Wrongful Termination: A Savannah Martin Novel (Savannah Martin Mystery Book 16)

by Jenna Bennett

  I couldn’t go around flashing my boobs in public, especially here in Maury County, without it getting back to my mother. Who’d have something to say about it.

  Rafe nodded. The car was already running, and he reversed out of the parking space and headed for the entrance to the parking lot.

  “Mother might be there, too,” I added, although I wasn’t sure whether that was an inducement or the opposite. I wasn’t even sure why I mentioned it.

  When I first got involved with Rafe, Mother had been dead set against it. On a list of eligible bachelors she could imagine her youngest daughter getting involved with, Rafe would be very close to the bottom, if not off the page altogether.

  And that’s the way it had been up until the day I was supposed to marry him but didn’t, since someone had kidnapped the groom while I’d been sleeping. Rafe had come out of that ordeal with a patchwork of knife wounds across his chest and stomach, and one particularly nasty cut clear through one arm, where the psycho who was torturing him had kept him pinned to the table with a knife driven through his forearm and into the tabletop.

  If I think too hard about it, it still has the power to make me feel queasy.

  At any rate, Mother had seen him in the aftermath of that experience, and had seen him sideline the injuries and the pain to track down the man who had hurt him, and who had killed a handful of working girls, and who came close to killing Mother herself and Rafe’s son David… and something had changed. Now he was pretty close to her favorite person. She thought the world of him, and while a year ago she would have taken every opportunity to tell me I could do better, now she was giving me the impression that nothing I did was good enough for him.

  Rafe’s lips curved. “I like your mama.”

  “She likes you, too,” I said.

  He shot me a look. “Never thought you’d see the day, huh?”

  I shook my head. “I’m glad she changed her mind, but in all honesty, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d held a grudge for years. And speaking of grudges and years…”

  Rafe made a noise that was halfway between a snort and a laugh. “Caught that, did you?”

  “It was hard to miss,” I said. “I guess Sergeant Tucker was someone you used to run into when you were younger?”

  Back in the days when he was the scourge of Sweetwater and Maury County.

  “He arrested me in Dusty’s Bar when I was eighteen,” Rafe said.

  Ah.

  It was a deceptively simple statement, but one that held a whole lot of information for anyone who knew a little about his background.

  The summer Rafe was eighteen and just out of high school, LaDonna Collier had been involved with a man named Billy Scruggs. And one day that summer, Billy had taken his fists to LaDonna, probably not for the first time. The difference was that this time, when Rafe had come home for a visit and found her beaten and bloody, he’d gone to Dusty’s Bar in Columbia to confront Billy, and had ended up putting the older man in the hospital.

  He hadn’t come through it unscathed himself, either. Billy had been a big guy, still in reasonable shape for his age, and had inflicted some damage on Rafe, too, in the process of fighting him off. But there was no question who had started the fight, and the outcome was that Rafe was arrested and charged with assault and battery, and sentenced to five years in Riverbend Correctional Facility.

  Where the TBI found him, and organized his release into their care.

  “Sergeant Tucker arrested you after the fight with Billy?”

  Rafe nodded. “He wasn’t a sergeant then. Wasn’t the first time we’d run into each other, neither.”

  I wasn’t surprised. Rafe’s teenage years had been one long string of drinking and fighting and joyriding and being talked to by the police. I had thought the law enforcement encounters had been mostly limited to run-ins with Sheriff Satterfield in Sweetwater, but I guess the Columbia PD had been involved, too, from time to time.

  “I’m going to guess Sergeant Tucker isn’t familiar with your exploits since he arrested you,” I said.

  “Guess not.” He maneuvered the Volvo south on the Columbia Highway.

  “Grimaldi might set him straight.” If Rafe’s name came up in the conversation Tucker and Grimaldi were probably in the middle of right now, and I had to assume that it would.

  Or maybe not. If Tucker didn’t bring it up, maybe Grimaldi wouldn’t. I guess it depended on whether Tucker could resist the opportunity to put in his two cents worth or not.

  Did the cops at the Columbia PD know that their new chief of police wanted to hire Rafe? Or hadn’t that news gotten around yet?

  I could make a good guess that Tucker wouldn’t be in favor. Patrick Nolan, on the other hand—my sister Darcy’s boyfriend—and his partner, Officer Lupe Vasquez, had no problems with Rafe. I guess it came down to the people who remembered him from before, and those who didn’t.

  “Dunno that that’d make a difference,” Rafe said, and he could be right about that. It had taken Sheriff Satterfield a while to come around, even after he knew what Rafe had been doing all those years. They were on better terms now—the sheriff had even apologized for some of his earlier behavior—but it had taken Rafe proving himself in person, and not just the knowledge of his exploits on behalf of the TBI, before the sheriff changed his tune. Likely it would be the same with anyone else who remembered Rafe from the old days.

  “I’m sure this didn’t make it any more likely that you’ll take Grimaldi’s offer,” I said, as we zoomed south toward Sweetwater. Beulah’s Meat’n Three was just coming up on the left, the OPEN sign cheerfully lit in the window, and the parking lot full of cars.

  Rafe shot me a look. “I don’t want the job. I don’t wanna come back here, where everybody thinks they know me and nobody’s gonna let go of the past.”

  Well, that was plain enough, anyway.

  “But I gotta have a job. You and Carrie depend on me. I gotta be able to take care of you.”

  “You can take care of us in Nashville,” I said. “There are jobs you can get there. They probably won’t pay as well as this,” the salary Grimaldi had mentioned was more than adequate compared to what Rafe could make in some menial job in Nashville, “but we’d be OK.”

  I twisted in the seat to look at him, to make sure he could see my face. “I just want to be with you. And I want you to be happy. If being here would make you miserable, I don’t want to be here.”

  Rafe nodded.

  “But now you have the details. And you can talk to Grimaldi more tonight. And when we go home tomorrow morning,” back to Nashville, “at least you’ll know exactly what you’re turning down.”

  Rafe nodded.

  “And if this isn’t what you want,” and after running into Tucker and getting a small taste of his attitude and what might be coming down the pike if Rafe did decide to move back here and go to work for Grimaldi, it would be hard to blame him, “we’ll figure something else out.”

  Rafe nodded.

  We drove in silence a minute.

  “The SWAT team?” I said.

  His lips curved. “Don’t you think it’d be kinda fun?”

  “For you, maybe. Not so much for me.”

  He gave me a quick look. “I don’t imagine the situations they get into are all that dangerous, darlin’. Not down here.”

  “You’d rather be on the SWAT team than be a detective?” The driveway to the mansion was coming up on the right, and I pointed.

  Rafe nodded. “Less chance I’ll run into anybody I know. Or at least less chance they’ll recognize me.”

  “I think you’d be a pretty good investigator.” And Grimaldi obviously did, too.

  “I’m pretty good with weapons and tactics, too,” Rafe said, turning the Volvo into the driveway and up toward the house.

  There’d be no argument from me on that score. “If being on the SWAT team is what it would take to get you here, I think both Grimaldi and I would put you on the SWAT team. That doesn’t mean we
both wouldn’t prefer something else. But it’s up to you, ultimately.”

  He nodded as he pulled the car to a stop at the bottom of the staircase leading up to the front door. “We can talk about it later.”

  “You don’t want Mother’s input?”

  “No,” Rafe said. “I know what your mama’s gonna say.”

  So did I. “I’ll get the baby,” I said, opening my door. “You get the stuff.”

  Rafe nodded. I swung my legs out just as the front door opened to the sound of joyous barking, and a gray bullet shot down the steps to greet us.

  Back in the fall, when we’d been in Sweetwater for the Skinner investigations, I had found a dog. Or she had found me. Or maybe it was mutual.

  Pearl had lived with Robbie Skinner, chained up under his trailer in the hills near the Devil’s Backbone. Rafe and I had found her the morning we found Robbie. He’d been dead, Pearl hadn’t, and a few days later, I’d brought her back to the mansion. It was Mother who had named her, after a Chihuahua she had as a child.

  The current Pearl was no Chihuahua. She was a stocky, big-headed, square-jawed pitbull mix with a lot of teeth and what would look like a terrifying canine grin to anyone who didn’t know and love her.

  Robbie had trained her to do dog fighting. We were hoping that love and care and enough food and treats would turn her back into the sweet and devoted pet she’d been destined to be from the beginning.

  And with a few minor setbacks, things were working out pretty well. She was still fiercely protective, and suspicious of anyone she didn’t know, but she loved Mother with slobbering devotion, and when it came time for me and Rafe to go back to Nashville—this was before we had Carrie—Pearl had chosen to stay here. Now, I guess, she was moving with Mother to Sheriff Satterfield’s house.

  Or maybe not. It hadn’t occurred to me to ask whether the sheriff was taking on Pearl as well as Mother. If he wasn’t, she might have to come back to Nashville with us. And might have to stay there, unless Rafe decided to come here.

  But that was a question for later. Now she was bounding down the staircase barking a greeting, her tongue flapping. Behind her, Mother stepped into the doorway and shaded her eyes against the midday sun.

  After a moment, she smiled. “Rafael! It’s good to see you. And you brought the baby. Hello, Savannah.”

  You’ll notice the order of importance there. I smiled back. “Hello, Mother. We drove down so Rafe could talk to Tamara Grimaldi. And now I need a place to nurse the baby.”

  Carrie had woken up when I hauled the car seat out of the Volvo, and was gearing up to start screaming for sustenance. “Shhhh,” I told her. “We’re here. Just another minute.”

  Pearl came bounding around the car. She had gone to greet Rafe first, maybe because he looks the most threatening. Unlike Mother, Pearl actually prefers me to my husband. And he must have convinced her that he was no threat, because now she came to see me. She wagged her stubby tail ecstatically, making the entire back half of her body wiggle.

  “Hello, sweetheart,” I told her, and made her wag harder.

  And then she noticed Carrie, and stuck her head into the baby carrier.

  For a second my heart stopped. I love Pearl, but I do worry about her and things that are smaller than she is. I bought her a stuffed toy once, and she reduced it to shreds in a few seconds.

  Rafe made a move toward us, too, but it turned out to be unnecessary. Pearl sniffed Carrie delicately, and withdrew her head. Once she was clear of the carrier, she gave another bark.

  Carrie scrunched up her face and let out a wail, and Pearl started dancing around, barking harder.

  Mother clapped her hands to get Pearl’s attention. “Biscuit, Pearl! Biscuit!”

  And Pearl, her love of Mother only eclipsed by her love of biscuits, went bounding back up the stairs and through the open door.

  “I’ll take care of her,” Mother said and turned away. I could hear the clicking of her heels fade away across the foyer and down the hall toward the kitchen.

  Rafe slammed the door on his side of the car and came around to my side, with Carrie’s diaper bag over one shoulder, her bouncy seat under the other arm, and the big bag with her extra changes of clothes, extra blankets, extra diapers, extra bottles and pacifiers and all the other things a baby needs, in his hand. “I’ll get the crib tonight. Ready?”

  I nodded, and headed up the stairs with Carrie while he followed with the rest of her stuff.

  Inside, he dumped it all on the floor of the foyer and shut the door behind us. January in Tennessee is often no big deal, but this week, at least, it was too cold to leave the door open. There was snow in the forecast for next week.

  From the kitchen, we could hear Mother admonish Pearl to sit like a good girl, and the scrabbling of Pearl’s nails as she obeyed.

  “Good girl,” Mother said, and then there was the crunching of a dog biscuit.

  Mother’s heels came clicking back up the hallway toward us. “You didn’t tell me you were coming.”

  “It was spur of the moment,” I said, in the middle of unhooking my squalling child from the car seat holding her captive. “Rafe lost his job.”

  Mother’s eyes widened, and she turned to him. “After everything you’ve done for them?”

  For once, Mother and I were in complete accord. “Can you believe it?” I said, handing Carrie off to Rafe for a second so I could shrug out of my coat before taking her back. “I have to feed the baby. I’m going to go sit in the parlor.”

  Mother nodded. “Come with me, Rafael. I have coffee.” She tucked her hand through his arm. A year ago she would have chosen to fall on her posterior rather than let him touch her, so it was nice to see the change. Perhaps a little less nice that she towed him down the hallway away from me, but I can’t have coffee anyway at the moment, and it was nice of them to drink theirs where I wouldn’t be tempted.

  “Bring me a glass of something,” I told his back, and he nodded, but without turning around. I watched for a second more, just because the view was nice, and then I took Carrie into the parlor, where I sat down on great-great-aunt Ida’s peach velvet loveseat and lifted my shirt. Carrie rooted like a piglet before she latched on, and I leaned back against the back of the sofa and closed my eyes.

  Footsteps a few minutes later was Rafe, bringing me a glass of orange juice. When I opened my eyes, he was standing next to the coffee table with that same expression he often gets when he watches Carrie nurse: half amused, half amazed, and somewhere between turned on and tender.

  I smiled back at him. “Mother being nice to you?”

  “Very.” He put the orange juice on the table, careful to nestle a coaster underneath the glass first. “She just spent a long time telling me how brainless all of the TBI must be for letting me go.”

  “Hard to argue with that.”

  He nodded. “Need anything else?”

  I shook my head. “Go back to Mother. Let her tell you how wonderful you are. I’ll be there when Carrie’s finished.”

  He took himself off down the hallway, but not before he’d given the baby and what she was doing another of those special looks.

  I closed my eyes again.

  By the time Carrie had concluded her business and I made my way down the hallway to the kitchen, Mother and Rafe seemed to have concluded theirs, too. At least the one that involved the many failings of the TBI. They were discussing Pearl.

  “Bob doesn’t mind if I bring her,” Mother was saying, “although there’s no question she likes me better than Bob.”

  Rafe nodded. “She likes Savannah better’n me, too. No surprise, when Robbie didn’t treat her right.”

  “She’s welcome there,” Mother said, “but I don’t think Bob’s feelings would be hurt if she didn’t make the move with me.”

  “We can take her to Nashville with us,” I said from the doorway, and they both turned and looked at me.

  There was a second before Mother said, “Nashville? But…”


  She stopped before saying anything else, but it was too late. What she hadn’t said was obvious.

  “We’re still thinking,” I said. “That’s why we’re here, to talk to Tamara Grimaldi about what it would be like if Rafe went to work for the Columbia PD.”

  Mother nodded. And waited.

  “She offered him a job in criminal investigations. He’d rather be on the SWAT team.”

  Mother turned to look at him. His lips curved.

  “Grimaldi said she’d rather have him on the SWAT team than not have him at all.” I wandered into the kitchen and over to the island with the baby in the crook of one arm and the juice glass in the other. “I’d be fine with either. The idea of SWAT is a little scary, but in a quiet place like this, I’m sure the SWAT team doesn’t end up doing anything very dangerous.”

  Mother shook her head, and watched as Rafe reached out to take the baby from me. “Hello, beautiful,” he told her before putting her up on his shoulder and keeping here there with one big hand that covered her from butt to the back of her head. Carrie squeaked, and Pearl’s ears twitched.

  “Would being part of the,” Mother paused delicately, as if putting it in quotes, “SWAT team make it more difficult for you to spend time with Savannah and Caroline?”

  Rafe shrugged. “No law enforcement’s nine-to-five. When somebody gets killed, you work until you solve the case. When somebody starts shooting up a concert, you go to work, even if it’s midnight on a Saturday.”

  And being an investigator instead of on the SWAT team would make no difference to whether he’d get dragged out of bed at night.

  “I just want you to be happy,” I told him. “Do whatever would make you want to get up in the morning and go to work.”

  His mouth curved. I flushed, since I knew exactly what he was thinking. Mother cleared her throat delicately, carefully not looking at either of us. “How about some lunch?”

  Rafe chuckled. “Sure. I can always eat.”