“Give me a hug,” I told him.
He arched a brow. “Scuse me?”
“Show the dog that you don’t mean to hurt me. Once it sees that, it’ll be fine.” I hoped.
Rafe didn’t look convinced, but he doesn’t usually refuse to touch me, either. He reached out and put an arm around me. I leaned in, making sure the dog could see that I was safe and happy. It was watching through the window, but it wasn’t barking, or throwing itself at the windshield trying to get out, and I couldn’t see where it was showing teeth.
“I love you,” I told Rafe.
He sighed into my hair. “I know, darlin’.”
“I’m sorry I scared you. I came around the corner, and there it was. I was afraid it was going to attack me, so I threw the sandwich at it. But I think it’s sad. When I first heard it, I thought it was crying.”
A second later, I added, “I thought someone was crying. I thought it might be Kayla. If I had realized it was the dog, I wouldn’t have gone back there.”
Rafe nodded. His cheek rubbed against the side of my head.
“I’m glad you didn’t shoot it. I’m not sure why, but I kind of like it.”
“I’m glad I didn’t shoot it, too.” He lifted his head to drop a kiss on top of mine, and then he stepped away. I straightened, and we both looked toward the car. The dog was nowhere to be seen.
“I guess it lay down,” I said.
Rafe nodded.
“That probably means it won’t attack you when you get in the car.”
“Let’s hope so.” He turned toward the sheriff as the latter reached us.
“Everything all right?”
“Everything’s fine,” Rafe said. “Savannah wants to take the dog home.”
The sheriff’s eyebrows rose. “Not sure how Margaret’s gonna like that, darling.”
“If she doesn’t like it, it can spend a couple of nights in the carriage house,” I told him, just as I’d told Rafe. “But I’m not giving it back to the Animal Control people. It ran away from them. If for some reason we can’t keep it ourselves, I’ll find another home for it.”
Surely I knew someone who could use a guard dog.
Not that I was worried. The dog was already more accepting of Rafe—if not, it would have continued to stand and stare at him—and by the time we got back to Nashville, it would love him as I did. And, I hoped, vice versa.
“We’re gonna have to let’em know we got the dog,” Rafe said. “Just in case they’re out looking for it.”
I thought they probably had better things to do than look for one runaway dog, but— “That’s fine. You can ask what’s-her-name about the dog fighting. I know the pot would make a good motive for murder, but so would animal abuse. When she was out here to pick up the dog, she certainly looked angry and disgusted enough to murder somebody.”
The sheriff stared at me. “You think the woman from Animal Control shot all the Skinners because they used their dogs for fighting?”
“Rafe said there’s a lot of money in it. So did the woman from Animal Control. And there are a lot of people who are against it. And it’s illegal, right?”
They both agreed it was illegal.
“Then shouldn’t you at least investigate it?”
The sheriff sighed. “You go on, son. Take your wife down to Animal Control, tell’em you’ve rescued Robbie’s dog, and ask about the dog fighting. If you get a feeling the folks there are involved in the killings, you know what to do.”
Rafe nodded.
“Before we go...”
The both turned back to me. Rafe’s brows were lowered.
“I just want to tell the sheriff about Officer Vasquez,” I said defensively.
The sheriff threaded his thumbs through his belt loops, Old West style. “What about Officer Vasquez?”
“She works for the Columbia PD. I met her back in May.”
The sheriff nodded. “I know Lupe Vasquez. I sent her looking for you and your brother and sister when you decided to burglarize Doc Seaver’s house, remember?”
Now that he mentioned it, I did remember. “Well, she and her partner picked up Yvonne McCoy earlier. When we got to the police station, I asked her who might be in control of the drug trade in Columbia. She wouldn’t tell me who it was—”
“Prob’ly knew I’d have her hide if she did,” Sheriff Satterfield growled.
“—but she did say that if you could finagle getting her attached to the Skinner investigation, she might be able to help you. She thought her boss would probably go for it, since he’d get one of his own people on the inside of things.”
The sheriff muttered something. Since he didn’t say it out loud, I figured it wasn’t intended for my ears. I took it to be a pejorative remark on the chief of police, although I suppose it could have been one on me. An even better reason not to ask him to repeat it.
“She said you should call him and ask if he could spare an officer. Perhaps the nice female one you worked with on the serial case this spring.”
The sheriff said he would. “Now get on outta here. I don’t need anybody doing my job for me.”
“I was just trying to help,” I said. “Somebody has to run the drug trade in Columbia. Unless the Skinners did. And if the Skinners didn’t, whoever does might be the one who killed them.”
“Yes, darling.” His voice was very patient. “I can connect the dots, too. I’ve been holding down this job for a while now. Take your husband and your dog and go. I’ve got this.”
He sounded irritated enough that I figured I’d probably best just do what he wanted. While I trudged toward the passenger seat, Rafe told the sheriff that he’d be in touch after talking to Animal Control. The sheriff nodded, and we got in the car and drove off.
That might make it sound a little too facile, actually. As soon as I opened the passenger door, the dog came alive in the backseat. When it saw that it was me, it settled back down. Until Rafe opened the driver’s side door and slid across the seat. The dog growled, a deep-in-its-throat, menacing rumble.
Rafe froze with his excellent posterior two inches above the seat.
“It’s OK,” I said, as much to him as to the dog. “He won’t hurt you. Or me. You can settle back down.”
The dog kept growling. Rafe slowly lowered his butt onto the seat. He turned his head to look at the dog. “You know,” he told it, “that was my lunch you gobbled up earlier. You could show a little gratitude.”
The dog tilted its head and looked at him.
“That’s right. You’re full of food, and I’m hungry. I’m gonna have to stop somewhere and get something to eat. If you behave, maybe I’ll get you something, too. But not if you show teeth at me.”
The dog seemed to be considering.
“Why don’t you lie down and rest?” I told it. “We’ll be driving for a while. You’ll probably be safer if you’re not standing up.”
It looked from me to Rafe and back for a second. Then, when Rafe put the car in gear and we started bumping across the uneven ground, the dog must have realized the sense of my suggestion. It walked in a sort of truncated circle before it settled on the backseat with sound halfway between a groan and a grunt.
“That went well,” I told Rafe.
He grunted, too.
“I think this will work out well.”
“From your lips to God’s ears,” Rafe said, but he didn’t sound too upset about it.
We drove for a moment in silence. When we’d navigated Robbie’s rutted track and wound up on the paved road in the direction of Columbia, I opened my mouth again. “I’ve been thinking.”
He slid me a look. “Uh-oh.”
I lifted my hand to smack his arm, but thought better of it. Not just because he was driving, but because the dog might see it as a sign that I was fighting and come to my rescue. “There’s no need to be smart,” I said instead, primly.
Rafe grinned. “What were you thinking about?”
“The dog. It’s OK now. But when
we first got to Robbie’s place yesterday, it was going crazy.”
“Protecting its owner.”
Right. “But somehow, someone had gotten past it and into the trailer to shoot Robbie. You said he was shot inside, right?”
Rafe nodded. “Blood spatter. Trail from the bed to the door.”
“And then that someone got out again. Without being mauled by the dog. How?”
“Fed it?” Rafe suggested.
It had worked for me. “Someone had to know there was a dog there, then. Because I’m not going to buy that some guy—or woman—with a rifle, intent on killing every Skinner he or she could reach, just happened to be carrying a sandwich or steak along in case they got hungry in the middle of the night.”
Rafe nodded. “If the dog was kept busy with food, or was given food that made it sleep, somebody knew the dog was there. It seemed pretty hungry yesterday morning, though. I didn’t get the impression it’d had a lot to eat lately.”
I hadn’t either, now that he mentioned it. He’d had to fill a bowl for it inside the trailer, and it had wolfed the food down. Not as if it were full of steak or chicken wraps.
“So if nobody gave the dog food to keep it busy...”
“Whoever it was prob’ly knew the dog. It was somebody the dog was used to seeing. Somebody the dog wouldn’t see as a threat.”
“Sandy,” I said. “Or Kayla.”
“I don’t see Kayla killing all the Skinners, do you? And anyway, how’d she get here in the middle of the night? She’d need her mama’s help.”
“Maybe she had it. Maybe it was both of them.”
He didn’t answer, and I added, “Who else?”
“What makes you think I’d know?” Rafe wanted to know, as he maneuvered the car down from the foothills. The dog gave a slight rumble at the impatience in his voice, and he made a concerted effort to sound calm. “The other Skinners. But they’re all dead. He mighta had some friends. Or a partner for the pot operation. Some kinda middle man between the growers—Robbie and his brothers—and the distributers.”
Maybe so. But— “Why would the partner kill him? Kill all of them? Wouldn’t he be out of a job?”
“Unless he was offered a better job,” Rafe said. The car picked up speed along the flat road leading to Columbia. “The Skinners and their little operation mighta run afoul a much bigger operation who decided they didn’t like the interference. So they turned the middle man and made him take care of the problem.”
“In that case, it probably wouldn’t have been him who called you this morning.”
Rafe shook his head.
“It’s confusing,” I said. “Too many options. Too many motives.”
Rafe disagreed. “Not that many. It don’t seem personal. Anybody with hard-on for Robbie, say, ain’t gonna take the time and trouble to drive to Darrell’s and Art’s to kill everybody there, too. If it was Robbie or Darrell who was the target, whoever wanted to kill them woulda killed just Robbie or Darrell. They both lived alone. The killer didn’t have to shoot nobody else.”
That made sense.
“If the target was Art, they mighta killed Linda, too. And A.J. He was in the same trailer as his parents. But there was no need to go after Cilla and her boyfriend. If they heard the shots and woke up, that’d be a different story, but they didn’t. They were still in bed when they were killed. They didn’t hear nothing. And Robbie and Darrell were at least a mile away, in opposite directions. If all the killer wanted, was Art dead—or even A.J. or Linda dead—he didn’t have to go after Darrell or Robbie.”
That made sense, too.
“This was somebody who wanted all the Skinners gone. Either because they thought all the Skinners were guilty, or because Cilla and A.J. were old enough to be able to tell people who the killer was. If all the Skinners were involved, Cilla and A.J. woulda known what it was about.”
“So someone who blamed the Skinners for the pot trade. Someone whose kid became a drug addict, maybe.”
Rafe nodded.
“Or someone who knew the Skinners were involved in dog fighting, and wanted to stop them.”
“Something like that. Or something else we don’t know about yet.”
“If there was something else, don’t you think you would have discovered it by now?”
“We only found the pot this morning,” Rafe said. “It’s been less than forty-eight hours since the murders. Not much more’n twenty-four since you and I got here. I’d say we’re doing all right.”
Maybe we were. Or they were. Whatever.
So we—they—were looking for someone who knew the Skinners and blamed them—all of them—for something. Someone who knew where they all lived, and knew about the dogs. Someone the dogs knew. Someone the dogs didn’t attack.
Sandy fit the bill on all counts. It was hard to imagine her cold-bloodedly killing Cilla and A.J., though. They weren’t much older than Kayla. And she had seemed genuinely distraught when we told her the news that they were dead.
I opened my mouth to say something, but before I could, Rafe’s phone rang. In the backseat, the dog’s ears pricked up, but it didn’t move. Rafe dug in his pocket for his phone. “Yeah, Sheriff?”
I could hear Sheriff Satterfield quacking on the other end of the line.
“Sure thing,” Rafe said. “We’ll take care of this dog situation, and then she and I’ll look into the other thing.”
Somehow, I didn’t think ‘she’ in this situation was me.
“I’ll let you know how it goes.” He dropped the phone back in his pocket.
“Lupe Vasquez?” I guessed.
“She’s gonna meet us at Animal Control. Just in case there’s something to this crazy theory of yours that the nice Animal Control lady killed all the Skinners so she could rescue their dogs.”
“Hey,” I told him, “I’m sure people have been killed for less.”
He arched a brow, but didn’t argue, so I was probably right. In the backseat, the dog made a rumbling sort of sigh and put its massive head down on its huge paws.
“After that,” Rafe continued, “you can take Cujo here back to your mama’s, and explain to her why the dog’s there. Officer Vasquez and I are gonna go looking for drug dealers.”
“I’d like to come,” I told him.
He grinned. “Tonight, darlin’.”
I rolled my eyes. I’d walked right into that one. “Thank you, but that wasn’t what I meant, and you know it. I’d like to come with you and Lupe Vasquez to see the drug dealers.”
“I’m sure you would. Over my dead body.”
“It’s not like anything would happen.” Not in broad daylight, with a cop and a special agent guarding me.
“You don’t know that,” Rafe said. “Drug dealers don’t always like it when cops show up to ask questions. Sometimes they do stupid stuff. And you don’t have bulletproof windows.”
I didn’t. When I bought this car—when my ex-husband bought it for me just after we got married—I’d had no idea my life would take a turn where bulletproof glass would become a concern. And I wouldn’t have believed it if someone had told me.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll take the dog home and tackle my mother. You go have fun.”
If I’d tried to make him feel guilty, it backfired. “Sure. Talking to violent criminals about whether they mighta killed seven people is always a joy.”
“You’ll be careful, right?”
He reached out and took my hand. “Always.”
Never. But— “Does Lupe Vasquez have bulletproof windows?”
He smiled. “I dunno. But she’s got a gun.”
“Good.” I held on to his hand as we entered the Columbia city limits and wound our way in the direction of Animal Control.
Sixteen
The Columbia PD squad car was already waiting beside the entrance to Animal Control when we came into the parking lot. Rafe pulled the Volvo to a stop beside it and cut the engine. Lupe Vasquez opened her door and got out. We did the same. In t
he backseat, the dog got to its feet, stretched, and sat down to watch the window.
Lupe Vasquez nodded to me. We’d spoken just over an hour ago, after all, so no need for much of a greeting. Instead, she turned to Rafe and held out her hand. “Agent Collier.”
He took it. His hand swallowed hers completely, of course. She’s a small woman, and he’s a big guy. “Officer Vasquez. Thanks for offering to help out.”
The corners of his mouth twitched as he said it, and Lupe Vasquez grinned. “Chief Carter would have given his left nut to get into this investigation. Getting me into it was second choice, but better than nothing.”
They both stepped back from the handshake. Rafe put his posterior against the side of the Volvo and folded his arms across his chest, and Lupe Vasquez mirrored the movement against her own car. Inside the Volvo, the dog eyed Rafe’s butt like it wanted to take a bite. I knew the feeling.
“Savannah says you might have some information about the drug trade in Columbia.”
Lupe Vasquez nodded. “She told me about the greenhouses. I have to say, I never heard anything about the Skinners being involved in any drug distribution. Could be they were just growing for someone else.”
Rafe nodded. Even in jeans and a gray hoodie, leaning against a Volvo, he didn’t manage to look relaxed. His eyes kept scanning the parking lot over Lupe Vasquez’s head. “Who’d that be, around here?”
She sighed. “It’s the same thing here as most everywhere else. The South Americans have taken over most of the drug trade. You get the occasional good old boy—like Billy Scruggs before he was killed last year—but it’s mostly the South Americans.”
I don’t know whether she noticed the way Rafe tensed. I know I did. “South Americans?”
“And Mexicans. Hispanics.”
There was a pause.
“You’re Hispanic yourself,” I said, “aren’t you?”
She turned to me. “Yes, ma’am.” And while she didn’t say it out loud, her tone very clearly asked me whether I was going to make something of it.
“I worked undercover for ten years,” Rafe told her, “trying to take down a South American theft gang. It damn near killed me.”
Bad Debt (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 14) Page 17
