Collateral Damage: A Savannah Martin Novel (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 19)

by Jenna Bennett

  Carrie had gone down for her morning nap, and didn’t stir when I pulled the seat out of the car. I had just turned toward the door to the family law firm—Martin is my brother Dix, and our father and his father before him, while McCall is our brother-in-law Jonathan, as well as Catherine, now that she has taken her husband’s name—when someone called my name.

  It wasn’t Charlotte. I had texted her on my way over, and asked her to meet me here, so I wouldn’t have to go over the story more than once. She was either here already, or on her way, but this wasn’t her voice.

  I turned toward it, and greeted Audrey, Darcy’s birth-mother. I guess that sort of made her a secondary mother to me too, if she was my sister’s mother, although there was nothing new about that: Audrey and Mother had been best friends since Mother married Dad some thirty-three years ago.

  I was twitching to get inside and get the story over with, but I mustered a gracious smile. “It’s good to see you. We missed you at the Wayside Inn yesterday.”

  “Aunt Tondalia is under the weather,” Audrey said.

  She’s a stunning woman, a year or so older than Mother, and a totally different type. Where Mother is soft and ladylike, Audrey is angular and dramatic. She’s tall, taller than me by a couple of inches, and in her usual three inch heels with platforms, towered over me. Her cheekbones are to die for, and she had her black hair styled in her usual severe bob, with her usual blood red lipstick on.

  “Oh, no.” Tondalia Jenkins, Audrey’s aunt and Rafe’s grandmother, is in her seventies. She’s small and scrawny and as wrinkled as a raisin, and physically she’s the kind of desiccated little person who looks like she could live forever. It’s usually her mind that’s the problem. Moving down here after Thanksgiving, and in with Audrey, had seemed to help a little. She had a home again, with her sister’s daughter—or her sister, since Mrs. Jenkins wasn’t always clear on exactly who Audrey was. She had the same problem with Rafe and me, and with Rafe’s son David. But Mrs. J had been happy and had seemed healthy the past few months.

  “She’s running a fever,” Audrey said. “She eats like a bird most of the time, so it’s hard to say whether she has any loss of appetite, but I couldn’t get any breakfast into her. I’m just here to put a sign on the door that the store will be closed, and then I’m going back home again.”

  “Don’t let me keep you,” I said. “I’m just going in to talk to Darcy.” And there was no need to burden Audrey with the reason I had to talk to her daughter. Audrey had troubles of her own. “Have you tried ice cream?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “She likes ice cream. Whenever I’ve had to take care of her, I’ve always taken her for ice cream. If she won’t eat anything else, she’ll eat that. She likes the kid meals at Burger King, too.”

  “Of course she does,” Audrey said.

  I shrugged apologetically. “It’s probably more important to get some food into her than making sure the food is nutritionally optimal, don’t you think? And you don’t want her to get dehydrated.”

  “No,” Audrey said, “I don’t. Thanks, Savannah.”

  “Don’t mention it.” I turned as a car door slammed halfway around the square. It was Mrs. Albertson’s car, and Charlotte raised a hand as she headed our way.

  I raised one back. “We should get inside.”

  Audrey nodded. “I’m just going to put that note on the door, and then I’ll head back to Aunt Tondalia.”

  “Let us know how it goes,” I told her. “If you need any help, I’ll be happy to help out, you know. She isn’t just your family. She’s mine, too.”

  “I know, Savannah. I’ll keep you updated.”

  She hustled toward the door to Audrey’s on the Square, the fashion boutique she runs, on her patent-leather heels, and I moved a few yards closer to the door to the law firm while I waited for Charlotte to catch up.

  “Everything OK?” she wanted to know, a little out of breath, when she did.

  “Rafe’s grandmother’s sick with a fever. Audrey’s putting a note on the door of the shop and then going back to her.”

  That wasn’t what Charlotte meant, of course, and I knew it, but I still didn’t want to say anything before we had gathered up Darcy, as well. “Let’s go in.”

  I headed for the door. Charlotte got there first, and held it open so I could maneuver the car seat inside. “Morning, Darcy.”

  “Savannah.” She looked beyond me to where Charlotte was coming in and shutting the door behind her. A small wrinkle appeared between her eyes. “Charlotte. What’s wrong?”

  I hadn’t texted Darcy on my way here, since I had assumed she’d be present and available to talk. Now I opened my mouth, and found the words hard to find.

  “This doesn’t look like good news,” Darcy said dryly. “I guess we didn’t get an offer on the house last night.”

  I shook my head. “Is there somewhere we can talk? Is the conference room empty?”

  She nodded. “Go on down. I’ll switch the phones over to Dix’s extension and let him know I’m taking a break.”

  She’s nothing if not efficient, my half-sister. Charlotte and I wandered down the hall and into the conference room on the left, and thirty seconds later Darcy joined us, and pulled the door shut. “What’s going on?”

  By that point I had deposited the car seat with Carrie on the floor and unwound my scarf. And since all the activity had woken the baby, who started to fuss, I unbuttoned my blouse and prepared to feed her while we were talking. “There’s a problem over at the house.”

  “What kind of problem?” Darcy wanted to know, and sat down across from me. Charlotte dithered for a second before she sank into the chair on the other side of me.

  “Someone broke in last night and tore the place up.”

  Charlotte gasped. Darcy’s lips tightened. “Tore it up, how?”

  “Every way it could be torn up,” I said. “The back door’s busted. Not just one of the windowpanes this time, but the whole door. It looks like someone kicked it in. The lock is shot, and so is the wood next to it. We’ll need a new door. I suggest steel with tempered glass.”

  Darcy sighed. “How much is this going to set me back?”

  “Quite a bit,” I said honestly. “We’ll need to replace the glass in some of the kitchen cabinets, and redo the backsplash. The shower glass is broken in the master bath, and that wasn’t cheap. We’ll need all new light fixtures throughout the house.” Except for the airplane propeller in the master bedroom. That was still in perfect condition, and obviously functioned just fine, too. But considering the noose, maybe we’d want to replace it anyway. “New paint. New drywall. Hopefully, when the floor dries, we won’t have to replace that, although there might be some places we’ll have to feather in new hardwoods. If that happens we’ll have to sand and stain everything again.”

  By this point, Charlotte had hidden her face in her hands and was moaning softly. Probably remembering all the hours we’d spend laying the tile and sanding the floors and painting the walls. Darcy was still staring at me, her eyes dark and angry. “Anything else?”

  “Most of the staging is ruined. I called Michelle, and she’s bringing in a van as soon as the police are done. We’re out the money we spent on the staging, and of course we’re out the staging itself, too.”

  Although, on the bright side, if this situation had a bright side, we would have had to move the staging furniture out in order to do the necessary repairs anyway. At least this way, someone else would do that job for us. A very slim silver lining in the middle of the gloom.

  “Of course,” Darcy said tightly. “Anything else?”

  I hesitated, but figured I probably shouldn’t hold anything back. She was my sister, and it was her house. She needed to know, even if I’d prefer to spare her this particular knowledge. “Someone hung a noose from the ceiling fan in the master bedroom. Made from the flat sheet Michelle put on the bed. It was spinning overhead when we walked in.”

  There was a moment o
f silence. Charlotte had looked up, and was gaping at me, her eyes wide in her now-pale face. Darcy’s jaw was tight. “That doesn’t sound good.”

  I shook my head. “I could tell it bothered Rafe.”

  “He was there?”

  “We had a showing this morning,” I said. “This real estate agent named Arlene Woods called me last night and said her clients had walked through the house yesterday afternoon, during the open house. They wanted a second look, so she set up a showing for this morning. When they got there around ten, they opened the front door and immediately saw the damage in the living room. She called me, and I called Rafe. We all met over there.”

  They both nodded, since that was clear enough.

  “He’s bringing in a crime scene crew,” I added. “He doesn’t think it’s likely that whoever did this left any fingerprints—every wannabe burglar knows to wear gloves these days—but he said it had to be done.”

  “Maybe there’ll be hair or other DNA,” Charlotte said optimistically.

  “Maybe. With as many people as walked through the house yesterday, it’s going to be hard to narrow it down, though.”

  If one of Rodney Clark’s brown hairs was found on scene, it wouldn’t prove anything. He’d been there in the afternoon, so his hair had every right to be there.

  “I don’t think anything’s going to come from that,” I said. “DNA testing takes a long time. Months. Especially for something like this, where the only damage was to property. If somebody had been killed, it might be a different matter…”

  “Thank God no one was killed,” Darcy said.

  I nodded. “We can fix this. It’s going to take more time and more money, but it can be fixed. It could be worse.”

  We sat in silence a moment.

  “What about that couple?” Charlotte wanted to know. “The guy from the auction and his wife?”

  Darcy looked from me to her and back. “Who?”

  “They showed up at the open house yesterday.” I explained who they were. “The lady wasn’t very complimentary about the work we’d done.”

  “Bless her heart,” Charlotte added, “she had her nose so high in the air she would have drowned in a rainstorm.”

  Darcy’s lips twitched, but she refrained from comment. “And you’re thinking they might have had something to do with it?”

  “I can’t quite picture the lady kicking in the back door,” I admitted, “not in the boots she had on yesterday, anyway, but most of the things that got destroyed were things she talked about. The kitchen backsplash, the cabinets, the floor stain. The bathroom light, that’s ripped out of the wall. When she headed down the hallway to the master suite I stopped listening, but in the front of the house, she made a big deal out of pointing out all the things she didn’t like, and they’re all going to need replacing now.”

  “Did you tell Rafe about her?”

  I nodded. “I’m sending him the sign-in list from the open house when I get back to the mansion. He’ll have to track them all down and talk to them, I guess. Including the couple from the auction.”

  “I’d like to be there for that,” Charlotte muttered.

  So would I. Although I didn’t see much chance of that happening. “He’ll have to treat this like any other investigation. Mostly that means no civilians sitting in on the interviews.”

  Not that he—or we—hadn’t broken that rule before. Although I didn’t see it happening this time.

  Charlotte nodded. “Well, I hope she confesses.”

  I hoped so, too. But I didn’t see much chance of that, either. Whether she’d done it or not. “I guess I should get home so I can send him those names.”

  “Let’s discuss what we’re going to do first,” Darcy said.

  “Yes,” Charlotte nodded, “what’s going to happen now?”

  Well… “I guess first of all the police have to release the crime scene, after the CSI crew is done. Then we’ll have to let Michelle know that they’re finished, so she can get her things out. Once that’s done, we can take stock of what needs doing, clean up, and order new materials. It could be the end of the week before we can get going again.” Or longer.

  Charlotte moaned. Darcy sighed. “OK,” she said. “Let me know if you hear from Rafe. In the meantime, I guess we can plan to meet over there after I get off work this afternoon. I’d like to see for myself what it looks like.”

  I couldn’t blame her. I would have wanted that, too. “I’ll meet you there at five-thirty.”

  Darcy nodded. “I should get back to work.” She pushed up from the table.

  “I’ll just sit here until Carrie has had enough,” I said. “I’ll see you both later. I’ll let you know if I hear anything.”

  They both walked out, Darcy only as far as the desk in the lobby and Charlotte, I assumed, all the way out to her car, while I focused on taking deep breaths and being calm and relaxed for my nursing daughter.

  By the time I had to leave the mansion to meet Darcy and Charlotte—if she chose to show up; she might not have been born with as much curiosity as the Martin women—I still hadn’t heard anything from Rafe. And I hadn’t called to bother him, either, since I figured he had his hands full, and the last thing I wanted to do was distract him from it.

  The phone rang when I was halfway to Columbia, though, and it was him. “Sorry, darlin’.” My normally unflappable husband sounded frazzled and out of sorts. “I’m gonna be late getting home.”

  “That’s OK,” I said. “I’m not there anyway.”

  There was a beat. “Where are you?”

  I told him where I was, and that Darcy had wanted to see the damage for herself. “There’s no objection to that, right? I mean, it’s her house.”

  “No objection,” Rafe said. “The crime scene crew finished thirty minutes ago. I’m on my way back there myself, to board up the back door. Prob’ly best if we don’t leave it hanging open.”

  Probably so. Not that there was much left inside anyone would want—not with a lot of the furniture slashed to ribbons—but you never know who or what might crawl through an open door and make itself at home.

  “We’ll see you there,” I told him, and hung up.

  He got there before me, and so did Darcy. By the time I pulled up in front of the house, both their cars were parked outside, and I heard hammering from the rear of the house.

  I stepped through the grass to the back, and saw my husband busily nailing boards in place while Darcy was standing by with the box of nails and conversation.

  They’re cousins of sorts. Twice-removed, or something like that. Their grandmothers were sisters, their parents—Audrey and Tyrell—first cousins, and they look enough alike to be brother and sister.

  Or maybe not. Darcy has Audrey’s cheekbones and Dad’s mouth and jaw, while Rafe looks a lot like the picture I had seen of Tyrell at eighteen, with a little of LaDonna in the forehead and eyes. Not the color, but the shape and setting. They’re both tall, though, with the same basic coloring, and Darcy certainly looks a lot more like Rafe’s sister than mine.

  When I came around the corner unannounced, they both turned, and in that moment their expressions couldn’t have been more different. Darcy looked startled and a little nervous, while Rafe bypassed both and went directly to action. He stepped in front of Darcy before he’d even looked at me, and I could see him weigh the hammer in his hand for its potential as a weapon. I have no doubt that if it hadn’t been me standing there, but someone more dangerous, that hammer would have been entered into evidence as the murder weapon ten minutes later.

  As it was, his face cleared and his grip on the hammer relaxed. “Darlin’.” His lips curved as he stepped away from Darcy again.

  My sister managed a smile. “Savannah. You scared me.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “You made good time getting here. I expected to be here before you.”

  “I left the office ten minutes early. Figured I’d beat the traffic.” She smiled, more relaxed now. I smiled back, since the
traffic between Sweetwater and Columbia, even at the height of rush hour, is pretty much non-existent, and especially in the direction she was traveling.

  While we talked, Rafe lifted another board from the small stack on the ground, and held it against the door frame. He nodded to Darcy, who extended the box of nails so he could grab one, and put her other hand on the board to hold it in place while Rafe hammered.

  He took a step back. “That oughta do it.”

  It ought to. This was board six or seven that covered the back door. Anyone who wanted in, would either have to pry each board out with their bare hands—or a crowbar, if they brought one—or would have to be skinny enough to fit between the boards. Neither one of us could have, and from what I remembered about Rodney—who wasn’t a big guy—he couldn’t, either.

  No, if someone wanted in at this point, it would be easier to kick in the front door or break one of the windows.

  “Have you been inside yet?” I asked Darcy. She shook her head. “I’ll take you through the front.”

  “Go ahead,” Rafe told us. “I’m gonna grab the rest of this and put it in the car.”

  He bent to gather the couple of boards he’d brought but hadn’t used. I gave myself a moment to admire the way his jeans stretched tight across his posterior when he leaned down, and then I turned and led the way around the side of the house to the front door with Darcy following behind. She was grinning.

  “Hey,” I told her with an unrepentant shrug when we were standing on the stoop and I was opening the lockbox to get the key, “that’s my husband. And he’s hot. I’m allowed to look.”

  “I never said you weren’t.” She turned to the street at the sound of a car coming closer. “Here’s Charlotte. I wasn’t sure she was going to join us.”

  I had assumed she wouldn’t, since she wasn’t here yet. But now she pulled Mrs. Albertson’s tiny car to a stop behind mine, and swung her legs out. “Sorry I’m late.”