Past Due

by Jenna Bennett

  Although that didn’t change the fact that I could see the irony in the situation.

  Charlotte was married to a man who did facelifts and Botox injections for a living. I was involved with one who put murderers and drug traffickers behind bars. And yet she looked down at me for my choice in men.

  But I didn’t say anything about it, just led the way into Beulah’s, where Yvonne was waiting by the register in her usual uniform of short skirt, tight shirt, and sneakers. “Sugar!” She smiled at me. When Charlotte came in behind me and the door closed without a sign of Rafe, the smile slipped a little. “Where’s your man?”

  “The sheriff arrested him,” I said.

  “No! Why?”

  “Someone called in a tip that he had the gun that was used to kill Billy Scruggs in the toolbox on his bike.”

  Yvonne arched her brows. So did Charlotte, who hadn’t heard any of the details. “Did he?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Charlotte blinked. “Who put it there?” Yvonne asked.

  I could have kissed her. “I assume whoever really shot Billy. Nobody else would have had it.”

  “When did it happen?”

  “Sometime yesterday. Probably after dark, when Rafe and Dix were at Dusty’s Bar and I was babysitting.” The bike had been parked outside the mansion all day, so someone could have done it at any time, but it wasn’t like someone could just walk right up to the front steps of the mansion and stick a gun into the toolbox of the bike, after all. My mother would have noticed. “It was probably someone they met at Dusty’s. Someone who realized that Rafe was in town and that his bike would make a fine place to ditch the murder weapon.”

  Yvonne nodded, so it must make sense to her. Charlotte looked like she’d sucked a lemon.

  “He’s calling a lawyer this morning,” I added. “I’m sure he’ll be out shortly. I can go visit him after nine.”

  “We better get you fed and outta here, then.” Yvonne grabbed two menus and headed for a table halfway down the row.

  We hadn’t gotten there yet when a voice on my right said, “Savannah.”

  I looked over, and there were Mary Kelly and Tina in a booth by the wall.

  “Would you like to join us?” Mary Kelly asked. “We’re just getting some breakfast before Tina hits the road.”

  I glanced at Charlotte. She didn’t seem opposed, so I slid into the booth next to Mary Kelly, while Charlotte took the seat next to Tina. Yvonne handed off the menus and asked us what we wanted to drink. I ordered orange juice and Charlotte coffee, and Yvonne withdrew. Or more accurately bounced off, ponytail and breasts bobbing, and butt jiggling under the tight, black skirt.

  “She’s as cheap as a ten dollar whore,” Mary Kelly said indulgently, “bless her heart.”

  I blinked.

  She added, with a sly look at me, “She had a thing for your boyfriend, you know. In high school.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m aware of that.” And it was more of a thing with Rafe than for him, technically speaking. Elspeth was the one with a thing for him. Although they’d both slept with him, so maybe it came to the same thing. “She slept with Ethan Underwood, too. And probably Matt and Willem. Maybe even Danny Emerson.”

  “Maybe she’s the murderer,” Tina said with a giggle. If it hadn’t been eight in the morning, I would have guessed she was high.

  In fact, maybe I’d better make sure she wasn’t. “Are you driving back to Atlanta after breakfast?”

  She nodded. “I took today off from work. But I have to go back tomorrow.”

  “Did you check with the Columbia PD that it’s OK to leave?”

  She shot a startled glance, not at me, but at Mary Kelly. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “Three people are dead,” I said. “Someone killed them. Someone at the reunion.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Someone could have come from outside and killed Ethan,” Mary Kelly said. “Called him up and asked him to come out to the parking lot, maybe, and stabbed him.”

  “I suppose.”

  “And Matt and Willem were both killed at home. It could have been anyone.”

  “Anyone who knew where they lived.”

  “Yes,” Mary Kelly said, “but that’s everyone we went to school with. Or maybe not Willem—he’d moved—but Matt still lived in his parents’ house. Everyone knows where that is.”

  She looked from Tina to Charlotte for confirmation. They both nodded; Charlotte a bit reluctantly. Yvonne, who just now arrived with my orange juice and Charlotte’s coffee, nodded too.

  “I didn’t,” I said.

  Tina giggled. “That’s because your mother never let you do anything, Savannah.”

  “My mother let me do plenty. And I wasn’t the one who got myself in trouble at one of those parties.”

  Nobody said anything to that. Tina opened her mouth, but I think Mary Kelly must have kicked her under the table, because she winced and subsided.

  “Are you ready to order?” Yvonne asked into the silence. Since things were starting to feel uncomfortable, I seized the opportunity.

  “Yes, please. I’d like oatmeal and a side of fruit.”

  “Stomach bothering you?”

  I had to admit it did, a little. It was still early, and the grease from the eggs and bacon probably wouldn’t do my morning sickness any favors.

  Charlotte ordered a Western omelette, and Yvonne wandered off again.

  “Who told you that?” Mary Kelly asked.

  “What?”

  “About getting in trouble at one of Ethan’s parties.”

  “One of the other girls we went to school with said that Ethan raped her.”

  Tina gasped. “Who?” Mary Kelly asked.

  I hesitated, and Charlotte took the decision out of my hands. “Darlene West,” she said.

  “I told you that in confidence!”

  “And now I’m telling Mary Kelly and Tina in confidence.”

  She waited for me to respond, but when I didn’t, she continued. “I think she killed them.”

  There was a beat. “Darlene?” Mary Kelly said.

  Charlotte nodded. “Think about it. She lives in Birmingham. The killer has to be someone who’s in town for the reunion. If whoever it is lived here, she wouldn’t have to wait for the reunion to kill anyone.”

  Unless, as Rafe and I had talked about on Saturday night, a lifetime ago, the killer was local but had decided to take advantage of the suspect pool being doubled or tripled this weekend.

  Or—since I now knew we were dealing with two people—maybe one was local and the other not.

  “She’s strong,” Charlotte said. “She’d be able to stab someone and kill them. And she must be really angry. Whatever Ethan did to her was bad enough that it made her a lesbian.”

  I didn’t try to set her straight. “How would she know where Willem lived?” I asked instead. “He wasn’t at the reunion. And I checked information and his address wasn’t listed.”

  “I don’t know,” Charlotte said.

  “And anyway, why would she want to kill Willem or Matt in the first place? She didn’t mention anyone but Ethan.”

  “Just because she didn’t mention them, doesn’t mean they couldn’t have been there.”

  No. But the situation Darlene had described hadn’t included anyone but her and Ethan. She’d said so. They may have been in an adjacent room, but they hadn’t been part of what happened, and Darlene hadn’t seemed to carry a grudge toward them.

  “I don’t think it’s Darlene,” I said. “I think someone else got raped. That night you were there. The night when Danny Emerson brought you home. I think you don’t remember much because you were drugged, and I think he got you out of there before anything could happen to you. But I think someone else wasn’t as lucky. And I think that someone blames Danny. So after they killed Ethan, Matt and Willem, they wanted to get Danny, too. But they couldn’t butcher Danny the way they butchered the others, because he hadn’t really done
anything wrong. But they still wanted him to pay. So they hit him over the head and left him to die from carbon monoxide poisoning. That’s probably why Danny had problems with alcohol, too. He suspected what had happened that night. Maybe it wasn’t the only time it happened. And maybe he blamed himself for not being able to rescue everyone. So he’d drink to make himself feel better...”

  I hadn’t been aware I’d been thinking all that until it all came pouring out. And it seemed I had shocked not just myself, but everyone else at the table, too. They were all staring at me with wide eyes.

  “That’s quite a scenario,” Mary Kelly said finally. She glanced at Tina. It was hard to tell under the makeup, but I thought Tina looked pale.

  “Sorry.” I cleared my throat. “Guess I got a little carried away.”

  “Here’s the food.” Charlotte sounded relieved. We all straightened up and leaned back as Yvonne stopped beside the table with plates stacked up and down her arms.

  Like Charlotte, Mary Kelly had ordered an omelet, while Tina was breakfasting on French toast drenched in syrup and butter. My stomach lurched just from looking at her plate. And all it took was one bite of oatmeal before I slid out of the booth with my hand over my mouth.

  “Excuse me.”

  I took off for the bathroom.

  Sometimes it was harder to appreciate still being pregnant than others.

  I was standing in front of the cracked mirror wiping my face with a paper towel when the door opened and Charlotte came in. She looked me up and down before meeting my eyes in the mirror. “You’re pregnant.”

  She sounded accusatory.

  I nodded.

  “With Rafe Collier’s baby.”

  My lips curved. Yes, I was.

  “Have you lost your mind?” Charlotte demanded.

  Not lately. Not that I knew about. I focused on her in the mirror. “What do you mean?”

  “Isn’t it bad enough that you’re sleeping with him? Now you’re having his baby, too?”

  “He’s not the enemy,” I said. “And babies often come along when you’re sleeping with someone. You should know that.”

  Charlotte’s face twisted, to the degree that the cosmetic surgery allowed. “Your mother must be having kittens.”

  “My mother doesn’t know yet. We were going to tell her last night, but then Rafe got arrested.”

  Charlotte’s lips pursed, and for a second she looked alarmingly like her mother. And mine. “Are you going to tell your baby that his father is a felon?”

  “I’ll tell him or her the truth,” I said steadily. “I’m not ashamed. And he’s not really a felon.” At least not this weekend. “He had nothing to do with shooting Billy Scruggs.”

  She put her hands on her hips. “Then who did?”

  “I have no idea. One of the people he sold drugs to? For all I know, it could have been the same person who killed Ethan and the others.”

  In fact, maybe it was. It was pretty damned unlikely that there should be two murderers—two unrelated murderers—running around on the same weekend, after all. It made much more sense that the crimes were connected. And Yvonne had said he’d been supplying the boys with alcohol and whatever drugs they used during the time Rafe had been in prison, which I assumed was the same time Ethan and Matt had been having their parties.

  “Your boyfriend is the one in jail,” Charlotte pointed out.

  “My boyfriend wouldn’t even be in Sweetwater if it hadn’t been for the other murders. And he had no reason to want to rid the world of Billy Scruggs.”

  “He tried to kill him once before.”

  “That’s ancient history,” I said. “He didn’t kill him now.”

  “Whatever you say.” Although she sounded like she didn’t believe me. Her attention dropped to my stomach. “How far along are you?”

  “Two months,” I said.

  “It isn’t too late to change your mind.”

  It took a second for her meaning to penetrate. When it did, I felt like she’d sucker-punched me in the gut. I lost my breath for a moment, and it took a lot longer than that before I got my voice to cooperate. “I’ve had two miscarriages. I’d never abort a baby. Especially Rafe’s.”

  Really, after the mental anguish I’d gone through last time I was pregnant, and then the loss of the baby in the end anyway, her suggestion wasn’t just rude and insulting, it was damned near vicious. Not that she’d have any idea, of course. I hadn’t talked to her about it. So she probably just didn’t realize what she’d said.

  But I realized something.

  “I’ve changed my mind about you.” My voice was shaking, and try as I might, I couldn’t steady it. “I’ve been trying to be nice to you for the past couple of days, while you’ve insulted my boyfriend left and right. I even took you in in the middle of the night last night! But this is it. I’m done. I don’t want to have to talk to you anymore. I’m going to go see my boyfriend, and then I’m going to figure out what it’ll take to get him out of jail. And then we’ll go back to Nashville, where people don’t look sideways at me and tell me I shouldn’t be with him.”

  Charlotte opened her mouth, probably so she could remind me that I had driven her here. “I’m sure Mary Kelly will give you a ride home,” I said. “Feel free to spend another night at my mother’s house. You and she can pretend I don’t exist, and that you’re her daughter instead. You’re just like her.”

  It was the most vicious insult I could come up with without using foul language, and I wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction.

  I pushed past her and out through the door. And I heard her say my name, plaintively, but I didn’t stop. I just swept up the aisle between the tables and out the door—not realizing until later that I’d left Charlotte to pay for my uneaten breakfast.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  On the ride back to town, I managed to rid myself of most of my bad temper. Charlotte couldn’t help being who she was, after all. She was a product of her upbringing, just like I was. Just like my mother. She was me, before Rafe. He’d changed me. Loving him had changed me. I couldn’t blame Charlotte for not having had the same opportunity to change. It wasn’t her fault that she was stuck with a cosmetic surgeon who reinforced all her prejudices and preconceptions.

  I didn’t go back for her, though. Mary Kelly would drive her home, or back to the mansion. Mary Kelly had to have her own car at Beulah’s, if she’d said that Tina was hitting the road after breakfast.

  The path between Beulah’s and the jail lay past the Albertsons’ house, and on impulse, I pulled into the driveway behind an official fire department vehicle. I was curious to see how bad the damage had been. There might have been a part of me that wanted to know how soon the Albertsons would be able to go back to their own house, too, just in case I couldn’t get Rafe out of jail today and had to spend another night in Sweetwater. After my tirade in the bathroom, it would be humiliating beyond words to come face to face with Charlotte in the hallway at the mansion.

  The front of the big, white Victorian looked just as it always did. Elegant and staid, like an aging Southern Belle.

  The lawn was soggy and trampled, the grass alternately flattened or kicked up in clumps. Here and there were imprints of heavy boots dug deep into the wet soil. Evidence of the firefighters who had been here last night, I assumed.

  After I’d turned the corner to the rear, the damage was a lot more visible. Soot streaked the white paint, which was blistering in places from the heat. And the middle of the house, where the back door had been, was just one big, charred hole.

  A man was squatting by the foundation, a clipboard with a pen next to him on the wet ground. And he must not have heard me approach, because he didn’t turn around or greet me.

  That was fine with me. I was too busy being disconcerted at the appearance of the house.

  The fire had chewed through the old wood, and planks and timber hung in charred chunks around the opening in the wall. Inside, I could see that the fire had licked at
Mrs. Albertson’s new kitchen cabinets, causing the white laminate to buckle, while the tile floor was a mess of mud and plaster and ashes.

  The man by the foundation straightened with a grunt, and bent to scoop up his clipboard and his pen. Before he could turn around and be surprised, I thought I’d better let him know I was here. “Excuse me.”

  He swung around on his heel, a middle-aged man with a giant handlebar mustache that would have made Wyatt Earp proud. What is it about firemen and facial hair?

  “My friend lives here,” I said, by way of explanation. “I was driving by and thought I’d see how bad it is.”

  He gestured to it. “Bad.”

  “Not as bad as it could be.” The rest of the house was still standing, after all. I was sure it could be saved. It was only the kitchen and back wall that would need redoing.

  Not that that’s a small matter. But compared to losing the entire house, it wasn’t too bad.

  The fireman grunted. “Your friend was lucky she was awake. If she’d been asleep, the fire might have gone out of control before anyone realized what was going on.”

  “I’m Savannah Martin.”

  “Craig Jenkins. Fire investigator.” He held up a dirty hand as evidence for why he couldn’t shake.

  “Nice to meet you.” I glanced again at the charred hole in the wall. “Any idea what happened?”

  “Sure,” Jenkins said. “Somebody soaked a bunch of rags in gasoline, stuffed them into the dryer vent, and lit them on fire.”

  I blinked. “You mean it’s arson? Someone lit the house on fire on purpose?”

  He nodded. “Probably kids. They do dumb stuff like that.”

  They did. Although this went well beyond dumb and into criminally stupid. “People could have died!”

  “Kids don’t think about that,” Jenkins said with a shrug.

  “How do you know that’s what happened?”

  “This didn’t burn.” He nudged a crumpled rag with his toe. White at some point, now it was stained with dirt and grass and water and ashes. When I looked politely confused, he added, “Synthetic wool blend. Flame retardant material.”

  “What is it?”