Contract Pending

by Jenna Bennett

  Contract

  Pending

  by

  jenna Bennett

  CONTRACT PENDING

  Savannah Martin Mystery #3

  Smashwords edition

  Copyright © 2011 Bente Gallagher

  All rights reserved.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner of this book.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Chapter 1

  Absence makes the heart grow fonder, they say, and there must be something to it, because I started missing Rafael Collier pretty much the minute his taillight disappeared around the corner at the end of the block. As the weeks went by with no sign of life, I only missed him more.

  Or maybe missed isn’t exactly the right word. I mean, I’m not stupid, and missing Rafe would be just that. Stupid. We weren’t involved, and it wasn’t like I cared that I might never see him again. Not really. Not much, anyway.

  Or maybe I cared a little. When a man saves your life, you tend to feel a little sentimental about him afterwards, and the fact that Rafe is drop-dead gorgeous and has made no secret of finding me somewhat attractive as well, didn’t exactly hurt, either. Nor did the fact that he was the only man I had ever met who could, quite literally, leave me breathless and weak in the knees with no more than a look.

  So yes, I might have been just a mite disappointed that he hadn’t decided to take advantage of me before he left town. The idea that he might never come back, and that I’d missed my chance to indulge in one night of wild passion before I settled down and married my old boyfriend Todd Satterfield, was irksome, to say the least. I’d gotten used to having Rafe around, his cheerful attempts to talk me into bed gave my ego a much-needed boost after I leaving my cheating husband two years ago, and, to be honest, I felt safe knowing Rafe had my back. I’d gotten myself mixed up with two different murderers in the past few months—something of a record for someone who’s not looking for trouble—and just in case it happened again, I’d feel better knowing that Rafe was in reach. Except he wasn’t, and now something was brewing that caused my want of him to spike into something close to desperation.

  It all started over dinner with Todd at Fidelio’s Restaurant.

  Todd Satterfield is my brother’s best friend and my mother’s choice of second husband for me. He’s also someone I dated for a year in high school. When I married Bradley Ferguson, Todd married a girl named Jolynn because she reminded him of me, and when I divorced Bradley, Todd divorced Jolynn. Now he wants to get back together. He hasn’t come out and proposed yet, but he’s come pretty close. And when he eventually gets around to it, I don’t see what I can do, other than accept. He’s everything a well-brought-up Southern Belle should want in a husband: normal, healthy, and good-looking, at least if one’s tastes should happen to run to the fair-haired and blue-eyed all-American type. He is also nice, honest, attentive, unfailingly polite, loyal to a fault, and flatteringly devoted. Oh yes, and well-off. More than capable of providing for me in the manner to which I was born, and to which I would like to become accustomed again, once I don’t have to support myself. He can trace his antecedents back to the War Against Northern Aggression—that’s the Civil War to you Yankees—and he has a brilliant future ahead of him in the district attorney’s office in Columbia, and probably—if I know him—in politics. In short, he’s perfect. Or would be, if it weren’t for one thing.

  “Have you heard anything from Collier?” Todd asked. His voice sounded strained.

  I shook my head. “Not a word.”

  Todd smirked. “I always told you he was trouble.”

  He had. Repeatedly. He was absolutely convinced that Rafe was a threat to my virtue—correct as far as it went—and he kept giving me reasons why I shouldn’t have anything to do with him. He—Todd—had even gone so far as to hire a private investigator to follow Rafe around, just so he could prove to me that Rafe was involved in illegal activities. Since this was something I’d already suspected anyway, the news didn’t come as a big shock.

  “I know you have,” I said docilely.

  “I gave the police those pictures I showed you, you know. The ones of Collier and those three men who were involved in those open house robberies last month. The police seemed quite interested in them.”

  “I’m sure they were,” I said. Rafe had been involved in last month’s robberies up to his eyebrows, and considering that he’s at least six three, that’s pretty high up. “They’re all languishing in jail already. Detective Grimaldi told me.”

  Tamara Grimaldi with the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department’s homicide unit is by way of being a friend of mine. Or at least a close acquaintance, if that isn’t a contradiction in terms. We met a couple of months ago, after Rafe and I stumbled over my colleague Brenda Puckett’s butchered body in an empty house in East Nashville, and the detective dragged both of us to Police Plaza for questioning. She turned up her nose at my delicate constitution and ladylike vapors, but over time we buried the hatchet and arrived at an uneasy sort of truce. The detective tolerated me and made no attempt to hide her interest in Rafe, although I’ve never been entirely sure whether that interest is professional or personal in nature. On the one hand, he has done plenty in his life that might interest a police detective. On the other, he has attributes that might interest any halfway conscious woman, too.

  “I met your Detective Grimaldi,” Todd said. “When I dropped the pictures off.”

  I didn’t see the sense in explaining that the detective isn’t actually mine. “What did you think of her?”

  “She seems competent enough,” Todd said. “And she was very complimentary of you. Although she said something I didn’t understand. Something about your terrible ordeal and a DVD…?”

  I grimaced. “Oh. That.”

  Todd looked politely inquiring, and after an uncomfortable pause, which I tried to fill with sips of wine while I avoided his eyes, I gave up. “I told you about what happened last month. With Perry Fortunato, the man who raped and strangled Lila Vaughn, and who raped and strangled his wife, and who would have strangled me too, if Rafe hadn’t killed him first.”

  A shadow crossed Todd’s even features. He didn’t like to be reminded of the fact that I—and he—owed Rafe Collier my life. “Yes.”

  “Well, I didn’t mention the fact that he liked to film things. Like sexual encounters. His own and other people’s. And that he tied me to his bed and was going to film me. Except he ended up filming his own death instead.”

  Todd went very still. “He tied you to the bed?”

  I nodded.

  “Naked?”

  “Well… almost naked.” I’d been wearing a bra, panties, and a pair of shoes, to be exact. And earrings and a watch.

  “Collier was there?”

  “He killed Perry. I told you that.”

  Todd had taken to breathing through his nose. Somehow,
the fact that Rafe had seen me in my skivvies seemed to upset him more than my almost being raped and murdered. “Did he touch you?”

  “Perry? No, he didn’t get a chance to. Other than when he undressed me and tied me to the bed in the first place. But I was unconscious then, so I don’t really know what he did.”

  “Collier!” Todd clarified, between gritted teeth.

  “Oh. No. Of course not.” Other than a teasing stroke up my arm that had almost made me jump out of my skin, but there was no need to mention that. “He’s not like that.”

  “Hah!” Todd said. He grabbed his glass of Merlot and tossed back the dregs. I took another ladylike sip of my Chardonnay in lieu of remonstrating. It was difficult not to try to explain why he was wrong, but I knew from experience that it wouldn’t make any difference. Todd was convinced that he knew what Rafe was like, and there was nothing I could say or do to change his mind. And therein lay the problem. Todd loved me, but he was obsessively concerned about my relationship with Rafe, and he would go to almost any lengths to make sure nothing happened between us. As evidenced by his giving his photographs to Detective Grimaldi in an attempt to get Rafe arrested. And as evidenced by his showing the photographs to me in the first place. He’d even turned me on to a woman named Elspeth Caulfield, who—Todd claimed—had been compromised by Rafe in high school. We’d all gone to Columbia High together, a few years apart, and Todd claimed Elspeth had had either a nervous breakdown or an abortion as a result of her encounter with Rafe. I had tried to ask Elspeth about it, but she refused to talk to me, explaining sweetly that we were ladies and didn’t discuss things like that. When I’d asked Rafe, however, he’d said she’d been a more than willing participant, and that she’d kept hounding him for months afterwards to continue the liaison. If she’d had a nervous breakdown or an abortion, she sure hadn’t mentioned either to him.

  “Have you seen anything of Elspeth lately?” I asked now, in an attempt to play tit for tat.

  “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 sa
id. “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.