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

by Jenna Bennett

  I nodded. “I didn’t go out there, so I have no idea how far away it all happened. Rafe can tell you. I stayed inside the house with Carrie.”

  Grimaldi nodded and gave up the vigil. “Did I hear you mention coffee?”

  “Back in the kitchen.” I pushed the door open again as she came up the steps. “Late night?”

  “No later than usual.” She gave me a look on her way past, and her lips twitched. “None of your business.”

  “I didn’t say anything,” I protested as I shut the door behind her.

  She smirked. “You thought it.”

  Well, yes. I had thought it. But— “There’s no law against thinking.”

  “Guess not.” She headed down the hallway to the kitchen, long legs in short heels eating up the distance. “Dog still at the vet?”

  I nodded, hurrying along behind. “They wanted to keep her overnight to make sure the wound didn’t get infected. We haven’t called them yet this morning. But if all is well, and doesn’t get worse throughout the day, we can pick her up tonight.”

  “I’m glad it wasn’t worse,” Grimaldi said, and passed from the hallway into the kitchen. “Morning.”

  She nodded to Rafe and Bob, who were leaning against the counter and island, respectively, enjoying mugs of steaming hot coffee.

  “Anyone want me to make breakfast?” I asked.

  “Your mama took care of it,” Bob told me.

  “I had something,” Grimaldi added, reaching for the mug Rafe was handing her.

  I turned to him. “Rafe?”

  He grinned at me. “I’ll grab an apple or something later. Don’t wanna waste any daylight.”

  No, considering what yesterday had been like, and what today was shaping up to be—it was so early that Carrie wasn’t even up yet—I could see why he’d be worried about that.

  “Let me know if you change your mind. I’m going to go upstairs and take care of the baby.”

  The baby monitor on the counter was starting to make little noises.

  “I’ll come back in before we leave,” Rafe promised. “For now, we’re just gonna walk around the front forty and see what we can find.”

  “Have fun. Don’t trample the evidence.”

  “We’ll try not to, darling,” the sheriff said. “Go take care of that baby before she starts fussing.”

  I did. Headed back upstairs to change and feed Carrie, and get her ready for the day.

  I was halfway through the feeding when I heard the front door shut downstairs, and heard their voices outside the window as they moved off the porch. By the time I’d finished nursing, and put Carrie to my shoulder to pat her back, they were off in the far distance, more than halfway across the field. Walking in a line, with about ten feet between them, heads bent and eyes fastened on the ground.

  I smirked. Rafe, in his faded jeans and black leather jacket, and Grimaldi, in her business suit, both looked out of place wading through the dry grass. Bob Satterfield looked like he did this every day of his life.

  And it was Bob, out on the left flank, who must have said something, because Grimaldi and Rafe both converged on him, and they stood for a minute and discussed whatever it was, before they each pulled out a cell phone and took a picture of it.

  Footprint, maybe.

  Once that was done, they went back into formation and kept moving across the field.

  “Daddy’s working,” I told Carrie. “He’ll be in to say goodbye before he takes off. And later this morning, you and I are going to meet Alexandra Puckett for lunch. Won’t that be nice?”

  She gurgled. I peered out the window at the activity—or lack thereof—in the field.

  It took them the best part of two hours to walk around everything. Then Grimaldi and Bob got into their respective vehicles and took off down the driveway while Rafe came inside. “We’re done, darlin’. I’m gonna head in to work now.”

  I nodded and presented my cheek for a kiss. “Did you find anything?”

  He shrugged. “Nothing that helpful. Tire tracks on the other side of the field. Nothing distinctive about’em, but they’re spaced far enough apart that we’re prob’ly looking at a truck.”

  “Kyle Scoggins has a truck,” I said. “So, I’m sure, does the renovator who walked through the house the other day.”

  “And Bob and half the rest of the population of Maury County,” Rafe nodded.

  So no help from the tire tracks. “Anything else?”

  “Footprints,” Rafe said. “At least two sets, maybe three, but there’s no telling whether that’s just ’cause I thought I saw three people last night. There mighta been four, and the last one was careful where he stepped.”

  Maybe. “Anything else?”

  “Shell casings from my gun,” Rafe said.

  “What about from the gun that shot Pearl?”

  “We already know what kinda gun that was,” Rafe said. “We have the bullet.”

  The bullet the vet had dug out of Pearl’s leg yesterday. I grimaced. “What kind of gun was it?”

  “Some sort of rifle. Could be a bolt-action, could be semi-automatic.”

  Semi-automatic? “That’s an assault weapon, isn’t it?” Wasn’t that what we heard about on the news, the kinds of guns being used in mass-shootings around the world?

  “You can use any weapon to commit assault,” Rafe said, and relented. “Yes, darlin’. A lot of the recent shootings were done with AR-15s. Semi-automatic assault rifles.”

  “Is that what AR stands for? Assault rifle?” Or automatic rifle?

  He shook his head. “Stands for ArmaLite. The folks who made it.”

  Shows what I know. I abandoned the minor point in favor of the bigger one. “So you’re saying someone was walking around the front forty—” or the fields across from the mansion, “with an assault weapon last night? And used it to shoot Pearl?”

  “Either that or a bolt-action hunting rifle,” Rafe nodded.

  “What’s the difference?”

  “For this purpose, very little.” He looked at me, decided I didn’t need the lecture, and added, “Let’s hope it was just somebody out there popping rabbits. Somebody walking around the place with a semi-automatic is a lot more of a problem.”

  I guess it was. Guns that shoot one bullet at a time are bad enough. Guns that keep shooting bullets for as long as you keep your finger on the trigger are a very different matter.

  “Semi-automatics don’t do that,” Rafe said. “That’d be a fully automatic. You gotta squeeze the trigger every time for a semi-automatic, too. But you don’t have to reload every six or eight rounds. They keep shooting as long as you keep squeezing.”

  “They only squeezed once yesterday.” Or Pearl might have been riddled with bullets. “Does that make it more likely that it was a… um…”

  “Single action,” Rafe said. “Maybe. But it don’t rule out a semi-automatic.”

  No, I imagined it didn’t. “Will you check on Pearl today, or should I?”

  “I’ll do it. After this, I don’t see any way I can join you and Alexandra for lunch, though. I’ve still got stuff to do I didn’t get around to yesterday, and now this.”

  I nodded. “Don’t worry. We’ll be fine on our own. We’ll probably just go to the Café on the Square, and check in on Audrey and your grandmother—see if she’s feeling better,”

  “Be careful.”

  “It’s Sweetwater,” I said. “Nothing bad would happen on the square in Sweetwater.”

  Rafe didn’t look convinced, but he didn’t say anything, just bent to kiss me. “Have a good time, darlin’.”

  “You, too,” I said, and watched him head out the kitchen door and over to the garage for the Chevy.

  Eight

  Michelle the stager had left word that the truck would be at the house on Fulton at ten-thirty. I got there at ten-forty-five, and watched for a few minutes as three burly guys in overalls carried furniture and knick-knacks out of the house and into the truck. Michelle was not there, or I w
ould have tried to talk to her. She might have anticipated that, and stayed away. Or maybe she’d stopped by before ten-thirty, had looked at the damage, and then had left before I got there, cursing me.

  Either way, there wasn’t any point in talking to the three guys who were here. They were just moving stuff around, probably for hire. After a few minutes, I got tired of the show and put the car in gear to roll away, and that’s when my phone rang.

  I glanced at the display and stabbed the button. “Alexandra? Everything all right?”

  “Car trouble,” Alexandra’s voice told me, echoing and far away. I deduced I was on speaker. “I think we ran over something a few miles back. The flat tire light came on, and I can sort of hear a noise every time the tire goes around.”

  “Like a nail or something? Hitting the ground?”

  “Something bigger than that,” Alexandra said. “This isn’t a small noise.”

  “Are you stranded along the side of the road somewhere? Do I have to come get you?” And then arrange for a tow truck for her zippy little sports car?

  “No,” Alexandra said. “We’re still moving. Just more slowly. We’re coming into Columbia on the north side right now.”

  The north side? “Why…?” I shook my head. “Never mind.” It didn’t matter why she—or they, it sounded like she had someone with her—hadn’t taken the interstate all the way to the Columbia exit, but had gotten off earlier and were, it sounded like, coming down from Franklin. “Pull into the nearest auto shop you can find. I’ll come get you there.”

  “Looks like there’s one coming up,” Alexandra said. “We saw a billboard a mile back. I think I see it.”

  “Make sure of it before you hang up.”

  I waited a few seconds until she confirmed it. “Yeah. This is it.”

  She rattled off the address.

  “I’m just a few minutes away,” I told her. “I was over at the house on Fulton, the one Charlotte and I have been renovating. I should be able to get there in ten minutes.”

  “Take your time,” Alexandra told me. “You’ve got that precious baby in the car, right? Drive carefully.”

  I said I would, and then I stomped on the accelerator, so she wouldn’t have to wait any longer than she had to.

  It wasn’t until I was a couple of blocks from the address she’d given me, that I realized I was familiar with this particular auto shop.

  I know for a fact that there are several of them in Columbia. There are probably even several on the north side of town, but this was where Rodney Clark worked. Rafe had staked it out for a week about a month ago.

  There was no real reason why that should give me pause, of course, but I found my heart beating a little faster as I gunned the car up the street.

  I got there just in time for the showdown, which was Alexandra sort of hiding on one side of the car, looking worried and very pregnant as she pushed herself up against the bright red metal. Her eyes were huge in her pale face, and her stomach bulged out of the short denim jacket she wore over leggings and a striped shirt.

  Her significant other, Jamal, was hurling invective across the roof of the zippy little Mazda Miata. It was directed at one of the mechanics, a medium-sized, scrawny guy with a skinhead haircut and baggy blue overalls.

  “What the bleep you call my girlfriend?!” Jamal bellowed, hands fisted and head lowered like a bull about to paw the ground.

  He’s a tall guy, almost as tall as Rafe, and he had the scrawny white kid by several inches and several pounds. He weighs considerably less than Rafe, though. Rafe weighed less, too, ten years ago. Jamal’s about a decade younger, early twenties, and he hasn’t filled out yet. He still looks a bit like an overgrown kid.

  Not that there was anything kid-like about his anger. He was clearly about to burst with rage, and a few short seconds away from vaulting the car and beating the mechanic into a pulp. Thanks to Rafe, he knew how to do it, too. Rafe had probably even explained how to get rid of the body.

  Not that there would be a body this time, or any way to get rid of it, if there was. There were too many witnesses for that. I was here. Alexandra was here. Rodney Clark was peering out of one of the bays, a smirk on his face. In the background, I could see a couple of other mechanics keeping an eye on the situation, too, as one of their number squared off against a customer.

  “Imma gonna kill you, you bleeping bleep!” Jamal roared as I flung my car door open and jumped out.

  “What’s going on?”

  “This effing effer,” Jamal said, at decibels loud enough to make my ears ring, while Alexandra uttered a squeak and came running toward me, both hands under her stomach, “asked Alexandra if that’s my baby she’s got inside her.”

  I glanced at the guy, who gave me a cocky smirk.

  “When Alexandra said yes,” Jamal added, voice rising, “he told her she oughta be strung up for whoring for a bleepety-bleep bleep.”

  “Oh, my God.” My mind blanked for a second, as the hideous words washed over me. My thoughts went directly to that noose revolving in the master bedroom of the house on Fulton. This was another, very unpleasant, explanation for it. I had assumed it was directed at Darcy. But I’d slept with Rafe, I’d had his baby—a baby Rodney had seen just that afternoon. A baby who looks quite a lot like her father. Was Rodney—was someone—saying that I ought to be strung up, too?

  I glanced at him, back there in the background. It was obvious he found no fault with what his coworker had said. He was grinning appreciatively, watching the showdown. Maybe the whole crew was made up of racists. Maybe word around Columbia was that if you had neo-Nazi sympathies, you could find a job and friends at the auto shop on the north side.

  “Get in the car,” I told Alexandra, my voice tight. She slid inside the back, next to the seat holding Carrie. I turned to Jamal. “Does the Miata drive?”

  “The tire’s losing air.”

  It was. The front tire was noticeably flatter than the back tire. There was no way he’d be able to drive that car to another shop. Not without grinding along on the rim before he got there.

  I turned to the young mechanic, who was still standing there smirking, looking from me to Jamal and back. “Listen, you. My brother’s a lawyer. So is my sister and my brother-in-law. We have a law firm in Sweetwater. And I swear to God, if you refuse to work on this car, or if you do a shoddy job of changing the tire, or if you say anything else that’s offensive… we will have you and this entire shop and everyone in it up on charges so fast your head will spin!”

  He looked at me, pale blue eyes under almost invisible brows.

  “Did you get that?” I added, when he didn’t say anything. “I’ll do it if you push me, so you’d better not.”

  The young man nodded, resentment all over his face. Jamal grinned. “Pussy,” he said under his breath.

  The guy flushed angrily, and his hands curled into fists.

  “For God’s sake,” I told Jamal, “that’s not helping. Just get in the Volvo.”

  He gave me a look, but he did it. Not without a swagger, however. I waited for him to tuck himself into the passenger seat and shut the door, before I turned back to the young mechanic. “We’ll be back at two o’clock. The car better be done, and done right. And you’d better not overcharge for the work, either.”

  He nodded sullenly.

  I gave him one last, hard look, and then I folded myself back into the Volvo, and reversed out of the body shop and into traffic.

  “That went well,” Jamal said.

  I nodded. I was still shaking a little bit, but it was adrenaline, not fear. “It would have been nice if someone had warned me that you were going to do it. I was so surprised when I recognized Clayton that I almost gave the whole thing away. Unlike the rest of you, I’m not trained to do undercover work.”

  Jamal grinned.

  “Me, either,” Alexandra said from the back seat, where she was tickling Carrie’s toes through the fuzzy suit my daughter was wearing. “She’s gorgeous, Savanna
h.”

  She went on without missing a beat or even drawing breath. “I mean, I know Clay. I like Clay. But the way he looked at me, and the things he said…” She shivered. “I almost believed he believed them.”

  “This was what Rafe drove up to Nashville for on Sunday,” I said, putting the pieces together. “To get Clayton here from Chattanooga, and then set it up so you two could come down and have a confrontation with him. I guess you punctured your own tire?”

  “Big ole spike,” Jamal nodded. “We stopped a mile out to drive it into the tire. Even so, I thought we were gonna have a flat before we made it there.”

  “I wondered why you didn’t come in from the interstate.” Going down the Lewisburg Pike from Franklin takes so much longer. Especially if they were aiming for Sweetwater and not the north side of Columbia.

  “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,” Jamal said philosophically, and I guess that was true.

  “So this whole production was to show Rodney Clark that Clayton is a kindred spirit?”

  They both nodded. “Clay’s worked on cars before,” Jamal added. “Mostly chopping’em up, I think.”

  That’s what I’d heard. Rafe had told me once that Clayton ended up at the TBI because he’d been arrested in connection with a ring of car thieves and a chop shop. And like with Rafe twelve years earlier, someone had grabbed him, like a twig from the fire, and shoved him into the TBI’s undercover program instead of prison.

  “He finished what he was doing in Gig City last week,” Jamal said. “And things were a little hot down there.”

  I deduced he wasn’t talking about the temperature.

  “Wendell pulled him back up to Nashville for a few days, and he and Rafe figured out this setup. Clay’s been down here since Sunday, getting settled. Yesterday was his first day on the job.”

  “And today you showed up.”

  He grinned. “If that don’t make that pissant Clark think Clay’s as much of a bastard as he is, I don’t know what woulda. Although for a second there, I thought I was gonna have to punch him.”

  “He would have punched you back,” Alexandra said from the back seat.