Home Stretch

by Jenna Bennett

  I wondered whether Fesmire had found the weapon, and whether that was why he’d been so unhelpful in trying to locate Mrs. Jenkins last Sunday. Maybe he thought she’d put it there, and that was why he’d been upset when he saw her at the funeral on Tuesday morning. Because he thought she’d been trying to frame him.

  Inside the interrogation room, the conversation had moved on. Hammond explained how he had taken Julia’s car and driven it back to the pavilion to load up the corpse for the drive to the river. “When I got there, the old bat was standing over the body.”

  He sounded unreasonably put out about this. Apparently it was just fine for him to do whatever he wanted, up to and including murder, to get what he wanted, but if anyone inconvenienced him in any way—as Mrs. Jenkins had done that night, or as I had done earlier today—all bets were off.

  “That’s my grandmother you’re calling an old bat,” Rafe informed him gently, and Hammond huffed.

  “So you took Mrs. Jenkins with you,” Grimaldi prompted, and Hammond went on with the story. He’d driven to the park, his brother had boated up there and picked him up, and they’d both gone home. And gotten a little worried when they didn’t hear about Mrs. Jenkins being dead along with Julia. But then they’d seen her at the funeral on Tuesday morning, and used my name to figure out where she lived.

  “I couldn’t be in two places,” Hammond said, sounding like everyone left all the work to him all the time, “so Chet and Brigitte went after the old bat, and I contacted Fesmire. To talk.” He smirked.

  “Was he trying to shake you down?” Grimaldi sounded sympathetic.

  Hammond snorted. “Not him. He told me he was going to call the police, because he thought I’d killed my aunt and Julia. So I grabbed a brick and hit him over the head.” He shrugged.

  “And tossed him in the river.”

  Hammond nodded. “Later, yeah.”

  “And kept his car and drove it here.”

  “My brother effed up with the old lady,” Lester said. “And ran like a rabbit instead of finishing the job.” He sounded exasperated. “He had’em both locked in the basement. He coulda just set fire to the kitchen before he left, and been done with it.”

  Rafe growled. I wanted to growl, too, even as I was very grateful that Chet Hammond was more squeamish than his brother.

  “By the time I got back there after dumping Fesmire,” Lester said, “the old lady was gone. And there were cops everywhere. So I waited. And kept an eye on the place. And today,” he smirked at Rafe, “I followed you here.”

  “Where you tried to drown my grandmother and my wife and my unborn child,” Rafe said. “And failed. For which you should be very, very grateful. Cause if you’d done any of that, you wouldn’t be on your way to prison right now. You’d be on your way to the morgue.”

  Hammond tried to sneer, but he couldn’t quite pull it off. I wouldn’t have been able to, either. It was more than obvious that Rafe meant every word.

  My husband turned to Grimaldi. “We done here?”

  “The sheriff and I have some paperwork to take care of. Then we’ll arrange to have Mr. Hammond transferred to Nashville. We don’t need you for any of that.”

  Rafe nodded. “If the TBI can be of any assistance with any of this, you know where to find me.”

  He nodded to Grimaldi, nodded to Sheriff Satterfield, gave Lester Hammond a last look of the sort that should have made Hammond very happy to be alive, and walked out.

  Two seconds later he walked into the room where I was sitting. “Everything all right?”

  “Fine,” I said. “That’s not a nice man.”

  Rafe shook his head. “But he’s off the streets until he goes to trial. No judge in his right mind’s gonna give this POS bail he can afford. And with the evidence we have, no jury’s gonna think he’s innocent. So we don’t have to worry about him no more.”

  Good. “We may have something else to worry about,” I told him.

  “What’s that?”

  “You know those fake contractions I’ve been having?”

  “Yes,” Rafe said.

  “I’m not sure they’re fake.” They were coming regularly, and getting stronger all the time.

  “No kidding.” He didn’t sound surprised at all.

  “It’s more than two-and-a-half weeks until my due date. I’m not supposed to have contractions yet.” Not the real kind.

  “Then maybe we should get you to the hospital, so they can check you out,” my husband said.

  “My OB/GYN is in Nashville. I can’t give birth here.”

  “Not sure the baby cares,” Rafe said, and hauled me to my feet and steered me toward the door. “But if they can give you something to stop the contractions, we can get you home and to the hospital in Nashville, and maybe wait a little closer to term.”

  “I don’t have my hospital bag.” I’d left it in Nashville when I took Mrs. Jenkins and ran for Sweetwater. After all, I was more than two-and-a-half weeks away from my due date.

  “You’ll have to make do with what you’ve got,” Rafe said and opened the door. “Let’s go have a baby.”

  “We’re not having a baby! You said they could give me something to stop the contractions. We can’t have a baby now. It’s too soon. And I don’t have my bag!”

  Rafe patted my back and steered me toward the parking lot, making encouraging noises.

  Epilogue

  “Have you picked out a name?” my mother asked.

  It was the next day, and I was still in the hospital. The doctor hadn’t given me anything to stop the contractions. Not only did they consider thirty-seven-and-a-half weeks to be full term, but I’d also waited too long to get there. By the time Rafe walked me through the emergency room door, things had progressed too far. As the doctor told me, it was too late to put the pin back in the grenade. I was exploding whether I was ready for it or not.

  So we had a baby. And if that sounds simple and easy, I can assure you it was not. It took hours, and a lot of effort. I moaned and cried. I vomited. I felt unspeakably sorry for myself, and very envious of Rafe, who’d had all the fun of making this baby, plus the countless times we’d practiced before conceiving, but he didn’t have to go through any of the pain now.

  I managed to refrain from yelling at him, though.

  I didn’t even want to, to be honest. He was right next to me the whole time. He held my hand and helped me breathe through the contractions. He held the little kidney-shaped bowl when I threw up—and let me tell you, it isn’t every man who’ll cheerfully dump his wife’s vomit and come back into the room to tell her how beautiful she looks.

  He was lying through his teeth, of course. I looked awful. All sweaty and blotchy and red-faced. I knew it, but I didn’t have the energy to argue, or call him a big, fat liar. I was too busy gritting my teeth and breathing and counting and—eventually—pushing.

  “Just a little longer,” Rafe told me, hanging onto my hand while the doctor and nurse got in position. “You can do this.”

  I shook my head. Weakly. “I’m not sure I can.”

  He bent to kiss me. Softly. On the lips. “I know you can. You can do anything. Compared to the other stuff you went through today, this’ll be easy.”

  Easy for him to say.

  But I did it. I pushed, and pushed again, and pushed some more.

  And after one of those pushes—I’m not sure which one, because I lost count—the nurse said, “One more should do it.”

  And after one more, they all started moving around really fast, and nobody told me to push again, and I closed my eyes and enjoyed the tranquility until a shrill, irate cry cut through the peace and quiet.

  My eyes popped open and I looked up at Rafe, horrified. “Is that our baby?”

  He nodded. His eyes had tears in them.

  I struggled to sit up. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” He shook his head. “Everything’s perfect.”

  “It doesn’t sound perfect. The baby sounds angry.” />
  “She was comfortable,” the nurse said, approaching the bed with an impossibly tiny, blanket-wrapped bundle in her arms. A bundle so small it shouldn’t have been able to make the ear-splitting shrieks I was hearing. “And then someone yanked her out here, in the cold and the light, and started slapping her around. She’ll calm down in a minute.”

  She lowered the bundle toward me. I reached for it, automatically. “She?”

  The nurse smiled. “You have a baby girl, Mrs. Collier.”

  A baby girl.

  I looked up at Rafe. He was smiling, with tears still in his eyes. Obviously a baby girl was OK with him.

  “We’ll just finish up down here,” the nurse said, “while you visit.” She wandered off.

  I didn’t even look at her. And I had no need to know what finishing up down there entailed. I was holding a baby. Rafe’s baby. Our baby.

  He reached out and used a single finger to pull down the blanket so we could look at her.

  She hadn’t been cleaned up yet, so she was still a little sticky. Her hair was wet and black. Her face was small and wrinkled and a shade darker than mine, but lighter than Rafe’s. Her nose was tiny and her eyes big. And blue.

  “She’s beautiful.” My voice shook.

  He nodded. “Like her mama.”

  To me, she looked more like her daddy, but I wasn’t going to argue about it. I yawned. “I’m beat.”

  Rafe smiled. “They’ll come take the baby in a bit. To clean her and weigh her and all that. I’m gonna go get a shower and tell everyone the news. When they wake up.”

  “What time is it?” I’d lost count of that too, as the night progressed.

  “Going on five.”

  In the morning. “Long night,” I said. “Why don’t you try to get a couple hours sleep and come back later?” And maybe I could do the same. If he left me alone for a while.

  He nodded. “I’ll stay here until they take the baby away, and then I’ll let you get some rest.”

  “That works.” I put my head on his shoulder and looked down at our baby.

  Things continued to be blurry after that, to be honest. They finished whatever they had to do, and then they took the baby away. Rafe left, and I drifted off to sleep. At some point, they brought the baby back, and I had to stay awake so I could try to nurse her. That happened a couple of times, I think. And eventually Rafe came back, as the first of the family.

  He’d managed to get a few hours of sleep, and looked pretty good, considering. He’s always been able to get by on little sleep, so he’d probably be OK. And he was freshly showered and dressed in clean clothes, including the blue shirt that had taken the plunge into the Duck River yesterday. Mother must have laundered it for him.

  He brought Grimaldi, who bent and gave me a hug. She’s not very demonstrative usually, so this was big.

  “Congratulations.” She gave the baby a dubious look.

  I grinned. “Thank you. Want to hold her?”

  She actually took a step back. “No. Thank you.”

  “Don’t you like babies?”

  “I like them better when they’re old enough that I can reason with them,” Grimaldi said. Which made sense, I guess. And probably meant that she got along fairly well with Abigail and Hannah, who are both old enough to be talked to.

  “I’ll take her.” Rafe swooped in and scooped the baby out of my arms. “Hi there, beautiful.” He smiled down at her.

  So from now on, she was going to be the beautiful one. Not me.

  I turned back to Grimaldi. “What’s happening?”

  “I’m headed back to Nashville. Lester Hammond is being transported this morning, and we have Chester and Brigitte in custody. I have to go wrap up my case.”

  “Good luck with it.”

  “It’s mostly just the details,” Grimaldi said. “We have Lester’s confession implicating Chester. We know what they each did, and how they did it. I’ll have to interview Chester and Brigitte, but we already know what happened. This is just ticking off the boxes.”

  “I don’t expect you’ll be back?”

  “Not for a while,” Grimaldi said. “Your brother invited me to Christmas dinner. And your mother told me about the Christmas Eve party she has every year.”

  “Any chance you could let someone else take Christmas duty this year, and come spend the holiday with us?”

  “I’m thinking about it,” Grimaldi said, which was probably the best I was going to get. “When are you coming back to Nashville?”

  I’d be in the hospital one more day, from what they’d told me. But I also had a feeling Mother would try to keep me in Sweetwater for a bit longer.

  “Not sure. Maybe not for a few days.”

  She nodded. “Let me know when you do.”

  I promised I would, and she headed out. Rafe moved over into the chair next to the bed, still holding the baby. “Morning, gorgeous.”

  He leaned in to kiss me. So I was still gorgeous—and that was still a complete lie. But nice of him to say so.

  “I need a bath,” I said.

  “We’ll get you one.” He looked down at the baby. “She’s beautiful.”

  She was. Nice and clean now, as opposed to me. Her tufts of black hair were curly.

  “Do you have to go back to Nashville, too?” I asked. He’d been involved in the Poole investigation, if only because of Mrs. Jenkins. Maybe he’d have to go back and help clean things up.

  “Not right away. But I should probably check in on Monday.”

  Probably so. “Are any of the others stopping by?”

  “Your mother’s setting up a schedule,” Rafe said, with a grin. “She oughta be here soon.”

  Gah. “I’ll have to clean up.” Birth was no excuse for not looking great. Mother would expect me to be neat and polished, with fluffy hair and makeup in place. She’d probably want to take photographs. And she’d never forgive me if I looked less than presentable in them.

  “C’mon.” He shifted the baby to the crook of one arm, like he’d always been doing it, and used the other to help me out of bed and over to the bathroom door. “You gonna be all right in there?”

  I’d have to be, since I couldn’t take him with me. “I wish I had my hospital bag. With my pretty nightgown.” Instead of this faded hospital gown I was forced to wear in lieu of anything personal.

  “I brought your nightgown from your mother’s house,” Rafe said, nodding to the plastic bag he’d dropped on the chair next to the bathroom door. “And your shampoo and cream and stuff.”

  “Bless you.” With any luck, there was enough in there to make me look halfway decent for Mother and the pictures.

  “I aim to please,” Rafe said with a grin, and got back to admiring his daughter while I closed myself in the bathroom and did my best to repair any visible damage from the night’s excesses.

  By the time Mother walked through the door, I was as presentable as I could expect to be. My hair was clean and dry, and wavy around my shoulders. I was dressed in a nice nightgown, and I had makeup on. There wasn’t much I could do about the bloodshot eyes, but I’d managed to cover the dark circles under them. And anyway, as it turned out, nobody was all that interested in me.

  Mother brought Mrs. Jenkins and Audrey with her. While Mrs. J and Audrey descended on Rafe and the baby, Mother came over to the bed and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “Good morning, darling.”

  “Good morning,” I said.

  “You look well.”

  She sounded vaguely disappointed. “I feel well,” I said. A bit sore, but it’s amazing what a difference being clean makes. “And I have a baby.”

  I pointed to it. Mrs. J and Audrey were making cooing noises over Rafe’s shoulders.

  Mother nodded. “So I hear. How long are you staying in the hospital?”

  I told her what I’d told Grimaldi, that they’d probably let me leave tomorrow, and she did what I expected her to do: tried to convince me to come back to the mansion for a few days. “Wouldn’t that be be
tter than being in that big, empty house by yourself?”

  It probably would. If I stayed here, I wouldn’t have to worry about doing anything for myself. I had a whole family I could dispatch to do my bidding.

  On the other hand, Rafe was my husband, and we had a home together. And he might have an opinion on this, too.

  “I hope you’ll stay a few days, Savannah,” Audrey said from where she was clucking over the baby. She glanced at Mrs. Jenkins, and took a deep breath. “We wanted to talk to you about something.”

  “What’s that?” She looked uncomfortable, which isn’t like her.

  “Aunt Tondalia and I,” Audrey said, “have been talking. She’d like to spend some time here in Sweetwater. With me. And I’d like to have her. I don’t know what your plans were, after what happened...”

  We hadn’t really talked about it. Although I guess the plan had been that she’d either stay with us, so I could keep an eye on her and make sure she didn’t wander off again, or we were going to find another facility for her, where she’d be happy and safe. I was more in favor of the latter, both because I was afraid I would lose her, and because I honestly thought she might be better off under the care of professionals. Although I was open to other suggestions.

  Like this one.

  I looked at Rafe. He shrugged. “If you’re sure that’s what you wanna do. You’re gonna have to make sure she don’t wander off. She has a habit of doing that.”

  Audrey nodded. “We’ll make sure everyone in town knows who she is. That way, if anyone finds her, they’ll know where she belongs.”

  “She’s safer wandering off here than in Nashville,” Mother added.

  No question. And with the connection to her sister here, and her niece and now a great-niece, she might be happy in Sweetwater. And of course we’d come and visit frequently. We did that anyway.

  There was a question I thought needed to be asked, though. “If you start introducing Mrs. Jenkins as your aunt, doesn’t that mean people will know that your mother was... you know...?”

  “Black?” Audrey said. “Yes. I assume so.”