

  He arched a brow at me when I said so, and I clarified. “I know Ethan was killed first. It looks like someone wanted Ethan dead, and then killed Matt because he knew something. Like the cheerleader Ethan slept with killed Ethan, and then killed Matt because Matt knew who she was. But maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe Matt was the one someone wanted dead, and Ethan was just a...” I hesitated, “I don’t know, a practice round?”

  “You know, darlin’,” Rafe said, “sometimes you scare me.”

  “Sorry.”

  He shook his head. “It was somebody who knew ‘em both. And prob’ly a woman. Whether she wanted one or the other—”

  “Or both.”

  He nodded. “Or both dead from the start, it’s likely a woman’s behind it. Matt wouldn’t have been naked in bed with a guy. And Ethan prob’ly wouldn’t have gone out to the parking lot in the middle of a party, unless he was hoping he’d get laid.”

  “I don’t know about that,” I said. “A friend could have asked him for a private conversation. Or they could have had a stash of liquor in the car because they didn’t want to pay for drinks at the hotel.”

  “I suppose,” Rafe said grudgingly.

  “And Matt could have been asleep when the killer arrived. Maybe he sleeps in the nude. You do.”

  “Whose side are you on?” Rafe wanted to know. “There were two wineglasses. One on the counter and one drying in the dish drain.”

  “The dry one could have been from the night before. They could both be from the night before. Matt was partying at the Wellington. Why would he open a bottle of wine when he got home?”

  “He wouldn’t. Guys don’t sit around drinking wine on their own. Specially not after a party. But if the doorbell rang, and it was a woman, and she had a bottle of wine in her hand...”

  “He’d let her in.”

  Rafe nodded.

  “How hard would it be for Ethan’s cheerleader to get hold of a bottle of wine?”

  “Not hard,” Rafe said
. “Most teenagers drink. Usually stronger stuff than wine. I never had a problem getting my hands on alcohol. Matt and Ethan didn’t, either.”

  “I never drank in high school, either,” I said. Other than a perfectly proper champagne toast on New Year’s Eve and whenever someone got married.

  “You had a deprived childhood, darlin’.”

  When I glared at him, he chuckled, then added, “She could have raided her mama’s liquor cabinet, or asked a friend to buy a bottle for her. There’s always a few people around willing to do someone a favor for a price.”

  Some favor.

  “Or she coulda had a fake ID. They ain’t hard to come by.”

  “Did you have a fake ID in high school?”

  I hadn’t, needless to say. As we talked about this, I realized how truly lacking my childhood had been. Safe, certainly, but I’d missed out on a lot of things the other kids had taken for granted. Like fake IDs.

  “I knew where to go to get one,” Rafe said. “But everybody in town knew who I was. Where was I gonna use it?”

  Good point.

  “So how do you plan to go about finding the guy from the picture?” I wanted to know. “I wish you would have reminded me that it was there. I could have taken a picture of it with my phone.”

  “I thought about going back inside and grabbing it,” Rafe confessed, “but you were looking pretty puny.”

  “And besides, if you took it, the police wouldn’t have seen it.”

  He shrugged, as if that was of lesser consequence. “Maybe we can go back to Beulah’s. Ask Yvonne.”

  She seemed to have known—in the biblical sense—almost every guy she, Rafe, and I had gone to school with, so yes, there was a good chance she could tell us who the blond man was, if we described him.

  “Fine with me.” It was going on for dinner, anyway. Or at least a pre-dinner snack.

  He stepped on the gas as we passed out of Columbia proper and hit the highway toward Sweetwater.

  Neither of us spoke for the next few minutes. Rafe was focused on driving, and I was worried about the speed he was keeping. He’s always driven like a bat out of hell, but if he didn’t watch it, our next meeting with law enforcement would be getting pulled over for speeding.

  No sooner had the thought crossed my mind, than I heard the wail of a siren behind us. Rafe glanced in the mirror and cursed. I looked too, and saw the tan and white of a Maury County sheriff’s department vehicle, lights flashing, bearing down on us.

  Rafe muttered under his breath as he slowed the car and pulled over to the curb. We’d almost come to a stop when the trooper flew past much faster than we’d been going.

  “Shit,” Rafe said.

  I looked at him. “He didn’t pull us over. That’s a good thing.”

  “I know that.” He moved the car off the shoulder and back onto the road again, before punching the gas. My back was flattened against the seat as the Volvo jumped forward.

  “What are you doing?” I managed, as my breath caught in my throat.

  He shot me a glance. “What d’you think?”

  It was a pretty stupid question, I guess. I mean, the answer was obvious. He was following the cop, flying down the road even faster than we’d done before. Outside the windows, pine trees flashed by so quickly they were a blur.

  “You don’t think someone else is dead, do you?”

  “Let’s hope not.” He took the turn onto Old Schoolhouse Road on two wheels while I clung to the sides of my seat. Up ahead, the police car was almost out of sight.

  There’s nothing much down that way, other than fields and some forest and a couple of new subdivisions. There are new subdivisions all over the area. All over Middle Tennessee, for that matter. Nashville is on the cusp of swallowing up Franklin. Another fifteen years, and it’ll have swallowed Columbia, as well.

  And a fine realtor I am, to be sounding like that’s a bad thing.

  Anyway, the problem seemed to be in one of the subdivisions. The squad car slipped through a gate in a tall brick wall, and when we followed, we found ourselves surrounded by cookie-cutter McMansions. Two story brick, with double garages in the front; the only concession to individuality was that some were built of red brick with white siding, some of brown brick with tan siding, and some of a sort of pinkish brick with cream-colored siding.

  The subdivision name was Sherwood Forest, and the streets were named for Robin Hood and his Merry Men, plus a few of the other less heroic characters from the legend. We passed Little John Lane and Will Scarlett Way on the left, and Nottingham Close on the right, before the police car turned right onto Huntingdon Road.

  “Know anyone who lives here?” Rafe asked, slowing down now that we were in sight of the car, and traversing streets where the posted speed limit was thirty five.

  I shook my head. “This place wasn’t built yet when you and I were kids.”

  “I thought maybe someone mentioned it.”

  Not as far as I knew. “Mary Kelly is the only one of us who still lives in town, and she lives in a townhouse in Brookchase. She told us so yesterday. Charlotte’s staying with her family near the town square. Do you remember where she used to live?”

  He shook his head.

  “You remembered where I lived.”

  “You’re special,” Rafe said.

  Awww.

  “I don’t know about Tina, or Darlene and Rhonda, but they’re all from out of town. They’re either staying with family, or in a hotel. Tina may be bunking with Mary Kelly. Epiphany’s staying at the Wellington, I think, so I guess maybe she doesn’t have family in Columbia anymore. Or maybe she just didn’t want to stay with them.”

  I could relate. I didn’t particularly want to spend time with my mother, either. But she would be horribly hurt if I came to town and didn’t stay with her, so I didn’t really have a choice.

  “What about—?” Rafe began, and then stopped when the police car came to a standstill with a last squeal of the siren. The silence that followed was unnerving; the absence of sound echoing so loudly my ears rang.

  The squad car’s door opened, and a man jumped out. Stocky, in a tan uniform and with a brown face. Cletus Johnson.

  He hustled around the car and over to the house—one of the brown and tan ones, with the garage on the right. The garage door was open, and inside, we saw a gorgeous candy apple red vintage car in what looked like mint condition.

  Rafe whistled softly, and then stopped. “Shit.”

  “What?”

  He didn’t answer, just pulled the car up to the curb. “Stay here.”

  “We’ve been over this before—”

  He didn’t stop to listen, just opened his door and ran, sliding over the hood of the Volvo to save a couple of seconds. I stayed in my seat, staring after him with wide eyes, as he went up the driveway at a dead run.

  It wasn’t until he disappeared into the garage that I saw what he’d seen: Cletus on his knees on the garage floor, leaning over a prone body. And on the opposite side of the body, a woman.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I don’t think I realized until then just how strong Rafe is.

  Oh, I know he can lift and carry me without any problem. I’m five feet eight, and even before the pregnancy, no lightweight. I could stand to lose ten pounds under the best of circumstances, and now I’d gained a few extras from being pregnant.

  So I’d known he was strong. But I’d had no idea he could toss a grown man over his shoulder and not even stagger.

  Yet that’s what he did. I didn’t hear what he said, but I know he spoke to Cletus, because the latter moved out of the way. Rafe bent down and hauled the body over his shoulder and headed out of the garage again at a good clip. Cletus lurched to his feet and followed, while the woman lifted her face to watch them go.

  It wasn’t until then that I recognized her.

  I was out of the car and on my way up the driveway before I realized I’d moved. “Jan!”

  By now she’d gotten to her feet, t
oo, and was on her way out of the garage.

  Over on the grass, Rafe and Cletus arranged themselves on either side of the body. “I’ll push,” I heard Rafe say. “You blow.”

  Cletus looked like he hesitated, but I guess when it was someone’s life at stake, he was a big enough man to put aside his feelings for Rafe and work together. “You know what you’re doing?”

  Rafe didn’t bother answering, just started counting chest compressions while Cletus got ready to blow air into the victim’s lungs. I guess that was answer enough.

  I intercepted Jan as she stumbled toward them. “We’d better give them room to work. You won’t do them any good hanging over them.”

  “That’s my husband!”

  Was it? I took a better look at him. Dark hair, pale skin—a little extra pale under the circumstances, probably—dressed in faded jeans and a pair of tan workboots.

  Not sure I would have known him to speak to, had we run into one another on the street.

  On the other hand, he was not the toothy blond from the photograph on Matt’s fridge. Part of me had been afraid he was, so that was a bit of a relief.

  I turned back to Jan, vaguely registering Rafe’s voice in background, counting as he continued to push on Danny Emerson’s chest. “What happened?”

  The dam broke. She started crying: big, shuddering sobs racking her body.

  I put my arms around her and let her wail on my shoulder for a moment, before starting to maneuver her toward the house. “Why don’t we go inside for a minute? Get out of their way.”

  Jan shook her head wildly. “No! No, I can’t. I have to stay with Danny!”

  “They’ll take care of Danny. We have to give them room to work.” And standing over them surely wouldn’t help. “We’ll hear the ambulance when it comes. Come on. I’ll get you something to drink.”

  It took cajoling to get her inside, but eventually we were in the kitchen. Jan didn’t really seem capable of doing much, so I put her on a stool at the island and turned to survey the kitchen. Nice and new, with a black granite counter and maple cabinets.