Kickout Clause (Savannah Martin Mystery)

by Bennett, Jenna

  I nodded. “Watching TV at the bar.”

  “Could you tell how long he’d been there?”

  How was I supposed to know that? I’m not psychic.

  “Did he have a drink in front of him?” Grimaldi asked.

  “Glass of beer. And it was still full when we sat down. So I guess he couldn’t have been there all that long. Unless it was a second or third glass.”

  “Did you spend any time in the parking lot before you went inside?”

  I opened my eyes wide. “How did you know?”

  Rafe chuckled at the look on my face. “She’s good, darlin’, but she ain’t that good. She’s thinking he was following us, and had time to go inside while we were standing in the parking lot, necking.”

  “We weren’t necking. We were talking about—” I realized they were both laughing at me, and grimaced. “Yes, it might have happened that way.”

  “Besides,” Rafe said innocently, “we were necking when we found the flat tires.”

  We had been. No denying that.

  By now, the Volvo was on the flatbed and the tow truck was rumbling toward the road. We watched it roll by. “Ready to leave?” Grimaldi asked when it had merged with traffic in the direction of downtown Nashville, the red taillights winking out up the road.

  I nodded. “Yes, please.”

  “Come on.” She headed toward a plain, unmarked, obviously official vehicle parked in a no-parking zone in front of the building.

  Rafe opened the passenger door for me, obviously intending for me to ride next to Grimaldi while he took the back seat.

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t be more comfortable up front?”

  Last time we’d gotten a ride from Tamara Grimaldi, he’d put me in the back, where the criminals ride, on the other side of the reinforced metal grid and bulletproof glass. I’d assumed the idea of riding back there brought back bad memories for him.

  He grinned. “I’ll be all right.”

  “I really don’t mind, if you and Gri... Tamara want to talk shop.”

  “I can talk through the bars. I’ve done it before.”

  “I’d be perfectly happy...”

  “Just get in.” He gave me a nudge. “The quicker you get in, the quicker we get home so we can finish what we started.”

  When he put it like that...

  I slid into the passenger seat next to Grimaldi and let Rafe close the door behind me. He crawled into the back. “All set.”

  “So what do you two think is going on?” I asked when Grimaldi had reversed and was moving forward into traffic on Nolensville Road. “With Walker and this Hanson guy. I mean, Walker wasn’t here. I would have recognized him.”

  “He coulda been in the parking lot,” Rafe said. “He coulda been the one flattening our tires while the other guy went inside to make sure we were settled and not on our way back.”

  “So you’re saying they’re working together? That this guy let Walker escape?”

  “Lamont didn’t kill him,” Grimaldi said, “so I’m leaning that way, yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Two reasons I can think of,” Rafe said from the back seat. It was weird looking at him through the metal grid separating him from the two of us. I wasn’t sure I liked the sensation. “The first’s money.”

  “Walker paid Hanson to let him escape?”

  “Law enforcement isn’t a job where you get rich,” Grimaldi told me, while she kept her eyes on the road. “You do it because it’s important.”

  “It’s that why you became a cop? Because you wanted to do something important?”

  She glanced at me. Just a quick look before turning her attention back to the traffic. “My mother was killed when I was fourteen. I wanted to grow up and make a difference.”

  Ouch.

  I glanced at Rafe to see whether he’d known about this. The look he gave me was totally impassive, so I had no idea one way or the other. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “Sure, but... it’s probably not something you get over.”

  I wanted to ask what had happened, but it wasn’t really any of my business, and besides, this wasn’t the time or place for such a conversation. But before I could change the subject, she’d added, “They never caught who did it. I try to make sure that doesn’t happen to anyone else.”

  Man. What do you say after something like that? “And I’m sure we’re all grateful,” sounds flippant, even when it isn’t meant that way, and “Good for you,” isn’t much better. Patronizing at best, insulting at worst. But at the same time, the location and general situation didn’t really invite to anything deeply emotional.

  “I do it for the benefits,” Rafe said.

  Grimaldi snorted. “Sure.”

  “Hey, nothing wrong with full medical and dental.” He grinned.

  And he was right, there was nothing wrong with it. I didn’t have either. I’d been on Bradley’s policy before the divorce, but I hadn’t been able to afford my own afterwards.

  If I married Rafe, I could have medical insurance.

  If I got pregnant before I got married, would I be covered?

  While I’d been thinking, the two of them had continued the conversation. Or had brought it back to Garth Hanson.

  “You checked out his place, right?”

  “The first day,” Grimaldi confirmed. “When we thought he was dead. Just in case Lamont was holed up there.”

  “But he wasn’t.”

  “We didn’t find him.”

  “Have you checked it again?”

  “I have one of the patrol cars drive by once or twice a day to check for signs of life,” Grimaldi said, navigating the intersection at Nolensville and Harding Place, “but they can’t go inside. We have no reason to suspect foul play.”

  “D’you have a reason to suspect foul play now?”

  Rafe didn’t wait for her answer, just added, “Where’s his place?”

  “Not very far from yours, actually. He lives near the river.”

  “How about we stop by on the way home?”

  “He probably won’t be there,” Grimaldi said. “And if he is, I’ll need to call it in and request backup.”

  “I’m your backup.”

  “You’re not...” She stopped and rolled her eyes. “Of course you are.”

  “Carrying? You damn well better believe it. I ain’t going nowhere without a weapon these days. Too many people with guns and knives running around.”

  Grimaldi didn’t respond, so I guess she didn’t blame him. And he did, after all, have a license to kill.

  Chapter Fourteen

  As it turned out, Garth Hanson really didn’t live very far from us at all. Maybe two miles, as the crow flies. Instead of taking a left off the exit, Grimaldi took a right, and wended her way down through the industrial district to the river. We drove past Julio Melendez’s old warehouse—which actually had turned out to belong to Hector Gonzalez, now a guest of the state of Georgia. The warehouse was dark and presumably empty. Julio was still in Tennessee state custody, as far as I knew.

  Beyond that point, the land rose up to the left, on the side away from the river, and small houses crowded the steep hill up into the neighborhood known as Shelby Heights. Grimaldi turned the car onto one of the numbered streets and gunned the engine. We sailed halfway up the hill before she made a sharp turn into a narrow driveway beside a standard tract house. This area was built around 1950, and it was made up of little two bedroom, one bath cottages with the same floor plan, occasionally turned around just so the homes wouldn’t all look exactly the same. Over time, the owners have painted them different colors, added rooms or porches here and there, and done their best to instill some personality, but if you strip all that aside, it’s still all the same house over and over.

  Garth Hanson’s house was the original white color, with boring black shutters and spindly landscaping. A carport with a corrugated plastic roof was attached to one end of the house, coveri
ng the back part of the driveway. It was empty, save for a brown trashcan and a green recycling bin, both Metro issue with wheels. The house was dark, all the lights off, and it looked uninhabited.

  I thought about Walker’s beautiful sprawling midcentury ranch in leafy Oak Hill and tried to imagine him crashing here.

  It didn’t quite compute, as we used to say when I was little. One of these things is not like the others...

  “Looks empty,” Rafe remarked from the back seat.

  “So far it’s been empty. Come on.” Grimaldi unlocked her door and stepped out. And then she unlocked his, since he couldn’t do it himself from inside.

  I got out on the other side of the car and looked from one to the other of them. “Now what?”

  “Now we have a look around,” Rafe said, reaching for his gun. “You can stay in the car.”

  I rolled my eyes. “What if I don’t want to stay in the car?”

  “You’d be safer in the car, if someone’s here.”

  “No one’s here. He didn’t flap his wings and fly to the Shortstop. He has a vehicle of some sort. And it isn’t here. So he isn’t here, either.”

  “Unless he parked it somewhere else,” Grimaldi said. She had unstrapped her own gun and was holding it in her hand. We must have caught her off-duty for once, because she was dressed in jeans and a corduroy jacket instead of the usual business pantsuit.

  “And now he’s sitting in the dark, twiddling his thumbs?” I said. “I don’t think so. It isn’t even eight o’clock yet, so it isn’t like he’s gone to bed. And I doubt he’d park his car so far away. If someone came for him, he’d want it within easy reach if he had to make a getaway, don’t you think?”

  Grimaldi shrugged. “Suit yourself. If you don’t want to stay in the car, you don’t have to.” She glanced at Rafe. “You take the back. I’ll take the front.”

  He nodded. “Gimme a couple minutes.” He faded into the darkness behind the house. Grimaldi and I stood where we were, next to the car.

  “You don’t think he’s here, do you?” I asked after a few moments.

  She shook her head.

  “So he’s safe.” This time, the ‘he’ I was talking about was Rafe, and Grimaldi knew it.

  “He can take care of himself. I’d put my money on him against almost anyone most of the time.”

  Me too. Even so, I gnawed on my bottom lip. “He isn’t bulletproof. And chances are Hanson has a gun. Guards carry guns, right?”

  “Not on the job.”

  Wow. So these guys were tasked with keeping the peace between the state’s most dangerous criminals, but they weren’t given guns to do it.

  “Too much opportunity for one of the inmates to get it from them,” Grimaldi added, which I guess made sense. Still, it seemed somewhat counterintuitive, if you asked me.

  “You probably checked, right? Does Hanson own a gun?”

  She nodded, reluctantly.

  “So if he’s inside, he could shoot Rafe.” Who wasn’t wearing a bulletproof vest or anything like that.

  “He isn’t inside,” Grimaldi said.

  “How do you know?”

  She glanced at me. “His car isn’t here.”

  Great.

  “Has it been long enough?”

  She checked her watch. “Probably. You boyfriend should have had time to get into position in the back by now. Just in case someone’s inside and when I knock, he tries to go out the back door. You’d better stay here.”

  She left me where I was and moved up to the front door. Her feet were silent on the dry grass, and didn’t scrape on the two concrete steps that led up to the stoop. I held my breath when she knocked on the door.

  Nothing happened for a second, and then there was the sound of the deadbolt being shoved back. Grimaldi pulled the gun up into a firing stance, with one hand supporting the other.

  The door opened on a dark shadow. There was a blur of movement and then Rafe’s voice. “Don’t point that thing at me.”

  I opened my eyes. He was holding Grimaldi’s gun by the barrel, and we were probably lucky she hadn’t pulled the trigger in sheer surprise when he swept it out of her hands.

  She dropped them to her hips. “I wasn’t going to shoot. I saw it was you.”

  “Sure,” Rafe said. He handed the gun back and watched as Grimaldi holstered it. “The place is empty. Nobody here.” He moved back to let her in.

  “You weren’t supposed to go inside, you know.”

  Rafe shrugged. “The back door was open.”

  Grimaldi’s eyeroll made it abundantly clear what she thought of that explanation. “Any sign that they’ve been here?” She moved across the threshold.

  They kept talking as they disappeared inside, but I could no longer hear them. After a quick look around—nobody was watching that I could see—I made my way up the steps and through the door, too.

  The house was pretty much what I had expected, from what I could see of it in the dark. Big, manly leather furniture—the kind you’d expect a bachelor who works for the prison system to own—with a big-screen TV against the wall opposite the couch. The coffee table had some debris on it: newspapers and opened mail, it looked like. I heard Grimaldi and Rafe’s voices in the back of the house as I picked a Metro Water bill off the top of the stack. The postmark showed a date two days ago. If the postal service stamped it then, it might have gotten here yesterday at the earliest, or today.

  I put it back down and straightened as Rafe and Grimaldi came back into the living room. “Anything?”

  They book shook their heads.

  “Is there a reason we’re not turning on any lights?” It was like a crime show on TV, with the good guys walking through the villain’s pitch black abode at night instead of waiting for daylight.

  “We’re not supposed to be here,” Grimaldi said.

  “You’re the police.” And the TBI.

  “That doesn’t mean I can walk through people’s houses without a search warrant.”

  “The back door was open,” Rafe said. “Swear to God.” He grinned, white teeth flashing in the dark.

  I didn’t bother to register my disbelief. Grimaldi didn’t, either. We both knew he’d picked the lock, but we also knew there was no way to prove it.

  I looked around. “Any sign that anyone’s been here recently?”

  “Dirty dishes in the sink,” Rafe said. “Drops of water in the bathroom drain.”

  “Maybe the faucet drips.”

  He shrugged.

  “So does that mean we can go?” I looked from him to her and back.

  They both nodded. “There’s nothing here,” Grimaldi said. “And unfortunately I don’t have the manpower to put someone on this house fulltime. Not when we don’t know if he’ll be back. But I’ll put out an APB on him alive rather than dead and see if that helps.”

  She headed for the front door. I followed. “I’ll lock up and meet you out front,” Rafe said.

  “Isn’t there a deadbolt on the back door too?”

  “I’ve got it. Two minutes.” He locked and bolted the front door behind us and then headed in the other direction. I could hear his steps fade away across the carpeted floors before I stepped off the stoop and went to wait beside Grimaldi and the car.

  The detective watched the clock. It was less than ninety seconds before Rafe came around the corner of the house. “Damn,” I heard her say.

  “He’s good.”

  She glanced at me, but didn’t answer. “Get in,” she said instead.

  She dropped us off in front of the condo complex ten minutes later, and stayed at the curb until we were safely inside the building.

  “Does she think you can’t protect me?” I asked Rafe when the door was closed and locked behind us and we were on our way up the stairs.

  He glanced down at me. “Course not. It’s just her job to make sure nothing happens to you.”

  “What about anything happening to you?”

  “I’m supposed to be able to take
care of myself.” He put his hand out for the apartment keys I had fished out of my purse. “I’ll do it. You stand here, outta the way.”

  He put me with my back against the wall next to the door while he proceeded to put himself directly in front of the door while he unlocked it. When nobody put a bullet through it and into his body, he told me, “Looks all right. C’mon in.”

  I passed through the doorway and proceeded to remove my jacket and shoes while he walked all through the apartment, gun in hand, opening closet doors and peering behind the shower curtain and under the bed. Then he came back. “Looks like nobody’s been here since we left.”

  “Good to know.” Nonetheless, my nerves were jittery and I felt jumpy. I headed into the kitchen and over to the refrigerator. “I could use a glass of wine.”

  Unfortunately, we were fresh out of wine, and the refrigerator didn’t magically grow any bottles, no matter how wistfully I stared into it. After a few seconds I straightened and closed the door. “I don’t suppose I could prevail upon you to go get me a bottle of Chardonnay?”

  “No,” Rafe said. “I ain’t leaving you alone.”

  “It’s just two blocks up to Weiss’s Liquors. You could be back in ten minutes.”

  “You don’t need it that bad. Besides...” He snagged me around the waist and pulled me closer, “I’ve got something that’ll make you nice and relaxed.”

  “You do?” My body fitted itself to his, soft curves against hard planes, as I melted against him.

  “M-hm.” He slipped his hands down my back and into my jeans pockets. When he tilted his hips to nudge me—as if I didn’t already know what the ‘something’ was, that he had—I sank my teeth into my bottom lip to bite back what I might in other circumstances have called a moan. I swear my eyes rolled back in my head, and he chuckled. “Not that relaxed, darlin’. I ain’t going to all this trouble only to have you fall asleep on me halfway through.”

  No chance of that. My eyelids may have been heavy, but my body was wide awake. “I’m not sleepy,” I said.

  “Any chance I could talk you into going to bed anyway?”

  “You can talk me into anything at all. Living room sofa. Dining room table. Right here in the hallway.”