Kickout Clause (Savannah Martin Mystery)

by Bennett, Jenna

  While I’d been remembering my own experience at the Shortstop, Rafe had assured Manny that it was fine that he’d followed Bradley inside, and Manny had told Rafe about how he’d sat at the bar drinking a beer and eating peanuts while keeping an eye on Bradley in the mirror.

  “He looked like he didn’t wanna be there, you know what I mean?”

  I could imagine. I’m sure I had looked like I hadn’t wanted to be there too, back in the fall.

  “So what was he doing?” Rafe asked.

  “He was meeting somebody.”

  “Who?” I said.

  Rafe scowled at me, and Manny hesitated, obviously thrown by the sound of my voice.

  Rafe cleared his throat. “Who?” he said again.

  “Um...” Manny must have decided he’d either made a mistake or it didn’t matter who Rafe had with him. “I don’t know, man. Just another dude in a suit. He was there when the subject walked in, and he stayed when the subject left. All you told me to do was follow the subject home and call you. So I’m calling.”

  “Sure.” Rafe’s voice was easy. “No problem. I thought maybe, since you saw him, you’d wanna gimme a description.”

  I’m pretty sure Manny was rolling his eyes, but he complied. “Older than the other dude. Maybe forty, forty-five. Black suit, white shirt, striped tie. I wasn’t close enough to see eyes, but his hair was going gray.”

  “Any idea what he was driving?”

  “He was inside, man!”

  “In the lot,” Rafe said. “Did the target’s car stand out?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “Did anything else stand out? Guy in a suit prob’ly isn’t gonna drive a truck, you know what I mean?”

  Manny thought about it. “Coulda been a Mercedes. Think I saw one. I’m not sure, though.” He sounded worried now, like he was afraid he was going to receive a failing grade.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Rafe said easily. “I’m just reminding you to look around, is all. So the target’s home now?”

  “Thirty minutes ago,” Manny confirmed. “He left the dude in the bar and drove straight to a townhouse in Green Hills. Pregnant woman inside. He opened the garage door with a remote and parked inside. I figured that was the end of the line. They’re eating dinner.”

  If Manny thought Bradley had been a random assignment, just a guy or a car Rafe had picked out of thin air, it wouldn’t do to let on that we knew just who Bradley was and where he lived. But a townhouse in Green Hills with a pregnant woman inside—that was definitely Shelby and home.

  “Good work,” Rafe told Manny. “Go home. We’ll talk more in the morning. If you want something to do tonight, you can start on the report.”

  “Oh, man...”

  Rafe chuckled and hung up. “Where were we?”

  “Here.” I snuggled up next to him, with my head on his shoulder, just as I’d been when the phone rang. “Looks like I was wrong and Shelby was right. Bradley isn’t cheating.”

  “No.” He put his arm around me. “Or at least he wasn’t cheating tonight. Looks like he’s up to something, though. You’ve been to the Shortstop. It ain’t the kind of place Bradley’d go if he didn’t have to, is it?”

  No, it wasn’t. “I guess that means the other guy must have called the meeting.”

  Rafe nodded. “And he’s got enough pull that he can get Bradley to go outside his comfort zone to meet him.”

  I glanced up at his profile. “What do you think is going on?”

  He turned his head on the pillow to look down at me. “Dunno. But if they’re hiding in a corner of the Shortstop, I don’t imagine it’s anything good.”

  I didn’t imagine so, either, and the implications worried me. Bradley was no longer my responsibility, true. He was Shelby’s problem now, and she deserved him. But that didn’t mean I wanted anything bad to happen to either of them. I hadn’t wanted anything bad to happen to them even when they were fooling around behind my back.

  True, the knowledge that Bradley was battling a persistent case of genital warts might have gone a long way to salving my feelings, but that was the extent of it.

  When I said as much, Rafe nodded. “I know, darlin’.”

  “I’m not sure what to tell Shelby.”

  “Why don’t you let me take a drive down to the Shortstop,” Rafe said, “and see what I can find out before you tell her anything.”

  “You’d do that for Shelby? Or Bradley?”

  “No,” Rafe said. “But I’d do it for you.”

  “Thank you.” I went up on my elbows to kiss him, and one thing led to another, and that, as they say, was that.

  Chapter Six

  The phone rang again before seven AM.

  In fact, it was before six thirty, which is rarely a good sign, in my experience.

  It was Rafe’s phone, though, so I stayed where I was, warm and snug under the covers, while he stretched for the side table. “Yeah?” He kept his voice low, so he wouldn’t disturb me any more than necessary.

  There was a pause, during which the phone quacked. Rafe cursed. “Where?”

  The phone sounded again. By now I was wide awake, but I wasn’t able to make out the words on the other end of the line.

  “Something wrong?” I asked when he hung up.

  “Yeah.” He ran a hand over his head. There’s not enough hair there to actually run his fingers through, but it comes to the same thing. A gesture of resignation and frustration. “I gotta go.”

  I watched as he got to his feet and padded over to the chest of drawers. Obviously he wasn’t going to take the time to shower, which reinforced my impression that what was going on was serious.

  “Does it have something to do with Walker?” I asked.

  “Shit.” He turned to look at me, his eyes wide.

  “What?”

  “I forgot. Get up.”

  “Forgot what?” But I swung my legs over the side of the bed and got to my feet. Instead of watching me, he turned back to the drawers to rummage, another sign something was seriously wrong. Usually, when I’m standing nearby, naked, he’s looking at me.

  “Here.” He tossed underwear at me. “Hurry.”

  I hurried. And because it was early, and because something was wrong, I didn’t bother to dress up, just slipped into the pair of yoga pants I’d worn the other day, along with a fresh T-shirt. My only concession to makeup was a smear of lipstick. Mother would have been horrified to learn that I’d gone beyond the front door without my ‘face’ on, but needs must and all that. Rafe was almost crackling with suppressed energy, and I didn’t want to take any more time than I absolutely had to.

  He kept his gun in his hand and his body between me and any comers on the way to the car, and I didn’t distract him with small talk. Thus it was that we were in the Volvo, peeling away from the curb, by the time I asked, “Where are we going?”

  He shot me a glance out of the corner of his eye as he crossed Fifth Street at fifty miles an hour. “Antioch.”

  “Why?”

  “Manny’s place,” Rafe said, taking the corner onto Interstate Drive on two wheels and gunned the engine for the freeway.

  “Was that him on the phone?”

  He shook his head. “Tammy.”

  “Grimaldi?”

  He nodded.

  Uh-oh. I sat back in my seat.

  Rafe drove, his face grim, dodging and weaving through the early-morning traffic on I-24. Thank God it was too early for rush hour.

  The trip from my condo to Antioch, a middle class suburban neighborhood on the southeast side of town, usually takes somewhere between twenty five and thirty minutes, depending on traffic. We made it in seventeen. By the time we squealed to a stop at the curb outside what I assumed was Manny’s place, I had to pry my fingernails out of my seat, and I felt like my hair was blown straight back. It wasn’t, of course—the windows had been up the whole time—but that was how fast we’d been going.

  Rafe didn’t wait for me. He pulled up behind a MNPD c
ruiser and had the door open almost before we’d come to a full stop. And he covered the distance between the car and the door to the condo almost at a run, not even stopping to flash the cop at the door his ID. By the time I had disentangled myself from the seatbelt and followed, he was well inside the building.

  I stopped in front of the guard. “Hi.”

  He nodded.

  “What’s going on?”

  He hesitated. But of course he’d seen me arrive with Rafe, and Rafe had breezed right in like he belonged here—I could hear his voice from inside as I stood on the stoop—so I guess Officer Lowrie must have decided he could give me at least the bare bones. “Homicide.”

  I had already surmised as much. When Tamara Grimaldi calls, unless it’s a personal call, that’s usually the reason.

  “Who died?”

  He hesitated again, but eventually told me. “Someone named Manuel Ortega.”

  Damn. I mean... darn.

  My stomach clenched. I’d never met Manny, had only heard his voice on the phone yesterday, but I knew Rafe liked him. He’d been responsible for a handful of TBI rookies, putting them through their paces and teaching them hand to hand combat and such, and I knew he thought Manny was the one who showed the most potential. This must be devastating for him.

  “What happened?”

  It took another second before Lowrie answered. “Single gunshot wound to the chest.”

  God. “When?”

  “Sometime last night. The M.E. will have to make the determination.”

  “When was he found?”

  “An early riser saw the door standing open at five AM,” Lowrie said. “She called 911.”

  And by six Grimaldi had been here and had called us. “Any idea who did it?”

  Lowrie shook his head. “Sorry, ma’am.” He glanced over his shoulder. “You wanna go in?”

  It was my turn to hesitate. “Is the body still here?”

  Lowrie nodded.

  I shook my head. “No thanks. I’ve seen someone shot before. That was enough. I’ll wait in the car.” I headed back to the Volvo and closed myself in.

  The van from the medical examiner’s office showed up a few minutes later. I watched as two men dressed in coveralls moved a gurney up the walkway and into the condo. Then I watched as they came back out a few minutes later, trailed by Rafe and Tamara Grimaldi, looking grim.

  Manny was zipped into a body bag, the way you see on TV, and that was fine with me. I had no need to look at him. Nor did those of the neighbors who were hanging out on their stoops, watching the show. Two uniformed officers were slowly making their way from door to door, taking statements. Hopefully someone had seen or heard something useful last night.

  I was in the process of watching the two paramedics—or morgue employees—load the gurney into the back of the van when suddenly there was a knock on my window. I jumped, and so did my heart, right up into my throat.

  “Morning,” Tamara Grimaldi said.

  She left off the ‘good,’ which was probably a smart omission.

  I glanced out the windshield and saw that Rafe was on his way toward the two officers who’d been doing the canvassing. The morgue van was driving off, slowly. I got out of the car so I could talk to Grimaldi without making her stoop. “Do you have any idea what happened?”

  She shook her head. “Best as we can figure it, he opened the door to someone who shot him. Point blank, right in the heart. He fell backwards into the entry. Death would have been instantaneous.”

  That was good news, anyway. No suffering. “Nobody saw or heard anything?”

  “No one we’ve found so far. One of the neighbors saw the door standing open when she was out with the dog early. By then, the shooter was long gone.”

  “I don’t suppose this place has security cameras at the entrance?”

  There’d been no other security. No gate, no guard house, no security pad with a code. This wasn’t a closed community. The entrance was wide open onto the road for anyone to come and go as they pleased.

  Grimaldi shook her head. “Afraid not.”

  I glanced at Rafe again, now in conversation with the two uniformed officers. “He’s pretty upset, isn’t he?”

  “Yes,” Grimaldi said, “he is.”

  “He really liked Manny.”

  Grimaldi nodded. “He said Mr. Ortega spent the evening following your ex-husband around?”

  There was no censorship in her voice, but I flushed anyway. “It wasn’t the whole evening. Just a couple of hours. But yes, he did. He and Rafe were supposed to do it together. Part of their cops and robbers training. But then, when this thing with Walker happened, Rafe didn’t want to leave me alone. He said you called and told him not to?”

  “I thought you might not want to do it yourself,” Grimaldi said.

  “Thank you.” Because, yes, the thought of coming across as clingy had crossed my mind, and the last thing I wanted to do, was make Rafe feel smothered.

  “What’s going on with your ex?”

  “Not much. Not that I know of.” Certainly nothing that would explain this.

  She didn’t answer, and I felt compelled to explain. “His wife called me the other day. She said Bradley wasn’t acting right, and asked my help to figure out why. I assumed he was cheating again, but I told her I’d follow him around for a day or two to see where he went. But he gave me this car, so the first time he saw me, he recognized me. Rafe said he and Manny would do it instead. As a training exercise. But then Walker broke out of prison, and it ended up being just Manny following Bradley yesterday afternoon.”

  Grimaldi nodded. “What happened?”

  “Didn’t Rafe tell you?” I didn’t wait for her to answer. “Manny followed him to the post office, and then to some dive on Nolensville Road, and home. Once he saw that Bradley was settled with Shelby, he left.”

  “When was that?”

  I told her it had been just after seven when Manny called.

  “He didn’t say where he was going?”

  I shook my head. “I have no idea where he went. I assumed he was going home, but that’s just because I’d go home at seven o’clock on a weeknight. It doesn’t mean Manny would. I know nothing about him, aside from the fact that the TBI took him on.”

  “He’s got something of the same story as your boyfriend,” Grimaldi told me. “Early brushes with the law, and then a stint in prison for robbery. The TBI recruited him while he was inside.”

  No wonder Rafe had gotten along so well with this guy. That was exactly the same path he’d taken to come to work for the TBI, with the only difference being that he’d served two years of a five year sentence for assault and battery when they arranged to have him released early.

  “Do you think this had something to do with Manny’s previous profession?”

  “It’s likely,” Grimaldi said. “He associated with some unsavory characters. Both before and after the prison sentence. That’s the thing about these undercover agents. They get out of prison and go back to their old lives. The only difference is that their allegiances have shifted.”

  She thought for a moment and added a judicious, “Hopefully.”

  Right.

  I glanced at Rafe, still in conversation with the two patrol officers. “He’s going to want to get whoever did this. He’ll feel responsible.”

  “He’s not,” Grimaldi said.

  Maybe not, but he’d still feel that way. “He’ll want to be a part of the investigation.” And knowing him, there was absolutely nothing Tamara Grimaldi or anyone else could do to keep him out.

  “I imagine it’ll be a joint effort with the MNPS and the TBI,” Grimaldi said calmly. “Mr. Ortega was one of theirs. They’ll want to be part of it.”

  Good. Even if it meant I’d probably see very little of Rafe the next few days. And that reminded me... “Any news of Walker?”

  Grimaldi shook her head. “Not as of last night. Sorry. I haven’t been in to the office yet this morning, to read the report
s.”

  “The prison guard hasn’t turned up?” Dead or alive.

  “Not so far.”

  “Is anyone looking for him? I assume it’s a male, right?”

  “Never assume,” Grimaldi said. “There are plenty of female guards in all-male prisons. But in this case, yes. The missing guard is male.”

  “I don’t expect it would matter much to Walker, actually. Both Brenda and Clarice were women, and he had no problem killing them. He wouldn’t have had a problem killing me or Mrs. Jenkins, either.”

  Grimaldi nodded. “We’re going on the assumption that the guard is dead and that we just haven’t found the body yet. Truth is, we don’t know where to start looking. Lamont got leave to go to his mother’s funeral in Kentucky, but since she didn’t die—or rather, since she’s been dead for years—there was no reason for him to go there.”

  “He might have had to, though. The guard may have kept him in the back of the car or something until they got to where they were supposed to be going. That might have been the first chance Walker had to get away.”

  Grimaldi nodded. “I had someone check the cemetery where Mrs. Lamont is buried after I figured out what was going on. There was no sign of the guard or the car they traveled in.”

  So they could have been there and left, or they might not have gotten there at all.

  “It’s a desolate sort of place,” Grimaldi added. “Lots of fields and forest. Easy place to hide a body, especially for someone familiar with the area. The local PD had a look around yesterday, but didn’t find anything. They said they’d take another look this morning, but again...”

  I nodded. “You don’t even know if Walker and the guard made it there.”

  We stood in silence a moment and watched Rafe talk to the uniformed officers. One of the crime scene investigators walked to her van with a Ziploc baggie she locked away in the back.

  “You’ve checked Walker’s house,” I asked, “haven’t you?”