Kickout Clause (Savannah Martin Mystery)

by Bennett, Jenna

  He didn’t answer, and I added, “Maybe it isn’t. But it could be. Couldn’t it?”

  He sounded reluctant. “It might could.”

  I hadn’t expected that. I’d thought he’d tell me I was being silly and fanciful and it didn’t mean anything. The fact that he didn’t made me shiver, as if he’d drawn a very cold finger down the middle of my back.

  While I was shaking off the feeling he asked, “Where are you?”

  “Sitting in the car outside the locksmith’s,” I said.

  “You being careful?”

  I said I was. For good measure I looked around, and in the rearview mirror. There was nothing to see. No parked cars, and no lurking former brokers.

  “Go home,” Rafe said. “And stay there until I get there. I don’t want you out on your own.”

  “But I was going to go back to the house to clean up the mess. The tech is going to leave fingerprint powder everywhere. Not to mention the pieces of glass. And we’ve got the new buyers and their home inspector coming at nine in the morning.”

  He thought for a second. “When’s the locksmith coming tomorrow? And the window guy?”

  I told him at eight.

  “Then eight is soon enough for you, too. I’ll take you there in the morning, make sure you’re not alone, and then you can do what you need to do.”

  I guessed that would work. “I can do it now, though. Just in case something goes wrong tomorrow. We don’t want to scare the buyers off.”

  “Nothing’s gonna go wrong,” Rafe said. “Go home. Wait for me.”

  I had my mouth open to tell him that I didn’t take orders from him when he added, “Please, Savannah. I don’t wanna fail you, too.”

  The catch in his voice took my breath away. After a second, I managed, “You didn’t fail Manny. You had no way of knowing what was going to happen.”

  “Just wait for me. Please.” He hung up before I had the chance to say anything else. Maybe he was ashamed of showing emotion, or maybe he just knew he had me where he wanted me. Either way, I pulled the car out of the parking lot and headed home.

  Just as last time, I parked on the street and hurried across the courtyard to the building with the back of my neck prickling. And just like last time, nothing happened. I made it into the building unscathed, and nobody was lying in wait for me in the stairwell. Upstairs, I walked through the apartment with the pepper spray in my hand, making sure I was alone and that no one had been there, before taking off my jacket and shoes and hanging my bag in the hall.

  The place was empty, of course, and untouched, and it was nice to feel safe.

  Except I didn’t, really. I didn’t think Walker would try to get at me at home—then again, I hadn’t thought he’d vandalize Rafe’s house, either—but even if I was secure while I was inside these four walls, I would have to leave the apartment again at some point, and then I was fair game.

  But surely—if it was Walker’s doing— he was only trying to scare me. Wasn’t he? Killing me would only make things worse when—if—when—the police caught up to him.

  But there was no point in sitting and brooding about it, so I did my best to find something to occupy my time. It didn’t make any sense to cook dinner, since we were going to the Shortstop when Rafe came home. But I changed from skirt and blouse into my only pair of jeans so I wouldn’t stick out so much in the blue collar bar, and then I booted up the laptop.

  The first thing I did was check my email, only to find I had one from my best friend from high school, Charlotte. Are you going to the reunion?

  What reunion?

  It took a few moments before I realized what she was talking about. Some three months ago, in late November, early December sometime, I’d received an email from the reunion committee for Columbia High. Come May, it would be ten years since we graduated from high school, and of course there was to be a party.

  Back when the first email arrived, I’d been deep in the doldrums, trying to deal with my recent miscarriage and the fact that Rafe had walked out of my life without a word, while I was in the hospital losing his baby. I’d been in no position to consider whether or not I’d be going to a reunion six months in the future. Right then, all I really wanted to do was die.

  I’d gotten over it, of course. And things had worked out. But I’d never done anything to respond to the invitation.

  I’ll be there, Charlotte’s email said. Would love to catch up.

  I would too, as it happened. Charlotte married a plastic surgeon and moved to North Carolina, so I hadn’t seen her for a while. We’d sort of lost touch after Bradley and I divorced.

  I could just imagine her reaction to finding out that I was living in sin with Rafe Collier.

  I shot her an email back saying I would, and that we should try to meet for drinks the day before, and then I scrolled back through a couple pages of emails until I found the invitation itself, and RSVP’d to that, too.

  That done, I signed out of the email program and set to work finding the photos we needed of Bradley and Nathan Ferncliff.

  Google images are very convenient. You can find pictures of almost anyone there. Or at least of anyone who doesn’t mind being photographed, unlike my boyfriend.

  Nathan wasn’t hard to find. He’s been a prominent Nashville attorney for decades, and the internet was full of photos.

  He did fit the description Manny had given of the man Bradley had met at the Shortstop yesterday. White, middle aged, graying hair, expensive suit. Unfortunately, it was a description that could fit probably a hundred thousand men in Nashville. We have a population of roughly a million in the metropolitan area, and I felt confident that a hundred thousand or more were middle aged and white, with graying hair. Put any one of them in an expensive suit, and he’d fit the same description.

  There was a photograph of Nathan and Bradley together, that I sent to the printer. They were wearing golf shirts and were participating in some sort of charity golf tournament, so I also chose a recent picture of Nathan in a suit and tie and printed that as well, just in case the casual attire in the first picture threw someone off. Then I went looking for more pictures of Bradley.

  There were less of those, and one of them stopped me dead.

  When I divorced Bradley, I’d gotten rid of all my photos of the two of us, including the wedding photos. My sister Catherine had gleefully helped me create a little funeral pyre for my marriage, in which I burned my wedding pictures, my marriage license, and a few other things of sentimental value. Mother had removed them as well, of course, from the mansion, so this was the first time in several years I had seen a picture from my wedding day.

  But there we were, on the steps of my childhood home, the Martin Mansion in Sweetwater: him in his tux and me in my virginal white dress, between two of the tall, white pillars.

  (No, I wasn’t a virgin anymore at that point. Bradley had been quite amorous before we got married. It was afterwards that he decided I was frigid and he needed to get his needs met elsewhere. Familiarity breeds contempt, and all that.)

  Except for Bradley’s thoroughly modern tux, the scene looked like something from out of Gone with the Wind. The mansion was finished in 1841, and my dress was classic 1860s Vivian Leigh, with a tight, beaded and embroidered bodice, small cap sleeves, and a huge, flounced skirt with actual, honest to goodness hoops. It weighed a ton, and the veil hadn’t exactly been a lightweight, either. I looked something like a puffy cloud, and impossibly young.

  Five years ago. I’d been twenty three. Back in the early days of the mansion, people married a lot younger than that. My great-great-great-grandmother Caroline—the one who slept with the groom—had been eighteen when she married the then Martin in residence, I think.

  Nonetheless, looking at the picture, I couldn’t believe how young I’d been. And not just how young I looked, but how innocent and unworldly and naive I had been. At that time, Mother had me firmly convinced that if I just toed the line and did everything I was supposed to do, my life
would be perfect. It took marrying Bradley and having him cheat to realize that my mother didn’t know everything.

  That had been the beginning of the end, as far as my proper Southern Belle upbringing was concerned. Instead of crawling home to Sweetwater to lick my wounds, and in time letting mother convince me to marry Todd Satterfield, I had stayed in Nashville. On my own. I had sold makeup at the mall until I got my real estate license, and then, a month or two into that adventure, I had met Rafe, and he’d put the exclamation point on my life, as well as cemented my understanding that my mother had no clue about what I needed to make me happy.

  But I digress. I printed out the wedding photo. I wasn’t angry with Bradley anymore, and it was a nice reminder of how far I’d come. Besides, I thought Rafe might get some amusement out of seeing it.

  That done, I started looking for a picture of Bradley I could take to the Shortstop—a more recent one, and one that didn’t include me in my wedding gown.

  I found one from last year, with Bradley looking fat-cat happy, the way he’d looked before Christmas when I’d had dinner with him. That was a few pounds ago. He was thinner now, and a lot more drawn, but it was the best I could do. In the earlier photos he looked too young and unfinished.

  I printed it out and checked the time. I still had an hour to kill before Rafe came home. I turned back to the computer and started a Google search on the name Vandervinder.

  I hadn’t expected much, but as it turned out, Dale Vandervinder was something of a local celebrity. He was a producer in the music industry, and as such was ‘somebody’ here in Music City. There were several pictures of him, most with his wife on his arm. She was a buxom bottle-blonde in her forties, well-maintained but past the first bloom of youth. I couldn’t imagine Bradley sleeping with her. I couldn’t imagine her wanting to sleep with Bradley, either. After Dale Vandervinder—who was around fifty and exuded money and power, from his sterling-gray hair to his Armani suit—I’d have thought Bradley would be below her notice. I could imagine her frolicking with the pool boy or her personal trainer for a change of pace, maybe—she looked like she might be the type—but not Bradley.

  Maybe their appointment had been purely business after all.

  I did another search, this time on ‘Dale Vandervinder + divorce.’

  Family law, for your information, is about a lot of things besides dissolving marriages. There are paternity suits, surrogacy, adoption, and some other things, as well. But divorces are a family practice’s bread and butter, so I started there.

  And lo and behold, Country Music Today had a notice in the most recent issue saying that the acclaimed producer and his wife of fourteen years were splitting up.

  Ferncliff & Morton must be representing Ilona Vandervinder.

  Quite a coup for Bradley. And rather interesting how he, as opposed to one of the senior partners, had ended up representing such a high profile client. Maybe they really were sleeping together.

  Although if they were, you’d think she’d make especially sure not to hire him as her legal representative.

  Then again, it made a handy excuse for spending lots and lots of time together.

  A sound at the door brought my head up. It was a scraping sort of sound, as if someone was fiddling with the lock. Maybe inserting something into it that wasn’t a key.

  I got to my feet, as soundlessly as I could, and made my way across the floor. My stocking clad feet were soundless on the carpet.

  The scraping continued.

  I peered down the hallway past the kitchen and raised my voice. “Who is it?”

  The scraping stopped, with a sort of startled absence of sound. Or maybe that was just me reading something into the silence that wasn’t there.

  I took a few steps closer. “Hello?”

  There was a scramble outside the door, and the sound of rapid footsteps retreating down the hall in the direction of the stairs. I started forward, but stopped before I got around to actually unlocking the door. Chances were there was no one left outside, but why take stupid chances?

  I turned around instead, and headed for the window. I could have gone out on the balcony, I suppose, but that felt a little too exposed, so I kept the doors closed and just peered down at the street and sidewalk instead, craning my neck to try to catch a glimpse of someone who might come across the courtyard from my building. But since the human eye isn’t designed to see around corners, I had very little luck. A few cars drove by, and a few people walked along the sidewalk—an elderly black man, a young couple of the hipster type in skinny jeans and with unwashed hair, and someone who looked like a bag lady pushing a shopping cart she must have borrowed from one of the local Kroger stores. It was full of soda cans. Empty, I assume, since they were all in a pile and not arranged in orderly rows.

  I didn’t recognize anyone. After a couple of minutes I gave up and went back to the computer.

  Chapter Twelve

  A little less than an hour later there was another sound at the door, bringing my head up and setting my spider senses tingling. This time it resolved itself into a key being inserted in the lock and after a second, the knob turning. The door opened a few inches and then stopped with a jarring sound.

  “What the hell?” Rafe’s voice said.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” I hustled down the hallway. “I forgot about the chain.”

  “Nervous?”

  He waited for me to push the door shut enough to unhook the security chain and then open it again.

  I took a step back to let him inside. “Someone was here, trying to get in.”

  He stared at me for a moment while the amusement in his eyes gave way to murderous intent, thankfully without veering off into doubt along the way. “You OK?”

  I nodded. “I heard someone fiddle with the lock. When I asked who was there, he took off running.”

  “Did you run after?”

  I shook my head. Rafe would have run after the intruder, gun in his hand and ready for use, but I’m not that brave.

  “Good girl.”

  “I looked out the window. But I didn’t see anyone. Or no one I recognized. Or anyone who acted suspiciously.”

  Rafe nodded. He was inspecting the lock. It had faint scratches on it. “After he’s finished at the house tomorrow,” he told me as he straightened, “get the locksmith over here to install another deadbolt.”

  “Are you sure that’s necessary? I mean, whoever it was didn’t even get past the first lock.”

  “Someone who knows what he’s doing,” Rafe said, shrugging out of his leather jacket, “can get through this door in a minute or less. Even with the chain on.”

  I blinked at him, doubtfully, until I remembered that he’d made his way in here once or twice without me opening the door for him first. “I’ll do that.”

  “Thank you.” He hung the jacket on the hook beside mine, and turned to look me over. “You look like you’re ready to go.”

  I nodded.

  “Hungry?”

  Not for the kind of food the Shortstop served, but then I figured he knew that. I was hungry for information, though. I wanted to know who Bradley had been talking to the other night.

  “Gimme five minutes.” He walked away from me in the direction of the bedroom and—I assumed—the bathroom.

  I went back to the dining room table, to turn the computer off and gather together the printed pages. By the time I was finished, Rafe was back, pulling a clean T-shirt over his head to hide all those beautiful muscles.

  He grinned at me when his head popped free. “You sure you don’t just wanna stay here tonight? We could order a pizza.”

  Tempting, but— “I’d really like to know who Bradley was meeting the other night. And don’t you have to ask about Manny? I realize the Shortstop probably didn’t have anything to do with what happened, but you should probably ask, right?”

  “Prob’ly.” He glanced at the papers in my hand. “What’ve you got there?”

  “Photographs.” I han
ded them to him and watched him rifle through. “That’s Nathan Ferncliff, the senior partner at Ferncliff & Morton. The one Shelby said Bradley might have been meeting with.”

  Rafe nodded. “Fits the description.” He flipped over to the next picture.

  “That’s Bradley,” I said. “You probably recognize him.”

  “I didn’t really get a good look at him,” Rafe answered. “He was inside the car. And at the restaurant, I was watching you.”

  Nice to know. I had already known that when Bradley and I went out on that non-date before Christmas—dinner at Fidelio’s so I could pick his brain about his uncle Joshua—Rafe had followed us. No sooner had Bradley pulled the car to a stop at the curb outside the condo after dinner, than Rafe had been there to remove me from the passenger seat. He’d been a little jealous, I think, at least until he realized who Bradley was. And then, of course, he’d realized that jealousy was ridiculous. There was nothing in the world that could induce me to go back to Bradley, and I was pretty sure Bradley wouldn’t have wanted me back anyway. Back then he seemed plump and happy and thrilled about impending fatherhood.

  “What the hell is this?”

  I looked over, at what had prompted the outburst. “Oh. I thought you might enjoy seeing that.”

  He shot me a look. “A picture of you marrying someone else?”

  I shrugged. “I burned all my pictures of Bradley after the divorce. Catherine and I had a bonfire in the backyard in Sweetwater. It’s been years since I’ve seen that. And it doesn’t make me angry anymore.”

  He went back to contemplating the photograph. Eventually he spoke. “Long time ago.”

  “Five years. In June.” Long enough to get some perspective. And maybe just an ounce of wisdom.

  “Why d’you print it out? You trying to tell me something?”

  “What?... Oh. No.” I shook my head. “I’m happy living in sin.”

  He quirked a brow. “You sure?”

  “Positive. Bradley was different before we got married. He liked me better. Once we were husband and wife, everything went south. We stopped having sex, and he began sleeping with Shelby instead.” And I would hate for that to happen to Rafe and me. All that lovely heat and passion—and fun—we had now might go away once we were shackled together wrist and ankle.