Killer Reunion (16 page)

“Tom's not gonna like that,” she told him.

“I don't give a damn what Tommy boy likes or doesn't like. If I piss him off bad enough, he can lock me in a jail cell with my wife. I can think of a lot worse things.”

“I've seen those jail cots of his,” she said. “They're two feet wide, if that. We'd have to sleep double-decker.”

He chuckled, the sound of it deep and masculine in the darkness. “So what? You and me, we've done double-decker plenty of times before. And speaking of . . . What you think, darlin'? Am I going to get lucky tonight or not?”

“Reckon we ought to. It might be the last time we get a chance to for God knows how—”

He pressed his fingertips to her lips, shutting off the rest of her words. “Don't say it, Van. I mean it. I'm gonna make love to you right now, just like I have many times before and just like I'm going to many, many more times. And not during some stupid conjugal visit, either. You got that?”

She smiled at him, and by the dim blue glow of the night-light, she saw him smile back.

“I've got it. I've got it,” she assured him. “And now the all-important, burning question is, am I going to get it?”

He laughed again, and the sound of it went through her, sweeter and more sensual than any other form of foreplay

“Ah, brace yourself, darlin',” he said with a growl. “You're gonna get it
good
.”

T
he sweet intimacies of the darkness had faded all too soon, to be followed by a cheerless gray dawn. Morning had come far too quickly for Savannah's liking, and her dread of all the day might bring had kept her awake the entire night.

She was exhausted, too tired to breathe, and she hadn't even gotten out of bed yet.

That was never good.

As the first feeble ray of light shone through the lacy curtains, she heard some rustling in the kitchen. Soon the smell of fresh-perked coffee reached her nose.

No drip coffee for Granny. It had to be the “real” thing, made in a percolator and allowed to brew until it could crawl out of the pot and bench-press a Mack truck.

Savannah told herself the caffeine would help. Heck, it might even give her a pulse.

“You awake, babe?” she heard her husband ask.

She rolled toward him, took one look at his haggard face, and knew that he, too, had been awake all night.

“Yeah,” she said. “I'm lying here wishing I'd paid more attention to Miss Puddiphatt in seventh-grade geography. Which do you reckon is closer to Georgia? Canada or Mexico?”

She was trying for a joke, but he didn't even smile.

“Probably six of one and a half dozen of the other. But if either one is where you wanna go, darlin', let's get moving. I'm with you all the way.”

She studied his face a moment. “You're kidding, right?”

He shrugged. “Six of one and a half dozen of the other.”

“Hmmm. Go on the run or put my trust in the American justice system. Are those my only choices? Really?”

“Don't you believe in the American justice system?”

“I used to, back when you were innocent until a jury decided you weren't. Nowadays, with folks being tried by public opinion in the press and the politicians weighing in before they've even had a trial . . . not so much.”

“I hear ya. But things seem a bit backward around here. Maybe they're old-fashioned when it comes to stuff like that.”

“One can always hope.”

The aromas of baking biscuits and bacon drifted into the bedroom, mixing deliciously with the scent of the coffee.

“Shoot,” Savannah said, throwing back her sheet and quilt and sitting up in bed. “Granny's making a full breakfast. I didn't want her to go to all that trouble. Especially when she probably didn't sleep a wink herself last night.”

He caught her by the arm and pulled her back to him. “Leave her alone, babe. Let her do what she needs to do. It's important to her to make you a big breakfast. You know how she is. A wild tiger and a rabid grizzly bear couldn't keep her from sending you on your way with a full stomach. Especially
this
morning.”

“That's true, God bless her.” Savannah reached for his hand. “We have to find out who did this murder. Who
really
did it. Because if I go away for it, it'll kill her.”

“I know, sweetheart. I know. And we will. I'm sure of it.”

Savannah breathed in the blended fragrance of the food and listened to Granny rattle her pans while humming one of her favorite hymns. Ah, the scents and sounds of Savannah's childhood.

She only wished that she was half as sure as Dirk was pretending to be that everything would turn out all right.

 

Somehow it seemed appropriate to Savannah that it was raining when she and Dirk drove up to the front of the sheriff's station in downtown McGill.

The sky was as gray and cheerless as her mood. And why shouldn't it be? Unless her luck improved considerably over what had come her way the past few days, this was the end of her life as she knew it.

Dirk parked the car at the curb in front of the small, two-story brick building that housed the McGill Sheriff's Station. He switched off the key, and in unison, they both glanced up at the second story, where the windows had bars.

The jail.

Savannah's new home.

They had arrived fifteen minutes early, as the last thing Savannah wanted was to make Tom wait after giving him her solemn word that she'd be there on time. And yet, now that they were there, Savannah found that her feet refused to get out of the car and walk up to the station. The old, square brick building was so special to her, the place where, as a child, she had dreamed of being a police officer.

Who would have thought that a simple trip back here would result in her being imprisoned in that building, in her being unable to return home to San Carmelita?

Sometimes, life took a strange turn when you least expected it. And there seemed to be no way to prepare for the twist. You just hung on and rode the roller coaster to the end. Like with any other thrill ride, there was no stepping off midway.

“It was hard to say good-bye to Granny when we left,” she said, fighting back the tears, which recently seemed so near the surface at all times. “She took it well, though. Held up better than I did, in fact.”

Dirk grinned wryly, looking in his rearview mirror. “That's because she was just pretending to say good-bye.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Look behind us.”

Savannah turned in her seat and peered out the car's rear window. At first she thought there was some sort of impromptu demonstration or parade forming on Main Street in McGill, Georgia. Then she realized it was just her relatives. All of them.

Having parked their assorted vehicles, they were tromping down the street in Savannah and Dirk's direction. When they reached their car, they surrounded it. Gran, Marietta with her two boys, Cordele, Jesup, Alma, Vidalia and Butch and their double sets of twins. And with them marched Waycross and Tammy. The Reid family, full blooded and adopted, in all their indignant glory, had come to, as Gran had put it, “walk our Savannah girl through her valley of the shadow of death.”

Savannah appreciated the support, if not the melodrama.

She and Dirk stepped out of the car and stood with them in the pouring rain.

“You shouldn't have come out in this storm, Gran,” Savannah said, enfolding her grandmother in a warm embrace.

“Of course I should. We have to show that snotty-nosed Tommy Stafford who he's dealing with. We're not gonna cotton to him giving you any grief. At least none that's not absolutely necessary. We aim to show him that you're well represented by your kinfolk, and he'd better treat you right, or he'll have us to answer to.”

Savannah didn't have time to suggest that maybe a gentler, subtler approach might work better with Sheriff Stafford, because at that moment his patrol car pulled up in front of them.

Tom got out, wearing an oversized bright yellow rain slicker with wide silver reflector tape across the chest and around his equally oversized bicep areas. She'd seen him looking happier. Much happier, in fact.

He shook his head as he approached her. “What? General Sherman and his army weren't available, too?” he asked. “Good Lord, gal. I should've known you'd show up with a dadgum entourage.”

Gran stuck herself between him and Savannah and glared up at him with fire in her eyes. “Don't you get smart, boy,” she said. “We've as much a right to walk on this public road and sidewalk as anybody else.”

“Actually, you don't have the right to walk
in
the road,” he told her. “If one of you gets run over, I'll be the one fillin' out the paperwork.”

Gran turned to her family members. “Sheriff says to relocate yourselves onto the sidewalk. And you better get a move on it, too, or he might arrest you. Seems he's gone from being a good sheriff to all arrest happy these days.”

Savannah saw Tom wince. She said to Gran, “That's okay, Granny. Tom's just doing what he feels he needs to. Don't be too sore at him for fulfilling his duties.”

Granny sniffed, unconvinced. “If he was doing his job proper like, he'd have done solved this murder and found the real culprit, instead of laying the blame on you.”

Dirk stepped forward. “I agree with Granny. A real cop would've done some actual investigating. Not just pinned it on the—”

“The most likely suspect?” Tom interjected. “Heaven forbid, Sergeant Coulter. If this was your case, you'd never do such a thing, I suppose.”

Savannah felt her heart sinking, which surprised her, because she thought she'd already hit the bottom of the catfish barrel.

“Let's just go inside and get 'er done, Tom,” she told him as the rain suddenly increased fourfold and the wind began to blow. “If we keep standing out here, you won't even have to try, convict, and execute me. I'll catch my death of cold and die of pneumonia.”

Without cuffing her, for which she was most grateful, he led her to the front door of the station. Her faithful soldiers marched close behind, much to Tom's chagrin.

While she had to admit that they might be carrying the “unified front” business a bit too far, she had never felt so loved and supported.

When Tom opened the rusty old screen door for her, she couldn't help noticing and commenting on the patched holes in it. “Last time I was here,” she said, “you were keeping the mosquitoes out with cellophane tape. I see you've graduated to screen patches held on with . . . What is that? Gray bubble gum?”

“Metal glue,” he replied gruffly. “Move along before this storm washes us all down to the river.” He opened the wooden door, with its peeling green paint, and nudged her inside.

Dirk followed close behind, a grim expression on his face.

Inside the stationhouse, the air conditioner was cranking full force, and Savannah had the creepy feeling that she had just stepped into a meat locker. Certainly, the office area had all the charm and ambiance of a pork processing plant. Dark, cold, and somehow sinister. Sparsely furnished with only the barest of necessities—a couple of desks, some folding metal chairs, a locked gun cabinet, a single computer, and a fax machine—it spoke of a no-frills, no-nonsense operation.

And she still loved the place.

Even arriving as an unhappy, unwilling guest of the county failed to lessen her affection for this simple building.

It was here that she had first dreamed the dream of becoming a police officer. It was this strong brick station that housed those heroes in blue who had rescued her and her siblings that night so long ago.

Of all the places on earth to face such degradation, why did it have to be here, in this place that was sacred to her soul?

With a deeply troubled look on his handsome face, Tom Stafford dismissed Martin, who was apparently the night-watch deputy. And once the younger man was gone, the sheriff reached into a cupboard and took out a large green plastic bag.

“Have a seat over there, Savannah,” he said as he opened a drawer, searched through it, and pulled out a pair of flip-flops sealed in a clear bag.

She sat, as directed, and Dirk stood beside her chair, silent and vigilant.

Tom dropped the flip-flops onto the floor, next to her feet. Then he held the large green bag open in front of her. “I'm going to need your shoes and socks, your belt, if you're wearing one, and your jewelry. Also any cash you may be carrying on your person.”

She knew the drill. In fact, she knew it so well that she had actually given herself a pedicure the night before. Heaven only knew when she would have the opportunity to again. And just because she was a jailbird didn't mean she couldn't have bright red, sexy toenails during her incarceration.

Marietta would've been proud.

She pulled off her loafers and dropped them into his bag. “I'm not wearing socks or a belt, and I'm giving my jewelry and my cash to my husband, if you don't mind,” she told him.

She made a bit of a show about taking off the enormous engagement ring that her otherwise tightwad husband had bought for her. She made sure that Tom got a good look at it when she passed it under his nose and placed it in Dirk's hand.

She was mighty proud of that ring. A guy who made a practice of hanging up used paper towels to dry so that they could be used again and again and again had forked over a zillion bucks to buy her a doorknob-sized diamond.

If that wasn't love, what was?

Tom sealed the green bag, used a black marker to write her name on it, and stashed it inside the cupboard.

One by one, Savannah's family had entered the room, and they were standing shoulder to shoulder, a solid, silent wall of protestation.

Savannah heard one of Vidalia's older twins ask, “Is Aunt Savannah going to get her fingerprints made?”

“Yes, sugar,” his mother told him. “I reckon she is.”

“Is it gonna hurt?” he asked.

Savannah turned to him and gave him a wink and a smile. “No, puddin' cat, it won't hurt. Not a bit. You want to get your thumbprint done?”

“Hey, I don't know if—” Tom began to protest.

“Lighten up, Tommy. This is an informal proceeding, right? I mean, how many times do you get to arrest a woman you almost married? And in front of the folks who were almost your in-laws, at that?”

Tom shook his head and ran his hand across his face. “You may find this all highly entertaining, Savannah. But I'm not the least bit happy about being put in this position. I'd rather swallow a gallon of hot sauce, without a single beer to wash it down, than put you through this in front of your family. In front of your new husband, too, for that matter. How would you feel if you had to do it to me?”

Savannah stole a glance at Dirk, whom she had never seen looking so miserable. She searched Tommy's green eyes and saw a world of sadness. She turned and saw that her grandmother was wearing the same grief-stricken expression as when they buried her grandfather.