The Phillips-Robinson funeral home consists of a couple of big, white, Southern-style buildings on Gallatin Road in Inglewood. There’s a Mexican restaurant across the street, a Smoothie King on the next corner, and a big pine tree on the lawn in front of the funeral home. It wasn’t decorated for the holidays yet, but a sign advertised a Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony the first week in December. By now, we were two days away from Thanksgiving, so the holidays were coming up quickly.
When I’d been here last year for Brenda Puckett’s funeral, the parking lot had been bumper to bumper, including vans from all the major networks. Brenda’s murder had been headline news.
Today, it was quiet. Half a dozen cars in the parking lot, nothing more. I pulled the Volvo into a space between a muscular truck with a trailer hitch and a bumper sticker that said “I’d rather be fishing,” and a late model BMW convertible with the roof up in spite of the bright sunshine.
“Ready?” I asked Mrs. Jenkins. She nodded.
I’d tried to make her look as presentable as possible for the occasion. Since she insisted on wearing one of her new housecoats, and since we had a limited number of them—and they don’t tend to come in mourning colors—I’d done the best I could under the circumstances. The housecoat was navy blue, with sprigs of white flowers. I had paired it with white socks and Keds, and the coat we’d bought yesterday. She looked... if not put together, at least clean and maintained.
The smallest viewing room wasn’t hard to find. It was the only one in use at the moment, and in spite of the small crowd, there was enough noise to point us in the right direction as soon as we came through the front doors into the building.
“This way.” I took hold of Mrs. Jenkins elbow. Not because she couldn’t find her own way—I assumed she could, since she wasn’t deaf—but the place was big, with lots of doors that all looked the same, and I didn’t want to lose her. Who knew: with her luck, she’d probably end up in the embalming room, or somewhere like that.
The small viewing room held less people than I would have expected from the noise. The half dozen cars in the parking lot had resulted in maybe eight people in the small room, and a couple of them were conversing loudly. Under other circumstances, I might even say they were arguing, but since I’d been here before, and had witnessed an actual screaming match over the coffin, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and just say they were talking loudly. They were certainly nowhere near as loud as Kenny and Stacy had been on that other occasion.
“...lucky we don’t sue!” one man proclaimed.
He was almost as tall as Rafe, and ten years ago, might have been as muscular. Now, he was just big, with a few extra pounds around the middle, straining the buttons of the blue shirt he wore under a navy blazer.
In a weird sort of optical illusion, another man stood behind him, contributing his own two cents along the same lines. He looked something like a pale copy, or maybe a shadow. Same face, approximately twenty pounds lighter, and dressed in a gray jacket with a paler gray shirt under it.
Twins. Angry twins.
The man they were yelling at, on our side of the casket, was shorter, slighter, and older, with a head full of salt-and-pepper hair. And a nicely modulated voice with an educated, clipped accent that held more than a hint of annoyance. “I wouldn’t recommend it. After all, who knows what might come out?”
When we walked in, they all turned to look at us. For a second, nobody said anything. The florid guy in the blue jacket, his color high, looked from me to Mrs. Jenkins and back, and his brother did the same.
However, it was salt-and-pepper who looked like he’d had the rug yanked out from under him. He flushed, and his mouth opened for a second before he hiked up his jaw again.
“I’m sorry to intrude,” I said, since my mother taught me to be polite in all circumstances, even when other people aren’t. “Is this the Bristol memorial?”
Nobody said anything, but a few people nodded.
“My grandmother-in-law was a friend,” I said, gesturing to Mrs. J. “She would like to pay her respects.”
They all stepped back from the casket. We stepped forward.
There wasn’t much to see. The coffin was white, and pretty plain. Someone either had simple tastes, or not much money. Or maybe hadn’t liked Beverly Bristol much.
The coffin was closed. I had thought maybe I’d get a look at Ms. Bristol, but I guess after a week, decomposition had probably started, and she might not have been a pleasant sight. The smell of lilies hung heavy in the air, masking—pretty well—the odor of anything else.
For a second or two, nothing happened. Then the guy with the salt-and-pepper hair murmured an “Excuse me,” and brushed past us. He headed out the door, and I heard the hard soles of his dressy shoes slap against the floor in the hallway. A second later, the front door opened and closed.
It was like the rest of the room took a breath, and the guy in the gray jacket and shirt, less florid than his brother, managed a smile that looked more like a grimace. “Sorry about that.”
I smiled back. “Family get-togethers can be fraught.”
His brother, in the blue jacket, muttered something, and Gray Jacket gave him a warning glance before turning back to me. “I’m afraid I didn’t catch your name.”
That would be because I hadn’t mentioned it. Of course I didn’t say so. “I’m sorry. I’m Savannah Martin. Collier. This is my grandmother-in-law, Mrs. Jenkins. She knew your grandmother.”
“Aunt,” Gray Jacket said.
“I’m sorry. Your Aunt Beverly.”
I smiled again. He didn’t.
It was awkward. Weird and awkward. I’m sure they didn’t mind us being here—why would they? They didn’t know us, and that’s what a memorial is for, isn’t it? But I also got the distinct impression that we weren’t welcome. Maybe they’d hoped to keep it to just the family. Or maybe they didn’t like strangers.
Maybe we made them feel as uncomfortable as they made us feel.
I felt like they were all looking at us, just waiting for us to vacate the room.
I glanced at Mrs. Jenkins. She was looking around curiously, her black eyes birdlike in her little, brown face. If she felt any discomfort, or any lack of welcome, it wasn’t apparent.
Maybe I was just imagining things. But it didn’t feel that way.
I took a step back, keeping my hand on Mrs. J’s arm. “I’m sorry for your loss. We’ll let you get on with it.”
Nobody said anything. Nobody asked why we were leaving so soon, or wondered why we weren’t staying longer.
I pulled Mrs. Jenkins out of the small visiting room and down the hall toward the front door. And I admit I held my breath until we reached the door to the outside and pushed it open. When it swung shut behind us, I felt like I could take the first full breath of air since I’d walked into the funeral home. “That was weird.”
Mrs. J didn’t say anything, just smiled at me.
“Did you get a chance to say goodbye to Ms. Bristol?” That’s why we’d come, and now I’d ruined it for her by yanking her out of there after just two minutes. Who knew, she might not have felt any discomfort at all. She might have wanted to stay. To commune further with the dead.
“Yes, baby.” She patted my arm.
“OK. Good.” I looked around the parking lot. It was still early. Too early for lunch. “Let’s go get some ice cream.”
It’s never too early for ice cream.
Mrs. Jenkins beamed, and trotted next to me toward the Volvo.
I’m not entirely sure what happened next. One second we were on our way across the parking lot. The next, we had to jump out of the way as the fancy BMW parked next to us zoomed backwards out of its slot and straight at us.
I shoved Mrs. Jenkins to the side while I did my best to scramble to safety myself. We both ended up on the cold blacktop. Mrs. Jenkins skidded and skinned her knees. I watched the rear of the BMW come closer and closer, absolutely sure it was going to hit me... but just before it did, it came to a halt, and then sped forward. It belched a cloud of exhaust that made my eyes water, and I wasn’t able to clear my vision again until the car had exited the parking lot and taken off south on Gallatin Road with a roar of the powerful engine.
Clearly the driver was upset.
I turned over on all fours and crawled the couple of feet to Mrs. Jenkins, who was looking dazed, bleeding from both knees. “Oh, my goodness. I’m so sorry.”
It was my fault, or at least to a degree. I’d pushed her out of the way of the car, and she’d fallen and hurt herself.
On the other hand, if we’d stayed where we were, the car would have hit us and we’d probably be hurt worse, so I couldn’t feel too bad about it.
I’d managed to land on my butt. I’m reasonably well padded there, so I figured I was OK, maybe except for some bruises. And the baby wasn’t hurt, which was the main thing. The stomach was absolutely fine.
Mrs. J’s knees weren’t. It was a good thing she was small and light, or I might not have been able to haul her to her feet. “Let me help you to the car.”
I put my arm around her and supported her as we hobbled toward the Volvo. “There’s a drugstore just down the street.” The BMW was probably passing it just about now. “We’ll stop there and get some Band Aids and Neosporin and get you fixed up. Then we’ll go find some ice cream. That’ll make you feel better.”
She patted my arm after I loaded her into the car and made sure her seatbelt was fastened. I figured she was just offering comfort. She did that. But when I looked at her, it turned out she had something to say. “Fesmire.”
I blinked. “Excuse me?” It sounded like something out of Harry Potter. Maybe some sort of healing spell.
Although it did sound familiar. It took me a few seconds to place it. “Doctor Fesmire? Alton Fesmire? From where you live?” Or used to live.
She nodded.
“In the BMW?”
She looked blank at that. Maybe she didn’t know what a BMW looked like. “In the car? The one that ran us down?”
Mrs. Jenkins nodded.
Interesting. I chewed on it as I closed her door and made my way around the hood of the Volvo to the driver’s side door. “Are you sure?”
She shrugged. So maybe she wasn’t sure. Or maybe she just didn’t want to talk about it.
I started the car and rolled out of the parking lot. Two minutes later, we parked in front of the drugstore and headed in. I would have left Mrs. J in the car—her knees had to be painful, and she didn’t need to be there for me to buy Band Aids and Neosporin—but I was afraid I’d come back out and find her gone. So I made her come inside with me. There were chairs in the pharmacy waiting area, so I used one of those to smear a generous layer of cream across each knee before I covered them with the biggest Band Aids I could find.
As a side note, the Band Aid industry hasn’t graduated to skin-coordinated products yet. The pale Band Aids stood out distinctly against Mrs. Jenkins’s brown skin. Although when she stood up, the bottom of the blue housecoat fell to cover her knees, so I guess it was OK. Still, someone should go into business making Band Aids for people who aren’t pale peach.
I paid for the products I’d used, and we hobbled back out. “Ice cream next,” I told Mrs. Jenkins, and she beamed at me from the passenger seat.
There’s a place a bit farther north into Inglewood that has homemade ice cream, so we headed there. And while we drove, I pulled out my phone and called my husband. “Tell me about Doctor Fesmire.”
“Scuse me?”
“Doctor Fesmire,” I said. “Alton Fesmire. The guy from the nursing home. What does he look like?”
There was a moment of silence. “You looking to leave me for a doctor, darlin’?”
“No,” I said. “Your grandmother mentioned him. After someone tried to run us over in the parking lot of the funeral home.”
The silence this time was fraught. I sighed. “How about I start from the beginning?”
“How about you do.” His voice was dangerous.
“I’m not sure it was deliberate. But I don’t know that it wasn’t, either. Anyway, we went there. For Beverly Bristol’s funeral. The visitation started at ten. We got there maybe a quarter after. It was a small crowd.” I told him about parking next to the BMW. “When we went inside, a couple of people were arguing. This big, burly guy whose suit was too tight. His brother, who looks just like him, except he weighs less. And this older guy with salt-and-pepper hair.”
“Fesmire has gray hair,” Rafe said.
“Dark, going gray and white?”
He made a noise that sounded like agreement.
“Small, spare guy? Well dressed? Drives a navy BMW?”
“I can call the DMV and find out what he drives,” Rafe said. I opened my mouth, but he was already gone. I put the phone on speaker and dropped it in my lap, and concentrated on driving.
He came back on a minute later. “BMW convertible.” He rattled off the license plate number. A couple of digits sounded familiar.
“I was too busy getting out of the way to remember it all,” I told him, as I kept a steady course toward the coffee shop with the homemade ice cream. By now we were so close I could practically taste it. “But that sounds right. And it was definitely a navy blue BMW convertible with an older man with gray hair inside.” Or at least it was a reasonable conclusion. The man with the gray hair had left the funeral home, and the BMW had started moving a minute or two later. I hadn’t gotten a good look at the driver—too busy scrambling—but the guy with the gray hair hadn’t been anywhere else that I’d seen. And it made sense that he might have sat in the car for a minute gathering himself before he started the engine. He’d seemed rattled when he left. “Your grandmother mentioned Doctor Fesmire.”
“Then I’m sure she saw him,” Rafe said. “You both all right?”
I saw the revolving sign of the coffee shop up ahead. “We’re fine. I have some bruising on my rear end, but at least I didn’t land on my stomach. And your grandmother skinned both her knees. We stopped at the drugstore and fixed her up. Now we’re having ice cream.”
I flipped on my turn signal and waited for a break in traffic before pulling the car into the parking lot next to a small, red Mazda Miata. It looked familiar.
“Everything is fine,” I added. “He probably didn’t even realize we were there. He was upset. Beverly Bristol’s nephews had just threatened to sue him for negligence. He was probably too angry to pay attention.”
“That’s no excuse,” Rafe told me, but he sounded a little calmer. “Where are you?”
I told him where we were. The coffee shop is literally just three minutes from the TBI building. “You can come down here if you want. I think Alexandra Puckett’s here, too. At least there’s a car like hers in the lot.” And she lived just a few minutes up the street and down on the other side. “Are she and Jamal still together?”
Jamal’s one of the TBI recruits Rafe’s training. He and the late Brenda Puckett’s daughter had hooked up at Rafe’s and my wedding back in June. I hadn’t seen Alexandra for a few months, though, so I wasn’t sure whether that was over by now or not.
Rafe made some sort of non-committal noise. “Stay there.”
I had no plans of moving again until I’d devoured a triple-scoop of ice cream to settle my nerves, and told him so. He had plenty of time to throw himself on the bike or into a car and make it down here.
“Ready?” I asked Mrs. Jenkins.
She nodded, already smacking her lips in anticipation. We’d been here before, and it was obvious she recognized it.
So we climbed out of the car, careful of our cuts and bruises, and headed into the mid-century building with the checkerboard of black and white stone walls.
It used to be a bank. They use the old vault to make the ice cream now, and the drive-through window—for the coffee—is where people used to deposit and withdraw money. A heavy, old safe sits right inside the door, with a succulent garden on top of it.
While Mrs. Jenkins zeroed in on the ice cream counter, I looked around the room, at the dozen or so tables and chairs ranged where the banker’s cubicles used to be. It didn’t come as a surprise to see Alexandra Puckett’s jet-black hair bent over a cell phone a few tables away.
She was alone. Could be deliberate, or she could be waiting for someone.
I peeled my eyes, but wasn’t able to X-ray vision my way through the tabletop to determine whether she was still pregnant. Unless she’d done something about it, she should be, but that didn’t mean anything.
“What can I get you?” the barista’s voice interrupted my train of thought, and I turned back to the ice cream counter. Mrs. Jenkins ordered her triple scoop of chocolate, chocolate chip, and coffee, and the barista got busy scooping.
“What about you?” she asked me.
I hesitated, but only a moment. “Double mocha chocolate chunk.” The delicious odor of coffee hung heavy in the air, and since I couldn’t have any, I needed something to take my mind off it.
And anyway, dairy. Good for the baby.
Clutching our ice cream—Mrs. Jenkins was already digging into hers—we crossed the floor toward the tables. And toward Alexandra. She didn’t notice me until I said her name, and then she looked up with a guilty start.
“Oh,” she said after a second. “It’s you.”
It was me. “Who were you expecting?” After a second, I added, “Are you supposed to be in school?”
She rolled her eyes. She wore less makeup now than when I’d first met her a year ago, right after Brenda’s murder, but her eyes were still heavily outlined in black. “Are you my mother?”
I wasn’t. “Just concerned,” I said.
“Well, I’m not supposed to be in school. We’re off this week. For Thanksgiving.”
Nice work if you can get it. When I went to school, we didn’t get the whole week of Thanksgiving off. But then my parents had kept us in public school, while Alexandra went to a very exclusive girls’ school—and by exclusive I mean expensive—where maybe a lot of the families traveled for Thanksgiving and needed a little extra time.
Anyway, it was apparently OK for her to be here at eleven on a Tuesday in November.
“You remember Rafe’s grandmother?” I nodded to Mrs. Jenkins, who was busy spooning up chocolate chip. “Here. Have a seat.”
I pulled out the chair at the table next to Alexandra’s. They were small two-tops, suitable for romantic tête-à-têtes, but not bigger groups. Mrs. Jenkins dropped down and put her ice cream on the table.
“You look nice,” Alexandra said, looking me up and down.
Since I hadn’t been able to make Mrs. Jenkins as presentable as I would have liked, I’d gone out of my way to look presentable myself. Black wrap dress, black boots. Very somber. “Thank you,” I said. “Funeral.”
Alexandra’s lips turned down. “I’m sorry. Were you close?”
“A friend of Mrs. Jenkins’,” I said. “I didn’t know her. She fell down the stairs at the nursing home last week and broke her neck.”
“That’s horrible.”
I guess it was. Not as horrible as Julia Poole getting her throat cut, but I didn’t bring that up, since I didn’t want to remind Alexandra of her mother’s death.
“Anyway,” I said, “we decided to treat ourselves to some ice cream after the visitation.”
Alexandra nodded.
“Is that coffee?” I glanced at the cup in front of her. It was orange, waxed cardboard, and had her name scrawled on it in black marker.
She looked like she wanted to roll her eyes again, but thought better of it. One hand closed around it, sort of protectively; the nails painted black. Maybe she was afraid I’d try to take it from her. “No. Hot chocolate.”
Then she might still be pregnant.
Another second, and she confirmed it. “I’m off coffee. Remember?”
“I wasn’t sure,” I said. “I can’t see below the table.”
She scooted out of the bench and stood up to reveal a distinct baby bump under a tight, black turtleneck. Twisting back and forth to give me the full, left-to-right view, she told me, “Five months.”
“Good for you. Everything OK?”
She nodded, and fitted herself into the bench again. “Everything’s fine. I had an ultrasound last week. They think it’s a boy.”
“Nice to know ahead of time.”
She looked at my stomach. “Don’t you know?” The implication was that since she did, I certainly should.
“The baby wasn’t cooperative,” I said. “I guess we’ll be surprised.”
I put my hand on the back of the empty chair across from her. “Are you waiting for someone?”
She shook her head. “Have a seat.”
I did. “Rafe’s on his way. We had a small accident in the parking lot of the funeral home—a car didn’t see us, and knocked us down—and he wants to stop by and make sure we’re both—all three—all right.”
“Always nice to see your husband,” Alexandra said with a grin. Like Tim, she’s had a crush on Rafe since she first met him, shortly after her mother was killed last fall.
I dug my spoon into the ice cream and looked at her from under my lashes. “Are you and Jamal still... um...?”
Her face closed. “He’s been coming to some of the doctor’s appointments. He was there for the ultrasound last week.”
“So you’re keeping him up to date on what’s going on.”
“It’s his baby, too,” Alexandra said. “I don’t know whether he’s going to want anything to do with the baby once he’s born. Or with me. But I let him know what’s going on. Once the baby’s born, he can decide whether he wants any part of being a father or not. If not, he can sign away his rights, as far as I’m concerned.”
As far as I was concerned, too. If he wasn’t going to step up from the beginning, I wouldn’t want him coming back three—or ten, or twenty—years later, trying to lay a claim.
Then again, Jamal was only twenty-one or so. Young. And immature. I guess, even if he didn’t feel mature enough to be a father right now, he should still have the right to change his mind later.
On the other hand, Alexandra didn’t have a choice. She had to dredge up that maturity from somewhere, whether she wanted to or not. And it sounded like she had.
“It sounds like you’ve worked things out,” I said.
She shrugged. “The baby’s coming in April. I’ll have enough time to graduate with my class in May. I hope. And next year, I’ll go to college somewhere around here, so the baby can go to daycare while I take classes. My dad said he’d help out.”
That was good to know. Not that I’d had any doubt. Steven Puckett loved Alexandra and her brother Austin, and I’d never doubted that he’d step up and support her, no matter what she decided to do.
The front door opened, and Alexandra glanced in that direction. “Here’s your husband.”
Then her voice changed. “And he brought a friend.”
He had. Jamal, to be specific. Who looked just as uncomfortable about unexpectedly coming face to face with Alexandra as she looked about coming face to face with him.
For a second, I thought he was going to turn around and run. Then he visibly squared his shoulders. And across the table, Alexandra braced herself.
I looked at my husband. He arched a brow back before saying a few words to Jamal. Jamal beelined for the coffee counter, while Rafe sauntered across the floor to us.
“Darlin’.” He slipped a hand down the back of my hair to curl around my neck before he bent and gave me a lingering kiss. I could hear Alexandra sigh on the other side of the table. And then I didn’t hear anything else until he stopped and the hand dropped from my neck.
“Hi.” I smiled up at him, still dazzled after all this time.
He winked at Alexandra, and then he went down on one knee in front of his grandmother. “You all right?”
She nodded, and patted him on the cheek. “You’re a good boy, worrying about your mama.”
He was Tyrell today, it seemed. I guess that made me LaDonna. I wondered who Mrs. Jenkins though Alexandra was. Or whether she was even aware of Alexandra.
“Savannah said you hurt your knees.”
Mrs. J nodded and pulled her housedress up to show him. “We went to the doctor.”
We hadn’t, but it amounted to the same thing, I guess. “It isn’t bad,” I told him. “She skinned her knees when she fell. I landed on my butt. You can check that later.”
“Don’t think I won’t.” He got to his feet and pulled an empty chair over from a nearby table, and straddled it. “That looks good.”
He was looking at my ice cream.
“It is,” I said.
He grinned. “You ain’t gonna share?”
“You’re seriously going to take ice cream out of your pregnant wife’s mouth?”
But I handed the cup over, and watched him scoop a couple of spoonfuls into his mouth before he handed it back. “Thanks, darlin’.”
“No problem,” I said. “You really didn’t have to stop doing whatever you were doing to come check on us, you know. I told you we were fine.”
“We needed some coffee,” Rafe said, with a look at Jamal, who was waiting patiently at the counter. He had a cardboard container with two cups in front of him. And he must have ordered more, because he was still standing there. “Tell me again what happened at the funeral home.”
“Not much. We arrived. They were arguing. One of Beverly Bristol’s nephews told Fesmire he was lucky they didn’t sue. The nursing home, I guess. I can see their point. I mean, she was supposed to be safe there. Someone was supposed to make sure she didn’t hurt herself. And then she fell down the stairs and broke her neck.”
Rafe nodded. “And Fesmire said...?”
“Something about that maybe not being a good idea. Then he turned around and saw us. And stared at your grandmother for a moment before he left. We stayed another minute, but it was awkward, so we left again, too. When we got halfway across the parking lot, the BMW backed out of the parking space and clipped us.”
“And he didn’t stop.”
I shook my head. “He drove away. Chances are he didn’t even see us. I mean, he’s a doctor, right? If he thought someone was hurt, don’t you think he’d stop and check?”
“Unless he was trying to run you down,” Alexandra contributed from the other side of the table. She was very carefully not looking in Jamal’s direction. At all.
“But if he was trying to run us down, don’t you think he’d stop and make sure he had?”
Alexandra shrugged. “Maybe he wanted to scare you, and he wanted you to think it might have been an accident but it wasn’t.”
Maybe. Maybe not. It was all very confusing. And I found it very hard to believe that a respected medical doctor—and I had to assume he was respected; he was still licensed, right?—would go around running people down.
“Are you going to talk to him?” I asked Rafe.
“Eventually. Right now I’m just keeping an eye on him.”
From here?
Who he was keeping an eye on, was Jamal. A third cup of coffee appeared in the cardboard container, and Rafe got to his feet. “Time to go.”
“Only three cups?” I said, as Jamal picked up the cardboard container with a smile for the barista. She was young and pretty, and Alexandra watched with a stony face.
“José and Clayton are sitting on Fesmire,” Rafe explained.
José and Clayton are the other two rookies. The last coffee must be for Wendell, who keeps them all—including Rafe—in check.
“What are you afraid he’s going to do?”
“No idea,” Rafe said, as he pushed the other chair back under the other table, “but if he tried to run into you on purpose, he could be doing something.”
He could. Although he’d probably just go to work and spend the rest of the day there.
Rafe nodded when I said so. “Long day for Clayton, then.”
Clayton must be sitting on the nursing home. I guess that meant José was hanging out outside—and maybe inside—Fesmire’s home.
“Where does he live?”
Rafe contemplated me in silence for a moment. “Not sure I should be telling you that.”
“I’m not going there,” I said.
He arched a brow.
“I’m not!” I was extremely pregnant, and babysitting his grandmother. It wasn’t like I’d risk either of them by doing a spot of breaking and entering on Doctor Fesmire’s place. Especially if Rafe had already sent José to do just that.
“He has a house in Franklin,” Rafe said. “José’s on his way there. Clayton’s on his way to Brentwood. They’ll both check in when they get there. Should be another five minutes for Clayton and maybe fifteen for José.”
“Let me know if they discover anything interesting.”
Rafe said he would. “What’re you three up to?”
I glanced at Alexandra. “We’ll stay here a little longer and talk. Then I guess we’ll go home and watch more TV.”
My life was becoming about food and TV. I almost wished I could go to Franklin and break into Doctor Fesmire’s house just for something to do.
Although if José was there, I wasn’t likely to get within three feet of the door anyway.
“I’ll check in later.” Rafe dropped a kiss on my lips, another on the top of his grandmother’s head, and winked at Alexandra across the table. “Be good.”
She sighed as he sauntered off. “Why can’t all guys be like that?”
“I have no idea,” I said, as Jamal gave her a tentative nod as they headed for the door, and she gave him a grimace back. It might have been mistaken for a smile if you felt charitable. “But I don’t think Jamal’s a bad guy. He signed on for law enforcement. That says something. He wants to keep people safe.”
Alexandra shrugged. But I noticed she watched him until they had gotten inside the white TBI van parked outside—Rafe was driving—and had peeled out of the parking lot. Doctor Fesmire had nothing on my husband. I hoped the lids were on the coffee cups, or Jamal was likely to arrive back at the TBI building drenched in coffee.