A Cutthroat Business (8 page)

I turned off the engine and got out. The slam of the car door sounded very loud in the silence. And it was very silent here. No birds singing, no children playing, no conversations or music. The brook didn’t even babble. Very quiet.

Maybe too quiet, as they say in the movies. But I was here, so I looked around anyway. There were no names or numbers anywhere, or for that matter any mailboxes. Nothing to indicate in which of these depressing shacks LaDonna Collier had lived and died. If these people ever got mail, it must all arrive together in the big box up on the main road, and be distributed once someone had carried it all down here. Every place looked deserted, and just as neglected and derelict as the next. There was no sign of life, and no one I could ask directions of.

Just for kicks, since I was here anyway, I made my way over to the nearest of the shacks and peered through its dirty window. The interior was empty, save for some debris on the floor. Wire-hangers, crumpled papers, roach motels. It didn’t look as if anyone had lived there for a while.

Stepping carefully around broken bottles, crumpled beer cans and twigs, I moved to the next home. It was empty, too. Mother was right; people had been deserting the Bog like rats fleeing a sinking ship. There was nothing for me to do here but to go home. I turned on my heel to go back to the car, and stopped with a gasp.

He had moved so quietly through the dry grass that I hadn’t heard him, and now he stood between me and the Volvo. For a second, with the sun in my eyes, all I could see was a tall, dark figure, and I recoiled.

He didn’t move. Not when I stumbled back, not when the heel of my insensible shoe got caught in a snake hole, and not when I ended up on my derriere on the dusty ground, with my skirt twisted around my hips and my thighs on display. The only thing that moved was his eyes, from my face to my feet and back, with insolent appreciation.

“Didn’t your mama teach you better manners?” I inquired coldly, in spite of my burning cheeks. The tiny smile on his lips transformed into a full fledged, dangerous grin.

“Hell, no. My mama always said, grab what you can get, ‘cause it’ll be gone afore you know it.”

He held out a hand. I hesitated, trying to remember whether anyone had ever said anything about Rafe Collier being in the habit of forcing himself on women.

“Or you can stay there,” he added, pointedly. I took the hand and let him haul me to my feet. We stood contemplating one another in silence for a moment.

“Are you following me?” I asked, finally.

“Why’d
I
be following
you
? This is
my
place.”

“I thought you were in
Nashville
,” I said.

“I thought
you
were in
Nashville
.”

“It’s my mother’s birthday. I came down for the party.”

He didn’t answer. After a second I added, awkwardly, “I heard about what happened to your mother. I’m sorry.”

“So you came to offer your condolences?” His voice was dry.

I shrugged. It wasn’t as if I could tell him that I had come to the Bog out of idle curiosity, because I wondered if there might be a connection between LaDonna’s death and Brenda Puckett’s murder.

In the silence that followed, the sound of a car engine, backfiring badly, came closer. Turning, I could see an older model Chevy come bumping down the track. It stopped a few feet away, and the driver’s side door opened with a screech. An African-American woman shoehorned herself out from behind the steering wheel and waddled toward us.

She was about my height and age, and approximately three times my weight. Her breasts were the size of watermelons and she had a behind you could have left a tray of drinks on, with no worries that they’d spill. All of her was poured into a hot pink spandex dress with spaghetti straps, which must have been made for a woman half her size. Her hair was bleached yellow and curled into big, fat sausage curls, and her lips were painted a deep cherry red. She looked like a black drag-queen parody of Shirley Temple. Her eyes were small and half buried in fat, but she managed to give me a dirty look anyway, before turning to Rafe. “Who she?”

He opened his mouth, but I intercepted him. “I’m Savannah Martin. Who are you?”

She didn’t answer, nor give any indication of having heard me. “What you bring her here for?”

“He didn’t bring me,” I said. “I came on my own.”

“What you want with a skinny white chick like that? When you can have Marquita?”

She balanced her weight precariously on one foot and thrust the other ample hip out.

I hid a smile. “You know, I’m going to go. I can see you’ve got your hands full here, Rafe.”

I gave him a patronizing pat on the arm. The muscles under the golden skin were as hard as granite. He cut his eyes to me, but didn’t say a word. Marquita growled deep in her throat, like a Rottweiler. I found myself moving a little faster than usual as I headed for my car.

Mom’s birthday party was a big success. Everyone was there: Dix and Sheila and their two kids, Catherine and Jonathan and their three, the rest of the staff from the law office, mom’s best friend Audrey, and of course the society reporter from the local newspaper, also known as my Aunt Regina. She took my picture and promised to put it in her column, to let everyone know that I was a realtor now and would be happy to sell their houses out from under them.

Sheriff Bob Satterfield had released himself from duty for the evening and was present, and so, of course, was his son. Mom met them at the door, passed Bob deftly into Audrey’s capable hands, and snagged Todd’s arm, to escort him straight over to me. Her demeanor was that of a devoted pet presenting her lord and master with a fat rat. “Look,
Savannah
. Here’s Todd.” She beamed.

“So I see,” I said. “Hi, Todd.”

“
Savannah
.” He made something halfway between a cordial nod and a gentlemanly half-bow. We stood in silence for a few seconds.

Mother broke it. “You look very handsome, Todd.”

She smiled. I suppressed an eye-roll. This was really a little
too
obvious, even for my mother.

Not that she wasn’t correct. Todd did look handsome. At almost 30 he was still lean and had all his hair, and his tall frame was set off to perfection in a gray suit with a blue-gray tie that matched his eyes perfectly. Plus, he’s been brought up to be a Southern gentleman, so he knows how to behave. He bowed over my mother’s hand and told her how beautiful she looked. Which she did. The spa had tinted her hair a lovely champagne color, and she was relaxed and radiant. I hope I look as good on
my
58th birthday.

“And you,
Savannah
...” Todd turned to me, “you don’t look a day older than you did in high school.”

He leaned in and pecked me on the cheek. I simpered. “Thank you, Todd. That’s so sweet.” Untrue, but sweet.

Mother beamed. “I’ll leave you two to get reacquainted.” She patted Todd’s arm and shot me a look that said, as clearly as words,
Don’t you screw up this time,
Savannah
!
I grimaced.

“It’s good to see you again,” Todd said when she was out of range.

I turned to him. “You too. How long has it been? Three years?”

“Four. Your wedding, remember.”

“Oh. Yes.” How could I have forgotten? Bradley and I had gotten married in Sweetwater, in the same church where I had been christened 23 years earlier, and mother had invited everyone I had ever known, including my old boyfriend, to the ceremony. Todd had moved to
Atlanta
shortly thereafter, and he had gotten married himself just a few months later. I hadn’t been invited to his wedding, and had never even seen a picture of his wife.
 

“I was sorry to hear about your divorce,” he added politely. He even sounded sorry, which was nice of him.

“Thank you,” I said. “Likewise.”

He shrugged. It didn’t seem as if he was too heartbroken. Maybe mother was right. Maybe he had married her because he couldn’t have me. “Since we’re both in Sweetwater again, how about having dinner with me one night? Tomorrow, maybe?”

No, if he was still agonizing over his failed marriage, it wasn’t apparent.

“I’m really sorry,” I said, “but I’m only in Sweetwater for the day. I have to go back to
Nashville
tomorrow.”

“Couldn’t you stay one more night?” He looked deeply into my eyes. I hesitated for a moment — I admit it — but in the end duty won out.

“I can’t. I have somewhere to be at 2 o’clock tomorrow.”

“A date?” He smiled, but his eyes stayed sharp. This was getting awfully serious awfully fast.

“A funeral. A colleague of mine was murdered this weekend, and the memorial service is tomorrow.”

That
did it. He stopped making puppy-dog eyes at me as the professional DA kicked in. “I heard about that. Nasty business.” Indeed. “Her throat was cut?”

I nodded. And I must have turned pale, because Todd looked at me more closely. “The news said one of her colleagues found her. That was you?”

I nodded again. The memory of it would probably stay with me until my dying day. Todd swore. “Why would you go and do something like that,
Savannah
?”

“I didn’t do anything!” I protested. “It wasn’t like I knew I would find a corpse when I drove out there!” And if I had known, believe me, I wouldn’t have gone.

On the other side of the room, Sheriff Satterfield looked up from his conversation with mother and Audrey. I’m not sure if it was the mention of a corpse or our raised voices that had alerted him, but either way we had his attention now. Todd took a deep breath. “I apologize. It was just... I hate the idea of you having to face such unpleasantness.”

“Thank you, Todd,” I said, touched. “That’s really sweet of you.”

Todd took another breath, but before he could utter whatever it was he wanted to say, his father had turned up next to us. “What’re you two young’uns gettin’ so het-up about?” He looked from Todd to me and back. Todd flushed and bit his lip. I smiled sweetly.

“Hi, Sheriff Satterfield. I was just telling Todd that I have to get back to
Nashville
tomorrow, to go to a funeral.”

“Heard about that,” Bob Satterfield nodded. He’s always been a man of few words. “Sounded bad.”

I nodded. “I don’t know how you policemen do it, day in and day out. I haven’t slept through the night since Friday. Although I hear you had a nasty one yourself a few weeks back.”

I crossed my fingers hopefully behind my back. If anyone knew the details of what had happened to Rafe’s mother, it was Sheriff Satterfield.

He scratched his bushy, gray head. “LaDonna Collier, you mean? Over in the Bog?”

I nodded. “Mother told me she died. Although she didn’t know much about it.”

“Ain’t much to know,” Satterfield grunted. “Bog’s mostly empty these days. Bulldozers’re due any day. LaDonna was supposed to be gettin’ out, too. Guy from the construction company went over there to make sure the place was empty, noticed the stench, and called us. She’d been dead for a week or more. No way to tell what happened.”

“No sign of foul play?” I asked, with a smile.

Sheriff Satterfield shrugged. “The way she kept house, who could tell? Looked like a bomb hit the place. Cause of death was an overdose, but there’s no way to know if she did it herself, or if someone else was there with her. Nobody’s come forward.”

“What about her son?”

“Rafe? He don’t live here no more.”

“But you spoke to him, right?”

Bob Satterfield nodded. “He’s next of kin; had to arrange the funeral. Had her buried up there on
Oak Street
, next her mama and daddy. Arranged it all by phone from
Memphis
.”

I wrinkled my forehead, then straightened it out quickly, before mother could turn around and disapprove. “Why
Memphis
?”

“Seems to be where he spends his time these days.”

“Oh,” I said, surprised. “I assumed he lived around here. Or in
Nashville
.”

“Why’d you assume somethin’ like that, darlin’?” The sheriff peered at me from under bushy brows.

I grimaced, wishing I’d kept my mouth shut. It was too late now, however. “Because I saw him in
Nashville
on Saturday. And down here today.”

“Down here?” The two of them exchanged looks. I nodded.

“He was out at the Bog this morning. Cleaning out his mother’s house, I assume. It looked like he was working at something, anyway; he was all dirty and sweaty.”

Nobody said anything for a moment. “I don’t know what worries me more, darlin’,” Sheriff Satterfield remarked, “that you went to the Bog by yourself, or that you went to see Rafe Collier.”

Todd nodded emphatically.

“Oh,” I said, shaking my head, “I didn’t go to see Rafe. I thought he was in
Nashville
. He scared the bejeezes out of me when he turned up.”