“Thanks, darlin’.”
“No problem,” I told him sincerely. I had no desire to come face to face with this guy. None at all. He’d killed three people—that we knew of—over the past three days. I’d much rather survive and make love to my husband tonight. After we’d talked about Carmen and her baby.
Or maybe before. He might not be in the mood after.
“Just call me when you have him.”
He promised he would, and I assured him, again, that I wouldn’t go near the house on Potsdam until he was with me. And then we hung up. He went back to his surveillance, and I kept going in the direction of the real estate office.
Twenty
I was almost there when the phone rang again. And I got very excited at first, because I thought it might be Rafe calling back to tell me the guy had come home already, and had walked straight into the loving arms of the MNPD SWAT team.
But the phone wasn’t playing Hot Stuff, just the generic ring tone I use for the people who don’t call me enough to get their own special song.
I glanced at the display. Dixon Calvert Martin, it said. Someone who should have his own ring tone. Maybe I’d dig up the theme song from Legally Blonde.
I pushed the button. “Hi.”
“Drunk as a skunk,” my brother intoned.
“Excuse me?”
“Mother. She’s drunk as a skunk, and maudlin with it.”
“I don’t think skunks get drunk.” And maudlin had to be better than combative.
“Our mother does,” Dix said. “Catherine and I just poured her into bed. I had to carry her up the stairs. I just hope she didn’t drink so much she makes herself ill.”
“Better get her a bucket.”
“We did,” Dix said. “But that wasn’t what I meant. She downed most of that bottle of brandy, and on an empty stomach. I’m sure she’ll be violently sick. But I hope she didn’t drink enough to get alcohol poisoning or anything like that. I’d hate to have to take her to the hospital to have her stomach pumped.”
Yikes. “Hopefully it won’t come to that,” I said, and took the exit for Shelby Avenue. Off the interstate at last, and onto the friendly streets of home. “You don’t really think she will, do you?”
“I’m not sure,” Dix said. “I’ve never seen her like this.”
None of us had. “Today was a lot for her to deal with. Not only that the man she was married to for more than twenty-five years had a child with someone else. But that that someone else was her best friend. Who never told her about it, in the more than thirty years they were friends.”
Dix grunted. I assumed it was assent.
“I don’t really understand this part,” I added. “I mean, Audrey said she was in love with Dad, right? Before he met Mother? I don’t understand why she’d want to become friends with Mother after that. Wouldn’t you think that would be salt in the wound? Not just to see him happy with someone else, but to be best friends with that person?”
“I don’t know,” Dix admitted. “Maybe... In a strange way, maybe she felt like she got closer to him. Like, in a way, when Mother talked about her marriage—and I’m sure she did—maybe Audrey felt a little like she was married to him, too?”
“That’s a little creepy, if you ask me.”
I’d been dealing with just that possibility last year, when Rafe had been eating at Fidelio’s with Carmen. I’d been in love with him, and he’d been going around with her. If he’d ended up marrying her—and at the time, I’d thought they had a real relationship, so that was a possibility in my mind—there would have been no part of me that would have wanted to get any closer to the two of them than I had to. Listening to her talking about their relationship—the relationship I wanted—would have been agony.
“I don’t think we should judge,” Dix said.
“I know we shouldn’t. I’m just saying that I don’t think I could have done it. Or would have wanted to.”
Dix grunted again.
“So is someone going to stay with her?”
“I called Aunt Regina,” Dix said. “Catherine has an appointment at one. And I’ve got work, too.”
“And besides, Aunt Regina needs to know what’s going on. Darcy is her niece.”
Something struck me, and I added, “Do you think she knew? Aunt Regina? She was Dad’s sister. She might have known that he was sleeping with Audrey.”
I had spoken to her about this just yesterday. She hadn’t told me anything then, if she did know something.
Although she might have figured it out at that point. Maybe she’d known that Dad and Audrey had an affair, but she hadn’t known that Audrey got pregnant. Not until I told her about Darcy. And then she might have put two and two together, and contacted the sheriff after I left, and told him what she suspected. Maybe she’d asked him whether he knew any more than she did, and between them, they figured out the truth.
It wouldn’t surprise me. Nothing much about my Aunt Regina surprises me. She was the one who told me, last Christmas, about Great-great-great-grandma Carrie and the groom. She’d been sitting on that information since she was a girl, but she’d never mentioned it to Mother. Or to any of the rest of us, until I came out about my feelings for Rafe and my fear that Mother was going to give him hell for being mixed race. Aunt Regina had told me about Carrie and her son William to give me some ammunition.
“I don’t know,” Dix said. “I can ask her.”
“It doesn’t matter. I just wondered, that’s all. So she’s going to stay with Mother. Hopefully this whole thing won’t be fodder for the society column. I guess we’re society as far as Sweetwater is concerned.”
“I don’t think Aunt Regina would air the Martin dirty laundry on the society page of the Reporter,” Dix said.
“She put Rafe’s and my wedding on the society page of the Reporter.”
“Your husband isn’t dirty laundry,” my brother informed me, and put me squarely in my place.
“Right. Sorry.”
“No problem. I just wanted to let you know what was going on here. Are you almost home?”
“Almost to the office.” I told him what Rafe had told me. “He wants me to stay around other people until they catch this guy. So I’m going to grab some lunch and get some work done. And hopefully by quitting time, the guy will be behind bars and I can sleep in my own bed tonight.”
Next to my husband. After I told him that he might be about to be a daddy. Again.
“Good luck,” Dix said. “I’ll call you tonight and give you an update. Be careful.”
I promised I would, and hung up. And turned down Eleventh Street toward the office.
A sports bar and restaurant called the FinBar is right down the street from LB&A. I parked in the lot and ducked inside—quickly, so no nutcase with a gun could get a bead on me before I was through the doors and safe. And since I was there, I decided I might as well just eat there instead of getting something to go. So I hauled my extra bulk up onto a bar stool—one where I could see the door—and ordered a salad and an iced tea. I wasn’t really concerned that Rafe’s gang banger had somehow picked me up along my route, and followed me here, and was planning to come in and shoot the place up—why would he?—but better safe than sorry.
So I sat there and sipped tea and watched the door, when who should walk in but Alexandra Puckett.
I wrinkled my brows. It was Monday, wasn’t it? And it wasn’t a holiday. There aren’t any of those in August. So shouldn’t she be in school, in the middle of the day like this?
“Alexandra?”
She turned in the direction of my voice, and flushed when she saw me. “Savannah.”
“Come sit with me.” I gestured to the empty stool next to me.
“I’m just ordering some takeout,” Alexandra said. She moved toward me, but not eagerly.
The bartender gave her a friendly smile. “I can take care of that for you. Just have a seat and tell me what you’d like.”
Alexandra lifted her butt onto t
he seat next to me. “I guess I’ll take two hamburgers with fries to go.”
The bartender told her he’d put it in. “Would you like a drink while you wait? It’s hot out there.”
Alexandra shrugged. “Sure. A Diet Coke, I guess.”
A few seconds later, the Diet Coke materialized in front of her. The bartender went off to put in the hamburger order and hopefully bring me my salad.
“I know you’re eating for two,” I told Alexandra, “but two hamburgers and fries might be excessive.” Especially at this stage of the game, when she didn’t even know if she was going to keep the baby.
“Oh.” She flushed. “They aren’t both for me.”
I hadn’t thought they were. “I didn’t realize today was a holiday. Are you and Austin home?”
Alexandra shook her head, the color in her cheeks deepening. “Austin’s at school. He spent the night at a friend’s house, and they took him in. Dad’s on a business trip until tomorrow.”
“So because your dad’s away and your brother had a ride, you decided you didn’t have to go to school?”
“No,” Alexandra said, flushing.
“Did you go see the doctor?” Was that why she was here in the middle of the day?
“Not yet,” Alexandra said, and I guess it would have been something of a miracle to get an appointment this quickly. So much had happened over the past few days that everything seemed like it had happened longer ago than it really had. It was just two days since Alexandra and I—and Darcy—had had lunch together at the barbeque place.
“You’ll never guess what happened,” I said. “Remember Darcy and how we were trying to find her birth mother?”
She nodded, and took a sip of her Diet Coke.
“Turns out she’s my sister.”
Alexandra’s eyes grew huge. “How’s that possible?”
“You know about the birds and the bees, right? Darcy’s mother slept with my father before he met my mother. She got pregnant—Darcy’s mother, I mean, although my mother eventually got pregnant too, or I wouldn’t be here. And she didn’t tell my father about it. So he married my mother, and they had Catherine and Dix and me. And Audrey had Darcy and gave her up for adoption. And now I have an extra sister.”
“Wow,” Alexandra said, her eyes wide.
“I know. It’s weird. But kind of cool, too. But definitely a lot to get used to.”
The bartender brought my salad, and I lifted my fork. “You don’t mind, do you? I’m starving.”
Alexandra shook her head. “Go ahead.”
I went ahead. “So tell me what’s going on with you,” I instructed between bites. “Why aren’t you in school? Does your dad know? Are you feeling sick?” Or maybe she was feeling weird about it. About being pregnant and in high school. “The worst thing you can do is not finish high school, you know. If you’re going to have a baby, you need an education. Babies aren’t cheap.”
“It’s not that,” Alexandra said. “And I don’t know if I’m having a baby.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve heard from Jamal?” No one else had, so it wasn’t likely he’d thought to contact Alexandra in the midst of all that was going on. But I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask.
“No,” Alexandra said. And looked very guilty.
My spider senses tingled. “Are you sure?” With her dad away on business, and Austin at a friend’s house for the night, it would have been a golden opportunity to spend some time with her guy. Even if her guy was up to his ears in an undercover operation this weekend. “Who’s the second hamburger for?”
It wasn’t her father, not if he was away on a business trip until tomorrow. And it wasn’t Austin, if he was in school.
“Nobody,” Alexandra said.
“Sure.”
She sighed. “Don’t tell my dad, OK?”
“Tell him what? That you cut school today and asked Jamal to come over so you could tell him that you’re pregnant?”
Alexandra hung her head. It was all the answer I needed.
“Oh, my God!” I told her, driving my fork into the lettuce and leaving it there, upright and quivering. “Rafe’s been going crazy, trying to find Jamal. How long has he been with you?”
Since yesterday, as it happened. Steven Puckett had left in the early afternoon on Sunday for a two-day business trip to Omaha. He had meetings starting this morning, so he’d had to leave yesterday and stay in a hotel to be there bright and early today. And as soon as Alexandra had dropped him off at the airport, and taken Austin to his friend’s house, I’m sure she had been on the phone with Jamal.
“You have to tell him to call Rafe,” I said, as the bartender approached with Alexandra’s to-go bag. “I’m serious. Right now he’s AWOL, and everyone’s worried. He can’t do that without warning. If he isn’t careful, he’s going to lose his job.”
Alexandra looked worried too, as she pulled out her wallet to pay for the burgers.
“I’ll take my check, too,” I told the bartender. He produced my bill after running Alexandra’s card, and then he took mine and went to do the same with it while Alexandra signed hers. “Tell him, OK? He really does need to call Rafe. Or Wendell, or somebody. I know you had something important to tell him, and if he plays it right, this could be a mitigating circumstance, but he can’t disappear in the middle of an operation like this.”
Alexandra promised she’d tell him. “Listen, I’ve got to go. The food’s going to get cold.”
“Just don’t forget.”
Alexandra said she wouldn’t, and then she took her burgers and walked out. I waited for my credit card to come back to me, and then I signed the slip and left, too. I was out the door in time to see the tail end of Alexandra’s Miata turn out of the parking lot.
I knew where she was going, of course—or at least I knew where she had told me she was going: her father’s house on Winding Way. But I watched until she disappeared around the corner in the direction of Main Street anyway. And then I got into my own car and followed.
It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her to do what she’d said she would. More that I just thought she might forget to tell Jamal to call Rafe. Or that she wouldn’t impress upon him just how important it was that he did. And the last thing either of them needed right now, was for Jamal to lose his job.
Besides, I wasn’t doing anything else. I might as well go up there and tell him myself. Rafe didn’t want me to be alone, but I wouldn’t be alone. I’d be even safer there than at the office, since no one would expect me to be there, and so no one would be able to track me down.
And once I’d told Jamal how important it was for him to call Rafe, and maybe had a few words to say about Alexandra and the baby and his not making sure to keep his pecker in his pants around under-aged girls, I’d go back to the office and spend the rest of the afternoon there.
Unless Rafe and the others had caught the bad guy by then. And they might have.
Hell... heck, I should probably just call him and tell him where I was going, and that I’d found Jamal for him. Maybe it would score me a couple of brownie points. And he wouldn’t be able to yell at me for changing plans and going somewhere without telling him.
Keeping Alexandra’s car in sight, seven or eight cars up ahead of me on Gallatin Road, I dug my phone out of my purse and hit the speed dial button for the most recent call. By the time the light changed and we were moving again, the phone was ringing on the other end. And ringing.
Finally the machine kicked in.
“Hi,” I told it. “It’s me. I’m sorry to bother you again. I guess maybe the guy got home and you’re too busy apprehending him to take my call, huh? That’s great! Anyway, I wanted to tell you about a change of plans. I was sitting at the FinBar having a salad when Alexandra Puckett walked in for takeout. It turns out Jamal’s with her. She must have contacted him to tell him about the baby, I guess. He’s been there since yesterday. I don’t know why he hasn’t been answering your calls, but I guess maybe he’s ashamed because he kn
ocked up a seventeen-year-old girl he met at your wedding, and he didn’t want to have to tell you about it.”
That made sense, at least to me.
“So I’m on my way to Alexandra’s house, to try to talk him into calling you. I’m not sure I can trust her to do it. And then I’ll go to the office afterward. Just call me when the guy is contained, and I’ll meet you at home. I love you. Bye.”
I disconnected and peered up the street. The Miata was still up ahead.
We passed the grocery store, and a few minutes later, the Inglewood fire station and on the next block, the Inglewood library. Alexandra’s turn signal flicked on at the last moment, and she zipped around the corner and disappeared down Winding Way. Twenty seconds later, I made the same turn and followed.
Halfway down the block I saw her car pulling into the driveway of their oversized 1940s Tudor. Across the street sat Maybelle Driscoll’s little stone cottage, with a low-slung black car in the driveway.
Once upon a time, I had been caught by Officers Spicer and Truman, breaking into Maybelle’s house. Or if not breaking, at least trespassing where I didn’t belong.
Maybelle was in prison in Mississippi now, thanks to me and that break-in—and Alexandra asking my help in getting her father out of Maybelle’s clutches before it was too late.
Her house should be empty. And she’d never be caught dead in a black car with tinted windows and black wheel wells. It looked like a ghettofied hearse.
Maybe it was Jamal’s personal vehicle, and he’d parked it across the street instead of in Alexandra’s driveway so the neighbors wouldn’t talk.
It looked brand new, though. And like it would cost more than a TBI rookie could afford.
I had seen one of those cars recently. Where was it...?
When Darcy and I had been waiting at the light on Potsdam Street and Dresden on Saturday afternoon, on our way back to the house to see the SWAT team in action, we’d waited for a car like this to turn off Potsdam onto Dresden in the opposite direction.
And what kind of car was it Rafe had said the witnesses had seen driving away after the firebombing of the duplex? A black Dodge Magnum, wasn’t it?
Uncertain Terms (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 12) Page 24
