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

by Jenna Bennett

  Yes, I have a vivid imagination. You can blame it on my brother Dix and the ghost stories he used to tell me as a kid.

  But no. The nailheads Rafe had pounded in a month ago were still bright and shiny, and the trap door didn’t move when I dug my fingernails into it and tried to lift. So whoever had been hanging around our yard last night—unless it was just a neighbor cutting across the grass instead of walking up to the corner and around—he or she hadn’t made it into the tunnel.

  I wandered back and around the corner. Only to come face to face with Rick Goins, getting out of his Toyota at the bottom of the steps.

  He stopped when he saw me, and an expression of dismay crossed his features. I pretended I didn’t see it. “Detective Goins. What can I do for you?”

  “Your husband around?” Goins asked.

  I shook my head. “He left about an hour ago.”

  “Back to the TBI again?” He smirked.

  “Not this time,” I said, without volunteering any information about where he might have gone. I didn’t know exactly where José lived, anyway. “I don’t expect him back for a while. Can I take a message?”

  Goins expanded. There’s no other word for it. I guess the knowledge that Rafe wasn’t around made him feel more comfortable. He moved his feet farther apart and squared his shoulders. “I thought you might have changed your mind about providing an alibi for him the other night.”

  Oh, really? “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “First of all, he’s my husband. I wouldn’t change my mind. But his alibi doesn’t need any help from me. You can call my mother. You can call Sheriff Satterfield in Maury County. You can call Chief Grimaldi in Columbia.”

  “I already did,” Goins said triumphantly.

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  “She said you finished dinner by eight o’clock. It’s an hour’s drive from Columbia to Nashville. Your husband could have gotten here in plenty of time to run Doug Brennan off the road.”

  “That’s stupid,” I said. “I was with him. We didn’t drive to Nashville. We went back to the mansion and sat around for a while. We didn’t go to bed until eleven. And he had no reason to want to get rid of Brennan. If you spoke to Grimaldi, I’m sure she told you that.”

  “Tamara isn’t here,” Goins said, with relish. “I am.”

  “You might still want to listen to her. She knows us both better than you do.”

  He had no answer to that, and I added, “You realize that while you insist on going down this path, after a man with no motive and a solid alibi, the real murderer is getting away with it?”

  He had no response to that, either, and I continued, “That’s if there is a real murderer. So far, it sounds like it might have been an accident. Do you have any evidence that it wasn’t?”

  He opened his mouth, but must have thought better of volunteering whatever he’d been about to say, because he closed it again.

  “I thought so,” I said.

  He scowled. “Now, you listen here, missy—!”

  I channeled Mother. And looked at him down the length of my nose. It’s quite possible to do, even when the man you’re looking at is half a foot taller than you. In this case I had indignation on my side, so that made it easy. “That’s Mrs. Collier to you. And until you have some evidence that my husband has done something—which you won’t get, because he wasn’t anywhere near Ridgetop two nights ago—I’ll thank you not to come around here again with your questions. Go do your job, and find the real murderer. If there is one.”

  I headed up the stairs to the porch.

  “How do you know it happened in Ridgetop?” Goins asked from behind me.

  I turned at the top of the stairs and looked down at him. “Seriously? You told us Brennan ran off the road near his home. He lives in Ridgetop. My husband worked under him for eleven years. My husband’s boss worked under Brennan for even longer. People know where he lived.”

  Goins had no response to that.

  “If you’ll excuse me?” I said, and headed for the door. He didn’t say anything to stop me, so I let myself in and closed and locked the door behind me. And watched through the window as Goins stood for a second and looked around, before he walked back to the Toyota and got in. As the car started moving down the driveway, I went to find my daughter.

  * * *

  The FinBar was hopping when Carrie and I got there at noon. And Alexandra was early, already sitting in a booth by the window munching on French fries. She saw us coming and waved, and I headed for her. “Good to see you. Goodness, you look about to burst.”

  She made a face as she dropped down on the seat again after giving me a hug. “I’ve gained twenty-five pounds. I’m eating like a pig.”

  She was a little rounder in the face, and a lot rounder in the stomach, than the last time I’d seen her. “Are you sure you’re only six months along?” I shoved the car seat with Carrie into the booth and followed.

  “Positive,” Alexandra said and picked up another fry. “It’s Jamal’s baby. No question.”

  OK, then. I wriggled out of my coat and smiled at the waitress, who had appeared like magic once I sat down. “I’ll have a sweet tea, please. And a Cobb salad.” Might as well order, since Alexandra had gotten a head start.

  “Me, too,” Alexandra said, so I guess the plate of fries was just the appetizer.

  I could remember being pregnant. I was hungry all the time, and got light-headed if I didn’t eat regularly. I’d feel like Carrie was gnawing on my stomach lining. If Alexandra was dealing with those sensations, I didn’t blame her at all for stuffing fries in her mouth.

  “So how are you?” I asked. “Hungry all the time?”

  She nodded. “I swear, I eat all day long.”

  “It takes a lot of fuel to make a baby. And a lot of sleep.”

  “Tell me about it.” She rolled her eyes, heavily made up. She’s always looked several years older than the seventeen I knew her to be. “I sleep like twelve hours every night.”

  I did, too, back when I’d been six months pregnant. “Look at it this way. You’re saving up for after the baby’s born. I’m up a couple of times every night now.”

  “Great,” Alexandra said, in a voice that said the opposite. She stuffed another fry in her mouth and added, around it, “I can’t wait.”

  “Are you keeping the baby? If you’re not, you can give that duty to someone else.”

  We’d talked about this on and off over the past five months. She was young. She was still in high school, at least until the summer. She was hoping to go to college next year. She wasn’t really in a great position to become a mother.

  And her baby’s father was only a few years older than she was, and not really in a great position to be a parent, either. Not only was he young, around twenty or so, but he was going into undercover work. Of the kind where he could be gone for weeks and months at a time, when she’d have no idea where he was and what he was doing, and whether he’d make it back in one piece.

  I’d had a little experience of that with Rafe’s undercover career. Just for the last few months of it, before it all exploded in his face and blew his cover sky high. And it wasn’t something I’d wish on anyone. Especially not a seventeen-year-old, new mother.

  She put a hand on her stomach. “I think I am. Keeping it. I can’t see myself carrying it for all this time and then giving it to somebody else.”

  I nodded. I could certainly relate to that. By the time I gave birth to Carrie, if anyone had suggested taking her away from me, I would have clawed their face off.

  Different if you go into it with that idea, of course. But it didn’t sound as if Alexandra had.

  “Do you know what you’re having?”

  “The ultrasound was last month,” Alexandra said. “The tech said she thought it was a boy. It’s not for certain, though, but that’s what she said.”

  She picked up another fry.

  “Do you have a name picked out?”

  Rafe and I had
gone back and forth a little bit. I’d always been in favor of Caroline for a girl—after my few-times-great-grandmother, who had a baby with the groom while her husband was away fighting the Damn Yankees—but I’d wanted to make sure he didn’t want something else. Like LaDonna, after his dead mother. If we’d had a boy, I would have pushed for William, who’d been the son of Caroline and the groom. Robert, after my late father, had been another possibility, but Catherine had already beaten me to that one, and anyway, we ended up with a girl.

  “I thought maybe I’d call him Rafe,” Alexandra said.

  I choked, and then took a look at her face. “You’re not serious.”

  She nodded, eyes wide. “I am. Jamal and I met at your wedding. It seems appropriate.”

  Sure. Name the poor kid after my husband, whose responsibility it was that twenty-year-old Jamal had knocked up seventeen-year-old Alexandra and ruined her life.

  “If you’re going to name him after someone,” I said, “maybe you should go with Martin.” And put the blame on me, where by rights it belonged. “Rafe is such a romance novel name, don’t you think?” Probably the reason why 14-year-old LaDonna Collier had come up with it thirty-one years ago. “Are you sure you want to give your son something like that to live up to?”

  Alexandra thought about it. “Maybe not.”

  Thank you, God.

  “Jamal told me what happened,” Alexandra said, with a look at me across the table. “That the TBI fired Rafe.”

  The waitress came and dropped off my iced tea, and I waited for her to leave and took a sip before I answered. “They didn’t exactly fire him. I mean, he didn’t do anything to get himself fired. They’re just not giving him anyone else to train until they see how Jamal and his friends do.”

  After a second, and another sip of tea, I added, “I guess they’re essentially just eliminating his job. And Wendell’s.”

  Alexandra nodded. “Jamal’s going to be working with a guy named Kirk. He’s kind of bummed.”

  I would be bummed, too, if I’d thought I’d be working with Wendell and/or Rafe, and got someone named Kirk instead. “I’m sure it’ll turn out OK. Rafe doesn’t really know much about the gang culture. That’s more an urban thing. He didn’t grow up with it. And he’s getting a little old to pull it off.”

  Dreadlocks, gold teeth, and saggy pants four months ago notwithstanding.

  “Kirk is even older,” Alexandra grumbled. “And not near as hot.”

  I arched my brows, and she added, “Sorry. But your husband’s hot. You know he is.”

  Of course he was. But that didn’t mean it was OK for her to notice. Or remark on it.

  She snorted. “I’m seventeen. Not blind or stupid.”

  “Stick with boys your own age.”

  “I did,” Alexandra said. And although that wasn’t exactly true—Jamal was three or four years older, she’d been underage, and he should have known better—I had to give her the point. He was only three or four years older, not fourteen, like Rafe. And in Jamal’s favor, she didn’t tell him how old—or young—she was, so he hadn’t known she was underage when he took her to bed.

  Not that that’s much of an excuse, but he isn’t exactly seasoned himself, either.

  “How are the two of you doing?”

  She shrugged. “OK, I guess. He went with me to the ultrasound. He says he wants to be there for the baby. But he doesn’t want to get married, and I don’t, either.”

  “You’re a bit too young to tie yourself down. Especially if the only reason is that you’re pregnant. Give it some time. If you’re meant to be together, it’ll be obvious.”

  I’d gotten married the first time at twenty-three, and had learned pretty quickly that I’d had no idea what I was doing, or any clue what I’d been looking for in a mate. The relationship lasted less than two years before Bradley dumped me for his paralegal.

  “Easy for you to say,” Alexandra said. “You got Rafe.”

  Indeed I did. The second time around, I knew exactly what I wanted. Even if it took me a bit of time to admit—to myself and anyone else—that he was it.

  The waitress approached with the salads, and whisked away the now-empty plate of fries. Alexandra fell on her salad like she was starving, and I lifted my fork and started picking at mine, too. “How’s your father doing?”

  “Fine,” Alexandra said between bites. “Handling the baby-thing like a champ. And it’s been a year since Maybelle went to prison, so he’s mostly over that, too. Maybe starting to date again.”

  Good for him. “It’s not that long since your mother died. It can take time to get over something like that.”

  Alexandra nodded and swallowed. “He’s taking it slow. There’s a woman at work he’s had dinner with a couple of times. No more than that. She seems nice. Much nicer than Maybelle.”

  It wouldn’t be hard to be nicer than Maybelle. But since we both already knew that, I didn’t bother to point it out. “And Austin?”

  Alexandra’s younger brother, a classmate of Rafe’s son David at Montgomery Bell Academy, was also doing well. We spent the rest of lunch making small talk about Carrie, and the baby Alexandra was expecting, and Steven and Austin and how she was doing in school—Harpeth Hall, the exclusive girl-school equivalent of MBA—and any other little thing that crossed our minds.

  The check had arrived and I’d signed for it by the time Alexandra asked, “So what are you going to do now? You and Rafe? If he isn’t working at the TBI anymore?”

  “We’re thinking of moving back to Sweetwater,” I told her. And amended it. “At least for a while. Rafe has been offered a job with the Columbia PD.”

  That maybe wouldn’t last forever, or beyond the first year, now that I knew what Grimaldi’s appointment to the position was really about. Maybe we’d better not sell Mrs. Jenkins’s house, in case we needed to go back to it.

  Alexandra’s eyes widened. “Move away? But…”

  “It isn’t far,” I said. “Just over an hour.”

  She nodded. “I know. I’ve been there. But we won’t be able to have lunch together anymore.”

  And if she got in trouble, she couldn’t call me in the middle of the night, the way she’d done once before, and have me—and Rafe—show up to extricate her.

  Although with a baby on the way, hopefully those days were behind her.

  “It may not last long,” I said. “Rafe isn’t all that fond of Sweetwater. He didn’t have a great upbringing there. We’ll have to see how it goes.”

  “I don’t like it,” Alexandra said, sticking her bottom lip out.

  “I’m sorry. But he just lost his job at the TBI. Beggars can’t be choosers. The Columbia PD is offering a salary and benefits, and we do need money to live, just like everyone else.”

  “I get it. I’m just sad.”

  “I’ll come up and see you,” I said. “We’ll still be friends. Jamal will still want to see Rafe, I’m sure. We won’t be strangers.”

  Alexandra nodded, if reluctantly. “I’ll miss you.”

  “I’ll miss you, too,” I told her. “But we really aren’t going far. And it isn’t settled yet. For now, Detective Goins is trying to prove that Rafe had something to do with Doug Brennan’s accident, and is asking him not to leave town.” Not that he could enforce that. “While that’s going on, I don’t think Rafe’s going anywhere. I’ll let you know what happens later. And even if we do end up leaving, I’ll only be an hour away. You can call me anytime.”

  “Don’t think I won’t,” Alexandra said, and, putting her hands on the table, levered herself to her feet and waddled toward the door. I grabbed the car seat with the baby and followed.

  Chapter Ten

  I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention as I drove up Potsdam Street toward Mrs. Jenkins’s house. It wasn’t until I’d actually turned the nose of the Volvo into the circular driveway, that I noticed the cars parked there.

  Detective Goins’s Toyota was back. So were a black and white squad car, and a
white van with the MNPD logo and Crime Scene Unit in blue letters along the back. And not only that: a handful of CSI techs in white coveralls were moving slowly through the back and front yards, eyes on the ground.

  I stopped the Volvo behind the van and got out, leaving Carrie asleep in the back seat. In deference to her sleeping, I didn’t slam the car door, although I wanted to. Instead I closed it carefully before I stalked over to Detective Goins, who was standing—hands on his hips and belly bulging gently over the waistband of his Sansabelt slacks—surveying his minions. “What the hell—heck—is this?”

  He smirked. “What does it look like?”

  I looked around. Not that I needed to. “It looks like you’re searching my home.”

  “We started with the yard,” Goins said, pulling a folded sheet of paper out of his inside pocket, “since you weren’t home.”

  “The yard is private property too, you know.” I took the paper away from him and unfolded it. As expected, it was a search warrant. And it looked legal. Not that I’d know, but it had today’s date on it, and a signature on the bottom.

  I started to hand it back, and then changed my mind. “I’m just going to take a picture of this.”

  “Why?” Goins wanted to know.

  I glanced at him. “So I can send it to my husband. So he knows what’s going on.” I laid the warrant on the hood of Goins’s SUV, pulled out my phone, and snapped a couple of pictures. Then I sent them off to Rafe’s phone before I gave Goins his warrant back. “Would you like to go inside now?”

  “As soon as we’re done with the yard,” Goins said.

  “Any chance you’ll tell me what you’re looking for?”

  It had to be related to Doug Brennan’s death somehow, but if the man had driven off the road, it wasn’t like there was a murder weapon to be found.