I had no idea whether their fling had meant anything more to her. It might have. I knew just how easy it was to fall in love with Rafe. I’d done it even when I knew better. And I wasn’t the only one who had, not by a long shot. He’d left a long trail of broken hearts and besotted women behind him.
Carmen might have had feelings for him. She hadn’t gotten in touch when she found out she was pregnant, though. And if she were carrying his baby, you’d think she might have.
Then again, by then, she would have known that he wasn’t who he’d said he was; that the man she’d slept with was responsible for putting her in prison.
Or rather, her own actions were responsible for putting her in prison. She had committed criminal acts; Rafe had just caught her for them. But she might not see it that way. And it could be a reason why she wouldn’t want to contact him and tell him he was about to become a daddy.
Or maybe it wasn’t his baby at all.
Without my conscious decision, the car made the choice to go east on Briley Parkway. East, toward Nashville.
Darcy didn’t say anything about it. She probably didn’t even realize we weren’t on our way home.
She caught on when we got off the interstate and turned onto Dickerson Pike and then up Dresden Street, though. I heard her quick intake of breath. “This isn’t the way back to Sweetwater.”
“I just want to stop by the house for a minute,” I said. “I want to see Rafe.”
And reassure myself that he was alive, and more than that, that he was mine.
Not that there’d ever been a question about him preferring Carmen. He’d done what he’d had to do, and that was all it had been. He probably hadn’t thought about her since.
It would be nice to keep it that way. And tempting to leave well enough alone. If she hadn’t told him, maybe it was because it had nothing to do with him. Someone else’s baby, not his.
“It’s perfectly safe,” I told Darcy. “Nothing like what happened yesterday is going to happen today. The house isn’t empty. Rafe’s been there all night. So has Wendell, and a couple of the rookies. There won’t be anything ugly there.”
“I hope you’re right,” Darcy said.
I hoped so, too.
The house looked calm and quiet when we pulled up in front of it. No windows were shot out or boarded up, and there was no yellow crime scene tape in sight. They must have passed a quiet night.
Rafe’s Harley was parked at the bottom of the stairs, along with a pickup truck with a picture of the Virgin Mary on the back window that I knew belonged to José.
I didn’t want to accidentally startle him—or anyone else who carried a gun for a living—so I knocked on the door before I inserted the key in the lock. By the time I had the door open, José was standing in the foyer, gun in hand. Down the hall, in the door to the kitchen, I spotted the skinny frame and skin-head buzz-cut that belonged to Clayton.
I smiled and shut the door behind me. “Hello, boys. Is Rafe here?”
They both shook their heads. “He gotta call,” José said, in his accented English. “He and Wendell took the Town Car down to the duplex.”
I was familiar with the Town Car. Wendell had picked me up for my first date with Rafe in it a year ago.
“Do you know why?”
“It’s on fire,” José said.
“The duplex? Is on fire?”
They nodded.
Oh-kay. “Any problems last night?”
They both shook their heads. Clayton had ambled up from the kitchen now, and was standing next to José. He was a bit taller and a lot thinner, his muscles ropey, while José was a little fireplug with the sleeves of his polo shirt rolled up above his biceps, not to show them off but because the fabric likely wouldn’t stretch that far.
“Any word from Jamal?”
They both shook again, and shadows crossed both their faces. They were in competition with each other constantly, but they were also a team, goading and helping each other through TBI training. To lose a part of the team and not know where he was or what he was doing, must be hard for them.
“We’ll drive down to the duplex and see if we can catch Rafe and Wendell there,” I said, with a glance at Darcy. “It’s on the way home anyway.”
Sort of.
“If they come back,” I added, “please tell them we stopped by. And ask Rafe to call me.”
The boys both nodded.
“Carry on.”
We withdrew back out the door. I heard the locks and bolts slam before we’d turned to go down the stairs.
“What’s the duplex?” Darcy asked when we were back in the car and on our way down Potsdam Street.
I glanced at the dashboard clock, and then at her. Still a bit too early for lunch. “It belongs to the TBI, I think. In a roundabout sort of way. It’s a little house Rafe used to stay in when he’d blow through town during the years he spent undercover. Every once in a while, they put it to use for something else. Something like this. Otherwise, it just sits there.”
And the ownership must be deeply hidden, if someone had decided to set up a meth lab next door. Either that, or they’d figured setting up shop next to a building owned by the TBI would make a dandy front, since no one would suspect them of being that stupid.
“It won’t take long,” I added.
“I’m not doing anything else,” Darcy said with a shrug, and settled into the seat.
We were still a mile away when we saw the spiral of smoke reaching toward the sky.
“That must be it,” Darcy said.
I nodded. “I wonder what happened.” There were only so many options, and I didn’t think a lightning strike was likely. “It would have to be either an accident or arson, I guess. Rafe said the people next door were cooking methamphetamine. Maybe their place exploded.”
I hoped they’d made it out in time. I know they were criminals, and in a sense murderers, but I didn’t want them dead. Behind bars was good enough.
“Yikes,” Darcy said and turned pale. “Is it safe?”
“If Wendell and Rafe went down there, I’m sure it is. And it’s not like we’re going to crawl through the debris. And anyway, if we’re not supposed to be there, there’ll be barricades.”
Darcy nodded, but bit her lip worriedly.
The closer we got, the thicker the smoke became. And the thicker the traffic was, too. By the time we turned onto the street where the duplex sat, there were people everywhere, gawking at what was going on. Lights flashed where a big fire engine was parked crosswise in the middle of the street, stopping anyone from going further.
I pulled over to the side and slotted the Volvo in, carefully, between a couple of parked cars, and cut the engine. “Looks like we’ll have to walk the rest of the way.”
“Are you sure we should?” Darcy asked, although she did open her door.
“You don’t have to. You can wait here. But my husband’s up there. I want to see him.”
Darcy didn’t say anything, but when I struck out for the other side of the fire truck, she followed.
On the far side of the fire engine, a couple of firemen in heavy gear were busy coiling hoses. The street ran with water along both sides, and a burned-out truck sat in the driveway of the meth house. The house itself was gone: just a patch of burned grass was left, and about half a chimney. Debris was everywhere, and what had to be investigators were crawling all over the ground, dressed in Hazmat suits. I gulped, and then coughed. The air was thick with the smell of fire and floating ash.
“It looks like the house in the Wizard of Oz during the tornado,” Darcy said softly. “Like it was just scooped up and carried off.”
I nodded. “I don’t think it was. This debris is all that’s left of it, I bet.”
Burnt pieces of wood, charred beams, roof shingles, all were strewn across the road in front of us and the grass of the neighbors’ lawns.
“I think it exploded,” I added.
“That wasn’t the duplex, was it?”
/> I shook my head. No, thank God. “The duplex is up there. To the right. Or maybe was up there is better.”
There wasn’t much left of it, either.
Or perhaps I shouldn’t say that. The walls were standing, and some of the roof was intact. The windows had blown out, but the door was still there, even if it was hanging open. And there were investigators going in and around it, too, but they weren’t wearing hazmat suits. Just good old firemen in T-shirts and uniform pants.
“There’s your husband,” Darcy said, and pointed.
I nodded. There he was, in a huddle with Wendell and one of the firemen, an older gentleman with an impressive walrus moustache.
“Must be the fire chief.”
“Or the arson investigator,” Darcy said.
Yes, maybe so. “Let’s go see what happened.”
They were standing at the bottom of the driveway, well away from the shell of the house. We had to jump over fire hoses and detour around puddles to get there. And we had only gone about half the way when Rafe looked up and saw us.
He scowled. I smiled brightly and waved. He scowled harder. I ignored the expression and kept coming.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he told me when I was close enough to be able to hear him, with Darcy a step or two behind. His scowl seemed to work better on her than on me.
“We stopped by the house on our way home from the Tennessee Women’s Prison. José told us what happened.”
I turned to look at the duplex.
“Tennessee Women’s Prison?” Rafe said, moving close to me. I had thought that might get his attention off the fact that we were here and onto something different.
“We went to talk to Denise Seaver. To see if she’d be willing to tell us anything about Darcy’s mother.”
“That the woman who killed your sister-in-law?”
I grimaced. “Yes. And took David away from Elspeth. And kidnapped Oliver Cartwright. And killed the other doctor, the one we met at St. Jerome’s when I took you there. Remember?”
Rafe nodded. “You thought she might wanna help you?”
“As a matter of fact, I didn’t expect her to be willing to help me. And she wasn’t. But she let slip a couple of pieces of information we might be able to use.”
“You shoulda told me you were going there.”
“It wouldn’t have made any difference,” I told him. “You couldn’t have come with us. You had more important things to do this morning.” I glanced around, at the big mess surrounding us, and all its implications. And then I looked back at him. He still had the dreadlocks and the gold teeth, but at least he’d dug out a pair of jeans that fit—very nicely, I might add—and a T-shirt that stretched tight across his chest and shoulder and tapered to his waist. “And anyway, I’m not about to take you into a room full of man-starved female prisoners. They’d fall on you like a pack of wolves.”
He grinned. “It’s a curse.”
“Sure it is.” I leaned into him, my head on his shoulder. His arm settled more firmly around me. “So what happened here? Did the meth lab explode?”
“No,” Rafe said, and changed his mind. “It did. Later. But that wasn’t what started this. Someone threw a firebomb through the window of the duplex, and the fire spread next door. The place went up like fireworks.”
“Casualties?”
“Two in the lab. One in the duplex.”
“Someone was living in the duplex?”
“The cop I told you about,” Rafe said. “From narcotics. He moved in yesterday to keep an eye on the folks next door.”
“And now he’s dead?” How horrible!
Rafe shook his head. “He’s fine. He made it out. That’s how we know what happened. He was on the other side when the bottle went through the window in the part I’d been using.”
“Someone thought they were going to get you?”
He shrugged.
“So if the cop made it out, who’s the dead body?”
“Dunno yet,” Rafe said.
“Do you think...” It wasn’t a very pleasant thought, but— “We didn’t overlook a set of remains back at the beginning of the summer, did we?” When we’d been scouring the woods behind the house for the bodies of dead prostitutes.
“I don’t think so. And anyway, they were down to bones.”
They had been. Several skeletons of young women dumped in the woods behind the house.
But if this was a real body, one with flesh on the bones, it wasn’t likely to be one of them.
“So who—?” And then I realized what he was very carefully not telling me. “Oh, no. He wouldn’t have been stupid enough to come here, would he?”
“He mighta thought I’d be here,” Rafe said. “And when I wasn’t, he decided to spend the night.”
“You haven’t heard from him?”
Rafe shook his head, his expression grim.
“You’ve tried to call him again, I assume? And told him he needs to answer because you’re worried about him?”
“Yes, darlin’.” His tone said he didn’t need me to tell him his business, but he didn’t actually say so out loud. I snuggled into his side and tried to give what comfort I could as we both stared up toward the duplex and the van from the morgue making its slow way up the driveway.
Fifteen
Darcy and I didn’t stay long after that. There was literally nothing I could do to help, and Rafe had important things to deal with. So we said goodbye and got back in the car. Rafe promised he’d let me know as soon as the M.E. determined whether the remains were Jamal’s or some other unfortunate soul who had gotten mixed up in this mess.
“Here’s what I think we ought to do,” I told Darcy as we headed west on Bell Road to meet up with the interstate toward Sweetwater.
“Yes?”
“If Ora Sweet was a patient of Denise Seaver’s, there’s a record of it somewhere. The birth records at St. Jerome’s went back more than thirty-four years. I bet Doctor Seaver’s records did, too. And speaking of St. Jerome’s Hospital...”
“Yes?” Darcy said.
“This road we’re on passes within a couple of minutes of it. Would you like to take a look? There won’t be anything to see other than the building itself—it’s still in operation, so we could walk around in it, I suppose, although I’m not sure what purpose it would serve. But you could at least see where you were born. If you wanted. It isn’t far out of the way.”
“Yes,” Darcy said. “Please.”
“I’ll turn off when we get down there. But in the meantime... Doctor Seaver probably has records of Ora Sweet. Or whatever her real name was.”
“How would we know what her real name was?” Darcy wanted to know. “I mean, if we could get access to the records, how would we know which woman was Ora Sweet? If she went by her real name when she saw Doctor Seaver? And she must have, if they knew one another from before.”
It was a good question. I thought for a minute, and then ventured, “By the due date? She was a young woman, mid-twenties, whose baby was due within a week or so of the day you were born. And your weight at birth indicates a full-term baby, so you weren’t more than a few days early, if you were early at all. One week in either direction should do it.”
“That makes sense,” Darcy allowed. “How do we get access to the records?”
That was going to be the tricky part, and I told her so. “Doctor Seaver was part of a medical practice in Columbia. It had several other doctors in addition to Doctor Seaver. They’re all still in business, and I’m sure they have good security.” Doctors’ offices keep drugs and things like that on hand, don’t they? “We can’t just waltz in there and start digging through their files. And anyway, they might not have records going that far back on the premises. They probably have a storage facility somewhere, where they keep them. If they even exist anymore. They could have turned them into electronic files and pulped the paper. And it’s going to take a better hacker than me to access those.”
“Me, too,”
Darcy admitted.
“But Denise Seaver strikes me as someone who’d keep personal records. Unless the police confiscated them, and unless her house has been packed up and sold in the time she’s been in prison, we might find them there.”
Darcy’s eyebrows rose so far that they disappeared behind her spiky bangs. “Break into her house?”
“It’s not like she’ll be there,” I said reasonably. “We know where she is, and it isn’t anywhere near Sweetwater.”
“No...” She sounded shocked, but intrigued, too. “Do you know where she lives?”
Indeed, I did. Denise Seaver’s kitchen was where the incident with the gun, the pepper spray, and the frying pan had taken place. “One of the subdivisions on the outskirts of Sweetwater. Dix lives in Copper Creek. Denise Seaver’s house is in the one that backs up to it.”
“A subdivision full of McMansions,” Darcy said. “Those houses are built close together. Won’t there be people around who’ll see us?”
“Not if we’re careful. Denise Seaver’s house backs up to a band of trees. And Marley Cartwright’s house is on the other side. We could park in Copper Creek, near Marley’s house, and walk through the trees.”
That was how I’d ended up in Denise Seaver’s kitchen that night last November. Marley had realized what had happened, that Doctor Seaver had stolen Oliver, and had taken off through the trees. I hadn’t had a choice but to follow. And a good thing I did, because Denise Seaver would have finished her off if I hadn’t.
“If we go after dark,” I added, “I don’t think anyone would see us.”
Marley would probably give us access to her property if we asked. We could park in her driveway and walk through her yard.
Although I wasn’t sure I wanted to involve her. If she didn’t know anything, she couldn’t give anything away. Just in case someone asked.
“Don’t worry,” I told Darcy, “I’ve broken into lots of places.”
Most of them with Rafe, who knows how to pick a lock, but a few on my own, too. We’d manage. Somehow.
“And you haven’t gotten caught?”
I’ve gotten caught a few times. But it was probably better not to mention that. And anyway, it was by cops who knew me, so they’d let me go with a warning.
Uncertain Terms (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 12) Page 17
