Survival Clause: A Savannah Martin Novel (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 20)

by Jenna Bennett

  “At least you know what Rafe sees when he looks at you,” Charlotte told me, and I guess she had a point. It explained that amused chuckle he usually gave me at times like that, too.

  On the screen, he waited until I was steady on my feet, and then he tucked me into the car with another quick kiss. He bounded up the stairs and through the door, and the camera stayed on me while I reversed out of the parking space and rolled off down the street. The video ended with me passing the car where the videographer had been sitting.

  “Should I read the comments,” I asked Charlotte, “or is that just going to embarrass me further?”

  She pursed her lips. “Hard to say. Most of them don’t mention you, other than to say things like ‘Lucky girl’ and ‘Wish I were in her shoes.’ The rest of it is all about ‘he can kiss me like that anytime,’ and stuff like that.”

  “Any comments from Jessica herself?” I started scrolling as I asked, down through the comments and heart-eyed emoji Charlotte had quoted.

  “I didn’t notice any.” She bounced Carrie again, and the baby gurgled. “She’s precious, Savannah.”

  “Looks like her daddy,” I said.

  “She has your eyes.”

  She did. Bright blue, against Rafe’s dusky skin and curly, almost-black hair. “Oh, great. Someone’s calling me a fat cow and wondering how someone like me ended up with someone like him.”

  Not like that thought hadn’t crossed my mind too, a few times. That didn’t mean I appreciated anyone else asking the question.

  “And here someone else who says he should be with a black girl.”

  “I think he’d disagree,” Charlotte said calmly. “Besides, they’re just jealous.”

  Maybe so. “It doesn’t matter, anyway. I married him, he’s mine, and it doesn’t matter what someone else thinks.”

  “You go, Savannah,” Charlotte said, grinning.

  “Well, it doesn’t. I spent too much of my life thinking I knew who he should be with, and it wasn’t me. It happened this morning, too. I took one look at Leslie Yung—she’s stunning—and I immediately thought she was an old girlfriend, because that’s the kind of woman I feel like he should be with. Not someone boring and fish-belly white like me.”

  “I think he’d disagree,” Charlotte said again.

  “I know he’d disagree. He told me he disagreed. Just before he laid that kiss on me.”

  “Ah!” Charlotte said, as if that proved something.

  “So I don’t care that some woman thinks I shouldn’t be with him, and she should. He’s my husband and I’m keeping him.”

  “Maybe you want to leave a message on the thread saying that?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”

  She smirked. “Afraid they’ll cancel you?”

  The thought had crossed my mind. I’m in a profession where public opinion of me matters. “If I just ignore it, maybe it’ll go away.”

  “Maybe,” Charlotte agreed. “This can’t be comfortable, though. And next thing you know, she might be following you home. Or him.”

  She had a point. “Surely this is illegal? It’s stalking, isn’t it?”

  “That’s something you should be asking Rafe,” Charlotte said. “Or your friend, the police chief. Or Sheriff Satterfield. Or Todd. Or Dix or Catherine.”

  Plenty of people I could ask, it seemed. My life was full of law enforcement and lawyers.

  “Not much we can do about it until we figure out who she is, though. You can’t arrest someone, or serve papers on someone, if you don’t know who they are.”

  “No,” Charlotte said. “I guess you didn’t notice anyone filming you earlier.”

  “After that kiss? I wouldn’t have noticed a full crew with a dolly and a boom mike.”

  “That’s what I figured,” Charlotte said.

  We spent some time rewatching the video—it made me squirm with embarrassment each time, although I suppose the squirming might have lessened a little by the third time through—but it turned out to be for naught, since rewatching didn’t show us any clues we hadn’t noticed before.

  “The interior of her car looks messy,” I said. “And not new.”

  “A lot of cars are messy and not new. My minivan was.”

  “I don’t think this is a station wagon,” I said. “The camera’s too close to the ground.”

  Charlotte squinted at it. “Maybe.”

  I lowered the phone to my lap, where it kept going through the same video again. “I’m not sure what to do, other than follow Rafe around all day. And now that she’s seen—and filmed—my car, I can’t really do that.”

  “We can borrow Mom’s car,” Charlotte said. “She won’t mind, if we leave her yours.”

  Really? “You’d spend your whole day following my husband around?”

  “It beats sitting here,” Charlotte said.

  I shrugged. “I guess it does. I have to be over at the house on Fulton by eleven to let the photographer in. But before and after that, I guess we could follow Rafe around and see what he gets up to.”

  He’d notice us, of course. Maybe not at first, if we used Charlotte’s mother’s car, one he wasn’t conditioned to look for. But it wouldn’t take him long to pick up on any car that was shadowing him. He’s had a lot of practice.

  “Let me talk to Mom,” Charlotte said and breezed out of the room, still holding my daughter. I turned my attention back to the phone in my hand.

  By the time she came back, with the news that her mother would be happy to let us borrow the little hybrid in exchange for my gas-guzzling Volvo, I had watched the video one more time, and had noticed something.

  “See this shadow here, across the top of the dashboard? She’s got something hanging in her front window.” Looped around the mirror, maybe. “Looks like a scarf, or maybe a thick chain of something…”

  “Mardi Gras beads,” Charlotte said, in the process of dumping Carrie back into her car seat. “A handful of Mardi Gras beads. I’ve seen people do that.”

  I had too, now that she mentioned it. I examined the shadow again. “Could be. It gives us something to look for, anyway. A car with a bunch of beads, or something that casts the same shadow as a bunch of beads, around the rearview mirror. Can’t be too many of those around.”

  “More than you’d think,” Charlotte said, straightening, “but at least it narrows it down from every car on the road.”

  It did. “Unless she takes them down.”

  “No reason for her to do that. She doesn’t know we noticed them.” Charlotte looked around for her purse. “She doesn’t know we’re looking for her. Not yet.”

  Maybe not. “What about your kids?”

  “Mom’s staying with them,” Charlotte said, heading for the door. “Come on.”

  I grabbed Carrie and the car seat and followed.

  Fifteen minutes later, we were back outside the Columbia PD again. Rafe’s loaner was still parked at the foot of the stairs, so he was either inside, or had left by other means. Since we didn’t know which was the case, we decided to go with the assumption that he was still there, and that his stalker might be, too.

  “She doesn’t know what I look like.” Charlotte said, surveying the street outside the police station with shining eyes. “I should be the one getting out and looking around.”

  “Be my guest.” She was really getting into this, so who was I to deprive her of any of the fun? “I’ll just stay here with Carrie.”

  “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” Charlotte said, and swung the hybrid’s door open. I watched her walk away, up the street toward the police station, while she peered intently into every car she passed. Once she’d reached the top of the street, I saw her cross over to the other side, and come back down, doing the same thing to the cars parked on the other side. She was about as circumspect as that proverbial bull in the china shop, but since nobody peeled out of their parking spot and took off on her approach, I figured nobody had a guilty conscience or anything to hide.r />
  “Nothing?” I asked politely when she opened the door again, and fit herself behind the wheel.

  She shook her head. “Not in this section. Not now.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  I glanced at the dashboard clock. With everything that had already happened today, it was still only nine-fifteen. “We have about an hour and a half until we have to head over to Fulton Street for the photographer.”

  “I guess we wait and see if Rafe comes out,” Charlotte said, moving her seat back and getting comfortable, “and if he does, we follow him. And in the meantime, we check any new cars that come along.”

  Fine by me. If we didn’t know where Rafe was going, it wasn’t likely that Jessica Rabbit knew, either—she’d have to be here to follow him, too, and if she was here, Charlotte would have seen her—but I didn’t have anything else to do for the next hour and a half, so I figured I might as well stay here and enjoy the company.

  As it happened, we got lucky. We hadn’t been sitting there more than ten minutes when the door to the police station opened and Leslie Yung stepped out. A second later, Rafe followed. He gestured to the tan Chevy, and Agent Yung headed down the stairs.

  “Who’s that?” Charlotte wanted to know, her nose so close to the windshield her breath was fogging up the window.

  “That’s the FBI agent I was telling you about.”

  She shot me a look. “I can see why you thought she might have been an old girlfriend.”

  I nodded, as I watched my husband open the door of the Chevy for Agent Yung and hold it while she arranged herself in the passenger seat. Then he closed the door behind her and walked around the car. He stopped for just a second to run his gaze over the street—for a second I could have sworn he looked straight at me—before he opened his own door and slid behind the wheel.

  “Better get ready,” I told Charlotte. “He takes off like a bat out of hell.”

  She nodded. “Where do you think they’re going? Left or right?”

  My money was on right—toward the interstate and the road to Sweetwater, but— “I guess we’ll find out.”

  The Chevy reversed out of the parking space and took off. I sincerely hoped—with only a little malice—that Agent Yung was hanging onto the door handle and barely avoiding peeing her pants.

  “Don’t let them get too far ahead,” I told Charlotte as the Chevy headed past us and down the street. “The way he drives, we’ll lose them.”

  Charlotte nodded. She was already moving backward out of the space while I watched the Chevy in the mirror.

  By the time we’d gotten turned around, they were out of sight down the road. “Step on it,” I told Charlotte, “and let’s see if we can catch them.”

  She obliged, and the little hybrid took off like a shot down the street.

  I had kept watching until I couldn’t watch anymore, and hadn’t seen them turn off the main drag, so I kept Charlotte going straight. And every time she slowed down a little—because neither one of us is used to speeding through residential areas—I exhorted her to go faster. As a result, we caught sight of the Chevy after a couple of minutes, up ahead of us and halfway to the interstate.

  “Probably taking her to see the crime scene,” I said. “That had to be why she’s here. The serial killer case.”

  Unless she, too, had seen the video of Rafe. And—still believing he was a criminal—had rushed to Columbia to tell Tamara Grimaldi that she was employing an imposter.

  That would have been an interesting conversation to sit in on, if so.

  But more likely she was here to consult on the serial killer case, and hadn’t known Rafe was here until he walked in.

  I wished I could have seen her face when that happened, too.

  “What serial killer case?” Charlotte wanted to know. “You didn’t say anything about a serial killer.”

  “I didn’t? Must have been an oversight on my part. The body that was dumped yesterday is the last, or the latest, in a series of eighteen victims this guy has claimed.”

  “God,” Charlotte said, and shuddered. The little hybrid did, too. Compared to my sturdy Volvo, and Rafe’s even sturdier SUV, I felt like I was riding in a tin can.

  She shot me a look. “You said ‘claimed.’ How does he claim them?”

  “Oh.” Not sure I wanted to go into the details of that, because it was unpleasant and because Charlotte, like me, was a gently-bred Southern girl, who was supposed to be ladylike and squeamish. “He numbers them.”

  “How?”

  “I’m not entirely sure,” I admitted. “I haven’t seen the body, or looked it up.” The information was probably online. Unless this was one of those pieces of info the police hoarded, to use against the bad guy when they caught him. Although if that were the case, surely Grimaldi wouldn’t have told me about it. “The word Grimaldi used was ‘carved.’”

  “God.” Charlotte turned a shade paler.

  “I know. It’s icky.”

  She didn’t say anything else, and I added, “They’re signaling. Better slow down.”

  We watched the Chevy zip out of sight on the right. The hybrid came to a crawl as we approached the spot where the Chevy had vanished.

  And yes, it was as I’d thought. We were near the interstate, and the SUV had taken a turn into the parking lot of the truck stop. As we crept closer, we saw it come to a stop toward the back of the lot, near an overflowing dumpster.

  “Go over there,” I told Charlotte, waving my hand in the opposite direction. “Find somewhere to stop where we can still see what they’re doing.”

  She rolled off in that direction, obediently. I kept my eyes on the Chevy, and saw both doors open. Rafe and Agent Yung got out, and headed for the dumpster.

  And then disappeared behind the dumpster.

  My eyes narrowed. Not—I swear—because I thought they were doing anything untoward behind it. If Rafe wanted to make out with Agent Yung he wouldn’t do it behind a smelly dumpster. Nor would he make out with anyone but me.

  But I couldn’t see them, and that was annoying.

  Still, there wasn’t much question about what they were doing. He was showing her the crime scene, or more accurately, the dump site. The place where the body had been found. Most likely not the place where she’d been murdered. I didn’t they had any idea where that had happened.

  A few minutes later, they came out and got back in the car. The Chevy swung around and came back toward us.

  “Duck!” I told Charlotte, and tucked up into a ball in my seat. Next to me Charlotte did the same. We watched the Chevy cruise by through strands of hair, kind of like an ostrich believes that if it can’t see anyone, no one can see it, either.

  The Chevy hit the road and turned back toward Columbia, and I shook my hair out of my face and nudged Charlotte. “They’re out of sight. Let’s go.”

  She took her foot off the brake and rolled toward the exit. But a truck was coming in just as we were going out, and so we had to hang back until it had made its wide turn into the lot. I stared hard at it, wondering whether a truck like this was the last thing Ramona Mitchell had seen before she died, and whether there was a dead woman, or a bound and gagged woman, inside this one. Not that there was any reason to suspect this truck in particular; it was just there at a time when I was thinking about it.

  And then it was past us, and the hybrid leapt out of the lot and onto the road, and took up the chase after the Chevy, which was nowhere in sight.

  We’d driven maybe a minute when my phone rang. I pulled it out of my purse and looked at it. “It’s Rafe,” I told Charlotte, before I put it to my ear. “Hi.”

  “Darlin’.”

  It was all he said. The silence stretched out.

  “What do you want?” I ventured. He didn’t sound upset, so there was that, at least.

  “Don’t you think that oughta be my question?”

  I sighed. “Where are you?”

  “About twenty feet behind you.”

  I
glanced in the side mirror. Yes, there he was. Or there the Chevy was, at any rate. I could make out the pale oval of Leslie Yung’s face through the windshield.

  “How did you get back there?” He’d been in front of us when we left the lot. Or so I’d assumed. “No, never mind. We were just looking out for you.”

  “How d’you figure that?”

  “There’s a new video out on social media. Of you and me kissing. Outside the police station earlier.”

  That got a chuckle. “No kidding.”

  “I’ll send it to you. Some of the comments are saying I shouldn’t be married to you.”

  “Whoever says that is wrong,” Rafe said, while in the background I heard Leslie Yung’s voice mumble something. “What’s it gotta do with you and your sidekick following me around?”

  “We figured, if someone else was following you around, we’d see them.”

  “Ain’t nobody but you two following me around right now,” Rafe said, without pointing out that if we hadn’t noticed him circling around to end up behind us, we weren’t likely to notice anyone else, either.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I caught you, didn’t I?”

  He didn’t wait for me to answer, just added, “Go home, darlin’. If this person turns out to be a problem, I’ll deal with it. But I don’t want you and Carrie mixed up in this business. Or Charlotte. Tell her to take you home.”

  “She can hear you,” I said, while next to me, Charlotte rolled her eyes. “Where are you going?”

  “I guess if I don’t tell you, you’re gonna tail me over there?”

  Again, he didn’t wait for my response. “I’m taking Agent Yung to the sheriff’s office in Sweetwater. Feel free to follow us there if you don’t believe me.”

  “Don’t mind if we do,” I said, since my car was in Sweetwater anyway. “You want to pull around, since right now you’re the one following us?”

  “No,” Rafe said. “Just keep going until you hit Sweetwater. We’ll be right here.”

  Fine. “Promise you’ll be careful?”

  “Always.” He hung up before I could point out that he always said that, and never was.

  “What do you want me to do?” Charlotte asked.