Past Due

by Jenna Bennett

  “Tea?” I suggested. “Or something stronger? Wine? Brandy?”

  Jan shook her head. “There’s nothing stronger. Danny stopped drinking.”

  “Tea, then.” I found a mug, filled it with water, and stuck it in the microwave to heat. It’d be quicker than boiling water on the stove. While it rotated, I started opening cabinet doors, looking for the tea bags. “You want to tell me what happened?”

  The bags were in the cabinet in the corner. Earl Grey, black, green, and an herbal. The herbal sounded soothing, so I chose that. When the microwave dinged, I pulled the mug out and dropped the tea bag in. In another of the cabinets, I found a sugar bowl and dumped two teaspoons into the mug. After a moment’s thought, I added a third, and swirled them all around with the spoon before I pulled the tea bag out and squeezed the liquid from it. “Here you go.”

  Jan took a sip and winced. “Sweet.”

  “Lots of sugar.” I leaned on the other side of the counter. “For the shock.”

  “I’m not supposed to have sugar. I’m on a diet.” But she took another sip anyway before raising her gaze to me. “What are you doing here?”

  “We were on our way back from Sweetwater,” I said, “when we saw Cletus go by. We followed him, to make sure everything was OK.”

  She nodded. Perhaps she thought it made sense, or perhaps she was just too preoccupied with what was going on outside to question why we’d follow a police car to what might be a complete stranger’s house.

  I thought about telling her that Matt Perkins was dead, and that it had given us extra incentive to make sure no one else had met the same fate, but I was more interested in what she had to say. “You want to tell me about it?

  She glanced over her shoulder at the door. “We should go outside.”

  If it had been Rafe on the ground being worked on, wild horses couldn’t have dragged me away. I felt a little guilty trying to keep Jan inside. But she’d be in the way, and besides, I wanted to know what had happened. “Just another minute. You’re still pale. Have another couple sips of the tea first. And tell me what happened.”

  “We went to church this morning,” Jan said. “Then we went to my mother’s house. She always cooks a big Sunday dinner. My sister was there, too, with her family.”

  She glanced at the phone.

  “You should call her. Tell her what’s going on. But finish telling me what happened first.”

  “Danny left,” Jan said, and took another sip of tea. Some of the color had crept back into her cheeks. “The kids were playing, and Susan and I were talking, and the guys were sitting around watching football and drinking beer. And Danny has this old car he’s been working on in his spare time, and he wanted to get back to it.”

  As well as getting away from the guys drinking in front of him, probably. It couldn’t be easy, being a teetotaler in a family of Southern football fans.

  “When did he stop drinking?”

  “A couple months ago,” Jan said. She had her hands wrapped around the mug, letting the heat from the tea seep into her hands. The shock was probably making her feel cold.

  “So that’s why he wasn’t at the reunion last night. I wondered.”

  Jan nodded. “He didn’t want to be around when everyone else was drinking. Some of those guys used to be his drinking buddies—Ethan and Willem and Matt...”

  “Willem?” I didn’t remember going to school with someone named Willem.

  “He was older.” Jan slid off the stool and moved to the counter on unsteady legs. She opened a drawer and dug through some of the contents, before pulling out a photograph. “It used to hang on the fridge, but when Danny stopped drinking we took it down. He didn’t need the reminder.”

  No. Not when it looked like they were having fun, and when not drinking probably wasn’t much fun at all.

  It was a close match to the photograph I’d seen on Matt Perkins’s fridge, with one difference. Matt was gone in this one, and the man I’d seen on the ground outside had taken his place.

  I put my finger on the third man, the big blond. “This is Willem?”

  Jan nodded. Her eyes were glued to her husband’s face, and her bottom lip quivered.

  I put the photo on the counter, facedown. Less of a distraction that way. “So Danny went home.”

  “I was supposed to call him to come get me—get us—when we were ready. But he didn’t answer the phone. And didn’t answer the phone.” She sank her teeth into her bottom lip. “It isn’t like Danny not to answer when I call. He knows I worry.”

  I nodded.

  “So I left the kids with my mom and had Susan run me over. It’s just a few minutes.”

  “And?”

  “I thought maybe he was just taking a nap or something, and hadn’t heard the phone. But when she dropped me off, I heard the car running. But the garage door was locked. So I came inside and opened the door over there—” She glanced at it, tucked into the side wall of the kitchen, beside the fridge. “And that’s when I saw him. On the floor by the exhaust pipe.”

  Her eyes filled with tears again. “I can’t believe he’d do something like that. I wanted him to stop drinking—he wanted to stop drinking!—but I’d rather he drink than be dead!”

  Obviously. And anyway, if quitting was that hard, wouldn’t he just start drinking again? It didn’t make sense that he’d kill himself. Not over something like that.

  And why do it at home, where he had to know his wife would find him? Maybe even his kids. What kind of father does that?

  Unless something was going on, and he wanted Jan to find him. Because he wanted to punish her.

  “Were you...” I hesitated, “having problems?”

  Jan shook her head. “We were fine. Danny was fine. He’s the one who wanted to stop drinking. I wasn’t pushing him. And he didn’t act like it was a big deal. He wasn’t an alcoholic or anything. He just liked to go out with the guys on the weekends and have fun.”

  Sounded like normal, recreational drinking to me. “Why did he decide to quit, if it wasn’t a problem?”

  She pressed her lips together into a thin line.

  “What?” I said.

  “It was the guys. The other guys.” She glanced at the upside-down photograph on the counter.

  “They made him stop?”

  She shook her head. “They were drinking. And doing stupid things. Bad things.”

  “Does this have something to do with Ethan and the cheerleader?”

  She looked surprised, and I shrugged apologetically. “Someone told me. I don’t know any of the details, though.”

  “I do,” Jan said. “Ethan told Danny, and Danny told me. He slept with a student, Savannah.”

  “Ethan.”

  “Of course. Danny would never do something like that.”

  I’d take her word for it. I didn’t remember Danny well, either. “So Ethan told Danny the girl had come to his house and he’d slept with her.”

  Jan nodded. “Danny was disgusted. So was I. We have a daughter. She’s six. And I know it’s not the same thing, but... he slept with a student!”

  Yes, he had. Or so it seemed.

  “Do you know who she is?” I asked, my heart beating faster.

  But Jan shook her head. “If Danny knew, he didn’t tell me. And now might not be able to. Ever.”

  She crumpled into a sobbing heap against the counter. The cup of tea spilled, and a river of liquid ran toward the upside-down photograph. I snatched it up and stuck it in my pocket before tearing off a half dozen paper towels from the roll on the counter to soak up the mess.

  While I was busy doing that, we heard the front door open and close and then footsteps in the hallway. Familiar footsteps. I looked up and Jan turned around as Rafe came into the kitchen. His gaze glanced off mine before landing on Jan. “The ambulance is here.”

  Jan had tear tracks running down her face, and she looked like she was about to slide right off the stool, but she got a grip on herself. “Is he...?”

&
nbsp; Rafe nodded. He looked beat, his lips tight and his eyes dark and flat. “His pulse is weak and he’s not breathing so good. He’ll need oxygen when they get him to the hospital. But the paramedics are loading him up. If you wanna go—”

  Jan was off the stool and flying toward the door before he’d finished the sentence.

  “Don’t forget your purse,” I called after her, but I don’t think she heard me. I turned back to Rafe. “We didn’t hear the ambulance arrive.”

  “They kept the siren off. There’s no traffic back here, and besides, there was no need to advertise.” He leaned an elbow on the counter to take some of the weight off.

  “Are you OK?” I asked. “You look beat.”

  “Just tired. Saving somebody’s life is hard work.”

  “It’s safe, right?” Performing mouth-to-mouth on someone who’d been breathing in carbon monoxide fumes seemed like it might be asking to be poisoned yourself.

  And while I didn’t want to be petty and think about our own safety when someone else’s life was at stake, I couldn’t help but wonder.

  “Sure,” Rafe said. “You’re blowing air in, not taking it out. And anyway, Cletus did most of the blowing. I did most of the pushing.”

  “Are you sure you shouldn’t let the paramedics take a look at you?”

  “They’ve got their hands full with Danny,” Rafe said, and straightened. “We should get outta here. Jan’ll be going with the ambulance.”

  That’s right. We were standing in someone else’s kitchen, for the second time today. Third, if you count my mother’s.

  Jan’s purse and keys were on the floor in the hallway, and I picked them both up on the way past. Outside, the paramedics were just hauling the gurney with Danny Emerson into the ambulance. Jan scrambled after, and I hurried in that direction before the paramedics could close the door. “Jan!”

  She looked up and I handed her the purse and keys. “You’ll need these.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “Pray,” Jan said.

  I stepped back, and the paramedic closed the door before loping around to the passenger side. The ambulance was already running, and as soon as he’d swung himself up into the seat—before he’d closed the door—the vehicle took off down the street in a cloud of exhaust. Once they hit the main street, I heard the sirens kick on.

  Meanwhile, next to me, Rafe and Cletus were having a conversation.

  “If it were me,” Rafe said, “I’d tell somebody to check that bump.”

  I turned their way, eyebrows raised. Bump? What bump?

  “He hit his head when he fell,” Cletus answered, irritation lacing through his voice. I gathered they’d been over this once or twice already, and didn’t see eye to eye.

  Rafe shrugged. “Your jurisdiction. Your call. All I’m saying is, it bears asking the question.”

  “He’ll wake up soon, and then he’ll tell us.”

  “If he remembers.”

  Cletus all but rolled his eyes. “Why’d he forget wanting to kill himself?”

  “Maybe he didn’t wanna kill himself,” Rafe said calmly.

  Cletus snorted. “That what they teach you up there in Nashville? To go looking for trouble?”

  Rafe’s voice was calm, but I could see the tension in his jaw. “They teach me to keep an open mind.”

  Cletus’s expression made his opinion of fools who didn’t go with the obvious solution abundantly plain, but he managed a grudging semi-professional, “Thanks for your help.”

  It was as much dismissal as gratitude, I imagined, and Rafe must have recognized it, too. He glanced at me. “We should get outta here. Go find your brother.”

  “Yes, please,” I said, recognizing my cue. “Good luck.”

  Cletus grunted. And he stood and watched until we’d driven away before he turned and went into the garage. Maybe he was afraid we’d change our minds and come back.

  “Bump?” I said as we headed down the road.

  Rafe shot me a glance. “On the back of his head.”

  “Like someone hit him?”

  “Or like he hit his head when he fell.”

  “You mean Cletus is right?”

  “No,” Rafe said. “I mean Cletus’s explanation makes sense, to a point. He coulda hit his head when he fell. But I don’t think he did.”

  I half-turned in my seat to look at him. “Why not?”

  “Too many dead friends. Too coincidental.”

  Right. But— “Danny wasn’t stabbed, though.”

  Rafe shook his head.

  “And he isn’t dead.”

  “He woulda been,” Rafe said grimly, “if his wife had come home ten minutes later.”

  “That close?”

  He shrugged. “I’m no expert. But the car had been running awhile. I was in that garage for less than thirty seconds with the door open, and I still have a headache.”

  Uh-oh. For someone who never admits to weakness—who once called being graced by a bullet ‘just a scratch’—this was a pretty big deal. It must be the mother of all headaches for him to admit that it hurt at all. “Do you want to go home and lie down?” I asked.

  “I wanna go home,” Rafe said viciously, “but we’re stuck here until we’re told otherwise.”

  “I meant back to the mansion.” Our home for the moment.

  He shot me another look. “That place ain’t never gonna be my home, darlin’.”

  “It could. My mother won’t live forever. Someone will have to take over when she dies. And what if she marries Bob Satterfield and moves in with him?”

  “More likely the sheriff’ll move in with her,” Rafe said, “and leave his house to your ex. Since li’l Todd’s still living at home.” He grinned.

  I declined the bait, just told him, “Todd’s not my ex. Bradley’s my ex. Todd and I never officially dated. Not since high school.”

  “Speaking of high school...” Rafe said, and I nodded.

  “I found out the name of the guy in the picture. Willem Somebody.”

  “Jan tell you?”

  “She had the counterpart to the picture in Matt Perkins’s kitchen. But Matt was gone from this one, and Danny was there instead. She said he’d stopped drinking recently.”

  “Danny?”

  “That’s why he wasn’t at the reunion last night. And why he was home alone this afternoon. The guys were watching football and drinking beer at Jan’s mother’s house, and he left.”

  “Huh,” Rafe said.

  “She said he was doing well, that the drinking hadn’t ever really been a problem, but that he just liked to go out with the guys on weekends.”

  “Enough of a problem to make him wanna quit.”

  True. “She couldn’t think of any reason he’d want to kill himself. I can’t, either. If he wanted to drink, surely he’d just go back to drinking instead of killing himself where his wife—or God forbid, his kids!—would find him.”

  “You’d think.” Rafe turned the car onto the Columbia Highway in the direction of Sweetwater. “She say anything else?”

  “She confirmed what we already knew about Ethan and the cheerleader. Apparently that was the catalyst for Danny deciding to stop drinking. Or deciding to spend his time away from Ethan and the others. He and Jan have a daughter. I guess the idea that something like that could happen to her, made him not want anything to do with Ethan.”

  “Can’t blame him there,” Rafe said. “If she was my daughter, I’d wanna kill any guy who looked at her.”

  I put a hand on my stomach. Hopefully we’d have a boy, and I didn’t have to worry about his father committing murder.

  Rafe glanced at me. “You OK?”

  “Fine. Just hoping the baby’s a boy, so you don’t feel compelled to kill anyone.”

  He smiled, but didn’t tell me he’d just been joking. I guess he hadn’t been.

  I changed the subject. “I guess we go back to trying to find Willem and make sure he’s all right
.”

  Rafe nodded. “Where does he live?”

  “No idea. I don’t even know his last name. And I didn’t ask Jan. I was more interested in finding out what had happened to Danny. Do you remember him? Willem?”

  “Vaguely,” Rafe said. “Big guy. Blond. I think maybe a year or two behind me in school?”

  “Do you know his last name?”

  He shook his head.

  “If he was a year behind you, he’d be in Dix’s grade. Maybe Dix knows where to find him. He’d probably like to see you, anyway.”

  “I doubt that,” Rafe said, and pointed the car in the direction of Copper Creek.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Why, what?”

  “Why do you doubt that my brother would like to see you?”

  He didn’t answer, and I added, “My brother likes you. My sister does, too.”

  “Your sister, sure. I don’t usually have a problem with women.”

  Or rather, they didn’t usually have a problem with him. Always excepting my mother, of course. And—it seemed—Charlotte.

  “But your brother’s Satterfield’s best friend. He musta wanted you to end up with him.”

  “I don’t know about that.” I sat back in the seat. “It was always Mother who encouraged me to go out with Todd. Never Dix. I don’t think he would have minded if we’d ended up together, but I don’t think he’s disappointed that we didn’t, either.”

  He glanced at me. “If you were my sister, I’d have wanted you to end up with Satterfield. I wouldn’t have wanted you anywhere near someone like me.”

  “I guess my brother is smarter than you. He loves me. He wants me to be happy. And you make me happy.”

  “That don’t mean he likes me, darlin’.”

  “What’s not to like?” I shook my head. “You’re being weird. Why do you worry about this? He likes you. My sister likes you. Even Cletus seems to like you a little bit better than he did.”

  “More like, he don’t dislike me as much as he used to.”

  Whatever. “It doesn’t matter what they think of you. I love you. That’s the only important thing.”

  Rafe looked like he wanted to argue, but the entrance for Copper Creek came up on the right, and he focused on finding my brother’s place among the other McMansions.