Then again, she isn’t eating for two.
While I concentrated on feeding myself and the baby, Mother made small-talk about the party yesterday and the local gossip I had missed by leaving early.
“Your aunt Regina has lost twelve pounds. I thought she looked thinner when she walked in, although she was wearing black, and it’s always so slimming, so I couldn’t be sure. It wasn’t until after you left that she said she’s been walking every day this summer. An old relative of your uncle’s passed away, in some god-forsaken place—Wyoming or Montana or somewhere—and left him some money, and they’re going on a cruise in October. And Regina, bless her heart, wants to get into a bathing suit for it. Audrey said she’d help her find something suitable.”
“That was nice of Audrey,” I said, between bites of caviar, while I tried desperately not to imagine my aunt—who, even after losing twelve pounds, still looks like a Martin: short, dark, and gently rounded, a lot like my sister Catherine—in a sexy little two-piece.
“Todd looked very handsome, I thought. But then he always does.”
I muttered something non-committal. My mouth was halfway full, and besides, I didn’t want to encourage her. Not that she’d been throwing Todd at me lately. Not since I married Rafe. She kept at it right up until the last moment, but as soon as the knot was tied and the ring was on my finger, she stopped. I didn’t want her to start again, though, and if I admitted that Todd was handsome—especially after what had happened with Rafe yesterday—she might.
“I told him he was welcome to bring a date, but he came alone.”
“Maybe he’s not dating,” I said. I didn’t think he was. Not as far as Todd was concerned. There was a woman in town he’d gotten close to in the months since I’d made the choice to shack up with Rafe, and I rather suspected she had feelings for him, but if he reciprocated, I wasn’t sure he realized it yet. It was just two months since he’d sat outside the mansion on the occasion of my wedding to Rafe and hoped I’d have last minute jitters.
Although two months is long enough to change someone’s life. Two months last fall had changed mine.
Anyway, I knew that Todd and Marley spent time together. He’d been with her—on her couch—the night his ex-wife was murdered. But I don’t think he saw it as anything more than friendship. I hoped, for Marley’s sake, that he’d come around. But I could understand that he might not want to bring a date to Mother’s birthday party. She and everyone else in town would make something out of it. Aunt Regina would probably put it in the Reporter. And Marley’s past—and Todd’s part in it—would only make it worse.
“Darcy looked nice,” Mother added.
I nodded. “We’re having lunch tomorrow.”
“You and Darcy? Why?”
“She asked me,” I said. “Said she wanted to talk to me about something.”
“Oh, dear.” Mother clicked her tongue. “I hope she doesn’t have her eye on Dixon.”
Dix? “Isn’t that her job? To keep an eye on him?”
“You know what I mean,” Mother said.
It took me a second, but then I did. “Oh. No, I’m sure that isn’t it.” If Darcy was carrying a torch for my brother, I had seen no sign of it.
Mother looked unconvinced.
“She’s too old for him,” I said. “Dix is thirty. She must be thirty-four, at least. Maybe more.”
“Four years is hardly a cause for concern, darling.”
Well, no. Rafe was three years older than me. My dad had been at least a year or two older than Mother. But it would be very awkward if Darcy had a thing for Dix, since Dix had a thing with my friend, homicide detective Tamara Grimaldi in Nashville. The last thing any of us needed was to complicate the matter with another love interest.
“It would be terribly awkward to have to let her go,” Mother added. “She’s not from around here, so we’d essentially be kicking her out of town. And she’s been doing a wonderful job at the law firm. But it’s been less than a year since Sheila passed. Dixon isn’t ready for another relationship. And if she forces the issue, we won’t have much of a choice.”
“I’m sure she won’t,” I said, while I crossed my fingers and hoped really hard that she wouldn’t. And not just because firing her would be awkward, but because her coming on to Dix would be mortifying for him, and embarrassing for her when he turned her down.
“If you say so, darling. But if she says anything tomorrow that leads you to think she might...”
“I’ll disabuse her,” I said. Nicely, of course. “But I really don’t think that’s it.”
“I hope you’re right, dear.” But she looked anything but convinced.
I went to bed early, as usual. And lay there for a few minutes before drifting off, hoping that maybe Rafe would call with an update on the situation in Nashville. He’d said he’d call tomorrow, so he probably wouldn’t, but I could hope.
I missed him. It was strange to be sleeping alone again. After two and a half years of it between Bradley and Rafe you’d think I’d be used to it, but the last six months of living in sin had made me very comfortable with that warm, hard body next to mine. Now the bed felt empty and too big without it.
Aside from that I must admit to being a little worried. Bad things sometimes happen when Rafe goes undercover, and getting between two street gangs trying to exterminate each other didn’t seem like a very smart move.
Not that he could have done anything else. When Jamal decided to go ahead and get involved in the gang war, Rafe’s involvement was sealed. I would have thought less of him if he had abandoned Jamal to his own devices. Not that doing so would have crossed his mind. But there was no question that that level of chivalry and heroism could be inconvenient for those around him sometimes.
Eventually I drifted off, into weird dreams about my brother and Darcy and Todd and Marley Cartwright and Detective Tamara Grimaldi in some sort of weird musical chairs dating game. They’d go around and around four chairs set up back to back, and when the music stopped, four of them would sit and the fifth would be left standing. And when the music started they’d do it again, and ended up switching partners over and over. There was kissing, which was weird.
Eventually the music woke me. Sunlight slanted through the gap in the curtains, and the air conditioner hummed. My phone was vibrating on the bedside table, emitting the dulcet tones of Donna Summer’s Hot Stuff, my new ringtone for Rafe.
I rolled over on my side and reached for it. “’lo?”
“Rise and shine, Goldilocks,” my husband’s voice said in my ear, brightly.
I squinted at the clock. A little before eight. That meant I’d had a solid ten-plus hours of sleep. He probably hadn’t. “Morning.”
“Sleep OK?”
“I missed you,” I said. “The bed’s empty.”
I could hear the smile in his voice. “Sorry, darlin’. We’ll fix that in a couple days.”
I told him I was looking forward to it. “Is everything all right where you are?”
“So far. I got settled into the duplex yesterday. Jamal introduced me to some of his friends last night.”
“How did that go?”
“None of’em shot me,” Rafe said.
“Nobody pointed to you and screamed ‘traitor’?”
He chuckled. “No.”
“That’s good. So what are you doing today?”
“Just hanging out here. Jamal’s cousin Ry’mone don’t have no job.”
“You’re kidding,” I said.
“Ry’mone’s connected, darlin’. He don’t need to work.”
“That’s not what I meant.” I realized he couldn’t go to work at the TBI office. Of course he couldn’t. What if someone followed him? “Your name’s Ry’mone?”
“It’s always a good idea to stick close to your own name when you have to be someone else,” my husband informed me, without a trace of the Southern drawl or for that matter the less-than-proper grammar he uses most of the time. He can put on pretty much any
kind of speech he wants when he has to, but the ain’ts and gonnas fall trippingly off his tongue when he doesn’t think about it. “Makes it easier to remember to answer when people talk to you.”
“You didn’t have any problems being Jorge Pena,” I reminded him. “That sounds nothing like Rafe Collier.”
“Not like I could pick and choose that one, darlin’. You don’t like Ry’mone?”
Not so much.
“Ain’t that a shame?” His voice sounded amused. “I was thinking maybe I could talk you into naming the baby Ry’mone. Or Ry’mona, if it’s a girl.”
“No,” I said.
“You sure?”
I was positive. My mother would have a conniption if I told her we would be naming her grandchild Ry’mo-anything.
“I could probably be talked into Ramona,” I offered. “If you insist.” Or Ramon, in a pinch. Although it might be a bit too Hispanic, when there was nothing Hispanic about either of us.
“I was mostly kidding,” Rafe said. “How are things down there?”
“The same. My mother eats like a bird and talks about the neighbors. My aunt Regina is on a diet because she’s going on a cruise in October. I’m having lunch with Darcy today. Mother is afraid she’s setting her cap for Dix.”
“Darcy? The woman who asked about the costume party? I don’t see it.”
Thank you. “I don’t, either,” I said. “And anyway, if she were, why would she involve me? It’s not like we’re particularly close. She’d be better off talking to Catherine. She’s Dix’s sister, too, and Darcy probably knows her better than me.”
“Maybe that’s why she wanna talk to you and not Catherine.”
I suppose. “I just don’t get that vibe from her. But I guess I’ll find out in a couple of hours.”
“Guess so.”
There was a moment of silence.
“So you’re just going to sit there all day?”
“Ry’mone don’t need to work, darlin’.”
“You’re not Ry’mone,” I said. “Aren’t you going to be bored?”
“There’s plenty to look at,” Rafe told me. “I think the folks next door are cooking meth.”
What? “Why? How do you know?”
“I listened to’em coming and going all night. And there’s the usual signs.”
“What are the usual signs of someone cooking meth?” And why didn’t I know these things?
Oh, wait. Because, until I met Rafe, meth labs hadn’t crossed my consciousness.
“Aside from the coming and going all night?” Rafe said. “Blacked out windows, burn pits in the yard—”
“They make methamphetamine outside? That can’t be safe!”
I could hear from his voice that he was laughing at me. “No, darlin’. They cook the meth inside the house. But they dump the chemicals in the yard, and it kills the grass.”
“Oh. So there are patches of grass missing.”
“Like I said. Burn pits. And they’ve been leaving their trash in my can while this place has been empty.”
“Getting the incriminating evidence off their own property?” I suggested.
“Something like that. Or maybe their can’s full. Meth production makes for a lot of trash. I found a sack full of boxes of cold medicine and bottles of antifreeze and used coffee filters when I went out to dump the empty pizza box last night.”
Cold medicine and antifreeze and used coffee filters sounded innocuous enough to me—I’m sure I’ve had any and all of them in my trash can at some point or another, maybe even at the same time—but what do I know? If he said they were signs of methamphetamine production, he was probably right.
“You’re not in any danger,” I asked warily, “are you?”
“From the folks next door? Not as long as they don’t figure out who I am. As long as they think I’m just another stupid gang banger, everything’ll be fine. If they start thinking I’m here because of them, things could get ugly.”
He sounded very calm about it. I wished I could be.
“I’m not sure I like that,” I said.
“Don’t worry, darlin’.” There was a smile in his voice, and not because he was laughing at me this time. “I’ll sit around and look degenerate today. When the gang bangers start coming and going, I’m sure that’ll take care of any questions they might have.”
“What are the gang bangers going to be doing? Eating pizza?”
“Buying weapons,” Rafe said. “Jamal’s cousin Ry’mone can get his hands on guns.”
Yowch. “So you’re providing the weapons they’re planning to use to shoot their rivals tonight?”
“Something like that. And getting them on illegal weapons purchases at the same time.”
“So will you arrest them when they show up at your house? Or wait until they ride out to kill the other gang? What’s going to happen, exactly?”
“All out gang war,” Rafe said grimly. “Jamal’s posse has picked out eight or ten targets, and they’re planning to strike all of them at the same time tonight. The word is to take out anyone else who gets in the way. Girlfriends, mothers, even kids. Jamal knows who a few of’em are, because they’re the ones who killed his brother. But he don’t know the rest. I have until tonight to figure it out, or we’re gonna have a bloodbath on our hands.”
Yikes. I could see why a meth operation next door was the least of his worries at the moment.
“I’ll just leave you to it,” I said. “I can tell you have your hands full. Just... be careful, OK? Don’t take any stupid chances. And call or text me if you have a chance?”
He promised he would, and we hung up. He to sell guns and sniff out gang members marked for execution, and me to shower and primp before my lunch with Darcy. Sometimes, the dichotomy of our lives together really hit home with a vengeance.
Four
The Cracker Barrel at the height of lunch hour was something of a madhouse. I got there, and had a hard time finding a parking space. All around me were RVs with Ontario plates having made a pit stop on their way down to the Florida panhandle, and cars with Florida plates escaping from the onslaught of Yankees.
At long last, a Minnesotan, surely on his way south for the winter, moved his RV, and I scooted into the vacated space and cut the engine.
Darcy had already gotten us a table. She waved at me from a chair by the window as I walked by, and I headed inside.
Every Cracker Barrel consists of a restaurant as well as a country store that sells garden gnomes, cutesy signs, and old-fashioned candy. I made my way through the maze without knocking anything off the shelves with the stomach, and reached the restaurant, where I had to maneuver carefully around the tables and the people sitting at them.
I arrived at the window safely, without anybody accidentally elbowing me in the baby—it happens—and sank down onto the (hard, wooden) chair with a sigh of relief. “This place is crazy.”
“It’s rush hour,” Darcy said tolerantly. “And we’re right next to the interstate.”
Yes, we were. “Was there a particular reason you wanted to meet here? Instead of, say, the Café on the Square or Beulah’s Meat’n Three?”
“Privacy,” Darcy said. “And Beulah’s is closed.”
“It is?” I had driven past it coming and going for the past two or three days, but to be honest, I hadn’t been paying attention. “And what do you mean, privacy?”
There must be more than a hundred people taking lunch in the dining room right now. The noise level was insane. We had to raise our voices to be heard, just across the table from one another, and the closest person to Darcy—closer than me—sat two feet behind her.
“Nobody here knows me. Or you.”
That was true, anyway. I didn’t see anyone I knew. “So what is it you wanted privacy to talk about?”
“Let’s order first,” Darcy said, opening her menu as the waitress approached the table. “I’ll have sweet tea, please. And a Cobb salad.”
“The same,” I said, since I ha
dn’t had time to look at the menu and I didn’t want to hold things up while I did.
The waitress withdrew and I turned back to Darcy.
She sighed. “This is a little weird.”
“Sorry. We can make small-talk first, if it’ll make it easier.”
She smiled. “That’s not necessary.” And then she launched into small-talk anyway. “How’s your husband?”
“Fine,” I said. And tacked on a silent, ‘so far.’ “I spoke to him this morning. He thinks the people in the house next to the duplex he’s staying in are cooking meth in their kitchen, but he can’t bust them for it, because it would jeopardize the gang investigation and a bunch of people would die. So he just has to stay there until that’s all taken care of. Although I’m not real happy about him living next door to a meth lab, even just for a couple of days. Those things blow up, don’t they?”
Darcy stared at me for a few seconds, seemingly speechless. “I think so.”
“That’s what I thought. And there’s also the worry that they’ll figure out who he is—that the meth people will figure out that he works in law enforcement, I mean, although there’s always the chance that the gang members will figure out the same thing—and if they think he’s there because of them, they could hurt him.” Either group.
“That would be bad,” Darcy said.
I nodded. Yes, it would. “So I’m a little bit worried. I know he can take care of himself, but there’s really no way to protect yourself from the house next door exploding, you know? If you’re afraid it might, you just stay away from it. But he can’t. He has to be there, at least until tomorrow.”
Darcy nodded. She looked fascinated, in the way of someone who’s just waiting for the other shoe to drop. “I’m glad everything worked out the other night.”
“It was my fault,” I said. “And I’m lucky he doesn’t hold my upbringing against me.”
Darcy nodded. “Speaking of upbringing...”
Uncertain Terms (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 12) Page 4