Catherine and Jonathan, with their three children, live in one of the newer family-focused subdivisions on the outskirts of Sweetwater. It’s full of big brick McMansion-type family homes, with front-facing garages, small front yards, and privacy-fences in the back, surrounding the requisite trampoline and jungle-gym equipment. All of it along 15 mph winding roads where the kiddies can learn to skateboard or ride bikes without fear of being run down by speeding drivers.
It had taken us about ten minutes to get here, and now we were creeping along at a snail’s pace while Pearl was peering out the window, grinning.
I don’t know what she was grinning at, because there was very little to see. It was dark, and too late for any kids to be out playing. They were probably inside their respective homes, behind their lighted windows, either doing homework, playing video games, or getting ready for bed. We’d met two cars and seen one jogger since we entered the subdivision, but that was all. Nonetheless, Pearl was watching the world go by with a big canine grin. Maybe she knew we were going to see Mother, or maybe she just liked being in the car.
Rafe pulled up to the curb outside Catherine and Jonathan’s place, where Mother’s Cadillac was parked in the driveway. He cut the engine and opened the door. “You get the dog. I’ll get the baby.”
It made more sense for me to get the baby and him to get the dog, since he could walk around the front of the car to the front door where the dog was, and I could walk around the back of the car to the back door where the baby was. But the baby with carrier weighed more, and I didn’t have to carry the dog, so I guess that was his thinking. And either way, it made no difference to me. “Sure.”
We got our respective burdens and hoofed it up the driveway and across the grass to the front door, where I put my finger on the doorbell.
The summons was answered with excited shrieks and the pounding of what sounded like an army of small feet. It wasn’t an army, but when the door was yanked open and I looked down into the delighted face of one of my small nephews, he turned out to be accompanied not just by his own sister and brother, but Dix’s two little girls, too.
“Aunt Savannah!” They beamed at me. And looked past me. “Uncle Rafe! You brought Pearl!”
Pearl was clearly more exciting than either of us, including Carrie. Although I must admit that my heart melted a little when my nephew called my husband ‘Uncle.’ I know that that’s what he was, technically—my husband would be my sister’s children’s uncle—but my instinct was still to be delighted any time anyone in my vicinity said or did anything that made it clear that Rafe was accepted and valued as part of the family.
I glanced at him as the children all fell on Pearl with exclamations of joy. He glanced back, a corner of his mouth curved up. And then he glanced down at the kids, swarming around his legs and the dog. “This OK?”
“It seems to be.” Pearl didn’t seem to be in any danger of devouring any of them. She had a gentle heart, but had had a tough life that had given her some scary habits, so I was never entirely sure how she’d handle the situations that came her way.
At this point, Jonathan wandered into the hallway and surveyed the churning mass of children and dog outside his front door. He arched his brows and put his hands on his hips.
“Move on inside,” I told the kids before Jonathan could say anything. “We’re letting all the warm air out.”
I moved forward, and they moved back, swarming into the hallway. Rafe brought Carrie inside, and we were finally able to close the door behind us. Jonathan nodded to Rafe and turned to me. “Something wrong?”
I shook my head. “We drove over to the sheriff’s house so Pearl could visit with Mother. He said she was here. We decided to stop by.”
Jonathan didn’t seem to think this was strange at all. “Your mother’s in the family room with Catherine. The kids and I are upstairs.”
In the media room above the garage, I assumed. Where the big TV and toys were.
“And Dix?”
“On a date,” Jonathan said. “We’re kid-sitting.”
He turned to Rafe. “Up or down?”
My husband smiled. “I’m just gonna go say hello to Margaret Anne. Gotta rack up those points when I can. I’ll be up after.”
“Beer’s in the fridge,” Jonathan said and turned so he could shoo the kids ahead of him toward the stairs. Little Cole, the youngest of their three, dug his heels in.
“I want Pearl to come!”
“I’ll bring her with me later,” Rafe told him. “She came to see your grandma, so we gotta do that first.”
Little Cole looked mutinous. “Then I wanna go see Grandma, too. And stay with Pearl.”
Jonathan shrugged. “Have at it.” He left Cole there and ushered the other kids—Cole’s siblings Robert and Annie, and Dix’s daughters Abigail and Hannah—toward the stairs.
They headed up while I handed Pearl’s leash to Cole. “Here. You can take her in to your grandmther while we take our jackets off.”
Cole beamed, and then shrieked as Pearl saw her opportunity to take off down the hallway once I relinquished her leash. Cole held on, and slid after her in his stocking feet, like a slightly wobbly water skier. Pearl’s nails scrabbled on the wood floors.
“Slow down!” Jonathan bellowed after them, but of course Pearl didn’t listen, and Cole had no way to stop her. She weighed more than he did, and was solid muscle. All Cole could do was hang on.
They disappeared through the door into the kitchen with Jonathan in pursuit. Cole’s shrieks of laughter faded behind the wall.
“Oops,” I said.
Rafe shrugged. “They’ll be fine. I’m sure the house is child-proof.”
It probably was. Although maybe not dog proof.
If anything needed doing, Jonathan would take care of it, though. I shrugged out of my winter coat and handed it to Rafe, who put it next to his own in the closet before he picked up the car seat with Carrie. “Go on.”
I went, down the hallway where Cole had slid, through the door to the kitchen and into the family room, where Pearl was trying to express her love for Mother with a series of exuberant tongue-swipes.
Mother sputtered. “Down, Pearl! Down!”
Pearl dropped to her haunches and sat there, quivering with mad joy while she grinned at Mother.
“Good girl,” Mother managed, and swiped one hand over her shiny face while she extended the other to pat Pearl’s huge head. “Good girl.”
Cole giggled. Catherine’s lips twitched, but she managed to hold back her own, no doubt hysterical, laughter.
I let Rafe approach with Carrie while I detoured into the kitchen, snagged a paper towel from the roll, ran it through a small trickle of water, and brought it into the family room. “Here.”
Mother took it and dabbed gently on her complexion. “Thank you, Savannah.”
“No problem.” I dropped down next to Catherine on the sofa and exchanged a glance with her while Mother was hidden behind the paper towel. Both of us were on the verge of losing our cool.
“Sorry, Margaret.” Jonathan gathered up Cole and the dog, and took them both through the kitchen and out. “Join us when you’re ready,” he told Rafe over his shoulder.
My husband nodded and put the baby carrier down where Mother could see it. “Coming.”
He winked at me, grinned at Catherine, and patted Mother on the shoulder before sauntering out. He didn’t stop at the refrigerator for that beer Jonathan had told him was there, so he must have decided he didn’t want one.
When his footsteps had faded up the stairs, Mother folded the moist paper towel delicately into a square and deposited it just on the edge of a tray sitting on the coffee table. The tray was glazed ceramic, so the towel wasn’t likely to bother it.
“Sorry about that,” I said.
“It wasn’t your fault, darling,” Mother told me.
Catherine cleared her throat. “Sorry.” I could hear a little of the suppressed laughter in her voice, but she kept a straight face. “My son, my fault.”
“My dog,” I said. “I was the one who handed him the leash.”
“My dog,” Mother corrected. “Although I appreciate your taking care of her. It’s easier to settle into Bob’s house without her.”
No doubt. While Pearl loves Mother with single-minded passion, she’s less enamored with the sheriff. Not that she growls at him or anything. She just likes him less than she does Mother. And the change of scenery might be tough for her, just a couple of months after being moved from the underside of Robbie Skinner’s trailer and to the Martin Mansion. Better for everyone concerned to just keep her where she is for the time being.
I wiggled a little further into the sofa. “We stopped by and he told us you were here.”
“You should have told me you were coming,” Mother said, “and I would have stayed there. But Todd stopped by, and wanted to talk to Bob in private, so I decided to make myself scarce for a while.”
“Is something wrong? With Todd, I mean?”
“Not that I know about,” Mother said, and leaned back in the chair. “Is something wrong with you?”
“Of course not. Why would you…? Oh, because we came to see you? No, nothing’s wrong. Rafe told me that he’s going to be working with the sheriff for a while, on loan from the Columbia PD—” Where he was, technically, on loan from the TBI, although no one but the family, Grimaldi, and Sheriff Satterfield knew that, “and I didn’t want to wait until he comes home tomorrow night to hear the scoop about the case.”
“What scoop?” Catherine wanted to know. “What case?”
I turned to her. “They’ve found Katie Graves. Or what’s left of her.”
Catherine stared at me, her mouth open, as all the color drained out of her face.
My brother Dix and I take after Mother’s family, the Georgia Calverts. We’re both on the tall side, with fair hair and blue eyes. Catherine looks more like our father and the Martins: shorter, rounder, and with dark hair and gray eyes. Her skin is usually more on the sallow side, a legacy of our great-great-however-many-greats-grandmother Caroline—baby Carrie’s namesake—who had an affair with one of the grooms while her husband was off fighting the Damn Yankees.
But I digress. Catherine was pale. Paler than she usually is. “Katie?” she said. “They’ve found Katie?”
I nodded. And between you and me, if I’d realized she was going to take it the way she did, I would have tempered my language a little when I told her the news. Maybe not used the expression ‘what’s left of her.’
“I hadn’t heard anything about that,” Mother said, with a faint frown. Faint because frowning can cause wrinkles, and my mother doesn’t want them. As an aside, she looks damn good for fifty-nine-and-a-half.
“I don’t think it’s a secret,” I said. At least Rafe hadn’t acted like it was. Once they started investigating tomorrow, word would get around quickly, anyway. “Although I don’t think it’s common knowledge yet, either.”
“What happened?” Mother asked, while Catherine still just sat there and stared at me like she’d seen a ghost. Or heard about one.
“To Katie? I don’t think anyone knows. But she obviously didn’t run away. Or if she did, she didn’t get far.”
Neither of them spoke, and I added, “She was found up in the hills near the Devil’s Backbone back in November.”
“The Devil’s Backbone?” Mother repeated, with another faint frown line between her brows.
“The ridge of hills to the west of Columbia. Where the Skinners lived.” And died.
Mother knew about the murders, of course—everyone did—since Rafe had been down here investigating them. And since that kind of thing doesn’t happen in our quiet county with much regularity. Or at all.
Catherine made a little sound, and I turned to her. She stared back at me, a hand covering her mouth.
“Are you going to be sick?” I asked, worried.
She shook her head. “She was found on the Skinners’ property?”
“That’s what Rafe said. That one of the ATF agents who was up there looking at the pot houses found—” What was left of her.
I amended it on the fly to, “—her bones.”
“Dear me,” Mother said faintly. Catherine went from sallow to faintly green.
“Sorry.” Sheesh. I’d had no idea they were so sensitive. And what did they expect, after fifteen or sixteen years? Of course there was nothing left but bones.
I gave them a few seconds for their stomachs to settle, and then I added, “The sheriff sent the bones to the lab back in November. With the holidays, I guess they didn’t get around to testing them until now.”
“But it’s definitely Katie?”
I’d asked Rafe the same thing. “I think so. But I didn’t get a chance to ask the sheriff, because Todd was there. I guess Rafe will get all the details tomorrow.” And then I’d get them from him.
“Did he know Katie Graves?” Mother asked as, down in the baby seat, Carrie kicked her legs.
I shook my head. “They went to school together, but she was a year older than him, and he said she didn’t pay him no… um… any attention.”
Mother gave me a look, and I smiled apologetically. My husband’s language is a bit more colorful than mine, in several different ways, and sometimes I quote him. “No,” I said now, “he didn’t know her personally.”
Mother nodded, and it might have been my imagination, but I thought she looked relieved. Maybe, like me, she’s always worried that someone will come along and accuse him of something.
“You went to school with Katie,” I turned to Catherine, “didn’t you?”
She looked at me for a second before she nodded. “Rafe was a year below me and Dix a year below him. You were still in middle school.”
Yes, thank you. I knew that. “Did you know her? Beyond just going to school with her?”
There was another slight pause, like it took a few extra seconds for her to process anything I said. Or as if she had to think about it. “Not well. She was from Columbia, I was from Sweetwater. I already had my circle of friends by the time we got to high school. She did, too. But we had some classes together. I guess we spoke once in a while.”
So nothing to really explain the green tinge to her skin, or the shock. But maybe she just had a squeamish stomach and didn’t like the idea of Katie rotting up in the hills all these years. Hard to blame her for that. I didn’t much like the idea, either.
Or maybe something else was going on, that I didn’t know about. Like, there was another reason why her stomach was extra sensitive.
“You aren’t pregnant, are you?”
Her eyes widened, and she dropped the hand from her mouth. “Have you lost your mind? Of course not!”
“It’s not a crazy idea,” I said. “You’re only thirty-two. It’s been almost four years since Cole was born. If you were going to have any more children, now would be time to have them.” Before either she or Cole got much older.
“You don’t think three is enough?”
Three was enough. If she wanted it to be enough.
Catherine shook her head. “I’m not pregnant. From here on out, I think any new grandchildren will be on you and Rafe. I’m pretty sure Dix and I are done.”
“Dix might want another child. When…” I caught myself and changed it to, “if he finds someone else and they get serious about each other.”
Mother gave me a fishy stare, like she suspected I knew something she didn’t. Which I was pretty sure I did. Dix and Tamara Grimaldi were working on some kind of relationship. I wasn’t entirely sure what kind of relationship it was, but I thought it was romantic. Although I wasn’t sure Mother had caught on, and I certainly didn’t want to be the person to let the cat out of the bag.
“Well,” I said, “he’s on a date, isn’t he? Jonathan said that’s why you’re babysitting.”
Catherine nodded. “I wouldn’t expect any babies from that union, though.”
Oh, really? “Who’s he out with?” It wasn’t Todd, since Todd had been at his daddy’s house. Maybe Darcy, our half-sister, who also happened to be the receptionist at Dix’s law firm?
“Charlotte,” Catherine said.
My jaw dropped, and it took me a few seconds to find my voice. “My Charlotte? Charlotte Albertson? Whitaker? That Charlotte? Dix is on a date with her?”
Catherine nodded.
“But she’s married!” I said.
Yes, she’d been in Sweetwater on her own since just after Christmas, with her two kids but not her husband. Although there could be all sorts of reasons for that, not necessarily that they were having marital problems. Maybe one of her parents was sick. Or maybe she’d just wanted to give the kids some extra time with their grandparents. I had no idea what was going on, honestly, since Charlotte hadn’t seemed inclined to talk to me about it. I’d reached out a couple times, but she’d always had an excuse for why she couldn’t get together.
And now she was on a date with my brother?
“Why would Dix agree to go out with her?”
“You’d have to ask him,” Mother said, and from the set of her lips I deduced she wasn’t any happier about this than I was.
Here’s the thing. I loved Charlotte—who had been my best friend through elementary school, middle school, and high school, when she had dated Dix while I’d dated Todd. I wanted her to be happy. I certainly wouldn’t have had a problem with her dating Dix under other circumstances. I hadn’t minded when they dated in high school. But at this point I’d invested a lot in the Dix/Grimaldi relationship, and the last thing I wanted was for Charlotte to get in the way of that.
Plus, she already had a husband. The least she could do was get rid of him first, before she started looking for another.
“Maybe she’s just trying to talk him into hiring her for the office,” Catherine said, but in a tone that made it doubtful.
“Is she still doing that?” She’d done it a couple of weeks ago, when she’d first arrived back in Sweetwater, but I’d assumed, after Dix explained to her that Darcy isn’t just the receptionist but our sister, that she’d have stopped angling for Darcy’s job.
“She’s angling for something,” Catherine said. “But I’m not sure what it is.”
Me either. Especially since there weren’t any other jobs to be had at Martin and McCall. The staff consists of Darcy, Dix, Jonathan, and Catherine, when she isn’t taking care of kids. All family members. Three lawyers plus a paralegal-slash-receptionist. I had no idea what Charlotte thought she could do around the office, without any kind of legal background. They could make their own coffee, and Darcy already did the filing.
Mother muttered something, which isn’t like her. I glanced at her, but she was bent over the baby seat, lifting Carrie out, and I couldn’t see her face. “Hello, there,” she cooed at my daughter, “aren’t you pretty?”
Carrie has her father’s dark, curly hair and dusky skin, but long-lashed eyes of a startling clear blue that she either got from me and the Georgia Calverts, or from Rafe’s mother LaDonna. Either way, Carrie looks just like a doll. And is, in fact, very pretty.
I let Mother focus on her and turned my attention back to my sister. “Rafe and the sheriff are starting to work the case tomorrow. By now, it’s obvious that Katie didn’t run away, so I guess they’ll have to try to figure out what happened to her.”
“They tried that sixteen years ago,” Catherine said. “If they couldn’t do it then, what makes them think they can now?”
I had no idea, but cold cases do get solved sometimes. It was possible that this would be one of them.
If nothing else, at least they could stop trying to figure out whether she’d left on her own or not, since it was pretty clear that she hadn’t.
Unless she had left on her own, for whatever reason, and had ended up near the Devil’s Backbone. And had broken her leg or something like that, out there in the woods, and had starved to death in the Skinners’ back forty.
Part of me thought I’d almost rather have it be quick and brutal. Someone took her, and killed her. She didn’t suffer for interminable days or weeks by herself, out in the wilderness, hoping against hope that someone would come by and find her before it was too late.
“Now you’re turning green,” Catherine observed. “You OK?”
I nodded. “Just had an uncomfortable thought. I should know better than to let my mind wander like that.”
Catherine arched her brows, but didn’t ask me to elaborate. I was grateful, since I didn’t want to think about it anymore. “How are you doing?” she asked instead, and I was happy to accept the change of subject.
“We’re fine. Rafe’s all healed after the fire.” He’d gotten some minor burns while trying to get the rest of us out of Mrs. Jenkins’s house in the middle of the night, but they had healed nicely over the past week, with lots of cream and lots of kisses. “He’s been working with Grimaldi for the past two days, and this afternoon the sheriff asked to borrow him for this Katie Graves thing.”
Catherine nodded. “And you? Are you settling in OK?”
I was happy to be back in my childhood home, and told her so. “I should probably start looking for work, but since I’m not sure how long we’ll be here, I guess I’ll just keep my license in Nashville for now, just in case we end up going back there.”
When I’m not taking care of Carrie or sticking my nose in where it isn’t wanted, I have a real estate license. I had planned to transfer it down here permanently, but now that it looked like the move might not be permanent, I’d decided to just wait and see what happened. Carrie was still young enough that I could make a good case for staying home with her, and besides, we lived for free at the mansion. Rafe’s salary, which the Columbia PD was paying at the moment, was more than adequate to keep us in the manner to which we had become accustomed.
It wasn’t the manner to which Mother was accustomed, needless to say, or for that matter the manner to which Catherine and Jonathan were accustomed, but we were doing just fine.
“You could go back to school, you know,” Catherine said. “You dropped out before you got your degree, but you didn’t have a whole lot left. You could finish up, and then pass the bar and come to work with the rest of us.”
At the law firm my grandfather started, on the square in Sweetwater.
I shuddered. “No. Thank you. I’m not a lawyer at heart.”
She leaned back. “What are you, at heart? Because if you’ll forgive me for saying so, the real estate doesn’t look like it’s working out all that well.”
It wasn’t. I’d only sold a handful of houses in the time I’d had my license. Competition between realtors is stiff, at least in Nashville, and I’d been brought up to be a lady. Which meant I wasn’t equipped to take up the fight for the clients, listings, and dollars.
“Maybe things will be different here,” I said, optimistically. “Where people know me, and the Martin name still means something.”
“You’re not a Martin, dear,” Mother told me. “You’re a Collier now.”
And the Collier name meant the opposite. I made a face. “Whose side are you on?”
“Yours, darling. Always.” She smiled.
I smiled back, even though I wanted to snort. “Maybe I’ll just take the opportunity to write that historical bodice ripper I’ve been thinking about since Elspeth Caulfield died.”
Yet another long story. Elspeth Caulfield was a local woman, someone we had all gone to school with. She also happened to be the mother of Rafe’s son David, who was born when Rafe was eighteen, and who was living with his adopted family in Nashville. Rafe hadn’t even known about him until recently.
But back to Elspeth. Under the nom de plume Barbara Botticelli, she had also been a fantastically successful writer of bodice ripper romances, and one of my favorite authors. I figured, now that she was no longer writing, there was a vacancy in the market I could fill. I could call myself Romilda Romaine, or maybe Vanessa Vermicelli.
“Savannah Semolina,” Catherine said. “Or Jane Jamocha.” Jane being my middle name.
I gave her a quelling look. “I have come up with a title for it. Bedded by the Bedouin. I’m planning to put Rafe in a robe and turban and use him for inspiration.”
My mother and my sister gave me identical looks of horror.
“It worked for Elspeth,” I said.
Catherine’s lips twitched. “Elspeth hadn’t seen your husband naked since she was sixteen. It’s a little different.”
Maybe it was. “It’s something to think about, anyway.” I think I would like to become a fantastically successful author of bodice rippers.
“If you ask me,” Catherine said, “thinking about it is about all you should do.”