“Is this really necessary?” I asked three minutes later.
We were downstairs in the parking lot, and the young sheriff’s deputy—who was probably wishing with all his might that he was off-duty today—had told Rafe to assume the position against the hood of the Volvo.
He had patted me down already—very gently and politely, probably because Rafe had been staring at him with that patented ‘would you like to die now, or later?’ look on his face the whole time. Now it was his turn, and although Rafe was obeying without much of a fuss, the young cop looked reluctant to venture any closer.
I couldn’t blame him. He looked eighteen, although he was probably a few years older, if he was a full-fledged sheriff’s deputy, and he was no taller than me. Since he was of Asian ancestry, that wasn’t surprising, but standing next to Rafe’s muscular six-foot-three, he looked like a child. My husband could break him like a twig.
And Rafe was unhappy. “Listen, kid,” he said, legs apart and hands braced on the hood of the car, so the muscles in his upper arms stretched the sleeves of the T-shirt, “I ain’t carrying. We’re on our honeymoon. I left my gun at home.”
This assurance didn’t seem to make the young man any happier.
“He’s a TBI agent,” I explained. “The Tennessee Bureau of Investigations. He’s allowed to carry a gun. And if you ask nicely, I’m sure he’ll show you his badge.”
Rafe glanced at me over his shoulder. “That’s at home too, darlin’. I didn’t figure I’d need my gun and badge this weekend. I know your mama don’t like me much, but I didn’t think things’d go far enough that I’d need to shoot nobody.”
“He’s a TBI agent,” I told Deputy Chang. “You can trust me.”
Rafe rolled his eyes and turned back to the car. “Been a while since I had to deal with this shit. I forgot how much I don’t like it.”
I hadn’t particularly liked it, either, despite the deputy’s polite manner. There’s just something inherently demeaning about being patted down. And for Rafe, who had been on the receiving end of that kind of treatment more than anyone should be, I’m sure it was doubly annoying. After ten years of having everyone in the world believing he was a criminal, he was finally in a place where things were working well. He had a good job, everyone knew he was an upstanding citizen, even my mother had grudgingly admitted that I could do worse. He had a new wife and a baby on the way... and this kind of thing kept happening to him.
“C’mon, kid,” he growled. “I ain’t wearing nothing but a T-shirt and a pair of shorts. There’s nowhere to hide a weapon in this getup. Just do it. I don’t wanna spend the whole day standing here.”
Chang swallowed, but approached. Although he kept his hand on the butt of his gun. In case Rafe made a sudden move, I guess. I could have told him—although I didn’t—that if Rafe made a move, that gun wouldn’t have a chance to clear the holster. Hopefully Rafe wasn’t thinking of doing anything that stupid.
He didn’t. Just stood there, visibly simmering, while Chang made sure that he wasn’t hiding anything lethal in his board shorts.
Then Chang stepped back to a safe distance. “OK. You can turn around.”
Rafe turned around. I wandered over to him, now that we both were cleared, and he put an arm around me. “What’s going on?” he asked Chang.
“We got a call,” Chang said. “About a B&E in progress at this address.”
Rafe’s lips tightened. “Who called it in?”
“Don’t know,” Chang said. When Rafe didn’t bother to look like he believed him, Chang added, “I didn’t talk to them. The dispatcher took the call and told me to go check it out. I got here in time to see the two of you go inside Miz Wallin’s place.”
“We’re guests at the inn,” I explained, although we’d already been over this upstairs in Frenetta’s apartment, before Chang had hustled us down the stairs and into the parking lot. “She didn’t show up for breakfast this morning. We thought we’d check on her.”
“So you went up to her apartment and broke in.”
“The door was open,” Rafe said. “Misdemeanor trespass. I ain’t carrying.”
This time it was Chang’s lips that tightened. I deduced that Rafe knew more than Chang liked about the legalities of the situation.
“Besides,” I added, “we weren’t planning to commit a crime. We were concerned.”
“Because Miz Wallin didn’t show up for breakfast.”
“Because Ms. Wallin didn’t show up to cook and serve breakfast. She runs a B and B, Deputy. Cooking and serving breakfast is part of the job.”
Chang sighed. “Tell me what happened.”
I told him what had happened. Our arrival yesterday, and the fact that Frenetta hadn’t been here to greet us. “Although it was pretty late. Nina wasn’t happy about having to come downstairs to open the door for us.” At least not until she’d seen Rafe.
“Nina?”
“One of the other guests. There are four guest rooms upstairs. We’re in number 2. Nina and Chip are in 1, Hildy and Gloria are in 3, and Groot and Vonnie are in 4.”
Chang looked overwhelmed.
“Write it down,” Rafe growled, and Chang gave him a resentful look.
“Be nice,” I told him. Rafe, not Chang. Chang and I weren’t on those terms. Not yet. “He’s just doing his job. And he’s probably not used to dealing with dead bodies. Pretend he’s one of your boys. You don’t yell at them, do you?”
“Sure I do.” But he made a visible effort to calm down. “Listen, kid...”
“And don’t call him that. I don’t think he likes it.”
Rafe gave me a look that said he didn’t like being told what to do, either, but he followed the advice. “Listen, Deputy,” he said, with a sideways glance at me to make sure I appreciated how restrained he was, “my wife and I got here late last night. We never even met Miz Wallin. All we did was check and see if she was all right, since everybody else was just sitting around waiting for something to happen.”
“He’s used to taking charge,” I told Chang, and earned myself another look from Rafe. “Well, you are. And anyway, we just wanted to make sure she was all right. Nobody answered when we knocked, but the door was open, so we went in. And we found her in bed. Dead.”
“How did you know she was dead? Did you touch her?”
“I checked for a pulse,” Rafe said. “The body’s cold, and rigor mortis has set in.”
For someone who isn’t used to dealing with dead bodies, he sure sounded official.
“Of course the body’s cold,” I said. “It’s like a meat locker up there.”
And maybe that wasn’t the best analogy, because they both turned to stare at me.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’ll just stand here and be quiet, shall I?”
“Thanks, darlin’,” Rafe answered, and turned back to Chang. “There was no sign of anything suspicious, other than the open door. And she coulda forgotten to lock it. Or maybe this is the kind of town where people don’t bother to lock their doors at night.”
“The B and B door was locked,” I reminded him.
He glanced at me, but didn’t answer. “I don’t know nothing about this woman. For all I know, she coulda been in the habit of leaving her door open. She coulda been expecting someone. She coulda been planning to go out, and forgot.”
Chang nodded. “You arrived last night? How long are you staying?”
We told him, and answered a couple more questions—the lights had been out in the parking lot last night; no, we hadn’t noticed any lights on in the apartment, either; no, we hadn’t seen anyone but Nina—and then Chang said we could go. “But don’t leave town.”
“I know the drill, Deputy,” Rafe said. “We ain’t going nowhere for the next couple days. Like I said, we’re on our honeymoon. Is it OK if we go down to the beach?”
“You can go anywhere in town,” Chang said expansively, as if that included more than just a square half mile, “just don’t leave.”
We said we wouldn’t, and walked away. Chang went into the B and B, I assume to talk to the other guests and give them the news that Frenetta was no longer among the living.
“This is awkward.”
Rafe glanced down at me. “Not sure that’s the word I woulda used.”
“I meant that our hostess is dead. How can we stay on in a house where the hostess is dead? It seems like very bad manners.”
“I don’t think Chang’s gonna let us leave,” Rafe said.
“But we never even met Frenetta. Why would we want to kill her?”
“Why would anybody?” He didn’t wait for me to answer, just added, “What do you mean, kill? You don’t know that she didn’t die peacefully in her sleep.”
No, I didn’t. I guess I’d just gotten used to the corpses I encountered getting that way as a result of unnatural circumstances. But he was right. There’d been no evidence of foul play—other than that unlocked door, and Frenetta could have forgotten to lock it. And the blue lips... well, I’m sure there are lots of reasons why someone’s lips might turn blue, and not all of them unnatural.
“She didn’t look very old, though. Too young to die in her sleep for no reason.”
Best guess, I’d put Frenetta’s age at somewhere between sixty and sixty-five. And while people die at that age, it’s usually because something’s wrong with them.
“You dunno that something wasn’t wrong with her,” Rafe said, and stopped as we came out between the last two houses and stood opposite from the beach. “There it is.”
There it was. And we could see it so much better than last night. The sand was almost white, sugary, and the ocean a light turquoise or teal, bluer than the sky, with tiny, froth-capped waves.
“It’s gorgeous.”
Rafe nodded. When he turned to me, his eyes were lit up like a kid’s. “Let’s go.”
“You go.” I was wearing a sundress. I wasn’t about to throw myself into the waves.
“You sure?”
I nodded. Rafe whipped the T-shirt over his head and tossed it to me with a grin, and started running, straight for the water.
I watched him for a few seconds, and then wandered off to find shade. Being burnt to a crisp is unladylike, and tanning gives you wrinkles. So I found an empty umbrella, pushed a couple of quarters into the slot in the stem to get it to open, and settled in a lounge chair to watch Rafe play in the waves.
He was like a little kid seeing the ocean for the first time. If he’d had a bucket and spade, I think he would have built a sand castle.
He seemed blissfully unconcerned with the cross-stitch of healing scars across his chest and abdomen, and with the two-inch stab wound going straight through his lower arm, still pink and puffy. The bandage had come off just in time for the wedding. They weren’t his first scars, by any means, so I guess he just regarded them as par for the course, but I felt a little shiver go down my spine every time I looked at him. For a horrible eighteen hours or so, I hadn’t been sure I’d ever see him again. The fact that he had acquired another twenty or thirty scars during that time, didn’t bother me in the least. The fact that the person who gave them to him—the person whose name was carved into his skin along with that crazy-quilt pattern—could have, and had, every intention of killing him when he was finished amusing himself, upset me a lot more.
Rafe seemed to have shaken it off. He didn’t talk about the experience, and didn’t seem to dwell on it. And if the scars bothered him, he didn’t show it. He did get a few sideways glances, though. Some of them, I’m sure, just because he’s exceptionally gorgeous half-dressed, but I caught a few double-takes and shocked expressions thrown his way, as well. If those bothered him, he didn’t let that show, either.
I let him play for as long as I could stand it, and the next time he came back to the umbrella, I told him, “I’m starving. Any chance we could go get some early lunch somewhere?”
“Christ.” He looked immediately chastised. “Course, darlin’. You shoulda said something sooner.”
“I didn’t really notice until now,” I fibbed. He gave me a jaundiced look, and I added, “Fine. You were having so much fun I didn’t want you to have to stop. But now I really do need to eat something. I think the baby’s starting to gnaw on my stomach lining.”
“Let’s hope not.” He held out his hand for his T-shirt, and I handed it over and watched as he pulled it down over muscles, scars, and everything else. “What’re you hungry for?”
It took me a second to drag my gaze up to meet his, and he chuckled. “If you want some of that, you gotta keep your strength up. Let’s get you fed first.” He reached out a hand to haul me to my feet.
“I don’t really care what I eat,” I told him as I put my hand in his. “It depends on what’s available.”
“Then let’s take a walk and see.” He kept my hand in his as we wandered off down the beach, eying the store fronts on the other side of the street, and the food carts parked on the beach walk.
It didn’t take long to find something acceptable, probably because I was so hungry that almost anything would have sounded good to me. Rafe likes pizza, so we ended up in a pizza parlor where he grabbed a couple of slices, and I ordered a salad. The baby had given me a tendency toward heartburn, so I was trying to avoid both spicy—tomato sauce—and greasy—melted cheese—foods for the time being.
It was while we were sitting there, chomping on pizza and lettuce leaves, that Deputy Chang came back into our lives. The bell above the door rang. Rafe glanced up, and I could see his expression become resigned. When I turned to look over my shoulder, I saw Chang bearing down on us. “Mr. Collier? I’m going to have to ask you to accompany me to the sheriff’s office.”
“Found out about my record, did you?”
Chang didn’t answer, and Rafe added, “Just gimme a minute to finish lunch with my wife, Deputy. I’ll be right with you.”
Chang nodded and went to take up position next to the door. I guess he wanted to make sure that Rafe wouldn’t have a chance to make a break for it.
“I thought your record was expunged,” I told him as soon as Chang was out of range.
He shook his head, conveying the last few bites of pepperoni pizza to his mouth. “Nothing I did undercover stuck. But I earned that stretch in Riverbend all on my own.”
Five years for aggravated assault and felony battery with the intent to cause harm. Two years served before the TBI talked him into going undercover for them. He was barely eighteen when it happened, and just twenty when they let him out.
It was a lifetime ago. He was a different person now. It was a damn shame that after everything he’d done, it was still following him around, causing trouble.
“Do I need to call Dix and get a recommendation for a lawyer?” I wanted to know.
He shook his head. “I ain’t worried yet. Unless they’re stupid, they’re gonna figure out that I didn’t have nothing to do with it. We’ve never been here before, and didn’t know the lady.”
I nodded. “Do you want me to come with you?”
He shook his head again. “No sense in us both sitting at the sheriff’s office. Just go back to the B and B and take a nap. The sun prob’ly made you sleepy.”
It had, especially coupled with the food. And of course the baby. I was tired all the time nowadays.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m positive,” Rafe said and pushed his chair back. “I’ll see you in a couple hours.”
He took the time to bend and drop a kiss on my lips, and then he sauntered toward the door, where Chang was still waiting. As they passed through and out into the blinding sunshine, it was hard to say who looked more relaxed, the cop or the ex-con.
I cleaned off the table and headed out, while people stared and whispered. I ignored it, something I’ve gotten better at since taking up with Rafe. There was a time when the idea of being the center of attention, of having people talk about me, was the worst thing imaginable.
A lady doesn’t draw attention to herself, darling.
I could almost hear my mother’s voice.
But that was all behind me now. Let’em stare. Who cared what they thought, about him, me, or any of it? After tomorrow, we’d never see any of them again anyway.
By the time I got outside to the sidewalk, Chang’s patrol car was gone, and so, of course, was Rafe. I trudged back to the B and B, but before I made it upstairs and to bed, I was waylaid by Gloria and Hildy, who were sitting on the front porch sipping lemonade.
“There you are!” Gloria said when she saw me.
It seemed impolite to simply nod and walk past, so I made myself stop. “Hello.”
“We wondered where you’d got to!”
“We went to the beach,” I said. “And then to lunch.”
“And where’s your handsome husband?”
She peered down the street, maybe thinking he had let me walk back to the B and B on my own, and was coming.
“Deputy Chang came and picked him up,” I said.
That seemed to be the opening they’d been looking for, because they both leaned forward. “He said Frenetta’s dead,” Hildy said, her voice hushed.
I nodded.
“What happened?”
“I have no idea. She was in bed. I guess maybe she just... died.”
They exchanged a look. “She wasn’t very old,” Gloria said.
Hildy shook her head. “Old enough that she’d want to retire, but not old enough to die.”
“Maybe she was ill?” I suggested.
They exchanged another look. “I didn’t notice anything like that,” Gloria said. Hildy shook her head.
I decided that since I was here, I might as well get some information. It would keep my mind occupied, and off Rafe, in the process of being grilled by Deputy Chang at the sheriff’s office.
I was hopeful that Chang and his boss would see that Rafe wasn’t involved in Frenetta’s death, in spite of that arrest record. But the possibility that they wouldn’t was playing with my mind, so I could use a distraction. This one would work.
I pulled an unoccupied wicker chair closer to the porch swing where Gloria and Hildy sat, and sank down in it. “You said you’d been here a while, right?”
They nodded in unison. It was weird to see them so in sync, since they looked totally different. Gloria was handsome rather than pretty, with cropped hair, broad shoulders under a striped shirt, and muscular legs in khaki shorts. Hildy, on the other hand, was all girl, with a messy topknot of frizzy gray-streaked brown hair, and a frumpy summer dress with little flowers.
“We got here late last night,” I continued, “and I think Frenetta may already have been dead. At least she didn’t come down to greet us, and there were no lights on in her apartment.”
They both nodded.
“So we never actually met her. And since it was my sister who made the reservation, I never even spoke to her on the phone.” Although maybe I should give Catherine a call and get her impression of the deceased. Or at least let her know what was going on.
Thanks, sis. Just what we needed. A busman’s honeymoon.
Like we didn’t have enough crime in our regular lives.
“This is our third time here,” Gloria said. Hildy made a sort of aborted movement, and Gloria glanced at her, but didn’t stop speaking. “We came down from Massachusetts last summer and fell in love with the place. Then we came back over Christmas, and now we’re back again.”
“So you must have gotten to know Frenetta pretty well. Any idea who might have wanted to do away with her?”
There was a pause. “What makes you think someone did away with her?” Gloria asked.
“Was she...?” Hildy paused delicately.
I shook my head. “It looked like she’d gone to sleep and never woken up.” Aside from the blue lips. “But if the police are interviewing suspects, they must think she didn’t die a natural death.”
Or at least they were open to the possibility.
“And your husband’s a suspect?” Hildy asked. “How awful for you!”
I shrugged. “I’m used to it.” Not that it ever got any easier, but for a while, every time Rafe showed up in Sweetwater, Sheriff Satterfield tried to pin something on him. By now, I wasn’t even surprised when someone prejudged him based on the way he looked and the fact that he had a prison record. “So any ideas about who might have wanted Frenetta dead? Or why?”
They exchanged a glance. “She could be trying,” Gloria said. “Indecisive. She’d make up her mind, and then change it five minutes later. You never really knew where you stood. Although I don’t know that that’s enough for someone to kill her...”
“Do you know if she had any differences with anyone? Any arguments?”
They looked at one another. “Go ahead and tell her,” Hildy said.
“Tell me what?”
Gloria lowered her voice. “Yesterday morning, when we came down to breakfast, she and Nina were in the butler’s pantry. Talking.”
“Arguing,” Hildy said.
“Did you hear what they were arguing about?”
“Chip,” Gloria said.
“Chip?”
They both nodded.
“Why?”
“We don’t know,” Gloria said. “But we very distinctly heard his name.” She lowered her voice, after a quick look around to make sure no one was listening. “Nina threatened Frenetta.”
“Threatened her? Really?”
Gloria nodded. “I heard her say, ‘You’d better do right by Chip, or else.’”
“Or else, what?”
“She didn’t say,” Gloria said. “But I could tell it wouldn’t be good.”
Hildy nodded.
“Did you tell the police?”
They both shook their heads. “They didn’t ask.”
“Did she see you? Nina?”
They exchanged a glance. “When she came out of the butler’s pantry. Why?”
“Because if she killed Frenetta, and she knows you overheard her threaten Frenetta, she might decide to get rid of you, too.”
Hildy gulped, and Gloria paled.
I got to my feet. “If I were you, I’d tell the police.” Hopefully that’d be enough to remove some of the suspicion from Rafe. “As soon as possible. Better safe than sorry.”
I left them sitting there, looking a lot less relaxed than when I’d arrived.