[Cutthroat Business 01.0 - 03.0] Boxed Set

by Jenna Bennett

  “As a matter of fact,” Todd said, totally oblivious, “I have. She contacted me last week sometime, looking for you.”

  For me? “Why? Last time I tried to talk to her, she wouldn’t tell me anything.”

  “Maybe she has changed her mind,” Todd said. “Maybe she has realized that nothing good can come from continuing to protect him, and she has decided to tell the truth.”

  “Or maybe she has realized that it isn’t fair to keep quiet about it when nothing happened between them—nothing worse than a couple of kids making out, anyway—and she’s decided to go ahead and come clean.”

  Todd is far too well-bred to roll his eyes, but he looked like he wanted to. “Sometimes I really don’t understand you, Savannah.”

  “I don’t understand what’s so difficult to understand,” I retorted. “He said he didn’t force her, and I believe him. Why would he? There were plenty of girls who would have been happy to have him.”

  This time Todd really did do a tiny eye-roll. “Who?”

  “Yvonne McCoy, for one.” Yvonne was someone else I’d gone to high school with, who had told me that she and Rafe had had a fling once upon a time. Unlike Elspeth, Yvonne had had no problem talking about it. At length. Todd’s smile was patronizing.

  “Yvonne McCoy would have been happy to have anyone, Savannah.”

  Unfortunately, this was true. Yvonne wasn’t a bad person, but she didn’t know the first thing about keeping her legs together. I added, “And Marquita Johnson. Or whatever her name was back then.”

  “Cletus Johnson’s ex-wife? Yes, I remember that. She drove poor Cletus crazy, the way she was always hanging around Collier. Of course, she still is.” I could have sworn I saw an unbecoming smirk on his face.

  “She’s taking care of Mrs. Jenkins,” I said.

  Tondalia Jenkins is Rafe’s grandmother on his father’s side, and she’s old and slightly dotty and needs constant supervision so she doesn’t wander off and get lost. Rafe is too busy with his life of crime to be available 24/7, so he hired Marquita to be a live-in caretaker. Needless to say, Cletus—who is a deputy sheriff in Sweetwater, working under Todd’s daddy, Sheriff Bob Satterfield—isn’t too happy about that. I think Marquita had probably left him before Rafe came back into the picture, but considering the history between the three of them, I could understand Cletus’s feelings.

  “Are you still going over there regularly?” Todd asked.

  “To the house? Of course. He asked me to keep an eye on Mrs. Jenkins while he was gone, so I stop by every few days. I was there on Sunday afternoon.”

  “And how was everything?”

  I was well aware that Todd couldn’t care less, but maybe he was just as tired of talking to me about Rafe as I was of listening.

  “Everything was fine,” I said. “Mrs. Jenkins was napping and Marquita slammed the door in my face. Just as usual.” I had asked the nurse if she’d heard from Rafe, and she’d been so chagrined at having to tell me no that she’d lost any vestige of self control. “I’m planning to go back tomorrow.”

  Todd nodded. “You’ll be careful, right?”

  “Of course. Not that there’s any reason to worry. The neighborhood may not be the best, but Mrs. Jenkins’s no bigger than a mosquito, and although Marquita doesn’t like me, she’s not going to hurt me.”

  “Not even if she thinks you’re trying to cut her out with Collier?”

  “Don’t be silly,” I answered. “Normal people don’t go around hurting other people just because the man they like is paying a little too much attention to someone else.”

  “So you agree he’s been paying you too much attention?”

  Todd’s an attorney, did I mention that? Note the instant leap into hostile witness cross-examination.

  “That depends on what you think is too much,” I answered, unwisely. Since divorcing Bradley and living on my own for the first time in my life, I’ve had to learn to stand up for myself in ways unbecoming a well-bred Southern Belle, and it’s beginning to show. Todd’s blue eyes narrowed. I added, “He hasn’t paid me any attention for the past five weeks, remember? He hasn’t called, he hasn’t written, he hasn’t tried to contact me in any way whatsoever. He may even be dead by now.”

  I hoped he wasn’t, but I knew it wasn’t impossible. Rafe had left town because the police were getting ready to arrest him, but he had also gotten on the wrong side of some bad people over the past ten years, and they might be after him to settle the score. He had told me there was a chance he might not come back. I was prepared that I might never see him again. I wasn’t exactly happy about it, I suppose, but I was prepared. Or so I thought, anyway.

  “Do you really think so?” Todd had what I can only describe as a hopeful lilt in his voice.

  “Anything’s possible. Don’t get your hopes up, though. He’ll probably show up sometime around Christmas and explain that he spent the past few months in jail. Don’t worry about him, Todd.”

  “I’m not worried about him,” Todd said.

  “You know what I mean. I’ve told you before, I’m not involved with him. I just don’t want him to end up dead. He saved my life. I can’t do anything to save his, but at least I can pray.”

  “You pray for him?”

  “It was a figure of speech.” And yes, I do. I added, “Let it go, Todd. My God, what will it take for you to believe that nothing is going on between us?”

  Todd looked like he wanted to answer, but he thought better of it. “Where did you say he went, again?” he asked instead. “Memphis, wasn’t it? Didn’t the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation just roll up a big gang of cargo thieves out there?”

  “I believe they did.” It had been all over the news for the past couple of days.

  Todd smirked. “What are the chances that Collier was a part of that, do you think? It wouldn’t be the first time the TBI showed an interest in something he was doing. Maybe they finally got him this time.” He rubbed his hands together.

  “I’ll ask Mrs. Jenkins tomorrow,” I said. “She’s his closest—his only—relative, so I guess they’d notify her if anything happened to him.”

  “I’m sure they would.” Todd signaled the waiter. “Are you ready to go, Savannah?”

  He insisted on driving me home, in spite of my assurance that it would be OK to just put me in a cab. My apartment was twenty minutes in the opposite direction, and he had an hour’s drive to get home to Sweetwater after dropping me off. He wouldn’t hear of it, though, so we sat side by side in the front seat of the SUV as he maneuvered through the darkened streets over to Nashville’s east side, where I rent a one bedroom apartment in a multi-use development on the corner of Fifth Street and East Main. Todd parked on the street and walked me up to the second floor, again disregarding my assurance that I was perfectly capable of fitting the key in the lock on my own and that he had a long drive ahead of him.

  “You know, Savannah,” he said when we stood face to face in the hallway outside my apartment, “if you’re so concerned about my driving home in the dark, you could invite me to stay. I could get up early and drive down tomorrow morning instead. My first appointment isn’t until nine.”

  I stared at him. Was he serious? Was he insane?! “I can’t ask you to spend the night. What would people think?”

  “That we’re involved?” Todd suggested.

  Well... yes. “You know as well as I do that in our circles, that means marriage is next.”

  “And you don’t want to get married? Remarried?”

  I took a fractional step backwards, distancing myself emotionally as well as physically. “I’m sure I’ll end up getting remarried one day. I’m only 27; it’s not like I want to spend the rest of my life alone. But I’m not ready yet. I’m still carrying baggage from being Mrs. Ferguson, and… um… there are things I want to do.”

  I didn’t want to think too deeply about that last statement, but I knew that Rafe had told me to hold off on marrying Todd until he came back to town, because he
had plans for me, and if I were married, that would seriously cramp his style.

  “I see,” Todd said. He was staring intently at me, in a way that suggested that he might be trying to read my mind. I didn’t think he could, but I also didn’t want to take any chances. So I looked away, down the hall.

  “You should go. It’s a long drive.”

  “You’ve mentioned that,” Todd nodded. “All right. How about Tuesday? Are we still on?”

  We’d had what pretty much amounted to a standing dinner date every Tuesday and Friday for the past five weeks. When Rafe left, Todd had decided he’d better take advantage of this time without—as he perceived it—competition, and he had been wining and dining me every chance he got. Which was twice a week. I didn’t want to go out with him any more frequently than that. First because I didn’t want to give him the idea that I was waiting for him to pop the question, but also because Mother has brought my sister Catherine and myself up never to give any gentleman the impression that we are too available. Occasionally, he’d get us tickets to the opera or the theatre on a Saturday or Sunday instead, and we’d skip one of the other nights, but I never went out with him more than twice in the same week.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “I’ll pick you up at the usual time.” He leaned in to kiss my cheek.

  I nodded. He’d pick me up at the usual time and we’d go to the usual place and eat the usual dinner. Not that there was anything wrong with that—I knew exactly what I’d get, and had the assurance of knowing that it would be excellent—but just once in a while it would be nice to try something different. Especially since I had personal reasons for wanting to avoid Fidelio’s. My ex-husband had taken me there on our first (and last) wedding anniversary and invited his mistress to join us, under pretext of talking business. Needless to say, I didn’t have good feelings about the place. I was also concerned that one of these days, I’d run into Bradley and the new Mrs. Ferguson celebrating their anniversary at Fidelio’s. But I knew better than to question Todd’s choice of restaurant, and I suppose there’s something to be said for tradition and continuity. It’s safe and comfortable, if nothing else.

  “Good night, Savannah.” He squeezed my hand. I smiled.

  “Good night, Todd. Thanks for dinner.” I went up on my toes to kiss his cheek. At the last moment he turned sideways, and I ended up kissing his lips instead. They were cool and tasted faintly of red wine.

  The kiss went on for a few seconds, and when I pulled away, Todd had what I can only describe as a triumphant smirk on his face. He had a spring in his step as he walked down the hallway toward the stairs to the first floor. I let myself into my apartment and locked the door behind me.

  Chapter Two

  Mrs. Jenkins’s house on Potsdam Street—the house where Brenda Puckett met her untimely end, and where I’d met Rafe two months ago, for the first time since high school—is a big run-down Victorian with an overgrown yard and a tower on one corner. Before he left town, Rafe had done his best to fix it, but there’s a limit to how much one man can do in a few weeks, so when I drove up the circular drive the next afternoon, the place still looked pretty dismal. The grass was dry and dead from the summer heat, and yellow leaves had started to fall from the trees onto the lawn, but no one had made any attempt to rake them. The porch swing was still peeling and the boards in the porch creaked under my feet as I made my way up to the front door.

  The door bell had long since given up the ghost, so I banged on the glass instead. And waited while shuffling footsteps made their way toward me, agonizingly slowly. “Who is it?” Mrs. Jenkins’s quavery voice asked.

  “It’s me, Mr. Jenkins. Savannah Martin. I just wanted to see how you were.”

  I heard the rattling of chains and the sound of the security bolt being pulled back, and then the heavy oak door opened. “C’mon in, baby.”

  Mrs. Jenkins’s wrinkled raisin-face beamed up at me. As usual, she was dressed in a flowery housecoat and fuzzy slippers. She’d been wearing the same thing every single time I’d seen her, although these days, at least both dress and slippers were neat and clean. Her steel-gray kinky hair was carefully tamed and slicked back against her head, and she looked reasonable healthy, happy and alert. At least I thought so, until she glanced at my midsection and added, “How’s my grandbaby this mornin’?”

  It was actually early afternoon, but that was the least of my concerns. “Your grandbaby is thirty years old, Mrs. Jenkins, and somewhere in Memphis. I’m Savannah, remember? Rafe’s… um… well, I’m not sure what I am—I don’t think I’m Rafe’s anything, really—but I know I’m not pregnant.”

  Mrs. Jenkins’s eyes turned vague for a few seconds while she processed this information. I held my breath. Sometimes she believes me, sometimes she doesn’t. Sometimes she has no idea who I am. She forgets me between visits, and the past is a lot more vivid to her than the present, so she mistakes me for LaDonna Collier. LaDonna was Rafe’s mother, and she had gotten pregnant by Tyrell Jenkins more than thirty years ago. Old Jim Collier, LaDonna’s daddy, had then shot Tyrell because he didn’t want his daughter involved with a black man. All three of them were dead now: Tyrell while LaDonna was still pregnant, Old Jim when Rafe was twelve, and LaDonna most recently, this summer. Her death was the reason Rafe had come back to the Middle Tennessee area in the first place.

  Eventually, Mrs. Jenkins’s eyes cleared. “Oh. Hi, baby. It’s you.”

  I nodded. “I brought you some cookies and lemonade. Would you like to go inside and sit down?”

  “Sure, baby.” She shuffled down the hall, leaving me to close and lock the door behind me.

  The first time I’d been in this house, there had been debris and mouse droppings on the floor and cobwebs draping the ceiling. Today, it looked better. Not as fabulous as it could look, with an influx of a few hundred thousand dollars and a lot of elbow-grease, but not bad. Rafe had refinished the floors and taken down the tattered wallpaper, although the plaster walls in the hall still needed a coat of paint to come into their own. He’d expended more money and effort on the kitchen. A new bank of cabinets stood against the wall, topped by a new Corian counter, and a new refrigerator hummed in the corner, instead of the avocado-green 1970s relic that had been here before. The old, cracked vinyl had been replaced by new, and someone—probably Marquita—had taken the time to cover the kitchen table with a pristine, yellow-checkered tablecloth. I didn’t like the woman any better than she liked me, but I had to admit she wasn’t bad at her job. Except…

  “Where is Marquita today?” I asked, opening the cabinets above the counter to look for glasses and something to put the cookies on.

  Mrs. Jenkins looked around, vaguely, as if she expected to see Marquita pop up from behind the microwave. Fat chance of that, no pun intended. Marquita was two years older than me, two inches shorter, and approximately twice my weight. She might be able to hide behind the side-by-side refrigerator, but not behind anything smaller.

  “Did she run an errand? Go to the grocery store, maybe?”

  Mrs. Jenkins’s face cleared. “Gotta phone call,” she said. “Took the afternoon off.”

  “Really?” I placed a plate of gourmet chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin cookies on the table before I turned around to pick up two glasses of lemonade. “Does that happen often?”

  Mrs. Jenkins shrugged her birdlike shoulders, a cookie already halfway to her mouth. “Girl’s gotta have free time, you know. Can’t always stay here with me.” She bit into the treat greedily, scattering crumbs on the tablecloth and the front of her dress.

  “She’s supposed to be here with you,” I said, sitting down opposite. “That’s the point of paying her. You’re not supposed to be alone.”

  “Marquita’s gotta couple kids, you know, baby. They was here visitin’ last week.”

  “No,” I said, “I didn’t know that. Where are they now?”

  “Livin’ with that ex-husband of hers down south, I guess. Or maybe with her mama. They’s
in school down there, so she only gets to see’em weekends. And not all the time, neither.”

  “Is that where she went? To Sweetwater to see her children?”

  Mrs. Jenkins shrugged again. “Can’t rightly say, baby. But she’ll be back tonight. And meantime, I get to eat what I want and see what I want on the TV.” She winked. I smiled back.

  “So how is everything going? When Marquita is here, does she take good care of you?”

  Mrs. Jenkins nodded, her mouth full of raisin and oatmeal. When she had swallowed, she assured me that yes, Marquita took very good care of her. We sat and chatted for another fifteen or twenty minutes, and then I got up to take my leave. Mrs. Jenkins shuffled with me out to the front door, and I told her I’d stand outside to make sure she put the chain back on after I’d gone out.

  “By the way,” I added, just as I was about to leave, to give the impression that the question wasn’t of much consequence, “I don’t suppose you’ve heard from Rafe, have you?”

  Mrs. Jenkins looked blank for a second, like she had no idea who Rafe was. Then she shook her head. “Can’t say as I have, baby. Why?”

  “Oh, no reason. I was just thinking… if Marquita doesn’t come back…”

  “She’ll be back. Ain’t the first time she’s gone home to see her babies.” She looked at me, shrewdly, for a moment, and then added, “You miss him, huh, baby?”

  “I guess I do.” I might as well admit it. It wasn’t like Mrs. Jenkins would tell anyone—no one who mattered, like my mother—and it was nice to be able to say it to someone. Especially someone who’d likely have forgotten by the time I drove away. Plus, I was worried. I had expected him to be back by now. I’d even taken to checking the Memphis newspapers online while I was at the office every morning. That was how I’d found out about the TBI arresting all those people in the hijackings of those cargo containers Todd had mentioned yesterday. I wasn’t so far gone that I read the obituaries yet, but I did skim headlines, and if I came across anything about shootings or arrests or the unrolling of criminal syndicates, I read the article to make sure Rafe’s name wasn’t mentioned. So far I had refrained from calling the Memphis justice system to inquire whether they had him locked up somewhere—I didn’t want to turn them on to him if they didn’t—but I figured it was only a matter of time before I gave in to temptation and picked up the phone.