Bad Debt (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 14)

by Jenna Bennett

  “You were not trailer trash,” I said firmly. “Nor was your mother. Or even your grandfather, bless his—” evil, rotten, “heart.”

  Rafe grinned at me. “It is what it is, darlin’. Not much anyone can do about now.”

  I supposed not.

  “Anyway, the Skinners lived in a couple trailers up in the hills. I never had much to do with’em. Darrell was older’n me, like I said, and he didn’t like me much.”

  “Because... um...?”

  He shot me a glance out of the corner of his eye. I’m getting better at articulating difficult thoughts, but sometimes it’s very convenient that he can read my mind. “Cause my daddy was black?”

  That’s what I’d been getting at. Without saying it out loud, because that would be rude.

  “So he was a racist?”

  The corner of Rafe’s mouth quirked. “No more’n a lot of other people.”

  Point taken. My family had taken a while to warm up to him, as well. It hadn’t been just because he was half black—the fact that his mother had gotten herself in the family way at fourteen had had something to do with it, too, and so did the two years he’d spent at Riverbend Penitentiary—but the whole colored thing had played a part. Even if nobody was willing to say so. Out loud.

  “I love you,” I said.

  He smiled. “I know, darlin’.”

  “Is this going to be hard for you?”

  It was just a month since he’d stood over a dead body that had definitely hit close to home. I hated the idea that it would happen again. Especially so soon.

  “Cause it’s Darrell?” He shook his head. “I don’t imagine so. I ain’t seen him in close to fifteen years. And we weren’t real friendly before that.”

  I didn’t say anything, and he added, “It ain’t supposed to be easy, Savannah. But I don’t think this one’s gonna be any harder than anything else I’ve had to deal with lately.”

  Point taken.

  He gave me a searching look as he guided the car past the buffalo statues—Dickerson Pike used to be known as Buffalo Trail. Up ahead, we could see the entrance to I-24. “You gonna be all right?”

  “It won’t be up to me to figure out who killed six people,” I said.

  “I meant, with your mama and all.”

  “Oh.” My mother had gotten some bad news last month, and she was still struggling with accepting it. “That. Sure. I’ll be fine.”

  I’d probably have to listen to my mother moan, but there are worse fates. And if I kept busy with Yvonne and the Beulah problem, maybe I could cut down on the time I’d have to spend with her.

  Maybe I could even get her to take an interest in Yvonne and the Beulah problem. It would give her something else to think about.

  “You sure you wanna do this?” He gave me a sideways look, searching. “There’s time for me to turn around and take you back home.”

  We hadn’t reached the entrance ramp for the interstate yet, but it was right there on the other side of the intersection.

  “I’m sure,” I said. “Just drive.”

  Rafe nodded, and did.

  Two

  Columbia is usually about an hour south of Nashville. Today, we made it in just over forty-five minutes. And we did it without lights or sirens, and without being pulled over by law enforcement. I’ll admit to closing my eyes from time to time, though. Rafe’s a safe driver, but he goes fast.

  It was just before ten when we left the interstate at the Columbia exit and headed west. I caught Rafe glancing at the clock on the dashboard.

  “Just go straight there,” I told him. “If you take me all the way south to Sweetwater, and then drive north and across the county to the Devil’s Backbone, it’ll be another hour before you get there. The sheriff is probably already pacing, waiting for you to show up.”

  He gave me a look. “You sure?”

  “I don’t mind. If I drop you off, I’m sure the sheriff will give you a ride back. Or I can wait until you’re done if you want.”

  “We can work something out.” He headed west through Columbia instead of south toward Sweetwater.

  Twenty minutes later, we were on our way up into the foothills of the Western Highland Rim. The hillsides were thickly forested, but the branches of the trees were mostly bare. Here and there, there was a fir tree, but mostly we were looking at oaks and maples and the occasional hickory. All trees that lost their foliage in the winter.

  “How many Skinners are there?” I asked Rafe as he maneuvered the car up the slick road. The drizzle had started just after we passed Columbia, but it hadn’t developed into real rain yet. It was still enough to make the road wet and slippery, though. “More than six?”

  “Not too many more. In fact—” He stepped on the brake, and the car fishtailed.

  I uttered a faint scream and grabbed for the door handle. “What are you doing?!”

  “Sorry. I just remembered that Robbie Skinner has a place up here.” He backed up a few yards, going backwards down the hill at breakneck speed, before turning up an unpaved road that disappeared between the trees. A ghostly sign appeared out of the gloomy mist, and I leaned forward and squinted to bring it into focus. ‘No Trespassing’ in red letters, with an outline of something underneath...

  I sat back against the seat. “Is that an Uzi?”

  “Looks more like an AK-47,” Rafe said, running an experienced eye over it as we went by. “The Skinners ain’t big on company.”

  “Seriously?”

  He shrugged.

  “I mean it. If he’s threatening to shoot trespassers with an automatic weapon, what are we doing driving up to his house unannounced?”

  “He ain’t gonna shoot us,” Rafe said calmly, his hands flexing on the wheel as he fought to keep the car on the road.

  “Why? Do you think he’s dead, too?”

  He glanced at me, and I added, automatically, “Keep your eyes on the road.” Or this sorry excuse for one that we were traversing.

  “I wasn’t thinking he was dead,” Rafe answered my question. “More that he might know what’s going on, and I oughta ask. I don’t think the sheriff’s gotten around to talking to any next of kin yet. But now that you mention it...”

  “Or maybe he’s the one who shot the rest of the family. With his AK-47 or whatnot.”

  “You just never know,” Rafe said, and pulled the car out of the trees into a clearing.

  I peered through the steady drizzle. A new, fancy pickup truck with big, beefy tires was parked next to an old Airstream trailer that had seen better days. It looked desolate and unhappy. While they were two different makes and models, I was reminded of the trailer where Rafe had grown up, on the other side of the county. Not a place I wanted to revisit, even in my mind.

  A deep, reverberating bark echoed between the bare trees. It took a few seconds to spot the dog, as ghostly gray as the rain, at the end of a long chain extending from under the trailer.

  “Don’t turn off the engine,” I said.

  Rafe glanced at me. “Why not?”

  “Remember that Stephen King story about the dog? What if the car won’t start again? We’ll be stuck here.”

  “He’s on a chain,” Rafe pointed out. “He can’t reach us.”

  “If we get out of the car, he can.” And if one of us got out of the car, the dog might even break the chain to attack us. “Let’s just sit here and wait.” With all this barking, surely the dog’s owner would be out soon, to see what was going on.

  Rafe shook his head when I said so. “I don’t think so. Look over there.” He pointed.

  “Where?” I squinted through the rain. And then I saw what he had. A pale, longish lump on the ground a few feet from the dog. “Oh, no. Is that...?”

  “Looks like,” Rafe said. “The door’s open.”

  It was. Hanging wide open in the rain. As if someone had stumbled out of the trailer, trying to make it to the truck, and had collapsed at the halfway mark.

  Rafe opened his door. “I gotta see
if he’s still alive.”

  “But the dog...”

  “He’s protecting his owner,” Rafe said, swinging his legs out. The dog went into a hysterical spate of barking. “I’m sure he’s more afraid of me than I am of him.”

  “That’s spiders! And he doesn’t look afraid of you. At all.”

  Rafe shrugged. “Not much I can do about it. Somebody’s gotta see if Robbie’s still breathing.”

  “If you keep the dog away from me,” I said, “I will.”

  He turned to look at me, brow arched.

  “I mean it,” I said. “We have a better chance if we work together. You have a gun. And you’re better prepared to use it than I am. If you make sure the dog won’t attack me, I’ll go check if Robbie’s alive.”

  Rafe thought about it. “I’d rather you stayed in the car,” he told me.

  I’d rather stay in the car, too. But I had a point, and he knew it. Rafe would have a harder time keeping an eye on the dog as well as checking on Robbie than if he just had to keep an eye on the dog while I checked on Robbie.

  If it even was Robbie Skinner lying out there in the rain. We didn’t even know that yet.

  Rafe sighed. “All right. I’d rather you stayed here, but I ain’t gonna waste time arguing about it. Not if there’s a chance Robbie’s still breathing.”

  I nodded, and opened my own door. “Just make sure the dog doesn’t get to me. I don’t really want you to shoot it—”

  “I don’t wanna shoot it, either,” Rafe said. And added, “But if I have to, I will.”

  I swung my legs out of the car. Cold drizzle hit my knees. “On three.”

  “Two,” Rafe said. “One. Go.”

  He got to his feet. The dog went into hysterics. As Rafe took a few steps closer, it threw itself at him. I gasped, even as the dog came to the end of its chain before it reached Rafe, and was yanked back with a strangled yip.

  It was a scary-looking dog. Probably close to ninety pounds, with a big head, strong jaws, and ears that stood up. It was pale gray, with a blaze of white covering one eye and most of its square snout. It looked hostile.

  However, when Rafe took a step toward it—and I could only guess at the expression on his face, since his back was to me—the dog shied back. It kept growling, but it didn’t lunge again.

  “Go,” Rafe told me over his shoulder.

  I went. Along the side of the car and then across the open expanse of mud and grass toward the lump—that I now could see clearly was a body—in the grass.

  The dog backed off. Maybe because it recognized a stronger alpha, or maybe because it saw the gun and knew what it was. Or maybe it was because it realized, somehow, that we were trying to help.

  The body was dressed in a pair of tighty whities and nothing else. He—definitely male—was lying on his stomach with one hand thrown over his head and the other trapped under his body. His hair was dark—or maybe that was just because it was wet from the rain. When it was dry, it might be more of a medium blond color.

  He was a big guy. Shorter than Rafe, but hefty. Some muscle tone, but also some extra padding. And he was lying in a puddle, or maybe a pool, of what looked like blood.

  I reached out and put a tentative hand on his back. He was freezing cold.

  “Check for a pulse,” Rafe instructed when I told him so.

  I wasn’t sure I knew how. I tried, but I couldn’t feel anything, and I wasn’t sure whether it was because the guy didn’t have a pulse—likely—or because I just wasn’t touching him in the right place.

  “Hang on.” I yanked open my purse and fumbled for my compact.

  “Won’t work,” Rafe told me over his shoulder. “Too much moisture in the air.”

  He was right. Holding the mirror in front of the dead guy’s mouth and nose didn’t do anything at all. But fog beaded the mirror nonetheless.

  Rafe took a couple steps backward, with the gun still pointed at the dog, now huddled in the dryness underneath the trailer, and reached out with his other hand to grab the guy’s wrist. After a few seconds, he shook his head. “Nothing.”

  I dropped the compact back in my purse and extended a hand. “A little help?” Squatting was hard. Getting to my feet without tipping over was harder. And I didn’t want to have to brace myself on the body.

  Rafe took my hand and hauled me upright. “Go back to the car. Call the sheriff.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Find something to cover him with,” Rafe said.

  I glanced at the body. And then back at Rafe. “I don’t think he cares.”

  “The sheriff will. His crime scene’s washing away.”

  Good point. “I’ll go call,” I said. “Watch out for the dog.”

  “I think he’s content to stay where he is now that he’s figured out we’re not a threat. But I ain’t going near the dog.”

  He didn’t. While I made my way back to the Volvo, he went over to the pickup truck—the one I suspected Robbie had been on his way to when he was felled—and peered into the bed. After a few seconds, he reached in and pulled out something blue. As he shook it open, I saw what it was: a plastic tarp. It was big enough to cover the body and a couple of feet of ground in each direction.

  Meanwhile, I pulled out my phone and dialed Bob Satterfield. “Morning, Sheriff. Rafe said to call you. We’re... um...”

  “We?”

  “I came down to Sweetwater with him.”

  “Of course you did.” The sheriff sounded resigned.

  “I’m not going to get involved in your case,” I told him, even though I already was. “It’s just that... um...”

  “Spit it out, darlin’.”

  I spat it out. “We were on our way up to the crime scene. I was going to drop Rafe off rather than have him take me all the way to Sweetwater and then drive up to where you are. But on the way, he decided to check in on Robbie Skinner. I think we were driving right past his place, although I’m not sure.” Rafe might have taken the roads he did on purpose, to get him here. “Anyway, it looks like Robbie’s dead. Or at least someone is. Flat on his face outside his trailer.”

  “Shot?”

  “I’m not sure,” I admitted. “He’s on his stomach. We didn’t turn him over. But he’s dead, and there’s a lot of blood.” Some of it had probably washed away in the rain, as well. “He’s naked except for a pair of underwear, and the door to his trailer is hanging open. It looks like he was on his way from the trailer to his truck—” in his underwear? “—when someone shot him. Or maybe someone shot him, and he was trying to get to the truck to drive himself somewhere to get help.” A likelier explanation.

  “Huh,” the sheriff said.

  “What?”

  “He wasn’t shot in the head?”

  Not that I’d noticed. And if he had been, chances were he wouldn’t have made it out the door and halfway to the car before he collapsed.

  “Rafe is putting a tarp over him,” I said. “You should come over here and take a look. We’re off Little Marrowbone Road, I think.”

  “I know where Robbie Skinner lives,” the sheriff said, in a tone that indicated he’d been here before. After a second, he changed it to, “Lived.”

  “Good. Then I won’t have to give you directions.” Since I technically didn’t know exactly how we’d gotten here. “There’s a dog. Chained under the trailer. Someone will have to take charge of it.”

  “There are dogs here, too,” the sheriff informed me. “One more won’t make a difference to Animal Control.”

  I hesitated. “What will happen to them?”

  “The dogs?” The sheriff sounded surprised that I’d asked.

  I nodded. And then, since he couldn’t see me, I said, “Yes. If their owners are dead, what will happen to them?”

  “I imagine they’ll end up at the pound,” the sheriff said. “Some of’em might get adopted. Most will probably have to be put down. The ones we’ve found here don’t seem like they’d be pet material.”

&nbs
p; Probably not. “The one that’s here doesn’t seem too bad. It barked when we first got here, and tried to lunge at Rafe. But now it’s just curled up under the trailer with its nose on its paws.”

  And part of me felt sorry for it. What kind of life could it have had, out here in the elements with no shelter other than the underside of the trailer? Robbie clearly hadn’t been letting it in at night if it was outside now. He wouldn’t have had time to chain it up after getting shot. And was it getting fed regularly? I couldn’t see a food bowl anywhere.

  “Then maybe it’ll be one of the lucky ones,” the sheriff said. “I gotta go, darlin’. Tell your husband to stay where he is until I get there.”

  I promised I would. “Hurry.”

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes. The other Skinners don’t live far.” After a second he added, “Didn’t.”

  “I’ll let him know.” I tapped the screen to disconnect, and called out to Rafe. “The sheriff is on his way.”

  He nodded. “I’m gonna take a quick look inside. Just in case he wasn’t alone when it happened.”

  Oh, God. “Was he married? Involved?” Did he have children?

  “No idea,” Rafe said. “I ain’t seen Robbie in fifteen years. He could have a whole harem, for all I know.”

  Not in this trailer, surely. And—not to speak ill of the dead—he didn’t look like the kind of guy who could command a harem.

  Rafe, on the other hand...

  I watched as he made his way from the body toward the door of the trailer. And this time I was only peripherally enjoying the way he moved. I was more interested in what the dog was doing. If it suddenly lunged, Rafe would be in trouble. He had his gun in his hand again—he had nestled it at the small of his back to open the tarp and spread it over the body—but if the dog moved, I wasn’t sure he’d be able to get it up and pointed in time.

  Luckily, it didn’t turn out to be necessary. The dog watched him, but made no attempt to come out from under the trailer. Not even when Rafe stepped up into the doorway and peered inside.

  I rolled down my window and stuck my head out. “See if there’s anything in there you can feed the dog.”