Close to Home

by Jenna Bennett

  And then I realized something. “Wait a second. Brenda’s death was just a few months ago. I didn’t realize you and Sheila were still friends.”

  Marley’s mouth twisted. “Just because most of my so-called friends abandoned me when Oliver disappeared, doesn’t mean everyone did. Sheila believed me.”

  “That’s...” Nice? Severely misguided? Stupid of Sheila? “I’m sorry,” I said, “I really don’t mean to be rude, but how did Dix feel about that?”

  Marley shook another cigarette out of the nearly depleted pack and lit it up. Her hands were shaking. “She didn’t tell him. He wouldn’t have understood.”

  She was probably right about that. Dix would have been worried, and with reason. According to Todd, Marley Cartwright was dangerous, and a cold-blooded killer.

  Then again, a voice at the back of my head reminded me, Todd said the same thing about Rafe. And yes, granted, Rafe is both dangerous and has killed people, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t safe with him. And in any case, Todd might not be the best person to listen to when it came to this. It was his job to prosecute Marley, and I supposed he had to believe she was guilty.

  “Sheila called me,” Marley said, gazing at me with those ravaged eyes. “The day she died.”

  “Last Friday?” Tamara Grimaldi had told me Sheila’s call records had shown a call to a friend in the afternoon on Friday. But she hadn’t mentioned the friend’s name. I kicked myself for not having asked. The fact that Sheila had called Marley Cartwright of all people might be significant.

  Marley nodded. “We had lunch together the day before, after her doctor’s appointment. She told me about the baby. And I was in with my lawyer all day Friday, preparing for the trial. My phone was turned off. I really wish I could have spoken to her one more time.” Her eyes overflowed, and tears rolled down her thin cheeks.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “But it wasn’t like you could have known she wouldn’t come home.”

  And if Marley had been with her lawyer all day, at least she had an alibi for the time of Sheila’s murder. I was getting as bad as Todd when it came to assigning blame to people, I realized. Even if Marley smoked and probably drank and quite possibly had a supply of all sorts of drugs in her medicine cabinet, of course she’d had nothing to do with Sheila’s death. Why would she kill the one person who still believed in her innocence?

  Unless she was lying about that, and Sheila had found proof that Marley was guilty—

  “What did she say when she called?”

  “Here.” Marley fumbled in her purse again. “You can listen to it.”

  She pulled out a cell phone and began manipulating buttons and icons. After a few seconds, she held the phone out in front of her. I glanced at the display—the message had been received from Sheila’s phone at 2:04 PM last Friday—and then Sheila’s voice started. “Marley? Hey, it’s me. I’m sure you’re probably in with the lawyer all day, but give me a call when you get this. It’s important. I’m in Nashville right now, but I should be back in Sweetwater in a couple of hours. Call me!”

  There was the sound of the disconnect, and then nothing. I blinked away tears. “She sounds so... alive.”

  Marley nodded. “That’s why I can’t bring myself to delete it. It’s all that’s left.”

  “It sounds like she was planning to drive back to Sweetwater after her appointment. I wonder what changed her mind.”

  “Not me,” Marley said. “I told you I didn’t talk to her.”

  “I believe you.” If she had, there wouldn’t be a message. “Did you play this for the detective from Nashville who called you?”

  “Sure,” Marley said with a shrug. “I don’t have anything to hide.”

  So Grimaldi already knew that little tidbit of information. She hadn’t shared it with me. Then again, there was no reason why she should. And obviously something had happened to change Sheila’s mind. Maybe she’d made her call while leaving Dr. Rushing’s office, and the doctor had called her back inside. Maybe that’s why she’d never gotten into her car and driven back to Sweetwater.

  “Would you mind giving me your number?” I asked. “Just in case I want to hear Sheila’s voice again? You’re not the only one who misses her.”

  Marley looked apprehensive for a second, but she gave it to me. After that we just stood in mostly companionable silence until I excused myself to go back inside. Marley got in her Jeep and went home.

  Chapter 19

  “No,” Tamara Grimaldi said when I called her that night, “I didn’t make that connection. That’s interesting.”

  I’d waited to call until late, since I knew she had that appointment with the kid’s parents in the afternoon, and I didn’t want to interrupt. And besides, I’d had things to do myself. The wake, or post-funeral get-together, went on for quite a while, and then we had to clean and straighten and pack up the leftover food and send the excess home with people. Mother has a cleaning crew that would be coming in to take care of any deep cleaning, but we had to live in the mansion until they could come on Monday, so at least we had to set everything back to rights again. And once that was done, I was so exhausted that I needed a nap. By the time I woke up, it was almost six, and I was afraid I’d have a hard time catching the detective on a Friday night. Luckily, she picked up right away, and I could tell her about my conversation with Marley Cartwright.

  “Yes,” I said, in response to her statement, “isn’t it?” And I wasn’t surprised she hadn’t made the connection between Sheila’s friend she’d spoken to earlier in the week, and the woman who was on trial for murder in Columbia. Columbia is an hour from Nashville, and Grimaldi wouldn’t necessarily be up on the cases and trials going on two counties over. “Marley didn’t kill Sheila, though.” Accused murderess or no. “She was closeted with her lawyer all day and night.”

  “I’ll have to check with him or her to confirm that. When I first spoke to Marley on Monday, I didn’t realize it would be an issue.”

  “Why would Marley kill Sheila?”

  “No idea,” Grimaldi said. “I don’t necessarily think she did. But I have to confirm her alibi if there’s a chance she might be involved. When she was just a friend Sheila left a message for, it didn’t matter, but now that I know she’s on trial for murder, suddenly she’s coming across as a person of interest.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Women kill each other, Ms. Martin,” Grimaldi said. “You should know that.”

  I did know that. However— “She seemed really distraught that Sheila was dead. It seems Sheila was the only person who believed that Marley didn’t kill little Oliver.”

  “So maybe Marley didn’t kill her,” Grimaldi said. “Maybe Marley asked Sheila to pick up some drugs while she was in Nashville. Maybe that’s what she was doing in that parking lot.”

  “She wouldn’t!”

  “Are you sure?”

  I wasn’t, actually. Marley had told me herself that she was doing a lot of things now that she wouldn’t have done two years ago. Drugs could be part of that. And while I didn’t think Sheila would agree to do anything she knew was illegal, she might not have realized what she was doing. Maybe Marley had asked her to meet someone to pick up a package—“since you’re going to be in Nashville anyway,”—and Sheila had shown up in the parking lot in good faith. But why had the person she was meeting killed her? If it was a simple exchange of money for drugs, there would be no reason to kill the messenger.

  “I don’t know,” Grimaldi said when I offered this thought. “But rest assured I’ll ask Marley about it. As soon as I can.”

  “How did it go this afternoon? Did you talk to the parents of the kid in the picture?”

  “Very nice family,” Grimaldi said approvingly. “Cute kid. Little boy named Owen. No proof at all that he was adopted. Birth certificate—which they showed me—said he was born at St. Jerome’s, to the people who are bringing him up.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” I answered. “David Flann
ery’s birth certificate says he was born at St. Jerome’s to Ginny and Sam, and he wasn’t. Someone at St. Jerome’s has a contact at the state department, and they’re pushing through fake birth certificates.”

  “I’m aware of that, thank you. The way this is headed, we’ll have to investigate all of St. Jerome’s Hospital and all of the Tennessee Department of Health before we’re done.” She sighed.

  I gave her a sympathetic moment of silence before I asked, “Were Owen’s parents any help at all? Do you think they had anything to do with anything?”

  “No,” Grimaldi said. “They said they didn’t go to St. Jerome’s on Wednesday night, and they offered as alibis four hundred of their closest friends. They were at their weekly Wednesday night Bible study. Their alibis check out, the documentation for their child is in order, and unless I discover otherwise, there’s absolutely nothing I can do.”

  “So why remove the picture? It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I know,” Grimaldi said. “I’ll keep digging. If anything else occurs to you, or if you learn that Sheila spoke to anyone else about what she was doing on Friday, please let me know.”

  I promised I would. “Any news from Atlanta?”

  “Not today. You want me to ask him to call you?”

  I hesitated for only a moment. “No. If he wants to call, he’ll call. If he doesn’t, there’s no sense in forcing him.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “Physically, not too bad. The bleeding has almost stopped. I have an appointment with the gynecologist on Monday, and we’ll see if everything is getting back to normal. Emotionally I’m a bit of a wreck.”

  “I’m sorry this happened,” Grimaldi said.

  My voice caught. “I really wanted this baby. Now that I’ve lost it, I can’t believe I considered getting rid of it.”

  “You would have made the right choice. You had that pill sitting in your apartment for days, and you didn’t take it. You had weeks to decide what to do, and you never chose to terminate the pregnancy. If this hadn’t happened, you would have had the baby and loved it no matter what anyone else thought.”

  “I wish I could be sure of that,” I whispered.

  “I’m sure of it.” Her voice was strong. “There’s no part of you that could terminate a pregnancy. Especially one where the father of the baby was Mr. Collier. I’ve seen the two of you together, and there’s no way you’d willingly part with his child.”

  “I think I’m in love with him,” I admitted.

  “Took you long enough to figure that out,” Detective Grimaldi responded, and severed the connection.

  I spent Saturday with Dix, Abigail and Hannah, preparing for Christmas. With the big day just a month away, we went shopping for presents, and got them each a new dress for the big day. Abigail wanted satin and pink tulle with tiny white pearl embroidery; Hannah red velvet with a black, white and red tartan skirt and a huge bow in the back. I scraped the bottom of the savings account and bought myself a white blouse with ruffles around the neckline I could wear with several skirts I already owned. After the shopping was done, we went back to Dix’s place and watched Disney Princess movies until the girls fell asleep. I spent the night in the guest room, and went with them to church in the morning; the same church where I was christened as a baby and married to Bradley at twenty three.

  I don’t consider myself particularly religious. In Nashville, I rarely go to church. In Sweetwater I’m used to it, since I was brought up that way. That doesn’t mean I get a whole lot out of it. I go because I’m supposed to go, because a properly brought-up Southern girl goes to church on Sunday morning, does good deeds, and helps those less fortunate. It’s a way of life more than a matter of faith.

  This time I found myself praying. Or maybe bargaining is a better word. Dear God, I’m so sorry I even thought about aborting my baby. If you’ll just give me another chance—with Rafe and with another pregnancy—I promise I’ll do better next time. Please take care of him, God, because I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to him. And God, if you’ll just make him forgive me and give me another chance, I promise I’ll never worry about what anyone else thinks of me ever again! Oh yeah, and if you can help Tamara Grimaldi figure out who killed Sheila, so Dix and the girls can get some closure, that’d be great, too. Amen.

  I should have realized mother was planning something, but I didn’t catch on until we walked through the doors of the Wayside Inn for the weekly family Sunday brunch that I usually miss because I live in Nashville, and I saw Todd and Sheriff Satterfield waiting at a table for twelve.

  I stopped dead. “Oh, no.”

  “You have to face him sometime, darling,” mother murmured next to me, taking my elbow in a grip that belied her dainty and elegant stature.

  “I’m not afraid of facing him,” I told her out of the corner of my mouth. “He’s the one who doesn’t want to see me.”

  “Nonsense, Savannah,” mother said, towing me forward. “Todd adores you.”

  I dug my heels in. “Todd adored me before he found out that I’ve been sleeping with Rafe. Now he thinks I’m something that crawled out from under a rock.”

  Just my luck: both the men in my life, as incredibly different as they were in every other way, looked at me the with that same expression in their eyes.

  “You’re being silly, Savannah,” mother said.

  “I’m not! I saw him at the funeral, and he wouldn’t even look at me. At least let me sit on the other end of the table.”

  Mother hesitated. “I’m sure he just needs a push in the right direction, darling.” She reinforced her grip on my arm and moved us both forward. I sighed and followed.

  “Todd.” Mother beamed up at him. “Bob.” She simpered at her current beau, who grinned back.

  Sweetwater’s sheriff is a grizzled man around sixty. He looks a lot like his son, only older, with crinkles at the corners of his eyes and gray hair. He’s been sheriff almost as long as I can remember, and deputy sheriff before that, and apart from the fact that he’s always been a little too quick to assume Rafe guilty of any little crime that comes along, I have nothing against him. We’ve always gotten along well. I’m sure he was almost as upset with me as Todd was—both on his son’s behalf, and on my mother’s—but he hid it well enough.

  “Morning, Savannah.” He bent and bussed my cheek.

  “Morning, Sheriff.” I shot a glance at Todd under my lashes. “Morning, Todd.”

  “Good morning,” Todd said stiffly.

  I glanced at mother. See?

  She pressed her lips together. “Be a dear, Todd, and make sure Savannah gets situated comfortably.” Her voice brooked no argument. She transferred me expertly into Todd’s unwilling hands. “She’s still suffering the ill-effects of the recent tragedy.”

  She stepped away, leaving me to deal with Todd, and him with me. He looked acutely uncomfortable, as if having to touch me brought him physical pain. Yet when I tried to twitch out of his grip, he held on. A true Southern gentleman to the last. He didn’t let go of me until I was seated, with the chair pushed under my posterior.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “A pleasure,” Todd answered, while his voice, which sounded like it was squeezed out between two stones, said the opposite.

  “Won’t you sit?”

  Todd hesitated. The appropriate response would be to do so, just as my invitation had been the appropriate response to his helping me to my seat, but he clearly didn’t want to. In the end, good manners won out and he took the chair next to mine. We sat in silence for a while. I was toying with an apology, but part of me didn’t want to apologize for having fallen in love with Rafe, since I wasn’t actually sorry it had happened, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell Todd that I was sorry for not having told him it was going on, either. Rafe’s and my relationship was private, and none of Todd’s business.

  At the same time, I supposed I did owe him something. He’d proposed to me in good faith, and although I had
n’t precisely led him on, I hadn’t been as stand-offish as maybe I should have been, either. I’d let him take me to dinner and the theatre. I’d let him kiss me, and I’d told him, over and over, that there was nothing going on with me and Rafe. I’d even told him that if I were to marry anyone at all, I’d marry him, Todd. It was just that I wasn’t ready to get married...

  And instead the truth had been that I was head over heels for Rafe, and although I never seriously thought there could be anything between us, I still couldn’t bring myself to get engaged to someone else. Back in September, when he had to hightail it to Memphis after Perry Fortunato’s death, he’d told me not to get engaged before he got back, that he had plans for me. I guess when it came right down to it, I’d wanted those plans more than I wanted to be married to Todd.

  And that was my right, and my choice, but I did owe Todd an explanation, if not precisely an apology. I was just about ready to open my mouth when Todd spoke. “How do you feel?”

  I switched gears. “Better, thank you. I’ll be seeing Dr. Seaver tomorrow, and probably get a clean bill of health.”

  I’d been through this once before, of course. I knew my body’s functions would be back to normal within one to two weeks, and that my next cycle would probably be normal. I knew I’d have to wait another week or so to have sex, just to be safe. That hadn’t been a problem when Bradley and I were married—he wasn’t that interested in sex, at least not in sex with me—and it wouldn’t be an issue now either, with Rafe gone.

  “That’s good,” Todd said stiffly.

  We spent another minute in silence.

  “I spoke to Marley Cartwright on Friday,” I said. “How’s the trial going?”

  Todd shrugged. “We’ve presented our case. It’s the defense’s turn.”