Home Stretch

by Jenna Bennett

  “Sure.” He took the one I extended and pulled me to my feet. “You sure you’re all right?”

  “We’re fine,” I said. “My back hurts. My stomach hurts. I keep having those stupid fake contractions. But I’ll be all right once I eat something. We all survived. We’re all together. That’s the important thing.”

  Rafe nodded. “Let’s go. The sooner we do this, the sooner we can get you off your feet and into bed.”

  I grinned. “I like the sound of that.”

  “I bet you do,” Rafe said, and steered me toward the door.

  * * *

  We came back downstairs just in time to greet the minivan and the other women.

  Patrick Nolan had driven up right after we did, of course, and Dix had done what he said he’d do, and pushed a beer into Nolan’s hand. When the door to the minivan opened and Darcy came out, Nolan put the beer down and went outside and wrapped her in his arms. She dropped her head on his shoulder, and they looked very sweet just standing there for a moment.

  Both Darcy and Audrey had changed their clothes. Out of Audrey’s closet, I guess, since Darcy looked a bit more dramatic than she usually does. Like Grimaldi, she’s more of the sporty type. This green silk dress was something more like what her mother would wear. But there’s no question that Darcy looked great in it. And judging from the way Nolan’s hand moved up and down on her back, he seemed to like the texture, too.

  Audrey was in black from head to toe. Slacks and a long sleeved sweater. And while nobody was embracing her, Mother kept close. I guess the idea that Audrey might not make it out of the Duck River alive, had made Mother realize what she’d be losing. It was all right to be angry with Audrey when Audrey was right down the road and aware that Mother was angry with her. It was something else to maybe never seen Audrey again. They’d been best friends for more than half my mother’s life. I was glad she’d finally come to her senses, even if it had taken something like this to do it.

  Mrs. Jenkins was still wrapped in a blanket. Under it, Catherine’s sodden blue dress was gone, and a fuzzy bathrobe had taken its place. It dragged along the ground when Mrs. Jenkins moved. Chances were, Audrey hadn’t had anything in her closet that would fit Mrs. J, and had done the best she could to keep her warm until they could get her home. Or back here.

  I opened my mouth to tell Rafe to go get her, but he was already moving. He scooped Mrs. J up into his arms and strode up the stairs with her. I scurried after, to the degree that I could scurry. “She has dry clothes in her room. If you’ll just put her down on the bed, I’ll take care of her.”

  “I’ll do it,” Audrey said calmly. She was keeping pace with me up the stairs and across the foyer. As we reached the staircase to the second story, she passed me and kept going. “Just stay down here, Savannah. I’ve got this.”

  Fine by me. The stairs were getting harder and harder to manage, anyway.

  So I stayed downstairs with the others. Rafe came down after a minute, and joined us. And then another vehicle pulled up out front. Bob Satterfield’s off-duty pickup truck.

  As he opened the door and stepped down, yet another car turned off the road and into the driveway.

  “She made good time,” Rafe remarked.

  I nodded. It might feel like the beginning of today had gone on forever, but it wasn’t that long since I’d called Dix from the parking lot down by the river to tell him what had happened. And yet it was Tamara Grimaldi’s burgundy sedan coming up the driveway, and Grimaldi herself, in her usual business attire of suit and crisp shirt, who came out of the driver’s side door.

  By now, the foyer was getting crowded. Mother was greeting Bob Satterfield and sobbing a little against his chest, probably about Audrey. Darcy and Patrick Nolan were still sticking close to one another, although Nolan had picked up his beer again, and Darcy had found a glass of wine somewhere. She probably needed it. I could use some, too, to be honest, but of course that wasn’t possible.

  Dix was catching Jonathan up on everything that had happened while Jonathan was minding the kids, and every so often, one of them would stick his head into the parlor to make sure that those same kids were still OK.

  And Pearl was winding her way through the forest of legs and feet, sniffing a little here, snuffling a little there, and skipping out of the way whenever someone moved.

  “I need to sit down,” I told Rafe.

  He nodded. “C’mon.” He put an arm around me, and gestured to Tamara Grimaldi with his other hand. She looked like she really wanted to talk to the sheriff—probably preparing to fight him for custody of Lester Hammond—but since Bob was busy cooing at Mother, Grimaldi followed us down the hallway to the second parlor, the one not occupied by the kids. On her way past, she gave Dix a quick glance. Neither of them said anything, but I wasn’t surprised when, three seconds later, Dix left Jonathan and followed the rest of us down the hall.

  Twenty-One

  “Tell me what happened,” Grimaldi said when we were installed in the second parlor.

  It was a long story. I started, then Rafe continued, and I took over again, at the part where Les Hammond came out of the river and got into the SUV.

  “I should have just kept my mouth shut, you know? When I look back on it, I don’t think he planned to drive into the river. I think I gave him that idea when I said something about it. And when he realized he wasn’t alone. At first, he probably just wanted to take the SUV—it was standing right there, empty, or so he thought, with the engine running—and get away. He had the keys to the BMW, so nobody could take that and follow him—”

  Rafe made a face, and I nodded. “I’m sure you could have hot-wired it if you had to.”

  “In about ten seconds,” Rafe said, “if I’d gotten back there and you were gone.”

  No doubt. “But then he realized I was in the backseat, and he didn’t want to drive off with me. More for his own sake than mine, I’m sure. And I opened my big mouth and told him that if he drove into the river, I wouldn’t be able to get out. So that’s what he did. I don’t know if he would have, if I hadn’t said anything.”

  Rafe muttered something. Grimaldi gave him a look. “For purposes of charging him, this is good info. He knew you wouldn’t be able to get out. And he drove the car into the water anyway. That’s deliberate. Not something he can wiggle out of by saying he thought you’d be able to escape.”

  Good that one of us was happy. “If Rafe hadn’t shown up,” I said, “I’m not sure I would have. I had the window open, but I’m not sure I would have fit through it.”

  Grimaldi nodded. Over by the door, my mother made a distressed sound. She’d come in in the middle of the conversation, and I think this was the first time she’d heard what had happened to me when I was left behind in the SUV.

  Bob was with her, and Grimaldi looked at him. “I’m sure you’d like to string this guy up from the nearest tree for all this, but we need him in Nashville. You have a handful of attempted murders here. I have actual murders in Nashville.”

  Sheriff Satterfield nodded. “I’ll give him to you. Tomorrow.”

  Grimaldi opened her mouth, and he added, “It won’t hurt him to spend the night in the county lockup. You can take him in the morning. After you’ve had some turkey and a good night’s sleep.”

  Grimaldi didn’t look happy about this. “Listen, Sheriff Satterfield—”

  “And I’m charging him, too,” the sheriff continued. “You get first dibs. But he doesn’t come into my county and try to kill my people and get away with it. If you get him put away for long enough up where you are, these charges won’t matter. But it might make the difference for him ever seeing the light of day again. I don’t want him to.”

  Mother shook her head.

  Grimaldi sighed. “Fine. Keep him until tomorrow. File charges. But he’s going to answer for the murders he committed in Nashville first. I’ll tack yours onto the back end.”

  The sheriff nodded. “Good enough.” He looked hopefully at Mother. “Time
to eat?”

  She smiled and patted his arm. “Come along. You can help me set the table.”

  Since the table had already been set by the catering crew yesterday, I didn’t know what she planned to have him do, but they headed out and down the hallway. Grimaldi turned back to me. “You all right?”

  I nodded. “Fine. A little achy here and there. It could have been worse.” A lot worse.

  “You made good time getting here,” Dix commented.

  Grimaldi made a face. “I used the sirens. And now I want to talk to this guy ASAP.”

  “Have some food first,” Dix told her. It sounded more like an order than a request. “If I know Mother, she’s rearranging the table to make room for all the extra people we weren’t expecting.”

  “Probably setting a separate table for all the kids instead of having them at the main table.” That would solve the problem. We had five kids, and we had added four extra adults, unless my math was off. Putting the children in the kitchen for their own dinner would solve the problem.

  “We’d like you to stay,” I added, to Grimaldi. “Not just Dix, but all of us. We wanted you to be here from the start. It’s nice that you could make it, even if the circumstances aren’t as happy as they could have been.”

  She’d opened her mouth when I started talking, and shut it again. Now she opened it a second time, when she was sure I had finished. “Someone has to be on call.”

  “And it’s nice that you’re willing to do that. But I’m glad you’re here with us now.”

  Dix nodded.

  “So what’s going on in Nashville?” Rafe wanted to know.

  Grimaldi looked relieved at the change of subject. “Spicer and Truman are sitting outside the Chet Hammond house in Madison, waiting to see if anyone moves. So far, no one is.”

  “It’s Thanksgiving,” I said. “The family’s getting together.” And I felt bad for Officers Spicer and Truman, who had to spend Thanksgiving in a squad car somewhere in Madison.

  “So far it’s just Chet and his wife and the kids,” Grimaldi said. “But here’s an interesting fact: Lester Hammond drives a Ford Explorer. It’s parked outside his brother’s house.”

  So while Lester Hammond was sitting in the Maury County jail, his car was somewhere else. With people who would no doubt swear up and down that he’d been there with them all day, if anyone asked. Even the neighbors would be able to say that yes, Lester’s Ford Explorer had been parked outside Chester’s house all day on Thanksgiving.

  “Giving himself an alibi,” Rafe commented.

  Grimaldi nodded. “We haven’t moved on Chet and Brigitte yet. Part of me wants to. Part of me wants to pick them up and put them behind bars before they can eat their turkey and be thankful for all this money they’re getting now that Aunt Beverly’s dead. Or at least have someone knock on the door and establish, officially, that Les isn’t on the premises, even if his car is. Put the fear of God in them.”

  “Would that mean you’d have to go back to Nashville right away?” I asked.

  Grimaldi indicated that it would. I guess Spicer and Truman weren’t ‘fear of God’ enough, and for it to work properly, she’d have to do it herself.

  “Then wait a little,” I said. “Stay here and have dinner with us. Talk to Les Hammond later, if you want. See if you can get him to roll on his brother. And pick up the others then.”

  “He won’t roll,” Rafe said.

  Grimaldi shook her head. “I don’t expect him to.”

  “Even if he doesn’t,” I said. “Just stay here with us for a couple of hours. It would make us happy.”

  Just one big family. Everyone together.

  Grimaldi sighed. “No way I can say no to that without sounding like the Wicked Witch of the West.”

  No. “They’re all under observation. Lester in jail and Chester in Nashville. Neither of them is getting away. And you relaxing for a couple of hours won’t matter.”

  “If somebody gets murdered,” Grimaldi warned, “I’ll have to go.”

  I was aware of that. “We’ll just hope really hard that that won’t happen.”

  “Dinner’s ready!” Mother’s voice called from across the hall in the dining room.

  I planted my feet and reached for Rafe. “Take me in?”

  “Course, darlin’.” He hauled me off the sofa and presented his arm for me to hold. Behind us, Dix did the same with Grimaldi. She rolled her eyes, but tucked her hand through the crook of his arm. And I think she might even have blushed a little when he covered her hand with his. Although by then things were getting a little too personal, so I looked away to give them some privacy. There wasn’t much of that to be had in this house at the moment.

  * * *

  I’d been right about the seating arrangements. Mother had taken the path of least resistance, and had set the table in the kitchen for the children so she could fit the additional adults at the dining table.

  It worked out fairly well, even if we didn’t have enough men to manage a proper male/female rotation all the way around. Rafe sat between his grandmother and me, while across the table, Patrick Nolan was flanked by Audrey and Darcy. Jonathan was on Darcy’s other side, then Catherine. I had Dix on my right, with Grimaldi following. Mother and Bob sat on the ends: Bob with Catherine and Grimaldi, and Mother with Mrs. Jenkins and Audrey.

  Mrs. Jenkins didn’t say much, but Mother and Audrey kept the conversation going all by themselves. Now that they were together again, I guess they had a lot to catch up on. Mother got a little teary-eyed from time to time, and Audrey pretended like she didn’t notice. Mrs. J, meanwhile, was eating. Her tiny body had the capacity to process an incredible amount of food.

  I didn’t have much appetite myself, even though the dinner was excellent. Mother’s a good cook, and so is Mrs. Jenkins, and of course most of the dishes had been prepared beforehand by the catering company. The extra time before dinner hadn’t hurt any of the food noticeably.

  I just wasn’t feeling it. It tasted good, but it was hard to get it down. I felt a little nauseated, something I had chalked up to stress and exertion and the time since I’d last eaten. I’d thought once we sat down to eat, I’d feel better.

  But the food didn’t help.

  Rafe leaned closer to speak in my ear. “You all right, darlin’?”

  I nodded. “I think so. I just don’t feel great.”

  “It’s been a big day. Lots of things happened.”

  Yes, indeed. Lots of things, most of them deeply upsetting.

  “I thought I’d feel better once I ate something,” I told him, “but I don’t.”

  “You wanna lie down? D’you need to rest?”

  That actually sounded good, but I wasn’t going to go upstairs in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner with my family to lie down.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. “I just wish my back didn’t hurt. And my stomach. And that I didn’t feel sick. And that these damn Braxton-Hicks contractions would stop!”

  I must have spoken a little too loud, I guess, because Mother looked over with a frown.

  “Sorry,” I added. Mother doesn’t like cursing at the table. Or anywhere else.

  Her face cleared. “Of course, darling. Are you not feeling well?”

  “Just tired,” I said, since it’s OK to tell the truth to my husband, but not to my mother in the middle of a dinner party. “It’s been a big day.”

  She nodded and went back to her conversation with Audrey. They were giggling like two teenage girls. It was nice to see them happy again. I wasn’t sure whether Mother even realized how much she’d missed Audrey.

  “They’re gonna be OK,” Rafe said softly.

  I nodded. “I figured they would be, once Mother got over herself and her bruised ego. Although for a while there, I wasn’t sure she ever would.”

  Rafe slid his eyes the other way, in the direction of Dix and Grimaldi—who was conversing with Bob, probably talking police procedure or something equally dry; perhaps how they were plann
ing to do the transfer of Lester Holland. “They’ll be OK, too.”

  “I think so.” Dix still needed more time to deal with the loss of Sheila. It had only been a year. And from what I knew about Grimaldi, I didn’t think she was ready to give up crime fighting to be a wife and mother in Sweetwater. They lived very different lives, and what Dix needed wasn’t at all what Grimaldi offered. But there was something there, between them. And I didn’t think either of them was quite ready to give up on it yet. Not without a fair chance to make it work.

  Another of those stupid contractions tightened my stomach, and I braced my feet and breathed through it. Annoying things that just wouldn’t let up. I really hoped they wouldn’t keep going like this for the next two-and-a-half weeks, because I really didn’t think I could handle that. They’d been coming and going all day, and I was already sick and tired of it. Two more weeks of the same, and I’d be ready to rip that baby out of my stomach just to make it stop.

  “Another contraction?” Rafe asked.

  I nodded.

  “When was the last one?”

  “I’ve had them all day. The last one... I guess maybe in the parlor earlier, when we were talking to Grimaldi?” And before that, it had been upstairs, while I was waiting for him to get ready. “But I’m sure it’s just a reaction to everything that’s been going on. The running in the cemetery, and landing on my stomach when Darcy hauled me into the car, and then climbing over the seats into the back of the SUV while it was in the water...”

  “Not that far apart,” Rafe said. “Let me know when you feel the next one coming, OK?”

  I blinked at him. “I’m not in labor. They’re Braxton-Hicks contractions. Fake. We have almost three weeks to go.” Or at least two-and-a-half.

  “Humor me.” He didn’t say anything more about it. I didn’t either, since I didn’t want Mother or any of the others to hear what we were talking about. If there was any question at all about me being in labor—which was ridiculous, because I wasn’t—I’d find myself packed off to the hospital so fast my head would spin.