Bad Debt (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 14)

by Jenna Bennett

  Oops.

  “Sorry. I’m just going to... um...” I waved vaguely at the back row of benches, mostly empty, my cheeks hot. “Carry on.”

  Nobody said anything, but a few faces turned back to the front. Some watched me maneuver my bulk carefully onto the bench. I guess maybe I was more interesting than what was happening at the front of the room.

  It wasn’t a big room. The judge sat up front, on a low dais. There was no box to his left, the way you see on crime shows on TV, where the witnesses sit and give their stories. Instead, the box was up front, facing the judge, not the courtroom. The better for him to hear the testimony and judge their facial expressions, I guess.

  Of course there was no jury, either, so the judge’s opinion was the only one that counted.

  At the moment, a man I didn’t know was standing in front of the judge. Or at least I didn’t know him based on the back of his head. He was tall and skinny, with a long neck, protruding ears, and a bald spot at the back of his head.

  The judge nodded to him. “Carry on, Mr. Jackson.”

  “It’s like I said,” Mr. Jackson intoned. “She was always there early to open the place. She and I’d be the first ones there in the morning. And when she didn’t show, I drove up to Columbia to make sure she was OK.”

  “And you found her dead.”

  Mr. Jackson nodded. “Saw her through the window. Half outta bed, she was, and looking just horrible. So I called 911, and a couple minutes later, the police came.”

  He pronounced it PO-lis, the way a lot of old Southerners do.

  “How long had you been working for Ms. Beulah?”

  Mr. Jackson had been employed by Beulah for thirty years, he said. Even the judge looked to be impressed by that. “Beulah’s Meat’n Three was a good place to work?”

  Mr. Jackson nodded. “Couldn’t ask for better. I been working for Ms. Beulah since I got outta high school. Started out as a dishwasher, and then second cook. When old Norm retired, Ms. Beulah, she promoted me to head cook. I’ve been head cook ever since.”

  The judge nodded. “You knew her well.”

  “Known her all my life,” Mr. Jackson said. “Wasn’t a nicer woman alive. Hell, Judge, you should know that. You’ve known her your whole life, too.”

  The courtroom tittered. The judge rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Now work with me here, Grady. When did you find out she’d left the place to Yvonne McCoy?”

  Grady Jackson glanced over his shoulder to where Yvonne was sitting, next to—I squinted—my sister Catherine. Catherine’s dark curls were as familiar to me—more so—than Yvonne’s bright red upsweep.

  “Not until after Beulah died,” Grady Johnson said. “The police went through her office behind the restaurant, and found her will in the safe.”

  “What did you think?”

  Grady shrugged bony shoulders inside a blue shirt. “Wasn’t my business to think nothing.”

  “So it didn’t strike you as odd that Ms. Beulah left her property to one of her waitresses instead of her own family?”

  “Didn’t like her family,” Grady Jackson said, “did she? Her brother, he left years ago, and moved up to Williamson County—”

  Grady gave the words roughly the same inflection as Gomorrah, or maybe Hollywood. I guess maybe it was because Williamson County—just north of Maury—is the wealthiest county in the state, full of horse breeders and country music executives. Maury County is by way of being the poor country cousin, both to Williamson County, and to Davidson, Metropolitan Nashville, farther north.

  “—and if he came back, it was only ‘cause he had to. He’s dead now, rest his soul...”

  The whole courtroom took a collective breath, and a sort of respectful pause, before Grady Jackson continued, “but before that, it was years since I seen him.”

  “And the petitioners?” The judge indicated Beulah’s sister-in-law and niece, sitting on the other side of the aisle from Yvonne and Catherine. The niece had shoulder-length, light brown hair, glossy and nice, while her mother’s hair was a little shorter, a little lighter, not as healthy-looking, and cut in a severe wedge, thickly stacked at the nape of the neck.

  Grady Jackson shook his head. “Never seen’em before.”

  “So it didn’t surprise you that Miss Beulah left her restaurant to Yvonne, and not her relatives.”

  “Twas hers,” Grady said, “wasn’t it? She could do what she wanted with it. And it makes sense she’d leave it to Yvonne. Yvonne worked there. She knew how to run the place. All the regulars knew her. She’d keep running it the way Beulah woulda wanted her to.”

  That made sense to me, too. It was a big legacy, sure. Financially, I mean. A thriving business with thirty years of regulars who kept coming back. A business Beulah had busted her butt for, for decades. Yvonne would be set for life, as long as she kept it running. Restaurants don’t run themselves. But if Beulah hadn’t liked her brother’s wife and daughter, and she’d wanted someone to carry on her business the way she herself would, it made total sense that she’d leave it to Yvonne.

  Up front, the judge thanked Mr. Jackson, who stood down. The judge glanced at his watch. “We have time for one more before lunch, I think.” He nodded to Catherine.

  I recognized the woman who got up as another of the employees from Beulah’s Meat’n Three: a lifetime waitress with gray hair in tight curls and beefy arms that could rival Rafe’s. Her name was Maureen Boyd, and like Mr. Jackson and Yvonne, she had spent most of her adult life working for Beulah.

  “I knew her as well as anyone,” she said, her voice quavering a little. “I’d seen her every day for forty years. That restaurant was her life. She never had a family of her own, and once Otis got married and settled down up there in Franklin, he hardly ever came back. I don’t think I’d seen him more than half a dozen times in the last forty years.”

  “What about his wife? And daughter?”

  Maureen Boyd shook her head. “Never saw neither of’em until last year. Otis died, and Miss Beulah, she went to the funeral. A couple months later, they showed up at the Meat’n Three.”

  “Maybe Miss Beulah had invited them?”

  “She said she didn’t,” Maureen said. “She wasn’t happy to see’em, neither. They ate and drank and didn’t even offer to pay. And the whole time, they were looking around and trying to guess what everything was worth. I even caught’em checking the maker’s mark on the bottom of the china.”

  “Is the china valuable?” The judge sounded surprised. So was I. I wouldn’t expect a small country restaurant in the middle of Tennessee to be serving up chicken fried steak and stewed okra on Wedgwood or Spode.

  Maureen shook her head. “Miss Beulah was valuable. The customers, they’re valuable. Not the china.”

  Not much anyone could say to that.

  “So it didn’t surprise you when Miss Beulah left the restaurant to Yvonne?” the judge asked. “Instead of—say—you?”

  Maureen cackled. There’s no other word for it. “I don’t want the place. I’m happy doing my job and going home at the end of my shift. And I’m sixty-three years old. You oughta know that, Judge. We grew up together, you and I.”

  The judge waved that away, the same way he’d waved away Grady Johnson’s personal remarks earlier. “So you wouldn’t mind working for Yvonne McCoy?”

  “If Beulah thought Yvonne’d do right by the place,” Maureen said firmly, “that was good enough for me.”

  “Did you have any indications that Yvonne pressured Miss Beulah into leaving her the place? Or tricked her?”

  “Wasn’t nobody could trick Beulah,” Maureen said. “If she left the place to Yvonne, it was ‘cause she wanted Yvonne to have it. And if Beulah wanted Yvonne to have it, then so do I.”

  The judge nodded and dismissed her. While she stepped back from the box, Beulah’s niece leaned toward her mother and whispered something in her ear. The severe stacked bob nodded.

  “Any more character witnesses?” the judge asked my sister.
Catherine jumped halfway to her feet and shook her head.

  “Not at the moment, Your Honor.”

  The judge nodded. “Time for lunch. We’ll meet back here at…” He pushed back his voluminous, black sleeve to glance at his watch and calculate, “one-thirty. Unless there’s something new, I’ll give my ruling then.”

  He got to his feet, and so did everyone else. As soon as the door closed behind him, everybody relaxed. People started seeping toward the back door, and up at the front, Catherine leaned toward Yvonne. I couldn’t hear what she said, but I saw her lips move. “Look at me. Not them.”

  On the other side of the aisle, Mrs. and Ms. Odom got up and sailed toward the back.

  I stayed where I was, the better to see them as they approached and walked by. And I have to say, my mother would probably have approved. (That undoubtedly says more about Mother than it does about either Odom.)

  Both were elegantly dressed, in classic fashions, good fabrics, and expensive labels. Ms. Odom carried a Kate Spade bag, while her mother’s shoes sported the double Cs of Coco Chanel. Otis Odom, may he rest in peace, must have done all right for himself after leaving Sweetwater.

  Neither of them bothered to look my way. I waited until they’d gone through the door before I made my way into the narrow aisle—it was a very small room—and toward the front.

  Catherine and Yvonne were still talking. When I stopped beside them, Catherine looked up at me with her brows furrowed, an expression that smoothed out when she saw who I was. “Savannah. What are you doing here?”

  “It’s a long story,” I said, leaning in for a sideways hug, before turning to give Yvonne the same. We’ve never really been on hugging terms before, but she seemed to expect it, and I didn’t want to be rude. “Rafe had to come down for something. I decided to tag along and see what was going on. I thought I remembered that this was when the hearing was scheduled.”

  Catherine nodded. “How long have you been here?”

  “Just since Grady Johnson spoke. Whatever happened before that, I missed.”

  “We’ll fill you in over lunch.” Catherine gathered me and Yvonne in front of her—the result of being an older sibling, or maybe a mother—and ushered us in front of her toward the back door.

  Four

  We ended up at a small restaurant just off the square, where I got updated on the hearing over salads and sweet tea.

  Not that there was a whole lot to update, really. The judge had heard from several of the other employees at Beulah’s Meat’n Three before I got there, and all the testimony had gone pretty much the same way as what I’d heard. All the employees liked Beulah, had no problem with her doing whatever she wanted with her property, and seemed to have no issues with the idea of working for Yvonne after things were settled. Beulah’s doctor had started things off this morning, and had testified that while Beulah had high blood pressure and the accompanying diabetes, there had been nothing wrong with her mental faculties. She was free from dementia, Alzheimer’s, and senility, and according to her doctor, was quite capable of making up her own mind about what to do with her property. There had been no indications, or at least none he’d noticed, that she had been pressured or coerced.

  “Did you have to testify?” I asked Yvonne.

  She shook her head, but since her mouth was full of lettuce, it was Catherine who answered. “She’s the defendant, pretty much. She’s not required to testify.”

  “But she can, right? Don’t you think it would be good for the judge to hear from her?”

  “I think it’s better,” Catherine told me, while Yvonne turned her head back and forth to follow the conversation, “for the judge to hear testimony from the people who knew both Beulah and Yvonne. I’d consider putting her on if I thought we needed it, but I don’t think we do. Unless something happens in the next hour, I don’t see how Judge Hopkins can do anything but rule that Beulah Odom was compos mentis and capable of making her own decisions, and the will stands.”

  Yvonne swallowed. “Really? Are you sure?”

  “I can’t be completely sure until the judge rules,” Catherine told her, “but I haven’t heard anything this morning that would give me any reason to think otherwise. I don’t see why the judge would feel differently.”

  “So I’ll get the restaurant?”

  “The way it looks right now, I’d say so.”

  Yvonne broke into a wide smile, and Catherine added, “But let’s not start celebrating yet. Let’s wait until the judge has spoken. I’ll be very surprised if he says anything different, though.”

  Yvonne nodded, and gathered another forkful of lettuce. Before putting it in her mouth, she told me, “Thanks for coming, Savannah.”

  “It’s my pleasure,” I said. “I didn’t like how they tried to make it sound like Beulah wasn’t competent. And I guess I wanted a look at them.”

  “What did you think?”

  To be honest, they’d looked snotty. But since they looked like the sort of people of whom my mother would approve, and since my mother definitely didn’t approve of Yvonne—and since I, myself, try my best to meet with Mother’s approval and might look snotty too, to someone who doesn’t know me—I chose my words carefully. “Well dressed. Well put together. There’s some money there. Unless they’re living on credit.”

  “Many people do,” Catherine said.

  I nodded. “They don’t look like the sort of people who would want to run a meat’n three restaurant in a small country town.”

  “Maybe they think they can turn it into another kind of restaurant,” Yvonne suggested, around the lettuce. “Something more fancy.”

  Maybe. But if so, they hadn’t gotten a good look at the patrons the one time they’d been there. Beulah’s catered to a small town clientele, and had done well because of it. Most of the people who frequented the small cinderblock building with the plastic table cloths and gravel parking lot wouldn’t be caught dead forking up lettuce here in Columbia or in the Café on the Square in Sweetwater. If Mrs. and Ms. Odom thought they could turn Beulah’s Meat’n Three into another fancy eating establishment, they hadn’t thought things through well. The very reason for Beulah’s success, was that the place wasn’t fancy.

  “Hopefully we’ll never get the chance to find out,” Catherine said, and turned to me. “Did you say Rafe came down here with you?”

  I swallowed before I answered. “It was more that I came with him. He left for work this morning, and then showed up again an hour later because the sheriff had called and asked him to drive down. I thought I’d tag along, since he was going anyway, so I could check up on Mother as well as the competency hearing.”

  Catherine winced. “I don’t like the way you put those two words together in the same sentence.”

  “Which two words?”

  “Mother,” Catherine said, “and competency hearing.”

  That was three words, technically. However… “Mother isn’t incompetent. I realize that she can be a pretty tough pill, but there’s nothing wrong with her mind.”

  Unless…

  “Unless…” I added.

  Catherine shook her head. “She’s stayed off the booze since the incident last month. Or if she takes the occasional nip of something, it isn’t mimosas for breakfast and whiskey in her tea every afternoon anymore.”

  Yvonne looked fascinated. “Your mother’s drinking?”

  “Not anymore. And don't you dare spread it around that she is. It just took a few days for her to process the news last month.”

  The news that my father had had a love child with someone else before he met Mother. And the news that the mother of that child had been my mother’s best friend for thirty-three years, since before Catherine was born, and hadn’t mentioned anything about it. The news that that love child happened to be the receptionist at the family law firm, and had been for a couple of years before any of us knew anything about the relationship.

  Yes, it had taken Mother some time to process the news. I didn’t th
ink she was quite finished processing, to be honest. As far as I knew, she was polite and proper when she had to deal with Darcy, Dad’s love child, Dix’s receptionist, and our half-sister, but I didn’t think she’d spoken to Audrey, Darcy’s mother, since the morning we found out the truth.

  But as long as she wasn’t starting the day with a pitcher of mimosas, we were on the right track.

  “She’ll come around,” I said. “Eventually.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” Catherine added, without sounding sure at all.

  Yvonne looked from one to the other of us, and with something approaching delicacy, asked, “So what’s Rafe doing back in Sweetwater, Savannah?”

  There was a time, about a year ago, when I’d been bothered by Yvonne’s seeming fondness for my husband—who, at the time, hadn’t been my husband, but had been someone I’d been in love with, even if I’d been unwilling to admit that fact, even to myself.

  At any rate, Yvonne and Rafe had had a one-night-stand in high school. Yvonne had been willing to repeat the experience. Rafe, it seemed, had not, since they’d kept it to that one time. And since it was a long time ago, and since he was now mine, I didn’t let it bother me. Much.

  I hesitated. “The sheriff thought he might be able to help with a case that came up overnight, since he knew some of the people involved. Somewhat. A long time ago.”

  And also since it was a big case for a small sheriff’s department to handle. The sheriff could—or might have—begged help from the Columbia PD, but having Rafe around certainly wouldn’t hurt. Especially if my husband was right and there was a professional aspect to the crimes. That was something the sheriff as well as the Columbia PD would have had little experience with, while Rafe had spent the past eleven years working organized crime for the TBI.

  Catherine wrinkled her brow. “Someone local?”

  “Local to Maury County. Not to Sweetwater.” Although like Rafe and me, and Yvonne, Catherine had attended Columbia High. She’d been a year ahead of Rafe, so if Rafe had known Darrell Skinner, Catherine might have known him—or at least known of him—too. “A family called the Skinners, up in the foothills near the Devil’s Backbone.”