Uncertain Terms (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 12)

by Jenna Bennett

  “She don’t.” After a second he changed it to, “Not much. A little in the mouth and chin, maybe.”

  Maybe. I’d have to find a picture of my dad when I got back to the mansion, and take a closer look. I still remembered him—of course; he hadn’t been gone that long—but actually looking at the picture would make the similarities easier to find.

  “This is crazy,” Rafe said.

  “I know. I’m still taking it in. It’ll be while until we process it, I expect.”

  The mansion was coming up ahead, and I turned on the signal to go into the driveway. So far, I couldn’t see anyone’s car parked outside. Not even Mother’s.

  “I’m sorry to call and dump all this on you,” I added. “I know you’ve got your own troubles to deal with.”

  “Sure.” His voice was dry. “You just keep that kinda thing to yourself, darlin’, ‘cause your very important husband’s way too busy to listen.”

  “Sorry.” I hadn’t meant it that way. “I knew you’d want to know. And that you’d care. I just meant that you’ve got your hands full. And you’re worried about Jamal.”

  He didn’t say anything, and I added, “Any word from him? Any news?”

  “Nothing so far. When I get my hands on him...”

  But he didn’t finish the sentence. Maybe it was the idea that when—or if—he got his hands on Jamal, it might be Jamal’s body and not the living Jamal he found.

  “Go back to work,” I told him. “I just wanted to tell you what happened.” And now I had. “The rest of it can wait. Nothing’s going to change if we wait until tomorrow to talk about it.”

  But such was not the case with the situation Rafe was in. A delay in finding Jamal could mean the difference between life and death. Jamal’s life and death.

  “And anyway,” I added, and pulled the car to a stop at the bottom of the stairs, “I’m home now.”

  “Home?”

  “Back at the mansion. Go to work. Find Jamal. I’ll call you later.”

  “Good luck.” He didn’t wait for me to wish him the same, just hung up in my ear. A lot more worried than he let on, it seemed. I turned off the car and opened my door.

  At first glance, the house seemed dark and empty. There were no sounds of activity when I opened the door. I shut it behind me and looked around the foyer. “Mother?”

  No one answered.

  That wasn’t necessarily anything to worry about. Audrey could have caught up with her outside the law office, and they could have gone somewhere together. Like to Audrey’s house or even the office behind the store. Or Bob Satterfield could have caught up with them, and they could have gone somewhere together. Like Bob’s house, or the Wayside Inn. It was a bit early for lunch, but Mother might have needed a Mimosa.

  Or Mother could have refused to talk to either of them, and could have struck out on her own. I’d gotten the impression they had all arrived together at the office this morning, so she might not have had her car there. And cabs are few and far between in Sweetwater. But Mother knows everyone in town. She could have found someone to give her a ride. And I hadn’t passed her on the road, hoofing. At least I hadn’t noticed, and I think I would have.

  Or maybe she had walked to the cemetery to yell at my father’s grave. Under the circumstances, I’d have been tempted to do just that.

  “Mother?” I tried again, just to make absolutely sure she wasn’t here. And this time I heard a soft sound from the parlor.

  I headed in that direction, and stopped in the doorway. My mother was sitting on Great-Aunt Ida’s velvet loveseat with a squat glass of brandy in her hand and a bottle on the table in front of her.

  Let me just make sure you understand the significance of that. Brandy isn’t my mother’s usual choice of drink. She likes white wine. She’ll drink sherry. She probably wouldn’t turn down a martini, if someone tried to press one on her. She likes mimosas for brunch. But I don’t usually see her drink anything stronger. Certainly not before lunch, alone in her house.

  I took a couple of tentative steps into the room. “Mom? Are you OK?”

  The look she gave me was positively vicious. “What do you think?”

  And that didn’t sound like my mother at all. Her normal response would be, “Of course, darling,” whether she was OK or not.

  “I’m going to guess you’re not,” I said, taking a seat opposite, “since you’re sitting here before eleven in the morning drinking.”

  “You can assume that.” She tossed back the brandy and coughed, before filling the glass again.

  I raised my brows. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.” And to make sure it didn’t happen again, I moved the bottle off the table and onto the floor. On my side.

  “I’m your mother,” my mother informed me, with careful attention to the vowels. “If I want to get drunk before eleven in the morning, I can do that.”

  “Of course you can. And I can’t stop you. But is that really what you want?”

  “Yes!” Mother said, and knocked back a slug of the brandy. And coughed. When she put the glass down on the table, some of the brandy sloshed over the rim and splashed onto the hundred-year-old wood. I winced. Mother didn’t even seem to notice.

  “I can’t believe it,” she told me. “My best friend! And my husband!”

  “He wasn’t your husband when he slept with your best friend. And she wasn’t your best friend, either. That came later. You hadn’t met either of them yet.”

  “Whose side are you on?” Mother wanted to know, shrilly. Brandy-breath wafted across the table toward me.

  I had to think about it. “Darcy’s, I guess. None of this is her fault.”

  “Your sister!” Mother said darkly.

  I shrugged. “That isn’t her fault, either. And Audrey can’t help it that she was in love with Dad. You should understand that. You were in love with him, too. Or so I assume.”

  “Of course I was!” Mother said with a sniff.

  “It happened before he met you. He couldn’t have known you were going to come along just when you did. And you heard Audrey. As soon as he saw you, there was no one else for him.”

  “I’m not upset with him!” Mother said.

  I would hope not. He hadn’t done anything wrong, unless you consider it wrong to sleep with a woman you’re not in love with. If so, Rafe was guilty of the same thing.

  And who knew, if Mother hadn’t happened along at that time, maybe Dad would have ended up marrying Audrey after all, and they’d have had a long, happy life together. With more children following Darcy.

  That was a little strange to think about. My dad having children other than Catherine, Dix, and me.

  Not Darcy. I was OK with Darcy. But others. Hypothetical children with someone who wasn’t our mother. While Catherine, Dix, and I weren’t born.

  I shook it off. “Who are you upset with?”

  She looked at me as if I were the stupidest individual in the world. “Who do you think? Audrey, of course. And Bob. How could they do this to me?”

  “They explained that,” I said. “Bob didn’t know. Audrey didn’t tell him, because he and Pauline were having a hard time getting pregnant and she didn’t want to make it harder on them. And do you really think Audrey should have told you that she once slept with Dad and got pregnant and had a baby she gave up for adoption?”

  “Yes!” Mother said. “I had a right to know! Your dad had a right to know!”

  I couldn’t really argue with that, since I agreed. At least that Dad had had a right to know. Just as Rafe had a right to know if Carmen was carrying his baby. However— “How would it have made you feel?”

  “Like they weren’t keeping secrets from me,” Mother snarled and tossed back the rest of the brandy. She slammed the glass down on the table and looked around for the bottle.

  I pretended I didn’t notice. “What about how Audrey felt? It was her baby.” And Mom’s husband she’d been in love with. Talk about laying yourself bare. “I think she had the right t
o keep that to herself. It was private. None of your business.”

  Until now, anyway. Now, Audrey’s affair with Dad had become all of our business.

  Mother snarled at me. Wordlessly. “Where did you put the bottle?”

  “I think you’ve had enough,” I told her. “You just showed teeth. You need to take a break.”

  “My house,” Mother informed me. “My brandy. If you don’t like it, you can leave.”

  My mouth dropped open.

  My mother was kicking me out of the house?

  Then I closed it again. Maybe I would leave. I had a home to go to, after all. And what had kept me here—Darcy’s quest for her birth mother—had come off in spectacular fashion.

  And to be honest, I could understand why she was prickly. Mother, I mean; not Darcy. Although Darcy might be prickly, too, and that would be understandable, as well. But Mother had a lot to process. And while I might not feel that brandy was the best way to deal with it, it made sense that she might prefer to come to terms with all these revelations without anyone underfoot. Especially one of the children she’d had with the man she now learned had had another child with someone else first.

  If I’d come face to face with my husband’s love child after more than thirty years of marriage—instead of, say, coming face to face with my boyfriend’s love child after sleeping with him once—I might not have wanted company around, either.

  Mother went for the brandy bottle, and instead of getting into an undignified tussle over it, I got up and left the room instead. If Mother wanted to drink herself into oblivion, that was her prerogative. If she thought a hangover would be easier to handle than reality, more power to her.

  So I went upstairs and packed my bag and used the bathroom and made sure the bed was made, and then I headed back down the stairs again, bag in hand. I left it on the bottom step and walked over to the parlor door.

  When I showed up in the doorway, Mother gave me a look of active dislike. She was pouring herself another couple of fingers of brandy. I had no idea whether it had taken her this long to retrieve the bottle and twist the cap off, or whether this was the second serving since I left the room.

  At this point I wasn’t sure I cared. “I’m going now.”

  “Good riddance,” Mother said. “You do realize that if it hadn’t been for you sticking your nose in where it didn’t belong, we wouldn’t be here now?”

  That hurt. Even in the moment, I realized she only said it because she was halfway drunk and had lost most of her usual good manners—and because she was in pain—but it hurt anyway.

  “Darcy would still be Dad’s daughter,” I said, my voice tight. “Audrey would still have slept with Dad, and he would still have married you. The only thing I did, was find out about it. It didn’t change anything that happened before.”

  “We wouldn’t have known!” Mother informed me.

  “It’s better to know than not know. And if you weren’t drunk and angry,” and hurt, “you’d agree with me.”

  I didn’t wait for her to answer—just in case she came up with something even more cutting. I just turned on my heel and walked out, grabbing the bag on the way. When I closed the front door behind me, I heard the clinking of glass against glass from the parlor.

  I called Dix from the car. The office was in the opposite direction of the one I was going, or I would have stopped by again before leaving town. But at the moment, I just wanted to get out of Dodge as quickly as the speed limit would allow me.

  “I’m headed home,” I told him.

  “To Nashville?” Dix said. “Why?”

  “Mother informed me it was her house and her brandy, and if I didn’t like it, I could get out. So I did.”

  There was a beat. “She’s drinking?”

  “She’s not just drinking,” I said, sparing Yvonne McCoy a thought as I zoomed past the shuttered Beulah’s Meat’n Three. Hopefully the meeting with Catherine would go well this afternoon. “She’s stinking drunk, and ugly with it. She said some very regrettable things to me.”

  “Mother?”

  “I know she’s normally only very politely rude—even if she can be extremely rude when she’s polite—but this was flat out ugly. She’s polished off most of a bottle of brandy. At least there wasn’t much left when I walked out. I don’t know how much she started with.”

  “She must be very upset,” Dix said.

  No kidding. “That doesn’t mean she has to be stupid. A hangover on top of everything else isn’t going to help.”

  “Did you tell her that?” My brother’s voice was amused.

  “I tried,” I said. “She wasn’t going to take it from me. She said it was all my fault. If I’d only left well enough alone, this wouldn’t have happened.”

  Dix sighed. “I’ll get Catherine and go over there.”

  “Don’t take Darcy,” I told him.

  A second passed, and then— “No. That wouldn’t be a good idea.”

  Probably not. Not yet, anyway.

  He added, “You can stay with me, you know. You don’t have to leave town. We have an extra bed. So does Catherine.”

  So, probably, did Darcy. My other sister.

  Although it was likely too soon to stay over with her. If this was strange and awkward for us, it must be equally so for her. We’d gained a sister. She’d gained two sisters, a brother, two brothers-in-law, a half-dozen nephews and nieces, a mother, a dead father, and a stepmother who acted like the Wicked Witch of the West. Plus Aunt Regina and Uncle Sid and a long line of relatives, dead and alive, on the Martin side of the family. And probably a few people on Audrey’s side, too.

  And while we had each other, Darcy had no one.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “I’ve been away from Rafe for a few days anyway. I’d like to see him.” Dreadlocks, gold teeth, and all. “And there’s something we have to talk about.”

  Dix didn’t ask me what. He probably assumed it was this same situation we were all dealing with.

  “I’m sorry to leave you to deal with it all, though,” I added. “I’ll drive back down in a couple of days. I just really need to see Rafe right now.”

  “It’s fine,” my brother told me. “I’ll call you tonight. Let you know how things are going.”

  I told him I appreciated it. And then I put the phone down and my foot on the gas pedal and booked it up the interstate toward home.

  It was still early, just going on lunchtime, when I drove into Nashville. Rafe would be at work, whatever that meant these days. Normally, he’d be working out of the TBI building close to our house, but right now, who knew? So I called him again.

  “Listen,” I said when he picked up. “I need to talk to you about something.”

  “You already did, darlin’. Just an hour ago. Remember?”

  “This is something else. Something personal.”

  “And that wasn’t?” I heard voices in the background, and then he was back. “Sorry, darlin’.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Antioch,” Rafe said.

  “Why?”

  “One of the neighbors saw a car go by just after the duplex blew up the other night. Black Dodge Magnum with tinted windows.”

  Whatever that looked like. “OK.”

  “Looks like it might belong to one of the guys whose life we saved on Friday.”

  “You’re kidding,” I said. “Someone in the other gang? You made sure he wasn’t shot, and he repaid you by throwing a bomb through your window?”

  “Looks that way. We’re sitting here around the corner from his place, waiting for the car to show up. We gotta SWAT team on standby once he gets here, so we can go knock on the door and take him down.”

  And my husband was ready to put on riot-gear of his own, no doubt, to be in on the takedown.

  “It doesn’t sound like this is a good time for us to have that conversation,” I said.

  “Afraid not, darlin’. Unless it’s life and death, this takes precedence.”

  Of
course it did. And it wasn’t. Life or death, I mean. I wanted to get it over with, now that I’d made up my mind to do it, but not when he was busy doing something else. Especially something like this.

  “It can wait. Will you be home tonight?”

  “At the house? Depends on what happens between now and then. I imagine so.”

  “I just drove into Nashville,” I told him. “Mother kicked me out.”

  “What?”

  “She didn’t take the news about Darcy very well. When I left her, she was looking at the bottom of a bottle of brandy.”

  “Your mother?”

  “The one and only,” I said. “She told me it was her house and her brandy, and if I didn’t like it, I could leave. So I left. I’ll be sleeping in our bed tonight.”

  A smile colored his voice. “Then I’ll definitely be there.”

  “And we’ll talk?”

  “After we do something else,” Rafe said. “Listen, darlin’. Don’t go there yet.”

  “The house? Why?”

  “We pulled Clayton and José off guard duty. They’re on their way here. The place is empty, and I don’t want you there alone.”

  I felt a chill creep down my spine, and not from the air conditioning. “You think this guy might go there?”

  “I think he mighta been there already,” Rafe said. “The gun Lamar had—”

  “Who’s Lamar?”

  “The kid who got blown up the other night. His gun didn’t melt. And the bullets don’t match the bullets that killed the other two. So we’re thinking Lamar didn’t kill’em after all. That this guy we’re after now—”

  “From the rival gang.”

  “Right. He killed all of’em.”

  Oh. Yes, that made a difference. And a lot more sense. And he already knew where the house was, since—it seemed—he had killed Lamar’s comrade inside it.

  “I’ll find something else to do until you call and tell me you’ve got him,” I said. “Maybe I’ll go to the office or something.” Where it was nice and safe and I was surrounded by other people. “Grab a salad from somewhere and eat lunch at my desk.”