Bad Debt (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 14)

by Jenna Bennett

  “I don’t like the Skinners,” I said. “I know they’re dead, but I don’t like them.”

  Rafe shrugged. “It was a long time ago.”

  And whatever broken ribs he had incurred had healed by now. He’d been hurt worse since. Nonetheless, it made me less kindly disposed to the Skinners, dead or not. “That says a lot about them, actually. That they were the kind of people who would gang up, three against one, on someone younger.”

  “I gave back about as good as I got,” Rafe said.

  Not bloody likely, if you’ll excuse the word. Yes, he can fight, and probably could back then, too. But three against one is still three against one. However, before I could argue further, Yvonne came back into the living room and handed me a picture.

  It was still in the frame, a nice tarnished silver, and taken somewhere that might be Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga. Somewhere high up, anyway, with a view over a city and a river in the distance. Yvonne was snuggled into the arm of a tall guy with middling-to-fair hair and a cocky grin, dressed in a T-shirt and faded jeans.

  I could sort of see the appeal. He wasn’t my type at all, but he looked like he could be charming, with a few beers on board, and to a woman who didn’t have high expectations. I don’t think I would have been tempted, but I could see why Yvonne might have been.

  “When was the last time you saw him?” Rafe wanted to know.

  Yvonne, back on the sofa now, shook her head. “Not for a while. He used to come into Beulah’s once in a while, but it’s been six months, at least.”

  “What about the other Skinners?”

  “I’ve seen Linda at the Winn-Dixie out on the Lewisburg Highway a couple times. Saw Art at the Home Depot once, I think. Or maybe it was the Lowes. That was before last Christmas, though. I was buying lights.”

  “Robbie? Or the kids?”

  Yvonne shook her head. “Not for a while.” She hesitated, biting her lip and looking at Rafe from under her lashes. “Are they... all gone? Savannah said...”

  “Darrell, Art, and Robbie,” Rafe said, “Linda, A.J., Cilla, and Cilla’s boyfriend.”

  Yvonne looked sick. “Cilla and A.J. are just kids. Who’d kill kids?”

  “Who’d kill any of’em?”

  Yvonne didn’t answer, and Rafe added, “I could use some help here. It’s been a long time since I lived down this way. I don’t know much of what’s going on in Maury County anymore, and I need to know what the Skinners were mixed up in.”

  Yvonne hesitated.

  “The woman from Animal Control said something about dog fighting,” I said. “Were they involved in that?”

  Yvonne sighed. “Mighta been.”

  We waited, but she didn’t say any more. “Anything else you can think of?”

  “Darrell got around, you know. And he wasn’t always particular about whether the women he bedded were single or not.”

  “So a jealous husband or boyfriend,” I said, with a glance at Rafe. He nodded, but didn’t look like he thought it a very likely motive. And I guess it wouldn’t be. If Darrell had dipped his wick, so to speak, in the wrong woman, her husband or boyfriend might have beat up Darrell, but he wasn’t likely to have wiped out the entire Skinner family. Certainly not the women. It had to be something bigger than that. Something that involved the entire family, or enough of it that they all had to die. Including sixteen-year-old A.J.

  “Anything else?”

  “I can’t think of anything,” Yvonne said.

  “No idea who mighta had it in for them? Other than the dog fighting and maybe Darrell screwing around?”

  Yvonne shook her head, teeth in her bottom lip.

  “OK.” Rafe got to his feet.

  “We’re on our way to Pulaski to talk to Robbie’s ex-wife,” I added, as I followed suit.

  “Sandy?”

  “I don’t know her name. Todd told me Robbie had one. An ex.”

  Yvonne nodded. “Sandy. And a kid. A girl.”

  “Any idea why they aren’t married anymore?” Rafe held out my coat, and I slipped my arms into it.

  “You’d have to ask her,” Yvonne said. “But I wouldn’t wanna be married to Robbie, either.”

  “Was he a cheater, too?”

  She shrugged. “He never hit on me. I just didn’t like him much.”

  Rafe headed for the door. “Let me know if you think of anything else.”

  Yvonne said she would, as she got up to shut the door and lock it behind us.

  “I’m glad the judge found in your favor,” I told her as I passed over the threshold into the chill. “I’m sure the Skinner thing is probably taking precedence right now. But it’s a good thing. Catherine was happy.”

  Yvonne nodded. “Just so long as the Odoms don’t come up with something else.” Like they’d come up with the suggestion that Beulah had been incompetent.

  “I don’t see how they can,” I said, “when the judge has ruled.”

  Yvonne shrugged but didn’t say anything. She also didn’t look encouraged. Maybe she didn’t believe me. Or maybe she understood the depths of depravity that lurked in the Odoms better than I did. Or perhaps the news about the Skinners was taking precedence, and that was all there was to it. “Thanks for coming by.”

  “It was a pleasure,” I said, even though it hadn’t been, really. Giving people bad news rarely is. Nor is digging in their memories after someone dies. “We’ll be here a few more days. Rafe will be busy, but give me a call if you want to grab lunch or something.”

  Yvonne said she would, and then we headed back into the mist, which had turned into a driving rain by now, and turned the car south in the direction of Pulaski.

  The town was founded in 1809, and named after Revolutionary War Hero Kazimierz Pulaski, who had absolutely nothing to do with the place. He was born in Poland, recruited by Benjamin Franklin in France in 1777, and came to America to serve under George Washington. He died during the Siege of Savannah in 1779, without ever—as far as I know—even visiting Tennessee.

  Pulaski’s—the town’s—chief claim to fame otherwise, is as the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan, which was founded by six veterans of the Confederate Army in 1865.

  On a happier note, Frank Mars, founder of the Mars Candy Company, built a 25,000 square foot Tudor mansion with twenty bedrooms and fourteen baths just outside Pulaski in the 1930s. It’s still there, just off the road, and serves as an event venue these days. People get married there. Rafe and I got married on the grounds of the Martin Mansion, my ancestral home in Sweetwater, but if I hadn’t had a mansion of my own, I would have been all over the Manor House at Milky Way Farms.

  Just the wedding dessert would have been worth it, I would think.

  “That’s gorgeous,” I told Rafe as we zoomed past.

  He glanced at it, the Tudor beams and stone half obscured by the rain, and grunted.

  “So what did you think about what Yvonne told us?”

  This time he glanced at me. “She didn’t tell us nothing.”

  “She told us that Darrell slept around.”

  “I knew that,” Rafe said. “He did it when he was twenty. I figured he was doing it now.” After a second he added, “Guess I’m gonna have to dig up whoever he was sleeping with these days.”

  “Surely a woman wouldn’t have wiped out every one of the Skinners just because Darrell was lousy in bed!”

  His lips twitched. “I don’t imagine so.”

  “Then why does it matter who he was sleeping with?”

  “She might know something we don’t,” Rafe said. And since he was right, I didn’t say anything more about it.

  * * *

  Sandy Skinner—or whatever her name might be these days; she might have taken her maiden name back after divorcing Robbie—lived in a small, white house on Chicken Creek Road. It was empty, which we should have foreseen, since it was still the middle of the workday and, unless Sandy was unemployed, she wasn’t likely to be sitting at home watching soap operas or reruns of game shows. I c
ouldn’t imagine Robbie contributing much in alimony, so Sandy was probably mostly responsible for her daughter’s expenses.

  After this, she’d be solely responsible.

  Rafe stuck his hands on his hips and looked around, a scowl on his face.

  “I’m sure someone knows where she works,” I said. “We could ask the neighbors.”

  “What’s to say they’re at home?” But he headed across the soggy grass to the next house, another small, white clapboard shack. I followed, ruing the beating my boots were taking today.

  By the time I made it onto the tiny porch—more like an overhang over a stoop, really—Rafe had already applied his fist to the door. A moment later he did it again. I deduced he was annoyed, by the weather or the fact that Sandy wasn’t where she was supposed to be or maybe just the situation in general.

  “Yeah, yeah.” We heard a growl and slow steps from inside. “Hold your horses.”

  The door opened a crack. Rafe brandished his badge, and—when the door moved to close again—stuck his foot in the gap.

  The ancient black man inside, his face as wrinkled as a raisin, scowled. “What you wanna do that for?”

  “I’m looking for your neighbor,” Rafe said, with a toss of the head in the direction of Sandy’s house. “You know where I can find her?”

  “No.” The little old man pushed on his door. Rafe’s foot stayed where it was. And he wears sturdy boots, so his voice wasn’t even affected by the pressure.

  “Listen, grandpa. I don’t give a damn what you’ve got going on in there. I just gotta find Sandy Skinner, is all.”

  The little old man contemplated. After a second, I realized the sound I was hearing, sort of mixing with the dripping of the rain off the eaves, was him popping his dentures up and down inside his mouth. “Why?”

  “Her ex-husband’s dead,” Rafe said.

  The little man’s jaw dropped, and the teeth with it, until he snapped his mouth closed and fitted them back in where they belonged. “How’d that happen?”

  “Somebody shot him,” Rafe said.

  I waited for the old man to say something. ‘How horrible,’ or ‘That’s too bad.’ Something along those lines. What I didn’t expect to hear, was “Good riddance.”

  I don’t think Rafe expected it, either. Or maybe he did, and that arched eyebrow was just an invitation to continue.

  “Used to knock her around,” the old man said. The door opened another few inches, the better to communicate. I peered past him into the gloom, but couldn’t see anything he might have particularly wanted to hide. Unless he was embarrassed about the threadbare sofa and scarred table, and he might have been.

  “Have you seen him around here?”

  The old man sucked his dentures. “Not in a while. He used to come around more just after it happened. I ain’t seen him in a couple months.”

  Rafe nodded. “What about Sandy? When was the last time you saw her?”

  “When she went to work this morning. The school bus comes for the kid just after seven, and Sandy goes to work just after.”

  “Where does she work?” I asked.

  He peered past Rafe to me, and I got the impression he might not have noticed me before.

  “My wife,” Rafe said briefly.

  If the old man wondered what Rafe’s wife was doing, accompanying him to do murder notifications, he didn’t say anything about it, just nodded. “Down to the five’n dime. On Main Street.”

  “We’ll see if we can find her there,” Rafe said, and removed his boot from the door. “Thanks for your time.”

  The old man nodded. “I didn’t know the bastard,” he said, as the door closed, “but I’m glad somebody got him.”

  The door shut before either of us had time to formulate an answer. It might have been just as well. What, after all, could one say?

  * * *

  The five-and-dime store on Main Street was nestled between a cheap laundromat and an empty storefront that looked like it might have been a millinery store at some point, half a century ago, when people still wore hats. Now the window was streaked and dirty and the floor inside full of dust.

  The five-and-dime wasn’t a lot better. It also wasn’t a five-and-dime, technically speaking. Five-and-dime has turned into dollar, it seems, as what we were looking at, was a Dollar Store. But I guess the principle was the same. A jumble of different things, from plastic flowers and discontinued DVDs to off-brand laundry detergent and candy bars.

  There were two registers at the front. One was empty, while a young, black woman stood behind the other, picking at her nails. They were long and electric green, the better to match the tips of her hair. She glanced up when we walked in, and her jaw dropped when she saw Rafe.

  It isn’t unusual. He’s a good-looking guy, the type who wouldn’t look out of place gracing the front of one of those slightly irregular Hanes His Way boxer brief packages on the end-cap display right in front of her.

  Not that she could see that at the moment. The six-pack was decently covered, by both a T-shirt and the hoodie. But he still looks and moves like a guy who has one.

  He gave her a smile, designed to melt her down to a puddle on the floor. “Afternoon. We’re looking for Sandy.”

  I’m not sure the plural registered at all. She never looked at me. And he’d obviously struck her dumb, because all she did was lift a finger and point, her mouth still hanging open. I could see a wad of pink chewing gum next to her teeth. And I wanted to say something about it, but I contained myself. She couldn’t help it. God knows my own jaw drops plenty when he’s around.

  He flashed another smile. “Thanks, sugar.”

  We headed deeper into the store in the direction she’d pointed. Behind us, the girl—she couldn’t have been much older than twenty—snatched up a circular and started fanning herself with it. I rolled my eyes and kept going.

  We found Sandy down the food aisle, not quite in the direction the cashier had pointed us, but close enough. She was sitting on a low stool emptying cans of baked beans from cartons onto the shelves, and when Rafe said her name, she looked up and squinted. And promptly turned pale at the sight of his badge.

  She jumped to her feet—not an easy task when she carried more than a few pounds too many, obesity being a common problem in poor areas where people have to make less money stretch farther—and for a second, I was afraid she was going to make a break for it. I think Rafe must have thought the same thing, because I saw his body tense.

  But instead of running away, she stood there, sort of swaying, as what little color had been there leached out of her face. “Kayla! Something’s happened to Kayla!”

  She collapsed. Quite gracefully for such a large woman. Rafe was just in time to keep her head from cracking against the concrete floor.

  “Ooof!” he grunted as his knees hit the floor. “Damn.”

  “Lay her down.” I grabbed a couple of kitchen towels off a shelf and shoved them under Sandy’s head. “Look, she’s already coming around.”

  She was. It hadn’t been much of a faint. I took a leaf out of the young cashier’s book and used another kitchen towel to gently fan Sandy’s face.

  Her eyes blinked open and she looked around, vaguely. Then she sat up. “Kayla!”

  “Nothing’s wrong with Kayla,” Rafe told her. And added, prudently, “At least not that we know.”

  She squinted at him. Her eyes were a faded sort of blue, like well-worn denim—much like the color of Rafe’s jeans—and outlined in heavy black. Other than that, and the extra weight she carried, she’d probably been a pretty woman when she was young. At the moment, she looked like she was pushing forty, although I figured she was probably a few years younger than she looked. And I wondered whether it was Robbie or someone else who was to blame for her slightly crooked nose.

  “I don’t know you.” Her voice had an accusatory edge.

  “I’m with the TBI,” Rafe said. He got to his feet and held out a hand to help her up. “Is there somewhere priv
ate we can talk?”

  Not that the store was exactly teeming with customers at the moment. But the young cashier had realized that something was going on, and was gawping at us from the end of the aisle.

  Sandy put her hand in Rafe’s, and let him haul her upright. “Why?”

  “It’s about Robbie,” Rafe said. When Sandy didn’t say anything, he added, “He’s dead.”

  For a second, Sandy looked absolutely blank, like someone had taken one of those dish towels and wiped her face clean of every expression. I took a step closer, just in case she fainted again. Not that there was much I could do about it, in my condition, if she did. I probably shouldn’t try to lift her. But I could at least make it so that my husband didn’t have to crack his knees on the concrete again.

  But Sandy didn’t faint. “Really?” she asked, in the tone of one afraid of believing what she’d just been told.

  Rafe nodded.

  Sandy’s eyes lit up and she began to giggle.

  Seven

  “I’m sorry,” Sandy said, not for the first time. She had apologized at least once a minute since we’d sat down, and she still wasn’t finished.

  After the inappropriate—but perhaps understandable—attack of giggles in the canned food aisle, she had taken us into the tiny break room at the back of the store. It consisted of a single table with four chair, an old, golden refrigerator of 1970s vintage, that had probably been sitting in the same place since the days when the place really had been a proper five-and-dime, a small microwave, and a trash can. Oh, and a small and boxy TV on the kitchen counter. It was tuned to Wheel of Fortune.

  “It’s all right.” Rafe had been repeating the same mantra every time Sandy apologized for the past several minutes, too.

  “People deal with grief in different ways,” I added, sympathetically.

  She looked at me. “You ever been married?”

  “Before now, you mean?” I glanced at Rafe. He looked back at me, his face impassive except for a quirk at the corner of his mouth. I turned back to Sandy. “Once. For two years.”