Bad Debt (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 14)

by Jenna Bennett

  “Word gets around,” Yvonne said.

  “Well, can you think of anyone who might have been at either of the bars yesterday, who might have known that Rafe would be staying at my mother’s house, and who would have known that Robbie had a pot growing industry in his backyard?”

  Yvonne didn’t say anything for a moment. “Is that what he was doing?”

  “I assume that’s what we were supposed to find. It was there, and nothing else was.”

  She didn’t answer, and I added, “Did you know they were growing pot?”

  “They?”

  “After we found Robbie’s greenhouse, we followed the track up to Art’s place. He had one, too. By then it was time to go back and meet the sheriff, but the track went on up toward Darrell’s place, or so Rafe said. I didn’t go up that way, so I don’t know if he was doing the same thing, but I assume he was.” Rafe and the sheriff had certainly assumed so.

  Yvonne sighed. “No, I didn’t know they were growing pot. But it doesn’t surprise me.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Money,” Yvonne said. “They were always looking for ways to make money. Didn’t really matter whether it was legal. And drugs are big business.”

  Yes, they are. Big business worth lots of money.

  “Do you know anyone else around here who deals in pot?” And who might have reason to want the Skinners out of the game?

  “No,” Yvonne said. “Why would I know something like that?”

  “Sorry. I thought maybe it was common knowledge.”

  She shook her head. “Billy Scruggs used to deal in some stuff. A lot of it prescription. But he’s dead now.”

  Yes, he was. As of about six months ago. “Any idea who took over his business?”

  But Yvonne said she didn’t.

  “Any idea who would know?”

  “Some of the same guys we talked to last night,” Yvonne said. “If Rafe wants to go out with me again, just let me know.” She grinned.

  “I’ll be sure to do that.” I got to my feet. “Thanks for the tea.” I hadn’t had much of it, but it was the thought that counted.

  She stayed where she was. “Any news on the investigation?”

  “Not aside from the pot.” I headed for the door, just as somebody knocked on it. “Perfect timing.”

  I didn’t even think to ask whether she wanted me to answer the door, or whether she was expecting someone she maybe didn’t want to see. In my defense, she didn’t say or do anything to stop me when I took the last couple of steps and pulled the door open. “Good... oh.”

  Two uniformed police officers stood on the stoop. It took me a second to go from the general impression of ‘this can’t be good,’ to realizing I knew them. “Good morning.”

  They nodded to me, and Patrick Nolan, at least, looked a bit disconcerted. His partner, a short, Hispanic woman by the name of Lupe Vasquez, a few years younger than me, made a face. “Miss... Mrs...”

  “Savannah,” I said.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I could ask the same of you.” She didn’t answer—Nolan didn’t, either—and I added, “I’m talking to Yvonne. We’re friends. And she used to date Darrell Skinner a couple years ago. You’ve heard of the murders?”

  They both nodded. “That’s why we’re here,” Nolan said, and Lupe Vasquez glanced at him, a little wrinkle between her brows.

  “The sheriff says your chief of police has been trying to horn in on the investigation.”

  It might not have been the most polite way to put it. They might feel some loyalty to their boss, after all, and resent my implication.

  I added, “What I meant to say, is that he offered his assistance, and that of the Columbia PD.”

  Lupe Vasquez’s lips twitched. “Is that what you meant to say?” She didn’t wait for me to confirm or deny, just continued. “It’s the biggest case to hit Maury County since the serial murders in May. And the case is outside his jurisdiction. He wants a part of it.”

  “Like we don’t have enough work of our own to do,” Nolan added.

  I took a step back. “Why don’t you come in? I still don’t understand what you’re doing here. Rafe and the sheriff both know that Yvonne used to date Darrell. They’ve talked to her about it. Why do you need to?”

  “We don’t,” Nolan said, crossing the threshold and nodding to Yvonne. He didn’t seem the least bit threatening, not like he was about to whip out his handcuffs and start reading her her rights, but she looked apprehensive anyway. “Not about that.”

  “About what, then?” I waited for Lupe Vasquez to pass through the doorway before I closed the door behind them. “What’s going on?”

  “You’ll have to come with us to the station,” Nolan told Yvonne.

  Her voice was faint, and she kept pleating a fold of her sweater between her fingers, over and over again. “What for? I didn’t have anything to do with what happened to Darrell and the others.”

  “Is this about the pot?”

  They both turned to look at me. “Pot?”

  “Never mind.” If they hadn’t heard that the Skinners had been running a large scale pot growing operation up there in the hills, chances were their boss didn’t know yet, either. And I didn’t want to be responsible for passing the word to him.

  Lupe Vasquez gave me a considering look, but her partner turned back to Yvonne. “We’d like you to come into Columbia to the police station and talk to the detective in charge of the Beulah Odom investigation.”

  “What Beulah Odom investigation?”

  This was me again, not Yvonne. She was scared, and perhaps rightfully so. I had no reason to be, so I barreled ahead. “There’s no Beulah Odom investigation. The M.E. ruled natural causes. You were there, at the crime scene.” I looked at Lupe Vasquez, who had told me as much a couple of months ago. She nodded. “You said it was all tied up, and that there were no signs of foul play. Why does he want to talk to Yvonne about it now? Beulah’s dead and buried.”

  “New evidence has come to light,” Nolan said ponderously.

  “What new evidence?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t tell you that.”

  “You know,” I told him, “if you’re going to be like that, I’m not sure I’m OK with you dating my sister.”

  Nolan opened his mouth and closed it again, and flushed, all the way out to his prominent ears. Lupe Vasquez chuckled, and tried to hide it behind a cough, not too successfully.

  “I’m just doing my job,” Nolan told me. He turned to Yvonne. “You’re not under arrest. The detective just wants to ask you a couple of questions.”

  “If she’s not under arrest, why couldn’t the detective just get in his car and drive out here?”

  But I knew the answer even before I’d finished asking the question. If he’d come here to ask his questions, on Yvonne’s home turf, she’d have felt more comfortable. By bringing her to the police station, she’d already be nervous and maybe more prone to let something slip.

  “I’m going to call Catherine,” I told Yvonne. “My other sister,” I added, for Nolan’s and Lupe Vasquez’s benefit. “She’s a lawyer in Sweetwater. She represented Yvonne for the competency hearing. Beulah Odom’s competency hearing.”

  I turned back to Yvonne. “You can go with them.” If she didn’t, it would look like she had something to hide, when I knew she didn’t. “But don’t say anything to anyone until Catherine gets there.”

  Yvonne nodded, and looked a little less scared as she went to get her coat.

  Thirteen

  I got Catherine on her way, and by then, Nolan and Lupe Vasquez had loaded Yvonne into the back of their squad car.

  “I’m going to follow you in my car and meet her there,” I told them, while Yvonne had a sort of deer-in-the-headlights look in the backseat.

  “You won’t be allowed in the interro... interview room,” Nolan told me. I could tell he was becoming a little irritated by my persistence.

  “I’m aware of t
hat. But this way I’ll be able to drive Yvonne home after the interro... interview.”

  Yes, it was deliberate. Nolan scowled. Lupe Vasquez hid a smile, although I could hear it in her voice.

  “You’re welcome to follow us. We’re just going to the police station in Columbia. Do you know where it is?”

  I did know where it was. “I’ll see you there. Drive carefully.”

  Nolan grumbled something and opened his door. Lupe Vasquez slid into the passenger side without comment. I fired up the Volvo, and we all rolled backwards down the driveway and onto the street.

  It wasn’t a long drive. Just over ten minutes, and we were there. Right down the hill from the courthouse, in a big, brick building with arched windows, that housed the Columbia PD.

  “You can wait here.” Lupe Vasquez pointed to a bench in the lobby, just inside the doors. “When your sister gets here, have her tell the sergeant on duty who she is. I’ll tell him what to do with her.”

  “That sounds a bit ominous.”

  She smiled, although it didn’t reach her eyes. We usually get along pretty well, she and I—we’d first met in the spring, during my high school reunion, and all the murders that went along with it—but I surmised that in this case, her liking for me was warring with her need to do her job.

  “I’ll just wait here,” I said, and took a seat on the bench. Lupe Vasquez nodded, looking relieved. I added, “If you have a minute later, would you come back here? I need to ask you something. Not about this. About something else.”

  She nodded. “Sure. I’ll come back out if I get a chance.”

  I told her I appreciated it. She followed Yvonne and her partner into the bowels of the building, and I leaned back and waited for my sister to get here.

  She had twice as far to drive from Sweetwater, pretty much, as we’d had to go to get here, so I figured there’d be a few minutes yet, before I saw her. I decided I’d better give Rafe a call and let him, and thus the sheriff, know what was going on. It probably didn’t have anything to do with anything, but Nolan had mentioned the Skinner murders when I first opened the door, even though the rest of the conversation had been about Beulah.

  “Darlin’.” I could hear from the cadence of his voice that he was walking.

  “Still tramping around in the woods?”

  “We found Darrell’s greenhouse. It was out back of his trailer, like the other two. Looked the same, with the same number of plants in it. But there was just a path leading there from his place, too. So I’m walking the track to see where it comes out. It’s gotta lead somewhere. The sheriff went back to his car and he’s gonna meet me wherever I end up.”

  “Will you know where you end up?”

  “I hope so,” Rafe said, “or I could be in some trouble. But this track goes somewhere. They drove in on it. I’m gonna get to some kind of road eventually.”

  So it would seem. I mean, not only didn’t I think they had hauled all the lumber and the generators and the estimated three hundred marijuana plants into the woods by hand, but they needed a way to get the pot back out again, too, once it was ready for sale.

  “What’s going on?” Rafe added.

  “Oh.” Right. I’d had a reason to call. “I’m sitting at the police station in Columbia.”

  “What the hell?”

  There was anger in his voice, and I was reminded of one of those differences between us that cropped up every so often. If I had told my mother I was sitting at the police station, she would have assumed I was reporting a crime. That someone had hit my car in a parking lot or something, and driven off without leaving a business card. Rafe assumed I’d been arrested.

  “It’s fine,” I assured him. “I’m just sitting in the lobby, waiting for Catherine.”

  Somehow, that didn’t seem to make it any better. “Why?”

  I told him why. “So it isn’t about me at all,” I finished. “It’s about Yvonne. I thought you ought to know. It sounds like it’s about Beulah’s death and not the Skinners, but I don’t really understand why. Beulah’s case is closed. It was natural causes.”

  “Maybe they’ve learned different,” Rafe said.

  “Sure. But how? She’s dead and buried. I don’t think they’ve dug her up. We would have heard, don’t you think? It’s not the kind of thing that happens every day. And anyway, why would they bother? Nothing’s changed.”

  Other than that the competency hearing yesterday came down in favor of Yvonne, I guess.

  “Do you think the Odoms are doing this?” I asked.

  “Could be,” Rafe told me. “They couldn’t get the will overturned, so now they’re trying to say that Yvonne killed Beulah.”

  “But she wasn’t killed!”

  “She mighta been,” Rafe said. “There are plenty of ways to kill somebody that looks like natural causes. And the lab can’t test for all of’em. Usually, they only test for the usual stuff.”

  I pondered. “That’s not encouraging.”

  “I don’t think Yvonne killed nobody,” Rafe said.

  I didn’t, either. But proving it would be more difficult. It usually is.

  Through the door, I could see my sister’s minivan pull up and the door open. “Catherine’s here,” I told him. “I have to go. Enjoy your walk in the woods.”

  “I’d enjoy it more if you were here, keeping me company,” Rafe said.

  Awww. “I love you.”

  “Love you, too. Be careful.”

  He hung up before I could tell him the same. I dropped the phone into my purse and got to my feet to greet Catherine.

  It didn’t take long to get her up to date—I didn’t know much, just that Yvonne was answering questions about Beulah and my speculation as to why—and then she approached the sergeant at the desk and was taken into the back. I returned to the bench and took a seat. After a couple of minutes, I got up again, and wandered over to the desk sergeant. “Excuse me.”

  The look he gave me, told me that he’d already pegged me as a troublemaker.

  “I don’t suppose you have anything I can read? A magazine or something?”

  He looked at me for a second. Then he stretched sideways to fetch something. He held it up. Guns and Ammo, it said, over a picture of a guy in camouflage holding a rifle.

  “That’s it?”

  He nodded.

  I sighed. “Thank you.” It was better than nothing, I guess.

  He kept his face impassive when he handed it across the desk to me, but I’m pretty sure that inside he was smirking.

  As it happened, I didn’t have much time to read. No sooner had I sat down and started desultorily flipping through the magazine, than the door into the building opened again, and Lupe Vasquez came out.

  I closed the magazine. Lupe Vasquez looked at it, and her brows rose.

  “It was all he had,” I said.

  She shook her head and sat down beside me. “Your sister got here.”

  I nodded. “I saw her. For a second. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to tell me what’s going on?”

  “They don’t tell me what’s going on,” Lupe Vasquez said.

  Figures. “The case was closed, though. Why is it suddenly open again?”

  Vasquez shrugged. “Someone must have suggested to Jarvis it’d be a good idea to take another look.”

  Jarvis was the detective in charge, I assumed. “Who would do that? And why?”

  “He might have gotten a tip,” Lupe Vasquez said. “That happens sometimes. People will call in with a new piece of information, and a case will get reopened.”

  “But this wasn’t even a murder! It was an old lady with a weak heart who died from natural causes. You said so. The sheriff said so. The M.E. said so.”

  “I don’t know,” Lupe Vasquez said. “It looked cut and dried to me. I don’t know why Jarvis is looking into it again. But he is. Some kind of connection with the Skinner murders?”

  If there was a connection, I hadn’t noticed. And Rafe hadn’t mentioned it, either.
>
  “I’m sorry I can’t help you.” She made to stand up, and I yanked her back down.

  “Wait a minute. That wasn’t what I was going to ask. If I wanted to buy some pot around here, where would I go?”

  She looked at me, brows slowly creeping up her forehead. “You’re asking a cop where to go buy weed? And when you’re pregnant? I could arrest you for child endangerment.”

  Sheesh. “I don’t actually want to buy any. I just want to know who runs the pot industry around here.”

  Lupe Vasquez hesitated. She glanced around, made sure the sergeant at the desk wasn’t paying any attention to us, and lowered her voice. “Does this have something to do with the other case?”

  I probably wasn’t speaking out of turn by admitting that. Chances were Sheriff Satterfield would notify the Columbia chief of police soon, if he hadn’t already, about the greenhouses. It wasn’t the kind of thing he’d keep to himself, especially since the city of Columbia probably served as the Skinners’ biggest sales market. At least locally.

  I lowered my own voice. “Your chief of police may not know yet. But this morning, we discovered that the Skinners were growing marijuana. A lot of it.”

  Lupe Vasquez’s eyebrows rose, but she didn’t speak.

  “Someone called my mother’s house this morning, and told Rafe to look behind Robbie Skinner’s house. We went into the woods and found a big building full of marijuana plants. And then we found another building behind Art’s place, and another behind Darrell’s.”

  Lupe Vasquez nodded.

  “There’s enough pot there to make a very fine motive for murder. Especially if the Skinners were honing in on someone else’s business. And that someone else didn’t like seeing their own profits dwindle.”

  “I can see that.”

  “So I’d like to know who the big players are, in pot distribution in this area. And I’d also like to know who might have wanted to make sure that the police found the pot. Someone who knew that Rafe was here, and that we’re married and that he’s likely to be staying with my mother.”

  “I can’t help you with that,” Lupe Vasquez said. “For what it’s worth, I had no idea who either of you were until six months ago.”