We headed out just before lunch. By then, Carrie was ready for another nap, which she could take in the car while we drove, and we had enjoyed some time with her while she was awake and aware.
She was a beautiful baby, if I do say so myself. To me, she looked like Rafe, but with just enough of me that hopefully people wouldn’t wonder whether I was her mother. She had, as I mentioned, her daddy’s eyelashes—long and sooty—and her coloring was more like his than mine. Her hair was the same espresso color that Rafe’s is when he lets it grow. Usually he keeps it so short that it looks black, and it’s only when it gets a little length to it that the brown highlights come out. Carrie had those, and these cute, little curls that fit perfectly around my finger. And she’d been born with dark blue eyes, that everyone told me would probably change to brown as she got older. So far they hadn’t, and I kept wishing they wouldn’t, since my eyes are blue, and it would be nice to see a little of myself in her, too. And besides, they were amazing with her skin.
But she looked like a perfect little doll, with those big eyes, and that pink rosebud mouth, and a cute little nose. And truth be told, I was treating her kind of like that, too. Like we were playing dress-up with girly outfits and bows in her hair. She was making the trip in a tiny pink-and-white dress with white leggings, pink Mary Jane shoes, and a winter-white coat with puff-ball buttons. Rafe had rolled his eyes when he saw her—“That’s gonna last just until we get there,”—but at least she’d make a good impression when we carried her inside.
It’s a quick trip. The last-minute Christmas Eve shopping traffic made things slightly complicated until we’d passed the Cool Springs mall north of Franklin, but after that, it was smooth sailing the rest of the way. We got off at the Columbia exit and headed away from the interstate and south. Rafe drove, comfortably slouched back with one hand on the wheel. The baby snoozed in her car seat next to the presents. Christmas carols played softly on the radio, and I was looking around, at the blowup Santas and elves lying flat in the yards we passed.
“It looks like a massacre, doesn’t it? Like someone came in with an Uzi and mowed them all down.”
“I’m sure they’ll get inflated again when the owners come home,” Rafe said.
Well, of course they would. But in the meantime, they looked pitiful out there on the dry grass, among the dead leaves someone hadn’t raked.
We don’t usually have snow in Middle Tennessee for Christmas, and this year was no exception. It had snowed once, about a week ago, but the ground hadn’t been frozen enough for anything to stick, so while it had been nice to watch the snowflakes swirl in the air for the twenty minutes or so that the blizzard lasted, once they hit the warm ground, they melted.
We hadn’t done much in the way of decorating ourselves this year. Rafe had hung lights on the porch, and we had a wreath on the front door and electric candles in the windows, but that was pretty much it. We didn’t even have a tree. Rafe had asked me whether I wanted him to go get one, but since I hadn’t had the energy to deal with anything other than Carrie, I’d told him no.
“It’s going to be nice to see the mansion all decorated.”
He nodded. “Your mama always does a good job.”
“Next year, we’ll do more ourselves, too. Carrie will be old enough by then that she’ll notice what goes on around her. And I won’t be so tired all the time.”
He reached over and took my hand. “It’s all right, darlin’. I’ve got the two of you. I don’t care about a tree.”
Awww. I turned my hand and laced my fingers through his. And thought that yes, I had him and Carrie, too. But still, a tree might have been nice. I was looking forward to seeing my family’s trees, that I wouldn’t have to worry about taking down after the holidays.
About halfway between Columbia and Sweetwater, we passed the old Beulah’s Meat’n Three, a small cinderblock restaurant that had been there as long as I could remember. Until a couple of months ago, anyway, when Beulah Odom passed away one night. She left a will leaving the restaurant to her employee, Yvonne McCoy, an old friend of Rafe’s, and Dix’s, from high school.
However, Beulah’s sister-in-law and niece, Otis Odom’s wife and daughter, contested that will, and so the place had ended up being closed a lot longer than I think anyone wanted. I wasn’t sure exactly how the case stood at the moment. Between you, me, and the sleeping baby in the back seat, I suspected the Odoms of having poisoned Beulah to get their hands on the place, but as far as I knew, no charges had been filed. Maybe the police and sheriff’s office were still investigating. The Columbia chief of police had lost his job at the same time as all of this was going on, so things had been up in the air in that area for a while now. Columbia is the biggest town in Maury County, where Sweetwater is also located, and the Maury County sheriff, my mother’s boyfriend Bob Satterfield, had been filling in as interim chief of police since then. He might have been too busy juggling two jobs to have time to go after the Odoms.
Anyway, as we passed the place, the lights were on inside, and a string of small, colored lights hung under the eaves of the building. It’s hard to make a small, decrepit cinderblock shoebox look festive, but it was nice that someone had made the effort. I looked for the neon flickering OPEN on and off in the window, but couldn’t see it. There was a GRAND RE-OPENING SOON sign in the window, though.
“Do you know anything about that?” I asked Rafe as we zoomed by.
He glanced over and shook his head.
“You don’t talk to Yvonne?”
This time he glanced at me. “Why’d I talk to Yvonne?”
No reason. They’d been friends in school. More than friends on one occasion. But I guess she wouldn’t have any reason to be calling him in Nashville.
“I just thought maybe you’d heard something,” I said. “I mean, I know the judge in the civil trial ruled that the will was valid and the Odoms lost. But they were still trying to pin Beulah’s murder on Yvonne.”
“Alleged murder.”
Right. It wasn’t even clear whether there had been a murder. Maybe that was why the Odoms were still, presumably, walking around. After two different autopsies, the medical examiner still hadn’t been able to say conclusively that it hadn’t been natural causes.
I kind of hoped it had been. I was fine with murder if the murderer was brought to justice, but if he—or she or they—were left to wander free, I’d rather believe it had been a natural death and leave it at that.
I glanced at the lights disappearing in the rearview mirror. “The grand reopening probably won’t be today or tomorrow.”
Rafe shook his head. “Prob’ly not.”
“I guess we’ll have to wait until next time we’re in town.” I settled back into the seat as Beulah’s disappeared behind us.
“Anytime’s a good time for meat’n three,” Rafe said.
It isn’t a long drive from Beulah’s to the mansion. It sits on a little knoll outside Sweetwater proper, on the road to Columbia, so it was just a few minutes later that Rafe made the turn into the driveway.
It was still early, just past lunchtime, so it was just the caterer’s van and the decorators parked in the driveway. The usual Christmas topiaries flanked the wide staircase, and a wreath adorned each of the double front doors.
Carrie blinked her eyes open when I hauled her car seat out of the car and she felt the crisp air bite her cheeks. But after a second, she must have decided it wasn’t time to wake up yet, because she closed her eyes again and went back to sleep. I looped my arm through the handle and carried the seat and the baby up the few steps to the front door.
It was open, or unlocked, I should say. The caterers and decorators had probably been carrying things in and out, so it made sense to leave it unlocked. Nice to live in a place where you could do that and not worry.
Not that we had to worry much in Nashville, either. Everyone in the neighborhood knew who Rafe was, and that he was armed and had a license to kill, so to speak. Any troublemakers tended to give us and our house a wide berth. Although I still wouldn’t want to leave the door open.
And besides, anyone who opened Mother’s door had to deal with Pearl, and she was enough to strike fear into the heart of any burglar stupid enough to attempt to burgle the mansion.
Pearl was a pitbull terrier mix we had stumbled across at a crime scene up at the Devil’s Backbone a couple of months ago. She had taken to me, and I to her, so we had brought her back to Sweetwater with us, with the intention of taking her to Nashville when we left. But when it came time to go, Pearl had indicated that she preferred to stay with Mother. She might have been nice to have around the house in Nashville, actually—another deterrent, like Rafe and his license to kill—but I wasn’t going to force her. So we left her in Sweetwater with Mother and went home without her. Now we were back, and she was excited to see us. Her compact body came barreling down the hallway from the kitchen, and skidded into the front foyer, where she clipped the two-story Christmas tree. A few needles dropped, but nothing worse happened. Her deep barks reverberated under the high ceilings, and woke Carrie, who gave a startled squawk and began wailing.
“Ssssh!” I hissed, although I wasn’t sure whether I was talking to the baby or the dog. Carrie’s wails only made Pearl bark harder, and Mother’s antique glass Christmas tree ornaments jingled in the onslaught.
“Quiet!” Rafe roared from behind me. Pearl subsided with a startled yip, and even Carrie opened her eyes wide for a second. Then her little face scrunched up, and she went back to shrieking.
Mother burst out of the kitchen door at the end of the hall and came toward us, heels clacking on the hardwood floors. I handed the baby carrier to Rafe—with Pearl, I wasn’t sure how safe it would be to put it on the floor; she might want to investigate the small, shrieking thing—and squatted to try to calm her. “Hello, sweetheart. It’s good to see you again. Yes, it is.”
She stopped barking and started wiggling happily as I rubbed her short coat and compact body. Her stubby tail wagged furiously, and her jaws split in a doggy grin of welcome.
Rafe, meanwhile, slid Carrie out of the seat and put her against his shoulder. She hiccupped a couple of times, then stopped crying and started looking around, those big, blue eyes still swimming with tears. Until she caught sight of the Christmas tree, with all those bright lights and colorful bulbs, and then she made a sound I swear sounded like, “Oooh!”
Mother headed straight for her, and stared. Never mind me, her youngest daughter, or Rafe, the son-in-law she adored. All she had eyes for was the baby. Her voice was hushed. “She’s beautiful.”
Of course she was. “The dog scared her,” I said, and got to my feet with a last scratch behind Pearl’s ears. She looked up at me adoringly, pink tongue lolling. “You’ll have to keep her in the kitchen tonight, or she’ll scare everyone else, as well.”
She wasn’t the kind of elegant show hound you’d imagine Mother having, and when she came running hell for leather toward you, barking, I’d defy the strongest man to run for cover.
“She’s spending the night at Bob’s house,” Mother said. “It’ll be stressful for her otherwise.”
Never mind her. It would be stressful for the people who came to visit.
Although I totally got the concern. Pearl was protective. She’d feel she had to protect us from all the strangers coming and going. Every time the front door opened, she’d worry about another threat coming into the house. Much better for her to be tucked away somewhere out of range, with a chew toy and a bowl of food.
Of course, that does rather defeat the purpose of having a guard dog, if you won’t let it guard you, but I wasn’t really worried about the people of Sweetwater bursting into the mansion and holding us all hostage. And if they did, I figured between Rafe and Bob Satterfield, who would be here even if the dog wouldn’t, they’d figure it out.
Mother held her arms out. “May I?”
Rafe grinned. “Sure.” He passed the baby over. Mother tucked her into the crook of her arm, and they looked at one another.
After a second, Mother glanced at me. “She looks like you.”
If she said so. “I think she looks more like Rafe.” Or maybe Darcy, my half-sister, who was also Audrey’s daughter and thus Rafe’s… second cousin or something like that.
We’ve woven a pretty tangled web between us. And none of it our fault.
Mother shook her head. “She has your nose. And your eyes.”
“She’ll probably lose those,” I pointed out, since everyone had told me so.
“Maybe not.” Mother headed back down the hall toward the kitchen, still holding the baby. After a second, Pearl followed, her nails clicking on the hardwood.
I glanced at Rafe. He shrugged. “I’ll start hauling in the luggage.”
“I’ll help you,” I said.